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  In the hallway a middle-aged female stepped out of the ladies’ room. “Morning, Trudy,” Bob said.

  Connolly noticed a deer-in-the-headlights look from the woman. “Oh, hi, Bob. You aren’t here to see me, are you?”

  “You’re off the hook today. We’re dropping in unannounced on Nik.”

  “He’ll be overjoyed,” she deadpanned.

  Trudy continued on down the corridor, and soon Griggs and Connolly were keyed through a locked door. They entered a large office space with several high cubicles, and they followed the security officer through the maze for a moment, finally arriving at a large work space in a darkened corner of the room. The desk was overflowing with papers and stacked with towers of books.

  The security officer said, “Dr. Melanopolis, you have visitors.”

  A heavyset man in his forties with thick glasses and a thin, razor-tailored beard rimming his lower face swiveled around in his chair, which creaked and groaned under his considerable weight.

  Nik Melanopolis was still spinning his chair around when he saw Griggs, and he continued the motion, bringing him 360 degrees, where he again faced his monitors.

  With his back again to the new arrivals, he said, “Not today, Bob. I’m slammed.”

  Griggs sat down in one of the two chairs next to Melanopolis’s desk. Connolly moved along behind and took the other seat, but he did so self-consciously in light of what the man had just said.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you’re having a hell of a day,” Griggs said cheerily.

  “Dude, my day started last night at ten, after a full day before it.”

  “Let me guess. You’ve been working on a certain sex tape out of Tokyo?”

  The heavyset computer sciences PhD nodded while he worked. “Yep. Just about have it wrapped up after twelve hours nonstop, and I don’t have time for a chat at the moment.”

  “Even if we buy you lunch?”

  Melanopolis stopped tapping at his keyboard, but he didn’t look away from his screen. “Who’s the Marine?”

  “Nik, I want you to meet my friend and boss, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly. Don’t mind his Marine-ness; he’s actually a halfway decent guy.”

  Melanopolis didn’t look back. In a bored voice the NSA man said, “Semper fi, Devil Dog.” It was delivered with less than 1 percent of the zeal most Marines used when delivering this standard greeting—so much less that Connolly couldn’t tell if the man was being a smart-ass.

  “Semper fi,” Connolly repeated. “Bob tells me you’re a computer analyst.”

  Bob rolled his eyes at this, and Nik chuckled. “And Jesus was a carpenter.” He sat back in his chair, and it squeaked again.

  Connolly said, “Right. Look, we don’t want to take much of your time, but Bob thought you might be able to help us with something.”

  Now Melanopolis sighed dramatically. “It’s something about General Newman and Admiral Kelley, I take it?”

  Nods from both military men.

  “Lunch is on you guys?”

  More nods.

  The doctor hefted a shoulder bag and said, “Okay, I have to pick up my laptop from my car on the way, and I’m starving, so we’re getting something tasty.” He pointed to Connolly. “Not one of those Semper fit green salads you Marines eat. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The three men piled into Connolly’s truck and drove to a nearby Chinese buffet, where Melanopolis and Griggs stacked foam containers high with fried rice, General Tso’s chicken, spring rolls, and other side items, while Connolly chose a bowl of mixed greens and white rice. With their food packed they drove to Sawmill Creek Park, a nearby cluster of baseball diamonds and tennis courts that was all but deserted on this hot day. The men found a secluded picnic table and they laid out their meals.

  During the twenty minutes between leaving Dr. Nik’s office and sitting down to eat, Connolly had attempted to get Melanopolis to talk about the video and any conclusions he might have come to about how it came to be broadcast to the world. But the NSA staffer seemed intent on talking to Griggs about a litany of gripes and moans regarding his job, his benefits, his cholesterol, and some sort of a beef he had with his condo’s homeowners’ association.

  Connolly was beginning to worry he and Griggs had wasted the day on this trip. But once the big man started eating, he turned his attention to the reason he’d been invited out. “Okay, about the video. You came to the right place, because I spent the entire night tracking the hack.”

  “So . . . it was a hack?” Griggs asked.

  “No question about it. You want the short version or the long version?”

  Connolly said, “The short version, as long as it comes with a conclusion.”

  Melanopolis took a swig from his can of iced tea. “It does. Your culprit is China.” He held up a forkful of food. “That cost you a load of their general’s chicken, so I hope you’re satisfied.”

  Connolly shook his head. “I’m going to need more than that. How do you know it was China?”

  “I can show you better than tell you.” Melanopolis took a bite from a spring roll, then put it down, wiped his hands off on his pants, and pulled his laptop from his bag. He opened it and typed on the screen. Soon a map opened with China in the center.

  “This is mainland China. We track their Internet traffic constantly.” He typed again, and crisscrossed tracks of red lines appeared on the map. He pulled out another spring roll and used it to point to the screen. “We call this an Internet trace-routing diagram. A depiction of how computers link up and who they talk to. It’s like a real-time road map. Typically in China all public Internet is routed through the government hubs. That’s because China controls all public access. They look to see what people are looking at, spying on their own people at all times. Trying to get into their computers and minds to ensure they are still thinking like good Communists.” He finished his spring roll in a single bite.

