by Sam Fisher
And that is why these nanobots were all but unbeatable. By the time Light Touch’s sensors noticed something wrong in the processing complex of ITAM, it was too late. A billion nanobots were in the room and they had spread out and found their way into tiny cracks in the metal cuboid shielding of the processor core, just as an army of viruses or bacteria infiltrate a host and start to attack the cells of a living thing.
A few seconds after penetrating the cuboid, the nanobots had made their way to all major components of the core, invading the memory systems, the electronic circuitry and the power controls. Guided by Sybil, they were utterly invincible.
86
New York City
Light Touch was sitting in the living room of his penthouse apartment in Midtown New York. It was 4 am, the lights of Fifth Avenue, 76 storeys below, broke the grey night. Rain beat against a wall of windows overlooking Central Park.
The hacker was naked and so slender it was possible to count his individual ribs. His grey beard, plaited at the end, reached almost to his navel. Seated in a white leather armchair, his computer on his lap, he stared at the screen. He was playing Assassin’s Creed III with seven cyberfriends in unknown locations around the globe.
He turned to pick up a tumbler of water at his side and when his eyes returned to look at the screen it had changed. The backdrop for the assassin in the game – Renaissance Venice – had dissolved. In its place, an Excel spread sheet filled the screen. He recognised it immediately. It showed one of his secure bank accounts: the one he used to deposit his fee from the Four Horsemen. It comprised a list of payments and expenses relating to the ITAM operation. He had assumed everything about that project was under complete control. Indeed, he had been so relaxed about it, he had put it on ‘auto-guidance’ – a mode that only alerted him if something untoward happened in Geneva. So far nothing had interfered with his mission, allowing him to indulge in the quick game of Assassin’s Creed III.
His eyes scanned down the screen and he felt his skin become instantly cold. There had been a seven-figure number there. Now there was something very different. His fingers trembled as he played with his beard and stared at the amount: $0.50.
Then he was calm again. ‘Oh dear,’ he muttered. ‘Now that is a shame.’
Under the calm, his mind was racing. There was only one way this could have happened, he mused. Somehow, his employers had planted a cyberintruder, the digital equivalent of a virus. This clever little device caused no damage to the computer, nor to any of the machine’s operating systems. Instead, it simply stole, accessing bank accounts and personal information no matter how well they had been protected. The Four Horsemen must have taken back the money they had paid him. They had achieved their aim of destabilising ITAM and had then concluded they no longer needed him. That could be the only explanation for this.
He tapped the keyboard and the bank account information vanished, replaced by his management screen for the ITAM project. It was at that moment the ‘auto-guidance’ alarm sounded. Light Touch understood what had happened in Geneva immediately. His fingers flew over the keyboard and he concentrated so hard on the information streaming across the screen his head began to throb.
In little over 1.5 seconds, the nanobots controlled by Sybil had sucked the data from the gigantic ITAM mainframe in Geneva and, like a fleet of viral agents attacking an organ and then shooting through the blood system to invade another, they began accessing the hard drive of Light Touch’s laptop through the internet.
Light Touch hated to be beaten but he knew when he was and he appreciated superior forces when he encountered them. He could not help but stare in wonder as file after file on his laptop was sucked dry. Quelling his rising panic as best he could, he scrambled through his systems, trying desperately to salvage what he could, partitioning parts of his hard drive before they were spirited away.
And then he saw what he needed: a file only marginally less important than his financial ones. It sped across the screen to a folder entitled ‘The Four Horsemen’. It contained everything he had ever found out about his employers.
But even as he pulled the file towards him and dumped it into a specially encrypted ‘safety pod’, Sybil’s tendrils had gripped it too. Light Touch felt a surge of desperation shoot through him.
‘Have it!’ he screamed across the vast expanse of the apartment, the sound bouncing back at him. ‘But I’m having it as well.’
And he just managed to copy the information to a safe folder as the data slipped away through cyberspace and into Sybil’s vast memory.
87
Somewhere above Dubai
‘Mark?’ Dimitri called into the internal comms aboard the Big Mac. ‘Mick and Keith have arrived.’
‘I’ll be right there.’
Mark Harrison strode onto the flight deck, half a sandwich in his hand, his mouth full. Pacing over to the main control console, he saw on the big screen the two Silverbacks from Polar Base. They took up position level with the Big Mac a few hundred metres to port.
‘Mark? Dimitri?’ It was Ralph Newman, the pilot of Mick. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting,’ he quipped, knowing that they had made record flight-time from their home station on the Russian Island of Semja Alexandry inside the Arctic Circle, some 5000 kilometres northeast of Dubai.
Mark smiled back at the image of Ralph on the screen. ‘I hear you broke all the speed limits.’
‘Very possibly,’ Keith’s pilot, Gina Zvilion, interjected. ‘So what’s the situation?’
‘Not good, to put it bluntly. Tom’s computer model gives us between 21 and 22 minutes before the Tower goes.’
‘Christ!’
