Price of Duty

SEVENTEEN

A highly detailed digital map showing the region around Moscow covered the auditorium’s wall-size screen. Green symbols and circles showed the locations, estimated detection ranges, and missile kill zones for each of the multiple S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile battalions deployed around the Russian capital.

“Early warning radar reports a formation of high-speed aircraft bearing two-four-five,” a young-sounding voice said over the auditorium’s speakers. “Direction of flight is zero-seven-zero. Range three hundred thirty kilometers. Speed nine hundred kilometers per hour. Altitude unknown.”

A set of blinking red icons flashed onto the map, not far from the town of Roslavl. They crawled across the map, heading straight for the heart of Moscow.

“Sound air-raid alert,” a second voice said. Deeper and more resonant, it was identified by a caption at the top of the screen as that of Moscow’s air-defense commander. “Interrogate that formation.”

“Negative IKS from inbound aircraft,” the first voice replied.

The gaggle of high-ranking military officers and defense-industry officials crowded into the auditorium sat up straighter. IKS, identifikatsionnyy kod samolet, was the transponder code used by aircraft to identify themselves as friendly to radar sites and fighter interceptors. It was the Russian equivalent of the IFF, identification friend or foe, system used by Western militaries. Negative IKS was an almost sure sign the aircraft heading for Moscow were hostile.

“Estimated range to probable 96L6E acquisition?” the air-defense commander asked. The 96L6Es were 3-D all-altitude acquisition radars deployed with Russia’s most advanced S-300 and S-400 SAM units. As soon as these radars picked up the incoming aircraft and determined their altitude, they could pass their data to the 30N6E and 92N2E target-tracking and missile-guidance radars belonging to each firing battery. Once that was done, the SAM units could begin firing their long-range missiles.

“Thirty kilometers.”

Heads nodded inside the darkened room. At the speed those enemy aircraft were moving, they would be in range of the outermost target acquisition radar in less than two minutes.

As the seconds ticked down, the blinking red icons drew ever nearer to Moscow.

“All surface-to-air missile batteries report they are standing by. They are ready to fire on command,” the first voice said again, sounding more excited now. “Handoff to 96L6E complete! Hostile altitude is two hundred meters! Formation size is ten-plus hostiles. Types unknown. Enemy formation now increasing speed to one thousand kilometers per hour.”

The assembled officers and officials tensed. At any second now, salvos of long-range missiles would begin rippling skyward, reaching out to destroy enemy aircraft with relative ease.

“Second Battery, 210th Air Defense Regiment reports solid lock on hostiles. Ready to attack!”

Suddenly the red icons speeding toward Moscow vanished.

“What the hell?” someone exclaimed.

“Contact lost,” the first voice reported, seconds behind the situation shown on the map. “Radars are attempting to reacquire.”

Minutes later, the icons representing the incoming enemy air strike blinked back on. But they were in a different location now, well to the north of their previous plotted position and fifty kilometers closer to Moscow.

Again, the longer-range SAM acquisition radars cycled through the process of handing off data to their batteries’ target-tracking and missile-guidance radars. And again, as soon as the defenders were ready to fire, their radars mysteriously lost all contact with the hostile aircraft. Now, though, the green symbols representing several different SAM units flashed orange. Some went black.

“Our forces are under missile attack!” a panicked voice yelled over the speakers. “They report multiple impacts which have destroyed many radars and SAM launchers!”

The hostile icons reappeared suddenly on the map. But this time they displayed the enemy attack formation far south of its earlier reported position and scarcely a hundred kilometers from the center of Moscow.

“I think we’ve seen quite enough, Doctor,” Colonel General Valentin Maksimov, the tall and powerfully built commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, muttered to the much shorter man sitting next to him.

Dr. Nikolai Obolensky nodded. “Indeed, General,” he said in a dry, precise voice.

Everything about Obolensky, from his close-cropped gray hair and tortoiseshell eyeglasses to his unfashionable black suit and drab brown tie, marked him as an old-fashioned academic. Some would have gone further, pegging him as a washed-up professor of mathematics from some minor university. That would have been both unkind and inaccurate.

