Tim Washburn: The Day After Oblivion

“Bullshit. Send us a message—and then stand up and give us the finger? I don’t buy it. Whoever is responsible has been planning this for years.”

Zane wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Meaning they probably have something big in the works.”

“Don’t worry, Zane. Four Stars says we’re safe… the conceited asshole. All those weapon computer programs are older than Methuselah.”

Zane takes a moment to survey his new partner. Tall at five-eight, Alyx’s bottle-black hair is sheered close to the skull on one side while the other half remains long, cascading down to conceal a portion of her face. The shorn hair reveals a left earlobe studded with piercings to match the one in her left nostril. He wonders what the rest of her body would reveal. “You married or have a significant other?”

“No and no. Have a couple of fuck buddies available when needed.” Alyx glances up from her keyboard to see the blood rushing to Zane’s cheeks. She smiles. “You?”

“Was and no. I spent four years in the army and the marriage was a hastily arranged affair we both thought we wanted. It began to unravel almost as quickly as it began. We were both deployed at alternating times. Probably had something to do with the unraveling.”

Alyx straightens in her chair. “Might have something.”

“What?”

“Maybe a partial IP address. Three numbers.”

Alyx copies the partial address and pastes it into a browser on the NSA’s network. She taps her foot, waiting for a response. The odds are long, with only three numbers and over six billion possible number combinations. She groans when the screen fills with nearly a million hits. “There has to be some way to narrow this down,” she mumbles out loud.

“Can you exclude locations?” Zane asks. “Focus the search on known IP addresses associated with bad actors?”

“I used fairly narrow search parameters. Or I thought I did.” Alyx begins typing. “Let me try something else.” Going with her gut, she narrows the search parameters and the list of possibilities is narrowed to a hundred, all clustered in one region. “I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but I believe the partial IP address resides somewhere around Shaoxing.”

“Are you suggesting the Chinese are behind the hack?” Zane asks.

“Not necessarily.”

Weatherford

Gage Larson pulls a rag from his back pocket and mops the sweat from his face. Although he’s working 260 feet above the ground, what little breeze exists only stirs the stifling heat around. The heat makes his job twice as difficult and exacerbates the fact the equipment is not cooperating. Today he’s attempting to replace the brake pads, and every damn bolt he tries to unscrew is being a pain in the ass. Much like the brakes on a car, the braking system is used to slow or completely stop the turbine in times of emergency. Although blade pitch is used to control the turbine’s speed, the braking system is the fail-safe to keep the turbine from destroying itself in high winds. Two skinned knuckles into the procedure, he finally breaks the last bolt loose. As he works the ratchet, his mind drifts to Holly.

Married for two years, Holly broke the big news almost eight months ago—she’s pregnant. Now she looks like she swallowed a watermelon, and Gage is slowly coming around to the fact that he’ll soon be a father. It’s not that Gage doesn’t want children—it’s more a matter of money. He’s making about half of what he made in the oil patch and Holly’s paycheck as a teacher barely covers the debt on the new tractor and ten head of cattle they purchased last year. By the end of the month, they’re lucky if they have two quarters to rub together. Being able to afford everything raising a child demands is a concern weighing heavily on Gage’s mind. He thought about selling some of the cattle or the tractor, but the cattle are moneymakers and the tractor is an essential tool. He sighs. He’s going to have to come up with a plan because the baby’s coming despite his misgivings.

Gage works the last of the bolts loose and pulls the heavy caliper away from the large steel wheel. The wind sends a blast of brake dust up his nose and he sets the caliper aside and stands to clear his nostrils. In the distance, an AWACS plane is taking off from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. The large round radar dome mounted at the rear looks like a foreign appendage, much like a suckerfish on a shark. Gage recalls one of his buddies telling him the jets travel all over the globe, spending days in the air while being refueled by aerial tankers. That same friend also told Gage that Tinker Air Force Base has a big red X on it if something were to ever happen. But that’s a worry for another day, Gage thinks—or hopefully never.

Watching the jet climb higher into the azure sky sparks a yearning that he quickly tamps down. While the crew flies off to parts unknown, Gage knows, without a college degree, he’ll likely be working similar jobs the rest of his life. He did attend the local college to pick up a certificate that allows him to work on the turbines. And it’s not that he lacks intelligence—he’s plenty smart. It’s just that he finds the classroom boring, especially discussing this theory or that theory without ever accomplishing a meaningful task. Gage is more of a doer. He turns away and pulls a bottle of water from the ice chest and unscrews the cap. After guzzling most of it, he pours the remainder over his head and tosses the empty bottle back into the ice chest and returns to the job.

Working to install the new brake pads, a task he’s performed numerous times, his mind drifts again to Holly. She moved to town her junior year of high school, and it took Gage most of the year to convince her to go out on a date. That date stretched into their senior year, but the relationship hit a rocky patch when she left for Norman and the University of Oklahoma. She couldn’t understand why Gage didn’t want to “better himself”—her words—by getting a college degree. During her sophomore and junior years the relationship withered on the vine. Gage dated around, but spent most of his time moping. The other girls around town weren’t like Holly. Not even close. His greatest fear was that she’d find a frat boy and move to the other side of the world. During her senior year, when thoughts turned to life after college, she and Gage would share an occasional dinner when she was back in town. It wasn’t until Holly decided to return home to begin her teaching career that the last fragments of the smoldering fire reignited. Two years later they married.

A smile plays across Gage’s face as he recalls the honeymoon in Cancún. But the smile quickly fades because thinking about their time frolicking in the sun and bedroom is not going to do anyone a bit of good, especially with Holly eight months pregnant. He knows. He’s had his hand slapped more than once. Pushing those thoughts aside, he returns to the task at hand. After replacing the last brake pad, he reattaches the caliper to its mounting on the wheel and ratchets down the bolts. He stands and stretches his back before moving over to the side. In the distance, sunlight dances off the surface of a pond while, closer in, a pair of hawks cut lazy circles in the cloudless sky. Gage enjoys the view, having no clue how quickly it will all change.

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)

Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Colorado

If it flies in, out, through, or over North American airspace, NORAD tracks it. Tucked inside Cheyenne Mountain on the outskirts of Colorado Springs, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is also responsible for providing early warning of enemy attacks via missile, aircraft, or space vehicles over the United States and Canada. Using an array of sensors scattered around the globe, NORAD can detect a missile launch as soon as the rocket engines fire. Once moved to Peterson Air Force Base in a cost-cutting move, NORAD is back home in Cheyenne Mountain after the military brass decided the highly specialized equipment might be safer surrounded by several thousand feet of granite. So back NORAD went, the mountain acting as a natural shield against a possible electromagnetic pulse.