Break-In

by M G Leslie

  Fortunately, the sound suppressor had done its job – so the noise had been minimal. But before anybody else nearby could react, all 6 of the SAS men burst through the door in to the room, spreading out and sweeping their guns for other occupants.

  They were lucky– he must have been the only person awake. So the team immediately executed their well-rehearsed routine – two men covered the door, two more covered the windows in case someone was looking in, whilst the other soldier ran forward and ripped the computer disk drives out of the computers in the corner – literally throwing them in to his rucksack.

  Meanwhile, Chas took a casual walk around the room. He wanted to see if there was anything else that could be of use and just get a general feel for the lay of the land.

  A couple of minutes later, having satisfied himself that there wasn’t anything else that could be useful, he looked up and got the nod from the man with rucksack, “All done?” he said, and got a positive nod in return.

  “OK,” said Chas, “Move out,” and as he walked to the door, he took a GPS tracker out of his pocket and clicked a button recording his position.

  Once outside the room, they retraced their steps, exited by the same door they had used to enter, and sprinted as fast as they could back across the island towards the boats – Chas wanted to get away before the body of their latest victim was discovered.

  As they ran, Chas spoke to the team, “Dave, John, we’re on our way – how’s things there?”

  Dave replied, “All clear boss.”

  15 minutes later, Chas could see where they had stowed the boats in the distance, so he said, “We’re arriving.”

  “I see you,” said Dave, and then Chas could see him, Price and John walking out in to the open.

  Once the whole team had been re-united, Chas looked at his watch and spoke, “We’re actually 30 minutes ahead of schedule – spread out and keep watch – we’ll hit the water on the top of hour.”

  The team spread out whilst Chas walked over to Price. “Nearly there,” he said. “We’re extracting via submarine and they can only surface when there’s no satellites or foreign patrols in the area. How are you holding up?”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Price, “I was glad to see you though – where the hell is this place?”

  “Middle of bloody nowhere mate,” replied Chas, “It’s a tiny island just north of the Philippines, but really remote.”

  30 minutes later, Chas gave the team the signal and they carried the boats down to the water and sped away in to the darkness of the South China Sea until Chas, looking again at his GPS tracker, said, “OK we’re here, these are the GPS coordinates. Let’s strap the boats together and sit tight – should be a couple of minutes.”

  Sure enough, a few moments later, the nuclear submarine surfaced right next to them and the team were quickly pulled on board, whilst the inflatables were punctured and left to sink to the bottom of the sea.

  Once they were below deck, the submarine Commander greeted them and gave orders for the submarine to submerge again. Then he said, “We have authorisation to destroy the building, do you have the coordinates?”

  “Yes,” said Chas, as he removed his GPS tracker and read out the coordinates he had recorded earlier. The submarine commander passed the coordinates on to his weapons control officer who, a minute later, said, “Ready Sir.”

  The Commander looked at Chas and Price and said, “Are you absolutely sure about this?”

  Chas just nodded, so the Commander picked up the communicator in front of him and said, “Fire!”

  A second later, a missile hatch in the top of the submarine opened and a cruise missile was propelled up through the water and in to the fresh air. Once it was in the air, the rockets at the base of the missile fired and turned it parallel to the water – heading with pinpoint accuracy, for the island’s fort.

  The Commander spoke again, “Helmsman, full ahead, we’ve just given our position away,” then as the submarine sped up, he looked through the periscope, seeing the flash in the distance as the missile hit its target, completely destroying the building and everything around it.

  The security guards that Lucy had left there never knew what hit them – one minute they were asleep and the next minute they were gone.

  “Helmsman, take us down to 200 feet” said the Commander as he stowed the periscope in its storage position.

  Then Price spoke, “We need to get a message back to London ASAP. They’re planning to bomb two locations in the southwest of England where the main international Internet connections arrive from the US – the submarine cable buildings. We need to get the Police and the bomb squad activated.”

  The Commander turned and spoke to his communications officer, “Get on the scrambler and get that message to the admiralty now. Make it a priority message for immediate action.”

  “Aye Sir,” was the only reply needed and it was done, then Price was taken to see the medical officer for treatment whilst the rest of the SAS team found some bunks and relaxed.

  Given his injuries, Price was with the submarine’s medical officer for some time – being pleasantly surprised to see Chas walk in to check on him a short while later. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Chas said, “I’m glad to see you’re getting fixed up. It was unfortunate that girl took off before we got there. She got lucky this time, but don’t worry mate, we’ll get her next time,” and then he turned to walk out.

  Price, without even looking up, said, “We have a leak.”

  Chas stopped walking and even the medical officer stopped what he was doing and said, “What?”

  “She knew something that I’d said back in London. It was a flippant remark in a meeting and there were no minutes being taken. Someone in the room leaked the contents of that meeting – and they just did it again to get her out before you arrived.”

  The room fell silent until Chas spoke, “We’ll deal with this in Hereford. We’ll figure out who we can trust and then we’ll get the boss to send the message – for now just get yourself sorted out – and perhaps make a list of the people who were in the room when you made that remark. I’ll find out who knew about the assault on the island,” then he walked out.