In reality, he ran the Nizhny Novgorod Research Institute of Radio Engineering (NNIIRT)’s software lab — overseeing the development of the target acquisition and identification programs used by Russia’s most advanced and lethal SAM systems. Though it had been years since he had done any serious software development himself, Obolensky had proved his managerial talents by successfully shepherding a number of vital projects to completion, and doing so on budget and on time.

“End simulation, Anya,” the NNIIRT lab chief said into the wireless mic attached to his lapel. Behind him, in the projection room at the back of the auditorium, his assistant obeyed.

The digital map display froze, still showing the appalling hole torn in Moscow’s outer air-defense network. It also showed that the enemy strike force was now well within air-launched missile range of Russia’s capital. The lights came up, revealing a sea of unhappy faces.

Obolensky moved to the front of the auditorium. “This was a computer-generated simulation of what might happen if the Poles and their Iron Wolf mercenary allies conduct an all-out attack on Moscow. It represents our best estimate of the tactical advantages conferred by their use of netrusion technology and an array of stealth drones.” He smiled thinly. “As you have seen, they are considerable.”

Maksimov nodded bitterly. During last year’s short war with Poland and its hired high-tech warriors, he’d watched in horror while several of his most advanced fighter squadrons and SAM battalions were savaged — often without being able to even fire a shot in reply, let alone score any kills. The sensor data they’d gathered on the enemy’s netrusion systems and drones represented the only silver lining in that black cloud of slaughter and humiliation… and that was a very slender thread to which to cling for solace.

“Now let me show you what will happen once we deploy the software upgrades developed by my lab here at NNIIRT,” Obolensky told them. He moved to the side, away from the screen and looked up toward the projection booth. “Reboot the simulation, Anya,” he ordered. “Run FAVORIT/TRIUMF variation 19 point 17c.”

The lights dimmed again.

For a time, the sequence of events played out just as it had earlier. Enemy aircraft were detected and then vanished almost as soon as firing solutions were first achieved. But that was the end of any similarity. Now the icons showing the attacking force reappeared much faster, and they were much closer to their earlier estimated positions. Halfway through the war game, Russia’s S-400 and S-300 SAM batteries were in action — firing missiles at confirmed enemy targets. Most missed, lured astray by the array of close-in defenses employed by the Poles and their hirelings. But, ultimately, as almost always in war, quantity proved to be a quality all its own. The equation was simple: if you fired enough missiles at a given number of targets, you were bound to score hits.

Colonel General Maksimov sat enthralled, watching computer-generated Polish and Iron Wolf bombers, fighters, and drones disappear. Now, though, instead of vanishing behind their technological cloak, they were blinking off the display as they were shot down by Russian surface-to-air missiles. His SAM units took casualties too, but the fight this time was far more even. In the end, the whole enemy air formation was wiped out. Best of all, they were blown out of the sky before they could launch any of their own offensive weapons toward Moscow.

When the lights came up, he stood to applaud Obolensky, a move slavishly imitated by his subordinates and by the other defense-industry officials who depended on the weapons contracts he approved.

“You have worked wonders, Doctor,” Maksimov boomed. “For years, we have been at the mercy of this vaunted netrusion technology of the Americans. Their planes, and now those of the Poles, have flown unchallenged over our beloved Motherland. But now you have uncovered their secrets, and learned how to defeat our enemies.”

Precise as always, Obolensky shook his head. “Short of capturing one of the aircraft employing this technology, I’m afraid its innermost secrets will remain outside our grasp.”

Annoyed at being contradicted, Maksimov scowled down at the shorter man. He waved at the images shown on the screen. “Then what have you shown us? A lie? A wishful computer fabrication?”

“Not in the least, General,” the lab chief assured him. He smiled. “The new upgrade we’ve just demonstrated represents a significant improvement over our existing defenses. In the past, once the enemy blinded or spoofed our radars, it could take as long as two or three minutes to regain an accurate picture of the air battlefield.”

