Combat

One combat.com

The secluded community just outside of Valparaiso, Chile, slumbered on behind the high walls and steel-reinforced gates that surrounded it. Other than the lazy swaying of branches stirred by a gentle offshore breeze, the only sound or movement disturbing the early-morning darkness was that created by the rhythmic footfalls on the pavement of a pair of security guards patrolling the empty streets of the well-manicured community. The two armed men did not live in any of the homes they were charged with protecting. Even if either one of them had been fortunate enough to possess the small fortune that ownership of property in the tiny village required, neither had the social credentials that would permit him to purchase even the smallest plot of ground within these walls. If they harbored any resentment over this fact, they dared not show it. The pay was too good and the work too easy to jeopardize. Their parents had taught them well. Only fools take risks when times were good and circumstances didn’t require it.

Still, the guards were only human. On occasion a comment that betrayed their true feelings would slip out during the casual conversation that they engaged in during the long night. Upon turning a corner, one of the security guards took note of a flickering of light in a second-story window of one of the oversize homes. Slowing his pace, the hired guardian studied the window in an effort to determine if something was out of kilter. Belatedly, his partner took note of his concern. With a chuckle, the second guard dismissed the concerns of the first. “There is nothing going on up there that we need to bother ourselves with.”

“And how would you know that?” the first asked as he kept one eye on the window.

“My sister, the one who is a cleaning woman, chatters incessantly about what she sees in each of these houses. That room, for example, is off-limits to her.”

Rather than mollify his suspicions, these comments only piqued the first guard’s interest. “And why is that? Is it the personal office of the owner?”

Letting out a loud laugh, the second guard shook his head. “Not hardly. It is the bedroom of a teenage boy.”

Seeing the joke, the first guard let out a nervous chuckle. “What,” he asked, “makes the bedroom of a teenage boy so important?”

“The boy is a computer rat,” came the answer. “My sister says he has just about every sort of computer equipment imaginable cluttering the place.”

“What does your sister know about computers?” the first asked incredulously.

Offended, his partner glared. “We are poor, not ignorant.”

Realizing that he had unintentionally insulted his comrade, the first guard lowered his head. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to …”

“But you did,” the offended guard snapped. “What goes on in those rooms is not our concern anyway. We are paid to guard against criminals and terrorists, not speculate about what our employers do within the confines of their own homes.” With that, he pivoted about and marched off, followed a few seconds later by his partner.

Neither man, of course, realized that the only terrorist within miles was already inside the walls of the quiet little community. In fact, they had been watching him, or more correctly, his shadow as he went about waging an undeclared war against the United States of America.

Alone in his room, Angelo Castalano sat hunched over the keyboard of his computer, staring at the screen. As he did night after night, young Angelo ignored the pile of schoolbooks that lay strewn across the floor of his small room and turned, instead, his full attention to solving a far more interesting problem. It concerned his latest assignment from the commander of the X Legion.

The “foot soldiers” in the X Legion were, for the most part, the sons of well-to-do South American parents, people who could be correctly referred to as the ruling elite. While Angelo’s father oversaw the operation of a major shipping business in Valparaiso owned by a Hong Kong firm, his mother struggled incessantly to keep her place in the polite society of Chile that was, for her husband, just as important as his business savvy. Like their North American counterparts, the information age and modern society left them little time to tend to the children that were as much a symbol of a successful union as was a large house in the proper neighborhood. That Angelo’s father had little time to enjoy either his son or house was viewed as a problem, nothing more. So, as he did with so many other problems he faced, the Chilean businessmen threw money and state-of-the-art equipment at it.

A computer, in and of itself, is an inert object. Like a projectile, it needs energy to propel it. Young Angelo and the electricity flowing from the overloaded wall socket provided that energy. But engaging in an activity can quickly becomes boring if there is nothing new or thrilling to capture a young, imaginative mind, especially when that activity involves an ultramodern data-crunching machine. Like the projectile, to have meaning the exercise of power must have a purpose, a target. That is where the X Legion came in.

The X Legion, properly pronounced Tenth as in the roman numeral, was a collection of young South and Central American computer geeks who had found each other as they crawled about the World Wide Web in search of fun, adventure, some sort of achievement. In the beginning they played simple games among themselves, games that involved world conquest, or that required each of the participants to amass great wealth by creating virtual stock portfolios. Slowly, and ever so innocently, the members of the X Legion began to break into the computer systems of international companies, not at all unlike those owned or operated by their own fathers. They did this, they told each other, in order to test their growing computer skills and engage in feats that had real and measurable consequences. “We live in a real world,” a legionnaire in Argentina stated one night as they were just beginning to embark upon this new adventure. “So let us see what we can do in that world.”

At first, the targets selected for their raids were chosen by the legionnaires themselves, without any controlling or centralized authority. This, quite naturally, led to arguments as fellow members of their group ridiculed the accomplishments of another if they thought the object of a fellow legionnaire’s attack had been too easy.

“Manipulating the accounts of a Swiss bank must have more meaning,” a Bolivian boy claimed, “than stealing from a local candy store.” Though intelligent and articulate, no one had a clear idea of how best to gauge the relative value of their targets.

To resolve this chaotic state of affairs, a new member who used the screen name “longbow” volunteered to take on the task of generating both the targets to be attacked by the members of the legion and the relative value of those targets. Points for the successful completion of the mission would be awarded to the participants by longbow based upon the security measures that had to be overcome, the creativity that the hacker used in rummaging around in the targeted computer, and the overall cost that the company owning the hacked site ultimately had to pay to correct the problem the legionnaire created. How longbow managed to determine all of this was of no concern to the young men like Angelo who belonged to the legion. Longbow offered them real challenges and order in the otherwise chaotic and shapeless world in which they lived, but did not yet understand.

When they were sure he was not listening, which was rare, the rank and file of the legion discussed their self-appointed leader. It didn’t matter to Angelo and other members of the X Legion that longbow was not from South or Central America. One of the first clues that brought this issue into question was the English and Spanish longbow used. Like all members of the X Legion, longbow switched between the two languages interchangeably. Since so many of the richest and most advanced businesses using the World Wide Web communicated in English, this was all but a necessity. When it came to his use of those languages, it appeared to the well-educated legionnaires that both Spanish and English were second languages to their taskmaster. Everything about longbow’s verbiage was too exact, too perfect, much like the grammar a student would use.

That longbow might be using them for reasons that the young Latin American hackers could not imagine never concerned Angelo. Like his cyber compatriots, his world was one of words, symbols, data, and not people, nationals, and causes. Everything that they saw on their computer screen was merely images, two-dimensional representations. In addition to this self-serving disassociated rationale, there was the fear that longbow, who was an incredible treasure trove of tricks and tools useful to the legion of novice hackers, might take offense if they became too inquisitive about longbow’s origins. The loss of their cyber master would result in anarchy, something these well-off cyber anarchists loathed.

While the security guards went about their rounds, protecting the young Chilean and his family from the outside world, Angelo was reaching out into that world. As he did each time he received a mission from longbow, Angelo did not concern himself with the “why” governing his specific tasking for the evening. Rather, he simply concentrated on the “how.”

Upon returning from school that afternoon, Angelo had found explicit instructions from longbow on how to break into the computer system of the United States Army Matériel Command in Alexandria, Virginia. This particular system, Angelo found out quickly, handled requests for repair parts and equipment from American military units deployed throughout the world.

The “mission” Angelo had been assigned was to generate a false request, or alter an existing one, so that the requesting unit received repair parts or equipment that was of no earthly use to the unit in the field. Knowing full well that the standards used to judge the success of a mission concerned creativity as well as the cost of the damage inflicted, Angelo took his time in selecting both the target of his attack and the nature of the mischief he would inflict upon it. After several hours of scrolling through hundreds of existing requests, he hit upon one that struck his fancy.

It concerned a requisition that had been forwarded from an Army unit stationed in Kosovo to its parent command located in Germany. The requesting unit, an infantry battalion, had suffered a rash of accidents in recent months because of winter weather and lousy driving by Americans born and raised in states where the only snow anyone ever saw was on TV. Though the human toll had been minimal, the extensive damage to the battalion’s equipment had depleted both its own reserve of on-hand spare parts as well as the stock carried by the forward-support maintenance unit in-country. While not every item on the extensive list of replacement parts was mission essential, some demanded immediate replacement. This earned those components deemed critical both a high priority and special handling. With the commander’s approval, the parts clerk in Kosovo submitted a request, via the Army’s own Internet system, to the division’s main support battalion back in Germany to obtain these mission-essential items.

As was the habit of this particular parts clerk, he had waited until the end of the normal workday before submitting his required list of repair parts. In this way the clerk avoided having to go through the entire routine of entering the system, pulling up the necessary on-screen documents, and filling out all the unit data more than once a day. Though parts that had been designated mission essential and awarded a high priority were supposed to be acted upon as soon as they landed on the desk of the parts clerk, lax supervision at the forward-support unit where the clerk worked permitted personnel in his section to pretty much do things as they saw fit. So it should not have come as a great surprise that the parts clerk in Kosovo chose to pursue the path of least resistance, executing his assigned duties in a manner that was most expedient, for the clerk.

This little quirk left a window of opportunity for someone like Angelo to spoof the United States Army Matériel Command’s computer system. Since the request was initiated in Kosovo and relayed to the forward-support battalion’s parent unit after normal working hours in Kosovo, the personnel in Germany charged with reviewing that request were not at their desks. Those personnel had the responsibility of reviewing all requests from subordinate units to ensure that they were both valid and correct. They then had to make the decision as to whether the request from Kosovo would be filled using on-hand stocks in Germany or forwarding back to Army Matériel Command to be acted upon using Army-wide sources.

All of this was important, because it permitted Angelo an opportunity to do several things without anyone within the system knowing that something was amiss. The first thing Angelo did, as soon as he decided to strike here, was to change the letter-numeric part number of one of the items requested to that of another part, an item which Angelo was fairly sure would be of no use to the infantry unit in Kosovo.

The item Angelo hit upon to substitute was the front hand guards for M-16 rifles that had been cracked during one of the vehicular accidents. Switching over to another screen that had a complete listing of part numbers for other weapons in the Army’s inventory, Angelo scrolled through the listings until he found something that struck his fancy. How wickedly wonderful it will be, the young Chilean thought as he copied the part number for the gun tube of a 155mm howitzer, for an infantry unit to receive six large-caliber artillery barrels measuring twenty feet in length instead of the rifle hand guards that it needed. Just the expense of handling the heavy gun tubes would be monumental. Only the embarrassment of the unit commander involved, Angelo imagined, would be greater.

Selecting the item to be substituted, then cutting and pasting the part number of the artillery gun tube in its place, was only the beginning. The next item on Angelo’s agenda was to move the request along the chain, electronically approving it and forwarding it at each of the checkpoints along the information superhighway the request had to travel. Otherwise, one of the gate-keeping organizations along the way, such as the parent support battalion in Germany, the theater staff agency responsible for logistical support, or the Army Matériel Command in Virginia, would see that the item Angelo was using as a substitute was not authorized by that unit.

To accomplish this feat Angelo had to travel along the same virtual path that such a request normally traveled. At each point where an organization or staff agency reviewed the request, the young Chilean hacker had to place that agency’s electronic stamp of approval upon the request and then whisk it away before anyone at the agency took note of the unauthorized action. This put pressure on Angelo, for he had but an hour or so before the parts clerks in Germany and the logistics staffers elsewhere in Germany switched on their computers to see what new requests had come in during the night. Once he had cleared those gates, he would have plenty of time to make his way through the stateside portion of the system since Chile was an hour ahead of the Eastern time zone.

