Cyberstrike

by James Barrington

  Chapter 66

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  Inside the improvised control suite they’d constructed at the back of the house, Mahdi Sadir was suddenly aware of a change in the room, or more specifically of a change in the ambient lighting, but for a few moments he wasn’t aware of what had caused it.

  He checked the screens and controls in front of him, but they all appeared to be normal. Then he looked up towards the ceiling, at the three small flatscreens which displayed images from the CCTV cameras on the property. Strangely, only two of them still showed the feeds from the area around the house. The rear camera, the one that covered the yard, was no longer working. Sadir stood up in order to see better and carefully checked the pictures being produced by the two front cameras. Everything in front of the house appeared to be perfectly normal, exactly as it had been all day. No pedestrians and no new vehicles were visible.

  It was probably, he rationalised, a defective camera, or possibly a problem with the wiring, and of no consequence to him – not when he was so close to the end of the operation.

  Chapter 67

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  The two CCTV cameras mounted at the front of the detached property meant that the SWAT team would have to go in at the back, but Morgan was wondering if there was another option.

  ‘Maybe we should do a bit of divide and conquer,’ he suggested.

  ‘Meaning?’ Rogers asked.

  ‘There are two cars outside, and my guess is there are at least two people inside the building, maybe more than that. Before your people kick in the back door, let me go and knock at the front. If one of the occupants comes to the door, that’s one less person for your SWAT guys to cope with at the back. I can just be a lost Englishman wondering how to get to Bel Air.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because, Grant, I’m the only person here who isn’t wearing a full set of combat gear or who doesn’t look like an FBI agent.’

  ‘That’s true, but I don’t think—’

  ‘Good idea,’ Gordon interrupted, and handed Morgan a beige-coloured ballistic vest. ‘Put this on under your jacket. It’s a Modular Tactical Vest, or MTV, and it should stop anything up to a nine millimetre.’

  ‘That’s encouraging. Suppose he aims a forty-four magnum at me?’

  ‘Then I guess this isn’t your lucky day.’ Gordon’s wide grin showed a lot of very white teeth. ‘Seriously, the two guys covering the front of the house will cover you as well. If somebody carrying a bazooka opens it, they’ll take him out before he can pull the trigger. Just remember to stand well away from the door once you’ve knocked on it.’

  Morgan shrugged his jacket back on over the heavy ballistic vest, nodded to Rogers and Gordon and strolled off down the road towards the target property. As he stepped off the street and started walking towards the house, he pulled out his phone and sent a text to Angela Black. It just said: ‘Call now.’

  He heard the mobile ringing as he reached the house and stepped onto the porch.

  He gave three sharp knocks on the door and stepped half a dozen paces to one side, to make sure he was out of the firing line of the two SWAT team snipers.

  Chapter 68

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  Sadir sat down again, and almost immediately his mobile phone began to ring. He stared at it for a few seconds in surprise, because he had thought he’d switched it off after activating the electromagnetic bombs located across DC, then shrugged and answered the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ a chirpy female voice with an unusual accent said, ‘I wonder if you’ve considered changing your long-distance provider. We have some spectacular deals this month, with some of our rates slashed to less than half the normal cost. If you’re interested in seeing our tariffs we can—’

  Sadir powered down his mobile and tossed it to one side. He’d received enough marketing and cold calls in the past to know that listening to them was a complete waste of time, even if you were a genuine customer, and he was a long way from being that.

  A sudden movement caught his eye and he looked up at the CCTV screens on the wall. A figure was walking straight towards the front door of the house. A man, quite smartly dressed as far as he could tell from the tiny image. Probably a salesman of some sort, parking his car on the street and then going door-to-door with a pocketful of brochures and a smart line of chatter. The man rapped three times on the door and then stepped to one side, waiting expectantly.

  Sadir ignored him. He switched his attention to the navigation screen for the Reaper. It showed that the drone was just inside twenty miles from the centre of Washington, and that meant it was time to initiate the final phase.

  He accessed the autopilot settings and set the UAV into a powered descent to 15,000 feet, high enough to keep it out of range of the heavy machine guns that he knew were scattered on the tops of buildings throughout Washington, but low enough for him to identify suitable targets for the laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles hanging on the stores’ pylons below the Reaper’s wings. In point of fact, he had no specific targets in mind. He would simply aim the bombs and the missiles at the largest crowds he could see on the ground and then release them.

  American weapons of war would be unleashed upon the civilian population of the capital city to devastating effect.

  Chapter 69

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  Special Agent Vernon Wayne had identified the ideal way in as the French doors at the back of the house which gave access to the garden. They were an obvious weak point in the property and were almost certainly where any prospective burglar would have wanted to try his luck, which was probably why the rear camera had been positioned above them. But whereas a burglar would have tried to open the doors, perhaps with a lock pick or a pry bar of some sort, the SWAT team had a rather noisier, but infinitely more effective, way of getting inside.

