Free Black Horizon by James Grippando Page B

the aisle, as if inspecting his soldiers, as he spoke. “What I want to talk about this evening is this team’s mission, which is, simply stated: How did we get from this,” he said, pointing at the screen, “to this?”
    With a click of the remote the rig was gone. The blue waters had turned black. Seas that had foamed with whitecaps were teeming with chemical dispersants. The sight was enough to make Andie nauseous.
    Or maybe that’s Viola again.
    “As you probably have guessed by now, the education you received over the past two months—everything from improved proficiency in the Chinese language to sharpened insights into the Chinese Mafia—has nothing to do with counterfeit Gucci handbags. So-called Operation Big Dredge was a mere cover to ensure the secrecy of your preparation for a much more vital operation at the core of our national security. The explosion of the Scarborough 8 has only shortened the timeline and heightened the urgency of the real investigation. I assure you, however, that everything you have learned will be of use to you.”
    Another click of his remote brought the image of a shipyard onto the screen.
    “From the day construction began in this shipyard in Yantai, Shandong Province, China, we have kept a close eye on the Scarborough 8. That scrutiny intensified when the world’s largest oil rig—an engineering and technological monster built entirely in China with less than ten percent American-made parts—ended up just sixty miles from the city of Key West. Through means that I will not get into here, FBI tech agents and experts from U.S. Homeland Security were able to access the Chinese rig’s computer system during drilling operations. We monitored the rig right up to the moment of the explosion. At this time I would like to introduce Special Agent Raj Gupta, who will briefly explain the technical aspects.”
    Andie found that sickening as well. Oh, my God, Viola, you little stinker. If you make me vomit in the middle of this meeting . . .
    Special Agent Gupta walked to the front of the room and took the remote.
    “Unfortunately, no one will ever be able to recover the exact software events leading to the Scarborough 8 disaster because, even on a state-of-the-art semi-submersible rig, there is no ‘black box.’ But here is what we do know.”
    The projected image on the screen was suddenly a collection of circuits in a tangle of colored wires, which did absolutely nothing to alleviate Andie’s nausea.
    Ugh, spaghetti.
    “Offshore oil rigs are made up of dozens of complex subsystems that use embedded software or are operated under software control. Each system is a potential point of failure. When the software is operating properly, alarms are routed to a central control station.”
    Gupta stopped and looked straight at Andie. “Are you okay, Henning?”
    “Fine, thanks,” she lied.
    Where is the Big Palm Island ice bucket when a girl really needs it?
    Gupta went to the next slide. “Industry standards for manageable alarm rates are one alarm per ‘normal’ ten-minute period with a maximum of five in any ‘peak’ five-minute period. During Tropical Storm Miguel, in the peak period immediately prior to the explosion, our monitoring systems detected almost five hundred alarms. It was impossible for the system and its operators to sift through this overload of alarms and prevent the explosion.”
    Andie pulled herself together to ask a question. “Are you saying the storm caused a computer malfunction?”
    “Homeland Security does not believe it was the storm, per se, that caused the computer malfunction. We believe the system failed in the storm due to computer sabotage, unleashing a cascade effect that resulted in catastrophe.”
    “But sabotage usually involves advance planning,” said Andie. “How would someone who sabotaged the alarm system know far enough ahead of time that the Scarborough 8 was going to be hit by a major tropical storm?”
    “Excellent question,