The Sword of Cyrus: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 4)

by JC Ryan

  Stunned silence and not a few puzzled expressions greeted his words. As Admiral Banks stood to take the microphone, all faces turned to him.

  “I’ll tell you just a little more about what you’re facing. This is a terrorist threat from a well-financed and very organized Iranian group calling themselves the Sword of Cyrus. It is real. We know when the attacks will begin; you will not be caught unaware. Your job is to be ready.”

  Somewhat reassured, the men and women gathered in the hangar began to talk among themselves, until trainers barked at them. A grueling schedule would be theirs for the next five days. Half were dispatched to their bunks, mess hall or study desks where they would read about the details that Sam Lewis had left out. The remaining half stayed to learn the ‘video’ game on the simulators. In twelve hours, the halves would switch places. There was a scramble for the simulators that would have done a fire drill proud.

  In the coming war, only one side would be armed with lethal weapons. The other, with technology only.

  Eureka

  July 23-24, 2020; D-day minus six through early morning of D-day minus five

  Roy had been ordered to stand down and rest, but as he’d noticed before, his brain didn’t always obey outside orders. Before he went to his hotel, he sought out Sinclair’s team of navigators, to check on their progress. Raj had worked out the method to overlay the pictures on maps of the affected cities, and the location codes of the center of the explosions allowed them to precisely center the pictures on the affected areas. By turning the pictures into transparencies, they could pinpoint exactly where each bomb would be when it detonated.

  It was then a simple matter to triangulate the position of the MCU at the time of the explosion, as long as it was controlling at least three drones. If not, they had a line rather than a cross-referenced location. The MCU could be anywhere along the line. The analysts had also been looking carefully at the pictures, and their conclusions were that only about ten percent of the pictures showed evidence of a single MCU controlling three or more drones. In other words, as one wag put it, they were screwed up the creek without the proverbial damn paddle.

  This news only served to keep Roy’s brain working even as he tried to fall asleep. Even Salome’s best ideas to induce sleep gave only a temporary respite from the firing electrical signals that felt like little jackhammers in his brain keeping him awake.

  By the end of his rest period, he’d exhausted all the arguments for the various methods his team had advanced. The only thing he could think of that would be foolproof was to prevent the lasers from exciting the fuel. When he returned to the conference room, he asked that experts on laser technology be sent for and put the problem to them: how do we stop a laser beam from reaching its intended target?

  The only answer they had - put something between the source of the beam and the target, was laughably simple. And totally impractical. Roy was not one to give up on an idea, though.

  Leaving the others to debate again the three likely scenarios, Roy went alone to the laboratory where he’d worked out the specs of the drone’s payload bay. What could he do to disable the cargo after locating and taking control of the drones?

  Roy hit his palm against his forehead, but didn’t stop his rapid pacing. “Think, Roy, think! You built that laser device - you know how it works. There must be something you can do.”

  Salome, had come to the lab shortly after Roy got there, and was sitting quietly in the corner. She giggled. “Hon, you remind me of the Energizer Bunny.” Roy stopped in his tracks to stare at her. The battery! Salome had done it again!

  The answer was in the battery of the laser. Of course! It was easy! That battery in the nanolaser was storing almost ten times more voltage than the drone’s onboard lithium ion battery. Inside the battery was a nanocomputer that controlled the battery, the same as with lithium ion batteries. The computers inside the batteries emitted electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequency (RF) range. As the creator of the laser battery, he already knew the radio frequency range of the nanocomputer.

  The bomb would sit below the drone in the payload area. Within it, his nanolaser would act as the trigger, but the laser operated on one of his nanobatteries, assuming the Iranian scientists had used the plan unmodified. There was no indication in the bomb specifications they’d intercepted that it would be any other plan, so it was a pretty good bet. Based on those same plans, the bombs would be roughly rectangular or cylindrical in shape, with the nanonuclear fuel in one end, slightly larger than the other that held nothing but the laser trigger and an electrical relay to turn it on. To stop the trigger from working, all he had to do was compromise the battery in the laser. It would be a delicate operation, but it would work.