  In fact, they had a couple of options. They could wrap plastic explosive around the lock on the doors and detonate it, which would allow them entry but might still require the doors to be pulled open and would add precious seconds to the time it would take them to get inside. So they picked the second option, to remove the glass from the doors to allow them to step straight through them.

  Working as quietly as they could, two of the SWAT team taped a double length of orange Primaline 5 detonating cord, a thin, flexible plastic-covered tube of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) – high explosive – around the edges of the glass of the French doors. Detcord is a high-speed fuse normally used to trigger other explosive charges, but unlike other fuses it explodes rather than burns, so it can be used as an explosive in its own right. And the speed at which it does this is around 23,000 feet per second, or a little over 15,650 miles per hour, so the effect is as near instantaneous as makes no difference.

  With the charge in place, one of the team inserted a pyrotechnic blasting cap with a short fuse to act as the detonator, waited for Wayne to give them the okay, then lit it and stepped well clear. Unlike shaped charges, when detcord explodes the force blows in all directions.

  Ten seconds later, the Primaline exploded.

  Chapter 70

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  It was all going to work. If any radar sets had still been tracking the drone, he knew that by this stage and this close to Washington the UAV should have been intercepted and brought down. But it hadn’t been, which meant that the EMP weapons must have done their work and taken out the radars and probably the fighters as well.

  Suddenly Sadir switched his attention from the controls in front of him to the house itself. He had heard something, a scratching sound and a faint muffled thump, like a large object falling a short distance onto a wooden floor. The failure of the rear surveillance camera on the house suddenly took on a
new and sinister significance. Perhaps that hadn’t just been some kind of random electrical fault in the camera or cabling. And maybe the man at the front door wasn’t a salesman.

  It might be nothing, or it might mean that somebody had finally put the pieces together.

  Sadir smiled.

  Whatever had caused the sounds he’d heard, it didn’t matter. He had never expected to walk away from this operation, but he was determined to see it through to the end. He turned back to the controls and altered the autopilot setting as a precaution, specifying a new final altitude for the descent of ground level and opening the throttle of the Reaper’s engine, hiking its speed to 200 miles per hour. He also slightly altered the heading to aim the drone directly at the White House.

  He picked up his Glock pistol, took the magazine out of the butt and inserted a full one. Then he turned round to stare at the door of the room, which was where he was sure the danger lay. If there really was a threat, if he wasn’t just hearing the normal, innocent sounds of the house.

  He took a final glance over his shoulder at the instrumentation and control panel, checking that the UAV was still on course, then picked up his pistol and aimed it at the door, ready for whatever or whoever came through it.

  Chapter 71

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  The twin double-glazed units of the French doors instantly shattered, driving lethally sharp spears of glass into the heavy drapes that covered the opening, ripping holes in the fabric and smashing into the walls.

  Immediately, two members of the SWAT team, closely followed by two others, crashed their way in through the remains of the shattered French doors, thrusting the heavy drapes to one side and looking for a target.

  Wayne would have preferred to lob in a couple of flash-bangs – stun grenades – to disorient the occupants of the room before his men entered, but the obviously thick and heavy floor-to-ceiling drapes had prevented that being an option. What he was hoping was that the unexpected explosion of the detcord would have had a similar effect upon whoever was in the room.

  Chapter 72

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  Sadir had been looking in the wrong direction when the blasting cap triggered the detcord. The explosion was both deafening and shockingly unexpected. The drapes were blown inwards and the area of the room beside the French doors was suddenly filled with exploding glass.

  He swung round to face the threat and even before the echoes of the explosion had died away he was confronted by two strongly built and heavily armed men wearing full combat gear. Both were pointing Heckler & Koch MP5 submachineguns straight at him, and both were yelling.

  His ears still ringing from the blast, for a second or two he couldn’t make out their words. Then, as two more bulky figures stormed into the room, all wearing the same green combat clothing with FBI patches on their shoulders and ‘HRT’ on their chests, he finally understood the words they were bellowing: ‘Drop the weapon. Drop the weapon.’

  But that was the last thing he was going to do, quite literally.

  Sadir smiled slightly, still holding the pistol in his right hand, and stared at his attackers. ‘You’re too late,’ he said. ‘Much, much too late.’

  Then he took rapid aim with his Glock and squeezed the trigger three times, even as two of the FBI SWAT team opened up with their MP5s, the 10mm bullets smashing into Sadir’s torso and driving him backwards and down to the floor.