  “Understood,” said Connolly.

  Melanopolis moved the map to the east, until the continental U.S. appeared. A pair of larger star patterns of lines was clustered where the Chinese Internet intersected with the American Internet.

  “What’s all this heavy traffic here?” Griggs asked.

  Melanopolis said, “Internet porn.”

  “Whoa.”

  “And if you are a cyber warrior, where do you hide the really important traffic?” Melanopolis began zooming in on the huge number of lines leading from China to U.S. porn servers. A few of the red lines branched out, away from the main pack. “This is nontraditional traffic from U.S. servers. We’re not supposed to look at it because it’s inside the U.S., outgoing to China. It represents less than one-tenth of a percent of all the traffic.”

  “So, what is it?” Griggs asked.

  “It’s probably the porn king checking his profits and changing his content to lure new people into his web.” He clicked a few more buttons. “But this is net traffic on the same server from three months ago.” The map centered in on the U.S. Twelve very sharp lines led from the porn sites to various points around the continental U.S., and then two led back out to the Pacific.

  Connolly said, “I’m not getting what we’re looking at.”

  Melanopolis zoomed in on one line originating from California. “This IP address is a base near Los Angeles. It’s tough to tell, because your Navy and Marine Corps computer whizzes do some basic rerouting tricks to try to prevent this kind of thing from happening, but watch a minute.” He typed again and the red line bounced around the States for a while, then over to Hawaii. On a base near Honolulu it ricocheted around three more times, then on to one specific building. Melanopolis punched the military base street number and building number up, and the headquarters of U.S. Pacific Command appeared with a picture of the front of the building.

  Griggs said, “Let me guess. That’s General Newman’s o
ffice, isn’t it?”

  “You got it.”

  “So . . . they bugged his laptop somehow?”

  “Better than that,” Melanopolis said. “They set his personal laptop up as a mini audio and video recorder. Every night they spied on him, I guess, and then one night they got lucky when he decided to bump uglies with the admiral in a hotel room in Tokyo. The laptop was open and the cam was pointed at the bed.”

  “Oops,” muttered Connolly.

  Melanopolis said, “The Chicoms probably had the video for months, then just put it out yesterday after the assassination in Taiwan. They spread it around to topple our command authority to prevent us, or at least to slow us, from responding to this new crisis with China.”

  But Connolly seemed less convinced. “You figured all this out in twelve hours?”

  Melanopolis ate a forkful of fried rice. Nonchalantly he said, “It’s what I do.”

  “Any chance you’re being misled?”

  Now the heavyset bearded man sat up straighter at the picnic table. “Misled?”

  “There’s no way someone might be trying to get you to think it was China doing this, when the real culprit is someone else?”

  Griggs jumped in now. “Who? And for what possible reason?”

  “It’s just . . . it’s just that it’s pretty convenient that China did this, and we busted them in less than a day. And the assassination in Taiwan was perpetrated by the Taiwanese government, where the rifle that was left at the scene was traced back to them in just a few days.”

  Melanopolis said, “I don’t see your point, Colonel. Two different actors. Two different countries. How are they related?”

  Connolly shrugged. “Something happens to implicate China, and something happens to implicate Taiwan. It makes each side look at the other with even more distrust. Add to that the fact that the U.S. military is degraded in the region, and it all just seems fishy to me.”

  “Wow.” Melanopolis turned to Griggs. “This guy sees conspiracies everywhere, doesn’t he?”

  “Sorry, Nik. He just doesn’t realize how thorough you are in your work.”

  Connolly shook his head. “No, I get it. You’re the Jesus of computer analysts.”

  Now Connolly was the one being sarcastic, but he quickly reached out his hand. “I’m sorry, Doc. I’m just a suspicious guy. I appreciate all your time and the intel.”

  “Sure,” Melanopolis said, his own voice a little unsure now.

  * * *

  • • •

  As soon as they dropped Nik Melanopolis off at the NSA facility, Griggs turned to Connolly. “I don’t get why you don’t buy into the fact China did this to hurt the U.S. in the Pacific.”

  “Never said I didn’t. I just don’t like the timing of this.”

  “You think some other party is trying to foment a war?”

  “Just saying we have to keep open minds. There could be someone else driving the bus.”

  Griggs turned to Connolly as they drove south toward the Pentagon. Before he could speak, Connolly’s phone rang.

  “Connolly.”

  An Air Force colonel from the Office of Strategy, Plans & Policy was on the line. “The president just announced he’s sending Carrier Strike Group Five to the waters off Taiwan.”

  Connolly knew that Carrier Strike Group Five, with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) at its nucleus, was stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, so it would arrive in theater in just days.

  “Things are heating up,” Connolly said.

  “That’s right. We need you back here.”

  “We’re on the way.”

