“When is this teleconference going to start up, anyway?” McCloskey asked Chief Master Sergeant Steve Lominack, currently placing pads and pencils around the conference table. “And who is this fella Hawke that wants to talk to us, Brick? You were in an Iraqi prison with him, that right?”
The CIA director smiled and said, “Yes, sir. And I’d be buried there today if it weren’t for him. After a few weeks, he decided I couldn’t survive another day of torture. So he woke up one morning, killed a bunch of guards, put me on his shoulders, and walked across the desert for a few days until he found some friendlies.”
“Sounds like my kind of guy. Now, he’s MI6 or MI5, right? In London?”
“Six, sir, under Sir David Trulove, or C, as they always call the director. I’d say Alex Hawke is the single best counterterrorist operative they’ve got, Mr. President. You remember when the Royal Family was held hostage at Balmoral Castle?”
“Who can forget? It was on the damn TV twenty-four hours a day.”
“Well, Alex Hawke single-handedly engineered and executed that rescue with virtually no loss of life, starting with the Queen of England herself.”
“Well, hell, I’m looking forward to meeting him on the TV. Fire it up, will you?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Chief Steward Tim Kerwin said. “Mr. Hawke is coming up on the screen now.”
“I see him. Hello, Mr. Hawke, this is President McCloskey. I can see you, can you see me?”
“Yes, sir, I can, quite clearly, thank you.”
“Well, I want to thank you for joining us. With me are Secretary of Defense Anson Beard; your old friend CIA director Patrick Brickhouse Kelly; and my lovely wife, Bonnie. Now, Brick here tells me you went to Moscow to interview that Russian sub driver, Lyachin, who sank our cruise ship, that right?”
“I just left him an hour ago, sir.”
“What’d you find out?”
“Mr. President, in my opinion, based on that interview, the Russians, the Kremlin, and Captain Lyachin had absolutely nothing to do with the sinking of the American cruise ship. I believe Prime Minister Putin has been telling you the truth, sir.”
“Well, with all due respect, Mr. Hawke, the navy divers found two torpedo propellers down there on the bottom. They’ve both been positively identified as coming from extremely high explosive Russian torpedoes. Isn’t that right, Mr. Secretary?”
“That’s correct, sir,” Beard replied.
“Well, Mr. Hawke, how do you explain that?”
“The torpedoes were definitely fired from the Nevskiy, sir. The fish loaded were live torpedoes, not deadheads. They were in the midst of conducting a dry fire practice launch as ordered. But Captain Lyachin and his crew had nothing to do with launching live torpedoes at an American vessel.”
“Say again?”
“The sub’s digital controllers, the computers that run her reactor, all her systems including weapons, were infected with an unidentifiable, untraceable cyberweapon that seized control of the entire submarine.”
“Now, Mr. Hawke, let’s be clear with each other. You believe this fella isn’t just trying to get his ass off the hook?”
“With all due respect, sir, I believe he’s telling the truth, sir. He’s a former physicist and an engineer, Mr. President. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s analyzed the sequence of events and identified the causes of that tragedy. A cyberweapon infected his submarine.”
“How the hell could this happen?”
“The best analogy is the Stuxnet worm that infected the Iranian centrifuges at Natanz, sir. His sub was targeted by a new generation cyberweapon, except the one that infected the Nevskiy is vastly more sophisticated than anything we’ve ever seen before. Certainly the U.K. possesses nothing remotely capable of taking over an entire naval vessel’s systems.”
“Mr. Secretary, what do you think?”
“Somebody has to have made a giant leap forward in technology, but, yes, I suppose it’s possible. Taking cybercontrol of enemy vessels is one of the highest objectives of our own program. We’re nowhere near close, sad to say.”
“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. So who’s behind the attack, Mr. Hawke?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Well, I know you don’t work for me, but from what I hear, I’d sure as hell be grateful if you could help me find out the answer to that question.”
“Those are precisely my intentions, Mr. President. The director of MI6, as you may know, has ordered my counterintelligence unit, Red Banner, to find out who sank that cruise ship and how. Since Red Banner is composed of both MI6 and CIA assets, I also report to Director Kelly as well as Sir David.”
The president turned to Kelly.
“What do you think, Brick?”
“I think that if Alex Hawke says the Russians had nothing to do with this, then the Russians had nothing to do with it. Alex, was your entire interview with Lyachin taped?”
“Yes. I will make a call immediately and get a copy of that tape electronically transmitted to Air Force One as quickly as possible. Sorry I didn’t think of that before.”
“You got nothing to be sorry for, son. No idea how you pulled off this interview, but I’ll tell you what. You just saved all of us a lot of useless hand-wringing over what the hell Putin was up to. Now we just need to learn who possesses cyberwarfare technology at this level. Anson, could you give us an update on who the major players are in this new cyber arms race?”
“Certainly. In no particular order, the countries using linked supercomputers to advance these kinds of AI programs the most rapidly would be Israel, China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and, possibly, North Korea. If I had to guess, based on the most recent intelligence I’ve seen, China has taken the lead in this field.”
“If I may, Mr. President,” Hawke said, “based on that list, I would say our primary suspects are China and North Korea.”
“It’s a place to start, Alex,” Brick Kelly said. “So let’s get started.”
At that moment, there appeared to be a power failure; his teleconference screen went black. Alex Hawke had just lost his connection with Air Force One.
“R ed One Leader, I got a little glitch here, over,” USAF Lieutenant Mick Millard said to his wing commander. Millard was flying the Red Three position off Air Force One: one mile aft and to starboard.
“This is Cheyenne, Sixshooter,” Captain Steve Powell, the wing commander flying the Red One slot to port said. “Talk to Papa.”
“Yessir. I… uh… had three unexplained turbine power surges. Squawk’s out… and…’’
“And what?”
“Shit!”
“Sixshooter, are you declaring an emergency?”
“My gear’s lowering and retracting! Shit! All by itself! What the hell?”
“Sixshooter, Cheyenne, break off! Break off! Out of formation, that is an order, now!”
“I… uh… wait a minute… I… uh… can’t… nothing is responding… ailerons… rudder… the damn plane is flying itself, sir… like automatic pilot… I have no control… None…”
There was a blast of static as USAF Captain Powell contacted the cockpit of the president’s airplane.
“Air Force One, we have a serious problem at Red Three. Systems malfunction. Pilot reports…”
“Red One Leader, break, this is Sixshooter, my radar just lit up… what the-”
“Air Force One, take immediate evasive action… deploy chaff… flares… I say again, immediate evasive action… F-15 on your aft starboard quarter is a bogie…”
“Red One Leader,” said the incredulous captain on the big 747, “are you saying one of our own damn-”
“Air Force One, dive! Dive! You have armed Sidewinders at your zero angle, sir!”
“Hostile situation alert,” the captain said calmly over the airplane’s intercom. “All crew and passengers. Seated and buckled up. Now.”
Suddenly the giant 747’s nose pitched down, the aircraft now in a nearly vertical dive, and the pilot deployed defensive countermeasures. At the tailcone section, just above the auxiliary power units, was the MATADOR IRCM (Infra-Red Countermeasures System). This device, activated in response to a direct missile threat, spews out signals of such intensity that an incoming missile, homing onto hot areas, the engine exhausts, is suddenly overwhelmed by so many false signal noises that it loses its lock and flies past the target. These same systems are also located above the four engine nacelles, all aimed aft.