Drone Strike: A Joe Matthews Thriller

by David Austin

  Zubkin gestured at the monitors. “Making any progress?”

  “It’s slow going,” AK said, rubbing her tired eyes. “Whoever wrote this code knew what they were doing.” Her admiration for the other programmer’s skills were obvious to the two men. “The encryption is so advanced that this process could take much longer than the timeline you’ve given me.”

  That was clearly not what Teplov wanted to hear. “Perhaps your skills are not as impressive as I was led to believe. Maybe I should bring in someone else, someone who can break the encryption in a timely manner.”

  Appearing bored with the conversation, the young hacker looked up at Teplov, “You have access to my file, no?”

  Wondering where she was going with this, he said, “Of course.”

  “And you have read it?”

  “I have.”

  “Then you have seen the operations I’ve led and should know there is no one better. If there was, you would have brought them here in the first place and they would be sitting in this chair instead of me. So quit wasting my time with insults and idle threats.”

  A sly smile spread across Zubkin’s face and he turned his head slightly away from the GRU colonel to keep him from seeing it. He liked this girl and they got along well, so he tried a different approach. “Do you have any ideas as to how we could help speed up the process? Maybe come at the problem from another angle?”

  It was AK’s turn to smile, appreciating the aerospace engineer’s analytical approach. If he were ten years younger, she might even find him attractive. Pushing the thought from her head, she said, “I like the way you think, Vasily.” Then she looked up at Teplov. “You see, colonel, he’s being helpful, trying to work the problem, instead of attempting to intimidate me.”

  Teplov rolled his eyes, knowing that with a single phone call, he could replace her at any point he felt she was not up to the task. As far as he was concerned, the hacking cells in Moscow were full of young talent who would jump at the chance to work on a project like this. But he decided to tolerate her insolence for the time being. “So, how exactly do you propose to, as you said, work the problem?”

  AK swiveled on her chair and swiped a finger across a laptop’s touchpad. As its screen came to life, Zubkin and Teplov leaned in to get a better look, but the multiple windows running strings of code were a foreign language that neither man could comprehend. Finally, Zubkin asked, “What are we looking at?”

  She went on to explain that each window was running an exploit that attacked firewalls, servers, and computers’ operating systems. Some of the software was of her own design, while other programs running on the laptop were created by the hacking cells in Moscow. She was even using a few tools that belonged to the NSA’s Equation Group after they had been leaked online several years ago.

  The target of all this black-hat computing prowess was an American company called General Atomics. Based in San Diego, California, it had been created in the 1950s as a division of General Dynamics. Specializing in nuclear fuel cycles, electromagnetic systems, and wireless and laser technologies, General Atomics was also the maker of some of the most successful and advanced remotely piloted aircraft flown by the CIA and the U.S. military. The MQ-9 Reaper, the UAV sitting several meters away on the polished floor of the expansive hangar, was one of General Atomics’ products.

  She clicked the touchpad, bringing up another window that had been minimized to the task bar and said, “I’m also running a phishing scam against a list of known email addresses within the company.” She knew that some bonehead was bound to click on the link she had embedded in an authentic-looking corporate email. The link would activate a string of executable code that would give her access to the employee’s computer. Once inside the system, either through the employee’s machine or by using the more exotic exploits running in the background, she hoped to find something on the company’s servers, a classified paper or technical blueprint that would allow her to bypass or reset the drone system’s encryption.

  Teplov was impressed. Perhaps Kovaleski had earned some leeway and deserved the benefit of the doubt after all. He had indeed read her file from cover to cover, and there was no denying the skill she had demonstrated on past cyber operations. He knew she was the most talented hacker in any of his government’s cells, but he would never tell her that. Perhaps it was her appearance that rubbed him the wrong way. After thinking it over, he decided it was more likely her attitude. It reminded him of the rough spell he had gone through with his daughter during her teenage years, that rebellious period when it seemed that he was an idiot with no understanding of her or of what was happening in her world. Dealing with Kovaleski gave him that same feeling. And though he doubted he would ever totally understand the young hacker, he could appreciate someone who was an expert at their craft. And when it came to manipulating ones and zeroes, she was a craftsman of the highest caliber.

  Teplov’s phone vibrated in his pocket, snapping him out of his thoughts. Seeing the caller-ID on the screen, he excused himself and waited until he was back in the hangar to engage the call.

  The voice on the other end of the line said, “He’s here.”

  “You’re sure?” Teplov asked, needing to be certain before he put the next part of the operation into motion.

  “Positive, sir. His presence was advertised on an email circulated around NATO headquarters here in Brussels. It appears he will be in town only for a few days, so we must act or risk losing our window of opportunity.”

  Teplov thought it over for a minute. AK did seem to be making progress, but who knew how long it would take, or if she would be successful at all. No, better to have a contingency plan in place than to put all his eggs in one basket with the girl. His decision made, he said, “Keep an eye on him. But be discreet. I’ll get the team on the way. Be prepared to receive them and provide any assistance the team leader requires.”

