Cyberwarfare Read online

  Cyberwarfare

  By

  Pendelton C. Wallace

  Table Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought. But World War IV will be fought with sticks and rocks.” -- Albert Einstein

  “Frankly, the United States is under attack. Under attack by entities that are using cyber to penetrate virtually every major action that takes place in the United States.” -- Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence

  “WASHINGTON — A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to … the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.” – New York Times, By David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, Jan. 16, 2018

  “I think we should expect to see an increase in Iranian cyberactivity against us,” -- Michael Daniel, former White House cyber coordinator

  “[Abolishing the office of Cyber Coordinator is] a strange signal to send … If anything, the threats we face are going to continue to get more intense and worse in cyberspace before they get better.” -- Michael Daniel

  “… the U.S. Treasury named North Korean programmer Park Jin Jyok for working on behalf of Pyongyang in carrying out several cyberattacks against U.S. and global targets.” – TechCrunch.com, by Zach Whittaker, September 6, 2018

  Chapter 1

  ****

  Ted Higuera sat in the dark at his large oak desk pushed up against the window with a million-dollar view. A half empty bottle of Herradura Añejo tequila on the desk sat with a plate of salt and lime wedges. Next to the tequila stood a bottle of Corona. He chugged the glass in front of him, then sucked on a lime slice.

  From his Capitol Hill apartment, he saw the lights of Seattle’s Denny Regrade gradually give way to Elliot Bay. The bay opened to Puget Sound. He watched the ferry boats and private yachts as little specks of light on the dark water. Across the Sound, he saw the lights of Kingston on Bainbridge Island.

  He’d been trying to reach her for almost an hour. She didn’t answer. Her cell phone number was not in service. She didn’t answer his emails or return his texts.

  Jesus Cristo! Was she never going to let him talk to her?

  He dialed the ranch phone again. Somewhere, a couple of thousand miles to the south, the phone rang. And rang. “Lo siento, perro no estamos en casa …” the answering machine said.

  God damn.

  He hit the stop button and dialed again. This time, after five rings, he heard a pickup. His heart went into sprint mode.

  “Ted, I’ve told you not to call here.”

  “Don’t hang up, Mishis Gonzales.” Ted slurred. Could he keep her on the line? “I need to talk to you. I need to talk to Maria.”

  He heard a deep sigh.

  “I’ve told you, Ted. She’s not going to talk to you. I’m not going to let you. You’ve got to stop calling here. Just let it die.”

  “Teresha …” He didn’t know what else he could say. “I have to know. I do know. Itsh my baby. I need to be part of my son’s life.”

  “Teddy.” Her voice sounded almost sympathetic. “I don’t know how many times we have to tell you, it’s not your child. Please stop bothering us.”

  His heart stopped. He heard a baby cry in the background.

  Dios mio. He’s here!

  “Teresha, the baby, is he okay?”

  The connection broke.

  The bitch. Flaming mega-bitch from hell.

  Ted gazed out the window but didn’t comprehend what he was seeing. The entire view was dark. Despite his fuzzy vision, he still saw the lights of the ferry boats in the bay, but all the shore-side lights were gone. Seattle had slipped into total darkness.

  He poured another glass of tequila.

  ****

  Lieutenant Colonel John Stevenson floated through the corridor, occasionally giving himself momentum by grabbing a handle or protruding object. At the intersection of four passageways, he changed direction and went “up.” In his weightless world, there really was no “up,” but the opening was above his head, so he considered it “up.”

  He pondered the irony of going up to the cupola to look down on Earth. The cupola was on the bottom of the space station in its orientation to the planet below. Stevens mused on why they called this area a cupola. On Earth, a cupola was a small dome on the top of a building, usually to admit light and air. On the space station, it was just a dome module bolted onto the growing structure’s belly with seven windows.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace,” he mumbled and crossed himself as he passed through the threshold. He always said a little prayer as he entered. From this perch, high above his home planet, he could see the hand of God.

  He loved watching the changing face of Earth, two-hundred-fifty miles below him. He saw major features like oceans, big rivers, and mountain ranges, but small things like skyscrapers or aircraft carriers were lost in the distance.

  Through the windows he made out the Atlantic Ocean. Off the coast of Africa, a thick swirl of heavy white clouds circulated around a dark hole. Shit, someone’s gonna have hell to pay. Every time he looked at the growing hurricane, it seemed larger and more ominous.

  As Earth turned on its axis, the land mass of North America gradually came into view.

  “Is beautiful, dah?” Sonia Petkovic floated into the cupola besides him. She was in her forties but could pass for twenty-something. Her long black hair floated like Medusa’s venomous snakes.

  “Is beautiful, yes.” Stevenson agreed. He looked her over; she was dressed in white shorts and a navy-blue polo shirt. “We’re coming up on my hometown.”

  She pulled herself next him to look out the window.

