twincougars
Deceased
ATTACK
By
Twincougars
Copyright (c) 2005 by Twincougars. All rights reserved.
PREFACE
Although some of the places named are real, many of the characters and many, but not all, of the events are fictional. Any resemblance of any minor character to a real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. However, true names are used for major political figures. There are two main story lines that are intertwined. The first is an autobiographical account of the character, Thomas Duncan, during the period leading up to the attack upon the United States in 2005, and its aftermath through February of 2008. The second is a third person account of local and world events that have a background effect on Thomas Duncan and his community.
CHAPTER ONE
From 1996 to 2005 I lived in a small city called Colville, located in Stevens County, Washington. I was a computer geek and a wannabe survivalist. It disturbed me how the liberal media and corrupt politicians seemed to be working for the destruction of our Republic. There didn’t seem much I could do about it-it was as though everyone had already made up their mind to either go along with the "new world order" crowd, on keep their patriotic views to themselves or a few close friends.
I worked for a small engineering firm that did some subcontracting, making printed circuits modules for radio transceivers. There weren’t any really decent engineering jobs in the county, and as I hated cities, I didn’t look for work in Spokane, the nearest metro area. My field (from previous work back east) was electronic warfare, which included radar, secure radio communications, and electronic countermeasures. Try and find THAT around here! Industry wise, Stevens County is mainly a logging and cattle farming area. Rather than being in on cutting edge technology, I had to be content with routine documentation, testing and quality control work, and a rare visit to a customer in another state.
I said I was a computer geek. That developed out of boredom. I liked to think of myself as a very creative person, and if I couldn’t get that satisfaction from my job, then I had to find it another way in computers.
My interest in survivalism probably started when I was a kid, and used to spend most of my free time in the woods. Now, in my mid fifties and married with children, my survivalist activities consisted of reading magazines like American Survival, Backwoods and Home, Soldier of Fortune, The Resister, and perusing catalogs like those from Phoenix Systems, Delta Publications, and of course, that old standby, Paladin Press.
With all the information available from books, videos, and the Internet, I considered myself well prepared as far as book learning went. What I lacked was practical experience.
In 1999, the big “Millennium Bug” scare happened. Many of us bought gasoline powered generators, stockpiled food and water, bought land in the country, and prepared for the end of the world as we knew it. The two-digit date design flaw in computers was expected to create international havoc and bring modern society to its knees. As you know by now, this didn’t happen in 2000, but reincarnated in a different form in early 2002, thanks to the widespread use of an improperly designed computer operating system, Windows XP. But, I am getting ahead of myself.
It was in April of 2000 that several events came together to bring about a major change in my life. The first occurred when I purchased one of those small dish antennas and receivers for satellite TV reception. Unknown to me at the time, the receiver manufacturer had in its employ one William Yeager as an engineer, and a production worker named Sandy Louis. Bill Yeager was assigned to a team to design and develop a top-secret military satellite communications receiver employing a newly invented encryption algorithm. The project was not with the United States military, but was funded directly by the United Nations.
Bill had a working prototype, but like many engineers, he was not very good with documenting his work. He considered his intentional oversights as job security. He also was rather disorganized, and his desk and workbench were constantly cluttered with spare parts, circuit boards from various projects, and sticky papers with reminder notes, often several years old. Piles and boxes of catalogs and technical magazines litteres the floor of his office. The odor of old pizza and cigarette smoke pervaded his space. He smoked heavily, and would leave burning cigarettes upended on his desk whild he talked on the phone. Often they would burn down to the desk and leave little black rings. He didn't use ash trays because they would need to be emptied; this was much more convienant. Co-workers would call his standing burning cigaretts guided missles. Anyone else would have been fired for such behavior, but Bill was the company technology guru, and was virtually untouchable.
Tensions in the company had been growing for several weeks, due to some layoffs of minority workers. One Friday afternoon, after paychecks were handed out, everyone on the production floor walked off the job in protest. Bill had been seen frequently talking with one of the workers, and management believed that he had instigated the walkout. In a knee-jerk reaction, Bill was fired that same afternoon.
