The Perseid Collapse (3 page)

“I’ll be fine. I have a plan.”

“Just don’t fall overboard, okay? I do not feel like taking a midnight swim.”

He smiled and went to work. A few minutes later, he nestled into a sleeping bag suspended over the cockpit by a hammock. He lay still for a moment, trying to gauge whether the contraption would work. Previous attempts to hang the hammock had resulted in a series of spectacularly embarrassing failures he didn’t care to repeat. Suddenly striking the fiberglass deck at two in the morning was guaranteed to provoke laughter and a well-deserved string of “I told you so’s.” He’d tested the new hammock arrangement at their club mooring with a few mid-afternoon naps and felt that tonight would mark a new era in sleeping comfort aboard the
Katelyn Ann.

He adjusted his arms inside the sleeping bag and contemplated the empty cockpit. This would be the first time he had slept out here alone. Ryan never turned down an opportunity to sleep outdoors, especially on the boat. Before the hammock idea took hold, they slept opposite each other on the cockpit benches, watching the stars and talking for hours, mosquitos be damned. He was going to miss having Ryan around.

The faint red strobe light of a high-altitude aircraft distracted him from the thought. Travelling in a northeasterly direction, he assumed it was a red-eye flight bound for Europe
.
Alex could barely separate the aircraft’s lights from the growing field of stars superimposed against the velvety black sky.

Through his peripheral vision, he could tell that the western horizon held stubbornly to a thin cerulean blue aura. He resisted the temptation to look, instead keeping his eyes focused on the Perseid radiant rising above the shadowy rock cliffs that formed the eastern side of the cove. Later in the night, the Perseid radiant would drift over the mouth of the cove and continue west, remaining in full view from their anchorage. As long as the evening’s prevailing winds continued to blow from the southeast, the boat’s position in the water would afford him with a continuous, unobstructed view of the meteor shower.

The sound of a distant motorboat competed with the lapping water, growing stronger until the ugly racket dominated the cove. Sound travelled deceptively far across the water, with surprisingly little deterioration. The deep rumble reached its peak and faded south, as the fast-moving vessel navigated the narrow pass between Jewell and Cliff Islands and sped toward Portland.

An arc of light raced across the sky, burning brilliantly for the briefest moment. He counted two more streaks of light before the distant hum of the motorboat evaporated, enveloping Alex in the absolute silence he would enjoy for the rest of the night. His hammock rocked gently in the light breeze as he waited patiently for the next piece of cosmic dust to strike Earth’s atmosphere, unaware that his breathing had slowed and his eyes had drifted shut.

Chapter 3

EVENT -02:53 Hours

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

People’s Republic of China

Deputy Station Director Tin Jianyu raced his fingers over the plasma keyboard, pausing only to swipe at images on the 65-inch, paper-thin, curved OLED-T screen wrapped halfway around his station. He added a few more strings of code and raised his hand a few inches away from the screen, hesitant to drag the folder to its cyber destination in his centralized directory. He’d run out of ideas, and if this didn’t work, nothing would. He “hooked” the folder and moved it. Gone. A few more keystrokes and—nothing.

“Damn it. They must have physically separated the controls,” said Tin.

“How could they have done that? The whole station is connected,” said Fan Huning, his direct subordinate within the cyber warfare section.

“They must have designed the station like this. I haven’t found a single connection to Zhen’s office,” said Tin.

“How did we miss this?”

“We never looked for it. Zhen played us like a sheet of music to the very end.”

“And there’s no way to override the elevator controls?” said Fan.

“Same problem. I can’t find a single outgoing connection that gives me access to the elevator system root directory,” said Tin.

“The security station? They have direct feeds to the cameras in the elevator. I’ve seen them panning the cameras. There has to be a connection that can be exploited.”

Tin shook his head. He had already thought of this. The security camera feeds were wirelessly linked to the security station servers, and presumably Zhen’s private office, but attempts to piggyback the wireless signal only led back to the security servers. Either Zhen wasn’t watching the camera feeds, or he had his own camera feeds from a separate hardwire connection to the elevator. Either way, Tin had exhausted all options to access the elevators at this point.

