The Cyclops Initiative Read Online Free PDF

leaving this room until we have a plan for moving forward. I need all of you working together—­every agency, every organization, from this moment, is going to make this their top priority. What we’re talking about here is escalation. This is terrorism of a kind we haven’t seen before and we’re not going to let it get out of control. The world needs to know we won’t allow this to happen again. First things first, though. We need to know who’s responsible.” He turned and looked at one of the civilians—­one Chapel didn’t recognize. “CIA. What groups do we think are even capable of something like this? Hijacking a Predator—­could al-­Qaeda do that? IS? The Khorasan Group?”
    The civilian grimaced. “They’ve never done anything like it before. They stick to low-­tech methods, mostly. But we can’t rule them out. A Predator is like any other machine. It’s designed to accept input from a remote user and it doesn’t care who that user is as long as they’re broadcasting on the right frequency, with the right encryption. It’s not smart enough to ask why it’s being told to do something.”
    â€œBut our encryption is the best in the world,” the SecDef insisted. Norton looked to another man halfway across the room. “NSA. Am I wrong in believing that?”
    â€œNo,” the NSA director replied, though he looked a little dubious. “Our stuff should be uncrackable. But we can’t rule out the possibility that some very smart hacker in, say, Indonesia or Taiwan discovered a new exploit or just got lucky or—­”
    Norton shook his head. “I’m hearing a lot of qualifiers. A lot of ‘we can’t rule this out.’ I want real answers. Have we picked up any chatter about this? Anybody talking about planning an operation with a Predator drone, anyone discussing a cargo container full of radioactive waste?”
    â€œNothing,” the NSA man said. “The terror groups have been quiet lately. Most of what we hear is about money problems and recruiting. Nothing like this.”
    â€œAt least that’s definite,” Norton replied. “Okay. Let’s hear from the military. Who did this Predator belong to?”
    â€œThat would be us,” an air force general said. “It was one of our fleet. I’ve taken the liberty of tracking it through the system, and I can have a document on your desk tomorrow showing every individual who’s ever flown it, maintained it, or inspected it. I can tell you right now that it’s been sitting in a hangar for the last year, under armed guard the whole time. It hadn’t been modified or repaired for nine months. Nobody physically altered it.”
    â€œWhat was it doing in the air?”
    The general looked like he very much wanted to shrug. But he must have known this wasn’t the time to admit he didn’t know something. “It was signed out last night, by official e-­mail. Fueled up and launched just after midnight, eastern time.”
    â€œBy whom? Who signed it out?” Norton demanded.
    â€œThe CIA,” the general replied.
    That started some real shouting. ­People visibly moved away from the CIA director, who kept waving his hands in the air demanding quiet, insisting he had a response.
    â€œI guarantee you we did not sign out that drone,” he shouted over the babble. “Whatever paperwork the air force got was a forgery. Drone operations have to cross my desk, and I saw nothing like this. Whoever these terrorists are, they have access to CIA watermarks, that’s all, they have—­”
    â€œSir,” a navy admiral said, raising his voice, “if we can’t figure out who it was, why don’t we just hit them all—­punitive raids, keep up the pressure until one of the terrorist groups cracks—­”
    â€œThat’s going to kill our reputation