Total Fallout

by Alex Shaw

  ‘Pl … please … I … I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got to help me.’ The voice was low, and sounded hoarse as though its owner was not used to speaking. The language was English.

  The other two Wolves remained silent. Akulov started to understand what it was they were inspecting. The Canadian was wearing an improvised explosive device, a suicide vest.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ The voice was still hoarse but the tone was now desperate.

  Wolf 1, Vetrov, appeared at Akulov’s shoulder. ‘This is the issue.’

  Akulov thought back to the sniper and his spotter on the hill, the man who had targeted him and missed, the man who had not attempted a single shot at the rest of the team. He thought about the two gunmen stalking along the perimeter, taking an unobscured route that exposed them to fire. All four of the Werewolves were now in the room with the Canadian, with the IED. It was a trap …

  ‘Please talk to me!’ Belanger said now, his voice louder.

  ‘Where is the trigger?’ Vetrov said, in Russian-accented English.

  ‘Th … the what?’

  ‘Trigger?’

  ‘I … I don’t have a trigger.’

  There was a trilling sound. Belanger flinched. The two Werewolves by his side jerked backwards …

  The vest didn’t explode. The trilling continued.

  ‘Is that a phone?’ Vetrov asked, incredulously.

  The Werewolf on the left of the Canadian moved back towards the mattress, lifted the corner and pulled out a large, satellite handset. Vetrov took it. He raised his NVGs then tapped a button, and a voice started to talk, in English:

  ‘Russian soldiers. The device Mr Belanger is wearing will detonate if he leaves the room or if you attempt to remove it. We do not want to kill Mr Belanger, but we will if our demands are not met.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Vetrov asked.

  ‘You are speaking to Abu Mohammad al-Julani!’ The voice, whilst sounding tinny over the satellite phone now had an air of pride. Akulov recognised the name as that of the emir of the terror network, but it could have been anyone. It continued, ‘You may take Mr Belanger if you release my men you illegally captured in Aleppo. I will message their names to this phone, and you will then use this handset to contact your superiors.’

  ‘No,’ Vetrov said. ‘Those men are terrorists. They attacked our base. They killed Russian troops.’

  ‘If you do not wish to die, you will follow my orders. I have eyes on the facility where my men are being held. I will give you one hour to secure their release, otherwise I shall detonate the device and Mr Belanger will unfortunately be no more. Do you understand me, Russian soldiers?’

  ‘I do,’ Vetrov replied.

  ‘One hour.’ The call ended.

  ‘Please, you have to get me out of this!’ In the darkness, Belanger’s wide eyes glowed like alien spacecraft. ‘I … I don’t want to die.’

  Vetrov switched back to Russian. ‘Wolf 6, 7 and 8. Go now to secure our exfil point.’

  Wolves 7 and 8 left the room. Akulov stayed where he was. The sat phone pinged. Vetrov looked at the screen and swore in Russian. He then raised his hand to shoulder height and let go of the handset. It dropped onto the unforgiving concrete.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Belanger asked. ‘You have to get me out of here. Please call your boss!’

  ‘I will call no one.’ He turned to Akulov. ‘Get out, Wolf 6. That is an order!’

  ‘You need to defuse it.’

  ‘Go.’

  Akulov didn’t move. ‘Kirill, what are you doing? You and I are trained for this. We need to defuse the device!’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That is an order!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well. I do not negotiate with terrorists.’

  In a swift movement, Vetrov swung his Val up from his side and shot the Canadian in the head.

  Present day

  Texas

  Akulov sipped his coffee. He gazed at his two “prisoners” through the bars in the door. He’d used two more autoinjectors, one on each man. He’d hoped there may be a cumulative effect on the Giant, but as he had rarely relied on narcotics to do his bidding, he was just guessing. Both men were sprawled out on the floor and snoring heavily. They were, however, no longer in the office and conference room but in another room that Bravo had neglected to tell him about. It was a room specifically designed and built as a cell. Hidden behind a false wall in a back corner, it was a reinforced concrete box with a prison regulation steel door. He was under no illusion that the room had been well used by the cartel as the floor was angled, there was a drainage hold in the centre and the air carried a strong scent of bleach.