They were trapped four hundred and fifty feet below the surface, with no way to escape. All they could do at this point was hope for mercy from the lunatics that had dreamed up Red Dragon. He wasn’t optimistic. The information he discovered, while sifting through ultrasecret, highest-level government communiqués, painted a very bleak picture of their survival.

A brief “eyes only” message to the Centralized Military Commission from a Second Artillery Corp liaison embedded in the National Space Agency had piqued his attention. The message itself was purely administrative, containing nothing suspicious; however, reference to Red Dragon in a Second Artillery Corps communiqué seemed out of place.

The Second Artillery Corps controlled China’s nuclear arsenal, and had never been connected to Red Dragon
in any of the ultrasecret meetings he had attended with Director Zhen. With his curiosity raised, he dug deeper within the Second Artillery Corps servers, discovering that a ten-kiloton nuclear device had been delivered to the National Space Agency several months ago. More untraceable snooping yielded a nasty secret that had effectively doomed them from the beginning. Cyber Station Three’s two-year mission wasn’t the most insidious aspect of Red Dragon.

“We could package up what we’ve found and bury copies on multiple outside servers, with time-release instructions. We force them to let us out of here, or their secret will be exposed,” said Fan.

“They’ve already shut us down. We’re cut off from the surface,” said Tin.

“What are you talking about? They’re still doing their jobs,” said Fan, motioning his hand toward the concentric circle of frantic workstations.

“I think we’ve been interacting with mimic servers for the past twenty-four hours. Cases continue to stream in at the same rate, but we haven’t interacted with a new network or server since yesterday around this same time,” said Tin.

“When were you planning to let me in on this discovery? We could have forced Zhen to take us out of here,” hissed Fan.

“I discovered it accidentally about ten minutes ago, when I tried to access a private server used by some hackers I know. These guys can design code that makes my stuff look amateur. I thought I might turn to them for ideas. I couldn’t reach the server—or any new server.”

“What about taking control of the mimic servers? Look for something there? They have to be talking to the outside world,” said Fan.

“I doubt it. For all we know, the mimic server farm could be located right above us, hardwired to the station—or connected by satellite to another cyber warfare station thousands of miles away. Either way, it will be isolated from the real Internet.”

“So that’s it? We just wait for them to pull the plug on this place?” said Fan.

“Unless we can force open the elevator doors and try to climb out of here. I don’t think the security section will react very well to that plan.”

“Maybe it’s time we told everyone the truth about this place, including security. Let them make up their own minds. The security people have families too. Nobody wants to wait around here to die.”

Tin touched the screen and tapped a code into the window to unlock its contents.

“According to security protocols, any individual, unauthorized attempt to leave the station will be stopped using a combination of lethal and nonlethal measures. Any attempts to leave the station involving more than one person will be immediately met with lethal force. If any single attempt, or combination of attempts, creates an unresolvable evacuation caucus among station personnel, release of a nonpersistent, lethal nerve agent is authorized at the discretion of the security chief,” recited Tin from the screen. “They’ve planned for this.”

“We killed ourselves by sharing this with Zhen.”

“We were dead as soon as we stepped off the elevator two years ago,” said Tin.

Before Fan could respond, a screen activated in the bottom left corner of his wraparound screen. Tin quickly dragged it into the middle.

“Security feed for the elevator?” asked Fan.

“Yes. Looks like Zhen is returning to the station.”

“Maybe we let our imaginations get the best of us.”

“We’ll know shortly,” Tin said resolutely.

They watched the screen for several seconds, observing Director Zhen’s impassive, unchanging face as the elevator descended. From his workstation, Tin could hear the elevator machinery humming from the doors located in a small vestibule next to the security room.

“Maybe this is a fake feed too,” said Fan.

“He always looks like that,” responded Tin.

Tin’s hopes faded when he heard the elevator doors open in the vestibule. Zhen had never directly accessed the cyber-operations level using the elevator. It was against security protocol. Expecting a tight formation of black-clad commandos to fan out from the hallway, he was surprised to see Zhen emerge alone. The director lumbered toward them, carrying something dark and heavy on his back. Olive-drab shoulder straps tugged mercilessly against Zhen’s dust-coated, black suit jacket. Second Artillery Corps had contributed heavily to Operation Red Dragon. Tin relaxed his shoulders and took a deep breath before asking his last question.

