He walked his designated perimeter a hundred meters from the camp. He enjoyed this early morning time to contemplate his direction. France had been a cauldron ever since his people had effectively been segregated to poor suburbs and it had only gotten worse as the vitriolic speech of the hard right wingers and the National Front grew in recent years with various terrorist attacks. Before that, the riots in 2005 and the results from that action had festered for so long it continuously caused problems. That his people had migrated to France over the last seventy years but refused to integrate into their society never entered his mind as a possible cause. Arra Meer had no concept of personal responsibility. As far as he was concerned the fault was all with the French for keeping his people down. So now he had learned how to fight back and soon he would go back to his neighborhood and see how he could help create a worldwide caliphate.
It might not happen in his lifetime, especially if he ended up fighting in Syria or some other location. But, it would happen, he wouldn’t be wasting his life.
From his perimeter walk, he was able to watch as the darkness was cracked open and a massive amount of destruction rained down on the camp. Arra was shocked to see little lights screaming down to the ground from different points in the sky. They were never from the same location and came from unpredictable distances. Sometimes he would see one so close to the ground he thought someone might be able to grab hold of it and some were high enough he doubted he could use a pistol to shoot them.
He unslung his machine gun and tried to aim. The uselessness of that was quickly apparent. The best he could do was spray his bullets into the air and pray that something was hit.
He hadn’t shot fifteen rounds into the air when his mind realized one of those little lightning strikes was coming his way.
Then, Arra Meer, citizen of France and recently trained fighter, died when a slug of metal entered his chest. The shockwaves tore a fist sized chunk of flesh from his back, and his eyes were already glazed as he was tossed back five feet to land in the sand.
He never finished the thought that he would never be able to raise his gun in this war.
Pete was in awe. The flight from the first camp to the second was a high-speed, high acceleration joyride. The six Pods had formed a circle aimed at the camp. He heard Todd open the comms channel and then the single word, “Engage.”
That was when the night lit up and death rained down on the camp from above. The sheer number of the shots the Pods put into the camp was destroying buildings, vehicles and any heat source that Pete could see on his screen.
Suddenly, his screen lit up with an icon of a heat source, a person that was at least fifty yards outside of the camp. There was a question on his screen. “Terminate?” Pete reached out and hit the ‘YES’ option. A blink of an eye later and the body was flying backwards. A tracer round had impacted and gone completely through the center of the mass. The Pod returned to the destruction of the camp.
A few bodies were seen coming out of the tents firing into the air before they were mowed down.
In less than sixty seconds, Pete’s Pod screen came up. “No targets. Land?” Pete spoke to the microphone above him, “Todd, are we done here?”
Pete heard Joel mumble an almost silent, “Fuck me!”
Todd came back on. “Affirmative, let’s go down, but leave two Pods up as over-watch. Let’s find what we can take and then I have a gift from Team BMW to leave behind.”
With the destruction complete, four Pods landed. The snipers had stayed up, but with the Pods actively targeting anyone but them, Pete doubted they would need to do anything. It took the team five minutes to find the main tent and get into the area with the equipment. Most of the equipment was trashed, but Todd found two cell phones that looked unlocked, so he grabbed them and tossed them into the second backpack he brought along for this very reason.
Once the search was complete, the men returned to their Pods and Todd set the command that would pull them back a couple of miles. All six Pods lined up. Todd spoke to everyone there, “We came, we saw, we implemented our Queen’s command. Now, we leave a final gift, compliments of the baddest little R&D team this side of the Milky Way.” Todd reached down to press a button on his screen. “Bobcat said this package was a Marcus special and that we should tell them, ‘Eat this, motherfuckers!’” Todd pressed the button and he felt a tiny jolt as a package left his vehicle. A second later, his glass had to darken to protect his vision from the eye searing explosion that engulfed the camp. A tiny mushroom cloud could be seen rising up hundreds of yards.
Todd heard Pete’s voice come across the speaker when the screens returned their visibility and the team could see the massive destruction the bomb made in the camp. To their eyes even the sand was glowing red in places. There was nothing recognizable as human made for over fifty yards from the center of the blast zone. The circle of near-total destruction extended another hundred yards from that. “What the hell was that?”
“That,” Todd answered, “was Team BMW’s contribution to our retribution.” Todd paused then added, “Remind me never to piss off Marcus, okay?” He heard a few chuckles but thought he could hear every one of the guys watching return an affirmative.
Rocket scientists, Todd mused, could be bad fuckers to piss off.
19
Pudong Shanghai, China
Sergeant Lo Chongan was staring with concern at the computer screen in front of him. He was in charge of a PLA unit that was assigned to attack and subvert different financial concerns in the West.
