Cyberstrike

by James Barrington

  The PaDP was the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection branch of the Met’s Specialist Operations directorate, with responsibility for guarding Parliament, 10 Downing Street and other government buildings and politicians, and while on duty they were invariably armed, usually carrying both a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol and a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachinegun. Neither of those weapons would have been Carter’s choice to try to stop the cabin cruiser, but he was hoping that a few carefully aimed volleys of 9mm bullets from the riverbank beside the Palace of Westminster would be enough to try to deflect or disrupt the bomb attack that he was now sure was in progress. He also knew that it was almost certainly too late to get a sniper in position anywhere close enough to the scene to be able to take out the men in the cabin cruiser.

  So he was going to try and do his bit to resolve the situation. He had no access to a firearm, but he was sitting at the controls of several tons of powerboat, and in the right hands that could be a very effective weapon.

  ‘Don’t forget that fucking assault rifle,’ Fisher said, glancing at him.

  ‘Don’t worry – I won’t. Hang on, all of you. This is going to get very bouncy, very quickly.’

  Carter ran the Targa launch up to full power, getting it on the plane, and steered it not towards the cabin cruiser but north down the eastern side of the Thames.

  ‘You have a plan?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘Sort of. More of a gamble, really. The gunman’s in the stern of the cabin cruiser, so if we’re in front of his vessel he’ll have to shoot around or over the cabin, which hopefully will make it more difficult for him to aim. Plus, if we’re going at speed we’ll be a fast-moving target, not a static object. And the wake that we’re producing right now is going to make the cabin cruiser even more unstable as a shooting platform. So when we get beyond him I’m going to do a U-turn and head straight for him. That’ll also put some of the hull and superstructure of this launch between us and him. That won’t make us bulletproof, but it’ll sure as hell help.’

  * * *

  ‘Shall I shoot at it?’ Khalid asked as he watched the police boat start accelerating, but north down the river, not towards them.

  Hassan shook his head. ‘Save your ammunition,’ he instructed. ‘When we get closer to the building you’ll need it in case there are any police in the grounds. If there are, they’ll be armed.’

  At that location, the Thames was roughly two hundred yards wide, which meant the cabin cruiser had to cover a distance of about three hundred yards on its diagonal course from the eastern side of the river to reach the optimum point for the detonation of the explosives. Hassan didn’t want to get too close to the solid stone wall that marked the edge of the river and which would provide a measure of protection for the building. Instead, he intended to initiate the detonation when he believed the vessel was in the most advantageous position, close enough to the palace to inflict catastrophic damage, but not so close that the river wall would deflect most of the blast.

  He had a minute, perhaps two, before the cabin cruiser would reach the ideal detonation point, so he picked up his mobile to tell Abū Tadmir that they had been detected at the last moment, but that they would still complete the mission. But when he looked at the screen there was no signal at all, and in disgust he tossed the phone onto the control panel in front of him.

  Angela Evans’s instruction from C-TAC had been implemented almost immediately, and the network would stay down until the situation had been resolved.

  Khalid switched his attention from the police launch, which was still heading away from them down the river, to the building in front. He saw perhaps half a dozen black clad figures appearing at the top of the wall and had no doubt at all who they were.

  Hassan pointed at them and nodded. ‘Armed police,’ he said. ‘Give them something to think about.’

  Immediately, Khalid aimed his Kalashnikov at one of the men, his aim uncertain because the boat was now rocking in the wake caused by the police launch – which at least explained why it had accelerated away so rapidly – and fired a volley of three shots towards his selected target. He had no idea where his bullets went and switched his aim to the next man along and repeated his action. While Hassan tried to keep the boat on a steady course, he continued firing.

  ‘Why aren’t they firing back?’ he asked, slotting a new magazine in place and again picking a target.

  ‘Because they only have small calibre weapons, ideal for taking down a target in the street but useless for trying to stop a boat at a hundred yards. They’ll probably start firing when we get closer.’

  * * *

  The Targa patrol boat powered past the other vessel, staying close to the eastern bank for maximum separation from it because distance was their only real defence against the assault rifle.

  Carter was switching his attention between the cabin cruiser and the water ahead of him. When the vessel was about a hundred yards north of the laden boat, he called out ‘Brace!’ and swung the wheel hard round, trying to keep up the speed in the turn. Then he headed due south at full throttle, directly towards the target vessel.

  * * *

  Khalid was standing on the right of the cockpit, his entire attention focused on the police officers positioned behind the river wall in front of them, some of whom were now firing short bursts towards the cabin cruiser, most of the small-calibre bullets either missing their target or falling short.

  Hassan was standing on the left-hand side, the wheel, single throttle and other engine instruments and controls right in front of him. His view to the right, to starboard, was partially obscured by the superstructure of the boat and by his companion, which is why he didn’t immediately react when the police launch made its sharp turn to port further down the river, simply because he didn’t see what was happening.

