“I’m in!” Galina announced. The deciphering software had worked and she’d penetrated a flash drive. “Here,” she copied lines of code onto Lana’s computer.
“Why do you think this will work?” Lana asked. It looked like thousands of letters and numbers.
“The sequencing. Pattern recognition. I have a good eye for it. It’s similar to data he gave me that helped me access Professor Ahearn’s computer before I found out about the murders. Just try it.”
Lana did, this time landing smack into Oleg’s trash bin — only to find he’d cyber-incinerated everything.
Wanting to tear out her hair, she realized he — or an accomplice aboard — might have installed a rootkit, an intrusion into the submarine’s computers that would remain almost undetectable. What a frickin’ nightmare. It was malware that allowed a hacker remote entry, but also hid its own tracks even as it provided openings for polymorphic malware — attack software that could not only spread quickly from one system to another, but also change its file hashes, persistence mechanisms, access codes, and locations in memory every time it duplicated itself.
If she could track down the rootkit, she could start roaming the submarine’s computers, too — or send in her own worms to disable the Delphin’s entire system. Shutting down power and lights would certainly hamper the manual efforts necessary to launch the missiles.
But any keystroke could also set off a virtual trip wire that would launch them. Lana watched Galina typing away frantically, breaking only to sweep her fingers across the screen to move data. As calmly as she could, she voiced her worry.
“I’m working strictly with his own code right now, and I’m not altering anything.” Then she stared at Lana. “What choice do we have?”
She’s right. They had no choice. That was when it also occurred to Lana that a conspirator — in the eastern Ukraine or on the Delphin? — might at that very moment also be trying to penetrate Oleg’s defenses, but with a different goaclass="underline" to empty the sub’s arsenal so all of the WAIS would shatter into the sea and drive ocean levels up the full eleven feet.
She felt like they were in a race with a phantom that was already haunting Oleg’s systems. In the next few seconds she learned she was right: Oleg’s screen burst alive with Grisha Lisko smiling at Lana as he stood in the Missile Control Center. He exhibited no surprise at her presence. The dead bodies of sailors lay in the background. Lana figured he was sending his signal through the submerged submarine’s radio buoy.
“I know what you’re doing, but you’re too late.” Lisko held up the captain’s key. “We’re ready to fire. You can watch, but that’s all you can do.”
Galina gripped Lana’s arm, whispering, “That man is crazy.”
“You know him?” Lana asked.
“No, but look at him.”
Lisko was joined by two other sailors on the screen for the first time, though Lana knew the previously unseen collaborators had to have been present when Antarctica was bombed.
Lisko turned around and slipped the captain’s key into the console. He smiled as he grabbed a microphone. “Ready the Tactical Firing Trigger.” Then he cranked the key he’d just inserted. Lana knew the officer to whom he’d just spoken must be using a second key in another part of the sub so they could unleash the lethal madness once again. Two keys in separate locations — in combination with other security precautions — had once been thought sufficient to stop an unauthorized missile attack. But that had been in the era before cyberwar.
One more missile on Antarctica and even Noah’s mythical flood would look like a kitchen spill. Twenty-three more would mean death to billions.
“How much time?” Galina asked.
“Thirty seconds,” Lana replied. “Maybe.”
Emma lay in the blackness of the coffin trying to control her growing panic. Unlike Tanesa, Emma’s intense fear didn’t stem directly from a lack of space, but a distinct lack of air. Her worst fears of using up the oxygen in the tight confines were coming true, sending her anxiety levels rocketing upwards. She was terrified of an asthma attack, and knew that her fear alone could trigger one.
Don’t panic! But she was screaming that warning to herself.
She attempted every trick she’d ever used to try to calm down but they all involved breathing, so they didn’t work when breathing brought so little relief. A big gulp of air led only to the next big gulp… and the next.
In biology last year they’d studied expiration and learned that as carbon dioxide became more concentrated, it made you drowsy. And if you didn’t get oxygen at that point, it would put you in a coma and kill you.
With the last of her strength, Emma tried to beat on the lid, but even to her ears, just inches from the impact, the sound was muffled, weak, not enough to raise the nearly dead.
“He’s got to have used a Trojan to get in there,” Lana said, her mind racing wildly for a way to stop Lisko as he sat in the Missile Control Center. Trojans were malware that were supposed to look like regular programs, but were designed to take out specific targets, including cyberdefenses. In her less frenetic moments, Lana thought of them as a cyberwarrior’s smart bombs. But if she or Galina could possibly find a Trojan that Oleg had inserted into his computer as a defense mechanism — and Galina was still working at a furious pace — they could activate its destructive potential, perhaps on a key part of the sub’s system.
Galina was down to her last thumb drive. She must have read a thousand lines of code in the last minute because she’d been scrolling without stopping. “Maybe this,” Galina said, highlighting a line and shooting it over to Lana.
Lana used it, knowing at this point she was relying completely on code Galina had culled from countless lines under enormous pressure.
But she got you into his computer that way.
In moments, Lana entered the line onto Oleg’s screen and activated the code. It felt like a shot in the dark. Then they waited to see if they’d collaborated successfully. What else could they do if the code didn’t work?
The answer came to Lana in a flash: a kinetic attack. She messaged Holmes about the thick data stream the hacker had established with the submarine. If the NSA could detect it — and with extraordinary speed — they might stop the launch in time.
As Lisko began to speak into the microphone again, the lights on the submarine went out. Blackness filled Oleg’s screen where Lisko’s head had been visible a blink before.
“What does that mean?” Galina sounded as surprised as Lana felt. Had the sub’s missile launched? Or was the vessel dead in the water?
Prince’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He figured he finally had Lana Elkins on the line. Bitch better be ready to do some business, use her clout to get his soldiers out of the federal pen down in Middleburg, Virginia.
But it wasn’t Lana Elkins. It was freaking Don Fedder. What the fuck? Talk about prison… Prince hadn’t heard from him in years. “I can’t talk to you, man. I’m waiting for an important call, so adios amigo.” Last time he saw Fedder they’d shared a few cervezas down on a beach in Colombia as white as the coke Prince sold by the truckload. Fedder hadn’t been a competitor; he’d moved pot—tons of it.