  He could equip one of his hummingbirds with a laser cutter, fly it in under the drone to attach to the box carrying the bomb and cut the trigger battery, which would make it stop working instantaneously. The only challenge would be to build a chip that he would be able to attach to the hummingbird, both to detect the radio frequency and direct the laser to cut the battery.

  When he found the answer, Roy ran out of his lab and down the hall toward the conference room where his team was still debating, pretty much like Archimedes did about 230 BC, except Roy was not naked. Nevertheless, he narrowly avoided being shot as an intruder by one of the security team wandering the halls of the JOCC facility. Only Salome’s sudden appearance around a corner saved him, because she was between the sentry and Roy before the sentry could pull his trigger. The sentry yanked his weapon upright and shouted for Salome to get down, which stopped Roy in his tracks. He turned, saw her on the floor, and started back with the sentry yelling at him to stop. Finally, Salome’s cries got through to the sentry. “It’s okay, he’s one of us!”

  Roy looked with confusion from Salome to the sentry and then clutched at his chest. No ID hung there…he’d taken it off while working on the drone because he kept catching the drone’s landing skids in the lanyard. The close call had made lots of noise, and people began appearing from both ends of the hallway. Roy, who had made it to Salome’s side and pulled her up, stood in the center, holding his girl and glaring at the sentry, who glared back in return.

  “I’ll just step in here and get my badge,” Roy said finally. To Salome, he said in a near whisper, “Eureka.” Salome pushing him against the wall and kissed his breath away, to the amusement and applause of every witness. Both the incident and the aftermath were a testament to the condition of the team as a whole – they were getting punch-drunk from the tension.

  What if I can’t do it in time?

  July 24, 2020; D-day minus five, Washington, DC

  It was nearly an anticlimax when Roy stood at the head of the table in the conference room and explained what he’d determined to the rest of the team.

  “How sure are you of this?” one of the team asked.

  “No way to be sure without testing,” Roy returned. A babble broke out as the team protested hearing another theory with no proof.

  “Look,” said Roy, “I have one of the lasers in my luggage. It won’t take long to build more. I need a few more of the drones with mockups of the bombs to get it right, and then we need to figure out how to keep it from happening. But I’m confident this is the answer.”

  The team leader looked at his watch. Almost four, and the manufacturing facility where they’d purchased the drones they had was in Pennsylvania. He picked up his cell phone and dialed without telling anyone else what he intended.

  “We need a dozen of those drones, no wait, while you’re at it make it two dozen” he said. “ASAP. Send a helicopter for them.” He turned to the rest of the room.

  “Okay, folks, scatter. Have Roy tell you what he needs and get it. Run.”

  “I wouldn’t run,” Roy said, as everyone got up to follow orders. “There are some mean-looking folks in the halls that might shoot you.”

  While the others were retrieving what he needed to begin testing, Roy tracked Raj do
wn.

  “Hey, buddy, I’ve got an idea how we can stop those drones, and the bombs too,” he said, as soon as he’d found Raj. “I need something very small that can detect electromagnetic radiation in a specified radio frequency range. Any ideas?”

  “What do you have in mind?” Raj returned. He thought he might know someone who could make a suggestion, but before he contacted anyone, he needed details.

  Roy explained his idea, then said, “I’ve got a little nanodevice that looks just like a hummingbird in flight. It’s super-fast, can hover when it gets to its target, and I’m pretty sure I can attach one of my nanolasers to it. But it needs to know where the laser should cut. If we aim it at the wrong thing, it could trigger the bomb instead of disabling it.”

  “You’ve got one with you?” Raj asked.

  “Nah, but they don’t take long to build. I can put a few together for the tests, but if it works, we’ll need a lot. Do you think Sam can find me some people to build them?”

