All
Systems Down
by
Sam Boush
Genre:
Cyber Thriller
24
hours.
That's all it takes.
A new kind of war has begun.
Pak
Han-Yong's day is here. An elite hacker with Unit 101 of the North
Korean military, he's labored for years to launch Project
Sonnimne:
a series of deadly viruses set to cripple Imperialist
infrastructure.
And
with one tap of his keyboard, the rewards are immediate.
Brendan
Chogan isn't a hero. He's an out-of-work parking enforcement officer
and one-time collegiate boxer trying to support his wife and
children. But now there's a foreign enemy on the shore, a blackout
that extends across America, and an unseen menace targeting
him.
Brendan
will do whatever it takes to keep his family safe.
In
the wake of the cyber attacks, electrical grids fail, satellites
crash to earth, and the destinies of nine strangers
collide.
Strangers
whose survival depends upon each other's skills and courage.
For
fans of Tom Clancy, ALL SYSTEMS DOWN is a riveting cyber war thriller
which presents a threat so credible you'll be questioning reality.
Goodreads
* Amazon
Chapter
1
Sirens
blared across all twenty-five decks of the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Lieutenant
Kelly Seong grabbed her flight suit from the wall and slipped inside, practiced
hands buckling the straps of her Aramid coveralls. “A goddamned drill at 4
a.m.,” she mumbled as she attached her flotation vest and checked her oxygen
mask and survival gear. Not that she really needed to. The equipment hadn’t
changed since her last flight five hours earlier. But protocol kept her alive.
Red
lights flashed, and the boing, boing, boing of the alarm ricocheted
along the corridors of the ship. Sailors ran to stations. A petty officer
shouted orders to passing swabbies. Despite the cacophony, men and women
hurried through the upper decks with purpose. General Quarters drills occurred
frequently.
Every Jack and Jill on the Ford supercarrier had an assigned
station and knew where to be.
Well, nearly everyone.
Kelly exhaled sharply. Where the fuck was Orion?
“You
seen Beetlejuice?” she asked a cadre of her squadron mates. The men shrugged
and raced on, a playing-card spade peeking out from the back of the flight
helmets they carried under their arms. They were Black Aces. First to fight,
first to strike.
Orion,
as far as she was concerned, hadn’t yet earned the ace on his helmet. He was
what they called a “nugget,” a first-tour aviator fresh from naval flight
training. Technically, he was her weapons systems officer. The wizzo. In the
cockpit of their Super Hornet, he engaged air-to-air or ground targets and
operated the laser- and satellite-guided ordnance. In a “turn and burn,” Kelly
would make the turn while he dropped the burn. She would if he were any good.
Unfortunately, he was as green as a grasshopper’s right nut. And here she was,
expected to mentor the bastard.
She
checked his bunk then the hangar deck. Alarms blasted too loudly to call for
him, and the rush of hundreds of sailors made it hard to spot his little
cornbread head. The other airmen of the Black Aces beat feet to the ready room.
GQ brought the supercarrier alive, even in the dead of night.
Not
that the ship ever really slept; 24 hours a day, the “Jerry” hummed with
activity. At any given time, two-thirds of the four thousand souls aboard would
be awake, working on the floating fortress currently cruising two hundred miles
east of Honolulu.
Kelly
beelined past the flight lockers toward the ready room where the rest of the
squadron would already be waiting. If her wizzo couldn’t get his ass in the
saddle he’d suffer the consequence. Over her career, she’d seen better pilots
than him wash out.
She
peered in the ready room. Not there. Then back to the lockers.
“Jesus,
what time is it?” Orion Bether shouted above the din, in that whiny voice that
set Kelly’s fist to balling up all on its own.
He
slinked over to his locker and was now making a hash of getting into his flight
suit. Just like a fucking nugget.
She
punched him in the shoulder. “Beetlejuice!” she shouted. “Where the fuck you
been? You look like shit, by the way.”
“Ouch!”
He groaned, massaging his shoulder.
Like
Kelly, Orion had been pulling twelve-hour shifts, though that was no excuse for
the bags under his eyes and his generally un-shipshape appearance. His sandy
blonde hair, short and squared, still managed to stand up like a sailor’s happy
sock after a six-month deployment. He dropped one of his Nomex flight gloves,
revealing, most glaringly, that his flight suit hadn’t been fastened at the
crotch.
“It’s
balls thirty. And for fuck’s sake, if you’re going to button salute a boat
goat, at least get her to buckle you up at the end.”
Orion
reached down and cursed, fumbling to pull the strap closed while juggling his
helmet and flotation vest. Kelly didn’t wait for him, leading the way to the
ready room. He hopped after her.