‘We have something like . . .’ He checked the control panel. ‘Eighty-seven per cent evacuation of survivors below the impact site, some 27,300 people, and the rescue services on the ground have been augmented by sailors from HMS Suffolk and HMS Valiant, and from the aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth. Three-hundred men have helicoptered in. The Chief of the Dubai Fire Service has assured me they will have everyone out of the tower and in a safety zone in time.’
‘But . . .?’ It was Ralph.
‘But we have a group trapped on Floor 199. Steph and Chloe are with them. Steph’s given me a full report. They’ve found 13 survivors. They’re all walking wounded, broken bones and severe lacerations. But ironically, Chloe is the most seriously injured. She’s sustained multiple wounds and lost a lot of blood.’
‘But the nanobots are –’
‘Yeah, of course. But they’ll take time.’
‘So you’re thinking about a nanonet?’ Gina said matter-of-factly. ‘Like the operation in California a few days ago?’
‘Yes,’ Dimitri Godska interrupted. ‘But this is different in certain fundamentals.’ He tapped at his keyboard and immediately the two pilots in the newly arrived Silverbacks received schematics of the Tower. ‘This is the plan.’
88
Dimitri was kitted out in his cybersuit and watching the top of the tower rear up as he gripped the cable on which he was descending to the roof. Below him he could see the two Silverbacks, George and Ringo, where Chloe and Steph had landed them over 90 minutes earlier. He had chosen to ride George, its deep blue hull just a few metres to starboard of the cable.
He leapt the final couple of metres, ran to the plane and shot up the recessed steps to the cockpit, the canopy opening automatically. Once seated, he belted up and ran a speedy pre-flight check.
‘All systems ready.’
‘Copy that, Dimitri,’ Mark replied from the flight deck of the Big Mac.
The engines of the Silverback burst into life, sending out a stream of flame and gas from the undercarriage as the majestic aircraft ascended slowly, accelerating as it cleared the helipad of the Cloud Tower.
Dimitri could see the other two Silverbacks, Mick and Keith. They were just specs on his sensor screen. He brought the plane around and there they were in his holographic helmet display, suspended in the air 200 metres
above the tower. Mick was glowing pearlescent white, Keith a dark green.
‘Welcome to the party, Dimitri,’ Gina Zvilion called through the comms.
The three jets turned away in different directions. Gina banked around her Silverback and took up position 300 metres from the tower, the nose of the plane pointing towards the northeast-facing wall. Dimitri pulled George around and lowered the jet down to the building on the northwest-facing side. Ralph headed directly south before swinging around 40 metres beneath the roof and pointing the nose of his Silverback towards that side of the Cloud Tower.
‘Steph?’ Mark said into his comms. ‘Progress report, please.’
On Floor 199 of the Cloud Tower, Steph stared around at the devastation. Chloe lay on the ground beside her on a hastily constructed stretcher made from a couple of pieces of metal from a crumpled clothes rack and a rectangle of wood taken from a flatpack in an office equipment store. Steph and Frank had managed to lash the wood to the poles with several dozen metres of electrical cable from Cloud Electrics. They had also found some clothes in a nearby shop and fashioned Chloe a makeshift pillow. She was covered in a silver emergency blanket from her utility backup belt. Her eyes were closed but she was still conscious.
‘The bots are working overtime on Chloe’s injuries,’ Steph told Mark. ‘And the suit is almost fixed. She lost thermal control, so we have a blanket over her.’
‘Is she conscious?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the others? How are they?’
‘They’re bearing up but obviously terrified and exhausted.’
‘All right, Steph. I want you to get everyone into the centre of the floor. No one near the walls. Get under cover if you can.’
‘The planes are moving in?’
‘They’ll start on your signal.’
89
72 metres beneath the English Channel
Pete, Mai and Josh were used to the strain but the others were utterly exhausted. Billy was crying again. ‘He’s hungry,’ Mary stated as she tried to comfort him.
They had walked about 200 metres along the main tunnel.
‘According to my scanner,’ Pete said to Mai and Josh, ‘we left the Pram about half a kilometre that way.’ He pointed northwest towards the British end of the tunnel. His comms crackled. He stabbed at his wrist monitor.
‘Tom? Tom? Is that you?’
More crackling, then a voice came over the external speaker. It was breaking up so badly none of them could understand a word.
‘Tom, we can’t make out what you’re saying.’
‘Pete . . . out there . . .’
‘What are you saying, Tom?’
A burst of static. ‘Cave in . . . Get . . . 700 . . .’
‘What?’
Then they all heard a low rumble so loud it vibrated in their chests.
‘Holy Christ!’ Josh exclaimed.
‘What?’ Adam stared at him, wide-eyed.
Pete and Mai understood what it was simultaneously.
‘RUN!’ Mai screamed.
‘What’s happening?’ Gabir yelled, turning from Pete to Mai.
‘Water! The blast must have . . . JUST RUN!’ Josh screamed and grabbed Mary, pulling her up from where she had been sitting on the floor rocking Billy.
They all seemed to get it at once and dashed along the tunnel away from the sound.
The roaring grew louder staggeringly fast. It bounced around the walls, echoing and booming back from the concrete. Pete was in front, tapping at his wrist as he ran. Through the internal comms, he spoke to Mai. ‘I’m calling the Pram,’ he said, an edge of fear clear in his voice.
