Drexler’s smile was tight. “I’m not looking for control. I’m looking for effect. I trust the math.”
“Indeed,” said Dieter, “the Baltic States are definitely a Curve vector. We’ve got troop movements on the border, Russian paramilitaries with antiaircraft assets. Estonia is mobilising troops, our feed from SHAPE HQ suggests NATO is panicking.”
Screens showed newsfeeds from across Europe. Burning cars. Lootings. Riots. Water cannon and beatings. Cops dragging people across city squares, under hailstorms of bricks. It was 1968 all over again, but with selfies.
“The lights went out four hours ago,” said Drexler, leaning against a bulwark. “I’ve got a dozen outstanding UK sorties on the grid. Cal, those missions are yours. Just name your price. In forty-eight hours, you walk away a rich man. No Firm. No Erik Drexler. Just a whole new world full of butt-hurt politicians, scrambling for strong men to figure out their shit. The future is full of opportunity for men like us – take it.”
“You’d trust me to do that?”
“Hell no.” Drexler stroked his beard, “but Juliet Easter? I’ll have her killed if you betray me. Or maybe I’ll take her for myself. I’ve a way with the ladies.”
My blood ran hot. “Did Monty tell you that? Is that why he was having her followed?”
Drexler moved his hand to the gun strapped to his breastplate. “Monty gets paid to figure out what gets under people’s skin. I figure he was successful, by the look on your grid.”
“Give me the kill-switch, Erik,” I replied, “for the virus. I know it exists.”
Dieter looked up from his keyboard, eyes squinting his glasses. “Kill-switch? Wishful thinking. There is more than one virus driving this. By the time the white hats come up with a solution? We’ll be done.”
“Actually, Dieter, that ain’t strictly true,” said the tattooed American, “Hoffmann…”
“Shut the fuck up,” Drexler growled.
I slammed my fist on the wall, making the keyboard warriors jump. “The kill-switch. Give it to me. You can’t predict the end of the Hoffman Curve.”
Drexler came close enough for me to smell his breath. He jabbed a finger at me. “Face reality - this thing is happening.”
The German operator nodded, reaching for a mug of coffee. “Erik, we’re…”
Outside. A sound. The clatter of metal on metal. Like a rifle falling on the deck. It was muffled by the pod’s sound-proofing, but only just.
The German was too busy with his screen to notice. The coffee steamed on the desk next to him. “UK Air Traffic Control hack live on my mark…”
Drexler heard the noise too, reaching for his pistol.
Knocking hot coffee onto the German’s lap, I head-butted Drexler, powering my skull into his nose. The German shrieked, pushing his chair away from the keyboard and tumbling backwards. The Asian guy kept typing furiously. My head buzzed, both hands on Drexler’s FN 5-7. He snatched the trigger, the bullet zipping past me and hitting the tattooed operator in the belly. Face white, he slumped beneath his desk. With his free fist, Drexler punched me, aiming for my neck but connecting with my sternum. It was like being hit by a truck, the blow slamming me back into the wall. I kept a hand clamped to the pistol, another shot spider-webbing a porthole. The FN’s slide snapped back and forward, jerking my hand away.
The German, Dieter, staggered to his feet. Wide-eyed, he lunged for the door as a bloody exit wound appeared in his back. Suppressed bullets sliced through the pod’s fibreglass walls, churning the air. Then the hydrosonic boom of a .50 round from an anti-materiel rifle, a noise like a lorry hitting a brick wall. A ragged hole appeared in the pod, the Asian guy thudding wetly to the floor. A fine spray of pinkish-red gristle filled the room. I had no idea where the Asian guy’s head was, but it wasn’t on his shoulders.
Motors growled outside, the bass thunder of helicopter engines overhead. The pod rocked, something exploding outside. Then the high-pitched bark of rifles and the chug of machine-guns. Bullets spattered on the steel revetments cradling the pod, making showers of yellow-white sparks.
Drexler and I traded blows. I jinked to avoid his fists as a bullet caromed off his armoured chest. Teeth clenched, he staggered for the door. I let him go, hugging the ground for dear life. The floor was covered with bundles of network cables. My fingers trembled as I tugged them from their power sockets. The computers powered down, monitors dying and shrouding the pod in darkness.