It was in this endeavor that the tools and techniques that longbow had provided the legionnaires came into play. By using an account name that he had been given by longbow, Angelo was permitted to “go root.” In the virtual world, being a “root” on a system is akin to being God. Root was created by network administrators to access every program and every file on a host computer, or any servers connected to it, to update or fix glitches in the system. Having root access also allows anyone possessing this divine power the ability to run any program or manipulate any file on the network. Once he had access as a root user on the Army computer system that handled the requisitioning and allocation of spare parts, Angelo was able to approve and move his request through the network without any of the gates along the way having an opportunity to stop it. In this way the request for the 155mm artillery howitzer gun tubes for the infantry battalion in Kosovo was pulled through the system from the highest level of the United States Army’s logistical system rather than being pushed out of it from a unit at the lowest level.

To ensure that there was no possibility that the request would be caught during a routine daily review, the Chilean hacker needed to get the request as far along the chain as he could, preferably out of the Army system itself. To accomplish this little trick, he used his position as a root operator within the Army Matériel Command’s computer to access the computers at the Army’s arsenal at Watervaliet, in New York State. It was there that all large-caliber gun tubes used by the United States Army were produced.

Once in the arsenal’s system, Angelo rummaged around until he found six 155mm gun tubes that were already on hand there. Using the actual bin number of the on-hand gun tubes, he generated shipping documents for those items. Copies of those documents were then forwarded to the computers of the Air Force Military Airlift Command. The result of these last two actions would all but ensure that the request would go through. Upon arriving at work the following morning, the Department of the Army civilian employees at Watervaliet would be greeted by Angelo’s instructions for the disposition of the gun tubes issued through the Army Matériel Command’s computer in Alexandria, Virginia. Odds were the DOA civilian would not question this, since all the proper electronic documentation, including a code designating it as a high-priority item, were valid. At the same time the computers at the headquarters of the Military Airlift Command would spew out the warning order that a priority shipment for an Army unit forward-deployed in Kosovo was due in. As was their charter when dealing with such a request, the Air Force staff would immediately allocate precious cargo space on one of its transports headed for Kosovo, assign the mission a tasking number, generate their own mission tasking orders, and issue them to all commands who would be involved in the movement of the gun tubes. When all was set, the Air Force would relay disposition instructions back to Watervaliet, instructing the DOA civilian employee to deliver the gun tubes to the air base from which the designated transport would depart.

All of this took time, for Angelo needed to make sure that he not only hit every point along the long chain, but that each action he took and document he generated was correct. An error anywhere along the way would result in someone going back, up or down the actual chain, to ask for clarification or a retransmission of a corrected request. The chances of someone catching the hack would, as a result, be all but certain.

It was only when he had dotted his last virtual i and crossed his last digital t that Angelo noted the time being displayed on the upper right-hand corner of his screen. It was nearly 3 A.M. Shaking his head, the Chilean hacker raised his arms and glanced at his wristwatch. Why, he found himself wondering, had all this taken so long? While he appreciated that he had eaten up a great deal of time searching for the perfect target, and then finding an appropriately useless item to send them, Angelo found he could not explain the disparity. He had, after all, been involved in spoofs that were far more complex and involved than the one he had just completed.

Easing back in his seat, Angelo considered this incongruity with the same highly developed analytical tools that all the members of the X Legion possessed. Doing so proved to be no easy task, for his eyes were blurry and his mind, exhausted by hours of tedious labor, was not focusing. While there was always the possibility that the fault lay with the American Army’s computers, Angelo quickly dismissed this. They had, as best he knew, some of the fastest and most capable systems in the world. Even when the United States had been in the throes of a major crisis, Angelo had never experienced anything resembling a delay on the networks he so enjoyed hacking. This evening had been a relatively slow evening, with network traffic, if anything, being a bit lighter than the norm. So the young Chilean quickly dismissed this possibility.

This made his computer suspect. Perhaps, Angelo thought, it was time to run a diagnostic check of his system and clean up some old files, repair any fragmented sectors on his hard drive, and generally clean house. So, despite the late hour and his yearning for sleep, he leaned forward, pulled up his utility tools, and accessed the program.

Once the disk-repair routine was running, Angelo had little to do but sit back and watch. The images that flashed across his screen were, to Angelo, a bit silly. It showed a little figure, dressed in white with a red cross on his chest, turning a disk. Every now and then, the figure would stop, bend over, and give the appearance of examining a spot on the disk. After a second, the figure would straighten up and continue his search for another “injured” disk sector. Angelo no more enjoyed watching this mundane sequence than he did sitting before a television screen displaying a test pattern. Yet like the late-night viewer too tired to sleep, the Chilean continued to stare at his screen. Even the fact that the little stick figure before his eyes was going about its mindless chores slowly and with jerky motions couldn’t shake Angelo from his inattention.

In was in this semiconscious, almost hypnotic state that something utterly unexpected happened. The entire screen before him simply went blank. There was no flickering or shrinking of the image that is characteristic of a loss of power. Angelo did not hear the snapping that usually accompanies the tripping of the monitor’s on-off switch. Nor was there a change in the steady hum of the computer itself that would have occurred if hit by a surge. One second the screen had been up and active. Then the next, it was pitch-black.

After blinking in an effort to clear the glaze from his eyes, Angelo stared dumbstruck at the unnatural blackness before him. Already troubled by the previous problem he had been attempting to resolve, this new development further confused the Chilean hacker. He was just beginning to wonder if the diagnostic tools that he had turned to were the cause of this calamity when, on the left-hand side of his screen, he saw a figure appear. The peculiar figure, attired from head to toe in green medieval armor and mounted on a barded horse, sported a long lance and carried a shield. Mesmerized, Angelo watched as the knight, measuring about two and a half centimeters, rode out into the center of his screen. Once there, the horse turned until the small green knight, lance still held at a forty-five-degree angle, was facing Angelo head-on. The figure paused only long enough to lower his lance and tuck his shield up closer to his body. Then, with a quick swing of his feet, the green knight spurred his mount and charged forward.

Fascinated, Angelo watched. While one part of his mind wondered where this image was coming from, another part of the young man’s brain found itself captivated by the details of the computer-generated knight and its lifelike motions. As the virtual knight loomed closer and grew larger, more and more details were revealed. Quickly Angelo came to realize that the knight was not all green. Instead, the armor of the growing image before him began to blossom into a motley pattern of light greens, dark greens, browns, tans, and splotches of black, not at all unlike the camouflage pattern worn by modern combat soldiers. Even the bard protecting the knight’s steed was adorned with the same pattern. Only the shield clinched by the charging knight failed to conform to this scheme. Rather, the shield’s background was as black as the rest of the screen. Upon that field, at a diagonal, was the symbol of a silver lightning bolt, coursing its way from the upper right-hand corner almost down to the lower left. On one side of the bolt there was a yellow zero, on the other a one, numbers that represented the basic building blocks of all computer languages.

Completely engrossed by the video presentation, it took Angelo’s mind far too long to realize that the advancing knight, filling more and more of the screen before him as it charged home, was not meant to be entertaining. Rather the symbol of military virtue, power, and untiring quests was the harbinger of disaster. When this horrible fact finally managed to seep its way into his conscious mind, the young Chilean all but leaped out of his chair, as if struck by a lighting bolt not at all unlike the one adorning the knight’s grim, black shield. With a jerk he reached for the master power switch in a determined effort to crash his own system before the unheralded knight struck home and did whatever mischief its creator intended.

Had he been thinking straight, Angelo would have saved himself the trouble, accepted his fate calmly, and enjoyed the show. For the knight he saw was not the initiator of electronic doom, but rather a messenger sent forth from an implanted program within Angelo’s machine to announce that a sequence of destruction designed to destroy the Chilean’s toy had run its course. The South American hacker had been blindsided by an assault launched across the World Wide Web by another cyber combatant, a young boy not at all unlike himself. Like so many other intruders before, Angelo Castalano had been struck down by America’s new front-line guardians, the Cyberknights of West Fort Hood.

Two Virtual Heroes

The tunnels and chambers that honeycomb the hills of West Fort Hood had been built in another era. They had been part of a national effort to fight a foe that no longer existed, using weapons designed to be delivered by aircraft and missiles that had been relegated to museums. In underground chambers encased by reinforced concrete, nuclear weapons had been stored and assembled before being wheeled out onto the tarmac of the adjoining airfield, where the city-killing devices were hosted in the waiting bomb bays of B-47s. For many years the people of the United States had depended on those bombers to stand guard and protect them from foreign intruders. In time new weapons, weapons that were more precise, more advanced, replaced the free-fall bombs that had once been hidden away under the scrub-covered hills of West Fort Hood.

Strangely, the usefulness of the facilities that had been little more than storerooms during the Cold War long outlasted the weapons system they had been created to house. When the bombers had flown off for the last time, and the bombs themselves moved to other underground bunkers, new occupants moved into the spaces left behind.

This subterranean world had much going for it. For one thing, the earth and rock that concealed the underground work spaces created a constant environment and temperature. Other than providing a steady flow of fresh air, little needed to be invested in the heating or cooling of the facility to a round-the-clock temperature of just under seventy degrees. For those who have not had the opportunity to enjoy the month of August in Texas, this was a very big plus. Nor did people need to concern themselves a great deal with physical upkeep. There were, after all, no lawns, walkways, windows, or exterior walls that needed to be tended to. Even the interior was rather robust and carefree. The babyshit green glazed tiles that covered the walls, while monotonous and difficult to work with, made painting all but unnecessary. There were, of course, issues and difficulties that were well-nigh impossible to overcome. For one thing, the all-male draftee Air Force of the early 1950s had far different ideas about the minimum requirements when it came to the latrines than did the mixed workforce that followed them in later decades. And when it came to updating the electrical web that supplied power to everything from the overhead lights to high-speed computers, architects and engineers first found themselves having to redefine the meaning of creativity.

The attraction of the underground complex, however, went beyond these concerns over simple creature comfort. The very nature of the facility made access difficult. Since there were so few outlets, movement into and out of the underground complex could be readily controlled. The access tunnels which did connect the outside world to the work spaces within were long, straight, unobstructed, and narrow. This permitted security personnel manning the checkpoints at both ends of these tunnels clean fields of fire. The posts themselves, holdovers from the days when top-secret weapons had been stored there, were in fact bunkers. From behind bulletproof glass and using gun ports designed to sweep the entire length of the tunnel as well as the area immediately outside, the military police on duty could employ their automatic weapons to deny entrance into the complex completely.

This tight control extended to more than the coming and going of those who occupied the complex. Electronic equipment operated within the underground chambers was protected by the same dirt and rock that provided the humans who operated it with a comfortable environment. While not impossible, efforts to eavesdrop electronically from the outside were complicated. Nor could electronic emissions from computers escape, except though the cabling that provided power and communications from the outside world. To prevent this, filters and sophisticated countermeasures at selected points along the wiring leaving the complex denied unauthorized monitoring and filtered out emissions. If the powers that be wanted to, the entire complex could be shut down and isolated in every way imaginable.

Isolation, however, was not part of the charter for those who currently occupied the West Fort Hood complex, known by its occupants as the Keep. Quite to the contrary. From clusters of workstations that numbered anywhere from four to eight, young men and women sat before state-of-the-art computers, following the day-to-day activities of computer operators throughout the entire United States Army. With the twirl of a trackball and the click of a button, the cybersnoops at West Fort Hood could pull up the screen of any Army computer that was plugged into the World Wide Web or one of a dozen closed-loop systems used by units that handled hypersensitive material. Everything the unsuspecting computer operators “out there” did and saw on their machines could be monitored, recorded, and studied from the complex.

While the on-screen antics of some of the Army personnel and the civilians who work alongside of them in cyberspace could be entertaining, the residents of the subterranean labyrinths were not concerned with them. Rather, they searched the Army’s network of computers in search of those who did not belong there, young hackers from the outside like Angelo Castalano who used their computers to generate electronic mischief and mayhem on systems the Army depended upon to keep itself going. This, of course, was nothing new and far from being a secret. The hunting down and tracking of unauthorized intrusions into an organization’s computer system by the government and civilian businesses was practiced universally.