“Did you know from the beginning?”

Zhen shook his head slowly and raised his right hand, which held a gray “dead man” trigger mechanism.

“I should have known. I’m sorry, Tin,” said Zhen, opening his right hand.

Chapter 4

EVENT -02:49 Hours

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Headquarters

Vienna, Austria

Romy Nadel took a sip of steaming coffee and leaned back in her chair. As the International Data Centre’s (IDC) lead analyst, one of her primary duties entailed preparing the previous day’s Reviewed Event Bulletin (REB), which compiled all of the IDC’s confirmed and corrected seismic or acoustic events for distribution to member states. Once approved, data from the Reviewed Event Bulletin was automatically screened by the IDC’s mainframe system to determine whether the event was natural or manmade.

The automated criteria used to differentiate events had been agreed upon by member states during the ratification phase of the treaty, eliminating any possible accusation of bias against the organization should a violation occur. The IDC simply collected, compiled and disseminated raw data. What the member states did with the information was their own business.

She was seconds away from approving the weekend’s report when an “Event Alert” window appeared in the lower right-hand corner of her flat-screen monitor. Events meeting the criteria for immediate review were extremely rare, usually the result of an isolated meteorite strike or massive earthquake with unusual characteristics. The software classifying worldwide events kept these intrusions to a minimum. Her videoconferencing software activated less than a second later, opening another window. Walter Bikel’s caustic, angular face appeared in the upper left corner of her screen.

“Romy, have you seen the alert data?” he asked.

“No. It just popped up on my screen,” she replied, opening the alert window.

“Magnitude 4.7. Estimated 4-5 kiloton explosion at Lop Nur,” he said.

“Hold on. Let me take a look.”

Nadel saw several other videoconference requests appear on her screen below the initial data assessment. She ignored them and concentrated on the neatly packaged seismic information. The data screen showed initial waveform patterns with a software generated assessment of the cause. Walter was right. China had apparently violated the nuclear-test-ban treaty.

Fast moving P-waves were off the chart compared to the slower moving S-waves, indicating an explosion or sudden detonation of some kind. They couldn’t officially rule out a large meteorite strike, but the geographic epicenter left little doubt in her mind as to the cause of the explosion. Lop Nur had served as China’s only nuclear testing facility for nearly forty years. The Chinese government issued a formal moratorium on nuclear testing in 1996, the day after conducting their forty-fifth and supposedly final nuclear test. The site had been quiet for twenty-three years, which struck her as odd. They had no intelligence to suggest the Chinese were in the process of renewing their nuclear testing program. Why would they suddenly detonate a nuclear device?

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Nadel said. “Maybe they had an accidental detonation. The Chinese keep a sizeable weapons stockpile at Lop Nur.”

“Seismic data suggests that the explosion occurred deep underground. They don’t keep their stockpiled weapons underground. Nobody does,” said Bikel.

“I know; I’m being optimistic. Sorry to cut you off, but I need to make a few calls,” said Nadel.

“I imagine you do. Good luck.”

Romy Nadel disconnected the videoconference and dialed the International Data Centre’s direct line, bracing herself for a busy day.

Chapter 5

EVENT: -00:04 Hours

USS Gravely (DDG107)

Norfolk Naval Base, Virginia

Chief Fire Controlman Warren Jeffries took a long swig of bitter coffee from a worn USS
Gravely
travel mug and stared at the unchanging console screen. Three hours until one of Destroyer Squadron Twenty-Two’s teams arrived and resumed responsibility for this watch, allowing his sailors a much-needed break before the start of the work week. As Atlantic Fleet’s designated Launch On Remote (LOR) Homeland Ballistic Missile Defense (HBMD) platform,
Gravely
maintained a continuous state of readiness to fire her RIM-161 Standard Missile Three (SM-3) shipboard missiles at ballistic missile threats to key infrastructure assets in Washington, D.C. With an operational range of three hundred miles, the Block IIB version carried onboard
Gravely
could conceivably protect New York City.