Cyber Terror

by Rose, Malcolm

  “So we refused to pay up and he went ahead?”

  Angel shook his head. “The government wouldn’t admit it publicly, but they dropped five million precisely where it was supposed to be dropped. It wasn’t touched and he hit Edinburgh anyway. This isn’t about money. It’s someone who gets kicks out of making us squirm and pay up. When I say someone, I mean a man, woman or a group of people. I’ll play you his sound clips in a minute. But first...”

  “How he did it?”

  “Yes.” Angel stood up and walked up and down behind his desk. “The real answer is, we don’t know. But our computer specialists have come up with three possibilities. Black-box recorders couldn’t distinguish them. A cyber attack, a hardware Trojan, or an e-bomb.”

  Jordan looked blank. He’d heard of a cyber attack. That was a fancy name for hacking and computer viruses. He didn’t have a clue about the other two.

  “There’s no evidence anyone hacked into the aviation computers, but it can’t be ruled out. A Trojan’s harder to pin down. You’ll get a full briefing later, but it’s a microchip that was sabotaged with a bad circuit when it was made. It can be activated at any time, turning the microprocessor into a time bomb.”

  “Aren’t chips tested before they get put in planes – or anywhere else?”

  Angel nodded. “But there’s no way of detecting a single extra circuit among millions of genuine ones on a chip. The kill switch only makes itself known when it’s triggered. By then, it’s too late. The chip’s dead and whatever was relying on it is down and out.”

  “And that’s called a hardware Trojan?”

  “Yes. The third possibility’s an electromagnetic bomb.” Angel sat at his desk again. “Did you know you could down a plane, or even bring a city to its knees, in a fraction of a second without firing a single shot, spilling a drop of blood or blasting a single building? That’s an e-bomb for you. It’s simple to make and it doesn’t leave a trace. It’s a strong burst of microwaves and it’d burn out all circuits and crash every computer within a few hundred square metres.”

  “Does that mean it fries chips?” Jordan said, with a smile on his face.

  “This is serious, Jordan.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “The pulse creates a power surge in circuits, like giving all electronic gear a heart attack.” Angel sighed. “Cyber warfare, a hardware Trojan or an e-bomb could trash an aircraft’s power and control systems at a distance. Or worse. Crippling a few planes and killing the passengers is bad enough. But we could be facing the end of civilization.”

  “That’s a bit...”

  “Extreme? Not really,” Angel said. “Think about it. Society – civilization – depends on computers and technology. If someone could disrupt crucial computers, it’d be the end of everything. Energy generation and distribution. We’d have no power. Then there’s pumping stations. They’d grind to a halt. That means no drinking water after half a day and no petrol or diesel transport because there’d be no pumps to refuel vehicles. No deliveries. Supermarket shelves would empty in two or three days, no supplies of drugs would get to hospitals. So, no water, no food, no medicine, no power. Emergency generators would only work till they ran out of fuel. Health care and hospital services would collapse in seventy-two hours. How long do you think we’d last after that? How long before people riot on the streets?”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Remember, there’s no heating, no telecommunications, no internet, no emergency services. Sewage wouldn’t get pumped away. Banks, stock exchanges and just about every other business would go into meltdown. The armed forces rely on communication, so they’d be out of it as well.” He raised his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. “Need I go on? That’s not just a spanner in the works. It’s chaos and complete breakdown. Pretty much the end of civilization as far as I’m concerned. Experts tell me it’d take four to ten years to recover from an attack like that.”

  Jordan remembered his mum once saying that civilization is only three or four meals away from anarchy. At the time, he hadn’t understood. He did now, though. “If it’s such a big deal, why are you giving this job to me?” he asked.

  “Because you’ve got an extra incentive to sort it out.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Society depends on technology. So do you. An e-bomb would scramble your circuits. If you’ve got a Trojan chip inside you, you could be crippled at the flick of a switch. Or a hacker could break into your systems and disable you. That’ll spur you on, to say the least. But you won’t be on your own. I’ll give you all the backup you need. Now,” he said, “do you want to hear him – or her? The police called him Short Circuit.”

