Cobra

by David E. Meadows

  * * *

  “Captain Holman,” Commander Steve Cloth, the air operations officer for Task Force Sixty-seven said, drawing Dick’s attention away from the long-range surface display in front of him.

  “Yes, Steve.”

  “Sir, the Air Force B-52s have entered our operation area and are now under Sixth Fleet control. They have completed refueling and are ready for assignment.”

  Admiral Pete Devlin, commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, listening to the exchange asked, “Commander, have we down loaded the missile locations provided by the Italians?”

  The location of the Libyan cruise missiles was important for his own force targeting effort.

  “Sir, still in progress. Joint Task Force African Force operations officer reports the data is slightly incompatible with our own systems, so we are having to manually massage it. Shouldn’t take too long.” Steve Cloth looked at his watch. “Another ten to twenty minutes should do it.”

  The hatch to the Combat Information Center opened, and General Leutze Lewis, the commander of Joint Task Force African Force, entered. Dick was slightly surprised to see the three-star general in full uniform.

  Seemed to him, with the exception of the man’s arrival over a month ago, that every time he saw the general, he was either in PT gear or getting in or out of it. Dick guessed if he was proud of his body, he wanted to show it off.

  “Sir,” Steve Cloth said softly to Dick Holman. “I have an Air Traffic Order”—He handed the message to Dick—“showing the presence of three Air Force KC-135s orbiting in three different geographical locations over the southern Algerian and Libyan desert. I have nothing to indicate they have air protection, and I have no idea why they are there.”

  Before Dick could answer, General Lewis entered the circle. “Looks as if your doctor was wrong, Pete. Seems the Libyans don’t have to wait until tonight to fire those missiles.”

  “The USS Hue City has shot down the missile fired at Algiers, General.

  We are waiting on the report from the second, even as we speak.”

  “What is the holdup on taking out the other ten?”

  “We are downloading the Italian targeting data now, General. Should be able to disseminate the target assignments within the next half hour.”

  Lewis crossed his arms. Dick noticed how the tall man’s left eyebrow raised slightly. “Let’s hope he doesn’t fire any more, then, in the next half hour.”

  “Yes, sir. Let’s hope and pray. The B-52s are on station with their air-launched cruise missiles. I intend to keep them to our northwest.

  Their Tomahawks have the range to reach anywhere in Libya from where they are orbiting now. No need to move them closer.”

  Commander Bailey, the Sixth Fleet CIC tactical action officer on duty, walked up. “General, Admiral, the targeting data is loaded, sirs.”

  “That took less time than I thought,” Admiral Devlin said.

  “Yes, sir. It was less of a problem than we thought.”

  The hatch slammed opened as Captain Paul Brooks burst into the space.

  Spotting the flag officers near the long-range display consoles, Paul hurried over to them. Behind him, through the hatch, appeared Captain Kurt Lederman.

  “Paul, it makes me nervous when a cryptologic officer arrives out of breath and looking like you do,” Admiral Pete Devlin said.

  “General, Admiral, we have indications that the Libyans are in the process of launching the remainder of their missiles.”

  Kurt Lederman stepped into the growing circle of decision makers. “Paul is right, General, Admiral. We have minutes before those missiles leave their launch pads.”

  General Lewis’s eyebrows bounced up and down several times before he grinned. “Then it seems to me, gentlemen, that we must launch our Tomahawks immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” Admiral Devlin replied. “But it will take some time to ensure that those missiles hit the right target. It would not be good to take out a bunch of civilians with them. Collateral damage—”

  “Sir,” Dick Holman added, interrupting before General Lewis had a chance to respond to Admiral Devlin. “Have you decided on our proposal for an air strike against the Libyan command post? We already have the aircraft airborne and ready for the order.”

  “No!” General Lewis shouted. “No, no, no. There is to be no cruise missile or air strike against the Libyan command post until I tell you.”

  He looked at Pete Devlin. “You know why, Pete. I can’t imagine why you want to continue trying to do this.”

  “General, we need to have a backup in event of failure.”

  “There won’t be a failure ” “What is going on?” Dick asked. “Something is going on that you two know about.” He looked at Kurt Lederman, who handed the general a folded note. Dick pointed at Kurt. “And it seems everyone knows but me.”

  Colonel Brad Storey attempted to read the note over the general’s shoulder, but the general’s superior height kept the note secret. General Lewis read it, folded it, and handed it back to the intelligence officer. “Okay, Dick. You can know now. Pete, Operation Tango Bandit is a go.” He looked at Dick Hoi man. “Want to know why I haven’t stopped you from putting those fighters in the air for your command post attack?” Without waiting for Dick to answer, he continued.

  “It’s because … “

  * * *

  Sergeant Major Jonathan Adams, career soldier and supervisor of the operations team at the United States Army Land Information Warfare Command located deep within Fort Belvoir, snapped a salute as Major General Gramps Morgan came down the stairway. The sixty-one-year-old general seemed to bounce off his heels as he moved down the broad set of steps leading from the entrance to a small landing a couple of feet above the operations floor. Master Sergeant Adams straightened as Morgan approached, assuming a relaxed position of attention. Major General Morgan touched the sergeant major on the shoulder and grinned at him. “Sergeant Major, I’m glad to see you here, but weren’t you here ten hours ago when I left?”