What made the West Fort Hood cybersleuths different than that of other, more mainstream agencies was what they did once they latched on to someone fiddling about in an Army computer. The computer geeks of the FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service, banks, and corporations all relied on laws, both federal and international, or protective countermeasures to deal with violators they came across. While this was usually sufficient to do the job, the use of established courts to punish or end unauthorized intrusions and electronic vandalism took time. In some cases, the lack of laws or a foreign nation’s inability to enforce existing laws made retribution impossible. And there were more than a few instances where the nature of the violation demanded an immediate response.

It was to provide the United States Army with the ability to deliver that response that 401st Signal Detachment was created. Sporting a simple black unit crest with nothing but a zero and a one separated by a lightning bolt, personnel assigned to the 401st went about their assigned duties without fanfare. Together this collection of intelligence analysts, computer experts, and hackers stationed at West Fort Hood was rather unspectacular. The didn’t sport a beret, worn at a jaunty angle. Nor did they wear a special skills qualifications badge over the upper left pocket of their rumpled BDUs like that given out to paratroopers, expert infantrymen, or combat medics. To those who did not have a security clearance sufficient to read the unit’s mission statement, it appeared that the 401st was simply another combat service support unit swelling the ranks of the Army that already had far too much tail and not near enough teeth.

Only a handful of senior officers in the Army knew that this was just not so. The 401st provided neither service nor support. It had teeth, real teeth and a mandate to use them. For the fangs that the 401st sported had not been created to serve as a show of force or deterrent. Unlike their more conventional counterparts, the computer hackers who wore the black “Oh Slash One” crest had but one mode of operation: attack. Collectively known as Cyberknights, their charter was not only to find intruders, but to strike back using every means possible. The motto adopted by this quiet little unit pretty much summed it all up in three words, “Seek, Strike, Destroy.”

From their small workstations tucked away in casements where nuclear weapons once sat, the Cyberknights of the 401st went about their task with enthusiasm. For many of the young men and women assigned to the unit, this was the ultimate in jobs, a nonstop video game played against a foe that was always different, and just as articulate as they in the ways of cyberspace. Most of the “foot soldiers” belonging to the 401st were in their early twenties. With few exceptions they had been recruited by the Army on campuses of America’s most prestigious universities and colleges. The typical candidates targeted to fill the ranks of the cyberwarfare unit were well-educated students who had more ability than they did drive, ambition, and money. Better than half had been on academic probation when the recruiter from the 401st approached them. Faced with the prospect of being cast out into the real world, where they would not have a degree to help them find a job sufficient to pay off student loans and credit-card debt they had accumulated along the way, the Army’s offer was a lifeline.

Without fanfare and often without the knowledge of the administration of the campus on which the recruiting was taking place, the FBI scanned records to detect discrepancies between the potential of students enrolled in computer-engineering courses and their actual performance. When prospective candidates were found, discreet inquiries were made into the habits of the student as well as the reasons for the poor academic showing. When a student matched the profile the 401st had established as being susceptible to what it had to offer, the action was passed off to the administrative branch of the 401st which dispatched one of its recruiters. These officers tracked down the candidate and made offers few in their positions could refuse.

Some in the unit’s chain of command disapproved of the procurement practices. Older officers who had been educated at West Point and had proudly served their nation for years without compromising the ethical values which that institution took pains to instill saw the methods used to induce young people at risk to join the 401st as rather predatory, a tad intrusive, and a shade too far over the line that separates that which is legal and that which is not. Few of the former students, however, complained. Plucked out of college just when things in their tender young lives could not have gotten any bleaker, they were offered an academic version of a golden parachute. In exchange for a three-year obligation, debt they had incurred during their ill-fated academic pursuit of excellence would disappear in the twinkling of an eye. While that alone would have been sufficient to bring over a number of prospective recruits, the Army offered more, much more. To start with, there was a tax-free, five-figure cash bonus paid up front. Coupled with this windfall was a college fund that grew with each year of honorable service. And for those who had trepidation about shouldering a rifle or slogging through the mud, a promise that their nights would be spent between two sheets and not standing a watch in a country whose name they could not pronounce was more than enough.

In most cases, however, such inducements were unnecessary once the new members of the 401st entered the Keep. To young men and women who had learned to read while cruising the World Wide Web, the Keep was a virtual wonderland, a field of dreams for cyberpunks and hackers. A flexible budget and a policy that permitted the unit’s automation officer to ignore normal Army procurement procedures ensured that the Cyberknights were well equipped with state-of-the-art systems. Once they were on the job, the new Cyberknights employed every cutting-edge technology and program available, not to mention a few that were little more than a glimmer on the horizon in the world outside. This last benefit came via a close relationship the 401st maintained with both the NSA and the CIA. This gave the equipment and technologies procurement section of the 401st access to whatever those agencies had, both in terms of equipment and techniques.

While the Keep was, for the Cyberknights, akin to a dream come true, not everyone found their assignment to the 401st to their liking. As he trudged his way down the long tunnel en route to his office located at the heart of the Keep, Colonel Kevin Shrewsbery tried hard not to think about his command.

An infantry officer with an impeccable record and a shot at the stars of a general, his selection to command the 401st had come as a shock. The mere fact that neither he nor any of his peers in NATO headquarters in Belgium had heard of the 401st when his orders had come in assigning him to that post should have been a warning. “What the hell are you people doing?” he yelled over the phone to his careermanagement officer at Army Personnel Command. “Whose brilliant idea was it to assign me to command a signal detachment? What happened to the brigade at Bragg I was promised?”

Equally ignorant of what, exactly, the 401st was, the personnel officer could only fumble about in search for an explanation. “You were asked for by name,” he replied to the enraged colonel on the other end of the line. “The request for orders assigning you to the 401st was submitted by the Deputy Chief of Staff for Special Operations himself.”

Rather than mollify the irate colonel, this response only served to confuse the issue. In the Army, young up-and-coming officers that bear watching are tagged at an early stage in their careers. The field from which a future Chief of Staff of the Army is chosen is pretty much narrowed down to a select few by the time the rank of major is achieved. Those who have a real shot at that coveted position are usually taken under the wings of a more senior officer, an officer who can guide the Chief of Staff of the Army in waiting along the maze of peacetime career assignments that are mandatory checkpoints. This senior officer, known as a rabbi in the Old Army, ensures that all the right buttons are pushed, and all the right tickets are punched by his charge in order to ensure that his candidate wins the four-star lottery.

Major General William Norton, the current Deputy Chief of Staff for Special Operations, was Shrewsbery’s rabbi. So it was not surprising that the designated commander of the 401st took the unprecedented step of calling Norton at his home at the earliest opportunity. With as much respect and deference as circumstances would permit, Shrewsbery pleaded his case. “Sir, I have never questioned your wisdom or judgment. But assignment to a signal unit? What is this all about?”

Since the phone line was a private home phone and not secure, Norton could not tell his protégé a great deal. “Kevin,” the general stated in a tone that conveyed a firmness that could not be missed, “the Army is changing. The world of special operations and the manner in which we wage war is changing. In order to advance in the Army today, you must ride the wave of change, or be crushed beneath it.” While all of this was sound advice, advice that he had heard time and time again, neither Norton’s words or the fact that he, Shrewsbery, would be reporting directly to Norton himself while commanding the 401st did much allay the colonel’s concerns. His heart had been set on a parachute infantry brigade. Though considered by many an outdated twentieth-century anachronism, the command of a whole airborne brigade was his dream assignment, a dream that now was beyond his grasp.

That was the first chip on Shrewsbery’s square shoulders. As time went on, more would accumulate until it seemed, to Shrewsbery, that he would be unable to walk along the long access tunnels leading into the Keep without bending over.

If there had been a casual observer, one who had the freedom and the security clearance necessary to stand back and look at the 401st from top to bottom and make an objective evaluation of the unit, they would have compared it to a piece of old cloth. In the center, at its core where Shrewsbery sat, the fabric retained its old structure. The pattern of the cloth could be easily recognized and matched to the original bolt from which it was cut. But as you moved away from the center, out toward the edges, the fabric began to unravel, losing its tight weave, some of its strength, and as well as the neatly regimented pattern.

Around the center the observer would see an area populated by the 401st support staff. The recruiters who provided manpower for the unit were assigned here, as were the technocrats who maintained and modified the computers and networks that the Cyberknights used. These staffers liked to think of themselves as the Lords of Gadgets. The Cyberknights called them the stableboys. Also counted as part of the support staff was the intelligence section. While not the equal of the knights in the scheme of things, it was the wizards behind the green door who did much of the seeking.

The intelligence section worked in its own series of tunnels, isolated from the rest of the complex by a series of green doors, a quaint habit the Army’s intelligence types had adopted years ago. There they took the first steps in developing a product that could be used by the operations section and, if necessary, the Cyberknights themselves. Rare information concerning computer hacks on military systems was funneled to them from throughout the Army. Once deposited behind the green doors, the intelligence analysts studied each case handed off to them for action. They looked at the incident and compared it to similar events they had come across in the past in an effort to determine if the intruder was a newbie, or someone that the 401st had met before in cyberspace. Next the analysts were expected to make a judgment call, based in part upon the facts they had on hand, and in part on intuition, as to the nature of the hack.

By the time one reached the edges of the material, the original color and pattern could no longer be discerned. All that one could see were individual strands, frayed ends that were barely connected to the cloth. Each strand, upon closer inspection, was different. Each had a distinct character that little resembled the tightly woven and well-regimented strands that made up the center. Yet it was there, among these strands, where the real work of the 401st took place. For these strands were the Cyberknights, the young men and women who sallied out, into cyberspace, day in and day out to engage their nation’s foes. And while the terms these Cyberknights used were borrowed from computer games, and the skirmishes they fought with their foes were in a virtual world, the consequences of their actions were very, very real.

While Colonel Kevin Shrewsbery settled in for another long day, Eric Bergeron was in the process of wrapping up his shift. In many ways Eric was the typical Cyberknight. At age twenty-five he had spent five years at Purdue in an unsuccessful pursuit of a degree in computer science. Rail-thin, his issued BDUs hung from him as they would from a hanger, making it all but impossible for him create anything resembling what the Army had in mind when they coined the term “ideal soldier.” Being a Cyberknight, young Bergeron did nothing to achieve that standard. His hair was always a bit longer than regulations permitted. The only time there was a shine on his boots was when he splashed through a puddle and the wet footgear caught a glint of sunlight. Only his babyfine facial hair saved him from having to fight a daily hassle over the issue of shaving.

Making his way along one of the numerous interior corridors of the Keep, Eric didn’t acknowledge any of the people he passed. He neither said hello nor bothered to nod to anyone he encountered on his way to the small, Spartan break room. It wasn’t that he was rude or that he didn’t know the names of those he came across. Rather, his thoughts were someplace else. Like most of the Keep’s population, Eric’s mind was turning a technical problem over and over again. At the moment he was going over his last engagement. Though he had triumphed, it had taken him far too long to ride down the kid in Valparaiso, Chile. This had brought into question his skills, which he took great pride in, as did most of the Cyberknights. This was a far greater motivational factor than all the inducements that had been showered upon them to secure their enlistments or the official rating they all received periodically.

Recognizing the Lost in Space stare, Captain Brittany Kutter waited until Eric was almost right on top of her before she called out to him. “Specialist Bergeron?”

Startled, Eric stopped dead in his tracks and looked around. “Yes?”

When she was sure she had his attention, Kutter stepped up to the befuddled Cyberknight. Flashing the same engaging smile she used when she was about to ask someone a favor that was, in reality, an order, Kutter motioned with her right hand toward a rather forlorn figure who stood behind her. “I know you’ve just finished a long shift, Specialist Bergeron, but would it be possible to show a newly assigned member of the unit around the complex while I find out where he will be assigned?”

