The helicopter dropped down to near treetop level as it accelerated to over 200mph, speeding its passengers away from the danger of being in Washington. “Admiral Juliano is in the other Razorback with the rest of the team right behind us. I’m sure when we land, he’ll have more information for us,” Monty said while talking to someone on his smart phone.
LTG Rick Scott, the Director of the DIA, had arrived at the HIVE thirty minutes before the President and the national security staff. His first priority was to find out how bad the cyber-attack was and figure out what still worked. He had been on the phone with the DOD and DIA CIOs, and so far, the most they could tell him was that the Uninet routers and switches had been infected with some sort of malware that caused them to overheat and essentially burn out.
For the last fifteen years, the DOD had been upgrading its IT infrastructure with Uninet hardware, meaning most of the DOD’s IT infrastructure had been effectively destroyed. The CIOs explained that the problem was much worse than just the DOD systems. They had been in touch with their DHS and DOJ counterparts and they were also facing the same problems. Director Scott hit the speed dial on his phone to the Director of Homeland Security.
Within the first couple of minutes of his conversation with Director Perez at DHS, LTG Scott learned that AT&T was down and so was Sprint, along with nearly half of the country’s internet providers. Apparently Verizon was one of the few internet and phone providers who had not used Uninet’s hardware and had not been affected by the malware attack.
“General Scott, the President and the rest of the NSC will be arriving in ten minutes. We assured the President that the Chinese wouldn’t launch an attack against us…what are we going to do now?” asked Colonel Bauser, General Scott’s Chief of Staff.
“We were wrong. I was wrong to doubt General Wright’s warning. I suspect the President will probably fire me once he knows we made the wrong call.”
Brigadier General Joshua Wright was the Director for Intelligence (also known as the J2) at the DIA. Several of his analysts had determined that there was a high likelihood that the Chinese and Russians were going to attack the US and Europe within the week. Their assessment had been dismissed by LTG Scott due to no signals intelligence supporting the assessment and countering information from the economic and geo-political analysts. All of this became a moot point once the satellites started to go down.
The President’s helicopter and his staff arrived at the HIVE entrance and were immediately led to waiting elevators that would take them to the fiftieth floor. The fiftieth floor of the HIVE had been designated as the Presidential level; it had a residency for the first family along with the national security staff. There were also numerous offices and secured conference rooms to conduct the government’s business. The next five floors above them were dedicated for various essential departments of the government and their staff.
Once the President and the NSC arrived, the HIVE went into complete lockdown. Thirteen hundred Marines moved into the facility and took over internal security in coordination with the Secret Service. Five hundred Army Rangers, 50 Special Forces and 3,000 Army infantry soldiers would provide external security outside of the HIVE scattered across every approachable position to the site. The US Government had gone to ground and was hunkering in for the long haul until the situation with the nationwide communications blackout could be sorted out.
As the President got off of the elevator and began to walk to the NSC briefing room, he saw General Scott had already arrived and was clearly getting the room set up and gathering information for a quick briefing. “General Scott, we’ve been in transit for the last hour; I need an update with what we are facing,” said the President with a sense of urgency in his voice.
“Mr. President, I spoke with Director Perez, who is also en-route to our position. He told me his department also lost communications. They believe it had something to do with Uninet routers and switches within the government IT infrastructure. I’ve talked with the CIOs at the DIA, DOD, DOJ, DHS, DOS, NSA and CIA. They all have experienced the same problems. All Uninet routers and switches suddenly overheated and burned out at the exact same time. Our assessment is that they had been compromised prior to installation with some sort of sleeper malware waiting to be activated,” said LTG Scott with a worried look.
“Good God, this is worse than we could possibly have thought…,” said Mike Williams as he trailed off into his own thoughts.
“They have also destroyed our communications and GPS satellites,” Admiral Lewis said.
“So essentially, we are blind and unable to communicate with our forces abroad or here in the US?” asked the President.
“Sir, it’s a bit more than that. AT&T, Sprint, GoogleNet, Comcast, Cox Cable, and TimeWarner are all down. Cell phones, internet, just about everything. We are not entirely in the dark. The government’s cell and phone carrier is Verizon; so far they are the only phone and internet provider that is not down. They did not use the Uninet hardware. Right now we do not even know if this has hit the Europeans or how this is affecting our forces in the Middle East,” LTG Scott said.
The President immediately began to take charge of the situation and began to rapid fire orders to this staff. “First things first, we need to get communications back up ASAP. General Rice, see how many communication drones we have in the US and get them deployed immediately. We need to get military data communications back up immediately. Also, someone get on the horn with the CEO of Verizon; let him know that for the time being the federal government is going to temporarily nationalize their company and infrastructure until the other companies can repair or replace all of the Uninet routers and the switches and are back operational. We need the government functional, and if Verizon is the only content and data provider operational, then they just became our number one priority to secure and use. Work out a generous compensation package for them and ensure that they begin to assist the other providers in order to get services back up and running,” directed the President.
The attack against the American critical infrastructure grid caught most Americans by surprise — though some companies were better prepared than others to deal with a situation like this. Thousands of private companies began to assist the government in restoring the communication grid in the US. Google and Facebook had wireless internet drones and blimps they used in remote locations around the world; they immediately began to deploy that capability in the US, which greatly restored communications within America.
Three Shang-Class Type 96 nuclear-powered submarines entered their optimal strike range of the US Naval Facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As part of the first strike of Operation Red Dragon, their mission was to destroy the 7th Fleet Headquarters and any ships within the harbor. Upon receiving a message stating the that American satellites and communications were down, two of the three submarines fired four cruise missiles towards predetermined land targets, while the third submarine fired three cruise missiles at the Honolulu International Airport. One nuclear torpedo was launched towards Ford Island, which would effectively destroy the deep water facilities the US Navy relied upon.
The cruise missiles quickly found their marks and met no resistance since the communications and electronic grids within the naval facility were still offline. They quickly decimated the 7th Fleet Headquarters and numerous other strategic facilities at Hickam Air Force Base, Camp Smith and the Honolulu International Airport. The final and most devastating element of the attack was the nuclear torpedo. When it exploded, it destroyed dozens of naval ships in port, along with the equipment needed to service the surface fleet. The damage caused by the mini-nuclear explosion was immense and destroyed the use of Pearl Harbor for years to come, essentially neutralizing the military there for the duration of the war.