In a running crouch, I fled. Drexler had vanished. I watched as rigid inflatables approached Sea Witch in a ‘V’ formation. They cut their engines as one, letting the tide carry them forward. Back on the headland, muzzle flashes sparkled in the dark. The clubhouse, raked with cannon-fire, collapsed into itself in a whirlwind of brick, timber and smoke. A helo prowled overhead. Head down on the wet-rusty deck, I began crawling towards the cargo net. Two helos, Black Hawks, clattered towards Sea Witch. Men rappelled down from above, shimmering tongues of fire darting from door-guns. The wheelhouse was shredded by precise cannon-fire. I threw myself into cover by a steel storage box, Drexler’s men too busy firing at the heli to notice me. Cannon-fire gouged holes along the deck, buckling metal into crazy shapes. Men in dark combat gear materialised from the gloom, tactical choreography elegant and precise. One by one the sentries fell. One threw up his hands, but was blown off his feet anyway. A helo made a lazy circle as it lined up for a strafing run.
The smoke cleared long enough for me to see Erik Drexler, squatting by a davit. Wild eyed, he waved his pistol like a demented General Custer.
“Give me the kill-switch,” I shouted.
The American’s face darkened. “It doesn’t matter. The key’s in two halves. I’ve got one…”
“Jacques Paradis has the other?”
A smile crossed Drexler’s bloody face as he levelled his pistol at me.
“UK Special Forces!” bawled a black-clad figure. “Drop your weapons.”
More commandos appeared. The black shapes I’d seen in the water were swimmer delivery vehicles, submersible platforms used for covert maritime assaults. The RIBs had carried a second assault team and the helos a third. Overwhelming force, stealthily delivered.
Drexler raised his hands. “Compliant prisoner. Hold your fire.”
“On the deck!” ordered a man with a black-painted face and ballistic goggles. English accent. He wore dark combat gear, a suppressed M4 carbine levelled at us both. More commandos arrived, plasti-cuffing us and tugging sandbags over our heads.
The roar of helicopter engines blocked out any other noise, the downdraught of rotor blades tearing at my clothes. I felt arms clamp around me as a winchman strapped me onto a harness. Then I was aloft, pulled into the belly of the helo.
The sandbag was dragged off my head. A slim black guy studied me, head cocked. He had high cheekbones and a hawkish nose. No rank or unit markings on his multicam fatigues, only a blood-patch. Grimacing, he studied a laminated card full of mugshots with a red-lensed torch.
“I’m not one of Drexler’s people,” I shouted above the drone of engines, “my name is Calum Winter.”
“Yup, I’m sure you are,” he replied in an American accent. “My name’s Fendt. Wanna watch some fireworks?”
I felt the helo’s nose dip, gunners aiming their door-mounted miniguns at Sea Witch. The weapons made a metallic burping noise, blobs of shimmering tracer tearing into the ops pod. It was torn apart, a corona of cobalt sparks dancing skywards as the electronics suite blew. Explosive charges detonated along the waterline. Multiple fires flared from the wheelhouse to the pod, dirty grey smoke enveloping the doomed vessel. It exploded. What remained of Sea Witch yawed on a wave, the sea gushing hungrily into the ruptured hull.
“Hey, Drexler, you gettin’ all this?” said Fendt.
“Fuck you,” Drexler shouted. He sat on the other side of the helo, guarded by four burly men. They wore black and grey Union Jack patches on combat diving gear. SBS.
“Erik Drexler,” Fendt barked, like a cop reading a
criminal his rights. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Fendt, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment. I’m here to take you home.”
“In a body-bag?” Drexler replied.
“If necessary,” said Fendt, “and know this: you’re a disgrace to the United States of America.”
Below us, Sea Witch listed badly, smoke gushing from the wheelhouse. Fiery wreckage and flaming fuel dotted the water. I could see muzzle flashes from the beach.
“Who are the guys on the shore, shootin’ up Drexler’s people?” said Fendt.
“My team,” I replied.
“Eddie, can you get onto the intel people and run this guy’s name through your systems?” said Fendt to one of the UKSF men. “Calum Winter.”
“No worries, Boss,” the operator replied, pulling a rubberised tablet from his kit.
“You’ll get a hit,” I replied. “I worked for The CIA. Codename NEOPHYTE.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Fendt replied. “What you doin’ with Erik?”
“The same as you - taking him down.”