Eric made no effort to hide his feelings. He hated it when people like the captain before him assigned his tasks in this manner. Why in the hell, he thought, didn’t they just behave the way soldiers are supposed to, like the colonel, God bless his little black heart.

Stepping forward, the young man who had been following the female captain reached out, hesitantly, with his right hand. “My name is Hamud Mdilla. I am sorry to be of bother, but …”

Realizing what he had done, Eric managed to muster up a smile. “Oh, please. No bother at all.”

Taking advantage of the moment, Kutter broadened her smile as she stepped away. “Well, I’ll let you two go. When you’re finished, come by my office.”

Eric waited until he was sure that she was out of earshot before he spoke again. “You’d think,” he mumbled, “they’d drop all their phony pretenses once they’ve reeled in their latest catch and start acting like normal human beings.”

This comment offended Hamud. “I am sure that the young captain is more sincere than you give her credit for.”

Looking over at the newly recruited Cyberknight, Eric smirked. “Yeah, right.” Then, with a nod, the veteran stepped off. “Come on. I’ll give you a Q and D.”

New to the Army, Hamud hesitated. “Excuse me?”

“Q and D,” Eric explained. “Quick and dirty. I’ll show you around.”

Though the tour was an impromptu one, Eric executed his assignment using the same methodical approach he used when dealing with any issue. As he did so, he engaged the new Cyberknight in conversation. In part, this was to ease the tension that their awkward introduction had created. But Eric also took advantage of this opportunity to probe and take a measure of Hamud’s abilities. For even though the foes the Army wanted them to seek out and destroy were the ones lurking about in cyberspace, the Cyberknights engaged in an in-house competition that pitted one against another.

“So,” Eric chirped. “Where’d they find you?”

“MIT,” Hamud stated glumly. “I was in my third year there.”

“MIT! Wow. I am humbled in your presence.”

Glancing over at his rumpled guide, Hamud wasn’t sure if he was being mocked. “Yes, well, it sounds more impressive than it is.”

“The best I could do was a few years at Purdue before I reached the end of the line,” Eric countered. “The credit line, that is.”

Use of experienced Cyberknights to take newly assigned members of the unit was a practice that Colonel Shrewsbery had introduced. He figured that these soldiers, for all their shortcomings, were no different than any others in the Army. The old hand, he reasoned, would do more than show the ’cruit his way around. He would use the opportunity to lord it over the newbie, to demonstrate his superior knowledge as well as brag about his accomplishments. In this way the new man would have an opportunity to gain insights that a nontechno type could not hope to pass on.

“Not every assault on the Army’s network poses the same threat,” Eric explained as they wandered about the section of the Keep where the wizards of intelligence sorted through incoming material. “And not everyone who breaches security systems does so for the same reason. Most of the intruders are pretty much like us, young cyberpunks with more time and equipment on their hands than smarts.”

Nodding, Hamud listened, though he had never considered himself to be a cyberpunk and very much resented being lumped together with them.

“They utilize their personal high-speed computers and the World Wide Web to wreak havoc on unsuspecting sites for any number of reasons,” Bergeron continued. “The sociologists assigned to the unit say most of them are young people harboring feelings of being disenfranchised by whatever society they live in. They use their equipment, given to them by dear old Mom and Dad, to vandalize the very society which their parents so cherish. Of all the intruders that violate Army systems these hackers, known collectively as gremlins, are rated as being the lowest threat to the system as a whole, and generally rate a low priority when it comes to tracking them.”

“But they can still cause a great deal of damage, can’t they?” Hamud asked.

“Oh, of course,” Eric replied as he led Hamud to the next stop. “But nine times out of ten they have neither the expertise, the number-crunching power, or the persistence to crack the really tough security used to protect mission-essential systems.”

“The Vikings,” Eric stated with a wicked smile as he moved on to the next stop along the tour, “are a different story. They’re organized in bands. With their superior organization and, in the main, better equipment they can mount a serious and sustained offensive against the Army’s computers. Their ability to network, exchange information, refine techniques, and share insights coupled with an ability to strike along multiple routes using multiple systems simultaneously makes them far more lethal than gremlins. The more vicious bands of Vikings can crash all but the Army’s most secure sites.” Pausing, Eric turned and looked at Hamud. “But that doesn’t keep them from trying.”

“Are they all just vandals?” Hamud asked. “Or are some politically motivated?”

“If by political motivation,” Eric answered cautiously, “you are referring to terrorist groups, the answer is yes. Though the intel wizards seldom tell us everything, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the people we are assigned to take down are making the hack.”

Pausing, Eric cocked his head as if mulling over a thought. “Of course, there have been instances where a band of relatively harmless Vikings has been hijacked by someone who was, as you say, politically motivated.”

Having no qualms about showing his ignorance, Hamud shrugged. “Hijacked?”

“Yes, hijacked,” Eric explained as he resumed his tour. “We refer to politically motivated hackers who work for foreign groups or nations as dark knights. Normally, they will operate out of their own facilities, some of which are probably not at all unlike this place. But on occasion a dark knight will search the web for an unattached band of Vikings. By various means of subterfuge or deception, these roaming dark knights, or DKs, work their way into the targeted band. Often, they use bribes such as techniques that he hasn’t observed the Viking band he’s been tracking use as a means of worming his way into the targeted band’s good graces.”

When he heard this, Hamud’s pace slowed. Turning, Eric saw a pained expression on the new recruit’s face. Knowing full well what that meant, the veteran Cyberknight smiled and waved his right hand in the air. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry. We’ve all been duped by some predatory sack of shit. Just make sure you don’t get sucked in here.”

Forcing a sickly smile, Hamud nodded. “Yes, I can appreciate that.”

“Now the DKs,” Eric went on as he picked up both his conversation and tour where he had left off, “can be quite vicious. Unlike the gremlins and lesser Viking bands, most DKs and the war bands they belong to have unlimited funds. That means they can not only buy the best that’s out there, but even when we fry their little brains, it’s only a matter of time before they come back, but only smarter and better prepared for battle.”

“So what do you do then?” Hamud asked innocently.

“Then,” Eric shouted, thrusting his right arm up, index finger pointed toward the ceiling as if he were signaling a charge, “we have ourselves some real fun.”

Three www.quest

With growing reluctance, Lieutenant Colonel James Mann glanced down at his fuel gauge. In his sixteen years in the United States Air Force, he had never seen that particular indicator dip so low. Drawing in a deep breath, he struggled to control his emotions as he pressed the PUSH TO TALK button. “Quebec Seven Nine, Quebec Seven Nine. This is Tango Eight Four, over.” After releasing the PUSH TO TALK button, Mann stared out of the cockpit of his F-16, vainly searching the night sky as he waited for a response from the KC-10 aerial refuelers using the call signs Quebec Seven Nine.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Mann called out without bothering to use call signs. “Does anyone out there see anything that looks like a tanker?”

At first no one answered as five other pilots craned their necks and searched the black sky that made their isolation seem even more oppressive, more ominous. Finally, Mann’s own wingman came back with the response no one wanted to hear. “Boss, looks like someone missed the mark.”

Rather than respond, Mann flipped through the notes he had taken during their preflight briefing. When he found what he was looking for, he glanced up at his navigational aids. The coordinates, the time, the radio frequency upon which they were to make contact with the tankers all matched. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. Everything. Yet, there were no KC-10s out there waiting to greet them with the fuel they would need to complete their nonstop flight to Saudi Arabia.

In the midst of checking and rechecking all his settings on the aircraft’s navigational system, another voice came over the air. “Colonel, I’ll be sucking fumes in a few. Maybe it’s time we start making some noise.”

Mann didn’t answer. The deployment of his unit was part of a major buildup in southwest Asia in response to threats being directed against the Saudi government. With the exception of conversations between themselves and the aerial tanks, strict radio listening silence was the order of the day. The arrival of the air wing that Mann’s flight belonged to was meant to be a surprise to the local despot. “We’re going to come swooping down on that little shit,” their wing commander told his pilots at their final briefing, “like a flock of eagles on a swarm of field mice.” Now, as he peered out into the darkness, Mann accepted the horrible fact that the only thing he and his companions would be swooping down to was the cold, dark Atlantic below. Even if the tankers did show up in the next few minutes, which he doubted, there would be insufficient time to go through the drill and refuel all of the aircraft in the flight. Some, if not all of them, would have to ditch.

Faced with this awful truth, Mann prepared to issue an order that went against his every instinct. “Roger that,” he finally responded with a heavy sigh. “Everyone is to switch over to the emergency frequency following this transmission. Though I know some of you will be able to go on for a while, I don’t want to make it any harder for search and rescue than it already is. As soon as the first plane goes in, we’ll circle around him and maintain as tight an orbit over that spot as we can. Acknowledge, over.”

One by one, the other pilots in Mann’s flight came back with a low, barely audible “Roger.” With that, the Air Force colonel gave the order to flip to the designated emergency frequency and began broadcasting his distress call.

Even before the last aircraft belonging to Lieutenant Colonel James Mann began its final spiral into the dark sea below, frantic efforts to sort out the pending disaster were already under way. When the Kansas National Guard KC-10 tanker failed to rendezvous with Mann’s F-16s at the designated time, the commander of that aircraft contacted operations. A commercial pilot by trade, the tanker’s commander was less concerned with the operational security than he was with the lives he knew were in the balance.

Back at Dover Air Base, from which the KC-10 had been scrambled for this mission, a staff officer pulled up the tasking orders on his computer screen that had dispatched the KC-10. As the pilot of the tanker continued to orbit at the prescribed altitude, over the exact spot he had been sent to, he waited for the operations officer to confirm that they were in the right spot. Unable to stand the tension, his copilot broke the silence. “That yahoo back in Dover better get a hustle on or there’s going to be a lot of unhappy Falcon drivers out here with nowhere to land.”

From behind them the navigator glanced down on a sheet of paper he had been making some calculations on. After checking his watch, he cleared his throat. “I’m afraid it’s already too late.”

Both the pilot and copilot of the KC-10 turned and looked at him. In return, the navigator stared at the pilot. “What now, sir?”

The commander of the tanker had no answer. Without a word he looked away.

When he reached his workstation to begin his shift, Eric Bergeron didn’t bother to sit down. Posted in the center of his screen was an international orange sticky note. The reliance of some members of the 401st on such a primitive means of communications caused the young hacker to chuckle. Even in an organization whose whole existence centered on keeping a sophisticated communications network functioning properly, there were many who didn’t trust it. Of course, Eric thought to himself as he pulled the note off and read it, after seeing what people like the ones he hunted down could do, he really couldn’t blame them.

From his little cubicle next to Bergeron’s, Bobby Sung leaned back in his seat until he could see around the divider. “I see you’ve been zapped by the overlords.”

Waving the sticky note about, Eric nodded as he gathered up a notebook he kept next to his computer monitor. “Yes, I have been summoned.” In the parlance of the 401st, the overlords were the operations officers, the men and women who assigned the Cyberknights their missions, which the knights themselves referred to as quests. The orange sticky note, reserved for use by the operations section, indicated that this was a priority mission.

“Well then,” Sung stated as he made a shooing motion with his hands, “begone with you, oh wretched soul.”

Bending over, Eric contorted his expression. Then he did his best to imitate Dr. Frankenstein’s deformed assistant as he limped away, grunting as he went, “Yes, master. Coming, master.”

In a small briefing room tucked away in one of the numerous casements that sprouted off of the long internal tunnel of the Keep populated by the unit’s operations section, Eric met with several members of the staff as well as some outlanders. The conniving officer was no less than the chief of the unit’s operations section himself, Major Peter Hines, a name that caused him much grief in an organization with more than its fair share of irreverent cynics. He sat at the head of the long, narrow table in accordance with the military protocol that the regular Army staff stubbornly clung to.

