Terminal Run

In the darkened back booth of a Serocaba, Brazil, seafood restaurant, emaciated computer felon Pedro Meringe ate a plate heaped with food while Victor Krivak briefed him and Frederick Wang on the operation to find the Snare.

“We need to get the Snare to a rendezvous point so we can board her,” Krivak said. “Since we have the codes to the U.S. Navy communications and tactical data system, technically right now we could give her orders that would bring her to the surface where we want her to be. But there’s a problem we’ve never told our Chinese client, and that is that while we’ve been successful at monitoring the American communications, we’ve yet to prove that we can route our own orders through their command-and-control systems, and we haven’t proved that an order we insert will be followed, and finally, we haven’t proved an order that we originate will be undetected by the remainder of the system, with a failure giving our penetration away. Do you follow me?”

Pedro nodded, but Wang shook his head. “If you have the keys to the system,” Wang said, “why do you think you need to tiptoe around it?”

Pedro snickered and smirked. He understood, Krivak thought.

“Dr. Wang, your expertise on the carbon computer system has blinded you to the realities of the silicon computer protocols,” Krivak said with a smile. “You see, we are inside the

U.S. command network, and we can hear everything happening around us. We can report on all of it to Admiral Chu. We’re like a cat burglar hiding under the kitchen table listening to the family’s conversations. But let’s say we want to give an order to an electronic entity on the network — the Snare for example. If we do that, it would be like the cat burglar calling the dog from his hiding place. The family at the table would hear and react. Soon the burglar is in prison. Yes, we can give an order to the Snare calling her to surface near Bermuda so we can board her. But immediately the Pentagon would know, because our message would send out ripples in the lake of the system. Our message would be improperly formatted — the burglar’s voice — and the system would be alerted.”

“So what?” Wang asked. “We board the Snare and the Americans scratch their heads about the message.”

“No,” Pedro said. “The information warfare defense systems might kick in. The entire system could go into a default shutdown. The Pentagon has a contingency for network penetration. If they think they’re penetrated, the entire network would self-destruct.”

“But then their communications would be off-line,” Wang said. “They wouldn’t do a self-destruct. It would be too easy to beat them in a war if that were the case — you’d just have to penetrate their network and it would kill itself.”

“The point is,” Krivak interrupted, “that we would be detected. And once we’re detected, our ownership of the network, tenuous at best, would be over. Pedro here has one vital job, Dr. Wang, and that is to give us the ability to use the network using its own language in a way that it will not detect us. He’s going to make the cat burglar speak in the voice of the head of the household. So when he calls the family dog, the people at the table don’t notice.”

“Here, Snare,” Pedro joked. “Come here, girl.”

“Once you get in, Pedro, you need to find the Snare, get her position. Then you’ll upload a rendezvous order to go to the nearest land with an airport. Once that’s done, we’ll get out to the Snare and take her over. Then, if we need anything,

Pedro’s our communications link, our translator to the network.”

“Will he be doing any other operations for Admiral Chu? Disinformation to the fleet, or giving other orders?”

“Heavens no,” Krivak said. “This is a delicate situation, Dr. Wang.”

“Just call me Wang.”

“We can’t be detected meddling with the defense systems. We can only use the network sparingly, for what we absolutely need. Snare is it. If we are detected, the network will shut down, the Americans will know we’ve penetrated, and they could trace our manipulation of the system back to us. They could follow the wire right to our operation here. So, Pedro, give us a list of what you will require, and we will get it for you so you can get to work.”

Pedro Meringe sat at the console surrounded by computer displays. He had been working through the night and was dead tired, a spilled bottle of amphetamines by his keyboard. He had been trying to break into the U.S. Navy Computer and Telecommunications Command network while going around the Naval Security Group Command’s electronically mobile firewall. Krivak stood looking over at his desk after the young computer expert had sent Amorn with word that Pedro was in.

“You did it? You can talk to the Snare without the system becoming alerted?”