  Chas was, of course, referring to the SAS’s home, in Hereford in the UK.

  CHAPTER 10 – Close Call

  Several hours before Price and the SAS team were transferred back to Hong Kong and then home to the UK via a Virgin Atlantic flight, Lucy had arrived back in the Philippines. She already knew that she had to move fast, so she went straight to Club One where she locked herself in the office upstairs, logged in to the computer and sent a message to her team in the UK.

  “Split in to 2 teams. First team, take the second device to the Saunton Sands location and set the timer for 2 hours. Second team, wait until the first team are in place and then set the timer for 2 hours. It is critical that you contact me before you hit the timer ‘Confirm’ button as it may ask for a security code, which only I have.”

  The leader in the UK, was asleep in the camper when one of his team woke him up, “Boss, there’s a message,” so the leader got up and walked over to the computer and typed his reply, “Will do. Executing that now and we will confirm when timers are set as they are set.” Then he turned to the team and explained the plan.

  “Why don’t we all go and deliver the second package together?” said one of the men. “These things are really difficult to move. It will be a lot quicker if we all go, then come back here, set the timer on that one,” as he pointed at the box sitting a few feet from them, “And then confirm they’re both in place. If we split up we have to come back anyway, so why bother – let’s just go as one group?” he continued.

  “OK, we’ll do that,” said the leader, “Good idea,” and they got back in the camper and then started the short drive up the coast to Saunton Sands.

  Approximately one hour later, after what could only be described as a stunning drive along a coastal road with beautiful scenery, they arrived
at the Saunton Sands submarine cable building.

  From the outside, it looked like yet another grey industrial building, surrounded by an iron fence with a low green hedge and a small tarmac covered car park on the inside. There didn’t even appear to be anything other than very simple security measures in place at the main entrance. So the team just drove up to the main gate and spoke on the intercom, “We’re here to service the network switches, open up mate.”

  The security guard hesitated, obviously looking at a logbook to see if anything was scheduled. Then he said, “I have no record of any work taking place today.”

  The leader continued his story, “Oh god, not again. Look, I’ve got a ton of paperwork here mate, so I’ll tell you what, how about I pass it to you then you can phone up and confirm so we can get on, OK?”

  “But I have no record, I think you’re mistaken,” the security man replied.

  The leader continued with the same story again and again, but the security guard was obviously well trained and wouldn’t accept it. So eventually the leader conceded and switched to his alternative approach, “OK fine. We’ll go, but I need you to sign my papers otherwise I’ll get fired. Just sign to say we were here, it wasn’t scheduled and you turned us away – otherwise my boss will think we just didn’t show up!”

  “Well I don’t know if I can do that,” said the security guard.

  “For god’s sake!” said the leader, faking annoyance at the security guard. “All I’m asking is you say, we arrived and it was a big mistake. Is that really too much to ask of you? I’m just trying to do an honest job. Is that really so bad? Please help me out will you?”

  Sadly for the security guard, he took the bait and said, “OK, hang on a minute,” then he stood up and walked out to the pedestrian gate, which he opened in order to get to the camper.

  That was all they needed. As the guard walked up to the camper the quiet thud of a silenced pistol firing in to his chest caused him to fall backwards as three of the men jumped out of the camper. One ran inside and pushed the button to open the main gate, to allow the camper to drive in, whilst the other two, picked up the guard’s body, carried him back inside and then threw the body in to a corner of the car park – out of sight of the road.

  They already new that there would only be one guard on duty at this time, so once they were inside and the gate was closed again, they took their time to park the van with it’s rear against the loading bay of the building. Then they went inside to unlock the loading bay and complete their lethal task.

  The team used the same sliding mechanism as they had at Kings Hill, to unload the bomb, after which it took all the strength of all four of the men to push it up a small ramp and in to the main part of the building. As they recovered from the strenuous work, they looked at each other as if to say, “Thank goodness all of us came here and didn’t split up as we were supposed to.”

  The leader walked over and lifted the steel lid, inserting and the turning a key. After a couple more button presses, the computer display showed a timer, so he looked at his watch and set it for 2 hours time – doubling checking twice before walking back to the camper and sending a message on the computer that he was about to hit ‘Confirm’.

  Lucy’s heart started racing. She switched to another window on her computer screen and started sending network ‘ping’ messages to one of the network routers based at Saunton Sands. She could see the device responding, so she switched back to the leader and typed “Go ahead” before again looking back at the ‘ping’ messages which were telling her how long it was taking for her computer to send a message all the way from the Philippines to Saunton Sands and back again.

  The leader turned to the other three and said, “Almost done fella’s, get back in the van, I’ll hit “Confirm” and we can go.” Then he walked over and hit the button.

  There was no way he could have known that Lucy didn’t want any loose ends, which is why she had rigged the bomb to explode as soon as it was activated, regardless of the timer setting.

  The machine reacted immediately and the explosion was heard miles away, rocking the countryside like a mini earthquake.