  Raj shook his head, a tiny gesture that he didn’t mean for Roy to see. “Yeah, bro, I think Sam can do that. What kind of time are we talking here?”

  “Well, we have to have them ready in less than five days, right?” Roy was still moving and talking as if they had all the time in the world. Raj wondered if his brain was the only thing that moved faster than a snail’s crawl.

  “Yeah. So, get busy on that, and I’ll try to track down something that will tell the laser what to cut.” Raj walked away, his own pace far more urgent than Roy’s, searching his mind for the members of his hacker network that were known for firmware.

  Ten minutes later, he was on a private chat session with Rube, trying to convince him to come to the JOCC where he was urgently needed. He’d once asked Rube why he was called that, and the answer was “Goldberg, man”, which wasn’t an answer at all as far as Raj was concerned. But Rube did know his stuff.

  “Listen, talk to Sombra. He got a sweet deal when he came in. You can, too.” Raj knew his words sounded desperate, even in non-spoken form. In fact, he was desperate.

  “Look, my little brown buddy,” Rube answered. “I don’t want a sweet deal. I want to be left alone. Once they know about me, they’ll be looking over my shoulder all the time. Find someone else.”

  “Rube, do you trust me?”

  The answer was an icon, showing a head and hands repeatedly bowing. Followed closely by ‘you da man’.

  “Where do you live?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Okay, I’m in a suburb of NYC. Why?”

  “Dude, if you don’t come help, you’ve got about four days to live. I’m serious.”

  “WTF you talkin’ about?”

  “Get here and I’ll tell you, but I’m serious. This is not a joke.”

  “See you in a couple of hours, man. This better be legit. And if Sombra got a sweet deal, I want one, too. I want whatever he got, plus they’ve got to admit where they’re keeping Elvis and John Lennon. I want to meet them in person. Now, what’s the address?”

  Raj sent him directions, and told him to bring as many programmable chips as he could grab on the way. Then he went to talk to Sam.

  “Okay, I’ve got another one of my guys coming in. Same deal as before. Can you believe he actually thinks the government is hiding Elvis and John Lennon? He wants to meet them.” Raj withdrew from Sam’s doorway, having a good laugh at the expense of his friend. Sam gave Luke a look of comic despair.

  “Remember I told you he had a crazy hobby? I guess all of them do,” remarked Luke.

  “What’s his?” asked Sam.

  “He thinks we’re hiding aliens at Area 51” Luke started to laugh, but Sam’s raised eyebrows stopped him. “Are we?” Luke asked.

  Roy was putting the finishing touches on his third hummingbird bot when Raj came through the door with a hulking man of about forty. “Roy, this is Rube. Rube, Roy. Tell him what you need, Roy.”

  With little surprise, Roy responded. “I need something small that can detect electromagnetic radiation in this RF range and direct this laser to cut it,” he said, holding up an even tinier version of his nanolaser. Raj was awed by the progress Roy had made. The man was scary, that’s all he could say.

  “Ah I see, something like Van Eck phreaking?” When Roy and Raj gave him identical puzzled looks, he continued. “Van Eck phreaking is the process of eavesdropping on the contents of a CRT or LCD display by detecting its electromagnetic emissions. We can do the same with computers.”

  “Yea something like that,” said Roy

  And this electromagnetic radiation - what’s going to be producing that?” asked Rube.

  “Why, the battery in the bomb itself,” Roy said, with Raj semaphoring ‘no’ frantically with his hands.

  “Bomb? What bomb?” said Rube.

  There was no choice but to bring him up to speed, and it was a very shaken Rube who turned to Raj and said, “What if I can’t do it in time?”

  Raj said, “Then here will be as good a place to die as New York City, yes?”

  “Of course I can do that, with a bomb about to explode in my ass, nothing is impossible.” said Rube, his white face negating the sarcasm.