“Which is a lifetime in combat,” Maksimov growled. “In two minutes, a modern fighter-bomber might be as far as fifty kilometers away from where it was last detected.”

Obolensky nodded. “To address this problem, my team identified two separate approaches. First, we’ve greatly speeded up the rate at which our target acquisition and identification software comes back online after suffering a so-called netrusion attack. And second, our upgrade significantly enhances the software’s ability to sort out decoy drones from actual combat aircraft and air-launched weapons.”

“How much faster? And in plain Russian, please,” Maksimov asked. He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Remember that I am an old war-horse, not a computer scientist.”

“The enemy can still blind our radars or launch waves of decoy drones to cloud the radar picture,” Obolensky explained. “But now we can pierce this concealing cloak in as little as thirty to fifty seconds.”

“To what effect?” Maksimov asked bluntly. “In the real world.”

“We estimate this software upgrade will increase our Pk, the probability of kill, for S-300 and S-400 missile launches by up to thirty percent,” Obolensky said with serene confidence. He turned and pointed at the situation now shown on the screen. “And that increase in combat efficiency, Colonel General, represents the margin between watching Moscow battered into burning, bomb-gutted ruins… and victory.”

Maksimov lowered his head briefly, conceding the point. Much as he disliked appearing uninformed in front of others, he admired the little man’s willingness to stand up to him, and the self-assurance he exhibited. “Then I gladly stand corrected, Doctor,” he said with a forced smile. “But that leaves me with one last question.”

Obolensky raised an eyebrow. “Yes, General?”

“How soon can this program upgrade of yours be deployed to my surface-to-air missile regiments?”

“We should be able to transmit a final, completely debugged version to your headquarters in Moscow within forty-eight hours,” the NNIIRT lab chief assured him. He shrugged. “After that, its final distribution to the appropriate air-defense units will be up to your staff.”

Maksimov nodded. He shot an inquiring glance at his senior military aide, Major General Viktor Polichev. “Well, Viktor?”

Polichev pursed his lips, pondering the logistics involved. “Once we get our hands on this NNIIRT software update, our headquarters IT specialists should be able to make the necessary copies in short order. And we can send them out to every S-300 and S-400 regiment by special courier.”

“You suggest we use courier delivery?” Maksimov asked, unable to hide his surprise. “Wouldn’t it be faster to distribute this update online, using our data links to each regimental headquarters?”

“Perhaps, sir,” his aide said. Then he shrugged. “But in light of recent events, I think it might be wiser to avoid relying too much on electronic communication.”

Maksimov nodded slowly, thinking about the tidal wave of computer-caused havoc currently sweeping across Eastern and central Europe. Polichev was right. If nothing else, President Gryzlov’s cyberwar campaign showed the dangers involved in trusting vital information to the vagaries of the Internet.

“An excellent point, Viktor,” he said at length. “Organize your courier chain at once. Sooner or later, the Poles and their Iron Wolf pirates are bound to strike back at us. And when that day finally comes, I want to be sure our SAM regiments are ready, willing, and able to swat them out of the sky!”

As the assembled military officers and defense-industry officials filed out, Dr. Nikolai Obolensky stood near the auditorium’s exit, gravely acknowledging their congratulations. His briefing had been a triumph, both of showmanship and of substance, and he knew it.

The NNIIRT lab chief was well aware that many of the computer engineers who worked under him had little understanding of, or respect for, his skills as an administrator. Sometimes they even furtively passed around copies of the subversive American comic strip Dilbert, slyly identifying him with the comic strip’s imbecile, pointy-headed boss. In their insular world, a man who no longer wrote lines of code himself was nothing but an officious, interfering bureaucrat.

Today’s success should shake that ignorant view, he thought smugly.

