Ryan said, “I want every last UAV in the U.S. inventory, regardless of ownership, model, or manufacturer, at home or abroad, physically dismantled in whatever way necessary to where it cannot take off.”
SecDef Burgess said, “Yes, sir. That process is under way on our end.”
Homeland Security and CIA both agreed they were doing the same thing with their drones.
Jack looked to Scott Adler, Secretary of State. “We need your office telling all of our allies who possess UAVs that they need to follow our lead until we have more information.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. What do we know about this cyberattack so far?”
Mary Pat said, “NSA is in the process of bringing in all of their people to look at how this was done. I’ve already been warned that we will not get answers in hours, and they only hope to know something in days. I am told that this was a very sophisticated attack.”
“What do they know?”
“They suspect someone jammed the frequency of the drone’s communications to its satellite, which caused the Reaper to revert to autopilot. It does this anytime there is a break in communications.
“Once the aircraft was not under our control, someone used their own equipment to impersonate the valid secure signal. In order for them to do this, they had to have access deep inside the Department of Defense’s most secure network.”
“Who could have done this?”
CIA director Canfield said, “We’re looking at Iran.”
Mary Pat said, “Mr. President, keep in mind, it does not have to be a state actor.”
Ryan thought about this for a moment. “What you’re saying is that our threat matrix needs to include terrorist and criminal organizations, private businesses… hell, even rogue operators in our own government.”
CIA director Canfield said, “All we can do right now is look at the actors who had the motive and the means. Regarding the Afghanistan attack, that would be Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iran, as they all have been meddling in our Afghan operations for some time. When it comes to means, on the other hand, you can dismiss the Taliban. They have just about zilch in the technical-know-how department.
“Al-Qaeda is light-years ahead of the Taliban, which means they might be able to do some low-level website attacks at best. But they did not do this.”
“So you think it was Iran?”
“If anyone in that part of the world did it, it was Iran.”
Ryan asked, “They are only hacking one UAV at a time. Does that mean anything about how they are doing this? Is that due to technical ability or because they only have one pilot trained to fly the drones?”
“Could be either, sir. Might just be that they have only set up one flight control center. I’ve got to say that considering the capability we witnessed today, I find it hard to believe there is a technical reason they can’t fly more than one UAV at a time.”
“Someone is sending us a message. As much as I’d like to send them a message right back, I think we need to be in receive mode at the moment.”
Mary Pat said, “I agree, sir. We’ll get to the bottom of just how this happened before we can start placing blame.”
Ryan nodded, then turned to SecDef. “You guys have been hacked before, right?”
Bob Burgess said, “Twenty-fourth Air Force detected a virus six months ago in the Reaper system software upgrade on the network at Creech. We executed a rolling stand-down of the fleet while we checked each and every drone. None had been infected. Nevertheless, we had to wipe clean every hard drive in every GCS at Creech and start from scratch.”
Ryan said, “The Defense Department’s secure network is not supposed to be connected to the Internet. How the hell did a virus infect the Reaper software?”
Burgess said, “Yes, it’s true there is what is called an ‘air gap,’ physical space between our secure network and the Internet, that should preclude this happening.”
“But?”
“But human beings are involved, and human beings are fallible. We found the virus on a portable drive used to update map software in one of the ground-control stations. It was a breach of protocol by a contractor.”
CIA Director Canfield said, “Iran has done this sort of thing before. A couple years back the Iranians successfully hacked into a Predator feed and downloaded videos from the cameras.”
DNI Foley interjected, “Grabbing the video off a camera’s sat transmission is not the same thing as taking total control of the unit, aiming and firing the weapons, and then crash-landing the UAV. That is several levels of magnitude more complicated.”
Ryan nodded, taking it all in and reserving judgment for now. “Okay,” he said. “I expect you to let me know when you learn anything of value about the investigation.”
SecDef said, “Mr. President, as you know, we lost eight members of First Cavalry Division, and forty-one Afghan Special Forces soldiers. We have not released information about the casualties yet, but—”
“Do it,” Ryan said. “And admit the UAV was involved and there was a technical malfunction. We need to get out in front of this and tell the world that we got hacked and American and Afghan servicemen were murdered.”
Burgess said, “Sir, I recommend against that. Our enemies will use that against us; it makes us look weak.”
DNI was shaking her head, but Ryan was ahead of Mary Pat. “Bob, whoever hacked the drone is going to have the video feed from the cameras. They can show themselves defeating our technology whenever the hell they want. If we do anything to cover this, it’s just going to compound the problem.”
Ryan added, “In this case, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have to take this on the chin. I want you to release a statement saying that while on a sensitive mission in Afghanistan airspace, at the invitation of the Afghan government, an unknown force wrested control of our hunter/killer drone and attacked an American forward operating base. Our attempts to destroy the weapon before it crossed into Pakistan were unsuccessful. We will find the perpetrators, the murderers, and we will bring them to justice.”
Burgess did not like it, Ryan could tell. SecDef would be thinking about how, within hours of that announcement, the Taliban would be on Al Jazeera with some bullshit story about how they did it themselves.
He said, “I don’t like us sharing our vulnerabilities with the world. It will encourage more people to try it.”
Ryan retorted, “I’m not thrilled about it, either, Bob. I just see the alternative as being worse.”
At that moment the phone beeped in the center of the conference table. President Ryan himself tapped it. “Yes?”
“Sir, we just heard from Homeland Security. The Predator drone has been shot down over western Nebraska. No casualties reported.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Ryan said. It was the first good news all day.
TWENTY-NINE
Computer hardware territory sales manager Todd Wicks sat in a pizzeria with a slice of cheese pizza greasing up a waxed paper plate in front of him.
He had no appetite, but he could not fathom any reason why he should be sitting here, right now at three p.m., that did not involve him eating pizza.
He forced himself to take a bite. He chewed slowly, swallowed tentatively, worried he would not be able to keep it down.
Todd thought he was going to puke, but it wasn’t the pizza’s fault.
The phone call setting up the meeting had come at eight o’clock that morning. The caller did not give a name, nor did he say what the meeting would be about. He just gave a time and a place, and then he asked Todd to recite back the time and the place.
And that was it. Since the call, Wicks’s stomach had felt like he’d eaten a live cat; he’d stared at the walls in his office and he’d looked at his watch every three or four minutes, at once wanting three o’clock to never come and to hurry up and get here so he could get this over with.