Seated to the major’s right, along one length of the table, was the Queen of the Wizards, a title bestowed upon Major Gayle Rhay, chief of the intel section. To her left were the outlanders, outsiders who were not members of the 401st. They wore the typical bureaucratic camouflage that all visitors from Washington, D.C., favored, dark suits and tightly knotted nondescript ties. Farther along that side of the table was an Air Force colonel. That this senior an officer was placed to the left of the pair in civilian attire clued Eric to the fact that the outlanders were pretty well up there on the government’s pay scale.

The presence of the outlanders and the officer from a sister service was not at all unusual. Oftentimes the 401st handled a high-priority mission that originated within another service or government agency. What was disconcerting to the young hacker was the presence of the Master of the Keep himself, Colonel Shrewsbery. Seated away from the table against the wall, Shrewsbery was situated in such a manner that only Hines could see him without having to turn his head. Eric had noted that Shrewsbery often did this when one of his subordinates was running a meeting or briefing that he wanted to attend but not, officially, participate in. During the course of the proceedings the chair of the meeting would glance over to wherever Shrewsbery had placed himself, checking for subtle signals from the colonel. There was, Eric concluded long ago, a sort of mental telepathy used by the careerists within the unit that neither he nor any of the other Cyberknights were privy to. Not that he wanted to be part of that strange clique.

Without preamble, Major Hines launched into his presentation. “Our records show, Specialist Bergeron, that you have engaged a DK using the screen name longbow.”

Without having to look, Eric knew that the major’s use of the term “DK” had caused Shrewsbery to grimace. Despite the fact that the colonel had been with the 401st for the better part of a year, the terms his staff resorted to when dealing with Cyberknights still irked him. To him it was unprofessional to indulge in the video game terminology the Cyberknights favored. Still, like every professional officer who entered the Keep, he adapted.

“Twice,” Eric corrected Hines. “Once just last week during our quest against the X Legion down in South America, and a few months ago when he was working with Der Leibstandart in Germany.”

“Yes,” the major stated, annoyed that he had been interrupted. “I know.” Leaning forward, Hines folded his hands on the table in front of him. “Well, he’s back.”

Now it was Eric’s turn to be surprised. “So soon?” Not that this was unexpected. The Cyberknights themselves had reached a consensus after their second run-in with him that longbow was a DK working for a national-level interest. That he was back already, after only a week, confirmed speculation that had been bantered about between the Cyberknights that this particularly bothersome Dark Knight had access to funds and equipment that only a well-financed organization could provide.

Using a pause to break into the conversation, Gayle Rhay provided some additional information. “He’s currently using the screen name ‘macnife’ and, for the first time, making the hacks himself. Yesterday he hit the Air Force.”

Looking over at the rep from that service, Eric noted that the Air Force colonel was avoiding eye-to-eye contact with anyone.

Eric was quick to appreciate that the new screen name was a feeble attempt to cyberize the character’s name from the song “Mack the Knife.” Nor did he entertain any doubt that macnife and longbow were one and the same person. The one thing that he had learned during his tenure with the 401st was that when the military, the CIA, and the NSA were able to put aside their petty turf battles and pool their combined intelligence assets, no one and nothing could get by them. Even the most sophisticated hacker, exercising the greatest of care, left tracks that were both distinct and traceable.

To start with, a hacker tends to use the same system and computer language. Though he may be familiar with many different types, like an auto mechanic he can’t be an expert on every system out there. So he specializes. Nor could he change his ways. As with the mechanic, every hacker has a repertoire of tools that he uses when breaking into a system and while rooting about in it. The sequence in which he employs these tools and the manner in which he operates when confronted by security systems may vary some, but not so much that they cannot be used to assist in pegging who’s engaged in making the break-in. It was this particular trait that alerted the 401st that longbow was behind the hacks made by the X Legion, for the novice hackers of that Viking band slavishly mimicked everything longbow taught them. “It’s like watching half a dozen junior longbows,” an intel Wizard told Eric when they were preparing for that counterhack.

Even more insidious, in the eyes of a hacker, was the ability of intelligence agencies such as the NSA to ID an individual by simply studying the speed and manner in which someone typed. It was far more involved than just counting the number of keystrokes someone makes within a given period of time. Certain irregularities, such as the habit of misspelling the same word, or the use of a certain phrase, tagged an individual as surely as his or her own fingerprints. With the enormous number-crunching ability of the NSA, the American intelligence community had the capability to run the record of a hack through their library of past attacks and look for a match. No doubt, Eric thought as he listened to the briefing, longbow and all his past activities had been puked out as soon as they had done this, just as his own would if he were the target of such close scrutiny.

“He managed,” Rhay continued, “to change the mission tasking orders for a deploying flight of aircraft.”

“The F-16s,” Eric chirped with glee as if he had just guessed the right answer to a pop quiz. Then, when he belatedly remembered that all six pilots were still missing and assumed dead, the Cyberknight’s expression changed. “He did that?”

From across the table, one of the outlanders joined in. “The administration considers this attack to be nothing less than an act of war.” He made this statement using the sanctimonious tone that many from inside the Beltway seemed to favor when dealing with a flyover person. “As such, the President has directed that the National Security Council come up with an immediate and proportional response.”

In an effort to regain control of the meeting, Hines cleared his throat as he looked over at Rhay and the two outlanders, using a spiteful glance as he did so to warn them to back off. When he was ready, the ops major took up the briefing. “That’s going to be your mission, Specialist.”

Given the events that had brought this about, Eric did his best to hide his excitement. Still, he could see something big was in the offing. “Will this be a duel?”

In Cyberknight speak, a duel was a one-on-one confrontation between one of their own and a dark knight.

Shaking his head, Hines continued. “No, not in the traditional sense.”

Leaning back in his seat, Eric eyed Hines and the array of faces across the table from him. “You tagged me because I am familiar with longbow, yet you don’t want me to go head-to-head with him. Explain, please.”

“It is obvious,” the older of the two outlanders stated, “that not only is this character very, very good, but he has the backing of a very robust and well-financed support system. This makes him a very dangerous threat, since each run-in serves to enhance both his reputation and his experience level.”

The second outlander picked up the thought. “Since we can’t seem to terminate this particular hacker by direct means, we have been given the mission of finding another way of putting an end to his career.”

Like a wrestling tag team, the older outlander took over. “We hit upon the idea of discrediting this hacker, now operating under the name ‘macnife.’”

Looking back and forth between the pair of unnamed outlanders, Eric shrugged. “How do we plan to do that?”

Used to working with the Cyberknights and the way they could become quite unruly if allowed to, Major Gayle Rhay cut in. “We are fairly confident that another nation is using macnife, formerly known as longbow, and his nation as a surrogate, a platform from which to strike at the United States.”

“Other than raising hell and poking the tiger,” Eric asked, “what’s their motivation?”

“The second party, the one supplying equipment and funding to macnife’s nation for his use, may be doing so in an effort to test our computer security and try new techniques on us,” the intelligence officer explained. “By going through a surrogate, the second party nation is able to gain valuable experience without having to expose its own nation’s cyberwarfare capability to countermeasures or foreign intelligence agencies.”

“Huh,” Eric grunted. “Sounds like a Tom Clancy plot.”

“Were this not actually taking place,” Rhay replied, “it would make a rousing good read. But unlike a technothriller, we can’t be sure the good guys are going to win.”

Unable to restrain himself, Eric began to grin. “So, you’ve come to me, the Indiana Jones of cyberwarfare. What, exactly, is it you want me to do this time?”

Without any noticeable objections from Major Hines, the older of the two outlanders gave Eric a quick, thumbnail sketch of what the operation would entail. “You will begin the operation by breaking into the system used by macnife. Once there, you must establish yourself as the root, preferably without anyone noticing.”

“Is there any other way?” Eric asked in mock innocence.

In unison, the two outlanders looked at each other, searching each other’s expressions in an effort to determine if this was a serious question. Since neither was sure, the older outlander chose to ignore it and continue. “Now comes the hard part. Once in, you’re to assume macnife’s identity. Using his own system, you’re to access several computer systems within the nation that has been supporting macnife’s adventures.”

“The object here,” the second outlander stated in a crisp, monotone voice, “is to create suspicion and distrust.”

“I see,” Eric replied as he reflected upon the implications. “By making the supplier think that macnife is using their own equipment against them, you’re hoping to break this unholy alliance.”

“Exactly,” the older outlander stated. “Otherwise, the cycle will simply repeat itself, with macnife becoming smarter and the nation supplying the equipment and funding getting away scot-free.”

“Do you folks have any specific targets in mind?” Eric asked as his enthusiasm for this operation continued to mount.

“We have been assigned two targets,” Major Hines stated as he finally found an opportunity to elbow his way back into the briefing he was chairing. “The first hack is the supporting nation’s cyberwarfare center. We want you to get inside the system there and see what you can find.”

Excited, Eric blurted out his questions as he thought of them. “Is this a simple snoop and scoot?”

“If possible,” Hines stated, annoyed at the interruption, “we want you to plant a Trojan horse, which the NSA rep will provide you with.”

To hackers, a Trojan horse is an implanted code or program that runs an operation or performs functions that the host computer user is unaware of or alters an existing program so that the original functions do not behave as they were intended to. If done well, a Trojan is all but impossible to find and can totally corrupt the original program.

“Okay, so far, this sounds like a piece of cake,” Eric quipped.

Again, the two outlanders turned to face each other before continuing. “The second hack is a straight-out attack against a chemical plant located within the supporting nation.”

Suddenly, Eric’s tone changed. “A denial of service attack?” he asked cautiously.

“No,” the older outlander stated without betraying any emotion. “The objective of this hack is destruction. Whether this can be best achieved by altering settings or by incapacitating automated safety protocols will be determined once you’re into their system. It’s the results that matter.”

It was more than the words that caused the hairs on Eric’s neck to bristle. It was the cold, unemotional manner in which the outlander mouthed them that bothered the Cyberknight. “If it’s a chemical plant,” the young hacker stated cautiously, “then we’re talking serious roadkill. Aren’t we?”

Though they never saw it up close and personal, the loss of human life as a result of their hacks, referred to as roadkill, bothered even the most hardened Cyberknight. So long as there was no blood shed as a direct result of their activities, the young hackers belonging to the 401st could engage in a bit of self-deluding disassociation. But once that line was crossed, once they became aware that their activities, if successful, would produce death, many a Cyberknight hesitated. On more than one occasion, a Cyberknight even declined to execute an assigned task.

Realizing what was going on, Colonel Shrewsbery chose this moment to insert himself into the proceedings. “I am well aware of the fact, Specialist Bergeron,” he stated in a gruff voice that commanded everyone’s attention, “that you do not think of yourself as a soldier, at least not in the conventional sense.”

Eric looked across the room and into the dark, unflinching eyes of the colonel. “I do not believe,” the Cyberknight whispered, “in the taking of human life.”

“Unfortunately,” Shrewsbery countered without hesitation, “those who oppose us do not share that sentiment. While it would be wrong to characterize them all as monsters, let there be no doubt in your mind that they are willing to do whatever they need to in order to achieve their national goals.” Pausing, Shrewsbery reached down, without breaking eye contact with Eric, and picked a newspaper off the floor. With an underhanded toss, he flung the paper on the table, faceup, in Eric’s direction.

Reaching out, the young Cyberknight stopped it just before it slid off the table and into his lap. In bold print the paper announced that any hope of finding the F-16 pilots alive was waning. Below that banner headline was a photo of one of the pilots’ wife, looking up into the empty sky, as she clutched a crying child to her side. As Eric read the caption accompanying the photo, Shrewsbery continued. “How many tears do you think the folks behind that hack shed?”

Looking up at the colonel, Eric’s resolve hardened, but only for a moment. “I cannot speak for them, sir.”

“I’m not asking you to, son,” Shrewsbery replied as he moderated his tone. “All I am asking you to do is to do your best to keep that sort of thing from becoming a daily occurrence. While none of us can bring those pilots back, we damned sure can do something to protect those who are still out there, doing their duty, just like you.”