Unfortunately, his group had been given a particularly difficult group of financial companies to infiltrate. They were exceptionally difficult because they were under the protection of an elite American internet cyber-security company. So far the Americans had been able to counter the many different attack styles his group had attempted. They were almost successful a year ago, but the enemy had implemented new security software that had nullified his unit’s progress. His group had spent the last year trying to find any vulnerabilities in the security protocol. They would attack a small portion of the program that was protecting one of the companies under this company’s security. When they were able to document a vulnerability, they would stop probing there and use the knowledge to attack another company under their protection. Hopefully, this would provide his group the ability to plant their spyware inside the enemy’s firewalls before the Americans could identify and correct their vulnerabilities.
Sergeant Lo Chongan needed to crack this security. It wasn’t that his PLA commanders were impatient. They were actually far more patient with his group’s lack of success than he felt his team deserved. No, it was his other Master who was impatient. Sergeant Lo Chongan could feel the dark eyes staring at him every time he left his home at night. If he was lucky he rarely saw The Master. But occasionally The Master would appear in person to request an update.
The last update discussion had not gone well. His Master appeared at the meeting already agitated, and her barely concealed anger had made a considerable impression on Chongan. One that stayed with him for the last two months.
Chongan felt that his team was within thirty days of being able to crack the latest security updates. They had been within two weeks of their objective just three months ago. But then the latest update had occurred and shut them out. Lo Chongan had been able to find out, through his contacts, that the security programmer who had implemented that update for the American firm had left the company.
That was good for his team. Most likely the American company would not be able to protect their clients again.
His team of eighteen hackers worked in a darkened room, their faces illuminated by the glow of their monitors.
Their goals were quite simple. Analyze the enemy, infiltrate, take control and then wait. They would implement silent listening abilities that would send back important information. But should there be a significant threat against China’s interests, he and many other groups within the PLA would be able t
o attack the computers with commands that would cripple the ability of those foreign companies to produce anything.
They would not have their money, their data, their software or even a way to fund their payroll. It would immediately cause millions of jobs to become untenable. The sheer devastation brought about by so many people not able to work would, in and of itself, cause massive repercussions within the societies China fought.
No country would be able to promulgate war when their businesses supply lines could not operate.
The Art of War for the digital age.
Now, Sergeant Lo Chongan and his hackers just needed to find two more weaknesses and he would be able to finally crack open the bottle of French Champagne he had been saving.
Libya
“How little the world understands, no matter how much we let them see. Even with the Prophet’s words written hundreds of years ago, they fail to seek the understanding of our faith and the foretelling of the great Caliphate we are building even now!” The roar of the recruits was pleasing to Dawid Zadeh. He had been providing these exhortations to a group here in Libya for the last month. He felt the embrace of the crowd’s attention. All the eyes of those listening alight with the fire of the Holy Scriptures and the account of what was to come.
The Caliphate was growing. Even now it was being pulled together and strengthened by the hundreds who joined weekly, and the thousands who sent financial help. Dawid Zadeh’s face was serene as he walked across the large courtyard before entering the mosque. The Imam was not pleased with Dawid, or his teachings out in the courtyards, but Dawid was careful not to be rude or disrespectful. The time for declaring Sharia law in this land would happen. The truth that it would manifest was foretold. Whether he was here to see it or not didn’t matter, all that mattered was the duty to continue the effort. It might be his generation, or a generation yet unborn.
He went out a back passage to the apartment he was staying in, just a couple of blocks away. Half a year ago he moved his allegiance from Al-Qaeda to ISIS because he believed that ISIS was proper in focusing their push on establishing God’s Principality as it had been ordained. Once Dawid realized that was true, his only choice under the law was to move his allegiance to ISIS. To join them in the Caliphate and move forward to expand its physical borders no matter what the method.
Now he felt nothing but disgust for those in Al-Qaeda. They were true apostates seeking to stay in the shadows when it was time to come together under the first Caliph in a thousand years.
He had been in Belgium to help organize the French attacks before moving here to Libya. He had exited his apartment only an hour before a police raid.
God’s providence.
Now, he had been given instructions to continue his efforts spreading the word here for a few days before he was supposed to meet a new group to plan another attack. Because of his great success in France, his experience had been requested.
Dawid Zadeh was pleased to be able to provide his knowledge.
Pudong Shanghai, China
Sergeant Lo Chongan had to return early from his lunch, because of an urgent request from his corporal.
He stepped into the room, sliding the door closed. “Corporal, what is important enough to call me back from lunch? Did we get the last two vulnerabilities?”
Corporal Liu Jianguo shook his head but kept his eyes on the screen in front of him. “No sir!”
Chongan strode over to Jianguo’s desk. “What is it, then?”
Jianguo pointed to his screen. “Sir, our efforts to breach the defenses have been traced. We are seeing more and more of our second party servers in Europe being taken offline.”
The PLA had second party servers located in legitimate businesses throughout Europe. These machines did business twenty-four hours a day. The PLA group also had command and control software that would take small data-command scripts from the PLA and inflate them to full size and then use them as the commands to run attacks. Should a system try to track the command and control software, the best it could do is track it back to the business in Europe. It was the ultimate cutout. If you tried to take down their software, it would almost invariably take down the critical business server as well.
