John O'Brien - Reckoning

“They hold all of the cards with regards to surveillance and information. They’d find a way to take us out for sure. And, come spring, we’ll have lost any advantage we have with regards to the Spooky. We’ll be grounded and they could just walk right in,” I answer.

“That may be true, I just thought it had to be mentioned,” Bannerman comments.

“What about like Robert said, take out the solar panels? That will kill their power, won’t it, I mean, like eventually? Then, won’t they have to come out?” Bri asks.

“If I read the diagrams accurately, and Frank, correct me if I’m wrong, they have a couple of underground generators with what I’m assuming is enough fuel to run them for some time. Destroying the panels won’t have the desired effect,” I respond.

Frank nods his concurrence.

The discussion becomes an open-ended one with ideas tossed about and refuted. I listen to what is said while studying the diagrams.

Poisoning the water supplies is mentioned, but then rejected as being too difficult to access. Even if we could get to it, there has to be a water filtration system present that might prevent contamination. The conversation then goes to disrupting or poisoning the air.

“They’ll have MOPP gear and sensors. The filters would block the attempt and all they’d have to do is replace the filters,” Frank says. “And I don’t know if we could find all of the inlets in order to block them. Even if we did, they’ll have air scrubbers similar to those on a sub. Remember, this facility was originally designed to withstand a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack and survive.”

“What if we present a juicy target? Maybe that would draw them out and we could hit them then,” Roberts says.

“If they see the Spooky, and they do have the means to track it, they’ll see that a mile off,” Lynn replies.

The dialog continues. There’s talk of fast-acting poisons, launching cruise missiles from Leonard’s sub, options presented and discarded. I listen to the conversation, putting in my two cents on occasion, but most of my concentration is focused on the pictures and diagrams provided by Frank. I put together my own options, running through scenarios, discarding some and making alterations to others as I run into problems.

“Look,” I say, interrupting the ongoing discussion, which had died down some, “we’re going about this the wrong way. All of the suggestions so far have been about forcing them out and defeating them with the Spooky.”

“And what do you suggest?” Frank asks.

“We need to hit them from the inside. Anything else and they can just retire inside and wait us out,” I answer.

“And how can we do that?” Lynn questions.

“If all they are using is technology to safeguard the entrances, it can be defeated. The only thing I can’t figure out is how we can get the teams on the ground undetected.”

That statement throws the group into silence.

“At least you mentioned teams, Jack. I’m assuming you don’t mean your usual ‘go in by yourself’ tactic?” Lynn says.

“Well, initially it will be me and maybe one other person. I need to get to the security room here,” I say, pointing to one of the rooms just past the long escape tunnel. “After that is secured, then we’re going to need everyone on this one. Lynn, we have to bring those that are in training up to speed quickly. We have to replace the team members we lost and we’re going to need to add more. Those we bring up to speed will remain behind as security for the compound. I know that may sound callous with us having lost the team sent with Greg, but that’s just the way it is. Also, Lynn, I want you to take all of the teams and work on coordination, team movements, and communication. Do that in the equipment hangars so it’s not picked up on satellite.”

“You obviously have a plan, Jack. Would you care to let the rest of us in on it?” Lynn asks.

“Well, I don’t really have it all worked out, but let’s run through what I have in my head so far, starting on the ground. I haven’t figured how to get there yet. I see it coming in stages. The first will be getting through the fence and entering the tunnel building. That will require working through the outlying ground and, if one exists, marking a path through the minefield. Frank, I’ll need close-ups as clear as you can make them to study the terrain in detail to see if there are small gullies that will enable me to keep a lower profile. There are the cameras to deal with as well. I’m assuming they do a sweep on low-light and then infrared or some combination thereof. A dry suit will work best but that isn’t foolproof. The only foolproof method would be to use a large pane of glass as it blocks infrared for a period of time. But, that’s not really feasible so I’ll have to go slow and not heat myself up. Once through the fence, you’ll note that the building entrance is facing away from the fence line. The assumption is that they have a camera covering the entrance and approaches from the front. Frank, can we get a closer view of the building to make sure of this?”

“Sure thing, Jack. I’ll see how much I can zoom in and still keep the clarity,” Frank answers.

“The next phase will be gaining access to the exit tunnel. I’ll need to fool the camera, assuming there is only one. For that I’ll need several four-port coaxial switches with a main output port and a few short coax cables with quick connect ends. Bannerman, there are electronic outlets in town that will have those. I’ll show you where they are on the map when we’re finished. With the distances involved, the outer cameras can only be running coax or single-mode fiber. I’ll need several coax to fiber converters just in case. I’ll also need small video recorders with playback and continuous loop capability which can be hooked into the network. Most have USB connections so we’ll need USB to coax converters. You can find those just about anywhere. Harold, can you configure a middle-man program to spoof the system and feed our own looped video into the network?”

Harold pauses and thinks for a moment. “The problem is fooling the network into thinking the recording is coming from the camera. I should be able to reconfigure a network sniffer to do that. The basic idea will be to have the sniffer, with the programming, clone itself to mimic the camera settings. Then, I can have the program insert the looped video into the packet and it will look like it’s being sent from the camera. It’s called an ARP spoof, which will gather information about the network and mimic a certain device as programmed. That will give both the network the correct address but with the looped video. We’ll also have to configure the ports on the small switches.”

Harold pauses once again, lost in thought before continuing. “We’ll have to put the switch in a bypass mode which will act as a hub but will have the abilities of a switch. One port will be set to mirror port one which the camera will have to be hooked up to. Put the modified sniffer on the mirrored port and it will configure itself with the IP and MAC address along with the subnet mask. That port won’t send any traffic so there won’t be a problem with the network seeing multiple machines with the same address. Once that’s done, the recorder will have to be set to the mirrored port to capture the video. Then, move the camera to port two, a normal port, and plug in the sniffer to port three while simultaneously unhooking the camera cable. That can then be set to the mirrored port to make it look like it’s hooked up. The program will intercept the video feed and insert it into a protocol packet that will be accepted on the network. Yeah, I think that can be done.”

“How about the size? Won’t something that large be seen?” Robert asks.