  Akulov was impressed with the construction, but the Giant had been less so when he and Vinyl had been ordered inside. If either came round and managed to escape, he’d be the first to give them a medal. He locked the outer door, which hid the cell from view, and walked across the warehouse interior. Passing the van, he gave no second thought to the corpse lying in the back. He listened at the door for any tell-tale sounds from outside that would alert him of a trap but heard only the wind. It gently pressed against the metal panelling and whispered underneath.

  He opened the door and stepped through into early morning Texan sunshine. He was going to walk towards the nearest store, and on the way, he’d call Jack Tate.

  Chapter 14

  The St. Regis, Houston, Texas, USA

  ‘This eggs Benedict is superb,’ Tate said, mopping the side of his mouth.

  ‘That’s eggs royale; it’s the salmon one.’

  Tate inspected his fork. ‘I thought the ham was soft.’

  ‘And tasted like fish?’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed that – it’s the Hollandaise sauce.’ Tate took another bite, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘There’s one with spinach too. What do they call that?’

  ‘Eggs I won’t eat,’ replied Hunter.

  ‘It worked for Popeye.’ Tate shook his head. It was eight a.m. and they were sitting, eating breakfast as though nothing was wrong in the world. The elephant in the room had either not woken up yet or was hiding in the bathroom. But he would appear soon enough. Tate had slept badly, and it hadn’t helped that Plato’s message had woken him up just when he’d drifted off. Later during the night he had started to question himself and realised that he had been an utter fool to let Akulov walk away; he should have gone after him, should have done something. What was the word of a former Spetsnaz killer worth anyway? But something inside him, perhaps it was his British sense of decency, had made him want to believe that Ruslan Akulov had not murdered his parents. The couple had actually been his long-term foster parents and perhaps that slight alienation he had always felt from them had tempered his pain, his grief, but either way he knew that Simon was hurting.

  Their plates empty, the elephant appeared and nudged them both on the shoulder.

  ‘So are we going to just sit and wait?’ Hunter asked.

  Tate shrugged. ‘This is a black mission. We can’t ask the locals to help and put out an APB, and anyway, Plato has the CCTV cameras covered.’

  ‘Akulov is very good at not being seen.’

  Tate agreed. The bombing had happened three years ago but it had only been a year since the “found footage”, as the media had called it, had surfaced. It was this footage, taken on a lost iPhone discovered during renovation work, which had shown the face of the Camden bomber. That face had now been confirmed as belonging to Ruslan Akulov. Just under a year had passed since the EMP attack on the US had, among other things, destroyed all its functioning CCTV and surveillance systems. Major cities and institutions had new systems up and running but there were still considerable blind spots. Akulov, it seemed, had been exploiting these ruthlessly.

  Hunter picked up the newspaper he’d discarded when breakfast had arrived. He opened it up to read the smaller stories inside, having already read the front pages. ‘Death of a prince.’
>
  Tate arched his eyebrows. ‘Our prince?’

  ‘The fake one, and he’s only made page five on the international edition. It says here that French authorities found a body yesterday, which has now been confirmed as that of His Royal Highness Salman bin Mohammad Al Nayef, of Saudi Arabia. The corpse was discovered snagged on rocks off the coast of Cap d’Ail, on the French Riviera. Al Nayef was attacked two days ago, on his launch in Port Hercule by a bearded gunman … It is believed, although not confirmed by either the Saudis or the principality authorities, that it was a robbery gone wrong … An attaché case that was chained to his wrist has not been recovered … Al Nayef was known to hold both a safety deposit box and a clearing account at a private Monaco bank … The prince died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest … His identification was hampered by the length of time his corpse spent in the water.’