On Monday morning management had a meeting to figure out how they were going to keep up production to meet the contract goals. They had already phoned a contract engineering firm to have several technicians and assembly people sent over right away. Known as jobbers or job shoppers, these people get very high hourly rates paid by their contracting firm, but no fringe benefits, and work is typically three months to a year at most. The first action item of management was to survey the production floor to determine if any sabotage or theft had taken place. What they found was astonishing. In the drawers of many of the production workers they found between thirty and fifty completed printed circuit boards. Since each worker had a daily quota, the efficient workers didn’t want their less efficient friends to look bad, so they hoarded the extra circuit boards in their drawers. The worker would save them for some day when she might be under the weather and not feel like working very hard.
Since Bill Yeager had been fired Friday, maybe he had a few boards that he was testing. A jobber technician was sent to check his office, and yes, there was one of the boards on his bench. As you have probably guessed, this was the secret prototype, and was put in with the other standard boards and fabricated into satellite receivers. The receiver I purchased happened by chance to contain this board. A few months after the walkout, the company went bankrupt and the UN contract was turned over to another firm, in Nigeria. The same circuit design was used as the one Bill had been working on, but it didn’t have his experimental improvements.
While I was setting up the dish system, I brought a small portable TV outside with me to the dish antenna I had mounted on a post in the back yard. A long cable connected it to the receiver inside. This way I could better aim the dish for the maximum signal strength. As I pivoted the antenna about to get it aimed in the general direction for the satellite, a queer thing happened. The receiver locked onto a different satellite, and instead of the usual tuning screen that was supposed to appear (there should be no programming until I had the receiver working and signed up for the programming channel package), I saw what seemed to be a room with several military types sitting around a table in a meeting.
The next life-changing event occurred about a month later. I was to take a trip to a defense contractor out on Long Island to investigate a quality control problem they were having that involved our transceiver modules. While in a motel in Huntington, NY, I decided to take my rental car for a little side trip to my alma matter, the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The campus had grown into a city since I had been there in the early, muddy, always under construction days of the ‘60s. Some things never change, though. There was still an overwhelming population of graduate students from mainland China, Taiwan, and India. As I walked past the Kelly dormitories, I could smell curry cooking. Wandering about the halls of the Applied Analysis Department, I spotted a somewhat familiar figure walking toward me. “Tom, is that you?” he haled.
“For gosh sakes, Tom Chen. What are you doing here. I thought you would be back in Taiwan,” I replied. Tom Chen had been my roommate back in 1967. It was a standing joke that we were both named Tom, and when someone would phone for Tom, it seemed whoever answered would always hand the phone to the wrong Tom. His real name was Yaun-tong Chen, but he preferred Tom.
“After I got my PhD, I stayed on to teach. What brings you here?”
“Oh, I was on Long Island on business, and just thought I’d take a ride over here to see how the place had changed,” I answered.
We talked briefly and then walked over to the student center for coffee and to talk some more. We were each trying to fathom each other’s political positions and philosophy to see if either of us had changed since our good old Stony Brook days. We soon found that the bonds of trust were still in place. We could really talk, or perhaps a better word would be, unload. Tom was still a Taiwan citizen, but also loved his adopted country here. As we all knew, Taiwan had been trying to gain independence from mainland China, and the United Stated had been paying lip service to supporting on one hand the one-China policy of China, and on the other hand, the defense of Taiwan against the Chinese. Tom feared for his family if bloodshed should break out. However, the research he was doing here, when he wasn’t teaching, was important to him as a scientist, regardless of politics. He expected to be here another year before it would be complete, and then he would return to Taiwan.
Tom leaned forward and spoke softly to me. “Do you know what the grad students from China are doing? They are using their privileged accounts on the Cray computer to decode encrypted control codes for military satellites.”
“Sounds like a misuse of computer resources, to say the least,” I replied. How are they getting away with it?”
“Chang OK’d it. He pulls some heavy strings.” Chang was the Nobel Prize winner in Physics that the president of the university had wooed to bring more prestige to the growing campus. He helped bring in more grants, more alumni funding, and in general, helped build the Stony Brook empire to what it is today. No one dared to ruffle his feathers. “Of course it all looks legit. It’s done under a research grant for developing new algorithms for storm prediction from semi random haze particle motion.”