Unable to find a suitable reply, Eric again looked at the photo before him. Then he lifted his eyes and looked over at the people gathered about the table. They were all staring at him, waiting for him to say something.

Glancing back at Shrewsbery, Eric found that he was barely able to contain his anger. How he hated it when someone like the colonel rubbed his nose in what he, and the other Cyberknights, really did. Eric knew that the 401st was not a video arcade. He understood, on an intellectual level, that his actions had very real consequences that affected very real people. He just didn’t want to be reminded of this day in, day out. Like the bomber crews in World War II, the young Cyberknight managed, for the most part, to insulate himself from what he was doing. That’s why he and all the other Cyberknights used the colorful terms they did. Such words hid the meaning of their actions. Nor did the Cyberknights allow themselves to think of their foes as real people. And, like the young men who had flown the planes that had smashed Coventry, flattened Dresden, and eradicated Hiroshima, once they had finished an action, they moved on. No need, he often found himself thinking, to bother himself about what lay behind in his wake. He was, after all, simply following orders. Let the people who generated those orders lose sleep over the price.

But every now and then, reality took a bite out of this cherished isolation. As the saying went in the Keep, even Disneyland has a cloudy day.

“Okay,” Eric finally whispered as he took the newspaper before him and flipped it over. Mustering up as much enthusiasm as he could, he turned to face Major Hines. “Let’s get it on.”

Four The Pit

The days when a high-school kid, parked in front of his computer in the comforts of his bedroom, could rain down death and distraction upon the world were gone. So was the Lone Ranger approach, especially within the 401st. When executing a major operation, known as a hack attack, the exercise had all the intricacies of a Broadway production. The room in which they made their attack was not as nearly as sophisticated as one would have imagined, though it did have more than its fair share of bells and whistles common to most government operations. Yet even these, like everything found in that room, nicknamed the Pit, had a purpose.

The Pit was isolated for reasons of security. The official name of the Pit, posted on the red door that separated it from the rest of the tunnel complex, was Discrete Strike Operations Center, or DSOC, pronounced “dee sock” by the operations staff. Within the DSOC were two chambers, the Pit itself, where the actual cyberattack would take place, and a second, in which observers, straphangers, and miscellaneous personnel not directly involved in the mechanics of the attack could watch via closedcircuit TV and dummy monitors. The Army staff called this the observation suite. The Cyberknights referred to it as the Spook Booth.

Whenever Eric Bergeron had been in the Pit it had always been dark. The only illumination in the room was that which was thrown off by the computer monitors located there and small reading lights at each workstation. Everything else was so dark that if asked by someone, he would be unable to tell them what color the walls were.

The furniture in the Pit was quite sparse, consisting of two long tables, one set upon a platform behind the other. Along one side of each table were armless chairs. These chairs faced a wall that was actually one huge screen that covered that surface from ceiling to floor. Both tables were fitted out with four computer workstations, though there were power trees bolted at either end of the tables and space to accommodate two more if required. Unlike the normal haunts where the Cyberknights went about their day-to-day activities, there were no dividers between the individual workstations. This was done to permit quick access, both verbal and nonverbal, between the members of the 401st at each of the tables. A person working at one position could easily reach in front of anyone to their left or right to pass on a handwritten note or sketch. Even though everyone in the strike center wore a headset with a tiny boom mike that permitted them to speak to other members of the team, it had been found that there were times when these notes worked best, especially when the personnel in the Pit didn’t want those in the Spook Booth to know something.

Located at each of the eight permanent workstations was a computer. Each was set up to perform a discrete function during an attack. The primary assault computer, labeled PAC, was the center-right workstation on the front table. It was from this position that Eric Bergeron would make his way into macnife’s computer, then on to those that ran the chemical plant located in the supporting nation. To Eric’s immediate right sat the primary foreign language expert, or FLE. While much of the traffic on the World Wide Web was in English, many of the programs and protocols, especially those concerning security and safety, were written in the language of the actual user. Hence there was a need for someone to be there, at Eric’s side, to translate in real time. These interpreters, recruited in much the same way as the Cyberknights were, had to be as computer savvy as the knights themselves. This was how Bobby Sung, a second-generation Chinese American, had made his way into the ranks of the Cyberknights. Since this hack attack would be going into the systems of two different nations, there was a second FLE located at a computer at the right end of the table, set up at the overflow slot.

The left-center workstation belonged to the systems expert, or SE. While good, the Cyberknights could not possibly know every nuance and quirk of the computers they were working from or hacking. The SE was one of the many on-site civilian tech reps ordinarily charged with maintaining machines supplied by their companies. During an attack, an SE familiar with the targeted systems was brought in to answer any questions Eric might have during the hack or assist if the Cyberknight came across something that he did not quite understand. Oftentimes these SEs were members of the design team who had actually manufactured the computer being attacked. To the SE’s left was a language/ programs expert, or LPE. Like the hardware specialist, the LPE was on hand in case Eric needed help with the software he encountered.

Immediately behind the primary assault computer, on the rear table, sat the electronic-warfare station. Manned by a second Cyberknight, the operator of this computer had the task of assisting the hacker whenever he ran into a firewall or other security measure during the break-in. Once the hacker was in, the electronic-warfare knight, EWK for short, monitored the systems admin and security programs of the hacked network. It was his responsibility to protect the hacker from countermeasures initiated by automated security programs or systems administrators.

This feat was accomplished in any number of ways. The preferred countermeasure was simply to lie low, or cease the hack, until any detected security sweep was completed. If it appeared as if someone was starting to become wise to the hack, the EWK attempted to spoof the systems administrator by making him think everything was in order. When this failed and the administrator started to track the unusual activity that the hack was causing, the EWK began to feed his foe data that would create the appearance that the security program was malfunctioning. More often than not, this made the system administrator hesitate as he tried to determine if the suspect activity was nothing more than an anomaly in the system or a glitch with the security program of his computer. When this ploy didn’t work, the EWK was forced to employ the least desirable trick in his bag, the dreaded red herring.

Every EWK had a totally fictitious hack sequence loaded on the EW computer and ready to initiate with nothing more than the touch of a special function key. Often they used the screen name and tactics of another hacker that the Cyberknights had come across during their day-to-day efforts to protect the Army’s computers. This ruse was designed to be both sloppy and obvious, yet not easily countered. When initiated, more often than not, it gave the primary hacker more than enough time to finish his attack and back out before the system administrator caught on. Occasionally, however, the defensive measures taken against the feint were too quick. When the EWK saw that he was losing the fight to keep their foe at bay, he would call out, “eject,” signaling the hacker he had to stop the hack, no matter where he was.

To the right of the EWK was an intel wizard. Major Gayle Rhay herself frequently took this seat. Like the systems or the language/ programs experts, the intel officer was there to provide the primary hacker with advice and recommendations should he run across something that was unfamiliar or unexpected. The presence of someone from the intelligence section in the Pit also had the benefit of providing the wizards themselves with valuable firsthand knowledge of the capabilities of their foes.

The station to the left of the EWK was occupied by a recently recruited Cyberknight. Since a highly technical hack attack such as the one Eric was about to undertake was both difficult and involved operations against a sovereign power, only the most senior Cyberknights were permitted to make them. To qualify for what was, among the Cyberknights, these most prestigious assignments, a novice had to observe six actual hacks in the Pit and successfully complete twelve consecutive simulations. On this day, the honor of checking off his first observed Pit hack fell to Hamud Mdilla, the bright young newbie Eric had shown around.

Most people who wander onto the World Wide Web from their home computers give little thought about how their input makes it from the keyboard sitting on their laps to the sites they are seeking. Nor do they much care that so much data about who they are, and where they are, is bounced about the web in a rather haphazard manner, from one web server to another, in search of the most direct route to the site desired. Few appreciate how much personal data is left behind, like footprints, during this process.

Things were not that easy for the 401st. They could not simply dial up a local server, plug into the Web, and charge out into cyberspace in search of hackers messing with the Army’s computers. This was especially true when going head-to-head with a foreign power who possessed the same ability to tap into servers around the world in search of a foe. Since this was how the Cyberknights themselves found most of their adversaries, it was safe to assume that their counterparts working for other masters would do likewise.

To counter this threat, every major cyberattack, such as the one which Eric was about to embark upon, followed a pathway along the Web plotted out by a network-routing specialist. To the Cyberknights, they were the pathfinders. Working at the computer located on the far left of the rear table, the pathfinder opened the route the hack attack took through the World Wide Web. This normally involved going through a number of servers located around the world. Unlike the home web surfer, there was nothing random about the pathway that data would travel. Yet it had to appear that way. To accomplish this little trick the pathfinder mimicked the route that a hacker the 401st had dealt with in the past had followed. This not only served to confuse the cyberwarfare specialist who might come back at them later, but it also covered the unit’s own tracks as the Cyberknights crawled along the Web en route to their target. Any webmaster monitoring a Web server along the way who caught the Cyberknights hack would think that it was the same hacker who had visited them before.

This intricate course through the Web also served to protect the security of the 401st and the Keep. By knowing, in advance, where the outgoing data packets were going, the EWK would be able to go back, when the hack attack was over, and erase any record of the traffic at selected servers. This would make it impossible for anyone tracing the hack to discover the real point of origin. Since the Keep was, at that moment, a one-of-a-kind facility, protecting it was always a major concern. While the attack Eric and the team assembled in the Pit was important, it was not worth compromising the entire unit, a unit that could very well be needed to parry the opening attack of the next war.

The last member of the assault team, the officer in charge, had a seat at the rear table, but no computer. This paradox was the result of a decision made by Colonel Shrewsbery’s predecessor when the operational procedures for the 401st were being drafted. Since the officer in charge had the responsibility for the attack, the first commander of the 401st felt it was important that he or she be unencumbered by a computer. “Who’ll be keeping an eye on the overall ebb and flow of the attack, the big picture of what’s going on,” the unit’s first commander pointed out, “if the OIC is fiddling about with a computer mouse.” Though none of the Cyberknights since then understood how the OIC of a hack could run things without a computer, the issue was never debated or discussed.

A well-orchestrated hack attack did not simply happen. How various Cyberknights thought of their collective efforts was reflected by the terminology they used. Those who followed professional sports spoke of scoring when they accomplished an assigned task, or fumbling the ball when a hack went astray. Other Cyberknights with an ear for the classics liked to think of themselves as members of a well-tuned orchestra. And, of course, there were those who enjoyed spicing up their mundane lives by taking on superhero personas that would make Walter Mitty blush.

None of these alternate realities, however, could disguise the fact that this was, from beginning to end, a military operation. Once the officer in charge of the hack had assembled his team, all pretenses were dropped. With few exceptions these officers were like Shrewsbery, professional soldiers with a muddy-boots background who had been pulled into the 401st because they had a demonstrated ability to lead troops.

Their task was not at all an easy one. Most hackers, by their nature, were loners. They did not readily surrender their cherished individualism since so much of their self-worth was based upon what they, and they alone, could do. To overcome this common personality quirk, every OIC staged a rehearsal once all the preliminaries had been completed and the various players felt they were ready. While standing before his assembled strike team, the OIC walked through the hack attack step by step, from beginning to end.

Since most of the officers in the 401st who served as OICs for attacks could not hope to match the technical expertise of the people they would be in charge of, these professional soldiers relied upon the published execution matrix. This document, set up like a spreadsheet, listed each and every step that would be made during the attack down the left-hand edge of the page. Across the top of the matrix was the title of each member of the team, listed at the head of a column. By following that column down the page, everyone in the Pit could see what action he or she was expected to take as the attack unfolded.