  We have no choice but to go with your plans

  July 25, 2020; D-day minus four, Washington, DC

  With an incentive like that, Rube worked through the night on programming his chips to do what Roy needed. He couldn’t understand how the other man could be so calm, until it was time for Roy’s four-hour break the next morning and Salome came to get him. As she led Roy away by the hand, Rube got it. He wondered if they had a beautiful woman lined up to relax him when it was time for his break. Speaking of which, he’d worked through the night, during which Roy had already disappeared for several hours. When would it be his turn?

  He’d written the program and tested it for bugs, but the only proof he would have that it worked would be to burn it to the chip and test it. Since he couldn’t test the chip without Roy’s presence, Rube turned to the desktop he’d been shown to for his work and pinged Raj on their private chat line.

  “Do I get a break? Who do I talk to?”

  “Hang on, buddy, sorry, I didn’t think about it. Be right there.”

  Roy had been gone for most of an hour when Raj appeared, with an aide in tow. “We’ll get you a hotel for next time, but this guy will show you a place where you can sack out for now. We’ll wake you in four hours.”

  “Is that how long Roy gets?” Rube asked, leading Raj to believe he was acting a bit like a prima donna.

  “That’s how long anyone gets. You want more?” Raj’s voice had turned cold.

  “No, man, I want you to wake me when Roy is due back. It’s time to test these bastards.”

  Raj felt a little small for leaping to the wrong conclusion. “Oh, sorry, man. I guess I’m not getting enough sleep myself.”

  Rube was out like a sucker-punched boxer before the aide had left the room. The next thing he knew, someone was shaking his shoulder, and he came up fighting. He’d knocked the aide into the door before he was awake enough to remember where he was.

  “Sorry. Is Roy back?”

  Rubbing his sore jaw, the aide nodded, and silently led the way back to the lab. He’d use a broomstick or something to wake this guy next time.

  The next hour was consumed in integrating the firmware chip into the hummingbird’s control system. Now all that remained was to mock up a bomb in one of the drones and see if it worked.

  Aside from a few hours’ break in his nearby hotel room three times a day, Roy hadn’t been outside in more than a week. As he followed the aide who was leading them outside for the test, he reflected on how much more pleasant it would be in Boulder this time of year. Even Pasadena was nicer than DC in July, from his limited experience. Boulder was the best of all. He considered whether he’d be willing to give up teaching if the Rossler Foundation made him a permanent offer. Then he realized
it wouldn’t matter if this experiment failed. They were out of time.

  With Rube controlling the drone, and several of the key team members looking on, Roy launched his hummingbird, which was now programmed with the hacker app to locate and intercept any object generating a Wi-Fi signal in the correct bandwidth with a matching MAC address. The hummingbird went straight for the drone and hovered below the box at the bottom for a few seconds before it dropped away and returned to Roy almost like a falcon to its falconer. A small cloud of smoke was visible below the drone for a few seconds. Roy and Rube retrieved the drone and went back to his lab to analyze what had happened. The men were too weary to do anything but exchange an exhausted high-five. But, they’d done it. The device worked exactly as planned.

  Roy reported to Sam. They had a solution, but it still carried the very real danger of detonating the bomb instead of disabling it. However, given the time limitation, it was the best they could do.

  “We have no choice but to go with your plans then,” Sam said, when he’d swallowed the fistful of antacids he’d chewed. “Draw them up and give them to Sgt. Pierce,” he said, indicating one of the aides. “He’ll get them distributed. Thank you for your exceptional work, Dr. James.

  Roy couldn’t have been prouder if the president himself had saluted him.

  “That also means we have to update our training plan. Are you okay to work with the top instructor and show him how this works? I’ll have someone film you, so you’ll only have to go through it once.

  Roy was ready to drop, but it was of the utmost importance that the training begin right away. They had only a day or two before the teams bound for the other countries would have to depart to take up their stations.

  The demo

  Midday July 26, 2020; D-day minus four, Washington, DC