“Everyone’s been talking about China being a threat to the United States. This seems to confirm it,” I said.
Tom shrugged. “Maybe. Or, maybe that’s what we are expected to think. There’s probably a lot more to this.”
Some people came over and sat down at our table, so the subject quickly got changed. Tom and I exchanged email addresses and confirmed that we each had PGP encryption. We agreed to keep in touch and exchange information using multiple encryption, a process where a message is encrypted, then that encrypted message is further encrypted, and so on to the equivalent of 4096 bit encryption. All the computers in the world would have to work on a single message for many years before they could decode it.
Toward the end of April, 2000, I received a mysterious email. I had put up an internet website dedicated to patriotic themes, links to various militia unit web pages and Constitution study pages, and my site had my email address on it. Whoever sent me the email that day had visited my web site, and apparently checked me out through other avenues. In any event, he expressed an interest to meet with me.
My first thought was that he must be a fed. But, curiosity got the better of me, and I figured that if I went into the meeting on that assumption, and was careful what I said, things would be OK. We arranged to meet at the Colville Public Library, in the book stacks where the old magazine issues are kept. There wouldn’t be many people back there to notice us. When the day arrived, I waited on the front steps of the library to check out who was coming in, hoping to spot my contact before he would meet me inside. Maybe I could see what kind of vehicle he was driving. That could give me some clue about him. Also, how would he walk? Would it be a confident, military like stride, or a good old home boy waddle. Polished wing-tip shoes or sneakers? Long hair or short?
A few minutes before our 2-pm meeting time, I noticed a young woman with short dark hair get out of a vintage Suburu. She wore jeans and a denim jacket. Before she approached the sidewalk to the library, she surveyed the cars parked in front and across the street. She wore sunglasses, and her walk suggested a high degree of caution; as if she were ready to bolt back to her car at the slightest suspicion of danger. As she walked toward the library she looked directly at me.
When she reached the steps, she said, quietly, “I thought we were going to meet inside.”
After confirming that she was not the person whom had sent me the email, but was sent to take me to him, we walked to her car and got in.
“I am supposed to drive around until I get a cell phone call to tell me where to bring you. We are also being followed by another member of the Network. He’s the check-tail.”
“What’s a check-tail?” I inquired.
“That’s a person who follows a block or more behind to see if any suspicious cars are following me. Page two is ten minutes ahead and I am following him. He makes sure there is no trouble ahead. Page one would drive a half hour ahead of page two. He is used for longer trips. For this operation we aren’t using a page one.”
“Page two to cap,” a voice rang out from a walkie-talkie on the seat. She picked it up and pushed the button on the side.
“Cap.”
“It’s getting cloudy.”
“Will I need my wipers?”
“Standby one...yes, better safe than sorry.”
“What was that all about,” I asked as she put down the walkie-talkie and pulled over to the curb.
“This is where you get out. Start walking and then stick out your thumb like you are hitch hiking. A black pick-up truck will stop for you. Don’t ask the driver any questions. Just follow his instructions. Now get out quickly.”
As she sped away, I put out my thumb and about ten seconds later, a black pick-up pulled over and I got in. We drove to the Shell gas station and pulled up to the pumps. The surly driver with the bushy mustache ordered me to pump ten bucks of regular into the tank. When I finished, he handed me a ten spot and told me to go inside to pay for the gas. On the corner of the bill was a round white sticker with a black “N” imprinted on it. As I opened the gas station door, the pickup drove away. I handed the ten to the girl behind the counter. She peeled off the sticker and rang up the sale. She tore off the receipt, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. “Check it to be sure it’s O.K. Our computer has been acting up.” The message on the receipt read: “Meet me by the propane pump.”
Diane was her name. She had brown hair, was in her mid thirties, and slightly chubby. She explained that all the precautions were necessary. The cloudy day radio signal meant that page two had noticed something suspicious--possibly a surveillance vehicle or maybe somebody known to be an unfriendly. Putting on the wipers meant to switch me to another vehicle. The whole operation might not have been necessary, but it was better not to take chances.