  Jordan nodded and sat up attentively.

  Accessing the sound file through his computer, Angel explained, “His first message – before the crash in Ecuador – was short and not very sweet. He simply announced in advance when something bad was going to happen. This was his second. Like the first, it’s heavily distorted. My sound gurus tell me it’s been through several stages of manipulation to disguise the voice. Before you ask, background noise has been filtered out. Apart from the sound of an aeroplane taking off and that’s probably been layered over the top to remind us of the threat. It doesn’t mean he lives near Gatwick or Heathrow. Or Edinburgh.” Angel struck the Enter key to play the file.

  The Quito incident was a step on the way to proving I can cripple anything. Transport, energy, banks, government, shops. If it has electronic circuitry, it is in my power. That includes the whole of society.

  I hope you don’t doubt my ability. That would be a big mistake. Five million pounds will go some way to encouraging me not to repeat the exercise on British soil. I shouldn’t say British soil. That is not accurate. The money will encourage me not to repeat it in British sky.

  Films are very helpful. At least, thrillers and TV cops are. They show you the procedure for handing over ransom money. I want five million in used unmarked notes...

  Angel turned down the volume. “He’s finished his main rant. It goes on – in huge detail – about the mechanics of dropping the money in Kingston...”

  “Kingston?”

  “Upon Thames. Surrey. Anyway, you can check it out later, if you like. It came to nothing. He didn’t pick it up.”

  The voice could have come out of a synthesizer. It wasn’t natural in any way. The terrorist could have been male or female, young or old. Any accent was lost in the distortion. It could have been an English, American, Australasian or Canadian voice. It could have been Scottish, Welsh or Irish.

  “Have you heard from him since?” Jordan asked.

  Angel nodded. He stopped the recording and set up another. “This is the latest.” He clicked on the file.

  I wanted to make sure I have scared you enough to pay whatever I ask. Actually, I think money is grubby. It’s not worth worrying about. I can think of far more important things. Dignity is very important. I think it is perhaps the most important thing. Another important thing is fairness. I know what’s fair and what isn’t, but some people don’t understand the difference. I am going to bring them down before I target everyone. They will be good practice.

  The brief sound file came to a halt.

  Angel said, “I’m not sure what that means, but there could be a hint of why he’s doing it. Some sort of grievance, perhaps. Something he thinks was unfair that hurt his pride. That’s one of your jobs. Find out what’s behind his thinking. Then there’s how he’s doing it, who he is and – most important of all – stopping him before he steps up a gear to threatening everyone and civilization itself.”

  The pressure of responsibility made Jordan gulp. He wanted to protest that he was just a teenager, but he knew it was no good. In return for repairing his smashed body, Unit Red wanted something from him. It wanted an agent who did not look like an agent. It wanted him to use his powers against terrorists and crooks who had evaded justice. His debt to Unit Red was too great to walk away or to refuse a
mission.

  Jordan had become a spook. He’d never heard anyone in Unit Red refer to agents as spooks. Perhaps they reserved the term for their creepy neighbours in Highgate Cemetery.

  He stood upright and said, “Just a couple of things. How did these voice clips turn up?”

  “They were e-mailed from untraceable addresses to the police computer in Manchester.”

  “Manchester?”

  “No one knows why. Maybe there’s a reason, or he could’ve just stuck a pin in a map. What’s your second thought?”

  “Why Ecuador then Edinburgh? Why pick on those two flights?”

  Angel shrugged. “It could’ve been random, but I doubt it. I should think there’s a connection. That’s a good place to start.”

  3 SHORT CIRCUIT

  Kate Stelfox was not his handler’s real name. It was an invention, like Jordan Stryker, Angel and Raven. For confidentiality, Unit Red agents were only ever known by code names.

