“I did not say we put anything on there.”
“No. You did not. But I’m sure you did. I mean… why else would we be doing this?”
“There is nothing on there that any IT director can find.”
“You don’t know this guy, or his company. They are top-notch.”
The Chinese man smiled as he bit into his calzone. “I know Gavin Biery, and I know Hendley Associates.”
Wicks just looked at him for a long moment. Behind them, a group of high school kids entered, talking loudly to one another; a boy put another in a headlock as they stepped up to the counter to order, and the rest of the group laughed.
And Todd Wicks sat in the middle of this normalcy, knowing that his life was not normal at all.
An idea popped into his head. “Let me take the unit and run my own diagnostics on it. If I can’t find anything on it, then I’ll deliver it to Gavin.”
The Chinese man smiled yet again. He was all smiles. “Todd. We are not entering into a negotiation. You will do as you are told, and you will do it when you are told to do it. The product is clean. There is nothing for you to worry about.”
Todd took a bite of his pizza, but he let the food sit in his mouth. He wondered when he would feel like eating again. He realized that he had to trust the Chinese.
“I do this and I am done?”
“You do this and you are done.”
“Okay,” he said, and then he reached down and brought the shopping bag closer to him.
“Excellent. Now just relax. You have nothing to worry about at all. This is just business. We do this sort of thing all the time.”
Todd picked up the bag and stood up. “Just this once.”
“I promise.”
Wicks left the restaurant without another word.
THIRTY
Adam Yao had been working all day at his “white side” job as president, director, and sole employee of SinoShield, his one-man intellectual property rights investigation firm. As much as duty called with the CIA, it was also his job to maintain the front company that kept him over here in Hong Kong, kept him in touch with members of the local police and government, and gave him a ready cover for his CIA surveillance activities.
But it was nine p.m. now and, with the twelve-hour difference between Langley and Hong Kong, Adam decided to check in on the “black side” of his duties via his secure e-mail link.
He had not wanted to send the message yesterday afternoon; he knew somewhere in the Asia sector of CIA’s National Clandestine Service there existed a leak.
But he had to send the message.
Yesterday the entire U.S. drone fleet, military, intelligence, Homeland Security, the entire enchilada, had been shut down full stop, because someone had hacked into the network or the satellite signals or both, which was the prevailing opinion in the NSA’s prelim tech reports about the incident Adam had read.
As soon as he heard about the UAV incident in Afghanistan, Adam knew he would have to come out of the dark and let Langley know that, over here in Hong Kong, he was tailing Zha Shu Hai, a Chinese drone hacker and American fugitive.
No, he couldn’t very well sit on that information.
Yao knew his cable to Langley was going to be a tough sell. His supposition, that a young Chinese hacker who had stolen UAV software code two years earlier might somehow be involved in this week’s computer attack and hijacking of several American drones, was not based on any hard evidence.
On the contrary, there seemed to be some evidence that Zha Shu Hai was not working on anything as high- level as drone hijackings. Yao did not mention the Triads in his cable, but hacking drones and killing American soldiers in Afghanistan hardly seemed like the modus operandi of the 14K. No, hacking banking software or other forms of computer embezzlement seemed like it would be the more likely aim of Zha if he was, in fact, employed by 14K.
But Adam needed to be sure, and he had asked only for some additional resources to help him dig deeper into whatever was going on above the Mong Kok Computer Centre.
But Langley had declined his request, explaining that all assets in Asia were tied up at the moment and assets at Langley were similarly otherwise engaged.
The response Adam received had been reasonable, he had to admit, even if it pissed him off. The reply from Langley had explained simply that, in the unlikely case that China was involved with the UAV incidents, it would come from inside China. All intelligence out of China indicated that offensive computer network operations of a military nature on the scale of a UAV attack would originate from the PLA’s General Staff Department, Fourth Department. These were China’s elite cyberwarriors.
A well-coordinated attack on the United States would originate with them, not with a hacker or group of hackers in Hong Kong.
The cable went on to explain to Adam Yao, in what he saw as a patronizing tone, that Zha working in Hong Kong in an office building was not a threat to the Department of Defense’s secure computer network.
After all, Hong Kong was not China.
“No shit,” Adam responded to the message on his monitor. He knew the situation he described in his cable was highly unusual, but his evidence, his on-the-ground intelligence collection, though circumstantial, surely warranted a closer look.
But his superiors, the CIA’s analysts, did not agree.
So Adam did not get his assets, but that was not the worst news in the cable from Langley. His superiors in the National Clandestine Service indicated that they would pass on the helpful information about the location of Zha Shu Hai to the U.S. Marshals Service.
That meant, Adam was certain, that within a few days a couple of four-doors would show up in Mong Kok and a team of deputy marshals would climb out. They would be identified as a threat by the Triads, the Triads would get FastByte22 out of town, and that would be the last Yao saw of Zha.
Adam logged off the secure e-mail system and leaned back in his chair. “Shit!” he shouted to the small empty room.
Zha Shu Hai had never been in Center’s office before. Few of the employees of the Ghost Ship, even the important ones like Zha, had personally been inside the surprisingly cramped and spartan work area of their leader.
Zha stood with his hands at his sides and his knees locked, an affected military stance because Center had not asked him to sit down. The rock-hard gel in his spiked hair shone and sparkled in the light from the flat-screen displays on Center’s desk. Center himself was in his chair in front of his monitors, his ever-present VOIP earpiece in his ear and his rumpled demeanor on display here just as it always was on the operations floor.
He said, “Three American drones were downed before the Americans ceased all flights.”
Zha just stood there at semi-attention.
Center cleared up the confusion. “Why just three?”
“They were quick to land their other UAVs. We managed to break into one more in Afghanistan within minutes of the crash of the first one, but it had landed before our pilot achieved input control and the weapons had been offloaded. As soon as I realized that, I took the Global Hawk off the coast of Africa. That is a very valuable and technologically advanced machine. It will show the Americans that the capacity is there for great harm to them.
“The Global Hawk crashed into the ocean.” Center said it in a way that Zha could not read.
“Yes. It is a Northrop Grumman product, and my software was optimized for the Reaper and Predator platforms from General Atomics. I had hoped that the pilot could have crashed it into a ship, but he lost control