  In fact, neither man saw it until the launch was already established southbound, at speed, and was only about fifty yards away.

  ‘Stop it,’ Hassan yelled in sudden panic, pointing at the oncoming vessel. ‘Stop it right now.’

  Khalid reacted slowly, but he did react, turning to his right and switching his aim. Because the patrol boat was travelling almost flat out on the plane, the bow was lifted out of the water. The occupants were invisible from the cabin cruiser and all that he could see was the white foam and spray of the wave underlining the dark shape of the bow, aiming straight at them.

  He switched the Kalashnikov to full auto, the mid position on the weapon’s selector, braced himself against the side of the cockpit and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  The sound of the assault rifle firing was unmistakable and audible even above the roar of the launch’s engines and the thumping as the bow cut through the waves, and Carter thought he felt the impact of a handful of bullets, though he couldn’t be certain.

  His original plan had been to pass as close as possible to the cabin cruiser so that the wake from the launch would swamp it and cause the probably inexperienced helmsman to lose control of the vessel. If he timed it right, the really close pass might even be enough to topple the gunman with the assault rifle out of the boat and into the dark and unwelcoming waters of the Thames.

  But as he took another glance ahead, measuring angles and distances, he realised that that wasn’t going to work. The cabin cruiser was too close to the Palace of Westminster, and in a matter seconds or perhaps a minute at the most it would be in what he thought would be the optimum position for the explosive charges to be detonated. And then there would be nothing that he could do about it.

  He would also be signing his own death warrant and those of the two other officers on board with him, because they would be so close to the epicentre of the detonation that his launch would be reduced to matchsticks, or whatever the fibreglass equivalent was, and they’d be obliterated with it. But he was going to do his best to make sure that that didn’t happen.

  ‘Time for Plan B,’ Carter said, taking a firmer grip on the wheel and glancing at the two m
en with him. ‘Hang on tight.’

  ‘You didn’t mention a Plan B,’ Fisher objected, though it was perfectly obvious to him what Carter was going to do.

  He altered the position of the wheel very slightly and pushed the throttle levers to confirm that they were already in the fully forward position, meaning the engines were delivering maximum power.

  ‘Brace for impact,’ he ordered.

  Eight seconds later, the bow of the Targa launch smashed into the side of the cabin cruiser, more or less amidships.

  * * *

  The cruiser was old and built of wood. It hadn’t been properly maintained for much of its life and was comparatively flimsy. The patrol boat didn’t so much hit it as cut it in half, splintering the timbers of the midsection. The Targa surged forward, the power of its engines and its momentum reducing the centre of the cabin cruiser to little more than a collection of shattered timbers. The impact utterly destroyed the vessel.

  The stern section lurched down as the patrol boat powered over it and then tipped backwards as the two craft separated, knocking both Hassan and Khalid off their feet, drenching them with cold river water.

  Khalid screamed as the dark blue bow of the patrol boat, an unstoppable force despite now being riddled with bullets from the Kalashnikov, powered into and then steamrollered over the cabin cruiser. The impact was so massive that he lost his grip on the assault rifle. It bounced on the tilting side of the cockpit, then tumbled over the gunwale and immediately vanished below the surface.

  Khalid was a long way from being an expert user of the Kalashnikov, or of any other weapon, come to that.

  He’d received very rudimentary instruction on the assault rifle from Sadir, who had spent countless hours on the ranges in the various Al-Badr training camps in the Azad Kashmir region near Islamabad, close to Pakistan’s eastern border, but in the time they’d had available Khalid had learnt only the basics: how to aim and fire it, remembering to squeeze rather than pull the trigger, to only use the weapon in semi-automatic mode both to conserve ammunition and to increase accuracy, how to load and change a magazine and so on. What he hadn’t been able to do under Sadir’s direction was actually fire it for real, there being almost nowhere in the English countryside, and certainly nowhere within fifty miles of the centre of London, where the sound of automatic rifle fire wouldn’t attract unwelcome attention. And of course they also had only a very limited stock of ammunition.

  But one of the basics that Sadir had emphasised was the importance of fitting a sling to the weapon, particularly as Khalid would be using the Kalashnikov on a boat on the often choppy waters of the River Thames. The standard two-point tactical sling for the AK-47 uses an attachment point where the barrel emerges from the fore-end of the weapon and another near the end of the buttstock.

  No sling had been supplied along with the assault rifle, and so Sadir had constructed one using a long leather belt, the ends of it secured to the attachment points on the Kalashnikov with heavy-duty wire. And as well as the belt, for additional security he had also provided a length of strong cord to be knotted around the sling and the other end attached to one of the grab handles in the cockpit of the cabin cruiser.

