Excerpt: 'Breakpoint,' by Richard Clarke

ByABC News via logo
January 16, 2007, 4:34 PM

Jan. 17, 2007 — -- If anyone is fit to write a government thriller, it's Richard Clarke, the veteran counterterrorism official and author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."

"Breakpoint" is an edge-of-your-seat adventure set in the year 2012. Clarke's story focuses on a computer software program that can outsmart the human brain. Designer children mingle with government plots in a tale that is gripping from beginning to end.

For any reader in need of a nonstop thrill, look no further than "Breakpoint."

0730 Eastern Standard TimeOff the New Jersey Coast

The yellow flame leaped into the air where the ocean hit the land.It was followed by a boiling, churning blue-black cloud, climbingup around the now orange-red fireball. The cloud kept growing,forming into a pedestal shape above the water's edge."Atlantic City, Atlantic City," the pilot said calmly into his chinmicrophone, "Coast Guard forty-one ten. We see what looks like agas pipeline explosion at our ten o'clock position about fifteen milesahead. Estimate position of flare as Pine Harbor. Over."From the flight deck of USCG 4110, an old twin-engine Casa212 maritime patrol aircraft flying over the New Jersey coast, theplume had stood out against the dull-gray Sunday-morning sky."Roger, forty-one ten. Proceed Pine Harbor for a visual and report,"the radio cackled. "We'll check with Ops at headquarters tosee if they know what happened."

Lt. Anne Brucelli had been out of the Academy for five years andloved flying, loved being part of the Coast Guard and theDepartment of Homeland Security.

She was looking forward to her new assignment in the verticalliftoff Osprey aircraft, but for now she was happy just to be in commandof an old Casa. It got her up in the air, over the sea, and lookingat things from a perspective that most people never had thechance to enjoy. Her copilot today was an Academy classmate, Lt.Chuck Appleton. He flipped down her visor and tapped it for telescopicmode. "Jesus, Anne, there's another flare way out there atour two o'clock," Appleton called. "That's over by Banning Beach."From the low cruising altitude of five thousand feet above the coast,the visual horizon was almost eighty miles. The second flameseemed to be coming from somewhere on western Long Island.Before they could report the second flare, they heard a cracklingand then: "Coast Guard forty-one ten, this is Atlantic City, cancelthat. Proceed south instead to Miller's Hook and perform low-levelsurveillance on white blockhouse at the end of point. Copy that?And, Anne, this one came to us from Department Ops, HomelandSecurity."

Brucelli pulled the bright red striped aircraft into a tight bank toreverse its direction of motion, reaching the waters off Miller'sHook in four minutes. Appleton looked again through the visorthat showed him the image from the aircraft's nose-mounted cameras.He zoomed in on the end of the point of land in front ofthem. "Got a visual on a small white building, no windows. Got afence around it. White truck next to it." He moved his head slowlyto the right and examined the road on the Hook. "Two bikers drivinginland pretty fast; otherwise it's pretty empty out there." Theaircraft continued its rapid descent toward the narrow promontory.The pilot flicked the toggle to report in. "Atlantic City, CoastGuard fortyHoly s---! Hang on, Chuck." A yellow-red tonguefilled the cockpit windshield with flame, as she pulled the plane intoa steep left bank. A klaxon sounded loudly and then a recorded femalevoice replaced it over the speaker, saying calmly, "Left enginefire. Fire in the left engine requires your attention."

Brucelli hit the big red fire-suppression button above her headand struggled to right the spinning aircraft. As she did so, Lt.Appleton spoke clearly into his chin mike, "Mayday, Mayday. CoastGuard forty-one ten. Going down half mile off Miller's Hook, requestSAR support." The problem, he knew, was that the unmannedaerial vehicle that would normally have been on patrol over theJersey shore was down for maintenance. They were the search-andrescuepatrol that morning and they were going to crash.

0745 ESTHorizon Communications Network Operations Center (NOC)New Creighton, New Jersey

Less than fifty miles to the northwest, under a rolling hill of manicuredgrass, Constance Murphy was getting the handover briefbreakpoint from the midnight shift director at the Horizon CommunicationsNetwork Operations Center. From the command balcony, Constancelooked out at a two-story-high map of the United States,criss-crossed in yellow lines, connecting blinking green dots. Theycalled it the Big Board. Below, on the floor of the NOC, the nightshiftengineers were handing over their seats to their daytime replacements.The blinking lights represented twenty percent of theworld's internet traffic, which was routinely carried on the fiberopticcables of Horizon Communications. Running in pipes andconduits under wheat fields, along rail beds, over bridges, and up citystreets, twenty-three thousand miles of Horizon Communications'specialized glass fiber carried the photons that routers would convertinto electrons and then into billions of Internet Protocol packetsof ones and zeroes: e-mail and web browsers, buy and sell orders,travel reservations, pornography, and inventory updates.

As she stood sipping her coffee, Murphy scanned the teams onthe floor below and half listened to Joshua Schwartz, the midnightwatch director, say five or six ways that everything was routine.Then something in her peripheral vision caught her attention andshe looked up to see a light just south of New York City switch fromgreen to red. Then another light, east of the city this time, blinkedred. She put her hand on Schwartz's arm to stop him from talkingand nodded toward the upper right of the Big Board."What?" Schwartz said, furrowing his brow and squinting,"That's all three of our Atlantic cables.Why?" He quickly sat downat his computer console, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

"New Creighton is getting no reading from the Pine Harbor,Pleasant Bay, or Banning Beach routers. Syn-Ack messages arebeing black holed. Nada. How could all three go down at once?There are two rollover, backup routers at every landing."Constance Murphy stood over Schwartz and looked at hisscreen, "That says we got nothing going to or from Europe.""That's because we don't, Connie.We just had all nine routersat our beachheads simultaneously decide to shit the bed. HorizonCommunications is cut off from Europe!" Schwartz shook his head."We'll have to go hat in hand to Infotel and ETT and ask if we canredirect our load onto their fiber until we figure out what the f---is going on."