  ‘And that fact he didn’t have a face,’ Tate added.

  ‘The Saudis are demanding a full inquiry.’

  ‘Jolly right too.’

  Hunter put down the paper. ‘At least that’s one operation that’s going well.’

  Tate stood and moved to the window. From their room they could see both the Houston skyscrapers and the large houses of the expensive River Oaks area, nestled in among tall, lush trees. Downtown felt soulless to him but he had to admire the cleanliness of the city, at least compared to the grubbiness of London. An electronic ping made him turn.

  ‘Message.’ Hunter held up Tate’s iPhone. ‘It’s Akulov. He wants another meeting.’

  Tate crossed the room and sat next to his brother on the large settee. ‘Where this time?’

  ‘The Houston Police Officers’ Memorial at Buffalo Bayou Park.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I want to go.’ Hunter was resolute.

  ‘Simon, that’s not wise.’

  ‘Really? You think perhaps I’ll kill him with my bare hands? Or perhaps I’ll just let him walk away?’

  Tate said nothing.

  ‘Do you think he’ll kill me? Is that it? In the middle of a public park in broad daylight?’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘Look, Jack, remember who used to run E Squadron?’

  Tate rolled his eyes. Before Newman took over and Hunter accepted his current position in Washington, he had been Tate’s boss. Although Tate had argued that since he was “on loan” from the SAS to the SIS, technically he didn’t report to his brother. It had been Hunter who had planned the missions and carried out both tactical and intelligence assessments. But Hunter wasn’t a field operative, and both men knew it.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK, what?’ Hunter frowned.

  ‘You can come along too.’

  ‘Jack, I wasn’t asking for your permission. It’s a two-man job.’

  Vauxhall Cross, London, UK

  Plato entered his office with two fresh packets of fig rolls under his arm. He shut the door and hurriedly sat at his desk. As he’d been paying for them in a Tesco Metro store, he’d received two alerts on his footage search – both with a high probability of a match – the first of which was 86.4 and the other 89.1. His screens were black but once he’d nudged his mouse and input his password they came back to life. He clicked on the first. It showed a male passenger, white, mid-thirties walking with what appeared to be business class passengers dressed in suits or local Qatari attire. He didn’t recognise the man. He hadn’t seen him before and was pretty sure he wasn’t on any watch list that he’d seen.

  The footage ended with him passing the camera and heading towards the passport control area at immigration. Plato paused the footage. Even though it was his gait that was being analysed Plato wanted to see his face. He saved a still of it. Plato waited to see what footage had matched with the man in this video. The computer loaded and then a notification appeared. It had matched with the footage of Akulov at the airport in Wichita. The man in Qatar had, according to Plato’s program, the exact same range and angle of movement in their feet, legs, hips, torso and arms through the step cycle – their gait – as Akulov. The gait in both pieces of footage was the same.

  Plato’s mouth dropped open. ‘But … but come on … he’s got a completely different face!’

  He tapped a different command into his system and made a new copy of the footage. He then looked at the second hit. It showed what appeared to be the same passenger stepping out through the revolving doors of Hamad International Airport and walking to the official State of Qatar ‘Kawa Taxi’, taxi rank.

  He opened his new packet of fig rolls and munched slowly as his mind processed what his computer system already had. Ruslan Akulov, the former Spetsnaz Russian assassin who had been identified on the Camden bombing found footage, had now also been matched in Wichita airport, by the gait-recognition software. However, on the Hamad International Airport tapes, the facial recognition software found no match but the gait recognition did. He finished his first biscuit and ate a second. And then most baffling of all on the Camden footage, Akulov’s face was recognised but his gait was not. He knew gait differentiation was not completely foolproof, yet it was highly persuasive. And Plato was highly persuaded.

  ‘Welcome to the Infocalypse, ladies and gentlemen. Please ensure that your photo ID matches your face,’ Plato said and had to suppress a nervous giggle. He wiped crumbs off his top with a sweaty palm. It wasn’t funny; what he had uncovered and the implications therein to both national and international security was mind-blowing.

