His eyes flickered towards me—I could tell from his exasperated tone when he’d answered my questions earlier that he wasn’t a fan of curious people. He’d basically told me as much, anyway, with that comment about asking a lot of questions. Or maybe it was talking too much. He didn’t seem like much of a talker.
I wasn’t a talker, but I did ask questions for a living, then followed that up with research to get an answer. I’d always had an insatiable need to know how things worked or why they happened. And now, things were happening that were beyond my comprehension, and I had to know why.
The question was, could he tell me? He was a Navy SEAL—their missions were secretive, known to very few. But I felt I had been through enough today that I deserved to know what I’d gotten caught in the middle of.
But he didn’t answer, his attention inward as he continued to row.
“You looked interested when I told you about my research and why my team and I had been sent there. It had something to do with your mission, right?”
Again, his gaze flicked toward me, and I still didn’t receive an answer. But my mind had been working since I’d seen his reaction to the information about my research and what I’d found—he’d even asked if I’d sent it out. His mouth had tightened to a very thin line when I’d told him I hadn’t had the chance.
“Does it have to do with those power lines? What are they? They’re important, aren’t they?”
I would go so far as to say they were the key to this entire mess.
The Navy SEAL remained stonily silent, a truculent look to his eyes.
“I think I deserve to know,” I said, settling my glare on him. “I didn’t ask to be a part of this, but it happened, and now I’m stuck in the middle of it with you. I’m pretty sure whatever security clearance I need, the fact that I saw things I shouldn’t kind of puts me past all that.”
Just when I thought he wasn’t going to say anything and I would remain entirely in the dark and wondering, he sighed. It was such a slight sigh, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard it. More an escape of breath than a sigh, really.
“Those aren’t power cables. They’re underwater Internet cables.”
“Underwater Internet cables?” I asked.
Suddenly, everything made a lot more sense, at least, the strange behavior of the animals. I’d read a paper by a colleague, published recently, about underwater crabs off the coast of Scotland that had noted the strange behavior of the animals around underwater Internet cables that weren’t buried far enough under the sea floor. The crabs forgot their usual habits, including migration and mating patterns. The electromagnetic field emitted by the cable seemed almost to mesmerize the crabs, and the animals and the local fishing economy that relied on them suffered because of it.
More studies popped into my head, those warning about the potential impacts of these underwater cables on marine life. I hadn’t done any of the studies myself, but I knew colleagues who had. Several had even worked with engineers to understand the correct depths at which these cables had to be buried to allow for maintenance without harming marine life.
But this wasn’t about some eco-terrorist group harming wildlife or the fishing industry.
“This whole thing is about the cables, isn’t it?” I asked, my perception suddenly clear.
“Yes.” The growing dark had thrown the man’s face into shadow, but the moon was rising, and I could just make out his grim expression.
“They should have been buried a lot further down,” I added as a way to push for more information that he clearly did not want to give. “And, as I said, it looked like someone had tampered with them.”
Another almost inaudible sigh. “Those cables carry the Internet around the world. They’re off every major coastal area of nearly every continent, crisscrossing the oceans. They connect the entire world.”
Admittedly, this was a subject about which I knew very little. I’d known vaguely about underwater Internet cables thanks to the published papers, but that was all my knowledge amounted to.
“The cables are inside tubing, meant to keep it safe from the water pressure and erosion of the sea floor. But for as important as they are, they’re surprisingly vulnerable. No one has figured out how to protect them—they’re just lying in the ocean. There was an incident last year where a boat dragging its anchor cut through one of the lines, and the English Channel Islands lost the Internet for the time it took them to repair it.”
“Ouch,” I winced, but I knew the story wasn’t over. “This isn’t just about some teenager losing the ability to chat with her friend, though, is it?”
The Navy SEAL shook his head. “No. Think about it—what runs on the Internet?”
I thought about it, and it didn’t take me long to realize the problem. Everything ran on the Internet, from banking institutions to governments to power grids to hospitals to security. It was why cyber security was so important and fraught with danger. It was why analysts said countries would fight future wars online.
Because if you cut the Internet, things failed. Big things. Economies, entire cities, governments, the ability to communicate over distances, and even electrical and nuclear power.
I gasped, my eyes snapping to the Navy SEAL’s like they’d been drawn by a magnet. “The radiation readings I was getting.”
“Intelligence has found other cables cut, although the ones we came across had only been dug up and not yet damaged. But there are back-channel reports that several nuclear sites on Russia’s coast are in trouble. We, on this side, don’t know why, but there’s a chance an unknown terrorist cell is cutting strategic underwater Internet lines.”
Aware I was gaping at the man, I also didn’t care. What I was hearing was almost too big and too terrible to comprehend.
“But—” my mouth opened and closed on the words darting through my head like a school of tiny fish, so small and fast I couldn’t catch them. “But that would mean—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence because my mind wouldn’t allow me to go there. It was too awful, too terrifying, to comprehend.
But the Navy SEAL had gone there. His expression was grim, his eyes hard.
We rowed the rest of the way to the island in silence, the bright colors of the sunset fading as the moon rose, its silvery trail across the water leading the way.