The boat slowed and swung around to the port side of the larger vessel. Finn let it drift to a stop before he slipped underneath the water, kicking away from the boat as he did so. He had a waterproof knapsack slung over his back and an electronic jammer around his waist making him invisible to any tracking gear on board either boat. He dove down farther and headed underneath the other ship, which rode quite low in the water, and for good reason. It weighed over 80,000 tons, carried nearly a hundred aircraft and 6,000 sea and air personnel, housed not one but two nuclear powered generators, and had set the American taxpayer back over $3 billion.
Once he reached the spot, it took him only two minutes to attach the device to the bottom of the ship’s hull, and then, keeping well away from the massive screws, he made his way back to the other boat, reattached himself, and rode it back in. He had accepted this mission largely because it would give him some practice for another upcoming task of a more personal nature. He actually thought about the details of that job as the boat he was piggybacking on made its jog back to land. After it docked, he slipped out from his hiding place, swam to a remote part of the pier, clambered out and stripped off his gear. He made his phone call and later reported to the duty officer’s chambers with a high-level military escort, the members of which had privately bet there was no way anyone could do what Finn had just done: place a bomb on the hull bottom of the navy’s prized Nimitz-class George Washington aircraft carrier as it sat off the coast of Virginia. It was a bomb powerful enough to sink the carrier and all hands on board along with a couple billion dollars’ worth of aircraft.
This time the admiral of the Atlantic fleet and everyone down his chain of command was given a ten-megaton blast by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who happened to be a four-star army general. The man could barely hide his delight at delivering this meltdown to his naval colleague, a dressing-down so loud, it was said the four-star could be heard all the way back at the Pentagon nearly two hundred miles away. This very public whipping was reinforced by the presence of the secretary of defense, who had been standing by in his chopper waiting to see if Harry Finn could actually pull it off. The fact that the man had scored an improbable triumph against massively high odds prompted the secdef immediately to offer Harry Finn a position on his staff.
The secretary of Homeland Security was not amenable to this co-opting of a prized contractor. The two cabinet members went at it like schoolboys on a playground until the president himself interceded by secure video conference call and decreed that Harry Finn would stay right where he was, as an independent contractor to DHS. The defeated and miffed secdef climbed on his private chopper and flew back to Washington.
Harry Finn stayed down in Norfolk to give a briefing to a group of chagrined naval security personnel. While he was always courteous and unfailingly respectful, his comments were not watered down. Failures had happened, here is how I did it, and here is what you need to do to prevent a bona fide terrorist from doing it for real.
What Finn did for a living was often referred to in the field as “red cells.” The term had been coined by a former Navy SEAL who’d helped start the program. The red cell project had commenced after the Vietnam War at the request of a vice admiral to test the security of military installations. After 9/11, it had been expanded to test the security of nonmilitary facilities to penetration by terrorists and other criminal organizations.
People with Finn’s special skills, almost all of whom were formerly in the military, were tasked to impersonate terrorist cells and attempt to overcome a facility’s security. Often the penetrations were conducted in a nontraditional way, something also referred to as humanizing the task. That meant that Finn and his team members would emulate the skill levels of the terrorists they were attacking. Presently, Muslim terrorists were not deemed to have sophisticated skill levels. Even after 9/11 there was disbelief in American intelligence circles that such terror cells could take over a major facility or do what Finn had done that night with the aircraft carrier. They were good at blowing themselves and others up in public or driving planes into skyscrapers, but attacking a nuclear power plant or military installation was a whole different ball game.
However, it had finally occurred to both politicians and higher-ups in the military that Muslims were not the only potential terrorists in the world. China, Russia and other former Soviet bloc countries, as well as several nations in America’s own hemisphere, might well want to do harm to the United States. And these countries did have the infrastructure, personnel and access to intelligence to make determined and possibly successful attacks on secure American installations. Thus, Finn had been instructed to pull out the stops, use all his skills and cutting-edge equipment to break through the navy’s defenses. And he had.
Other men, including several on red cell teams Finn had worked with, might have stayed out all night celebrating this dramatic triumph. However, Finn was not like most people. He had stayed down in the Norfolk area an extra day for one very important reason. His oldest son, David, was on a soccer travel team that had a match in the area. The day after his briefing Finn attended his son’s match and then drove the victorious-and in high spirits-David back home that night. Along the way they talked about school, girls, sports. And then David, who at thirteen was nearly as tall as his dad, asked his father, “So what were you doing down there? Was it work-related?”
Finn nodded. “Some people were having problems with a security issue and asked me to come down and help them with it.”
“Did you get it figured out?”
“Oh, yeah. Everyone’s on the same page now. It actually wasn’t that complicated once the problems were identified.”
“Security with what?”
“A wide range of things. Nothing too exciting.”
“So can you tell me about it?”
“I doubt you’d find it interesting. It’s the same stuff lots of people do across the country. The only good thing is I don’t have to sit behind a desk every day.”
“I asked Mom about it once. She said she wasn’t sure what you did.”
“I think your mother was just kidding you.”
“You’re not a spy, are you?”
Finn smiled. “Well, if I were I couldn’t tell you.”
“Or if you did you’d have to kill me, right?” David said, laughing.
“All I do is help people run things better by pointing out flaws in their systems.”
“Like a computer guy does with bugs? So you’re like a debugger.”
“Exactly. Like I said, pretty boring stuff, but it pays well and keeps food on the table, which by the way, you seem to be eating about a hundred pounds of a day.”
“I’m a growing boy, Pop. Hey, did you know that Barry Waller’s dad chased a guy in his police car down an alleyway and wrestled a gun out of his hand after the dude robbed a bank? Barry said the guy almost shot his dad.”