The First Seal is Broken – part III

An Isolated Incident I, II and III The First Seal is Broken I, II

The story, and uproar, had died down after a couple of weeks. That was one advantage to the ravening maw of the media – without more events there was less coverage. The investigation had made no progress and the political pressure, unlike the media attention, was growing. Public titillation and interest had waned with the mass media, though social media hadn’t slowed down as much. The FBI’s digital tracing was loading up with tracks of ‘product’ (stories, discussions, comments) and the development of communities of interest that were hoped to lead to persons of interest. Though none had as yet.

Frank Regan had gone ‘home’ to Boston for a weekend break and to catch up with the family. Naturally his assignment had been the subject of some discussion, these were ‘their’ people and the tribal instinct didn’t abate. Frank, his father and grandfather sat in the den with a bottle of Jameson and a small fire in the woodstove.

The older men asked Frank what he could tell them about what was going on. Frank talked about the lack of clues, no surveillance, no detectable communications…

His father asked “where are you looking”?

Frank answered “every corner of the internet that can be swept, every text message, e-mail, and every other electronic communication means – and nothing”.

Frank’s grandfather asked “You ever hear about the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight?”

“Yeah, the keys aren’t there but it’s the only place he can see”.

“Well, you aren’t going to find them if you keep looking where they aren’t, are you?”.

“So where do you suggest we look?”

The old man shrugged, “yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t have a good answer”.

The conversation dropped into silence. That was broken by Frank’s cell phone ringing. A new round of attacks, spread across the country were happening – uncertain how many, but three known so far. Frank knew he’d need to be in the office as soon as he could get back to DC, so his weekend away was over early. As he was driving in New Jersey, his phone rang again – he answered it on the hands-free in the car. It was his father.

“Your grandfather and I were talking, about how you were stuck on their communications. I remembered something, it might be useful. You ever hear of Millenium Challenge?”

“What the hell is that, and why does it matter?”

“It was a big DoD war-game, supposed to prove out a bunch of ideas about technology and war – but here’s the key point. The guy who ran the red team (the enemy) was a retired Marine general and while he didn’t actually break them, he sure didn’t play by the rules. He didn’t use the means of communication that could be detected or disrupted – instead of electronics, he used couriers – he didn’t turn on radars so they could be destroyed by radar-homing missiles, and he ran swarm attacks at the start of the game that wiped out the U.S. fleet on station.  Everything he did wasn’t what the genius planners anticipated, and all of the great tech they had wanted to prove out was rendered useless.  If it had been a real fight, the war was lost before it began.  All of the supposedly great technology had failed to provide the superiority expected.  Not that DoD learned from that, they just hit the reset button and continued as if nothing had happened.”

“Okay, so what exactly are you telling me?”

“Two things: first, you are relying on technology to solve the problem, and second, you’re dealing with someone who knows that technology and your own operations well enough to know how to avoid you seeing them.”

As that sank in, Frank nearly drifted off the road. That snapped enough of his attention back to driving while he muttered “jesus” and then told his dad that he understood, and hung up. The next three hours driving would be a battle between focusing on the road and thinking about who could have that kind of knowledge.