Not one of his technically adept computer geniuses could possibly have “sold” their work so easily to an old Soviet-era dinosaur like Maksimov. Any briefing they put together would have opened with deadly dull PowerPoint slides and ended with a mind-numbing, jargon-filled recitation of intricate technical detail. By that time, the NNIIRT auditorium would either have been packed with snoozing generals or completely abandoned after the audience fled. Using a battle simulation to show off the upgrade’s features had been his idea. And it had worked perfectly. Nothing so delighted men of Maksimov’s kind as seeing enemy planes — even computer-generated ones — blown to pieces.

The crowd of officers and officials thinned and then vanished. Later in the day, they would meet again at one of Nizhny Novgorod’s most expensive restaurants. The Research Institute’s top brass had organized an elaborate lunch for their distinguished guests and customers. And there, celebratory toasts would ratify yet another programming triumph for Nikolai Obolensky and his software-development team.

He smiled to himself, imagining the paeans of praise and new perks his superiors were sure to shower on him.

Suddenly aware that he was under observation, Obolensky looked up. A striking redhead in uniform had stayed behind the rest. Her shoulder boards bore the three stars of a colonel. She stood a few feet away, eyeing him with a wry smile of her own.

He blushed, feeling slightly awkward at having been caught so obviously daydreaming. Embarrassed, he cleared his throat. “May I help you with something, Colonel…” His voice trailed off as he realized he did not know her name.

“Nechaeva. Tatiana Nechaeva,” the redhead said crisply. “And I think you will find that I am the one who can help you, Dr. Obolensky.” Seeing his confusion, she handed him her identity card.

Obolensky stared down at the card. It declared that Colonel Tatiana Nechaeva was an officer in the FSB’s counterintelligence service. His eyes widened a bit in surprise. He had always pictured secret-police agents as hulking, unsmiling brutes. Meeting one who was a shapely, extremely attractive woman came as something of a shock. Still puzzled, he handed her ID back. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” he admitted. “How is it that you can help me?”

Nechaeva shook her head. “Not here, Doctor. Not in public.” Her gaze was cooler now. “This is a matter of urgent state security.”

He froze briefly. “A matter of state security? But—” Seeing her mouth tighten in annoyance, he stopped talking.

“I won’t remind you again, Doctor,” Nechaeva said sharply. “I strongly suggest we move this conversation to your office.”

Obolensky bobbed his head in hurried agreement. “Of course, Colonel. At once.” He gestured toward the hallway. “Please, follow me.”

Somehow, his small office looked messier than he remembered. It also smelled strongly of both dust and pipe tobacco. With a murmured apology, he cleared away the stacks of file folders and manuals piled up on his only other chair.

Primly, Nechaeva sat down. She waited to speak until he closed the door and uneasily took his own seat. “First, you must understand that everything I am about to tell you stays in this room,” she said sternly. “This information is classified at the highest level. Revealing it to anyone else is punishable by life imprisonment or execution. Is that clear?”

Obolensky swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, Colonel. I understand.”

“Good,” she said, suddenly relaxing. “I apologize for all the theatrics, Doctor. But I’m afraid they are necessary.”

“Why is that?” he asked nervously.

“Because it appears that foreign spies have targeted NNIIRT and especially your section,” Nechaeva told him.

His eyes widened again. “Spies? Here? Trying to penetrate my lab?”

“Apparently, your good work is appreciated far beyond our Motherland’s borders,” Nechaeva said.

“My God,” he murmured shakily. He looked at her. “But how do you know this, Colonel? Have these spies been trying to break into our facility? Or bribing some of my staff?”

“Nothing so old-fashioned,” she replied.

“Then how—”

“We have observed several attempts to break through the security firewall guarding your lab’s computer system,” Nechaeva said flatly.

“Our firewall?” Obolensky shook his head. “Excuse me, Colonel, but that is not possible. The institute’s information-technology specialists would have informed me at once of any such hacking efforts.”

“You think it impossible?” Nechaeva said coolly. She nodded toward the computer on his desk. “Then I will show you what we have discovered, Doctor. You have system administrator privileges for the lab’s computer network, do you not?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, of course, but I… well, I almost never use them. Having such access is a formality, mostly. Because of my rank.”

