“To put it bluntly, I want to know if it’s possible for a hacker to remotely fire a ballistic missile from one of our nuclear submarines.”
I thought she’d be rattled by my question, but she took it completely in stride. “Once you’re at the root level and have administrator access to a weapons system, you’re only one keystroke away from Armageddon.”
“Now you’re just being melodramatic.”
She chose not to reply, and her silence seemed to buttress her point. “So are we talking a domestic or foreign threat?”
“Domestic.” Then I thought of Eco-Tech’s international ties. “But it might be internationally funded.”
“Let me think about that.” She typed quickly for a moment, then said, “I’ve got a GPS location for you.”
“Fantastic.”
She gave me the coordinates, and when I opened another tab on my web browser and punched them in, the Bureau’s satellite mapping program brought up a cabin that lay less than a mile from the Schoenberg Inn. “Give me a sec to call this in, Angela. In the meantime, see if you can come up with a way to remotely fire that missile.”
70
I phoned Tait and gave him the address. “Start there, move out. I think there’s a good chance Kayla might be there.” Then I called Natasha to see if she could go process the site.
“Do you want Jake to come with me?”
“Yes.”
End call.
Good, good, good. A break.
Back to Angela.
“Do you have actionable intel here, Pat?” she asked.
“Not yet. No.”
“But you’re thinking there’s someone who might try this? Try to hack into a nuclear sub? This Eco-Tech group?”
Everything I had so far was circumstantial, a loose network of clues all pointing in one direction, held together merely by assumption and hypothesis rather than conclusive facts: the word of an assassin, speculation about the involvement of an environmental activist group, an uncertain agenda.
“Yes.” I tried to sound more confident than I was. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“But Eco-Tech is anti-nuke, Pat. Why would they try to detonate a nuclear weapon?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, even if they wanted to, I just don’t think they have the resources or personnel.”
“They might have a Navy information warfare officer with them.”
She was quiet. “No, I still don’t see it happening.”
“You just told me ‘one keystroke away from Armageddon.’ Right?”
“I was probably overreaching. When you’re talking about firing a nuclear weapon, there are just too many redundant systems. Don’t you need to have, what, two, three people turn keys at the same time?”
“I’d say at least that many.”
“There you go. Plus authentication codes, scripted orders, verification protocols. Even if you were able to somehow get the launch codes, one person can’t set off a nuclear device by himself. You cannot physically be in two places at the same time to turn the keys.”
“But could you bypass those two people and their keys altogether, just like bypassing the Cloud?”
Angela looked at me quizzically.
This was one time I did not want to be playing devil’s advocate. “Turning the keys doesn’t actually fire the weapon, the computer does that. The keys simply tell the computer what to do. What if you could insert the code that would tell it what to do-”
“You mean without the keys turning.”
“Yes. One person can’t be in two places to simultaneously turn two keys from different parts of a room or a sub, but one person could turn them simultaneously-”
“From inside the computer.” Her voice was soft and frangible. “Theoretically, yes, once you pwn the system.”
“You just said theoretically, Angela.”
The look of worry on her face deepened. “I’ll contact USCYBERCOM and the Pentagon. Ask them to raise the DEFCON level on the fleet of nuclear submarines, but they’re going to ask for a threat assessment, and you know how long that can take, especially without actionable intel.”
Unfortunately, I did. “Tell them it has to do with Eco-Tech and the ELF station in Wisconsin. I’ll send you all my notes. I think we should have enough to get their attention, and they can call me if they need anything else.”
“How is this related to ELF?”
For anyone else it might have surprised me that they were familiar with the extremely low frequency technology, but not with Angela. “They’ll know. Just get them the word and keep me up to speed.”
“All right.”
“I don’t know what kind of time frame we’re looking at here,” I said, “but I don’t like how quickly everything is happening here, so fast-track this.”
“I’ll make that clear.”
“And could you do me one more favor?”
Angela looked at me somewhat suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“I can’t seem to get ahold of Margaret and she was supposed to send me the schematics to the ELF station. Can you look them up?”
“That station has been closed down for years.”
“Wait till I send you the files.”
A pause. “If the schematics are on the Federal Digital Database, I can get them for you.”
“It might only be on the JWICS. And you’re probably going to need above top secret security clearance.”
A long thin silence. I could tell that she was evaluating my request in lieu of the conversation we’d just finished regarding the hacking scenarios. “I think Director Wellington is still in the building. I’ll track her down, ask her.”
“And if you can’t find her?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I’d worked with Angela enough to know that pressuring her any more right now was not going to help. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“If you’re right about any of this, you don’t owe me anything.” She signed off.
I closed the chat window, forwarded all of my notes to her and to USCYBERCOM, then, as I was finishing up, I thought about the GPS location Angela had uncovered and that I’d relayed to Tait. It wasn’t far from from the Schoenberg Inn. Earlier in the day I’d had my team search the Moonbeam because of the possibility that Alexei was keeping Kayla there.
So the Schoenberg? Just get a room, knock Kayla out, lock her in there? It would keep her safe, warm, out of the picture.
I called Tait back and told him to have his men search every room of the Schoenberg while they were in the area after they’d inspected the cabin.
Then I ran down where things were at: Angela was pursuing raising the threat level and looking for Margaret, USCYBERCOM had all the data I did, Tait was having officers search the most likely locations for Kayla, and Alexei Chekov was behind bars. I had the sense that right now just about everything I could put into play on this case was in play.
Dealing with more than one investigation at a time isn’t easy, but more often than not, it’s the default setting for my life. So now, as I reviewed the objectives I’d noted earlier, I realized it was time to review the videos Torres had sent me, the ones found in Reiser’s trailer.
Still at my computer, I braced myself and then pulled up the footage that the ERT had digitized from the VHS cassette documenting Lana Gerriksen’s murder more than a decade ago.
And I pressed play.
71
CIA Detainment Facility 17
Cairo, Egypt
2:29 a.m. Eastern European Time
2 hours 31 minutes until the transmission
After wheeling into the bathroom, Terry used the cell phone to contact Abdul Razzaq Muhammad.
“Two and a half hours,” Terry said. “Your team will be here?”
“They are already in the area. Have the numbers changed?”
“No. They keep a steady rotation here. There’ll be eight to ten agents present.”
“We’ll wait until we have confirmation that the event has occurred, then we will-”
“No. Simultaneous,” Terry said. “That was our agreement. Don’t forget, I can still call this off.”
No reply.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Terry pressed him. “It all happens at 03:00 GMT.”