With this execution matrix in hand, the OIC would point to the member on the team whose responsibility it was to initiate the next action. As he and every other person in the Pit listened, the soldier or technician the OIC was pointing to explained in detail what he would do at that point. When finished the OIC would turn to another team member, sometimes chosen at random, sometimes selected because they were required to support the event in progress, to spell out what was expected of them. Every now and then the OIC threw in a “what if?” scenario before moving on to the next item in the sequence. Though he already had an idea who needed to respond to his hypothetical question, the OIC would not point to that person, waiting, instead, for them to respond to the unexpected situation. Only when he was satisfied that everyone knew his or her role in the pending operation would the OIC report to Colonel Shrewsbery that they were ready to execute.

The timing of these attacks varied. The classic window chosen to hack into a system was during off hours, when the traffic on the targeted system was light and the chances of someone noticing something unusual was minimal. There were times, however, when hackers wanted to get lost in the traffic, or when the traffic on a busy system was actually necessary, especially when the hacker was trying to collect authentic screen names and passwords which he could use later. Because the hack attack Eric was about to embark upon required him to assume the persona of macnife, the attack had to be staged at a time when the real macnife would not be at his computer.

The other factor that played into the equation was the desire to keep the number of casualties at the chemical plant low. When the OIC of the attack, an artillery captain by the name of Reitter, mentioned that during the rehearsal, Eric Bergeron could not help but laugh. Normally such outbursts were ignored. In the eyes of the professional officers assigned to the 401st the Cyberknights were not real soldiers and therefore unfamiliar with the proper military etiquette and protocol normally expected from soldiers belonging to “the real Army.” Reitter, however, was the sort that could not let such a breach of decorum go unchallenged. “As best I can see,” he snapped back, “there’s nothing funny about what we’re about to do, soldier.”

Eric didn’t shy away from the captain’s rebuke. “It’s not the fact that we’re going to be taking human life that I find laughable,” Bergeron explained. “What I find amusing is the concept that somehow, by killing only fifty people instead of one hundred and fifty, we’re being nice, or compassionate to the poor schmucks we’re zapping.”

Up to that point, Colonel Shrewsbery had been content to stand against the rear wall of the Pit, saying nothing as he listened while Reitter walked the assembled team through the operation. Eric’s comments and explanation, however, were both uncalled for and way out of line. “That’ll be enough of that, mister,” the infantry colonel bellowed. “We are soldiers, soldiers who have been given a mission. Executing that mission, and that alone, is all we are concerned with. Period.”

For several seconds, no one said a thing as Eric and the commander of the 401st locked eyes. Only when he was sure that he had made his point did Shrewsbery look over to where Reitter stood, seething in anger. “Carry on, Captain.”

When he was sure that their colonel was not looking, and while Reitter was fiddling with the note cards he had been briefing from, Bobby Sung leaned over till he was but a few inches from Eric’s ear. “Ve vere only following orders, herr judge,” Bobby whispered, using a mock German accent. Though they often joked about such things, the Cyberknights understood that they were playing the deadliest game there was. Only through the acceptance of the party line, as well as adopting the sort of graveyard humor soldiers have always used to preserve their sanity, did the Cyberknights manage to go on.

The one thing that would not be present in the Pit during the attack was something that no one in the 401st ever gave a second thought to, a gun. Once past the two MPs posted on either side of the Discrete Strike Operation Center’s red door, no one was armed. Yet the war that was about to be waged there was just as vicious, and deadly, as any war that had gone before. Only the tools, and the type of warrior who wielded them, had changed.

Five Hack Attack

From his post in the Spook Booth, the commander of the 401st watched the bank of monitors as the members of his command prepared for combat. Just as the business community had been dragged kicking and screaming into the information age, so, too, had the Army. Professional soldiers such as Shrewsbery knew, in their hearts, that units like the 401st were necessary. While some saw this change as being inevitable, and others freely embraced it as a brave new world, all who had been raised on the heroic traditions of their fathers grieved in silence as Eric Bergeron and his fellow Cyberknights took their place in the front ranks of America’s military machine.

Joining Shrewsbery to monitor the attack were a number of advisors. One of the most important members of this second-tier staff was a lawyer from the Army’s Staff Judge Advocate Corps. Of all the people involved, her position in the scheme of things was the least enviable, since everything that was about to happen was illegal. Not only were there no federal laws that sanctioned what the 401st did on a day-to-day basis, the United States supported every effort in every international forum it could to counter cyberterrorism. While they understood the necessity to aggressively seek out and destroy those who sought to attack their country under the cover of cyberspace, it didn’t make anyone pledged to uphold the law feel good about what they were seeing.

If all went well, the JAG officer would have nothing to do. Her presence there was in case something went astray and the activities of the 401st or members of that unit had to be defended in a court of law. The JAG officers assigned to the 401st likened their plight to criminal defense attorneys retained by the mob.

Though he was also charged with enforcing the laws of the land, the FBI liaison in the Spook Booth viewed the undertaking with envy. As a member of that organization’s computer crimes unit, the FBI Special Agent followed everything that the hack attack team did. His presence there was more than a matter of courtesy. Despite the fact that the Bureau could not use the same aggressive techniques employed by the 401st, watching a hack from inception to completion served to improve his abilities to devise ways of catching domestic cybercriminals his agency would have to combat once his tour with the Army unit was over.

Also joining Shrewsbery in the Spook Booth were the CIA and NSA reps who had generated this mission as well as the Air Force colonel who was, himself, connected to the Air Force’s own cyberwarfare center in Idaho. Collectively theirs would prove to be the most difficult burden during the hack attack. While they had been the ones who had come up with the plan, none of them could do a thing once the attack had been initiated. Like the dummy monitors they watched, they would be powerless to influence the action.

This was not true of the final man in the room. As a member of the National Security Council, he had direct access to the national command authority. If all went well, he would have no need to use this access. Like the other people in the Spook Booth who were not assigned to the 401st the NSC rep would merely go back to Washington, D.C., once the hack was over and submit a written report to his superiors on what had happened. If, however, things got out of hand, the NSC rep would be the one who would pick up the phone and talk to the President and his advisors. While the NSC rep was friendly enough, Shrewsbery likened being confined in the small observation room with him to being locked in a cage with a tiger.

“Okay, people,” Reitter announced over his boom mike after his assembled team signaled they were ready, “Here we go. Comms, open the channel.”

The first step in any hack attack was to connect the Pit to an outside commercial network. This was done to keep dark knights from doing to the 401st what Reitter and his team were about to do to the cyberwarfare center macnife was operating from. The communications section of the 401st, located in another part of the Keep, literally had to plug the cable leading from the Pit into an external access port. These ports were arranged in a row on a panel painted bright red. Each of these connections was covered with a spring-loaded cap that snapped shut when the internal cable was removed. While there were written warnings posted all over the room, across the top of the red access port panel, and over each cover, a further audio warning was initiated as soon as a cap was lifted, announcing that the connection now exposed was a commercial line. When the connection was made a banner announcing that fact flashed across the top of the big screen in the Pit. This cued the pathfinder to initiate the attack.

Entry into the World Wide Web from the Pit was rather unspectacular. The procedure used by the pathfinder was not at all unlike that used by millions of his fellow Americans on a daily basis. The pathfinder dialed up the Internet server he desired and waited for the link to be made. Patiently he watched the display on his monitor. The plotted pathway that would take them from the Keep to macnife’s system was displayed using a rather simple wiring diagram. Each server along the chosen pathway was listed in the sequence that it would be tagged. Within the hollow wire box each server was identified using its commercial name, the access code the pathfinder would need to use to connect with it, the type of equipment the server used, the nation it was located in, and the language the local webmaster used when tending to it.

The box representing each of these web servers was initially blue, the same color this particular specialist had chosen for the monitor’s desktop. When a server was being contacted the box went from blue to yellow. Once the connection was made, it would turn red on both the pathfinder’s monitor and the big screen on the wall. Only in the Spook Booth, where the nontechnicals watched, did the screen displaying the servers the hack was being routed through show up as an actual map. “Nontechnicals” was a catchall term applied to visitors to the Keep like the rep from the National Security Council and people who were not as computer savvy as the Cyberknights or their support team. When the Pit was being set up it had been decided that it would be far easier for these people to understand what was going on if they saw a map rather than the simplistic wiring diagram used by the pathfinder.

When a civilian web surfer goes out into cyberspace, he usually has a destination in mind but little concern over how he gets there. He simply instructs the web navigational program on his computer to take him to a Web address. This program does several things. It translates the user’s message into a protocol that will allow the user’s machine to interact with all the servers on the Web as well as the system at the destination site. This internet protocol, or IP, creates header information which includes both originating and destination addresses as well as the message or any additional information the sender has included. Once sent, this data is broken down into packets of data which then bounce about the World Wide Web looking for a server that is both available and capable of taking the message along to its destination. When the connection is made between the user who initiated the communications and the site he was looking for, the data packets are reformatted into a computer language that the receiver, or the system can understand. If the data is a simple e-mail message, the traffic is deposited in the memory of the computer to which it was sent or the service provider if a connection to the final destination is not open at that moment. If the sender has a desire to communicate in real time with someone on the other end, or access and manipulate information stored there, the connection between the two systems remains open until one party or the other terminates it.

Since he wanted to hit specific servers in a fixed sequence, the pathfinder had to organize the address portion of the packets so that they followed a specific route. If a selected server had no open ports, progress along the Web stopped until access was gained. Once in a server, the address for that server was stripped away, revealing the pathfinder’s instructions to send the routing message along to the next server.

The assembled Pit team sat in silence as they watched the pathfinder’s display on the big screen. Bobby Sung, a patient soul, could be as dispassionate as the computer that sat before him. Eric Bergeron, on the other hand, was unable to contain the nervous energy that was gnawing away at him. With nothing better to do with his hands, he tapped the table with a pencil. While there might have been some sort of rhythm in the Cyberknight’s head driving this subconscious response, his hand did a poor job of translating it into anything resembling melody. Instead of music, the female interpreter seated next to him heard disjointed thumps that only served to heighten her own jitters. Without a word, she reached over and snatched the pencil out of Eric’s hand. Offended by her action, Eric turned and stared at her. The interpreter met his indignant glare with an expression that all but said, “Go ahead, make my day.”

In the midst of this nonverbal exchange, the pathfinder broke the silence. “Okay, boys and girls, we’re in.” After giving the interpreter one more spiteful glance, Eric turned his attention back to the big screen.

By the time he had refocused his attention to the progression of the attack, Bobby Sung was already at work. As the electronic-warfare knight for this operation, it was his task to break through the security systems that protected the host computer macnife worked from. Since the system they were breaking into was based on an American design, and both the network-level firewalls and the application-gateway firewalls had not been modified by macnife’s sponsors, this task was relatively easy. For the first time that day, Bobby Sung betrayed the excitement he felt by humming “The Ride of the Walküre” while his fingers flew across the keyboard before him.

In the Spook Booth, the CIA agent chuckled when he heard Wagner’s oft-played piece. “Sounds like your people have been spending too much time watching old war movies.”

Kevin Shrewsbery looked over at the visitor from Langley. “I’d rather that than have them use the training we give them here to empty my bank accounts.”

While the CIA man stared at the Army colonel, the FBI liaison chuckled. “You’ve got that right.”

Back in the Pit, Bobby Sung was finishing his tasks. “Righto, mate,” he called out to Eric Bergeron, “we be in business.”

Taking a deep breath, Eric studied his screen. “Let’s see now,” he mumbled. Bobby Sung, using an old technique, had managed to enter an open port in the host computer macnife worked from by sending a message using an address that macnife’s system was familiar with. Once past the security gateways, the body of the message was not checked by the security programs, since it followed the address of a trusted user. That body consisted of a sequence of commands, written in the computer language used by the system under attack, that established a new root account.

Neither the nation that had provided the computers nor macnife’s native country altered the basic programming language, making it easy for Eric to pull up the directory of the host computer and get to work. The first phase of the attack involved the downloading of a Trojan horse. While there are several variations to this sort of attack, the one Eric introduced to macnife’s host computer involved that system’s Internet protocol instructions.

