Red Metal

CHAPTER 9

The Pentagon’s pressing concerns about a possible war between China and Taiwan meant more work for Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly and Army Major Bob Griggs. They had been moved out of J5 and up into the director’s joint plans cell in the E ring, in the chairman’s old office space, where they were tasked with supporting the planners of each of the military services as well as operating as a de facto war command post for the admiral running the office.

In the three months since the assassination in Taiwan that kicked off the initial conflagration in the Pacific, Connolly had left early for work each morning and he hadn’t been home before nine o’clock most nights. Even Griggs had picked up his game, rolling into work closer to “on time” than Connolly had ever known him to.

Connolly had missed multiple soccer games, music recitals, and even a birthday party for his daughter, and the situation was playing havoc on date nights and family time with Julie. She’d been through this all before, of course, during Connolly’s multiple deployments into war zones, but when she learned a year and a half earlier that her husband would be coming to the Pentagon to ride a desk, she thought his absences would become a thing of the past.

It was just past six p.m. now, Connolly and Griggs were going over some new intelligence about several Chinese landing dock ships that had left port in Zhanjiang two weeks earlier. The vessels had steamed to within miles of the Strait of Taiwan and then, according to satellite photos, stopped just outside of Taiwanese territorial waters. They were already being resupplied with fuel and food, which made it look like they had no plans to go anywhere for a while. China had threatened to invade only after the December 29 elections in Taiwan, and this was still some time away, so it was presumed at the Pentagon that the Chinese were merely demonstrating their resolve in hopes of both affecting the election results and dissuading a massive buildup in the region by the Americans.

On the latter front, things weren’t going as planned for the Chinese. Carrier Strike Group Five had arrived in the area, with the USS Ronald Reagan as the hub of the wheel. Around it were seven Arleigh Burke‒class destroyers, three Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and several support ships.

On top of the CSG-5’s movement into the contested area, the USS Kearsarge (LHD-3), an amphibious assault ship, was docked in Okinawa and ready to deliver a battalion of Marines into battle if the Chinese invaded Taiwan. Another LHD, the Wasp (LHD-1), was also repositioning to Japan so that two more battalions of Marines could be lifted into Taiwan.

The Americans were not backing down, but instead of this causing hesitation on the part of the Chinese, they simply sent more PLA ground forces to Xiamen, a Chinese port directly across the strait from Taiwan.

The Chinese and the Americans both moved forces around, endeavoring to influence each other’s actions.

There was no question that China was threatening war with Taiwan, whether or not someone else helped foment mistrust on that front, but in the back of his mind Connolly was bothered by everything going on. He still wondered whether some other actor might have been trying to turn Western eyes in that direction.

In the past month Connolly had been looking into the latest news out of Russia, and he’d discovered military movements well inside the nation’s borders that were out of the statistical norm. Fuel consumption had decreased and repairs had increased.

The knee-jerk assumption around the Pentagon was that Russia was planning on a possible foray into Ukraine. The goings-on noticed so far weren’t of the obvious magnitude to indicate a major offensive, such as one necessary to invade the Baltic States, another potential target for Russia.

No, most analysts’ suspicions were that Russia was preparing for some limited action, and this likely meant a heavier fighting season in eastern Ukraine.

But Russia wasn’t Connolly’s problem, so for now he got back to work on the conflict in the Pacific Rim.

Just as he returned to his papers, Griggs called out from his desk: “What do you say we knock off for dinner?”

Connolly didn’t even look up from a new report from the National Reconnaissance Office as he rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, probably a good idea. Could go for a beer, too.”

“Siné?” Griggs asked. Siné Irish Pub in nearby Crystal City was a watering hole for Pentagon workers. It was close and it was good, and for two guys who didn’t want to do any more thinking today than they had to, it was an easy pick for dinner.

As the two men entered the pub, Griggs got a series of text messages that he replied to before sitting down. Since Griggs was a bachelor without many friends away from work, Connolly noted the activity.

“Why are you so popular all of a sudden?”

Griggs said, “It’s Nik Melanopolis. He says he’s been at the Pentagon all day, and he just swung by our office and found it empty.”