  Connolly hung up the phone a moment later and muttered softly, more to himself than to Griggs, “If this is a trap, then I think we just started walking up to it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE KREMLIN

  MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  26 AUGUST

  Colonel General Boris Lazar felt like a stranger in Moscow. He was born here, had graduated from Frunze Military Academy here, and had served multiple postings earlier in his long and storied career at the Ministry of Defense building overlooking the Moskva River. But the vast majority of his forty-one years of service had been far away from the Russian capital; in the Caucasus and in East Germany, in Ukraine and in Belarus, in Afghanistan and in Siberia, and when he came back here, he always felt like he drew stares.

  And he was drawing stares now. He stood at the interior security entrance at Kutafya Tower inside the gates of the Kremlin, and in front of him a half dozen armed guards in full dress uniforms gawked at him in a way that made him think he had a damn horn sticking out of his forehead.

  But an instant before he asked the men what they were looking at, a colonel approached and saluted, apologized for the delay, and escorted the general out into the warm August morning toward the Troitskaya Tower.

  “What’s wrong with your men, Colonel?”

  “I apologize, sir. They see a lot of celebrities at the VIP visitor entrance. Politicians, entertainers, and the like. But you have a special place in the hearts of the troops. Surely you are aware.”

  Lazar just sniffed. He’d been more of a celebrity twenty years earlier, before some of those pimple-faced boys were born, but he wasn’t going to mention this to the colonel and risk appearing like he gave a shit about his fame or his legacy.

  They walked on.

  Lazar had no idea why he’d been asked here today. As commanding general of the Southern Military District, he lived and worked more than eight thousand kilometers from Moscow, in Khabarovsk, so he knew this was no social invitation.

  The only thing in the world Lazar cared about was his army, and he worried today would have nothing to do with it. If he was being summoned to Moscow to receive military orders, those orders would be handed to him in the Ministry of Defense building just down the river, so he didn’t expect today to revolve around anything he gave a damn about. The meeting would likely be with some minister of President Rivkin, it would be about politics, and Lazar would have to force himself to endure it before he could get back to his tanks and his men, and wash off the stench of the suits at the Kremlin.

  He was led into an ornate conference room and immediately saw there was one other person already inside. The stranger faced away, admiring a massive painting on the wall depicting the Battle of Vyborg Bay, a 1790 naval engagement during the Russo-Swedish War.

  But even without seeing the man’s face, Lazar knew what he did for a living. He was wearing the exact same uniform Lazar himself wore. He was an army general, and where Lazar was short, thick, and barrel-chested, this man was tall and lean.

  Just as the man turned toward him, Lazar realized who he was, and his confusion about today’s meeting only increased.

  “Eduard?”

  Colonel General Eduard Sabaneyev looked at Lazar, blinked hard as if in surprise, and moved quickly around the table with his hand extended. “Boris Petrovitch! Wonderful to see you.”

  Sabaneyev was commander of the Western Operational Strategic Command, based in St. Petersburg.

  “What are you doing here?” Lazar asked.

  “I know nothing,” Sabaneyev admitted as they shook hands. “Strange, isn’t it? Stranger, still, seeing you. They brought you all the way from Khabarovsk for this?”

  “Yes. Whatever this is.”

  Sabaneyev was twelve years younger than Lazar, but the men were equal in rank. They’d known each other for all of the younger officer’s military career, and Sabaneyev had been a protégé of Lazar’s much of that time. They greeted each other warmly.

  “It’s been years,” Sabaneyev said.

  “Too long, for certain, Eduard.”

  The door to the conference room opened suddenly and both generals were surprised again, because they found themselves facing a small man with piercing, intense eyes and a confide
nt manner.

  It was the Russian president, Anatoly Rivkin.

  Rivkin shook both men’s hands with a wide smile, asked after their families, and then paused. Lazar thought he was going to invite them to sit down at the conference table, but instead he remained standing while he spoke.

  Rivkin said, “I know you’ve been watching the news in the Pacific. The United States is turning its attention to the Far East. China says it will invade Taiwan in late December if they reelect their leader, and since there is no other viable candidate, it appears a conflict will happen. The United States is trying to get China to back down by sending a carrier battle group into the area, and we are hearing talk of more movements of American military power to come.

  “This was planned and forecast and it affords us a unique opportunity, right now, but only if we are willing to do everything within our power to exploit it.”

  The generals exchanged a glance and then returned their attention to the president.

  Rivkin said, “It’s been a difficult time for our nation these past few years. With sanctions from the West, with the illegal business dealings by America and its partners, the rodina has suffered greatly.

  “But, Generals, I have wonderful news for you both. The decision has been made to fight back against this aggression, and the two of you have been chosen to lead Russia in its quest to retain its proper place in the world.”

  Sabaneyev nodded appreciatively. “What is our objective, sir?”

  Rivkin smiled and put a hand on a shoulder of each man. “You will get your orders presently. I only wanted to drop by first to urge you gentlemen forward and to wish you great fortune.”

  Again the generals shared a glance. This time Lazar spoke: “I will read the orders with great interest, Mr. President.”

  Rivkin eyed the men gravely now. “What will be asked of all of us will require incredible fortitude. Ruthlessness. This is difficult, even unpalatable work for civilized men, I know. But the moment we accept that our survival, the survival of our families, the survival of our people, is at stake . . . only then can we do all that must be done.”