Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

Aboard the Acela Express

Two times a week, Gavin Minnick boards the noon Acela train from Washington, D.C., to New York City. The Acela Express is a high-speed train capable of traveling up to 150 miles per hour, but averages closer to 85 due to track conditions along the Northeast Corridor. On good days the trip usually takes two hours and forty-six minutes, gate to gate. That’ll put Gavin in New York in time to make his late-afternoon meeting and enjoy a nice meal before returning in the morning. An international banker by trade, his twice-weekly meetings in New York are beginning to erode his home life. His wife and two daughters at home often complain they don’t see enough of him. And at forty-six, the travel itself is a real grind even with the first-class accommodations aboard the train.

Gavin has made the trip enough times that he could probably drive the train blindfolded. He knows the slower sections of the track and the places where the train can accelerate to full speed. With four passenger cars bookended by two power cars capable of producing 6,200 horsepower each, the train’s acceleration can be breathtaking.

Gavin turns from the window and unloads his laptop from his messenger bag. He logs on and opens a spreadsheet for this afternoon’s meeting. Gavin has dissected thousands of corporate financials, accounting spreadsheets, and profit and loss statements, and it doesn’t take him long to zero in on the important numbers. The board of directors at the company he’s meeting with is hoping to slash payroll costs. Not their own exorbitant salaries, but the salaries of the hourly workers who make up the backbone of the company. If his bank didn’t have a financial interest in the matter, he’d tell them to go to hell. But it does, and he can’t.

Gavin removes his glasses and rubs the pressure points on the bridge of his nose. Once a basketball player at the small college he attended, his years spent behind the desk have sent his weight one way and his receding hairline the other, now extending to the back third of his skull. He cleans the lenses of his glasses with his silk tie and replaces them on his head, stealing another glimpse of the outside world. The bright sun is high in the sky, casting shallow shadows under the trees lining the track. He returns to his laptop, and, with a sigh, continues to search for cost savings.

After spending several more minutes crunching the numbers and finding no easy solutions—layoffs are the only option—Gavin closes the lid on his laptop and reclines his chair. The train begins to slow as the grimy underbelly of Philadelphia flashes past the window. The intercom chirps and the conductor announces the next stop will be at Penn Station. The train lurches as it rapidly accelerates.

An hour later, a pit the size of the Grand Canyon forms in Gavin’s gut as he cranes his neck to look ahead. The train is less than half a mile from Penn Station, one of the busiest train stations in the country, and instead of slowing the train is accelerating.

A small girl screams and clambers onto her mother’s lap as a pair of train conductors rush into the first-class car. “Please take your seats and brace yourselves,” one shouts as they race past. Gavin doesn’t know whether to stay where he is or find another place to take cover as the train continues to speed up. Brace ourselves? What the hell does that mean? Power poles flash past the window as screams fill the cabin. Gavin glances around at the other people aboard. Some people are weeping, while others sit, their eyes closed, their lips trembling out a remembered prayer.

Gavin sits and braces his legs against the seat in front of him. He grabs his cell phone and begins typing a message to his wife as the train sways violently from side to side. Before he can hit send, the train tips to the right and slams onto the ground. Gavin is aware of shrieking metal, sparks, and screams before the car he’s in rams into one of the waiting trains. Slamming against the forward bulkhead Gavin’s brain registers a sharp, intense pain before his world goes dark forever.

—BREAKING NEWS—Stock trading halted because of computer irregularities.

All stock trading has been halted due to some type of computer glitch. More details to follow…

—BREAKING NEWS—Chemical plant explosion south of downtown Seattle. Some residents to be evacuated. Still no word on types of chemicals manufactured at the plant. Witnesses describe strong smell of chlorine. Reports of numerous fatalities at nearby water park. More details to follow…

North Atlantic Ocean

With the weapon systems disabled and completely severed from Stark ’s computer systems, Captain Hensley crosses his fingers and orders the generators restarted and the power turned back on. The lights and computer screens on the bridge flicker back to life and the guns, for now, remain silent. Hensley breathes a sigh of relief. The ship’s e-mail system still isn’t operational and with the radio down, he’s desperate to know who and what was targeted when the ship’s weapons went berserk. He pulls his phone out of his pocket to check for a cell signal and finds no service now that they’ve sailed farther from port.

There had been much discussion during the design phase of this next-generation destroyer about enabling the ship’s computers to allow Wi-Fi calling via smartphone. The lead admiral on the design committee, Rear Admiral Richard Malloy—who grew up watching three channels on a black-and-white TV back in the ’60s—nixed that idea and wanted to limit or eliminate Wi-Fi capability altogether. His reason was an old one: loose lips sink ships. It wasn’t until some of the younger officers, Hensley included, got involved later in the process that ship-wide Wi-Fi was put back in the plans.

The Wi-Fi signal is strong and operates at fast speeds when it works, which it does—sometimes. The big question now is, will it work at all after the system reboots? This is the first time the crew has completely powered down the ship while at sea and those on the bridge are somewhat nervous to discover which systems will restart and function as they should and which won’t. If the ship’s track record so far is any indication of the outcome, they’ll be lucky if they’re not dead in the water. Hensley walks over to the communications desk. “Where are we on the radio, Lieutenant Taylor?”

“We’re still waitin’ for the systems to come online, Skipper,” Taylor replies. A red-haired, blue-eyed young man out of West Texas, Taylor looks more like a defensive lineman than a sailor.

“What are the odds the radio is going to work?” the captain asks.

“Well, sir, we didn’t do a lot of wagerin’ back home, but I’d put the odds somewhere around fifty-fifty. In other words, sir, it’ll be a crapshoot.”

“If the radio doesn’t work is your team capable of repairing it?”

“Yes, sir. We about had her whipped before we killed the power, Skipper.”

“Is the satellite uplink operational? Could we send a flash message to Norfolk about our wonky weapon systems?”

Taylor shakes his head. “It’s all part of this new computer system, sir. It’s either all or nothin’. I don’t know who designed it that way, but somebody needs to find out who it was and fire his or her ass. Sir.”

“So what you’re telling me is we are now aboard the most sophisticated warship ever built and we can’t make a phone call, send an e-mail, or talk on the fucking radio?”

“That ’bout sums it up, Skipper,” Taylor says. “If we had loaded on the helicopters we could have used one of their radios.”