Strike Matrix

by Aiden L Bailey

  “Tell me about it.” McIntyre scanned the carnage.

  They moved on, soon reaching the edge of the traffic jam. A newer model Volkswagen Beetle was idle by the road, engine still running but the owners long vanished. “Get in.”

  Nahla Asem squeezed into the back of the two-door car. McIntyre took the driver’s seat and Conner the seat next to him. They drove fast, nudging aside any parked cars blocking their path. Conner held the two AK-47s knowing they might need them. He found a water bottle, so they shared the contents hydrating them in this heat.

  Soon they hit the suburbs leaving the dust from the fallen skyscraper far behind. Everything was flat, dry and sandy. There were houses everywhere in whitewash stone, high fences and nil vegetation. No one was on the streets.

  “What’s the plan now?”

  “Al Dhafra Air Base,” McIntyre grumbled. “You said something earlier about nuclear weapons. I believe you now.”

  “Good, but why now?”

  “Because I think I know where and why it will detonate.”

  They entered a major road. McIntyre accelerated, speeding them south and far from the city.

  CHAPTER 24

  Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

  Emily Dawson accosted Peri Keser the moment she walked into their secure ops center. “With all due respect Ma’am, what the hell happened?”

  Peri eyeballed the tall, slim woman. Despite the insights into her own character she had been mulling over since her conversation with Szymanski, Peri was in no mood to let a subordinate undermine her authority. “You’ll show me more respect than that, Lieutenant.”

  Dawson tensed. Peri sensed the rage consuming the woman, the same agitation festering in every one of her team, but it was only Dawson who had lost her discipline and respect for the chain of command… so far. Peri had to get them focused, minds back on the mission. She couldn’t afford to lose control at this critical juncture. Not when their situation was so precarious.

  She also knew that she stunk like a sewer.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “That’s better. Is Skaffen secure?”

  Gritting her teeth and clenching her fists, Dawson said, “Yes Ma’am. She’s come ‘round. She’s secured in the interrogation room.”

  “Good.” Peri examined the tactical ops room. An array of monitors glowed in the dim light, with satellite imagery feeds of Mumbai streets, scans of local police and military communication channels, and classified files open on Ashcroft, Skaffen, Gridley-Brooks, Visser and everyone else they were tracking. But no one focused on the intelligence streaming on those monitors. Dawson might have been the most vitriolic of the group, but the rest of them — Saanvi Dara, Paul Szymanski and a half-dozen junior personnel looked not at their work, but to Peri with combined expressions of uncertainty, disappointed and worry.

  “What are you all waiting for?” Peri yelled. “Get back to work. Find Ashcroft.”

  Focus on the task, she reminded herself; accomplish one goal at a time. Let nothing else get to her.

  Everyone returned to their stations. Everyone that was, except for Dawson.

  “You got something to say, Lieutenant?”

  “The situation needs containment, Ma’am. The Mumbai police have discovered Pfündl’s, Cassian’s and Ndulu Adebayo’s bodies and their deaths are being investigated as homicides. Sergeant Wilks is in our U.S. Consulate, getting his snapped wrist reset, which could expose our operation if the wrong person talks. We’ve lost contact with the drones, and we can no longer contact Major Fitzgerald and the team in Camp Lemonnier. That’s what I’ve got to say.”

  Peri growled. “I warned you we are dealing with one of the worst cyberterrorists on the planet. They must have hacked us too. Reboot everything then get as many systems back online as you can and stop bringing me problems. Bring me fixes.” Peri stormed towards the washrooms. “I’ll be back in five. I want a full update when I return. Then I’m interrogating Skaffen.”

  Peri grabbed a change of clothes from her luggage. She stormed into the shared washroom with the single shower stall, locking the door behind her. She stripped out of her filthy, stinking clothes and binned them all. Her skin was hot to the touch. A wave of nausea hit her, and soon she was dry retching into a toilet bowl. After several minutes, when nothing came up, she growled again. It wasn’t fair. The malaria, its fever and the fogginess it caused was getting her down, defeating her. If she wasn’t so sick, perhaps she would manage the operation better. But she couldn’t worry about how things could have been different. She could only do her best with her current situation and remain focused on their ultimate objectives.