Connolly cocked his head. “He came to see you?”

“Yeah. That’s weird. Anyway, I told him we were here, so he’s on his way over. He wants a Guinness waiting for him.”

“Of course he does,” Connolly said with an eye roll, and ordered a Guinness for himself and another for Melanopolis, while Griggs ordered a Harp and a basket of fried cheese.

A few minutes later the heavyset bearded man entered, scanned the room, and saw Connolly and Griggs in a booth halfway down the length of the establishment. He shook his head and pointed to the back corner. Both men looked in the direction he indicated and saw a darkened booth far from any other customers.

The NSA analyst began marching over to the out-of-the-way table.

Griggs said, “I guess he wants us to move,” and he snatched up his Harp and started over.

Connolly sat there for a moment, then muttered, “Computer guys.” He grabbed his beer along with Nik’s and followed.

All three men sat down together, and Melanopolis hefted his Guinness and took a foamy swig before saying, “I’ve got something I need to show you guys.”

Connolly noticed suddenly that the doctor appeared tired, drawn, and stressed.

“Dude,” Griggs said, “you look like death warmed over. How long since you slept?”

Connolly added, “How long since you ate a vegetable?”

Melanopolis waved their comments away. “Look, this is serious. And this is bad.”

“If it’s as bad as you’re making it sound,” Connolly said, “should you really be telling a couple of midlevel guys in an Irish pub? Why aren’t you telling your superiors?”

“I did. They know. Now, I’m telling you, because…” He looked up to Connolly. “Because you were right.”

“Right? Right about what?”

Nik grabbed his pint of Guinness, took another long sip, and then put the glass back on the table. He pulled his laptop out of his bag and opened it, then moved around and slid into the same side of the booth as the other two men.

“Okay, check this out. This is data from an FBI server.”

Connolly said, “Wait. What?”

Griggs added, “Are you literally breaking into the FBI?”

“Of course not. Not right now, I mean. I did this yesterday. This is a report I made from the metadata.”

The two military officers just stared at him.

“Oh, grow up, guys. We do it all the time when they refuse to share stuff with us. We’re covered under an old law that says we’re allowed to as long as they don’t know we’re doing it and it’s vital to national security.” He looked back to Lieutenant Colonel Connolly’s dubious expression. “You straitlaced Pentagon stiffs really have no idea, do you? There’s a war going on in the cyber world — has been for some time — and guys like me are on the front lines.”

He added, “We get a little callous to the public’s sensitivity to these kinds of things.”

Connolly finally just shrugged. “Well, I didn’t do it, so my conscience is clear. What did you find, Doc?”

“This is a list of government computers that have been compromised in the last year. The ones we know of, anyway.”

Connolly looked at the long list as Melanopolis scrolled down. One device listed was highlighted in red. “That’s General Newman’s laptop,” the NSA man said.

Each listing noted the machine’s operating system, and Connolly saw there was a wide range of OSs present. He looked at the Internet operating system reports of all the listings and again noted that many different applications and service providers had been compromised.

Besides the fact that they all worked in spheres that touched the Pacific, Connolly wasn’t seeing any connection between the computers listed. “If you want me to see a pattern here, I don’t.”

“Let me help you out.” Melanopolis zoomed in to the manufacturer’s name on each of the reports of the hacked devices. “All the hardware is from the same two manufacturers.”

“Interesting,” Connolly said.

Nik typed up a few more items and the first manufacturer’s website appeared on the screen. “All these computers originated from China.”

Griggs said, “And they had some kind of latent back door in their programming allowing the Chinese to break into them?”

“Not their programming. That would never do. People scrub their software all the time. Plus, most operating systems are made in the U.S., and we have our own back doors built into the OSs.”

Griggs said, “We do?”

“Like I said, there’s a war going on. Anyway, the Chinese had latent back doors built into the hardware. That comes in handy for them, especially considering the fact they build ninety percent of the world’s computers and seventy percent of the world’s cell phones.”

Connolly was confused. “But this is just more proof China was behind this, right?”