  Mouth dry, he went to his teapot, knowing that he had half a cup left of cold, stewed tea but he needed something to drink. He noticed that his legs were wobbling, but was it with fear or elation that something huge was happening, a whole new epoch for digital information and cyber war and he was the person who had discovered and prevented the first true attack? He wanted to run into Pamela Newman’s office and tell her the good, bad and potentially game-changing news but his thoughts were running too fast for his mouth. No. He needed to relax, take a few minutes to compose himself and then he would go. But there was one more thing he could check, and hopefully this would, beyond all reasonable doubt, prove that somewhere, somehow, someone had used AI – artificial intelligence – to produce synthetic media that was indistinguishable from reality.

  Plato sat again and started to mentally plan what he had to do in order to prove his theory. He pulled up the Hamad airport footage that had given him the second hit. On a paper pad, he made a note of the time the man he now believed to be Akulov had appeared. He studied the figure, which did not have Akulov’s head but was carrying a bag. A single cabin luggage bag. Plato zoomed in and could make out a Qatar Airways Business Class tag hanging down from the bag’s handle. The figure was not holding anything that would lead Plato to believe that he had spent any time in the small “on arrival” duty-free shops.

  Plato then pulled up the first match, which showed the man exiting his plane and entering the terminal. He made a note of this time too. Plato cross-referenced the arrival times with the airport’s historical live arrival data, which told him that the arrival was from Singapore.

  Now that he had the flight number all he had to do was to break into the immigration data base and pull up all the Singapore arrivals. Once he had that then it would be a matter of copying the specific video feed for the desk that the man passed through. But breaking into one of the most secure databases Qatar had was not an easy matter.

  He knew that what he was about to do was not sanctioned at all by his boss, but if he didn’t do it, he would not know for sure if his theory was correct. He ate another fig roll and decided he had no other choice. He started to hack into the State of Qatar’s Immigration Database.

  The Houston Police Officers’ Memorial, Buffalo Bayou Park, Houston

  Their driver pulled into the small parking lot at 1400 Memorial Parkway and let Hunter out before accelerating back into the flow of traffic and driving away. Hunter knew nothing about the park apart from what he’d read online and seen via Goog
le Street View. The parking lot was on a mound directly above the monument. At this time of the day the place didn’t look busy, which would make his approach much easier to see and he imagined was exactly what Akulov had wanted. He stepped onto the grass to his left and walked towards a footpath below, which took him directly to the base of the monument. Trees lined the outer edge of the path and disguised a drop to a second path below and then the Buffalo Bayou itself.

  The sky above was the brightest of blues and the sun reflected from the distant skyscrapers. The mix of manicured greenery and futuristic architecture was a million miles away from Camden and reminded Hunter of sci-fi films he’d watched as kid, like Logan’s Run. The path reached a crossroads of sorts. He paused and looked around. The only people he could see were walking on the bridge. He turned right, towards the monument.

  Hunter remembered from his quick research that morning the monument was laid out in the form of a Greek cross. The stepped granite pyramid in front of him was the sole part to rise above the ground, and was topped with a reflecting pool surrounded by pink granite slabs engraved with the names of over one hundred fallen police officers. It was a brutal, tough yet moving structure. As he neared the pyramid a solitary figure appeared from around the other side. Their eyes locked and the man nodded. It was a uniformed police officer, either paying his respects or patrolling the area. They passed each other and Hunter continued on towards the granite structure.

  He could see no one else so checked his watch. It was gone nine thirty. Akulov was late but Hunter knew how these things worked. The Russian would be watching from somewhere, checking that Jack Tate had come alone. Hunter suddenly started to doubt himself and his insistence to meet Akulov. Hunter continued inspecting the monument. He felt exposed, but also angry that the man who had murdered his parents was toying with him like this.