CyberStorm Part 1

CyberStorm.

by Matthew Mather.

Foreword by the author:.

I would like to thank the many people who lent me their time and insight into helping make this a realistic a scenario of a full-scale cyber event: ---.

Richard Marshall, frmr Global Director of Cybersecurity, US DHS and Information a.s.surance to NSA.

Curtis Levinson, United States Cyber Defense Liaison to NATO.

Major Alex Aquino, Head of Cyber Operations, USAF WADS.

Erik Montcalm.

Director of Security Technologies, SecureOps.

And I have added a Special Thanks section at the end of the novel for all my beta readers, listing everyone individually.

Prologue.

IN THE DIM light I could see five people huddled together in the bare metal box, sitting on soiled sheets and clothing. One of them threw me a blanket, and I took it, mumbling my thanks while I covered myself, s.h.i.+vering.

Can I trust them? I didn't have much choice. Freezing cold and wet, I'd die out there on my own. This small box was as close to salvation as I had anymore. How can I fight back when I can barely survive? I had to get back into the mountains.

"How long have they been here?" I asked again, my teeth chattering.

Silence.

I was about to give up when one of the occupants sitting in the corner away from me, a kid with blond hair and a baseball cap, replied, "A few weeks."

"What happened?"

"Cyberstorm, that's what happened," said a kid with a mohawk sitting next to him. He had about a dozen piercings, and that was just what I could see. "Where have you been?"

"New York."

A pause. "That was pretty intense up there, huh?"

I nodded-all the horror summed up in one tiny gesture.

"Where's our military?" I asked. "How could they let us get invaded?"

"I'm glad they're here," replied Mohawk.

"You're glad?" I yelled. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?"

Blondie sat upright.

"Hey, man, calm the h.e.l.l down. We don't want any trouble, okay?"

Shaking my head, I pulled the blanket up around me.

These kids are the future? No wonder all this had happened. Just weeks ago, America had seemed indestructible, but now...

Somehow, we had failed.

All that remained important was to find my family, to keep them safe.

Sighing, I closed my eyes and turned away from the others, pressing my face against the cold metal, listening to the rumble that pulled me deeper into the night.

November 25.

Chelsea, New York City.

"WE LIVE IN amazing times!"

I carefully studied the piece of charred flesh that I held up in front of me.

"Amazingly dangerous times," laughed Chuck, my next-door neighbor and best friend, taking a swig from his beer. "Nice work. That's probably still frozen on the inside."

Shaking my head, I put the burnt sausage down at the edge of the grill.

It was an unusually warm week for Thanksgiving, so I'd decided to throw a last-minute barbecue party on the rooftop terrace of our converted warehouse complex. Most of our neighbors were still here for the holiday, so my two-year-old son, Luke, and I had spent the morning going door-to-door, inviting them all up for our grill-out.

"Don't insult my cooking, and don't get started on all that."

It was a spectacular end of the day, with the setting sun s.h.i.+ning warmly. From our seven-story perch, beautiful late-autumn views of red and gold trees stretched up and down the Hudson, backed by street noise and city skyline. New York still held a vibrancy that excited me, even after two years of living there. I looked around at the crowd of our neighbors. We'd gathered a group of thirty people for our little party, and I was secretly proud so many had come.

"So you don't think it's possible a solar flare could wreck the world?" said Chuck, raising his eyebrows.

His Southern tw.a.n.g made even disasters sound like song lyrics, and kicking back on a sun lounger in ripped jeans and a Ramones T-s.h.i.+rt, he looked like a rock star. His hazel eyes twinkled playfully from beneath a mop of unkempt blond hair, and two-day-old stubble completed the look.

"That's exactly what I don't want you to get started on."

"I'm just saying-"

"What you're saying always points to disaster." I rolled my eyes. "We've just lived through one of the most amazing transitions in human history."

Poking the sausages on the grill, I generated a new round of searing flames that leapt up.

Tony, one of our doormen, was standing next to me, still dressed in his work clothes and tie, but at least with his suit jacket off. Heavyset, with dark Italian features, he was as Brooklyn as the Dodgers of old, and his accent never let you forget it. Tony was the kind of guy that grew on you immediately, always ready to help, and never without a smile and a joke to go along with it.