  Raven was one of the organization’s electronic whizz-kids, yet she defied the geeky stereotype. In her mid-twenties, she was glamorous, slim, heavily made-up and dressed as if she were on her way to a nightclub. She filled the air with a perfume that Jordan’s olfactory system identified as oranges, blackcurrant, jasmine and cedar wood. It smelled expensive. On sizeable heels, she stood in front of the wall-to-ceiling window that overlooked Highgate Cemetery’s stone crosses, headstones and monuments. To Jordan and Kate, sitting next to each other on the sofa, she seemed to have an enchanted wood behind her as she briefed them.

  “Have you heard of this? When a nuclear bomb goes off, you generate an electromagnetic pulse that overloads electrical systems for miles around.”

  Jordan shook his head, but Kate said, “Yes, I think I knew that. Probably a documentary on the telly.”

  “Lightning and high-energy particles from a solar storm can do it as well. They create a massive current that short circuits everything. An e-bomb has the same effect, but you don’t have to fire a nuke or wait for the right weather. You can generate enough of a radio-frequency shock wave with pretty simple equipment. You could cobble it together for a few hundred quid using off-the-shelf gear from an electrical shop or the internet.”

  “Someone like me could do it?” Jordan asked.

  “You’d need to download instructions from the net, but the components and know-how are out there, yes.”

  “Scary,” he muttered.

  “The powers-that-be are keeping quiet about it because they don’t want the bad guys to know how easy it is. You don’t want e-bombs in the wrong hands. But – with Edinburgh and Quito – maybe it’s already happened.”

  Kate asked, “How big are these things? Would they fit in a pocket, like a phone, or would you need a lorry to cart one around?”

  “It’s between the two. About the size of a briefcase. You’d have to get it on the plane or put it on the ground within about a kilometre of the plane coming in to land or taking off. Either way, the microwave flash would be powerful enough to bring the plane down.” Raven hesitated and added, “Angel asked me to put all the technical stuff on file so you can access it. Riveting bedtime reading.”

  “That’s an e-bomb,” Jordan said. “What about a hardware Trojan?”

  “That’s easier to get your head around,” she answered. “We’ve got microchips everywhere these days. Faulty ones are somewhere between inconvenient and dangerous. You could be booking a train journey when the internet packs up, or you could be in a plane when the engines cut out.” She paused to gather her jet-black hair and push it over her left shoulder. “We’ve only got ourselves to blame. We rely far too much on technology. What happens is, you spike a chip with a hidden circuit that does nothing until you send a trigger message. Then it blows the chip. Easily enough to screw up a plane’s flight and control systems.”

  Jordan said, “What’s the trigger?”

  “There are a few. The only one that makes sense for attacking planes is activating the Trojan with a radio signal.”

  “How close would you have to get?” asked Jordan.

  “I’m not sure,” Raven replied. “You’d probably need to be near enough to have a direct line of sight to the target.”

  Kate was puzzled. “Wouldn’t the chip have to be sabotaged where it’s made?”

  Raven nodded.

  “But if someone makes a few Trojan chips,” Kate said, “how does he get them where he needs them – like into a plane he wants to bring down?”

  Jordan wondered if he’d already figured out the answer. He leaped in before Raven could respond. “Aren’t almost all chips made by one company?”

  “Yes,” Raven said. “Worldwide, eighty per cent are from the same source.”

  “Well, if he worked there, he’d be pretty sure his chips would get into almost everything. Planes included. He’d just have to sneak a rogue circuit into the design.”

  “I suppose so,” Raven replied, taken aback by Jordan’s quick reasoning. “The company would churn out millions of them without knowing a thing about it.”

  Kate nodded. “It makes sense. That way, he’d have a few sleeping Trojans in most IT systems across the planet, waiting for him to wake them up and cause havoc. What’s this company?”

  “HiSpec. Short for HiSpec MicroSystems.”

  “So,” Kate suggested, “Jordan could be looking for a HiSpec worker with a whopping gripe of some sort.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Could I have some of these dodgy chips in my head and arm?” Jordan asked.