  Peri stood under a shower for ten minutes, washing away the grime and stench. She shampooed and conditioned her hair three times. She scrubbed her skin until it was raw.

  Dripping with cool water, she stepped from the shower and dried herself. The water cooled her, so she’d keep as much of it as possible on her body as possible to battle her fever. After devouring a full container of bottled water and the first round of broad-spectrum antibiotics, she dressed in undergarments, a blouse, loose cargo pants and desert boots. Being clean and cool again left her feeling much better.

  With her P226 holstered on her belt, she returned to the tactical ops center. “What’s the situation?”

  It was Saanvi who answered. “Ma’am, you’re right. I think someone has hacked us. None of our feeds are making any sense.”

  The largest monitor in the room played an India News channel. A report in Hindi ran over aerial footage of the smoke trail pouring out of Dharavi where the Predator drone had fired a missile at Ashcroft and Peri earlier this morning.

  Peri turned to two junior security officers on their team, each dressed as civilians but equipped as soldiers with body armor, M4A1 assault rifles and combat webbing with spare clips. “Who’s watching the perimeter?”

  “Petrovitch and Quaid, Ma’am,” said Corporal Chandler. “Front and back entrances.”

  “I want you two on the roof.”

  “You expecting an assault, Ma’am?”

  “I don’t know what to expect, but I want as much coverage as possible.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  The two soldiers disappeared.

  Peri returned her attention to Saanvi. “I want you, Dawson, and the rest of your team to get as many systems back online as possible. It won’t take long for someone to identify Pfündl and Cassian, and when they do, India’s Intelligence Bureau and who knows else will discover that we caused the chaos in Dharavi.”

  “Ma’am,” Saanvi interrupted pointing to the main monitor. “All news channels are reporting the drone missile strike as a gas explosion. It’s saying they have recovered only one body, that of a Caucasian male. This ‘fake news’ might benefit us.”

  “Maybe. But see, it’s cyber-hacks again. Find out what is really going on.” Peri turned to Szymanski. “We need to talk to Skaffen. I want you to join me on the interrogation.”

  The NSA officer nodded as he scratched his head. “Sure.”

  Skaffen was locked in an interrogation room with no windows and little furniture. When Peri and Szymanski entered, they found her seated on a wooden chair with her left wrist handcuffed to an exposed water pipe. She still wore the torn and dirty blue and gold sari. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were dark and sullen. Earlier, they had provided her with a cup of water, which she had already drunk. It was hotter in here than anywhere else in the building.

  Ready to begin their interrogation, Szymanski stood towards the back of the room. Peri took a chair and sat close to Claire Skaffen.

  “Do you know how much trouble you are in?”

  The woman gave a condescending chuckle. “If you’re here to threaten me, believe me, I’ve got far worse problems to worry about than you two.”

  Peri nodded, considered what the woman might have meant by that, and what those other threats might be. “I think you should worry about us right now. I’ve
seen your FBI charge sheet. I figure, with all the crimes you’ve committed, you’re looking at multiple life sentences with no chance of parole. Maybe even the death penalty.”

  Skaffen locked eyes with Peri. This woman was feisty, certain of herself despite her battered state.

  “You’ve got no idea what is going on, do you? No idea at all?”

  Their prisoner was talkative, which was a good sign. So Peri prodded her, “Why don’t you enlighten me, Claire Skaffen?”

  That caused their prisoner to laugh louder than before.

  “You want to tell me what is so funny?”

  “Who are you? CIA? FBI? Maybe the NSA? What I know is you’re American, like me, which means I have rights. You can’t treat me like this and get away with it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who we are. What matters is, we know all about you.”

  “You sure about that.” She laughed again. “I think you’ve been lied to, just like everyone else.”

