‘I’m sure all this is fascinating to those of a geeky persuasion,’ Barbara Simpson said, ‘like the three of you for example, but what I do is undercover work, and I have no clue what useful skill or knowledge I’m supposed to be bringing to this particular table.’
‘Patience, Barbara, patience. I promise you all will become clear.’
For the next half hour or so Richard Boston displayed a series of PowerPoint slides that explained what was known about the attempted intrusions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Everything he said and every image he showed was eminently comprehensible to Inskip and Mitchell and meant the square root of sod all to Barbara Simpson, and when he finally stopped talking she pointed this out to him.
‘Geekery upon geekery,’ she announced. ‘And I suppose this is where you tell me about the shitty little job you’ve got lined up for me to do.’
‘Perspicacious as ever,’ Boston replied. ‘Right, the purpose of this briefing has mainly been to bring Ian and Tim up to speed on the situation so that they know what we’re up against and have a good idea of what to look for in their jobs. And what to do about any incidents or attempted intrusions that they encounter. They’re also in the loop to back you up, Barbara, if you need specialist advice later on.’ Boston glanced at Inskip and Mitchell and nodded. ‘Unless either of you have any questions, that’s about it as far as you’re concerned.’
‘I’ve got nothing,’ Inskip said.
Boston nodded briskly. ‘Okay. You both know where to reach me if anything crops up, and I’ll be Barbara’s conduit to you if necessary. Keep me in the loop about anything that you think could be relevant. Now, Barbara’s tasking is classified and on a need-to-know basis, so I need to brief her in private.’
Inskip and Mitchell gathered their notes and mobile phones and other stuff together, said their goodbyes and left the room.
‘Now you’ve really got me worried,’ Simpson said. ‘Is this where you issue me with a packet of suicide pills and a silenced revolver and send me out hacker hunting?’
‘Not exactly. We don’t do suicide pills and you can’t silence a revolver, no matter what you may see on television or read in bad novels. But I do want you to go hacker hunting, or at least terrorist hunting, because blending into the kind of environment where we think they’re hiding is something I believe you would do well. We think these cyberattacks are building up to something that could be catastrophic in its effects and could affect us as well as the Americans.’
‘But surely the FBI—’
Boston interrupted her. ‘Make no mistake,’ he said, ‘I have the greatest possible respect for the CIA and the FBI and American law enforcement generally, but they have their own problems with potential sleepers, and I don’t mean people too lazy to get out of bed. What they need and I want is somebody on the ground over there able to watch, listen and report. And that, really, is more or less what your CV says you do.’
‘Where? Where exactly are you sending me?’
‘Near your old hunting grounds on the other side of the Atlantic, but a long way further north.’
‘Let me take a wild stab in the dark here, based upon what we’ve been talking about for the last hour. Washington D.C., maybe? Because perhaps you do think there’s a link between these hackers and home-grown suicide bombers?’
‘You’re right about the location,’ Boston agreed, ‘though we have no definite intelligence to suggest a link. But it occurred to me that the people who are mounting these attacks are clearly aiming at causing destruction or at least disruption, just like a terrorist wearing a suicide vest, so at least they have the same kind of mindset. So you’re right: it wouldn’t surprise me if they were connected in some way.’
‘So what do you want me to do in the land of the free?’
‘In fact, it’s not so much me as they. While you were down in Colombia you were working for the National Police, but ultimately you were working on behalf of your favourite organisation, the DEA, which was coordinating operations between the two countries and, at least by implication, for the American government. What you did has been noted and been commented on at the highest level, and that’s not me using the usual bullshit to try to pebbledash your ego or boost your career. You really did make a difference, and your services have been officially requested again by the Americans. And as I said, I think this tasking is tailor-made for you. You have a kind of sixth sense for spotting people or things that are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s what we need from you again.’
Barbara Simpson looked anything but flattered.
‘I say again, I know nothing about cyber. Whatever the Yanks think, am I really the right person for this job? Whatever it is.’
‘Down in Colombia, according to reports I’ve read, one of the biggest challenges you faced was trying to decide which of the police officers and other officials you were working with wasn’t also working for one of the cartels, and the problem Stateside is similar but different. As I said, the Americans are really concerned about the number of sleepers there might be in law enforcement over there, people who appear to be loyal Americans but who are actually nothing of the sort, people who’ve been radicalised.
‘People like Nidal Hasan, that guy at Fort Hood just over a decade ago. American born and bred, he reached the rank of major in the US Army and then flipped and killed thirteen people because he’d basically self-radicalised. He’d worked out that the best way to save his mother’s soul – she’d committed the appalling sin of allowing alcohol to be sold in her corner shop, which in his twisted interpretation of the Koran meant she was destined to burn in hell for all eternity – was to slaughter as many unarmed American soldiers as he could.’
‘He was a psychiatrist,’ Simpson pointed out, ‘which means he was halfway loony already, in my opinion, like most shrinks.’