She didn’t reply, just ran. The sound was deafening. It was like waves breaking on a shingle beach but amplified 1000-fold. And it just kept growing.
‘How far?’ Mai asked Pete. She could see a bend in the tunnel about 50 metres ahead.
It took a moment for him to respond. ‘I’ve got the Pram booted up by remote. It’s turning in the tunnel. I estimate 100 metres beyond that bend.’
Mai turned her head as she ran. She could see Louis and Mary falling behind. She sped back and yelled at Josh. ‘Help me, Josh!’
He slowed and turned. Gabir and Adam dashed past him. He saw what was happening and ran after Mai. ‘Come on, Louis!’ he bellowed, grabbing the Frenchman under the shoulder. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in a heap. Josh bent down, lifted him into his arms and ran.
Mai had reached Mary and Billy. ‘Faster,’ she shouted. ‘Mary, you have to run faster. You have to!’ Mary looked at her, eyes huge with terror. Making a snap decision, Mai snatched Billy and pulled him to her, span on her heel and accelerated away.
Pete was first to the corner and first to see the Pram. He stopped for a second, trying to encourage them all on. That’s when he saw the wall of water heading towards them. It was no more than 40 metres back along the tunnel.
Josh saw his expression and knew what he was seeing. He had no need to look.
Pete played desperate fingers over his wrist monitor, watching the Pram accelerate towards them. He dashed forwards, meeting the vehicle 20 metres on and bringing it to a halt. Flying around to the driver’s side, he dived into the seat, span the machine around to face away from the flood and opened the side doors.
Adam and Gabir reached the Pram next, quickly followed by Josh carrying Louis. They all tumbled into the passenger compartment. Then came Mai and the baby. She dumped Billy in Gabir’s lap, shot around and saw Mary about 10 metres back.
The wall of water had already passed the bend in the tunnel.
‘Mai! No! You’ll never make it!’ Pete roared through the internal comms, drowning out the crashing of water.
She ignored him, jumped off the side of the Pram and sprinted back towards Mary. She reached her, the mountain of water no more than 10 metres behind them. Grabbing her by the front of her shirt, she hurled the woman before her, ran as fast as she could to come parallel and screamed at the top of her voice, ‘Think of Billy!’ She pulled at her again, propelling her on.
Mary slammed into the side of the Pram. Mai guided her half a metre to her left and threw her into the vehicle, tumbling in behind her as Pete floored the accelerator.
90
Singha Pitiya, Sri Lanka
War was by his pool again. Already as brown as a chestnut, sunning himself in the bright lemon of a Sri Lankan afternoon came high on his list of sensual pleasures. But then he had so many. He enjoyed the attentions of the boys from the village who stayed in his home, he loved the topless girls who were his waitresses and bartenders. He loved his corny old jokes, his mint juleps and his Turkish Delight. He loved sailing on his massive yacht, Rosebud, adored piloting his private jet and cherished the smell of his Aston Martins, even though he could no longer fit inside them. But most of all, he loved the thing that provided all these goodies. He loved the money he had amassed and he could find no greater pleasure in life than laying on a lounger by his pool, having a 10-year-old Sri Lankan boy rubbing oil into his blubbery back and tapping away at his laptop, analysing just how ridiculously rich he was.
War clicked his fingers and another 10-year-old boy ran forwards to adjust the sunshade so that it maintained a puddle of shadow over the computer. He glanced up at the child and then back at the screen. In that half second, War’s world began to crumble.
‘What the . . .?’ he exclaimed to no one. He stabbed at the keyboard. The screen changed but the data it showed was the same.
‘What?’ War was utterly confused. He jerked up from his lounger, dragged the laptop off the marble floor of the deck and shouted at the shade boy. ‘Bring that over my head, you fucker!’ he hollered.
Panic-stricken, the boy grabbed the handle of the sun shade and pivoted it around so that a broad shadow fell across the screen. War was so distracted, he didn’t even care that the shade was over him as well as the computer. He glared at the monitor and jabbed a finger at the keyboard with such venom he kept
missing the desired keys.
‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ he screamed and forced himself to calm down. He tapped the keys again a little more gently, bending his head forwards so his nose was only a few centimetres from the screen.
A new page appeared. It was from his personal management system. It was multi-encrypted and as far as he had been told, totally impregnable – expressly ‘for his eyes only’. War stared at it, his face drooping, his expression passing almost comically through incredulity, fury and then despair.
On the screen was a number. It represented War’s total worth as calculated by him on the basis of the latest information from his brokers, agents, estate managers and web-controllers. It began as an 11-figure number, a sum greater than the GDP of a swath of Africa. But as War watched, the numbers flashed so fast he could barely follow them. However, what he could see, very clearly, was that the number was dropping, dropping precipitously.
Within a few moments, he was down to his last billion. That number dissolved so rapidly the screen was a blur of indecipherable digits. War swallowed hard and, in the time it took to complete that action, he had lost 100 million. And still the numbers plummeted.