  “Yes, sir, General. A lot going on, sir. I felt this was where I needed to be,” Sergeant Major Adams replied.

  Gramps Morgan winked at the man, the wrinkles along his cheeks arching upward as he smiled. “You are right, Sergeant. It is exactly times like these when our Army needs us old men,” he said. Morgan scanned the room, his eyes taking in the two rows of computers, their screens reflecting various colors in the blue-lighted operations space. Morgan turned to the graying sergeant major. “Shall we go, Sergeant Major, and give these great, young soldiers the benefit of our age and experience?” Without waiting for a reply, Morgan took the two remaining steps to the operations floor and turned toward the center of the room where the combat management consoles were installed.

  Major General Morgan was the oldest flag officer still on active duty of all four military services. His spry steps, smile wrinkled face, and thin frame fooled those who first met him with his beret on. They often mistook his age to be early fifties when in fact next year he would reach the mandatory military retirement age of sixty-two. When he removed his beret to reveal the thinning silver hair shining beneath, it was easy to realize he was much older than fifty. Women loved to be around him. They feel safe because they think of me like a grandfather.

  He had grown accustomed to hearing the most intimate concerns of the wives at the most unexpected moments. Sometimes, Major General Gramps Morgan, career Army infantryman, thought that maybe in a previous life he had been a priest. If so, he hoped it was a warrior priest.

  Flag officers usually retire after two or three years if they fail to advance to another star or the Army had no job openings for their pay grade and skill. This mandatory retirement opened opportunity for those following to move up. But Gramps Morgan was an Army icon. He was the Army answer to the Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who opened the door to computer programming. He was a founding father of the Army’s information warfare effort. Major General Morgan graduated from the Industrial College of
the Armed Forces in the class of 2000—Class of Y2K they called it — having studied information warfare as a sidebar to his ICAF studies. The Information Resource Management College, located in Washington, D. C., at Marshall Hall on Fort Mcnair, was home to some of the brightest thinkers the Department of Defense could find to teach what everyone liked to call a revolution in warfare. He graduated with honors and made colonel the same year.

  His wife died of a heart attack after the two of them ran the Boston Marathon four years ago, and with no children or grandchildren to dote on, the aging warrior remained on active duty. His family was the army and its soldiers the children they never had. His two attempts to retire in the past four years had been turned down by the Army chief of staff, who personally invited Major General Morgan to the Pentagon so he could convince Gramps of his importance to the Army. After each of the two office calls, Morgan left the COS office and drove to his wife’s grave at the edge of Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he discussed with her the prospects of remaining on active duty. With no concrete plans for retirement, he believed she agreed he still loved the Army, the uniform, the pomp and circumstance, and he would be bored with shuffleboard, canasta, and bingo — a personal joke between the two of them. Satisfied that she understood, he always drove back to the small government house on Fort Belvoir, called the COS, and agreed to remain for another two years. Last year, the new Army COS asked him to remain another two years. Whether the Army liked it or not, Major General Gramps Morgan had to go home next March when he turned sixty-two. It would take an act of Congress to extend him past this age, and Gramps had few friends in the hallowed halls of that great institution.

  LIWC operations would have passed for a twin of the Libyan command post of Colonel Alqahiray. If Alqahiray and Morgan had miraculously exchanged places at that instant, it would have taken a few moments for each to realize he was not in his respective center. Gramps looked at the broad intelligence display that spanned the front of the room, much like a screen in a large theater. He was proud of what his soldiers had accomplished. Why use a multitude of screens for multiple displays, when one screen would do the job? You just programmed the data you wanted to see, and it appeared on the screen in whatever position you designated.

  By keying in the right program, the data were constantly updating, and certain keywords within the data could cause portions of the display to change color to highlight emerging and important events as they occurred. Across the broad expanse of the gigantic LED screen rode a virtual display of the east coast of the United States and the Mediterranean. Several small ship icons identified the location of Sixth Fleet ships and aircraft while different colors and shapes located friendly, allied, enemy, commercial, and unidentified air contacts. He knew clicking on any of the symbols on the control screen would bring a stream of data, giving in-depth identity. In Hawaii, a similar operations room ran the Korean War with LIWC providing a reach-back capability when they needed additional resources. It was hard to fight a computer war against an enemy that uses few to no computers to control their critical infrastructures such as electricity, water, transportation, and communications. Afghanistan had been a great example. A computer network attack initiated by the United States had never been authorized until now. He could retire gratefully now, knowing his LIWC had become a footnote in American military history.

  The two rows of computers curved around the front of the room in such a fashion as to allow every operator visual access to the broad-screen display.