Murphy picked up a green phone on top of which a big light wasblinking furiously. "Horizon Communications, Murphy." As shelistened to the voice at the other end, she stared at Schwartz andher eyes grew. "Hang on one second," she said into the phone andthen leaned forward. She grabbed a long, flexible microphone thatwas connected to speakers on the floor below. "This is Murphy.Night shift, do not depart. Repeat, do not depart. Day shift, activatethe Emergency Engineering Notification Plan." Then shelooked back at Schwartz. "I got ETT on the green phone. We ain'tswitching load to them. All their beachhead routers are deader thana doornail, too."

They looked at each other, their expressions changing fromdumbfounded to horrified. Finally, Schwartz stood up. "You call aVP. I'll get onto the National Communications System."

0805 ESTAboard the MV Atlantic Star, Two Miles Off Squirrel Island,Booth Bay Harbor, Maine

"It's too cold to be diving, no?" the captain asked in Russian."Not with these," the diver replied, slapping his side. "New suit.Latest technology from Russian Navy labs. Never feel the cold.Besides, I'm just there to guide the drone. It does all the work,hauls the cargo down to the bottom, sends us back the pictures."The MV Atlantic Star was registered in Panama and flying itsflag. In smaller letters under the ship's name on the stern, it said"Colón." The captain and crew were Lithuanian, and paid by thecompany that owned the ship, in Antigua. For this trip, they werealso being paid by someone else who had also hired the sixUkrainians who had boarded in Newark. The ship's instructionswere to stop in a few places off the coast and let the divers placetheir experiments on the ocean floor, using the drones that hadbeen in a container on-loaded in Hamburg. For this odd businessand for total secrecy about it, each crewman got $50,000 and thecaptain got a million in cash. So maybe they were really the RussianNavy, the captain thought, as he watched the divers readying themselves.Maybe it was placing listening devices on the ocean flooragain to find the American submarines. It was smart to useUkrainians, in case they were caught. Moscow could deny. Moscowwas good at denying.

The diver went over the side. Despite the new Russian gear, hefelt the cold right away, piercing to his bones. He tried to think ofhow heated his body had been two nights ago, with the Americanhooker. She was not like the women he had hired in Europe. Shewas athletic, muscular. And yet she had beautiful fruit aromas, onein her hair, one around her full breastsHis daydream was terminatedby the voice in his ear. "Do you see the sled, Gregor? Is itstable?" He looked through the new underwater binoculars and sawshades of green and black on the ocean floor beneath him."I see it fine. It's sitting right next to the cable. Sitting flat. Thebig rock next to it will protect it from shifting in deep swells.Nothing fell off the sled on the way down. I can even see the littlelight blinking."

His whole body involuntarily shivered. Then he heard the voicefrom the surface again in his ear. "Good. Then come up.We needto deal with the crew."

0945 ESTHomeland Security Department, National Communications SystemArlington, Virginia

Two miles west of the Lincoln Memorial, in one of the many highrisesin the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington,Virginia, a quicklycalled meeting started in the Board Room of the NationalCommunications System. The NCS had been established after thebreakup of Ma Bell in the 1970s. It was a place where all the phoneand internet companies could come together, without worryingabout illegal-collusion charges, to share information necessary tokeep America's communication systems running in support of thePentagon and, of course, the consumers. It was one of the fewplaces where federal bureaucrats cohabitated with competing vendorcompanies.

Around the table, both industry and government representativeswere comparing notes, balancing coffee mugs, and trying to activatethe flat screens that were discreetly placed into the mahoganyand-cherry conference table.

"Okay, okay, let's get going," Fred Calder, the director of NCS,said loudly and seated himself at the head of the high-tech table.Around the table, the talking stopped as people sat down behindsigns that read "Defense Department," "Infotel," "FBI," "Pacific-Westel," "Homeland Security," "ETT," and a host of other threeletteragencies and corporations. "Jake Horowitz is the director ofinfrastructure protection at NCS. Jake, give us what we know.""Here's what we have so far. Between 0730 and 0745 this morningexplosions took place at seven of the ten Atlantic beachheads,the shacks near the beaches where the transoceanic fiber-optic cablescome ashore from Europe and go into routers and switches.About the same time, three of the Pacific crossing beachheads inWashington State were hit by explosions and ceased to function."The room grew quieter.

"New Jersey State Police have preliminary reports that suggestat least one explosion was a truck bomb. No one was injured inany of the explosions, because these places are usually not staffed.A Coast Guard plane saw one of the explosions and then wentmissing.

"Although three of the ten Atlantic beachheads are still functioning,they are the older ones and together carry about tenpercent of the load. State Police in Massachusetts and theMounties in Nova Scotia are setting up defenses at the remainingthree beachheads. Teams from Horizon Communications, Infotel,PacificWestel, and others have begun to shift the load to thePacific fiber, to get to Europe the other way round, but we gotserious capacity problems and we are dropping packets all overthe place.