She went on to explain the “Network.” “We are a nation-wide secret organization. Our main purpose is to preserve the liberties that were promised to citizens of our country by the founding fathers in the form of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There are many organizations that have that purpose, but they are mainly lobbyists and information providers. We have people inside the system. We have excellent intelligence sources. We think we know the real agenda out there. And, most importantly, we have been developing the means to defeat it.”
She went on to say that the Network was also a brotherhood, and its members were sworn to aid each other when necessary. If any member came under suspicion by the authorities, then he could be taken, underground railroad style, to a safe house belonging to another member. The Network was cell-structured. No one person knew or had a list of all the members. There were established communications points where coded messages could be left for other cells. Every member knew the names of the cells in his area, and the names and general location of the areas. If someone in a the cell active in Colville needed specific intelligence about Hanscom Air Force Base in New Hampshire, he would send a message addressed to the New England area. Anyone in that area would know which cell was active around Hanscom, and would forward the message. Any message leaving a local cell would be sent by encrypted packet radio, kind of like a secure internet communication over the radio waves.
Although my website had been thoroughly studied by them, and I seemed like a good candidate, they had arranged several “chance” encounters, where casual conversations had been started with me by someone in the laundromat, someone sitting next to me on the bleachers watching a swimming competition, and a guest at a meeting of the local ham radio club, of which I was a member. They had also received a personal recommendation and referral from a friend of mine, Tom Chen!
“How about the person who sent me the email. Do I get to meet with him?” I asked.
“First I have to ask you if you are interested in working with us. Before you answer, realize that a heavy burden goes with that. It’s kind of like the army. If we need you to do something, you do it. Period. Everything else comes second. If your daughter wants daddy to read her a story because she’s sick in bed, and you get a call to pick up someone at the airport, you go to the airport. If your wife got her hair done and is wearing a new gown to go to a dinner party and a hungry Network member fleeing from the FBI shows up at your back door, you stay home and take care of him.”
Can’t I have sort of a loose association with you guys, like trade information. I’ve got this satellite receiver that hacks into secret encoded UN military conferences. I could provide you with that information.”
“We already know what you have,” she answered. “As part of our investigation of you, we parked a van with a Tempest receiver across the street from you. We monitored everything you typed on your computer keyboard, everything that appeared on your computer screen, and everything that you watched on your TV set. We know all your computer passwords, your bank statements, and what adult web pages you visit.”
“The Network can’t have people in it that aren’t totally committed to the cause. It would be too much of a security risk.” She continued, “If you want to post stuff that you get on your website, you could be tipping off the enemy as to what is known about them. If they continue as they are, you can gather information without them changing their frequencies or encryption keys. If you publish the information, I can guarantee your source will dry up within an hour. So, what good can you make of this information? The only practical use is to let the Network use it to its advantage. As it is now, if the feds or the UN people find out that you have that receiver, and it is technically possible for them to do that if you should come under suspicion, your ass is up the creek. With the network, you and your family can go underground and keep out of their reach.”
“Can I talk it over with my family before I commit?” I asked.
“Yes, of course, since they would all be affected. But for now, all I wanted to know is if you would seriously consider joining the Network. I think you have answered that. Now it’s time to see Mathew.
CHAPTER TWO
In 2005 the war was still going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Political tensions were increasing all over the world. China was flexing its muscles against Taiwan, concerned that it would declare independance. India and Pakistan were on and off with hostilities and peace overatures.
Russia was concerned about it's former Soviet countries and the pro-democracy populist uprisings. Several of the governments of these had been toppled by popular revolt. Although there had been an official breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia had still been maintaining control through the Stalinist bureaucracies running these countries.
North Korea had announced its possession of nuclear weapons. Iran was accused of possessing them. The din of sword-rattling was heard everywhere.
Earth changes were in full swing with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamies killing thousands about every couple of months. Armegeddon really seemed to be at hand.
