Borger reached forward to zoom in on the picture and watched in fascination as the outside edges of the hole began moving. Subtly, as if it were shrinking, its outside edges began to soften and close inward, millimeter by millimeter. It appeared as if the edges were actually attempting to crawl toward one another — bit by bit, until the last edges reached each other and the hole disappeared.
The entire team stood watching in stunned silence, equally fascinated. In less than three minutes, any trace of the damage — any hint of anything — was gone.
After several more seconds the video ended, leaving the entire room in silence.
“Okaaay,” Caesare breathed out slowly. “Anyone ever seen anything like that before?”
17
Admiral Langford sat somberly around the dark rich mahogany table while listening to another heated debate between National Security Advisor Stan Griffin and Fred Collier, the Chief of Naval Operations.
To Langford, the president’s morning security meetings were growing, or rather devolving, into little more than political theater. At the same time, the geopolitical relationship with China continued to unravel. Most of the senior officers around the table remained fixated on the sinking of the USNS Bowditch, one of the Navy’s most prominent science vessels, several weeks earlier. To them, it was a blatant act of war that deserved an immediate response, if not an all-out retaliation.
But what surprised Langford was how little those same men understood or appreciated the ramifications of what the U.S. had just done. In a last ditch effort to save John Clay, and more importantly what he held in his possession, the Central Intelligence Agency was forced to recall their entire network of undercover operatives throughout China and several other Asian countries. It was a proverbial Hail Mary play that by the grace of God worked, but the political vacuum it left in its wake was immense.
The problem wasn’t simply the recall of U.S. operatives, but the unavoidable exposure that went with it as well. And just how deeply those operatives had penetrated various government departments in China. Espionage was rife between all major countries, but the depth of U.S. penetration that China was now coming to grips with was devastating. And the impact wasn’t just about those who had been extracted. It was about those who were still left. Chinese officials who had been utterly deceived and would now have to face the wrath of the Chinese government for allowing their departments and their secrets to be compromised.
So the implications weren’t just about a U.S. extraction. It was about the damage left behind. About people who would be killed as a result and a seething Chinese government hell-bent on revenge.
For the foreseeable future, any friendly relations with the Chinese were now merely superficial — the thinnest veneer of public relations for the world to see. China may have started the fight with the sinking of the Bowditch, but now after the extraction, the gloves were officially off.
Langford looked to the head of the table and into the tired eyes of President Carr. The leader’s tall stature paused unmoving in his chair, slouched slightly and sharing the same look as Langford. They both knew that the price paid for getting Clay and the special DNA out was likely greater than most of the other officers in the room were admitting.
His eyes flickered briefly at Langford’s stare and then back to Collier, whose voice suddenly grew louder.
“If we are to do nothing in response to this, then when will we?” he said, stabbing the table with his finger. “If they can sink a naval ship, an unarmed ship, in broad daylight without a response, then what else can they do?! Will they have to invade before we fight back?!”
Griffith shook his head. “What you don’t understand is that what we’ve just done is far worse than any military strike. We’ve just set off a bomb in the very heart of China and attacked their pride as a sovereign nation. It’s already a government barely holding itself together while its economy crumbles to the ground. Honor and reputation are everything to them—”
“Honor?!” Collier exclaimed, leaning forward again. “Honor and reputation is everything to us!”
To that, Griffith’s voice lowered and he merely shook his head, exasperated. “Not like this, Admiral. Not like this.”
Collier shook his head in admonishment. “You tell them then. You tell our troops that their honor isn’t as great as the Chinese. You tell them and see what kind of reaction you get. Honor is the only thing that some of these men live by. They will fight to the death to defend this country. With no—”
This time Langford interrupted. “And how hard would they fight if someone exposed them as fools? For the entire world to see. How mad do you think they’d be then?”
“Take your anger over the Bowditch,” President Carr blurted, “and start multiplying.”
Collier didn’t answer. His face showed his desire to but instead he forced himself back in his chair.
Merl Miller, the Secretary of Defense, frowned. “They’re going to come at us hard. And it’s going to be nasty.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning something quiet. And out of the public view.”
“Cyber warfare,” the president said.
“Most likely. The NSA is already working to harden every system they can. So far they haven’t seen plans for any concerted attack, but it’s just a matter of time. God knows they’ve already been in our systems enough to know where our vulnerabilities are.”
President Carr leaned forward onto his elbows and sighed. They couldn’t wait until it was too late. They had no idea what form the retaliation would take, but they had to do something. “Raise the threat level. And tell local law enforcement to remain sharp. This could come from anywhere.”
The grave irony of the situation was not lost on anyone in the room. Years ago, the NSA had embarked on a mission that would forever change the face of cyber warfare — all under direction from the White House. It started with developing the Stuxnet worm to help Israel disable Iranian centrifuges, just enough to render the uranium enrichment unusable. It was the first time in history such development had been undertaken at a state level. And when Stuxnet proved successful, it didn’t stop there. The NSA pushed forward with more sophisticated forms of hacking that pushed the envelope even further. Coupled with their secret monitoring of every system they could access, the secret directive initiated a firestorm around the world, bringing their espionage tactics to the attention of other countries, including allies. The viruses or “worms” that had been created were almost something in the realm of science fiction. Spyware that could infiltrate every hard drive on the planet it came in contact with. And so malicious that it could never be removed, even when detected. The only remedy was to destroy the hardware itself.
In just a few short years, all major countries had their own state-sponsored hacking teams. Armchair soldiers now waged wars on a battlefield that few could even see.
What the NSA and its Stuxnet brain child had done was to demonstrate that it was possible to inflict real-world damage from the cover of the virtual world. The greatest irony of all was that it was the U.S. who had opened Pandora’s Box. And now, years later, it was the U.S. who would bear the brunt of a full-scale cyber war as a result.
Carr stared blankly across the table in front of him. An air of dread hung heavily in the room.
“God, I hope this was worth it.”
18
The city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, was founded by famed explorer Juan Ponce de León. He was a man obsessed with immortality and the search for the legendary Fountain of Youth — an ironic twist considering one of Hospital San Francisco’s patients, recently transferred from a nearby island.