  One of the SWAT team stepped slightly sideways so that he could cover the fallen man with his submachinegun, while another member approached him cautiously. He kicked the Glock well out of reach, then knelt down beside Sadir’s body, checked for a pulse in his neck and stood up.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘Check the rest of the house and get Wayne and that English guy in here ASAP.’

  Morgan stepped into the room about half a minute later from the front of the house, as Rogers and Gordon crunched their way in from the back over the carpet of glass shards. They took in the three corpses lying on the floor, but Morgan’s attention was immediately seized by the improvised control suite that dominated the room.

  ‘There were three of them?’ Gordon asked, the house echoing to shouts of ‘Clear’ as the SWAT team checked every room.

  ‘It looks to me like they had a falling-out,’ the SWAT officer said. ‘When we came in, the only one standing was that guy on the floor over there, the one who looks like an Arab. The other two, the two Chinese here, were already dead. The Arab fired three times and so we returned the favour.’

  ‘But none of you are hurt?’

  ‘No, because he didn’t fire at us. He fired at that.’ He pointed at the control suite, where Morgan was just sitting down.

  ‘I think Unit 61398 of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is now permanently down by two of its most experienced hackers,’ Morgan said, glancing at the two bodies on the floor behind him. ‘Which is no bad thing, in my opinion. But that doesn’t help us right here and right now.’

  ‘What you mean?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Sadir knew that once the SWAT team guys were in the house, he was only going to leave here in a body bag. So he didn’t fire at them: he fired at the control panel to try and disable it. The reason he did that must be because he’s already got the Reaper inbound to DC on quite literally a crash course, and by disabling these controls he knew there would be nothing we could do to stop it.’

  ‘Knew, or hoped?’ Rogers asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  Chapter 73

  Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

  Sadir’s bullets had smashed the flatscreen monitor directly in front of the central seat on the console, ripped through the control column mounted on the desk and ploughed through a black plastic box containing several circuit boards. On what was left of the front of the box Morgan could see various analogue-type, but obviously digitally powered, flight instruments. He presumed that was a device running in tandem with the Reaper’s instrumentation circuits that he expected to see displayed on the flat-panel monitors. A throttle quadrant was clamped on the right-hand side of the desk and below it he could see a set of rudder pedals. A standard computer keyboard and a trackball completed the set-up. It looked very like some of the other much-modified home flight simulators he’d seen.

  He knew time was running out, and he also knew that he was the only person in that room and in that house with anything like sufficient knowledge of computer systems to recover the situation. And that depended upon him getting the control console up and running again, soonest.

  The control column was way beyond repair, just a shattered collection of plastic and wires, but Morgan knew the way that computer programmers thought and worked, and he was absolutely convinced that somewhere in the room, in one of the cupboards or drawers or somewhere, there would be spare components. No serious computer user ever just has one machine or one screen or one mouse or one keyboard because people like that are always looking for faster or more responsive equipment, and so inevitably they accumulate bits and pieces that are perfectly functional and usable but not quite the newest or highest-spec.

  All they had to do was find them.

  ‘Grant,’ he said, ‘can you see if you can find a spare control column somewhere, as fast as you can, please.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Morgan stepped around to the back of the control console, unplugged the ruined screen and connected the undamaged one on the right-hand side, then walked back to the seat. Behind him, one of the SWAT team members was photographing the room and the three bodies lying on the floor, hopefully to allow the corpses to be moved somewhere else.

  As he sat down the screen came to life and displayed the view from the Reaper’s main forward-facing camera in the upper portion – the view was simply sky and clouds with nothing at all to indicate the drone’s location – and below that, in a separate window, the flight instrum
ents of the UAV.

  He looked to his left, at the other undamaged flat-panel monitor, and realised it was showing the location of what could only be the Reaper, a tiny blue triangular symbol following a red vector and overlaid on a map of the local area. What immediately worried him was how close it was to Washington D.C. He checked the scale displayed at the bottom right of the screen and mentally applied that to the distance the UAV still had to run.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘That’s fifteen miles, eighteen at the most.’

  He switched his gaze to the other screen and to the flight instruments displayed there. The ASI, the air speed indicator, was showing 175 and he knew that the speed of an aircraft was normally given in knots, so that meant 200 miles an hour. Or just under twenty seconds to travel one mile.

  The altimeter was unwinding at a frightening rate, and as he looked it passed 20,000 feet in the descent. He did some very rough and ready calculations in his head and estimated that the drone would reach ground level at about the same time as it would be over the centre of Washington.

  Which was obviously the point.

  Sadir must’ve heard something or guessed that he wasn’t going to get the chance to drop whatever weapons the Reaper was carrying and instead had set it up to crash into the city centre, relying on the explosive power of the fuel still in the drone’s tanks to cause as much mayhem as possible.

  ‘I found this,’ Rogers said, handing Morgan a complex-looking control column studded with buttons and switches.