  He thumbed the red icon to end the call, then re-entered the room just as the laptop began emitting an audible alarm. He quickened his pace and joined the other two as a new window appeared on its screen displaying the view of a General Atomics employee’s computer.

  Slack-jawed, Zubkin pointed to the laptop. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Someone had taken the bait and clicked the link. Allowing herself a subtle fist pump, AK leaned back in her chair and took a long sip of an energy drink, savoring its flavor as if it were the finest champagne on the planet. Swiveling her chair to face the men, she looked up at Teplov and said with a grin, “That, my good colonel, is how I work the problem.”

  CHAPTER 25

  With the operation in Cyprus wrapped up, Joe’s team had taken Scott Garrett to the general aviation terminal at Larnaca International Airport. There they handed him off to the crew of a Beechcraft King Air B-350 belonging to the CIA’s Air Branch. With Garrett wheels up for the flight back to Amman, Joe and the team had been ordered to remain in Cyprus rather than head home right away. Headquarters wanted to keep them in the region in case something broke in the next few days.

  So, with nothing better to do, the guys took advantage of their paid time off and acted like all the other tourists on the island. Joe made the two-hour drive in the rented SUV to the west and hiked the trails in the hills around Mt. Olympus, the highest point in Cyprus. Chris spent his time at the beach surfing and snorkeling while John explored Larnaca’s historical sites, starting with the Church of Saint Lazarus, which dated to the ninth century, and the Medieval Fort, built in the twelfth century to protect the city’s harbor.

  At the end of each day the trio would meet for dinner before making their way to the promenade at Mackenzie Beach for a few beers. Joe thought it had been a pretty good couple of days. He just wished Kevin and Mike were there to enjoy the downtime with them. But at the rate the guys’ rehab was going, he had no doubt they would be back with the team before long.

  After spending a good deal of time and money in the local bars and restaurants, they decided to give the I
rish-themed Bennigan’s a shot. The three experienced travelers from the CIA could be away from home only so long before giving in to the cravings for a little Americana. Joe couldn’t remember the last time he had been to one of the restaurants and wasn’t even sure the chain was still open for business in the States. After a quick check of the company’s website on his phone, it turned out there were still a few of the restaurants spread across the upper Midwest. But what really surprised him were the number of international locations. Apparently, the chain was a huge hit along the gulf coast of Mexico and had restaurants in Bahrain, Qatar, and Dubai as well. The big stunner, though, was that Cyprus had four of the eateries on the tiny island. Who knew the Cypriots were such fans?

  Joe had just ordered the first round when his phone began vibrating. Flipping it face up on the table, he took a quick peek at the screen. Seeing the number, he wagered, “Ten bucks says our vacation on Uncle Sugar’s dime just came to a screeching halt.”

  *

  Eighteen hours later, Joe found himself sitting inside a sensitive compartmented information facility or SCIF, on the third floor of the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, while Chris and John were getting settled in a nearby hotel.

  Three other people joined Joe at the table in the windowless, soundproof room designed to be impervious to electronic eavesdropping. Reed Ashton was a preppy Ivy Leaguer in his mid-forties who had graduated from Brown University before joining the CIA. He had worked his way up the ladder of the civilized intelligence community, never serving in a hardship post or war zone before being assigned as the chief of Brussels station. To Ashton’s right was Vivian Vernon, the National Security Agency’s representative to NATO. She wore a dark skirt with a matching blazer over a white blouse. Her neckline was accentuated with a gold necklace that looked like the letter W but was instead the two overlapping Vs of her initials.

  Elijah Miller rounded out the group and was the reason Joe’s team had been sent to Brussels. With advanced degrees in mathematics and computer science from Carnegie Mellon, he merged the two disciplines, using his knowledge of each to become one of the world’s leading architects of algorithms used to protect everything from text messaging apps to banking transactions. Recruiters from tech firms like Google and Microsoft had made the trip to Pittsburgh singing the praises of their respective companies. They had offered everything from obscene compensation packages to enormous research and development budgets to entice him westward. While the offers were certainly generous, becoming another cog in the tech giants’ machine or participating in Silicon Valley’s digital snobbery was not what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

  Interestingly, it was a pitch from a fellow Carnegie Mellon alum who had gone to work for the U.S. government that intrigued Miller the most. Prior to the unexpected visit, he had never considered a career in Washington. His mental image of a federal job consisted of drone-like bureaucrats sitting behind gun-metal-gray GSA issued desks punching time clocks on their way to retirement and a taxpayer-funded pension. To Miller, it sounded like one of the nine circles of Hell depicted so vividly in Dante’s Inferno.

  But that all changed when the alum said he worked for one of the agencies in the intelligence community. Seeing that Miller’s interest was piqued, the recruiter baited the hook by shifting the conversation to what they were doing in the areas of encryption protocols and code breaking, two subjects in Miller’s wheelhouse. Intrigued by the seemingly unlimited resources of the national security apparatus, but more importantly, the work being described, Miller accepted the offer. Two months later, with graduation behind him and two advanced degrees in hand, he put Pittsburgh in his rearview mirror and migrated the two-hundred fifty miles south to Fort Meade, Maryland, home of the National Security Agency.