  “Where is home town?” she asked.

  “Long Island, New York.” He pointed out the window. “See there, the long, curving island close to the coastline. That’s it.”

  “Is beautiful from here, but then again, everything is.”

  They floated at the window, watching North America slip into darkness as night approached that side of the planet Lights appeared, extending from New England to Florida in an almost unbroken network. In the middle of the continent, vast patches of darkness were broken up by small light clusters. The big cities stood out like beacons amid the surrounding blackness.

  Finally, the West Coast came into sight. “Here comes Disneyland,” Stevenson said, turning to the woman beside him.

  “Where? The whole West Coast is lit up.”

  “At the south end of the coast.” He turned back to the window. He saw the sprawling lights of the Seattle metropolitan area to the north, then Portland and San Francisco stood out among a host of smaller cities. Finally, he gazed at the Los Angeles area. From the north of L.A. to Tijuana, Mexico, it looked like one solid city. “The happiest place on Earth.”

  “Shit. What’s going on down there?” Stevenson put both
hands to the window and gasped.

  “What the …?” Sonia put her face against the glass to get a better look. “What happen?”

  Disneyland, and all the surrounding metropolis, went dark. The lights went out close to the border. From Mexico to the Canadian border, one-by-one the lights went dead. A sea of black covered the continent, from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains.

  ****

  Dr. William Everly was God in his world. He commanded the minions serving his bidding and held the power of life and death in his hands.

  An elderly woman whose heart had stopped on her way home from church, lay draped with green cloth on the table below him. Dr. Everly sat in a chair that looked as if it belonged on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

  A rapid beep-beep-beep emitted from the heart monitor.

  “BP one-sixty-five over one-ten,” a nurse said.

  Everly nodded and kept his eyes focused on the binocular device before him.

  “Okay, we’re going in.” He put his hands in two cuffs and rotated them.

  A Rube Goldberg looking machine sat poised over the old woman. It rested on a four-wheeled cart and had four arms Everly always thought of as “Doctor Octopus Arms.” As he moved his hands, two arms of the machine moved in unison.

  “Everything looks good here.”

  “All clear,” the anesthesiologist replied.

  The nurse held her breath as the robotic arms inched closer and closer to the woman’s chest.

  With deft movements, the doctor’s commands were transferred to the surgical robot. One of the robot’s arms ended in a scalpel-like device, the other in a pincher-like implement. The two unused arms lay back along the cart.

  The blade moved closer to the woman’s chest in tiny increments, touched her skin, and began a smooth cut. A line of red traced its way down her chest.

  “Retract,” Dr. Everly said.

  Dr. Pauline West pulled the flaps of skin open, revealing the rib cage beneath. “Retract,” she echoed.

  The Michelangelo Machine, dubbed “Mickey” by the operating room staff, continued to cut.

  “Retractor,” Dr. Everly said.

  Dr. West inserted a shiny stainless-steel implement into the woman’s chest and pulled the ribs apart.

  Dr. Everly slid back from the machine and took a deep breath. “Okay, good so far, people.”

  He put his eyes back to the binocular device and studied the ancient heart.

  Then the lights went out.

  The view in his binocular device went black. The beep-beep-beep went silent.

  “Power outage,” one of the nurses announced.

  “Stay calm,” Dr. Everly ordered.

  The operating room staff froze.

  “Emergency power should come on in a second,” he said, as much to reassure himself as his crew.

  Battery-powered emergency lights dimly illuminated the room. Dr. Everly waited for Mickey to come back on line. And he waited.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s the emergency power?”

  “It should be up by now,” Dr. West said.

  “Tanya, call the security desk. Find out what’s going on.”

  A heavy-set woman peeled off her gloves and grabbed the red phone on the wall. She turned back to the doctor. “The phone’s not working.”

  “Then get the hell out there and find out,” Dr. Everly snapped in a raised voice, then stopped and took a breath. He took pride in always being in control. How close had he come to losing it?

  The nurse flew through the swinging doors.

  “Pulse, BP,” the doctor said.

  A nurse placed fingers on the patient’s wrist. “One-twenty and thready,” she said.

  She put a manual blood-pressure collar around the woman’s saggy bicep. After a moment, she looked up at the doctor. “BP remains the same, one-sixty-five over one-ten.”

  “Where’s the fucking power?” The surgeon pushed himself up from his Captain Kirk chair.

  “The backup generators didn’t come up,” the heavy-set nurse said as she burst through the doors. “The systems guys are working on it, but they don’t know how long it’ll take. The batteries for the emergency lights only have about an hour in them.”

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” Dr. Everly said. “Okay folks, we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  He shoved Mickey aside and moved next to Dr. West.

  ****

  The El Nuevo Chaparral was packed. With a full parking lot an attendant showed drivers where to find an empty space.