  Raven nodded again. “You, the Unit Red computer network, your car, almost anything.”

  “Where’s the HiSpec factory?” he asked.

  “Ah,” she said. “It’s a multi-national business, I’m afraid. You’re going to need a big net. They’ve got manufacturing units in China, the USA, Japan and here – in Cambridge.”

  Jordan didn’t ask her about the third possibility of cyber warfare. He knew someone else who could tell him all about hacking into important systems. Someone with practical experience. Instead, Jordan changed the subject. “Have there been any other electrical blackouts – before Ecuador? Nothing huge or it would’ve been on the telly.”

  Raven looked at him oddly for an instant. “How do you mean?”

  “If I wanted to crash a plane by turning its engines off, I’d practise on something smaller first.”

  “Got you.” Raven thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I’ll trawl through a few things and let you know. But...”

  “But what?”

  “Bringing down a plane isn’t hard. You just stop its engines and it’ll crash. It’d be much harder to crash, say, a boat. Stop its engine and it just floats till someone fixes it. No one gets hurt. Just because a plane’s bigger doesn’t make it more difficult. Quite the opposite. To crash a boat or a car or something, you’d have to take control of its steering. That’s much trickier.”

  “Okay,” Jordan said. “Thanks.”

  Leaving the room, heels clicking on the shiny granite floor, Raven smiled at Kate, but she merely nodded at Jordan. There was a fleeting hint of suspicion – maybe even dislike – in her expression.

  After the door closed, Kate gazed at Jordan and said, “How are you feeling about this?”

  “Like I’m in Lower Stoke Boys, about to take on Manchester United.”

  Kate’s quiet laugh was laced with nerves. “Make that both of us. But at least we’ve got people like Raven and Angel on our side.”

  The curtains slid slowly across the massive window, as if possessed by an unseen presence, cutting out daylight and the view of the Highgate tombs. Opposite the window, the giant screen unrolled itself. In seconds, the system was ready to show the CCTV footage of the ransom left in Kingston Upon Thames.

  It wasn’t a thriller.

  In split-screen mode, there were two views of a rubbish bin taken by fixed cameras at different positions. The bin containing a black sack of money was on a tree-lined riversid
e path called Barge Walk. Highlights of the recording were a mum in a bright red cagoule pushing twins in a wide-load pram, an overweight jogger putting on a brave but probably unwise burst of speed, a spaniel cocking its leg against the bin, and a young black woman walking past eating a sandwich with one hand and holding a mobile to her ear with the other. Then came the significant forty-three seconds.

  A slightly podgy white man entered the scene from the left. He was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and a beanie hat. He was probably trying to look younger than he actually was. He wasn’t hurrying, wasn’t dawdling. He dropped a chocolate wrapper into the bin and hesitated. He looked around suspiciously and then put both hands into the bin as if he were about to lift out something heavy. He paused again. Another second or two of indecision. He straightened up, scratched his cheek and glanced round once more. Finally making up his mind, he walked away empty-handed.

  “The police identified him as David Venables,” Kate remarked. “A local government worker.”

  Jordan nodded. He had logged in to the Unit Red network and the police report was being fed directly through his optic nerve into his online brain. “They cleared him of any involvement,” Jordan added. “He was going along Barge Walk, saw the black sack, decided to take a closer look and then changed his mind. ‘It could have been a bomb or something,’ he said when they questioned him. That’s all. No interest in electronics, nothing beyond normal use of a computer, no connection to Ecuador or Edinburgh. End of the line.”

  “Yes,” Kate replied. After a moment’s thought, she added, “Or guilty but very crafty indeed.”

  “Not that crafty or he wouldn’t have got caught on camera. And if he’s Short Circuit,” Jordan said, using the police’s code name, “why didn’t he take the money?”

  “That wasn’t the point, judging by the message he sent afterwards,” Kate replied. “He just wanted to check he’d panicked the authorities enough to make them cough up and put millions in the bin.”