  That had been five years ago. Now he found himself in Belgium, having given a talk earlier in the day at the NATO School’s Joint Targeting Staff Course. The courses of instruction were normally held in Oberammergau, Germany, but that facility was being renovated, so Miller’s presentation had been moved to NATO headquarters in Brussels. Designed to teach military officers the approved targeting cycle, the Joint Targeting Staff Course included instruction on target development, weapons systems capabilities, mission planning and execution, and combat assessment. Additionally, it dealt with the issues of collateral damage and time sensitive targeting, none of which had anything whatsoever to do with Elijah Miller’s area of expertise. He had been invited there to talk about encryption and its role in securing the link between the UAVs, their ground control stations, and the satellites that allowed the three individual units to communicate in a secure manner.

  Joe could see Miller was not in a good mood, and under similar circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have been either. It was nearing the end of the business day and Miller had been looking forward to a couple of drinks at the hotel bar when he had received Vernon’s text telling him to get over to the embassy. Now, instead of a relaxing evening before catching his flight home in the morning, he was sitting in the SCIF wondering what the hell was going on, and more importantly, what it had to do with him.

  Reed Ashton looked at his watch, clearly annoyed with the late hour of the meeting. “So, what is it we can do for you, Mr. Matthews?”

  Joe spent the next ten minutes giving the assembled group the Cliffs Notes version of the attack on the drone base in Jordan and the theories being thrown around about what the Russians planned to do with the stolen Reaper. Did they steal it to reverse engineer the technology, or was it a worst-case scenario, where they were trying to get the UAV operational? He was here to find out if the latter was even possible.

  The room fell silent except for the ever-present hissing of the air conditioner as everyone took a minute to digest the magnitude of what they had just been told. Joe took a sip of the Starbucks he had bought on the way to the embassy, then turned to Miller. “Well, what do you think?”

  He could almost see the gears spinning as the encryption specialist ran through the most likely scenarios in his head. Finally, Miller seemed as if he had completed his mental gymnastics and come to a conclusion. “You said during the briefing that the commo guy was able to destroy the crypto keys before the Russians gained control of the base. How confident are you in that assessment?”

  “The commo shop in Amman got an email from him confirming the destruction protocols had been followed. The timestamp on the email indicates it was sent minutes before the control center was overrun.”

  “Good man,” Miller said, appreciating the communicator’s actions even more, knowing that he had been killed before the assault force left the base. “The Russians have some talented people over there, but without the crypto keys, there’s no way they can break my encryption.”

  There was a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Joe had seen plenty of arrogant people overestimate their abilities and needed to find out what side of the line Miller was on. “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “That’s because I’m exceptionally good at what I do. Even with all the computing power we have at Meade, it would take the mainframes years to crack my algorithm. And truth be told, I’m not so sure they could even do it at all.”

  Feeling a little better about the situation, Joe continued, “So you’re saying it’s impossible for the Russians to get the Reaper operational?”

  Sounding a little annoyed that the big redhead couldn’t seem to keep up with the conversation, Miller shook his head. “What I said is that they can’t break the encryption. They could, however, get in through a backdoor in the system if they could access General Atomics’ servers.”

  “There’s a backdoor? You’ve got to be shitting me?”

  “Look, man,” Miller explained. “Regardless of what the different agencies do with the drone, it’s still just a flying computer. And at times, computers lock up. Ever had that happen with your machine at home?

  “Sure.”

  “And what’s the first thing tech support tells you to
do? You either force it to reboot, or sometimes, in a worst-case scenario, you reinstall the operating system. Same concept applies here. If the UAV’s computers lock up, and it does happen from time to time, then there has to be a way to reboot the system. Otherwise, what you have is an airframe that looks cool sitting on the tarmac or inside a hangar but is really nothing more than an expensive set of spare parts waiting to be scavenged for another drone. So in order to get it back online, the designers built in the backdoor.”

  Joe was afraid of the answer but had to ask the question. “And if the Russians can access this backdoor…”

  Miller finished the sentence for him, “Then they can install their own encryption and the Reaper would never know the difference.”

  “And how many people know about this backdoor?”

  “Officially?” Miller took a moment to think about his answer. “It’s impossible to give you an accurate number, but it’s probably way more than necessary. The backdoor is possibly the worst kept secret of the entire program. First, you have the programmers and employees at any of the companies who build the drones.” He raised a finger as he counted off each one. “General Atomics. Lockheed Martin. Northrop Grumman. Then throw in all the Air Force and CIA maintenance techs who keep the drones airworthy.” Miller shook his head. “It’s a pretty big number, man.”

  Joe didn’t like the direction this conversation was heading. “Think the Russians would know about this backdoor?”

  “Probably. Like I said, they’ve got some smart people over there. And once they get a taste of my encryption, they’ll know they can’t break it. If the roles were reversed and I was the one looking for another way in, gaining access to the backdoor would be the first option I’d try.”