account in Crete, and the money is yours. You won’t be able to return to SVR, but with four million euros you can do much with what is left of your life.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Think back over our relationship. Have I ever lied to you?”
“Is that a fucking joke? Of course you—”
“No. I had others deceive you, yes. But I do not lie.”
“All right, then. Give me the access code to the account.”
“I will give it to you tomorrow morning.”
Kovalenko just stared at the floor. He didn’t really care about the money, but he did want to be free of Center.
“Why not give it to me now?”
“Because you have one more task. One more very important task.”
The Russian on the floor of the basement apartment in Dupont Circle heaved a long sigh. “What a fucking surprise.”
President Ryan was running on fumes at five in the afternoon, after having been up and hard at work since three a.m. The day had been full of diplomatic and military crises; often success in one arena was offset by setbacks in another.
In the South China Sea a pair of Chinese Z-10 attack helicopters flying off China’s aircraft carrier shot down two Vietnamese Air Force aircraft monitoring activity in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Just an hour and a half later, several companies of PLA paratroopers dropped in Kalayaan, a tiny Philippine island with a permanent population of only three hundred fifty, but also an island with a mile-long airstrip. They took the airfield, killing seven, and within a few hours more Chinese troops began landing in transport aircraft.
American satellites had detected Chinese attack aircraft landing on the island as well.
The Taiwanese destroyer that had been hit by the Silkworm missiles sank in Chinese waters, but the PLA had allowed the Taiwanese to enter China’s side of the strait for recovery of survivors. China very publicly claimed it had acted in self-defense, and Jack Ryan had gone before cameras at the White House to express outrage about China’s actions.
He announced he would be sending the
It was a threatening gesture, to be sure, but it was a measured response, considering all China’s actions of the past few weeks.
The Chinese, quite predictably, went ballistic. Their foreign minister, ostensibly the most diplomatic person in a nation of 1.4 billion, blew a gasket on Chinese National Television, and called the USA a world power run by criminals. The chairman of the Central Military Commission, Su Ke Qiang, released a statement saying America’s persistent interference with a Chinese internal security matter would cause an immediate and unwelcome response.
The unwelcome response came at five minutes after five in the afternoon, when the NIPRINET, the Department of Defense’s unsecure network, went down under the weight of a massive denial-of-service attack. The entire U.S. military global supply chain — and a vast amount of its ability to communicate between bases, departments, forces, and systems— simply ceased to function.
At five twenty-five, the secure DoD network began having drop-offs in bandwidth and problems with communications. Public military and U.S. government websites went down completely or were replaced with pictures and videos of American forces being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, a sick and violent loop of images of exploding Humvees, sniper victims, and Jihadi propaganda.
At five fifty-eight, a series of cyberkinetic attacks on critical infrastructure in the United States began. The FAA’s network went down, as did the Metro systems in most major cities along the eastern seaboard. Mobile phone service in California and Seattle became spotty or nonexistent.
Almost simultaneously, in Russellville, Arkansas, the light water pumps at Arkansas Nuclear One, a pressurized-water- reactor nuclear power plant, suddenly shut down. A backup system failed as well, and the core temperature at the plant quickly began to rise as the fuel rods radiated more heat than the steam turbines could handle. As the system neared a potential meltdown, however, the Emergency Core Cooling System did function properly, and a crisis was averted.
Jack Ryan walked the length of the Situation Room conference room, manifesting his anger in his movements instead of his tone. “Someone explain to me how the hell the Chinese are able to turn off equipment at our nuclear facilities?”
The head of Cyber Command, General Henry Bloom, answered on video link from his crisis center in Fort Meade. “Many nuclear facilities, for purposes of efficiency, have linked their secure plant computer systems to their less secure corporate networks. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and many of our links are weakening instead of strengthening, as technology improves, because there is actually more integration, instead of more security.”
“We have managed to keep the news of the attack at the plant secret for now, have we not?”
“For now, sir. Yes.”
“Tell me we saw this coming,” Ryan said.
The head of Cyber Command said simply, “I’ve seen it coming for a long time. I’ve been putting out papers for a decade describing just exactly what we are all witnessing today. America’s cyberthreatscape, the spectrum of possible threats, is vast.”
“What can we expect next?”
Bloom said, “I would be stunned if Wall Street’s systems operated normally tomorrow morning. Banking and telecom are ripe targets for an attack of this magnitude. So far the electrical grid has not been attacked like it easily could be. I suspect large power outages across the country sooner rather than later.”
“And we can’t stop it?”
“We can fight back with whatever electronic resources they don’t rob from us. Something this large and well coordinated will take some time to combat. And there is something else you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“The networks that are not down, and I’m speaking of Intelink-TS, the CIA network, for example, are suspect.”
“Suspect?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I see their capability by what they have accomplished this evening. Anything left standing is only left standing because they are using it to spy on us.”
“So they are inside the CIA’s digital brain?”
Bloom nodded. “We have to operate under the assumption that they have deep persistent access to all our secrets.”
Ryan looked to CIA Director Canfield and DNI Foley. “I would take General Bloom’s comments seriously.”
Both Foley and Canfield nodded.
Ryan then asked, “Why the hell are we so far behind the Chinese on cybersecurity? Is this more of the aftermath of Ed Kealty’s gutting of defense and intelligence?”
General Bloom shook his head. “We can’t blame Ed Kealty for this, sir. The simple fact is that China has millions of very smart people, many of whom were trained here in the U.S. and then went home to essentially do the modern equivalent of taking up arms against us.”
“Why don’t those smart people work for us?”