  The shock wave ripped through the building, instantly tearing everyone and everything apart. The walls and roof shattered in to hundreds of pieces as the impact of the bomb moved on to the adjacent buildings in fractions of a second causing their walls to implode and glass to shatter. It was fortunate that the explosion was on a fairly deserted industrial estate, as it limited the number of casualties to a few people receiving cuts and bruises from flying shrapnel, plus of course the brutal killing of the security guard.

  Lucy’s heart still raced as she watched her ‘ping’ messages fail to reach their target – that was positive confirmation that the building was gone.

  Despite the devastation she had just caused, Lucy smiled to herself. Now all she had to do was wait for the second device to be activated. She had installed a remote control in each device – so she could have detonated the bomb in the Kings Hill site immediately, and ironically, if she had done so, her plans would have probably been successful. But she really wanted to team to do it, so she could be sure there was nobody left to speak to the police, or even worse, identify her.

  Her estimate was that she should hear in the next hour or so, so she sat patiently, not knowing that the team had failed to follow her instructions and had been obliterated by the Saunton Sands explosion.

  Fortunately, instead of her team arriving at the Kings Hill site, the bomb squad appeared shortly after the first explosion, backed by an armed unit from the Police – the message from Price and the Admiralty had got through – not in time to save Saunton Sands, but hopefully in time to check for any other devices.

  The Police didn’t know which building would contain the bomb so they set up a cordon around the entire Kings Hill industrial estate and spread out to conduct a building-to-building search. They had no idea what the bomb looked like, where it was or when it was likely to explode, so they moved fast.

  After around 30 minutes of frantic searching, a Police Officer found the seemingly unoccupied grey industrial building, gained entry through the side door and discovered the bomb inside.

  However, as the bomb squad jumped in to their jeep and headed over to the building from a couple of blocks away, 7000 miles away Lucy was becoming impatient in the Philippines.

  She had already contacted her small army of working girls across Asia and instructed them to stand by. They were waiting for the second bomb to explode. As soon as the submarine cable links between the USA and the UK were broken, the computer network traffic, and more critically, financial transfer data, would be automatically re-routed by the only remaining available cables – which meant most of the data would pass through Hong Kong and Lucy’s computers in the underground rooms at Stanley Bay. They had been programmed to intercept financial transactions and redirect millions of British pounds to different bank accounts. The girls would then withdraw the money before depositing it in dozens of Lucy’s secret offshore bank accounts – turning her in to a multi-billionaire and depriving the real owners of their money forever.

  As the bomb squad arrived, it had been just over an hour since Lucy’s last contact with her team at Saunton Sands. In her impatience, she tried calling the leader’s mobile – but there was no reply of course. “OK,” she said to herself, “Maybe they’re in traffic – 5 more minutes then I’ll remotely detonate it.”

  Meanwhile the bomb squad leader opened the lid of the grey box. “This is fairly standard,” he said. “It doesn’t look like there’s even any booby-traps. They’re clearly not expecting this to be found. I should be able to disconnect that wire there,” as he pointed to a blue wire and his colleague looked on, “And the device will be secure. But before I do that, everyone, clear the area – just in case.”

  It took the Police another 10 minutes to clear everyone back to the bomb squad’s satisfaction. However, Lucy was now getting really frustrated and even m
ore impatient, having said twice more, “Maybe just another 5 more minutes.”

  Satisfied, the Police had moved everyone back, the bomb squad leader retrieved a pair of wire cutters from his bag and leaned over the device and placed it on the blue wire. “Ready?” he said.

  “Go for it boss,” his assistance replied.

  Lucy, however, had finally lost patience and decided enough was enough and initiated a remote connection to the device.

  As the bomb squad men looked on, the lights on the bomb’s display lit up before them.

  The two men looked at each other and the bomb squad leader cut the wire. Less than a second later, 7000 miles away, Lucy pushed the Enter key on her keyboard. The display on the bomb read, “Detonating”, but fortunately, it was unable to initiate the explosion with out the blue wire.

  “Blimey… that was closer than I would have liked,” said the bomb squad leader, who had cut the wire.

  “Yeah, I think I’ve just aged 30 years,” said his partner as both men re-checked it was secure, removed the remote control unit, severing Lucy’s connection to the device. Then, with considerable relief, they walked outside to declare the bomb safe.

  “All OK?” said the Police Officer, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “Let’s just say it was close,” replied the bomb squad leader, “But yes, all good now – thanks for your help – everyone can come back.”

  “OK thanks,” said the Police Officer.

  7000 miles away, however, Lucy could see her network ‘ping’ messages to the Kings Hill site continuing – even after her attempted detonation. Realising it hadn’t detonated, she screamed abuse at the top of her lungs – that was it – her plan was over – she had been foiled, and worst still, it meant she had to move fast.

  Whilst she had been on the island north of the Philippines, she’d already arranged for the money in the club’s safe to be deposited in various legitimate offshore bank accounts. So she could access her funds from anywhere in the world. With that in mind, rather than risk capture, she just stood up, picked up her bag and walked out of the club without so much as a word to the mama-san or anyone else.