EXFIL Anthony Patton (short novels in english .TXT) 📖

a country like China could cripple our command and control systems or shut down our critical infrastructure, it would make us vulnerable to a conventional or even nuclear attack on a scale never before imagined. This included shutting down our banks and stock markets, or stopping the flow of air and sea transportation. Our way of life was under attack.

Our social virtues of trust and openness sometimes made it more difficult to defend ourselves from those who would do us harm. The computer geeks we had always teased in high school now had the power to bring us to our knees and make us rethink modern warfare.

The operations floor of Cyber Command was in a state of controlled chaos, with red lights flashing on a diagram of the Pentagon computer network on the wall.

The U.S. military was famous for its doctrine and tactics, but we were also famous for improvising and throwing out the rulebook when necessary, with the understanding that you couldn’t operate effectively without doctrine unless you had first mastered the doctrine.

This drove foreign militaries mad, because they could never predict what we would do, just as they couldn’t understand how our short and ambiguous Constitution could have sustained our republic for over 200 years. Our traditional values and high degree of social trust made this possible, at least for those who could see beyond the noise in the mainstream media.

Brigadier General Schmidt commanded the phone and gave out orders like a maestro, gesturing purposefully and reading reports without missing a beat. They had a detailed checklist and everyone knew what to do, but by now, the team was operating on a higher level of intuition, from triaging the relevant reports to manage time and resources to keeping the chain of command advised to make decisions. Every few minutes, one of the red lights would turn green, and the offensive would continue, one yard at a time, one first down at a time, one touchdown at a time. I passed by when he got a moment of relief.

“Sticking it to Charlie?” I asked.

“One phone call at a time,” Schmidt said, removing his reading glasses, and sipping his coffee. “I’m too old for this shit.”

“What’s the damage?” I asked.

He exhaled and shrugged. “Another hit on the Pentagon computers. Not fatal, but I’m not sure how much longer we can hold them off. It’s definitely the Chinese.”

I gestured to Lieutenant General Lewis’s office, which overlooked the watch floor.

“Keep America safe.”

Lewis was busy on the phone and waved me in. Cable news had live updates from the Pentagon as the sun was rising, with interviews of soldiers on the scene and speculation from pundits. I found myself entranced again by the Laocoön statue as I sat and waited.

Why did we find horror and death so gripping or sublime?

Even if I were to get promoted to brigadier general, I had many years ahead of me for political games before rising to a position like Lewis’s. The funny thing about promotions was that ambitious people couldn’t help but strive for them. At the same time, we feared promotion would remove us from doing what we loved the most, only to learn that we never wanted to go back after getting promoted. I had fun as a captain but would never want to be one again.

Another factor was the knowledge that if you didn’t get promoted, someone else would, and it was never fun to salute colleagues or call them “sir” or “ma’am.” In my case, I loved intelligence. A promotion to brigadier general would virtually guarantee that I would never run overseas intelligence operations again, but as I watched Lewis talking on the phone, I couldn’t help but imagine that I would one day look back on my military attaché days with nostalgia.

“How does it look, General?” I asked.

“Our NIPRNet and SIPRNet security patches are holding,” he said, “but the Chinese are getting more sophisticated with each attack, making it look as though they’re coming from Russia, Iran, or North Korea.” He joined me on the couch.

“How can I help?” I asked.

“Sorry for calling you in so early, but I wanted you to see this firsthand so you’d know what’s at stake.”

I nodded to show he had my full support, but was ready to change the subject.

“I can’t believe CIA and FBI think Tom is working for the Chinese,” I said, hoping to get him on my side. “Chen agreed to work for us.”

Lewis looked at me with a calm nod. “You mean you coerced him to work for us.” He raised a finger to keep me silent. “I understand that we sometimes have to take off the gloves, but keep in mind that they can play the same game. How would any of us respond to seeing compromising photographs? From what I hear, coerced sources usually aren’t reliable.” He managed a comforting smile. “We can’t turn this success into a failure. We can’t let CIA and FBI say they told us so. Help Captain Howard get this case on the right track.”

I glanced at the statue and nodded.

Lewis was right, but one of the biggest challenges in the intelligence business was keeping the generals and policymakers focused on our products, not on how we collected them, which sometimes meant withholding important information. Ignorance was bliss, but phony moralism ran the risk of diminishing the quality of the intelligence reports they demanded every day. Only a fool wouldn’t order the torture of someone with information about a nuclear attack.

“We’re under attack,” Lewis continued, “but I fear our worst enemies might be within, given the frequency of these attacks. Is it possible that Lieutenant Colonel Li is running an American source, someone with access to our computers?”

“If he is, General, I’ll find the son of a bitch.” One of the challenges of living in a free society like America, with deeply held values like private property, free speech, and freedom of the press, was that we often naïvely assumed that our fellow Americans would