“Naturally,” she agreed. Then she shrugged. “I suppose I should not expect the head of a computer software lab to pay close attention to the security of his own systems.”

Obolensky flushed at her obvious sarcasm. Recovering, he fumbled around in one of his desk drawers until he found the laminated card with the necessary password and user-ID information. He showed it to her.

“Very good, Doctor. Now sign in as an administrator and bring up your denied-access log for the following times,” Nechaeva commanded, rattling off a succession of specific days, hours, and minutes.

He obeyed, bringing up a dense wall of text showing that several different attempts had been made to penetrate the lab’s firewall at those moments. He glanced through the data and then shrugged his shoulders. “This is not evidence of any hacking, Colonel,” he said confidently. “Even a cursory look reveals these are simply instances where the computer systems the institute uses for routine day-to-day business accidentally contacted our lab’s secure network. This happens quite often, usually when someone hits ‘reply all’ to an e-mail which contains one of our secured addresses. Or occasionally when one of the administrative staff sends out a general memo to all departments, including ours, without first obtaining the necessary permissions.”

Nechaeva smiled thinly. “I suggest you examine those supposedly ‘internal’ IP addresses more closely.”

Nettled, Obolensky did as she suggested. What was she driving at? he wondered. His eyes moved from IP address to IP address, now paying careful attention to every detail. This time he saw the problem. The blood drained from his face. He looked away from the screen in horror. “Those are not genuine internal IP addresses,” he sputtered. “Those queries are coming from the outside, camouflaged as one or another of our business-side computers.”

“Clever, isn’t it?” Nechaeva said quietly. “By mimicking known internal IP addresses so closely, these foreign agents were able to hide their hacking attempts from any routine firewall check.”

“Clever? No. It’s diabolical,” he muttered. He turned back to his computer, still staggered by what he now saw. “Who is doing this? Who do these spies work for?”

Nechaeva shrugged. “The American CIA? Our ‘friends’ in Beijing’s Ministry of State Security? The Poles? It is impossible to say for sure.”

“This is terrible. It’s a disaster. A complete nightmare,” Obolensky stammered. His mind was busy working through the consequences of a security breach. “My God, every piece of advance military-grade software that we’ve developed is at risk.”

“True enough,” Nechaeva said bluntly. Then she patted him on the shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, we do not think these hackers have been able to penetrate your computer security. At least not yet.”

“But they’ll keep trying,” he realized.

She nodded. “Oh yes. And they will succeed, probably sooner rather than later — unless additional precautions are taken.”

Obolensky seized on that hope. “I’ll contact our IT people immediately,” he promised. “They can strengthen the firewall… and institute more rigorous monitoring of those access logs.”

Nechaeva raised a finely sculpted eyebrow. “You would trust those who have already failed to detect these attempted intrusions? Or who, perhaps, deliberately decided not to report them to you?”

“What are you hinting at?” he demanded, turning even paler if that was possible. “Are you implying that some of the institute’s own people may be in league with these spies?”

She smiled coldly. “I have said nothing of the kind, Doctor.”

“But you think it is possible?”

Nechaeva shrugged again. “I merely suggest it might be wiser not to rely too heavily on your own resources. Not when faced with an espionage threat of this caliber and magnitude.”

“Then what can be done?” Obolensky asked desperately, sounding like a drowning man thrashing about in the hope of rescue. “Earlier, you said you were here to help me. What did you mean by that?”

She reached into her uniform jacket and took out a USB flash drive. He could see the double-headed eagle emblem of the FSB embossed on the small device. “Our best cybersecurity specialists have devised a more advanced set of defenses for your network, Doctor. Their work will add a new and virtually undetectable layer to your existing firewall.” Her mouth twisted in a cold, cruel smile. “Best of all, these defenses will instantly alert us to any new attempts to breach your security — enabling us to trace these hackers back to their lair.”

