Evan Rallus raised a hand as Alicia started to speak. “Hold up, Alicia. We’ll circle back to you. Go ahead, Mara.”
“Thanks.” Mara’s fingers drummed once on the table. “I reached out to a friend, Alex Donnelly, at our Beijing embassy. We’ve worked on different projects together for going on fifteen years, so I know him pretty well. He’s now the Economic Unit Chief, Political Section.”
She glanced briefly at her notes. “For a little more than three years, Alex has regularly met with Zhao Lifen — he’s the Deputy Director, Trade Policy Coordination Office. They meet weekly for breakfast and lunch, sometimes both if it’s important. Alex said Zhao’s a pragmatist, walks the line at Commerce. Officially handles trade messaging before his office and our embassy. Unofficially, however” — her eyes swept the room — “he’s become State’s back channel for de-escalation.”
“So I asked Alex, is this more chest-thumping from Ouyang? Same rhetoric we’ve seen since twenty-eight?” Mara’s expression tightened. “Yesterday, Alex left me a voicemail. His voice was… off. Spooked, even—”
“Really? What did he say?” Alicia couldn’t wait this time, concern etching her features.
Mara nodded slowly. “Zhao told Alex to ensure President Ashford understood something: Ouyang was going to be firm on Taiwan.” She let the words hang. “Does that mean he’ll escalate to a direct conflict? Alex wasn’t certain. But in the three years he and Zhao have been meeting, he’s never been this blunt.”
The room was absorbed by quiet, with no one speaking for a moment.
Batista finally broke the silence. “OK, then, I think we have our answer. We’ll circle back in a few days and discuss how we should respond to this once we’ve had some time to think on it. Now that we’ve solved world peace and ended homelessness,” Batista joked, trying to break the tension of the moment before shifting to the next meeting update, “Rooke, you mentioned your people at CYBERCOM had an update on some unique offensive capabilities. Floor’s yours.”
Colonel Everett Rooke sat a little straighter in his chair, the former NSA operative’s fingers unconsciously tapping binary patterns on the table. His North Carolinian drawl emerged, clipped and precise.
“Yes, sir. My team’s been developing a new tool kit targeting Russian rail infrastructure.” He pushed his brief to the main display for everyone to follow along. “Specifically, we’ve gained persistent access to their automated rail-line-switching systems.”
The screen filled with some technical schematics. Rail networks spider-webbed across Russia, Belarus, Iran, China, and the Stan countries, pulsing in an amber color.
Batista smiled as he leaned back in his chair. “Very nice. Walk me through it. How’d you get in and what are you able to do with it?”
“Patience and luck.” Rooke allowed himself a thin smile. “Thankfully, the Russian rail network management system uses a version of Huawei routers that we’re familiar with and have exploited in the past. Chinese hardware, Russian implementation. Neither side fully trusts the other, so it’s created some vulnerabilities that we’ve been quick to identify, and that’s allowed us to create a series of back doors we can access later on at a time of our choosing.”
“Ha-ha, good one, Rooke. The seams once again for the win,” Morane laughed.
“Exactly. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Rooke said, sharing a humorous moment with Morane before turning serious again. “As we moved through their system, we identified the weak link we could exploit to sow some chaos and cause serious damage when the time comes. What we found was a component part, a timing controller chip that still accepts firmware updates.” Rooke smirked as he highlighted code snippets. “Huawei pushes out a series of patches quarterly. We’ve been injecting our own code into those patches for going on eighteen months now.”
“Christ almighty!” Cross’s hand tightened on his coffee cup. “You’ve been inside their rail network for a year and a half?”
“Yes, observing only. At least until now.” Rooke’s expression hardened. “Given current tensions, we’ve gone ahead and developed some active measures.”
New graphics flowed across the displays. The Trans-Siberian Railway stretched across eight time zones. A handful of choke points glowed red.
“The Russians have eight rail lines connecting their Far East oblast to European Russia. But geography’s a beast.” Rooke zoomed in. “They’re funneled through six major tunnels and eight critical bridges. Right now, Chinese engineering teams working with a few thousand of those GR-3R ‘Drevnik’ humanoid robotic workers are helping expand the rail bridge and tunnel capacity. But until those projects are finished, they’re limited to using just three operational tunnels.”
“Ah, those make for some nice bottlenecks,” Batista observed.
“Yeah, massive ones. Seventy percent of their military logistics flow through these choke points.” Rooke pulled up a traffic analysis report. “In peacetime, this is manageable. In a war…”
He let them fill in the blank.
“Yeah, I get it. So what’s the play?” Batista’s tone stayed neutral.
Rooke’s fingers resumed their binary drumming. “Simple physics. Their automated switching system prevents collisions by routing opposing traffic to holding tracks when necessary. As we continue to observe their rail schedules, we’ve mapped when the gates get turned on to divert the trains to the holding tracks.”
The display showed train movements in real-time simulation. Green arrows flowing east and west, diverted smoothly at junction points.
“When authorized, and only when authorized, we flip those gates.” His voice dropped. “An eastbound military transport carrying tanks. A westbound fuel train. Both doing eighty kilometers per hour and neither is diverted.”
The simulation continued to play out, the two arrows converging on each other until they merged into one — impact.
“On one track, we engineer a head-on collision inside a tunnel.” Rooke’s drawl vanished, his tone sharp. “On another track, we time a collision to occur on a bridge span. Either way, you’re looking at weeks of cleanup, and a hell of a mess. If we’re lucky, it could take months to repair and restore traffic. Our bottlenecks become corks.”
Silence fell. Around the table, operators who’d seen death up close processed the implications. Hundreds dead, maybe even thousands. Infrastructure crippled. Supply lines severed.
Cross’s Philly accent cut through. “That’s… Jesus. The crews…”
“Not crews. Military logistics personnel.” Rooke met his gaze. “They’re valid targets under the laws of armed conflict.”
“Still.” The FBI agent’s jaw worked, but he said nothing more.
Dr. Yuryevna leaned forward, her academic detachment intact. “If such an event occurred, controlling the information space would be critical, especially in the immediate moments and hours after it happens.”
All eyes turned to the Russian exile.
“Railroad disasters resonate deeply in Russian psychology. There is a history of this happening, and it is almost always a result of incompetence and corruption. Lives wasted over greed.” Yuryevna’s fingers traced patterns on the table. “We would not claim credit, da? Instead, we flood Telegram channels with speculation. Maintenance failures covered up. Embezzled safety funds. Officials more concerned with Beijing bribes than Russian lives. We sow doubt between allies where none previously existed.”
“I like it. Turn their people against their own government,” Mara observed.
“Is already happening. We simply amplify.” Yuryevna’s smile could have etched glass. “Perhaps leaked documents showing rail officials’ Swiss bank accounts, videos of Chinese advisors living in luxury while Russian workers die. The narrative writes itself.”