While the general populus of the United States swallowed the government line about "the war on terror," it became increasingly apparent, from the postings to various internet forums and newsgroups, that the US government was bent upon world conquest and control. Others, however, blamed a "new world order (NWO);" a secretive group of extremely wealthly individuals, headed by David Rockefeller, former CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank. Affiliated with, and by some considered a part of the NWO, was the Bilderberg Group, The Trilaterist Commission, and the Club of Rome. Of these, the Trilateralist Commission was considered central to the NWO. Those accepting the latter conspiracy theory believed that the US President, George Bush, was merely a puppet of the NWO.
Along with the military adventurism came the crackdown on dissent and human rights within the United States, all in the name of "the war on terror." Without barely a wimper from Congress, the draconian (and misnamed) Patriot Act and Patriot II were passed.
Early in 2005, the government contracted out its largest military expenditure ever--the production of a robot army! This would eliminate the public relations disasters stemming from thousands of body bags coming back from the US-started wars. It would also cut back on the manpower needed for its world conquest plans, as even with a draft, it was conceded that there just weren't enough soldiers to fulfil the need for these vast plans. Additionally, massive numbers of high-tech weapons contracts and "black" projects were begun.
All of this was not lost on the rest of the world, and Europe and Asia were becoming very nervous about the wars and threats of wars and military buildup of the United States. Base closings? Yes, there were many military base closings. Too, there were dissarmamant talks. But, all this was to give the false impression that although the US wanted to see "democracy" spread throughout the world, but that being engaged in wars on two fronts already, she was in no condition to start a third.
CHAPTER THREE
Shortly after my briefing with Diane, a dark green Bronco pulled up from behind the gas station. I was told to climb into the back and the doors were closed. The windows were blacked out, and a barrier kept me from seeing the driver or through the windshield or windows up front. The dome light was kept lit so I was not in total darkness. About 20 minutes later the vehicle pulled into a driveway and into a garage. I could hear the electric garage door closing.
After I stepped out of the car, a middle-aged man named Eric shook my hand and solumly told me that although my membership in the Network had not yet been confirmed, they were taking a chance exposing me to some of the individuals in the network. However, I would be watched and my activities monitored, and if I were to give any information about the Network to any one other than my immediate family, I would be quickly eliminated. This was to hold for my family members, as well.
After nodding my understanding, I was taken down into a basement room. There was a short, stocky man with dark, greying hair putting something onto a shelf. When he turned around to face me, we both grinned! He was a checkout cashier at the local Super One supermarket. "Hi, Thomas," he greeted as we shook hands. "The Network can have members just about anywhere, as you can see."
I always thought that he knew a little too much for the average minimum-wage earner. Our brief conversations at the checkout counter had mostly been conversations on current world events and political, patriotic and survival themes.
"To get to the point, we need intel from your satellite dish receiver. One member of the Network happened to work on the production line of a company that produced satcom systems for the UN. We suspect that your receiver ended up with a special prototype board from that company. The board was designed, acording to this worker who was close to the project engineer, to not only receive encrypted satcom signals, but also transmit them. Some relatively simple modifications to your receiver and antenna will allow us to not only intercept their signals, but to spoof or jam them, as well."
"This production worker, Sandy, actually had a PhD. from Brooklyn Polytech, but she pretended to be a pc board inspector, and got hired as one, just so she could find out how the UN satcom system worked. She befriended the project engineer, a real geek who probably never had a date in his life, and got him to spill everything he knew about the project, though she pretended to be a ignorant bimbo so as not to arouse his suspicion."
"We try to stay as decentralized as possible. Hence, our cell structure. We could ask you to give us your receiver, but we decided that it was better to keep it where it is at your place. The more spread out our resources are, the less chance of the entire Network being brought down. The Internet operates on the same principle."
"So what happens now?" I asked. "If I decide to join, do I just email you encrypted .avi files taken off the video feed of the receiver?"
"Something like that, only you will use a dead drop to deliver us a zip drive of each day's video downloads, PGP encrypted, of course. Jerry, our microwave specialist here, will make some modifications to your receiver, antenna, and transmission line. Should some government agent come snooping around your block with a Tempest receiver, he will just pick up The Simpsons or Malcom in the Middle, and not a UN military strategy conference."
