Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

With no landlines or cell service, Peyton would spend good money right at this minute to send a message via a homing pigeon if one were available. Otherwise she’s going to have to slog all the way down the street to see if Eric’s free so they can start their walk home, which is in the exact opposite direction. For a long time they rented a small apartment in a building overlooking the lake, but at $2,500 a month for less than eight hundred square feet, the walls began to close in on them and they grew tired of throwing their money away every month. So after looking for months and being outbid on three of their dream properties, they finally settled on a two-bed, one-bath condo on the third floor of a three-story brownstone in Lakeview West. Given their thoughts of starting a family soon, the area’s excellent schools sealed the deal. The problem, though, is rather than walk to work as they did for years they are now dependent on the city’s subway system for transportation. Not a problem on a normal day but cut the electrical umbilical cord and it becomes a major issue.

Peyton checks her phone again with the same result—no service. Her mind clicks through possible scenarios. The easiest thing for her to do is stay where she is and wait for Eric to come, but if he works until six or six-thirty p.m. as he usually does, they’ll be traipsing across Chicago in the dark. That wouldn’t normally be a problem because the streetlights, the lights from the businesses, and the lighted residences would provide enough illumination for them to find their way. But the thought of traveling home in absolute darkness sends a shiver of fear down Peyton’s spine. “Flashlights,” Peyton mutters. “We’ll need flashlights.”

She stands and works her way across the room to the “goody” closet. The ad agency receives a large assortment of products from companies wanting to hawk their wares. Some products get returned, but a majority of them either go home with the employees or end up in the goody closet, a large walk-in space filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Peyton opens the door, flicks on the light switch out of habit, and stares into the darkness. “Shoot,” she says, the frustration over the loss of electricity already building. She walks back to her desk, grabs her cell phone, and returns, launching the flashlight app.

Wading into the closet, she’s trying to recall if a recent ad campaign had featured batteries, or a camping scene, or maybe a night shoot. Inside, boxes line the shelves, each labeled with the name of the client. Peyton scans the boxes, hoping a name pops out. In the first row, there’s a box for a soup company, a tire maker, a toy company, a national lingerie retailer—Peyton is currently wearing one of the bras from that campaign—an auto manufacturer, and a movie promotion. She stops and goes back, recalling a scene from one of the agency’s earlier shoots. Pulling out the box for the auto manufacturer, she places it on the floor. The ad was a promotion for a new and improved version of one of their popular trucks. Peyton remembers one scene that was shot at night, something about difficult terrain that only their new truck could surmount—who knew?—and she’s hoping to find a flashlight left over from the shoot. Pawing through the box, she smiles when she finds a flashlight at the bottom. She holds it aloft like it’s a first-place trophy and clicks the button only to be disappointed—the batteries are dead. Standing, she starts rummaging through the boxes again.

Thirty minutes later, Peyton exits the closet with two flashlights and a brand-spanking-new box of AA batteries. There’s no one left in the office to celebrate her find, so Peyton returns to her original problem: What to do? She carries the flashlights and batteries over to her desk and dumps them in a reusable shopping bag she keeps handy in case she needs to lug something home. She stands there, hand to her chin, thinking. Eric’s boss is an asshole of the highest order and the odds of Eric being released early fall somewhere between zero and 10 percent. Paige sits and wipes the perspiration from her forehead. It’s suddenly stuffy inside with no air-conditioning. A bolt of lightning strikes nearby, lighting the room with a brief, blinding flash. That’s followed a second later by a loud rumble of thunder that Peyton swears rattles the glass. She holds up a finger. “Umbrellas,” she says to the empty room. She stands and heads back to the goody closet.

When she’s halfway across the room, her cell phone rings and she thumbs the answer button without looking at the screen. “Eric, are you headed this way?”

“It’s me, sis,” her sister, Paige, says. “You need to get out of Chic—”

“Paige, you’re breaking up. What did you say? Paige?” She hears the beeps that signal the call has ended and immediately redials her sister. All she hears is silence and she glances at her phone screen—NO SERVICE.

En route to Davison Army Airfield

“Damn it, the call dropped,” Paige says, looking at her phone screen. She hits redial and puts the phone to her ear.

“How much did she hear?” Hank asks.

“No idea. Now the call won’t go through.”

“If there’s only a few towers in the area with battery backup, it’ll be a crapshoot for you to get another call through.”

“Can’t the FCC force them to install a backup power source on all the cell towers?”

“They tried back in May of 2007 after Hurricane Katrina and again in June of 2012. The industry took them to court to block it.”

“Why in the hell would they do that?”

“Why do you think?”

“Money?”

“Yep,” Hank says. “It’s the number one driver for most business decisions. Forget what’s best for the customer.”

“But don’t they lose money when their systems are not up and running?”

“How are they goin’ to lose money? You’re locked into a plan that charges a certain amount every month. Hell, they’d probably save money if the power went out every once in a while. Ever see a credit to your bill for lost service?”

“No.”

“There you go.” Hank glances in the rearview mirror to check traffic before pulling into the right lane. “What’s our game plan when we get to New York?”

Paige glances out the side window and tries her sister again, ending up with the same result. “Call still won’t go through.” She turns to look at Hank. “I think we have to approach it the same way we did with the power companies.”

“Why? Because that worked so well for us?”

Paige shoots him an angry glare. “Let’s hear your plan.”

Glancing ahead, Hank spots the exit for Fort Belvoir and pulls over into the far-right lane. He glances at Paige. “Do you think the malware really self-destructed, or is it still there and we just didn’t find it?”

“I ran every software program in my toolkit and didn’t find squat.”

“Maybe we need a better toolkit.”

“Hell, Hank, techies at both the FBI and the NSA worked on the software, including me.”

“Let me reframe the issue. If you invite someone you’ve just met over for dinner are you going to serve them the very best wine in your cellar or will you pick, say, a midrange selection, savin’ the best for yourself and your dearest friends?”

Paige thinks about the question for a moment. “You think the NSA is holding out.”

“Of course they are. You don’t give your best toys away to someone that Uncle Sam says you have to play nice with. And I guaran-damn-tee you the folks at USCYBERCOM have software toolkits that’ll put ours to shame.”

“How do we get access to them?”

“Good question. I’m goin’ to make a few calls after we board the jet.”