  These young men and women at the Army’s premier information warfare command possessed far superior technical expertise than he did. He had no illusions about their technical knowledge in comparison to his. His technological knowledge grew stale with each new development. Back in the late ‘90s, a man named Moore said information technology moved so fast that regardless of where it was at any given moment, within eighteen months, new technological developments made the current technology obsolete. The truth was, those developments were occurring so fast that six months was more realistic. Gramps Morgan believed he received more credit for the success of LIWC than he truly deserved.

  “Status, Colonel?” Gramps Morgan asked the duty commander.

  “Morning, sir. We still have access, General. They fired two missiles thirty minutes ago. Not sure exactly what is happening now.” He pointed to two men and a woman who were moving from one console to the other, quickly scanning a screen, leaning down to whisper something to the soldier manning it, and then moving on. Several times, they shifted the small microphone of the cordless headsets they were wearing and whispered into it.

  “The three Arabic linguists we got from NSA have been invaluable.

  Several more are on their way from Fort Meade. I called our contact at the National Security Agency and told him things were moving too fast for just three. They have asked the Naval Security Group Command at Fort Meade to provide us additional resources. The Navy linguists should be arriving shortly.”

  Morgan nodded. It was one thing to penetrate — hack into— another computer system, but if you could not read the language, it became an intellectual challenge — a time-consuming one — targeted against the ones and zeros that made up the program. They needed more than a computer programming attack; they needed to exploit the data the enemy operators were using, so they’d know what they were doing or planning.

  The three linguists came to the end of the row as their hopscotch walk among the consoles, scanning each, brought them together. Their microphones shoved up alongside their ears, they put their heads close together and nodded in unison as they reached some unknown conclusion.

  The spokesman of the three led the group as they crossed the floor to where Gramps stood with the colonel. The two men with her watched for a second before breaking apart and resuming their movement through the row of computers, observing and whispering their analysis to each other through the microphones.

  “Colonel,” she said as she walked around the edge of the console. “We think they are preparing to fire a whole bunch of missiles.”

  “How many?”

  The US A civilian shrugged her shoulders. “A whole bunch,” she repeated, sounding slightly miffed that she had to repeat the answer again.

  “Colonel, how soon can we assume control of the enemy’s system?” Morgan asked. “A whole bunch. ” Is that like a hand fill or a bushel? What is our military coming to? He asked himself, knowing the NSA couldn’t really be considered military. The story of the new NSA employee asking the gentleman in the elevator of the OPS One building what the four stars on the shoulder of his jacket meant flickered across his memory.

  This was just another example to Gramps Morgan of how the Department of Defense had changed over the past five decades. Some would say for the better, but they wouldn’t be wearing a uniform.

  The duty commander reached over the shoulders of the two Army captains manning the main control console and pushed the mouse so the arrow pointed to a red execute banner in the top right corner of the screen.

  “All we have to do, sir, is click on this. When we do, our system will go automatic, wipe out their displays, and transfer their control protocols to our position.”

  “Any way they can counteract our actions?”

  He bit his lower lip. “I am sure there are ways, sir. Methods we may be unaware of but, even if they do, I doubt they can counteract our actions before Tangle Bandit is completed.”

  An NSA linguist, leaning over the shoulder of an operator in the first row, turned. “They are preparing to launch those missiles. We’ve got less than a minute, probably seconds, and they’re gone!” he shouted.

  “Colonel, I think we need to execute,” Morgan said.

  Another colonel standing in the shadows stepped forward. “General, I am Colonel Mccormack, sir; judge advocate general’s office. I have been assigned to—”

  “General, the legal eagles haven’t decided yet the legality of us actually doing this,” the duty operations colonel int
errupted. “The United States has never launched a computer network attack before, and whatever we do now establishes a precedent we will have to live with in the future.”

  “Yes, sir, General,” Mccormack continued. “I have to get permission from Lieutenant General Smitters before we can actually launch an information warfare attack. Until then, I can’t give permission for you to activate the attack.”

  “Colonel, if we don’t act now, innocent people are going to die.”

  “Yes, sir, General, that may happen, but I was given a direct order by the judge advocate general of the Army to not allow you to execute a computer attack until it has been cleared by him personally. Until then, sir, we cannot legally execute.”

  “You mean. Colonel, you lawyers arc holding up this operation?”

  “We don’t mean to, General. I know even as we speak, my cohorts in the Pentagon are meeting to resolve the international laws surrounding this type of warfare.”

  “I think they have had years to resolve it, and they haven’t. What makes you think they will now?”

  The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “I know they are working on it, sir.”

  Gramps Morgan stared down at the mouse, glancing up briefly at the screen where the arrow still rested on the execute banner. “All we have to do is click on this banner?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  General Gramps Morgan leaned forward. “Let me move it, so we don’t have an accident.” He clicked the banner. “Oops … now, how did I do that?”

  Gramps turned toward the JAG colonel. “Colonel Mccormack, seems that I have accidentally launched the attack. My, my,” he said, shaking his head. “What a shame. Why don’t you go to my office down the hall and call Lieutenant General Smitters and tell him what happened. Sergeant Major Adams, have someone escort Colonel Mccormack to my office, where he can remain until I am through here trying to stop this inadvertent action. Make sure he has plenty of coffee.”