“And then what?” Obolensky wondered.

“If, as I suspect, they are operating on our soil, we will capture them if possible. If not, we will eliminate them,” Nechaeva told him brusquely.

He shuddered. Something in this beautiful woman’s voice hinted that she would enjoy personally killing the foreign agents trying to break into his secure networks. He found such ferocity frightening. “Kills” in his professional world were antiseptic, largely a question of watching blips disappear from a glowing screen.

Still pale, Obolensky took the flash drive from her and plugged it into his computer. Immediately a dialogue box popped open. “Prodvinutaya Programma Kiberbezpasnost. Advanced Cybersecurity Program. Run Y/N?” He typed in yes and then entered the password necessary to approve the program for use throughout the lab network.

For less than a minute, the tiny device quietly clicked and whirred. When it fell silent, he ejected it and gave it back to Nechaeva.

She dropped it back into her pocket. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said, without any apparent emotion. “The state appreciates your cooperation in this matter. Just as it also requires your utmost discretion.”

Obolensky nodded quickly. “I understand fully, Colonel,” he assured her. “No one else at NNIIRT will hear about this. Not from me.”

“For your sake, I hope that is true,” Nechaeva said. A thin, icy smile flitted across her face and then vanished. “It would be a great shame for Mother Russia to lose a man of your intelligence and ability.”

Several blocks from the Research Institute for Radio Engineering, Colonel Tatiana Nechaeva paused at a street corner to check her surroundings. To a casual observer, she was merely making sure she could cross safely.

Her eyes flicked in all directions. No one suspicious was in sight. She was clear.

Walking quickly in the cold, Nechaeva crossed to the other side of the narrow, tree-lined street. Halfway down the block, she turned into an alley running beside a run-down brick apartment building. After one more quick check to confirm that she wasn’t being followed, she used a key to unlock the building’s battered metal service door and went in.

Her nose wrinkled against the rank odor of uncollected trash. The dented, rusting garbage cans lined up along cement-block walls were overflowing, surrounded by plastic bags stuffed with rotting food scraps, dirty diapers, and broken bottles. Sanitation wasn’t the strong suit of the apartment building’s part-time superintendent. On the other hand, neither was poking his nose into the affairs of his tenants. All things considered, she thought, his laziness and lack of interest in anything but making sure his rents were paid on time was a net plus.

So were the other tenants, a mix of working families and single men employed in the city’s factories and other businesses. During the daytime, the adults were either out at work or asleep after pulling exhausting night shifts. Their children were either in school or day care. All of which added up to a building where no one wondered about, or even noticed, the strange spectacle of a uniformed colonel in the FSB coming and going at odd hours.

Nechaeva took the dingy, garbage-strewn rear staircase to the small apartment she’d rented on the second floor. Most of the lightbulbs were burned out, so she used her smartphone as a flashlight to avoid stepping in the worst messes. At the door to her apartment, she rapped four times, then used her key and went straight in.

A young man wearing jeans and a sweater swiveled away from the computer he’d been using. “I’m inside their system, Sam!” he said in glee. “I’ve got total access to everything in the NNIIRT lab network. I went straight through their firewall without so much as a peep.” He shook his head in disbelief. “But I still can’t believe this loco scheme of yours actually worked!”

Samantha Kerr grinned back at him. “There’s always a way in. Sometimes you pick the lock. Sometimes you figure out where they hid the key. And sometimes you just con them into opening the door for you.”

She unbuttoned her heavy uniform coat and tossed her officer’s cap onto a chair. “Have you snagged that target acquisition and identification upgrade yet?”

The younger man nodded. “No sweat. A copy’s already on its way to our tech guys at Scion.”

“Is there any way the Russians can detect what you’ve been doing?” Sam asked. “Or spot you when you go back in?”

“Not in a million years,” he told her confidently. “The passkey program that nice Dr. Obolensky installed for us includes a cleaner function.”

“Good,” she said seriously. “Because I have a hunch Mr. Martindale is going to have more work for us very soon.”