  The pink stucco building sat on a hill over-looking Seattle’s Lake Union. Hope Higuera always thought of the heart shaped lake as the center of the city.

  The L-shaped building with a domed cupola was perfect for a Mexican restaurant. The packed dining room was to the left when entering the brightly-tiled entryway, the bar to the right.

  Cheerful Mexican music and the sounds of laughter filled the air. Hope, the proprietress, walked among the tables wearing a silk blouse and a skirt that showed off her tiny waist and hid her fill hips.

  “Donald, Marion, how’re you doing?” Papa always told her that nothing was more important than remembering a guest’s name.

  “Hi, Hope,” the chunky business man said as he half rose. “This is my cousin Marty, from Minneapolis, and his wife, Gloria.”

  “Hi.” Hope held out her hand. “So nice to meet you.”

  “Señora, they need you in the bar,” a young busboy said as he approached Hope.

  “Thanks, Miguel.” Hope excused herself and whispered to the busboy. “Send a complementary order of Nachos to Donald’s table, will you,” before making her way into the bar

  “What’s up?” Hope asked the light-skinned, brown-haired woman tending bar.

  “We can’t get the spigot on the keg to work.” Toni Walker wore a low-cut blouse and her store-bought double Ds strained to break free when she bent over the keg.

  “Let me have a look.” Hope moved beside the keg. She didn’t see anything wrong. She pushed down on the tap with all her strength and turned it to the right. It slid right in.

  I swear, she couldn’t get her wings on by herself if the angels came down from heaven to take her home. But she was a good bartender and a great draw. Every night on her shift, the bar was packed with single males.

  The dining room personnel moved with choreographed precision. She made her way through the kitchen back to her office. She closed the door behind her and absorbed the quietness. Before the incident in Mexico, action was fuel for her system, but something had changed. Since being shot, she craved the peace of her closed off space.

  She logged in to her computer. A whole string of black boxes appeared on the lower-right-hand-side of the screen. There were bunches of messages and Facebook posts. She ignored them and brought up the scheduling program.

  She found the schedule filled out and ready to post. Automation was great; her scheduling program produced a product that was ninety percent accurate, but the schedule was her single best tool for making her staff happy. She wanted one last look before posting it.

  Her screen flickered, then went black. The lights in her office went out. Her world was plunged into darkness.

  What the hell?

  She got up and felt for the door knob. The entire restaurant was dark. She felt her way along the wall to the back door and searched for the alarm. She turned her key and opened the door.

  She stepped through the exit and looked out over Lake Union and the city. It was all dark. A city-wide blackout.

  When she came back inside she was stunned by the silence. Her little brother, Carlito, dressed in chef’s whites, was easy to pick out of the mulling crowd of employees.

  “Hey, sis. What do we do now?” he asked.

  “It looks like the entire city is dark.” She rubbed her head. “Jenny, make sure the guests are comfortable. Get extra candles lit wherever you can put them in the dining room.”

&nb
sp; Jenny nodded and hustled away.

  “Carlito, grab the flashlights from the office and get back into the kitchen.” Fortunately, most of the cooking equipment was gas. “Keep putting those orders out as best you can. If you have something you can’t make, let the server know so that the guest can re-order.”

  When she went through the door to the dining room, she saw that Inez had already gotten the emergency box out from under the cash register and was issuing paper guest checks to the servers. Servers and bus boys lit dozens of votive candles on every flat surface.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she yelled over the swell of conversation. “Please remain in your seats and stay calm. The entire city seems to be in a black out. We don’t know how long the power will be out. We can still cook and will continue to serve your meals. If you would like to cancel your order and go home, please tell your server so she may remove it from the queue.”

  A soft murmur spread through the dining room.

  “Of course, there will be no charge for your food tonight. Let’s all be good neighbors and take care of each other. It’s a great night for a fiesta.”

  The crowd applauded.

  ****

  “We interrupt your broadcast for the following special report”

  “Good evening.” A heavily made-up, fortyish blonde smiled to the camera. “I’m Janet Petersen. Welcome to a special report from News Front, coming to you from Washington D.C.” The theme song crescendoed and the camera panned out to show Janet Petersen sitting behind an ebony anchor desk. “Our story tonight: The West Coast Black Out.”

  “And, out,” a voice carried over the set.

  Janet took a sip of water and smoothed her hair as the shows credits ran. She knew the hairdressers hated it when she touched her hair, but an old habit was hard to break.

  “Back to you, Janet. In five, four...” the stage manager mimed the last three numbers with his fingers.

  “Five minutes ago, all electrical power to the West Coast was lost.” Janet read from her teleprompter. To viewers, it appeared she were looking straight at them. “Here on the East Coast, we are still getting sporadic information from local stations out west. Our West Coast affiliates all have emergency generators and our news vans make their own electricity. I’ll update you as more reports come in. As of this time, no one knows the reason for the blackout or even how it could happen.”