“She’s
no boat goat, Moonshot. She’s a 2-10-2 if I’ve ever seen one.” Then he laughed
that obnoxious cackle of his. A girl who was just a two on a scale of ten when
on land could easily be a ten out on deployment, where the ratio of men to
women was forty-to-one. When they got back to land she’d be a two again. Few
Navy men were below fucking an ugly girl at sea.
“Listen
up!” The call spun them around in salute. Mike Montez stepped into the room
right behind Kelly and Orion. The squadron commander was a short guy, black
hair, usually calm as a pickle in a salt bath. But in the light of the hangar
deck, his dark cheeks were flushed, eyes excited. “Black Aces,” he said, “this
is not a drill. I’m going to repeat myself. This is not a drill.”
“Sir,”
Kelly said. “The call on-speakers sounds a lot like a training exercise.”
During a true GQ, loudspeakers would call all hands to man their battle
stations. Tonight, there’d been nothing but sirens.
“Chrissakes,
Lieutenant Seong. I know what I know, and we’re buns to our guns. Maybe they’re
having some technical difficulties up on the island.”
That
drew some laughter. The Admiral sat up in the island—the control tower rising
above the flight deck—and wherever he went, clusterfucks seemed to follow.
“I
don’t know much, but here’s what I got,” Montez continued, sweeping his gaze
across the eighteen pilots in front of him. He bit his lip and smiled, like he
was about to give them some good news. “Ten minutes ago, at zero-four-hundred
hours, our radar sweeps caught more blips than your collective wives have
boyfriends. And they’re moving in on our position. It might be nothing. Might
be seagulls or flying peckers. But, sonafabitch, it looks a lot like bogies. I
don’t have more details than that. So get in your birds and beat wings west.
Stand by for orders when you’re airborne.” He clapped his hands. “To
stations!”
Halle-fuckin’-lujah.
It wasn’t a drill. Maybe she’d actually get to see some real action, for the
first time in years.
“Lieutenant
Seong. Lieutenant Bether.” Commander Montez stopped Kelly as she advanced on
the exit. “Hold up.” While the other pilots, flight engineers, and wizzos ran
out of the ready room, Kelly and Orion pressed in close to their commander.
“Brush and Wildfire are coming off a training run. Their bird is hitting the
trap in two minutes. She’s got live ordnance and half a tank of fuel, at most.
I want you two to take her up the minute she lands.”
“A
hot switch?” Orion asked.
“Yes,
Lieutenant. Now get your asses up and aft.” He tore out of the ready room,
leaving them alone.
“I’ve
never done a hot switch,” Orion confessed.
“Then
this is on-the-job training.” Kelly helped Orion into his flotation vest, then
handed him his helmet. “How fast can you run, sailor?” The question was
rhetorical, and she didn’t wait for him to answer before dashing up to the
hangar deck. Orion fell in, close behind.
Kelly
had performed hot switches many times and didn’t feel any nerves. It meant that
she and Orion would have just three minutes to switch out with the landing
flight team. They’d forgo the normal preflight checks and would have less fuel.
The bonus was they’d be lead jet in this foray—and Kelly loved to lead.
Sprinting
through a narrow corridor on the hangar deck, she located the ladder to the
flight deck. A sailor, running the opposite direction, clipped her with his
shoulder. Dozens more men pushed past. The siren wobbled and shifted. A
grinding noise now.
Why
had the general quarters alarm changed? It didn’t matter. With both hands she
grabbed the rails and ascended to the surface of the supercarrier, into the
October night.
The
flight deck of the Jerry shone through the darkness, illuminated with a
thousand bulbs. A vibrant city. A red-light district at night. Officers and
mates hopped over the lighted pathways. Adrenaline seeped through her, pulsing
in her veins. She hoped, as she slowed to a safer speed, that the fight would
last long enough for her to get in a few good hits.
Starboard,
the six-story island dominated the landscape, the most prominent structure on
an otherwise flat surface. From there, the air boss and mini boss would direct
the dozens of F-35C Lightning II and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft that
shuttled across the deck, ready to catapult into the sky. She scooted past the
island, around munitions in large, white bins and over cables, following
markings to where she’d rendezvous with her own multirole fighter jet.
Sweat
dripped down her face, though whether from the heat or anticipation she
couldn’t tell. Even two days before Halloween, the North Pacific sizzled. In a
lot of ways, it felt like her hometown, only hotter. And muggier.
What
time is it back in Duluth, anyway? It had to be early afternoon. Mom would
be working the phones to sell combines and tillage equipment to small-acreage
Georgia farmers. Pop would be out buying sweet plum candy for the
trick-or-treaters.