‘Maybe. He certainly wasn’t completely sane. Anyway, the problem they have in DC is that they don’t really know who to trust, so they need somebody like you, untainted and preferably not an American citizen, to burrow down into the underworld, the same as you did in South America, to try to find out what’s actually going on and who’s involved.’
‘How do you know I haven’t been radicalised?’
‘Anyone who calls a spade a bloody shovel and drinks Newcastle Brown for fun is too far gone to be converted, I’d say. I know you, Barbara. I can’t think of anybody less likely to suddenly decide that radical Islam and Sharia law are what the world really needs. Frankly, I’d be more likely to believe you if you told me you’d become a devil worshipper.’
‘Well I follow neither Mohammed nor the horned goat, Richard, so you can relax. I presume there’s a briefing document somewhere for all this, and somebody I can actually trust on the other side of the Pond?’
Boston slid a thick sealed A3 size package across the table towards her and followed it up with a much smaller but quite bulky envelope.
‘The briefing document is in the big envelope and you need to start reading through it right now, because you can’t take it with you to the States. You fly out on BA at five tomorrow, which means getting to Heathrow by early afternoon. For tonight we’ve booked you a room at the Marriott at Canary Wharf so at least you’ll be comfortable. A uniformed officer will meet you at the reception desk tomorrow at one thirty to collect the large envelope from you, and he’ll drive you to Heathrow for your flight. There’s a mobile phone inside the small envelope, with all the contacts from the briefing document already loaded in, plus a memory stick holding all the information, that’s the contacts and the briefing data. The phone and the memory stick are both password protected and the password is also in the envelope. Memorise it and then burn the slip of paper. Get the password wrong three times in a row and both devices will lock you out.’
‘Cattle class across the Pond, presumably?’
‘Regrettably, yes. Your cover, such as it is, is that you’re a tourist doing the world on a budget, so you can hardly step off
the aircraft from the first-class section smelling of Bollinger and caviar. There’s five thousand US in cash in the envelope as well, plus a credit card that doesn’t have a limit. But we will need receipts for anything other than food, drink, transport and accommodation, and the bean-counters will be looking closely at meals in Michelin-starred restaurants, champagne, limousines and five-star hotels. You know the rules.’
Simpson nodded. ‘I do. Luckily I’m used to burgers, beer, buses and budget flophouses, so I’m sure I’ll feel right at home. Are you sure you don’t want me to go all the way and live as a street person?’
For a moment Boston seemed to give her question serious consideration. ‘Not unless you think it’s absolutely necessary, no. Though you could perhaps think about slipping into that persona when you start doing surveillance. Being invisible to almost everybody could be a useful tactic to employ.’
She nodded again.
‘So it’s back to the streets and the shit and the spying,’ she said.
‘It’s what you do best, Barbara.’
Simpson stared at him with a baleful expression on her face. ‘I think I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she replied, then tore open the large envelope and tipped the contents onto the table in front of her.
Chapter 3
Six days ago
Above Oxfordshire
It’s a truism that anybody can be taught to fly an aircraft, just as anybody can be taught to drive a car: the only variable is the length of the training process. Most people with some degree of natural flying ability can reach basic solo standard after about ten to fifteen hours in the air in a fixed-wing aircraft, though reaching the same level of competence in a helicopter will take a bit longer because learning how to drive an egg-beater without adding to the annual aviation accident statistics is a rather more complex process. But the majority of people can achieve a reasonable standard of proficiency in about forty-five to fifty hours.
The military doesn’t do it quite that way, as might be expected, and they take a hell of a lot longer. In the British Armed Forces, the usual route is to put wannabe pilots through a flying grading to see if there’s any chance of them making it out of the other end of the process in one piece. Then they get them up to a reasonable standard in a fixed-wing aircraft. That’s usually called something like elementary or basic flying training, and the embryo pilots emerge from that phase with just enough skill and knowledge to be dangerous to themselves and to anybody and anything else in the air. Even birds.
At that point they’re introduced to the bafflingly complex and unlikely flying machine that is the modern helicopter. Just like the bumblebee, it doesn’t look as if it should be able to fly. It’s probably also at about this point in their training that pilots are reminded that nobody actually knows how or why aircraft stay in the air. There are at least two different and mutually contradictory theories of flight, neither of which provides a complete explanation for the phenomenon.
Assuming their nerves can stand it, they then begin basic rotary wing training, intended to transition them from an aircraft with large and solid visible wings to keep it in the air to a bulbous object possessing no obvious means of support or lift apart from a rotor disk characterised by a small number of remarkably slender blades. If they get through that part of the process they move on to advanced rotary wing training and follow that up with operational training and finally conversion to type. That will familiarise them with whatever kind of helicopter is operated by their designated flight or squadron. And then they go front line, their training over.
Just as there are good drivers and bad drivers, the skill and ability of whoever is sitting at the controls in the cockpit of a military helicopter can vary from – hopefully at the very least – competent up to excellent. And just a handful of the very best of the very best chopper pilots are recruited to serve in various specialised units like the Queen’s Helicopter Flight and the JSFAW, the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing.
