Peter Kirsanow - Target Omega

Dwyer wore the mischievous look of a pubescent boy, a look Garin had seen on Dwyer dozens of times in the past. It was usually a mistake to indulge Dwyer, a former SEAL and savvy businessman who nonetheless had the mentality of a college athlete at a strip club. He strenuously resisted separating work from play, regardless of how serious the circumstances.

“You want details? Here are the details,” Garin replied. “My team’s dead. I’ve killed more than half a dozen Iranians in the last seventy-two hours. All hell’s breaking loose in the Middle East, and none of these things happened in isolation.”

Garin’s speech sobered the other two occupants of the car. Dwyer shook his head. “Mike Garin. All work and no play…”

“Keeps me alive,” Garin finished. He inclined his head toward the former SAS man. “Matt, please drive.”

As the SUV pulled out of the parking lot, Dwyer’s demeanor became more serious. “Mike, you’ve been in some bad situations before, but this may be one of the worst.”

“What do you have for me?” Garin asked.

“That flash drive you gave Olivia contains a very sophisticated worm. We’re still working on the codes, but I can tell you, this thing is well beyond the capabilities of the Iranians. Not that they’re that bad. In fact, as you know probably better than most, they’ve got some serious cyberattack capabilities. But this thing is next, next, next generation.”

“Then who engineered it?”

“There are only about a half dozen countries that even conceivably could have done it: Russia, Israel, China, Germany. Maybe the Brits and Japan. That’s about it.”

“Then it’s definitely the Russians,” Garin said unequivocally. “What’s the worm supposed to do?”

“I think the technical phrase is ‘screw with our defense computers.’”

“You mean disable them? Shut them down?”

“No. This thing is a lot more subtle. Kind of like the Stuxnet worm that wreaked havoc on the computers in Iran’s nuclear program, another situation with which I believe you have a passing familiarity. Only this one’s even more advanced, more like the Snake or Ouroboros used against Ukraine when the Russians invaded Crimea. Apparently, this worm infiltrates a system like missile defense, locates a certain target, and then knocks it just slightly off kilter. Enough to render it essentially useless, but not enough to be detected,” Dwyer responded.

“But even slight anomalies would set off alarms,” Garin said. “Besides, we have multiple redundancies in our systems to guard against systems failures and data corruption.”

Dwyer nodded. “That’s the beauty of this thing — if, that is, you’re trying to knock out a segment of our defense grid. It has up to seventy-five submodules, giving it the ability to adapt, to evolve. The worm disguises itself, fools our systems into thinking everything’s operating okay. The system’s been corrupted, but the data appears normal. We don’t know anything’s wrong until we get hit.”

Garin stared out the front windshield, assessing what Dwyer was telling him. “So, say a satellite detects a Topol-M missile launch from the Teikovo missile base in Russia…”

“The worm scrambles the data so that our computers show no launch. Or, it might actually show a launch, but that the missile’s trajectory is taking it to China as opposed to the actual target — the US. Point is, we have no way of knowing anything’s amiss. We believe the data. And we react — or don’t react — accordingly.”

Garin shook his head slowly. “How much damage can the one flash drive do?”

“Enough,” Dwyer replied. “A bad guy inserts it in the USB port of a defense laptop connected to a particular network and the worm crawls toward its targets. It searches for specific lines of code, attaches itself to it, and does its mischief. It keeps expanding, keeps infecting the system. Keep in mind, Mike, my guys tell me it’s unlikely the flash drive you gave to Olivia is the only one. Our bet is that several flash drives have been created — each with its own codes. All it takes is for one to be inserted into any laptop that may be a gateway to a DOD network, and it’s off to the races.”

“I figured as much,” Garin said. “Tell me something. Now that we’re on notice of a worm, do your guys know whether we can find out which computers have been infected? Aren’t there diagnostics that can be performed?”

“The short answer is ‘probably,’” Dwyer replied. “We haven’t gotten that far. But remember, we don’t know which systems have been infected. DOD’s huge. Figuring that out would be a colossal undertaking. That takes time. We didn’t know the Chinese had hacked OPM for months. How much time do you think we have?”

“Don’t know. As usual, probably not enough.”

Matt drove back onto I-95 heading south. The traffic was light.

“Why do you think the Russians want to screw up DOD computers?” Dwyer asked.

“I don’t really know. In fact, I’m not sure it’s DOD computers or only DOD computers that they’re attempting to hit. Could also be NSA, Department of Energy, who knows? But I’ve seen evidence of Iranian interest in our missile defense systems. The Russians are working with the Iranians. So I’d conclude that the Russians have got the Iranians running around trying to sabotage our missile defense systems.”

“And trying to kill you, too, Sherlock. Busy Iranians,” Dwyer added. “But I don’t understand why the Russians would want to sabotage our missile defense systems. Why do it? What’s their interest?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Garin said. “The Russians are usually more subtle. And why enlist the aid of the Iranians? Russians have more and better assets by far. They don’t need the Iranians to do their dirty work.”

“Maybe for plausible deniability,” Dwyer offered. “The Russians always liked to use proxies, cutouts, during the Cold War. East Germans. Bulgarians. You know, the KGB themselves rarely, if ever, killed anyone on US soil, at least not Americans. So they may have farmed out this operation to the Iranians this time.”

Garin nodded, not in agreement, but in thought. “Regardless of who they’re using, we keep coming back to the same question. Why would the Russians want to scramble our computers — missile defense or otherwise — when they wouldn’t dare risk attacking us?”

“Well”—Dwyer shrugged—“have you considered that maybe screwing up the computers is, in fact, the end game? Multiple worms could do serious damage — set us back quite a bit. Stuxnet set Iran back two years. The Russian president is known to want to restore Russia to coequal superpower status. Resurgent Russia, and all that.”

“Maybe,” Garin said. “But I’m not convinced.” Garin switched gears. “What about Laws? Any updates?”

“He was really in bad shape, Mike, but barring any setbacks, the old horndog’s going to make it. He’ll be in the hospital for quite some time. Then rehabilitation, physical therapy. They say several months, but I bet the chastity of most of the nurses in ICU will be in jeopardy by the end of the week.”

Garin’s expression didn’t change.

Dwyer said, “I thought you’d be pleased with Laws’s progression.”

“I am.”

“You’re thinking about how you’re going to kill his attackers, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

The news about Laws did cheer Garin. “Did your men get any more information from him?”

“No,” Dwyer replied. “It appears Laws really didn’t hear anything beyond what he already told us.” Dwyer shifted in his seat, pulled his cell phone from his hip pocket, and searched for the photo he had taken the previous evening at the Mayflower. “Speaking of updates, you might be interested in who your close friend Julian Day is having dinner with.”