Kelly
forced away thoughts of home. She needed to focus.
More
sailors swarmed the deck of the supercarrier, like a thousand bees in a
shook-up Coke can, zipping to stations. Every man had a purpose, his role
indicated by his shirt. Maintenance guys, hook runners, and catapult crews wore
a forest green vest over a somewhat lighter green shirt. Chock and chains wore
blue. Purples supplied fuel. Red shirts loaded bombs. But to Kelly, they were
all faceless nobodies that existed for the sole purpose of getting her bird
ready to fly.
There
was only one thing Kelly liked about the Navy. Flying.
Everything
else about this service branch sucked. Two weeks out of port and the food
started to taste like preservatives and powder. The racks stunk. The showers
were so small the crew called them “rain lockers.” And then there were the
shower bunnies—clusters of hair, grime, and semen that stopped up the drains.
But
flight was life.
Nothing
on earth compared to soaring at eleven-thousand feet and watching the target
approach in an instant. Flights were long, and the payoff was short. But
nothing made her feel alive like rolling in over the bad guys at Mach One,
pushing that button, and watching ordnance erupt below.
Of
course, it had been years since her last active duty combat. The world was
quiet. Too quiet. No wars or even military conflicts. Maybe America had just
fucking won. Maybe there would never be another world war. Her gut yawed at the
thought.
Up
ahead she saw her carrier-capable Super Hornet on approach to land, fourteen
feet above the deck, tailhook out to snag the arresting wire—the trap.
The
Super Hornet landed flawlessly, catching the trap and accelerating. The pilot
brought it to full power at the end, just in case the wire broke and he had to
pull up to get off the carrier. It had been known to happen, and this kind of
accident killed men on the flight deck as well as in the plane.
Fortunately,
the wire held and the jet jolted to a stop.
Kelly
didn’t have time to celebrate the other pilot’s safe night landing. The flight
crew ran to the plane and hauled out the boarding ladder from a jigsaw-shaped
door on the side of the fuselage. As soon as the pilot and his weapons systems
officer climbed down, Orion scampered up the ladder. Kelly followed.
Buckling
into her seat, calmness filled her. Everything was routine. She punched in her
coordinates and performed a quick inspection of her flight controls.
“Beetlejuice, systems check?”
His
reply came in through her helmet. “Systems a-go.”
“LSO,
this is Bravo-60 on a hot switch. Gimme a CAT. Over.”
The
landing signal officer, a white shirt, waved a pair of traffic wands,
incandescent red, signaling her toward the bow. “Bravo-60, you’re on CAT Two.
First in line. Over.”
There
were four “CATs”—short for catapult—on the Jerry, like the starting blocks at a
track meet. Once fired, they could launch a thirty-three-ton aircraft off the
deck in seconds. And when the Jerry really got going, she’d be launching birds
off all four CATs at once, sending a death-dealing warhawk into the sky every
twenty seconds.
Kelly
obeyed the white shirt’s signals across the deck until she rolled to a stop at
CAT Two. The magnet clicked below. The white shirt indicated the go-ahead with
his traffic wands. The air boss shouted a confirmation. Her catapult was
cleared for takeoff.
“Bravo-60
is ready,” she said through her radio.
“Full shhhszzshhsshhshszzzshzz,”
a reply came from the tower.
“Tower,
I’m getting a lot of static on your end. Repeat the command.”
“They
acknowledged ‘full tension,’” Orion said over her shoulder.
It
went against protocol not to have heard the command herself, but she could see
the white shirt flagging her forward. And hadn’t her squadron commander
required haste? Fucking Navy. Pay a billion dollars for a plane,
can’t maintain a working radio.
“Whatever,”
she said. “Full tension is go. Military power is go.”
A
yellow shirt, the plane director, touched his helmet, nodding to the shooter.
And with that, the shooter fired the CAT, launching Kelly’s Super Hornet
forward.
The
G-forces of the catapult slammed her back in her seat, head and neck straining
to stay upright. The combat fighter broke free down the stroke, accelerating to
more than 160 mph in mere seconds. The CAT threw her jet off the flight deck
and over the open sea, in starlit darkness, ascending, and the punch of
acceleration knocked into Kelly like a body blow, as it did every time.
Violent. Loud. The catapult could launch her a thousand times over the ocean
and she’d never get used to it.
She
pulled the aircraft away from the water and brought the wheels up into the
fuselage. They soared, airborne.
“Beetlejuice,
I’m going to take this bird west. Radio the carrier to see if you can get us
specifics on these radar blips.”
“10-4.”
The
darkness outside stretched into eternity, ocean and horizon melding together,
both black and indistinct. At night, she always tried to take it slow and let
her flight tools do their job. They called it “flying the instruments.” She
called it common sense.
