Red Metal

CHAPTER 5

The three men piled into Connolly’s truck and drove to a nearby Chinese buffet, where Melanopolis and Griggs stacked foam containers high with fried rice, General Tso’s chicken, spring rolls, and other side items, while Connolly chose a bowl of mixed greens and white rice. With their food packed they drove to Sawmill Creek Park, a nearby cluster of baseball diamonds and tennis courts that was all but deserted on this hot day. The men found a secluded picnic table and they laid out their meals.

During the twenty minutes between leaving Dr. Nik’s office and sitting down to eat, Connolly had attempted to get Melanopolis to talk about the video and any conclusions he might have come to about how it came to be broadcast to the world. But the NSA staffer seemed intent on talking to Griggs about a litany of gripes and moans regarding his job, his benefits, his cholesterol, and some sort of a beef he had with his condo’s homeowners’ association.

Connolly was beginning to worry he and Griggs had wasted the day on this trip. But once the big man started eating, he turned his attention to the reason he’d been invited out. “Okay, about the video. You came to the right place, because I spent the entire night tracking the hack.”

“So… it was a hack?” Griggs asked.

“No question about it. You want the short version or the long version?”

Connolly said, “The short version, as long as it comes with a conclusion.”

Melanopolis took a swig from his can of iced tea. “It does. Your culprit is China.” He held up a forkful of food. “That cost you a load of their general’s chicken, so I hope you’re satisfied.”

Connolly shook his head. “I’m going to need more than that. How do you know it was China?”

“I can show you better than tell you.” Melanopolis took a bite from a spring roll, then put it down, wiped his hands off on his pants, and pulled his laptop from his bag. He opened it and typed on the screen. Soon a map opened with China in the center.

“This is mainland China. We track their Internet traffic constantly.” He typed again, and crisscrossed tracks of red lines appeared on the map. He pulled out another spring roll and used it to point to the screen. “We call this an Internet trace-routing diagram. A depiction of how computers link up and who they talk to. It’s like a real-time road map. Typically in China all public Internet is routed through the government hubs. That’s because China controls all public access. They look to see what people are looking at, spying on their own people at all times. Trying to get into their computers and minds to ensure they are still thinking like good Communists.” He finished his spring roll in a single bite.

“Understood,” said Connolly.

Melanopolis moved the map to the east, until the continental U.S. appeared. A pair of larger star patterns of lines was clustered where the Chinese Internet intersected with the American Internet.

“What’s all this heavy traffic here?” Griggs asked.

Melanopolis said, “Internet porn.”

“Whoa.”

“And if you are a cyber warrior, where do you hide the really important traffic?” Melanopolis began zooming in on the huge number of lines leading from China to U.S. porn servers. A few of the red lines branched out, away from the main pack. “This is nontraditional traffic from U.S. servers. We’re not supposed to look at it because it’s inside the U.S., outgoing to China. It represents less than one-tenth of a percent of all the traffic.”

“So, what is it?” Griggs asked.

“It’s probably the porn king checking his profits and changing his content to lure new people into his web.” He clicked a few more buttons. “But this is net traffic on the same server from three months ago.” The map centered in on the U.S. Twelve very sharp lines led from the porn sites to various points around the continental U.S., and then two led back out to the Pacific.

Connolly said, “I’m not getting what we’re looking at.”

Melanopolis zoomed in on one line originating from California. “This IP address is a base near Los Angeles. It’s tough to tell, because your Navy and Marine Corps computer whizzes do some basic rerouting tricks to try to prevent this kind of thing from happening, but watch a minute.” He typed again and the red line bounced around the States for a while, then over to Hawaii. On a base near Honolulu it ricocheted around three more times, then on to one specific building. Melanopolis punched the military base street number and building number up, and the headquarters of U.S. Pacific Command appeared with a picture of the front of the building.

Griggs said, “Let me guess. That’s General Newman’s office, isn’t it?”

“You got it.”

“So… they bugged his laptop somehow?”

“Better than that,” Melanopolis said. “They set his personal laptop up as a mini audio and video recorder. Every night they spied on him, I guess, and then one night they got lucky when he decided to bump uglies with the admiral in a hotel room in Tokyo. The laptop was open and the cam was pointed at the bed.”

“Oops,” muttered Connolly.

Melanopolis said, “The Chicoms probably had the video for months, then just put it out yesterday after the assassination in Taiwan. They spread it around to topple our command authority to prevent us, or at least to slow us, from responding to this new crisis with China.”

But Connolly seemed less convinced. “You figured all this out in twelve hours?”

Melanopolis ate a forkful of fried rice. Nonchalantly he said, “It’s what I do.”

“Any chance you’re being misled?”

Now the heavyset bearded man sat up straighter at the picnic table. “Misled?”

“There’s no way someone might be trying to get you to think it was China doing this, when the real culprit is someone else?”

Griggs jumped in now. “Who? And for what possible reason?”

“It’s just… it’s just that it’s pretty convenient that China did this, and we busted them in less than a day. And the assassination in Taiwan was perpetrated by the Taiwanese government, where the rifle that was left at the scene was traced back to them in just a few days.”

Melanopolis said, “I don’t see your point, Colonel. Two different actors. Two different countries. How are they related?”

Connolly shrugged. “Something happens to implicate China, and something happens to implicate Taiwan. It makes each side look at the other with even more distrust. Add to that the fact that the U.S. military is degraded in the region, and it all just seems fishy to me.”

“Wow.” Melanopolis turned to Griggs. “This guy sees conspiracies everywhere, doesn’t he?”

“Sorry, Nik. He just doesn’t realize how thorough you are in your work.”

Connolly shook his head. “No, I get it. You’re the Jesus of computer analysts.”

Now Connolly was the one being sarcastic, but he quickly reached out his hand. “I’m sorry, Doc. I’m just a suspicious guy. I appreciate all your time and the intel.”

“Sure,” Melanopolis said, his own voice a little unsure now.

As soon as they dropped Nik Melanopolis off at the NSA facility, Griggs turned to Connolly. “I don’t get why you don’t buy into the fact China did this to hurt the U.S. in the Pacific.”

“Never said I didn’t. I just don’t like the timing of this.”

“You think some other party is trying to foment a war?”

“Just saying we have to keep open minds. There could be someone else driving the bus.”

Griggs turned to Connolly as they drove south toward the Pentagon. Before he could speak, Connolly’s phone rang.

“Connolly.”

An Air Force colonel from the Office of Strategy, Plans & Policy was on the line. “The president just announced he’s sending Carrier Strike Group Five to the waters off Taiwan.”

Connolly knew that Carrier Strike Group Five, with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) at its nucleus, was stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, so it would arrive in theater in just days.

“Things are heating up,” Connolly said.

“That’s right. We need you back here.”

“We’re on the way.”

Connolly hung up the phone a moment later and muttered softly, more to himself than to Griggs, “If this is a trap, then I think we just started walking up to it.”