Melanopolis shook his head. “I’ve been digging for a while. For some reason this seemed a bit out of place to me. So I started pulling older and older data: three months back, six months back, nine months.” He typed a moment and brought up a diagram. “This is trace routing from about a year ago. Do you see anything strange?”

“This?” Griggs asked, pointing to a single line between two points in China.

“That’s it.” Melanopolis turned the laptop toward Connolly. “See this odd ricochet between these two servers? That’s one server taking instructions from another. The server on the right is the one that I tracked sending the code to the Chinese computer in Hawaii activating the hardwired back door. But it’s that other server that puzzled me.” Nik opened the link and it displayed the actual code that was transferred between the computers. “The code is lengthy, but this server on the left is an old part of Unit 61398, China’s elite government hacking group. They moved to a bigger, better facility a while ago, which is the server on the right. So it looks simply like the old server sending some data to the new server. However, the old server, on the left, actually made the right server, the new Unit 61398 server, its slave for about three hours while it downloaded some code. That in itself wouldn’t usually be a big deal, except Unit 61398 was no longer operating in that old building. I don’t think their old server even existed, as far as I can tell. But the new server didn’t know that yet. Someone set up what we call a ‘doppelganger site’ at the old server warehouse and made the new server believe it was just its old buddy communicating with it.

“I know I’m getting technical with you boys, but I looked through everything I could find to see who is in that old building.”

The NSA analyst stopped talking, and the two officers spoke in unison. “Who?”

“In 2014, Russia’s new version of the NSA came online. They bought a brand-new, shiny 1.2 petaflop server. China loved the idea and asked if they could tap into its computing power from time to time to crunch numbers. You know, yesterday’s Commies helping today’s Commies, I guess. Moscow asked for a server in China to put in their downlink station and China let them take over a floor in the old Unit 61398 building.”

Griggs understood. “The Russians ran this entire hack through China and then broadcast it to the world?”

Nik said, “China unwittingly became Odysseus’s sheep.”

Connolly was astounded. “So this whole thing — all the smearing of our military officers to look like a surreptitious and advanced computer hack in advance of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan — was, in truth a full-blown Russian plot meant to both weaken us in the Pacific and implicate China in the process?”

“It looks that way,” Nik said. “I’ve checked this data out. It was brilliantly covered up, but not brilliantly enough.”

Griggs said, “And you’ve told everyone at NSA?”

“Yesterday afternoon. They sent me over to the Pentagon to brief the intelligence heads of the Joint Chiefs today.”

“And?” Griggs asked.

Melanopolis looked deflated. “And… from what I gathered from their body language, nobody really gives a shit.”

Connolly understood immediately. “The Joint Chiefs are already predisposed to see China as a threat. I know our leadership in the Pentagon. We’ve been waiting for China to make a muscle movement toward Taiwan. Our own plans lead us to believe China has just been waiting to create an opportunity like this. I’m not sure we can back out.”

“Why not?” asked Nik.

“China’s motive is clear and fits all our assumptions. But what’s Russia’s motive? If we knew what their game was, then maybe we could ring the alarm bells. But we don’t. All these cyber bread crumbs are interesting, but they don’t counter the fact that right now the PRC’s invasion fleet is massing off the coast of Taiwan.”

“What do we do?” Griggs asked.

Connolly replied, “We brief it anyway. Just pound the point that the Russians have manipulated us in some of this, and we need to proceed very carefully until we know why. This is a huge blind spot in our operations, and we can’t let our guard down in Europe. We need to at least ensure that the Joint Chiefs have the information in their hands as they make decisions.”

Griggs shook his head. “Dan, I need to be the one to brief this to the admiral. Not you.”

Connolly cocked his head. “Why?”

“If you go before the admiral and tell him Russia is trying to lure the U.S. into the Pacific, and nothing happens, then it could hurt your career. Me, on the other hand… no one cares if I brief some harebrained theory. You can stay clean and work the inside angles.”

Connolly knew Griggs was right, but he worried what this might do to his subordinate’s career.

Griggs saw his unease. “Trust me, this isn’t going to hurt me at all. I topped out years ago.”