In the news today is a story (at the link above) about a worm/malware attack affecting various industries in several countries, including Iran. Not many details yet and the idea is a familiar one: Shut down an infrastructure by disabling the automated systems that control it.
What I did in the book was guess a little bit at the future, using my almost five decades of life experience with evolving technology, as to what the Iranians might have in the 2030s. Since I do not have a clue now, nor at the time of the outlining and writing, what the Iranians have, I took a stab at what might be around in general twenty years from now and had the Iranians ripping-off systems that are slightly dated.
I started with a view of US forces in the Continental US (CONUS) and gave my male lead some credit for the systems being used by US/Israeli Allied forces. Autonomous aircraft and trucks were a big thing, makes for a good visual for the mind. There needed to be a supply scheduling system tying all that together, so I made one up and to illustrate it, I had a US Marine with a small staff monitoring the Eglin Air Force Base deployment operations.
One thing I was trying to avoid was having the couple involved in brutal, horrible, violent encounters like were in the books that preceded Suki IV. The "drama" for this book was their work with the government and John's son being in the war zone. By this time, John's son and Suki's best friend are a couple too. That was enough emotional tension for me.
John's muscle-car building and aviation program management skills come in handy, since he is one of the "geeks" assigned to defeat Iranian cargo aircraft and he gets to help out with the rolling stock. However, one thing I did differently than what has been described in the current story about Iran, the Allies are actively targeting specific functions within Iranian machines.
Not to be left out, I gave Suki a breakthrough. She discovers the "Allah Hack" to bypass the biometric locks on all of the Iranian equipment.
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| Suki IV: Finally A Vacation (War With Iran) on sale in Paperback and only $2.99 on Kindle. |