Luke loved him too. From the moment he could walk, every time we went downstairs, Luke would go rocketing out of the elevator as soon as it pinged to ground level and run to the front desk to greet Tony with squeals of glee. The feelings were mutual.

Looking up from my sausages, I directly addressed Chuck. "Over a billion people have been born in the past decade-that's like a new New York City each month for the last ten years-the fastest population growth that has ever been, or ever will be."

I waved my tongs around impressively in the air to make my point.

"Sure there've been a few wars here and there, but nothing major. I think that says something about the human race." I paused for effect. "We're maturing."

"That billion new people are still mostly sucking baby formula," Chuck pointed out. "Wait fifteen years until they all want cars and was.h.i.+ng machines. Then we'll see how mature we are."

"World poverty in real-dollar, per-capita terms is half what it was forty years ago-"

"And yet one in six Americans goes hungry, and the majority are malnourished," interrupted Chuck.

"And for the first time in human history, just a year or two ago," I continued, "most humans live in cities rather than the countryside."

"You say that like it's a good thing."

Tony looked at me and Chuck and shook his head, taking a swig of his beer and smiling. This was a well-worn sparring match he'd watched many times before.

"It is a good thing," I pointed out. "Urban environments are way more energy efficient than rural ones."

"Except urban is not an environment," argued Chuck. "The environment is an environment. You talk as if cities were these self-supporting bubbles, and they're not. They're entirely dependent on the natural world around them."

I pointed my tongs at him. "That same world we're saving by living together in cities."

Returning my attention to the barbecue, I saw that the fat dripping off the sausages had ignited into flames again and was searing my chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"I'm just saying that when it all comes undone-"

"When a terrorist launches a nuke over the US? An EMP pulse?" I asked as I rearranged my meats. "Or a weaponized superbug let loose in the wild?"

"Any of those," nodded Chuck.

"You know what you should be worried about?"

"What?"

I didn't need to give him anything new to be obsessed with, but I couldn't help myself. I'd just finished reading an article about it.

"Cyberattack."

Looking over his shoulder, I could see that my wife's parents had arrived, and my stomach knotted up. What I wouldn't have given to have a simple relations.h.i.+p with my in-laws, but then again, that was a boat most people were rowing with me.

"Ever heard of something called Night Dragon?" I asked.

Chuck and Tony shrugged.

"A few years back they started finding foreign computer code embedded in power plant control systems all over the country," I explained. "They traced command and control back to office buildings in China. This stuff was specifically designed to knock out the US energy grid."

Chuck looked at me, unimpressed. "So? What happened?"

"Nothing happened, yet, but your att.i.tude is the problem. It's everyone's att.i.tude. If Chinese nationals were running around the country attaching packs of C-4 explosives to transmission towers, the public would be crying b.l.o.o.d.y murder and declaring war."

"Used to be that they dropped bombs to knock out factories, but now just click a mouse?"

"Exactly."

"See?" said Chuck, smiling. "There's a prepper in you after all."

I laughed. "Answer me this-who's in charge of the internet, this thing that our lives depend on?"

"I don't know, the government?"

"The answer is that n.o.body is in charge of it. Everyone runs it, but n.o.body's in charge."

"Now that sounds like a recipe for disaster."

"You guys are freaking me out," said Tony, finally finding some s.p.a.ce to add something. "Can't we talk about baseball?"

"Don't listen to us," I laughed. "We're just fooling around. You're going to live a long life, my friend. Trust me."

"I do trust you, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l."

"Tony, please, could you call me Mike?"

"Yes, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l," he laughed back. "Maybe you'd better let me take over the grilling?" The flames on the grill roared up again, and he recoiled in mock fear. "You got more important stuff to do, no?"

"And we'd like to eat some food that's not burnt to a crisp," added Chuck with a smile.

"Yeah, sure," I replied without enthusiasm, nodding and handing the tongs over to Tony. I was hiding at the grill, trying to delay the inevitable.

I glanced over my shoulder to see my wife, Lauren, looking toward me. She laughed as she talked to someone, brus.h.i.+ng back her long, auburn hair with a sweep of one hand.

With high cheekbones and flas.h.i.+ng green eyes, Lauren captured attention whenever she entered a room. She had the refined, strong features of her family, a sharp nose and chin that accentuated her slim figure. Even after being with her for five years, just looking at her from across a patio could still take my breath away-I still couldn't believe that she chose me.