Down
in the void of the Pacific, her strike group would be at battle stations. The
guided missile cruiser and two destroyers would be circling the Jerry,
protecting her. A nuclear sub patrolled the waters a quarter-mile below the
surface. Even the combat support ship provided a defensive flank for the
supercarrier, their flagship.
Kelly
swiveled back toward the vertical red and horizontal blue lights of the optical
landing system that pilots called “the ball.” Beyond, white lights dotted the
deck, illuminating the runway. Otherwise the carrier sat in obscurity. Quiet.
“Beetlejuice,
do you have a copy from the island?”
“Negative,
Moonshot. They’re radio silent over there.”
“Try
the emergency channel.”
She
could hear him clicking through stations. “Nah-nothing.” His voice caught like
a deer mouse in a snap trap. “Our, uh, our radio must be out. With the fucking
hot switch, we didn’t catch it.”
“That’s
crazy. It was working a minute ago. I’m gonna give it a try.”
Kelly
moved her dial to the emergency channel. “Bravo-Bravo, this is Bravo-60. Come
in.” On the other end, the shush of static. “Come in, Bravo-Bravo.”
Nothing.
“Try
one of the other birds,” Orion suggested.
“Who’s
in the air?”
Orion
craned his head around. “I don’t have a visual on any others. Do you see any on
radar?”
Kelly
tapped her cockpit radar display. “I’m not picking up any birds. We’re on lead.
They should be right behind us.”
That
pissed her off. It was just like the fucking Navy to send her out in the darkness
against an unknown threat without anyone on her six for backup. “I’m circling
back. We’re no good to anyone with a tits-up radio.” A hard turn of the stick
brought the plane windward and back to the east.
“Jesus,
Moonshot. We need orders to head back, right?”
“You
wanna radio in for new orders?”
“Radio’s
busted.”
She
rolled her eyes and continued to follow the protocol that prioritized the
safety of the plane and its pilots. They flew back toward the supercarrier.
As
they neared, Kelly fixed her gaze on the flight deck, a half-mile away but
still clearly visible. Bathed in moonlight. Beautiful.
One
by one, the lights on the USS Gerald R. Ford blinked out. First the
red lights of the landing strip. Then the white deck lights. Then the optical
landing system, the ball. All out. Gone in less than a second.
Kelly
gasped. Sweat collected on her palms and between her fingers. This was
impossible. In the eight years she’d flown for the goddamned US Navy she’d been
in some hairy situations, seen some real crazy things. But no one she’d ever
flown with had ever seen the lights of their carrier turn off. Wasn’t supposed
to fucking happen.
“Beetlejuice,
are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Motherfuuhh
… we’re gonna crash.” His voice held an edge of panic.
“Anything
from the island?” Blood beat at the back of her eyes. “Anything from the Jerry
at all?”
He
didn’t reply at first. Then a prolonged exhale of “Craaaap.”
The
only light on deck came from a lone F-35 shooting forward on the catapult, down
the stroke. She could tell even from here it wouldn’t be fast enough. The CAT
hadn’t been correctly calibrated. Or it had lost power.
In
slow motion, the catapult propelled the jet until it flipped lifelessly off the
bow and toward the sea. At the final second, the pilot ejected—an explosion
from the cockpit that sent him vertically into the sky. Then the last light
winked out as the jet disappeared into the Pacific.
With
her world now illuminated only by moonlight, Kelly never saw the pilot land.
Never even saw the splash of the F-35 hitting the water.
But
it didn’t matter. A fellow pilot losing a plane into the ocean didn’t matter.
The blackout on the Jerry didn’t matter. At least not compared to what was
happening inside her plane.
“Was
that Tater’s bird?” Orion said over her shoulder.
Kelly
didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at her cockpit controls. The systems on the
Super Hornet were failing. The Navigation Forward Looking Infrared—the advanced
sensors that let her see—dropped offline. The Doppler ground mapping radar followed.
Then the target designator that delivered laser-guided bombs.
Even
those system failures paled in comparison to the reading from the fuel
gauge. Where the hell are we going to land? Her hand shook on the
stick.
And
the dial moved steadily toward empty.
Sam
Boush is a novelist and award-winning journalist.
He
has worked as a wildland firefighter, journalist, and owner of a
mid-sized marketing agency. Though he's lived in France and Spain,
his heart belongs to Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife,
Tehra, two wonderful children, and a messy cat that keeps them from
owning anything nice.
He
is a member of the Center for Internet Security, International
Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, and Cloud
Security Alliance.
ALL
SYSTEMS DOWN is his first novel, with more to come.
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the tour HERE
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