  Khalid had followed his instructions to the letter, and as soon as the Kalashnikov bounced out of his grip and he was back on his feet he seized the grab handle and began pulling on the cord to recover the weapon, which emerged muzzle first from the black waters of the river.

  As the heavily waterlogged cockpit more or less stabilised he once again aimed the weapon at the police launch, now turning towards him and towering above his location more or less on the surface of the river. He made sure that the fire selector was still on fully automatic and aimed roughly, because at that distance he couldn’t possibly miss. Then he squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  When the raked bow of the patrol boat impacted the side of the cabin cruiser, the entire vessel rode up out of the water and for the briefest of instants it felt almost as if the Targa had become airborne. And then it crashed back down again, sending a massive cloud of spray and a large wave surging across the surface of the river. It didn’t land completely flat, the collision having knocked it slightly to one side due to the angle at which it had struck the other vessel, but it righted itself immediately and rocked from side to side as it stabilised.

  The three MPU officers on board had seen the impact coming and had not only braced themselves for it but also ensured that their harnesses were properly attached so that when the collision was over they would still be on board the boat rather than swimming for the shore.

  Paul Carter had pulled back the twin throttles at the moment when the Targa had hit the cabin cruiser and checked that his two colleagues were uninjured as soon as the boat landed.

  ‘You both okay?’

  He had no doubt that all three of them would develop impressive bruises over the next few days, but there were no broken bones, which was all that mattered.

  ‘We’re still afloat then,’ Bob Fisher pointed out.

  ‘Somewhat to my surprise, yes,’ Carter responded.

  The Targa launch seemed to be handling somewhat sluggishly, probably because it had taken some water into the hull through the bullet holes from the Kalashnikov, and from the inevitable damage caused by the impact, but it was handling and didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger of sinking.

  Cautiously, he turned the wheel to head back to the expanding area of floating wreckage which was all that remained of the cabin cruiser.

  He and Bob Fisher saw the threat at precisely the same moment as the bearded man in the shattered remains of the cockpit of the destroyed boat aimed his assault rifle directly at them and at point-blank range.

  Neither of them said a word, just threw themselves down flat on the deck of the Targa to try to avoid the fusillade of bullets that they knew was coming their way.

  * * *

  The Kalashnikov is arguably the most robust and reliable assault rifle ever made, and it can and will operate even if it’s been dug up out of the ground or pulled out of a body of water. But most people on retrieving such a weapon will at least remove most of the debris before attempting to fire it.

  That thought never occurred to Khalid because of his inexperience. He also failed to register the fairly obvious fact that he had pulled the weapon muzzle first out of the river, and was then aiming it upwards. So when he pulled the trigger and the round in the chamber fired it was an instance of an unstoppable force – this time a 7.62mm bullet – meeting a largely immovable object, in this case the barrel of an old and very well used assault rifle almost full of murky and incompressible water and debris from the Thames.

  The result was predictable and utterly catastrophic for the man holding the assault rifle.

  The breech and barrel of the weapon blew apart, and because Khalid was the person holding it and his face was just a couple of inches from the breech, most of his head blew apart as well.

  He slumped down in the right-hand side of the cockpit, dead before his legs had even started to give way.

  * * *

  Carter heard the bang, which sounded louder than a rifle shot and nothing like the barrage of rounds he’d been expecting, a volley of shots that he was quite certain would be the last sounds he would ever hear because nobody, not even the most comprehensively untrained and manifestly incompetent person ever to have been given a weapon, could possibly miss him and the two other officers with an AK-47 at that range.

  But what he didn’t hear was a second shot, assuming that the bang was the first round of a volley. He eased himself up cautiously into a crouch and stared warily at the wrecked cabin cruiser. He was just in time to see the body of the man with the assault rifle collapse bonelessly into the remains of the cockpit like a puppet the instant the strings have been cut. His face and head appeared curiously misshapen and Carter guessed that either something had gone wrong with his weapon – a catastrophic blowback or something of that sort – or against
the odds the Met police had managed to get a sniper in place in time. That seemed less likely because no sniper would go for a headshot unless it was unavoidable. But either way, it was clear that he would be taking no further part in the proceedings.

  But the other man, the one who had been driving the boat, was still on board and could quite literally have his finger on the trigger, so the danger was still absolutely immediate and very real.

  Carter pushed the throttles forward and turned the wheel to point the bow of the Targa launch directly at what was left of the cockpit and the figure of the second man standing there. The boat was the only weapon he had and there was no way he wasn’t going to use it. The last time he’d aimed at the midships section of the cabin cruiser. Now his target was going to be what was left of the flooded cockpit at the stern.

  Perhaps twenty or thirty yards separated the two vessels and he knew that it would still take precious seconds to cover even that short distance from a standing start on the river. But Carter had no other options.

  He had to go for it. There was nothing else they could do.