Major David Charles North, late of the Special Air Service and currently something of a wheel in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, was sitting in one of the passenger seats of a dark blue Eurocopter AS365N3 Dauphin II helicopter being flown by a warrant officer from 658 Squadron Army Air Corps and taking remarkably little notice of where he was or what was happening outside the aircraft. He had spent a significant proportion of his working life sitting in aircraft of one kind or another, most of them helicopters, and the experience of entrusting his life to an aluminium box carried aloft by a rotor disk powered by some kind of jet engine had ceased to either bother or interest him. He knew that the JSFAW pilots were among the best in the business, and that the aircraft were maintained to military standards, so he normally just relaxed and let the pilot get on with the job of flying the thing.
The SRR was a kind of SAS lite, meaning its tasks involved identifying, observing and following potential terrorists and other undesirable threats to the people of the United Kingdom rather than tracking them down and then shooting them, though the SRR personnel were perfectly happy to do that as well if the situation demanded it. Right then, North was en route from Stirling Lines, the SAS headquarters at Credenhill near Hereford, to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to attend a classified briefing in one of the hardened underground rooms at the RAF station.
The pilot was flying VFR – visual flight rules – which meant he was self-navigating and taking his own avoiding action against other aircraft in the area, but he had also been in contact with the Brize Norton air traffic control LARS, the lower airspace advisory radar service, on 124.275 MHz. He’d been passed a weather update – fine with clear skies and light winds – and given the controller his ETA.
It was near the end of a routine, no pressure flight of the kind that North had made countless times in the past.
The pilot slowed and descended the aircraft, aiming towards the hardstanding where the local controller had given him clearance to land, and North felt the slightly increased noise level as he lowered the landing gear.
And then, suddenly and utterly comprehensively, the flight turned to worms.
The warrant officer emitted a kind of gasp that was just audible over the noise of the engines and rotor blades and his head slumped forwards, his arms dropping limply to his sides.
Dave North had been looking forward through the cockpit windows towards the hardstanding and immediately saw what had just happened.
The Eurocopter was single-crewed, with only North and the pilot on board, and the warrant officer had had manual control of the aircraft as it approached for landing. It was probably at an altitude of about five hundred feet and suddenly the ground appeared to be rushing upwards at considerable speed. It looked as if the pilot’s left hand had pushed the collective down as he lost consciousness.
‘Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ North muttered, ripping off his headset and wincing at the sudden increase in noise level. He unclipped his seat belt and scrambled forwards to clamber clumsily into the left-hand seat of the helicopter.
On civilian versions of the AS365 there’s a partition between the cockpit and the passenger cabin, which is typically equipped with about half a dozen comfortable leather seats suitable for the large and wide backsides of corporate heavyweights, heavyweights in both senses of the word. The military version dispenses with such niceties and crams in more than twice that number of very basic seats to accommodate a clump of hairy-arsed soldiers and also dispenses with the partition, which was just as well, because if it had been fitted North’s life expectancy would have been measured in seconds.
At the rate the Eurocopter was going down he might still be dead in seconds, but at least he had a chance. Vanishingly small, but still a chance.
He dropped into the seat and immediately reached down and to his left, pulling firmly up on the collective, the lever that controlled the angle of attack of the main rotor blades and hence the lift generated by them. North didn’t know much about helicopters but he did know that it was the collective
that kept the aircraft in the air.
The helicopter shuddered and lurched, the aircraft reacting badly to his clumsy action, but at least it had stopped dropping like a large, heavy, extremely expensive and very fragile stone.
North glanced to his right, hoping that the warrant officer would have recovered his senses, but the man was clearly still out cold.
He looked ahead and grabbed hold of the second control, the cyclic, with his right hand. That was equivalent to the control column in a fixed wing aircraft. The collective kept the helicopter in the air and the cyclic pointed it where the pilot wanted it to go. That was about all North knew. Right then he also knew that he needed to get the helicopter on terra firma. And he didn’t much care where.
The ground below him was typical of almost every airfield he’d ever seen, a mixture of runways, taxiways, hardstandings and grassed areas.
North could feel himself starting to sweat.
The Eurocopter was designed to be flown from the right-hand seat and almost all the instruments and controls were either in front of that seat or in the horizontal panel between the two seats. The left-hand seat just had a scattering of essential flight instruments in front of it, and the helicopter’s navigation kit sat in the centre of the wide instrument panel, an incomprehensibly complex – to a non-pilot – mix of flat panel colour screens and analogue instruments.
North ignored even the cut-down panel in front of him because none of the displayed information meant anything to him and none of it would help him in his present predicament. He didn’t need to know things like airspeed or altitude because he could see all he needed to through the helicopter’s windscreen.
And what he could see was that it was in more or less level flight. If it was still going down the rate of descent had slowed, and it didn’t seem to be moving forward very quickly, so he guessed the Eurocopter was almost hovering. That at least gave him a bit of breathing space to sort out what to do next. Like how to get it down.
Cyberstrike Page 5