  Skaffen words sounded like rambles. Perhaps the heat and the stress of today had rattled the woman’s mind. Peri looked to Szymanski for ideas on how to approach the interrogation, but he only shrugged.

  Skaffen spoke, “You don’t know who I am. You don’t know why I’m here. You’ve tried to kill Simon and me, but you don’t even understand who sent you, and the real reasons behind your mission.”

  “You did, Skaffen. You’ve been impersonating the President, using the Shatterhand program—”

  “Shatterhand? What’s that?” she said. “Oh, wait a minute, you mean the program my parents created?”

  “WHAT?”

  The prisoner laughed again.

  “I’m not laughing Skaffen.”

  The woman stared up at Peri through the dark rings around her eyes. “I’m not Skaffen. My name is Casey Irvine. My parents are Alan and Clementine Irvine. But you didn’t know that, did you?”

  “What?” Szymanski asked not able to mask his surprise and shock. “You’re saying: you’re the Irvine’s daughter?”

  She nodded. “I’m sure my father at least works for the NSA. A developer behind both the Shatterhand program you keep talking about, and its counterpart—”

  “GhostKnife?” Peri asked.

  The prisoner nodded. “So it has a name. But you don’t even know what those programs are—”

  “There is nothing in the Irvine’s files about them having a daughter.”

  Skaffen shook her head. “I know my parents are trying their hardest to keep me alive, to foil this Shatterhand program, stop it sending people like you to kill me.”

  “You know,” Szymanski said from the back of the room, “there is a resemblance, between Clementine and her.”

  Peri looked to Szymanski, then to their prisoner, and at her own trembling hands. There was an aspect about what their prisoner was saying, how she said it and her unwavering conviction, that made Peri believe her. Or at least consider that her story was worthy of further investigation.

  “Haven’t you worked it out?” the woman claiming to be Casey Irvine said in a raised voice. “You can no longer trust anything digital. The cyberterrorists you are talking about, they’re not people, like you and me.”

  “What do you mean?” Szymanski asked. He had paled since the subject of Shatterhand and GhostKnife had come up.

  “They are machines. Ghosts in the machines. True, self-aware, rogue AIs who have been playing all of us for fools.”

  “AI?” Szymanski asked, as he shuddered. “You mean artificial intelligence? Real artificial intelligence?”

  Their prisoner stared at him, grinning. “Look at you. You’re thinking back over everything that has happened to you these last few weeks, and suddenly everything weird in your life makes sense when you put an AI behind it.”

  Peri looked at Szymanski. “Is she right?”

  Szymanski seemed unsteady on his feet. He nodded. “I remembered what Stephen Hawking said about AI.”

  “The scientist? Theoretical physicist, right? What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Hawking once said ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of humans.’ Tech company giants like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, along with Hawking have been warning about the AI threat for years. Everything that’s happened, everything that is odd and unusual in the world, it makes perfect sense if you credit it to a sentient being that is both vastly more intelligent than us, has omnipotent powers over everything and is capable of being in many, many places at once.”

  Casey Irvine — for Peri now believed the woman wasn’t lying about her name — rattled her handcuff. It had not been so long ago that Peri had been in a similar situation herself, handcuffed while Szymanski and another NSA officer had interrogated her. Peri had been trying to prove to her captors that the President of the United States was dead and replaced online by a cyberterrorist. Now this woman was trying to convince Peri that she was not who the world was saying she was, and that the cyberterrorist Peri was chasing was a self-aware AI. The situation was the same, but also completely different. As incredible as it sounded, Casey’s claims had a ring of authenticity about them.

  “Are you going to release me? Are we going to talk like civilized people, and work out what we will do about this, together? Because we aren’t enemies. We are on the same side.”

  Peri was about to answer when she heard gunfire. The distinctive rattling roar of automatic fire echoing from downstairs. A second later, she felt the building shudder then heard the blast as a stun grenade detonated beneath them.

  Saanvi burst into the room.