Rather than destroy a single computer which could easily be replaced, the NSA had convinced the members of the National Security Council that it could nullify the effectiveness of future attacks by keeping track of where the dark knights from that country were going in cyberspace. Their solution was to modify the header portion of the Internet protocol instructions currently on macnife’s host computer so that every time macnife and his compatriots connected with the internet, the NSA would be alerted. The Trojan horse in this case did nothing other than send the NSA an info copy of everything that was sent out onto the Web. With that information in hand, the NSA would be able to warn any site that was the target of an attack as well as gather information on who this particular nation was working with.

Methodically Eric made his way into the operating system of macnife’s host computer. With root access, this was rather simple. What was not going to be easy was the substitution of codes. To do that Eric would have to operate on the old code. That could create a momentary interruption in service, much in the same way that a surgeon performing open-heart surgery must stop the heart in order to work on it. Everyone using macnife’s host computer that was connected to the Internet would experience a momentary delay of service. If this interruption became pronounced, the system administrator would, quite naturally, assume that there was a problem either with his connections or his system. Either way, he would become active and begin an aggressive effort to resolve the problem while ignoring the phone calls from angry users.

To prevent this Bobby Sung would momentarily block all outgoing traffic. To the average user this interruption would appear to be nothing more than a delay in finding an open circuit at his or her Internet service provider. Even the most astute computer geek would have difficulty detecting the hiccup Bobby Sung’s break in service would create.

“Hey, Bobby,” Eric called out. “You ready?”

The EWK looked up at the big screen, where he could clearly see that Eric had the existing IP header information highlighted and ready for deletion. “On the count of three,” Bobby Sung replied. Then he began his count, “Three, two, one, break.”

In the Spook Booth, the NSA agent pointed to the screens displaying what Bobby Sung and Eric were doing. “The interruption in service comes first,” he explained to the rep from the National Security Council. “Then the Cyberknight making the hack wipes away the old header information and substitutes the one we came up with, the Trojan horse.”

Though he really didn’t understand everything that was going on in the Pit, the NSC rep grunted and nodded knowingly.

Back in the Pit, Eric drew his hands away from his keyboard and into the air. “Done!”

Bobby Sung, alerted to this by his compatriot’s actions and announcement, removed the block from the targeted system. When the warning banner on his screen was replaced by a “Service resumed” message, the EWK let his hands fall away from the keyboard and to his sides. Dispassionately he watched his monitor, which was now showing him the same thing the systems administrator of the hacked computer was seeing. If anyone had noticed the break in service, they would notify the system administrator, who would, in turn, initiate some sort of action to find out what had happened.

Again the Pit became still as everyone watched for a flurry of activity on the portion or the big screen showing them Bobby Sung’s screen display. From his seat the OIC took note of the time. It had been decided that a thirty-minute pause would be sufficient to allay any fears that their insertion of the Trojan horse had gone undetected.

As before, Eric found himself unable to contain his nervous energy. With all his pencils out of reach, Eric began to drum his fingers on the tabletop as he watched the big screen. He was in the middle of rapping out a tune when he felt a sharp slap across the back of his right hand. Stunned, he looked over at the interpreter next to him. Surprised by her action and the scowl she wore, Eric pulled his injured hand up to his chest and began to rub it as he stared at his attacker as if to ask, “Why did you do that?”

Having anticipated this, the interpreter shoved a note in front of his face. In angry strokes, the note read, “Stop with the noise, before I am forced to break your fingers.”

Reaching over and snatching the pencil from her hand, Eric turned as he took up his notepad and jotted out a response. When it was finished, he flashed his response at her. “Oh yeah!” it read. “You and what army?”

Seeing an opportunity to pass time by engaging in something more exciting than watching the big screen, Eric and the female interpreter exchanged a flurry of notes.

They were still at it when Captain Reitter broke the silence. “It looks as if the Trojan horse is in place and doing its thing. It’s time to move on to phase two.”

Before breaking off the silent war of words, Eric scribbled out one more message to his neighborly foe. “We’ll continue this later.” After delivering that, he swiveled about in his seat and took up where he had left off. “Okay, Scottie,” Eric announced over the intercom, “beam me up.”

Without a word the pathfinder prepared to launch back out into cyberspace from the computer they had hacked into and on to the one at the chemical plant chosen for destruction. Using macnife’s screen name, he initiated the new hack from macnife’s own computer. Unlike before, he made no effort to cover his tracks or weave his way through the Internet along a predetermined route. For this part of the operation to be successful, the pathfinder had to leave a traceable path from macnife’s machine to the chemical plant for the cyberwarfare specialists in the other nation to find.

The point of entry at the new site was the computer system at the chemical plant that handled the shipping and tracking of the plant’s products. This point, according to the system expert, would be the easiest port through which they could enter and gain access to the rest of the system. While he watched the pathfinder hand off the attack to Bobby Sung so that he could crack the security codes, the system expert unfolded a diagram of the chemical plant’s network.

As before, Bobby Sung wormed his way through the security gateways and worked his way through the system until he had reached the network’s root directory. From his seat, Eric looked at up the big screen before him. “Gee,” he muttered as he took in the screen before him. “I thought you said this plant had been built by a German firm.”

“The plant is German,” the SE replied. “But the computer network is based upon an American design.”

“I sure hope the American firm got some royalties out of this deal,” the interpreter remarked.

Bobby Sung snickered. “Not likely.”

From his seat, Reitter called out. “Let’s settle down and deal with the issue at hand.”

Unlike the previous sessions that had passed in near-total silence, a lively exchange began between the system expert, who guided Eric through the computer network that ran the plant, the interpreter, who translated when they came across something in Chinese, and Eric himself, who asked them both questions. To assist in this effort, each of these three had laser pointers with which they could point to the word or section of the plant’s computer screen that was now displayed on the big screen.

“Okay,” the SE stated triumphantly. “The second file down contains the program that runs the control panel.”

“Well,” Eric mused as he highlighted the file and clicked his mouse. “Let’s see what we shall see.”

After taking a moment or two to study the series of computer commands, the language/program expert heaved a great sigh of relief. “They’ve not changed a thing. All the pre-programmed defaults are still set.”

The system expert nodded. “Agreed. We can proceed as planned.”

Leaning forward, Eric locked his fingers and flexed them as a concert pianist would before playing. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now, for my first number, I shall play, ‘Let’s fuck with the emergency shutoff.’”

“He’s a cocky little bastard,” the NSA agent commented to the group assembled in the Spook Booth.

Coming to Eric’s defense, Colonel Shrewsbery countered. “He’s twenty-five years old, playing the world’s most sophisticated computer game.” Turning, he looked over at the NSA man. “Like you, we recruit brains, not personality.”

Quickly Eric moved from item to item, changing the settings. In some cases he reversed values, so that when the computer screen in the control room showed the operator that a valve was open, it was actually closed and vice versa. Simple mathematical formulas were added to lines that displayed temperatures of the huge vats where chemical reactions and mixing took place. The inserted formulas were written so that the measured temperature at the vat showed up on the control room’s computer as being substantially lower than it actually was. Together with the disabling of the automated-shutdown sequence and fire-suppression system, the new settings were designed to initiate an uncontrolled chain reaction. Not only would the personnel in the control room be unaware of what was going on until it was too late, when they did take steps to shut down the plant or activate emergency procedures, the false readings they were seeing and the reversed controls they were manipulating would only serve to increase both the speed of the disaster and its magnitude.

When he was finished, Eric leaned back in his seat, pushed his chair away from his workstation, and looked up at the big screen. Slowly, he checked each line he had altered, character by character. When he had finished, he twisted about in his seat and looked up at Bobby Sung. “What do you think, old boy?”

Sung, who had been watching every move Eric had made, took another long look at the big screen before he nodded in approval. “Bloody good show, old boy. I’d say we have a keeper here.”

Though annoyed by their lighthearted manner, Reitter said nothing. The two Cyberknights, like everyone else in the Pit, were under a great deal of pressure.

When the hackers were satisfied, Eric next turned to his left. “Do you see anything that needs a second look?”

Both the systems expert and the language/programs expert took a few extra moments to scan the altered settings and formulas. In turn, each gave Eric a thumbs-up when they were satisfied.

With that, Eric glanced back at the pathfinder. “Okay, Scottie. Take us home.” As was his particular habit, the pathfinder clicked his heels three times, repeating the old cliché, “there’s no place like home,” each time while he backed out of the chemical plant’s main computer and prepared to quit the Internet. Finished, he clapped his hands. “We’re out.”

Without hesitation, Reitter called out over his boom mike. “Comms, break down the link. I say again, break down the link.”

In the Pit, the red banner that warned that they were connected to the World Wide Web suddenly disappeared. Standing up, Reitter looked about the room. “It is now nineteen thirty-five hours. Our initial afteraction review will take place commencing twenty hundred in the main conference room.” Though this briefing was standard, the assembled team let out a collective groan. Then, without further ado, all of the players began to gather up the material they had brought with them and prepared to leave.

From his seat in the Spook Booth, the representative of the National Security Council blinked before he looked over at Shrewsbery, then at the NSA and CIA reps. “That’s it?” he asked incredulously.

As one, everyone connected to the 401st, as well as the special agents from the CIA and NSA, looked about, wondering if they had missed something. Confused, Shrewsbery looked back at the NSC rep. “What were you expecting? Armageddon?”

“Well,” the NSC rep asked, still not sure of what had just taken place, “how do you know if you’ve succeeded?”

Shrewsbery did his best to hide his disgust. It was obvious that this refugee from inside the Beltway had expected to see explosions and death and destruction in real time, just like in the movies. When he had composed himself, Shrewsbery stood up. “Well,” he stated as tactfully as he could, “as far as the Trojan horse goes, it will be a few days before the NSA will know just how effective that is.”

“What about the chemical plant?”

Shrewsbery shrugged. “My advice is to watch CNN tomorrow morning. If we succeeded, it’ll be all over the news.”

“And the ploy to foment distrust between the two nations?” the NSC rep continued.

“That, sir,” Shrewsbery answered, making no effort to hide his irritation, “we may never know.”

Stymied, the civilian advisor stood there, looking about at the men and women gathered about in the Spook Booth. “So, that’s it? This is how we will go about fighting our wars in the twenty-first century?”

Bowing his head, Colonel Shrewsbery reflected upon that comment for a moment. He had asked himself the same question time and time again until the truth had finally sunk in. “Yes,” he answered, making no effort to hide the regret he felt over this state of affairs. “That’s pretty much it.” Then, sporting a wicked smile, he looked over at the NSA rep and gave him a wink. “Last person out, please turn off the lights.”

Without another word, the infantry colonel pivoted about and made for the exit. In so many ways, his job was finished.

About the Author

HAROLD W. COYLE graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1974 with a B.A. in history and a commission as a second lieutenant in Armor.

His first assignment was in Germany, where he served for five years as a tank platoon leader, a tank company executive officer, a tank battalion assistant operations officer, and as a tank company commander. Following that he attended the Infantry Officers Advanced Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, became a branch chief in the Armor School’s Weapons Department at Fort Knox, Kentucky, worked with the National Guard in New England, spent a year in the Republic of Korea as an assistant operations officer, and went to Fort Hood, Texas, for a tour of duty as the G-3 Training officer of the First Cavalry Division and the operations officer of Task Force I-32 Armor, a combined arms maneuver task force.

His last assignment with the Army was at the the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In January 1991 he reported to the Third Army, with which he served during Desert Storm. Resigning his commission after returning from the Gulf in the spring of 1991, he continues to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve. He writes full-time and has produced the following novels: Team Yankee, Sword Point, Bright Star, Trial by Fire, The Ten Thousand, Code of Honor, Look Away, Until the End, Savage Wilderness, and God’s Children.