"Just what is a Tempest receiver?" I asked.
"Simply put, it picks up whatever is displayed on your computer or TV screen. You may have noticed that when you hold a portable radio near your computer or its monitor, you get some buzz or static. It's picking up electromagnetic radiation from your equipment. Decoding circuitry in the Tempest receiver redisplays it on the Tempest screen. In the late nineties, some people would park near a bank's ATM machine with a homebrew Tempest receiver and use it to get bank acount numbers, balances and passwords. Then they would clone ATM cards using magnetic recording tape super-glued to a plastic card, and a credit card reader, picked up surplus from eBay and rewired to write to the card as well as read from it."
"That didn't last too long. Banks and other security-conscious companies started using heavy RF shielding on their computers, cables, and monitors to cut down the RF emmissions to the point where only the most expensive, sophisticated receiver would pick them up. Interestingly, the government came up with a kind of reverse Tempest system, where they could broadcast signals directly into your computer from up to a block away. This was a top secret project that one of our Network people told us about."
"Sounds pretty interesting. Is there anything else that I would be doing?"
"We will see. Too early to tell just yet. For now, we will take you back, you talk it over with your wife--only tell her the minimum of what she needs to know to. We will contact you again in two days."
CHAPTER FOUR
The ground rules were simple. Absolute secrecy. In exchange for cooperation, lucrative econimic ties would be established, and the Swiss bank accounts of the individual attendies would notice a substantial deposit. The agenda was to discuss how to put the United States back in its place and stop its military incursions into other countries. The complete top-secret military plans of the US were presented. Countries that had been allies and supporters of US policy were shocked to find that they were also on Uncle Sam's hit list. The time had come for these individual countries to put their differences aside and unite together to stop the US in its tracks.
China had had insiders within the United States Government, including one US President, and corporations pirating technology for years. China would share this technology and its nuclear weapons and delivery systems with those in the alliance, which was to be code named MABUS.
The representatives, of course, were somewhat apprehensive in trusting the Chinese. What was to stop China, once the US was neutralized, from going on its own conquest? Maybe the US-China balance of power was what was keeping each of them in check. Russia had had its own plans for a premptive strike, but had been waiting to see the US spread even thinner by its waging one or two more wars--probably with Iran and North Korea, before it felt confident enough to attack.
The Chinese representative addressed these concerns by giving each a disk containing the codes for hijacking government computers. Due to flaws, or more correctly, back doors that Chinese agents working for Microsoft had inserted in its XP operating system, any networked government computer could be hacked with ease. A Japanese geltleman inquired as to how could a top secret computer be hacked that is not part of a network external to its own building. Tempest shielding of the computer room is standard for such Top Secret instalations. He jokingly mentioned that maybe they were expecting to do remote viewing.
"Actually, you are not far off the mark," the Chinese replied. "Although Tempest shielding blocks radio frequencies in the short-wave to microwave bands, we have discovered a frequency emited by the optic nerve that will penetrate Tempest shielding. A person in a shielded, top secret room, is in reality, carrying a TV camera in his head, broadcasting to anyone who has the proper receiver to receive the signals. If he looks at a computer screen, you see what he sees on your receiver's monitor. Although the low level signal from the optic nerve would normally be buried in background noise, we have developed a scanning algorithym that creates a correlation signal with the sweep frequency of the optic function."
"To give an analogy, suppose you chop up a radiosignal into small bunches and mix these with noise that is greater than the radio signal. No one will be able to hear the signal because of the noise. But if your receiver knows exactly when each bunch of signal is being sent, and listens only during that period, then it can pick up the signal out of the noise. This is called correlation. If you know that a person is looking at a particular image, and you tune this image into your receiver along with the optic nerve transmitted image, the computer within the receiver computes the person's individual brain-scanning parameters and produces a correlation signature unique to him. Later, if he views some secret material, and your receiver is tuned to his correlation signature, you will see what he sees! This has been a major breakthrough in intelligence gathering for us."
"We will give each of you receivers and training so that your agents can monitor what the US government is doing and planning. When you see with your own eyes, you should not hessitate to join MABUS."