Drexler laughed. “In your fuckin’ dreams.”
A burly SBS man planted his boot in Drexler’s belly. “Shut the fuck up, Yank cunt,” he said in a broad Geordie accent.
Fendt raised an eyebrow. “Save your lip for the interrogators, Erik.”
“Who’s in charge here?” I said.
“That’s kinda complicated,” said Fendt with a smile. “The assault is a UKSF operation. Technically-speakin’ that is.”
“Technically?”
“UKSF assault team, sure. But American helo, American comms, American intel. Joint operation. Now, until I find out who you are, keep your grid zipped.”
I nodded and watched the shore draw near. There was a neat line of rigid inflatables on the beach, a huddle of armed men standing by the caravans. Flames licked the remains of the clubhouse, which looked like a Swiss cheese on account of all the bullet holes. A row of dead bodies lay nearby. The helo landed, the UKSF men de-bussing and joining their teammates.
I was bundled out with Drexler and led to row of prisoners. My team. And Monty, blubbering with his face in the sand. Harry and Oz, battered and bruised, sat with their hands on their heads. Dmitri, Duncan and Alex glowered at their captors.
Drexler strode on, smirking, head held high.
Fendt caught up with us. With him was a short, tubby man in casual civilian clothes and a baseball cap. He didn’t introduce himself, just stared at me like something he’d found on the sole of his shoe.
“What now?” I said.
Drexler nodded. “Yeah, I’m all fucking ears.”
Antonio Fendt rubbed his chin, smiling like a cat with a lifetime’s supply of cream. “Now? We decide who wins a one-way ride to a black site in Whogivesafuckistan.”
The tubby guy nodded. “Or gets thrown outta the plane en route.”
I looked out to sea. The Sea-Witch was gone. “You can’t cover this up,” I said.
“We ain’t covering it up,” said the Tubby guy. “We’re solving it. And I think you guys are to blame.”
Drexler looked at the parade of corpses lying in the sand. He smiled, showing big white teeth. “Blame? It’s too damn late for that.”
Chapter twenty-two
Urgent voices bled from Fendt’s radio: SBS men blocked the road to the caravan park, stopping local police from getting to the beach. A copper threatened to arrest the commandos, until a sergeant-major smoothed things over. Bleary-eyed officials arrived with suspicious haste. MOD and security types argued, trying to lumber each other with responsibility for the multi-corpse, career-ending clusterfuck.
Fendt and the tubby guy, who was called Tuck, examined the row of dead bodies. Tuck checked Drexler’s men and women off a list, cigarette stuck to his bottom lip. Red-faced and out of shape, he definitely wasn’t military. With his jowly, pock-marked face and beard, he reminded me of a younger Monty. The old Monty had been taken away by the SBS team and was nowhere to be seen.
Drexler sat by the helo, watched by two heavily-armed Americans. Bearded and feral-looking, full-on snake-eaters. The type intelligence agencies keep on the books for the direst of emergencies.
Fendt listened to a message on his satellite phone. “Okay, Winter, you check out,” he said. “What’s the extent of Drexler’s involvement in the infowarfare event?”
“Event?” I said.
“That’s what the brass are calling it,” Fendt replied with a shrug.
“Drexler ordered the attack, but the virus was created by a hacker called Kris Pilbeam,” I replied. “The algorithm that identifies the targets was created by a mathematician, Bryan Hoffman. Both of them died in a fire earlier today.”
Fendt rubbed his billiard-ball head. “I knew that. Anything else?”
“Yeah, the identity of the guy paying Drexler to do this: Paradis.”
“I knew that too,” the American replied, pulling a face. “Tuck, over here,” he called.
Tuck looked up from his list and ambled over. He extinguished his cigarette, put it in a small plastic pouch and pocketed it. Counter-forensic paranoia par excellence. “Yo, Antonio,” he replied cockily.
“Winter knows Drexler’s working for Paradis.”
“Really?” said Tuck darkly. “How big is the circle of knowledge?”
I shook my head. “Big enough. Maybe I’ll let the media know.”
“You’re hardly in a position to make threats,” Tuck replied coolly.
“I think Tuck might be right,” Fendt added. “It happens occasionally.”