Chongan frowned as he leaned over to view the map of the servers in question. Jianguo’s map had over four hundred locations that showed in green when everything was trouble free. At that moment it looked like maybe thirty percent were red. Chongan was surprised as he watched five more dots turn red while he was viewing the map. “It was good you called me, Corporal. Have you made any progress identifying the source of the attacks?”
“No sir, I have not. Further, I’ve double checked the servers that are red.” Jianguo looked up at his commanding officer. “Sir, all of the servers are still online! I’m afraid our cutouts must have been disabled but the next link back failed to notify us.”
Chongan reached over and hit a button on Jianguo’s touchscreen. “They are being monitored! Have we implemented the next security protocols?”
Jianguo turned and hit two keys on his keyboard. The screen was refreshed with an additional window. “Yes sir. I’ve averaged the ping time of the affected servers over the last twenty-four hours. I’ve implemented manual shutdown of all communications to any server not responding within twice that average ping time.”
“How many of the red dots represent a normal safety shutdown?” Chongan watched as his corporal’s shoulders hunched.
“None, sir.” Chongan looked back up at his commanding officer. “What are your orders, sir?”
Chongan considered the implications. If he shut down all of the second party systems, it would block their ability to work and it could take them weeks to rebuild their beachhead. He could implement a timed shutdown. Send out the instructions for the machines to lay dormant for a time and then start listening again. He could… “Send the command to all machines to cease transmitting any data. They are to move into ‘listen only’ mode. We shall see if we can find any communications or probes that are not coming from us. Maybe that will allow us to track the communications back to their source and find the responsible party. If that happens, I will request an attack against whoever is responsible. An aggressive attack should take their focus off us long enough to allow us to hide our assets.”
“Yes sir, shutting down all communications and moving to listen only mode.”
Now, thought Chongan, let’s see if we can find the enemy and turn the tables on them.
20
Washington D.C., USA
It was Friday afternoon and Don Roberts was nursing a late afternoon half-and-half from the Starbucks up the street when Barb walked in. He looked up and smiled. “Another week down, another week without a terrorist hit here in the States. We are hopefully doing some good.”
She dropped into one of his extra chairs. Don had better chairs for his visitors than she had for her desk. She had considered buying a chair and bringing it in, but it rankled her that the team couldn’t get permission to requisition better furniture than what she used in her office. So, she was teaching the system a lesson by keeping her butt in her creaky, cranky, poor back support chair. The lesson would occur when she had to go on worker’s comp for six months of reconstructive back surgery.
Maybe she should just break down and buy herself a new chair. Relieving her back pain was more important than teaching the system a lesson.
“Have you read the latest reports from overseas?”
Don gave her a quick shake of his head before sipping on his hot coffee again. “Nope, not unless it came in before eight A.M.. I’ve got a date tonight and I don’t want anything to jinx it.”
She stared at her boss. “How is an overseas report going to jinx your date tonight? Yeah okay, maybe a local issue, but we do research, not street operations.”
Don shrugged. “This date is very different from the type I normally ask out. She is an opportunity ‘to date up’ I don’t get very often, so I don’t want anything to upse
t the applecart.”
Barb decided she wasn’t going to understand Don’s situation and dropped the subject. “Well, I’m sure you’ll enjoy your date and the rest of your night will go swimmingly. Now answer me this, Sir Don-meister, how does someone take out two terrorist training camps and no one has a clue how it was done?”
“Beats me, but we took out a couple not too long ago. Those two in Libya we bombed the hell out of.”
“Okay, but we read about that in the newspapers. Everyone wants everyone else to know how much we’re helping with the war. And reports on this type of preemptive attack help the people in our country feel safe.
“But I’ve just read a report about two terrorist training camps being taken out. The first camp, everyone was killed by your run-of-the-mill knife or gunshot wounds. Or, believe it or not, ragged tears across their throats. The ragged tear deaths and the gunshot victim were in the command tent. Everyone else was killed with hand-to-hand weapons.”
Don sipped more of his coffee. When she had started talking he had known that Barb had gone and jinxed his date. So far, nothing she said had jinxed anything. “I’m liking this so far, what’s the catch?”
“Well.” She relaxed back in the chair. God it felt so good! “In the first camp there are massive amounts of wolf tracks, huge wolf tracks.”
“From scavengers?”
She shook her head. “Can’t be. The local variety of wolf is probably only a third that size. Hell, there seem to be some tracks that are bigger than anything known to currently roam the earth. Someone is leaving from the University of Alaska to go take a look.”
“Alaska? Why the hell way up there?”
“The state has the biggest wolf population, so one of the guys who study wolves is running a research grant out of the University.” She shrugged. “Beats me, I’m cold enough here, but that isn’t the coolest part of this.”
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets) Page 143