  “We’re under assault! At least a dozen armed men have stormed the building.”

  CHAPTER 25

  It was evening when Simon reached Dakshesh Matondkar’s apartment tower, lit up in neon yellows and pinks so it stood out like some kind of glitzy tourist attraction.

  For many minutes Simon watched the apartment from the shadows across the road. Three muscular thugs who had roughed him up the previous night loitered outside the entrance. One with a red cap gave instructions to the others, punching his fist into the palm of his other hand as he talked. Simon felt confident the men weren’t ex-special forces or even former army grunts, just regular criminals. It was time to act.

  With Keser’s SIG Sauer P228 in his waistband and within easy reach, Simon stepped from the shadows and walked with purpose along the opposite footpath. He wanted the thugs to see him. Sure enough, they spotted him within seconds.

  They came for him.

  He kept his pace steady, returned to the shadows pretending he was oblivious to their presence. When he sensed they were almost upon him he spun, smashed the capped leader across the head with the grip of SIG Sauer, sending him down fast.

  The two standing men watched in shock as Simon incapacitated one of their own. Their hesitation, counted in seconds, was all Simon needed to jab the second man in the solar plexus. Ribs cracked as the thug grunted from the impact, then dropped to his knees.

  The third thug shook his head, regained his composure and rushed Simon. Simon raised an elbow towards the man’s head. The man ran straight at him, knocking himself unconscious as his face rammed hard into Simon’s defensive move.

  The second thug struggled on his knees gasping for breath. Simon used the grip of the SIG Sauer again and smashed it across the man’s forehead and he too was out for the count.

  Three down, all rendered unconscious in less than ten seconds.

  Simon scanned the streets. No one had noticed the altercation, or if they had they weren’t hanging around. Simon took the red cap and placed it on his own head, then stripped the man of his cream linen shirt which he slipped over his own top.

  Before someone called the police, Simon walked fast across the road to the apartment entrance. He punched in the code he’d watched the thugs key in yesterday. Soon he was ascending in the elevator, all the way to the top floor where Matondkar’s penthouse waited.

  The elevator doo
r opened with a ping. Another thug approached. Not seeing through the disguise because he wasn’t looking at Simon, he called out, “Ganak? What are you—?”

  Before the man had finished speaking, Simon grabbed one of the Persian horse statues and smashed it over the thug’s head, sending him down onto his hands and knees. Simon then kicked him in the head sending his fourth foe into the land of slumber.

  With his pistol raised, Simon pointed it at Dakshesh Matondkar. The arms dealer only now aware of the situation tried to clamber out of the lounge where yesterday he had almost snipped off Simon’s fingers.

  “Sit down!” Simon commanded.

  Matondkar did as instructed.

  Simon scanned the expansive penthouse for other threats. The bead of his weapon soon lined up an elderly lady, in her sixties wearing bohemian-style harem pants and a loose, bright orange blouse. A man hauled her out of her seat. Simon recognized that man as Roger Gridley-Brookes. The South African mercenary pressed his 9mm pistol into the woman’s forehead, his other arm gripped around her neck as he maneuvered behind her using her body as a shield.

  “Drop the weapon, Ashcroft.”

  Simon considered the order, knowing that if he relinquished, he would lose what little advantage he had. “I don’t think so.”

  “You want me to kill her?”

  Gridley-Brook’s hostage had a pained, fearful look in her eyes. Simon recognized the family resemblance between Casey and her mother. He was looking at Clementine Irvine.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this Roger.”

  “I think it does. You ripped me off. No one betrays me and gets away with it.”

  “I didn’t betray you.”

  “The hell you didn’t.”

  Matondkar shuffled in his chair. Someone else moved behind Simon. Before Simon could react, he felt a pistol push into the small of his back, pressed right up against his spine. Knowing he was out of options, Simon carefully raised his pistol in surrender and let the man behind him take it. The unseen assailant then punched Simon hard in the kidney. The pain was sudden and sharp. He shuddered from the intense shock as he fell to his knees.