I leant in close to Tuck. He smelt of cigarettes and breath-mints. “Really? You’ve got a private army of ex-US military, planning a de facto terrorist outrage on the soil of your closest ally. I’d say Uncle Sam is up to his neck in shit, not least because he’s known about it all along. There’s everything to negotiate for.”
Tuck muttered something. It sounded a lot like asshole.
“Now Winter has a point,” said Fendt. “Mike, release him please,” he called to an SBS man. The commando stepped forward and slashed my plasticuffs with a knife.
“Leave us now, soldier,” Tuck ordered.
“I’m a Marine,” the SBS man replied. “You’re a civilian, a Yank, and you’re getting on my tits. Learn some fucking manners.”
Fendt chuckled. “There’s another man with a point.” The American walked me towards the Black Hawk, squatting behind the clubhouse. “Your guys did good,” he said. “They took out most of Drexler’s guys before our RIBs even hit the beach.”
“We had a plan,” I lied. “How did you find Drexler?”
“CIA, DIA, NSA SIGINT and a slice of luck,” Fendt replied. “We’ve been tracking Sea Witch for a week.”
“You knew what he was up to?”
“Only suspicions,” the American replied. “Drexler’s team quit the military and followed him into the wilderness. We could live with that, but he took Bryan Hoffman with him, and Hoffman was a man we needed to keep. Now he’s dead.”
“Why was Drexler fired?”
“You’ve met the motherfucker, right? He thinks he’s Colonel Kurtz,” Fendt replied. “Figuring out why the hell they put him in charge of Obsidian Futures will keep Congressional hearings in business for years.”
“Yeah, he’s a lunatic,” I agreed. “This is all about Obsidian Futures, isn’t it?”
Fendt licked his teeth, like there was a bad taste in his mouth. “Kinda. But the Hoffman algorithm is a game-changer. We’re a joint Task Force, tracking the ex-Obsidian team: CIA, DoD and DIA. We’re called CARNIVORE.”
“That’s an awful bloody codename,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Fendt laughed. “Then again, I once worked an assignment called ANGEL FURY. Man, that sounds like a bad metal band.”
I laughed. “And Tuck?”
“Dark side - CIA Political Action Group. Psyops shit. Now, I’ve told you something. Return the favour – what else do you know?”
&nb
sp; “Hold on, Fendt. I’m guessing there’s more to this.”
We neared the helicopter, engines crackling with ambient heat. Fendt stopped and crossed his arms. “There always is, Winter. You know what our math tells us might be at the end of the Curve?”
“War.”
“Yup,” said the American. “We need to stop it. Nothing else matters, not now.”
Fendt and I exchanged a look. Do we have an understanding? I looked up and down the beach, at corpses and officials and men with guns.
So I told Fendt everything. The Firm. Jacques Paradis. The island called Nördhaus. “Don’t ask me what he wants out of this. But I think Drexler has half of the kill-switch for the virus. Paradis is meant to have the other.”
“I didn’t know about a kill-switch,” the American replied, “but it sounds possible. You say Drexler predicts the Hoffman Curve ending with a shooting war in the Baltic?”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s after a load of world currencies crash and my country’s been turned into a Mad Max movie.”
Fendt shook his head. “We’ve had the math behind Hoffman’s theorem run through every computational model. It’s comin’ out ninety percent accurate.”
I shrugged. “We’re just standing on a beach talking about it.”
“Wait there,” said Fendt. He jogged back to Tuck and said something in his ear. Tuck pulled a tablet from his jacket and began tapping away at the screen.
In the distance I saw the wash of blue lights. Another helicopter buzzed overhead. It circled the beach and came into land, a silver civilian helo. Marcus hopped out, briefcase raised to shelter his face from the sandstorm blown up by rotor blades. The helo roared away into the night. Marcus trudged across the sand. “Hullo there,” he said, as if we’d just met while walking our dogs.
“Go on, then,” I replied.
“First, I think you need to speak to a mutual friend.” The spook pulled a satellite phone from his crumpled Barbour. “While you do that, I’m going to parley with our American colleagues.”
“Why?” I said. “Did you know about this CARNIVORE bullshit?”
“No,” Marcus replied darkly. “This has MI5 written all over it. I see some of them are lurking about already. Special Forces? Someone at Thames House has gone out on a limb. There was no COBRA meeting we were aware of.”
The Saint Jude Rules (Cal Winter Book 3) Page 17