Treasonable Intent

by C Shaw Hilton

  “They have my position, I’m moving around the side,” Fawzia breathed into the microphone and scrambled on all fours across the mud and around the cottage side wall. There was another burst of fire and she heard the shelving inside the kitchen erupt into a blizzard of broken porcelain and glass. Fawzia thought she saw a movement at the landing window. She stood up, raised the C8 to her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. In a flash she ducked back behind the wall. She ejected the magazine and tried to move the slide, but the weapon was jammed solid. Putting it on the floor, she pulled out her SIG P226. Holding the pistol ahead of her, she moved swiftly and skirted around the cottage towards the front gate. Before reaching the end of the wall there was a thunderous exchange of automatic fire on the other side of the building.

  “Major,” Bob’s hushed voice came over the headset, “we are pinned down. They have cross fire from the stairwell and the landing.”

  Fawzia darted around the end of the wall. Through the shattered front door she could make out Bob in the hallway changing his magazine. The remaining two terrorists were firing at his position in continuous short bursts. She darted in a zigzag pattern towards the entrance. It was a gamble. The twenty or so yards had little cover and nothing which would stop a bullet. She was banking on them keeping up their attempt to reduce the hallway to matchwood.

  Just as she reached the door she heard another burst of automatic fire sweeping the stairwell. Without hesitation she jumped over the threshold. Ahead of her, behind the stair post, was the hunched figure of a soldier clearly wounded. She threw a grenade over the upper bannister rail and fired two shots at the shadow at the top of the stairs. The explosion rocked the house and filled the air with splintered wood and plaster. The figure jerked backwards and slumped against the wall. Their rifle fell to the floor. Fawzia moved swiftly up the stairs with Bob and two other soldiers right behind her.

  They burst into the two bedrooms and searched the bathroom. Inside the former were computers and file servers and amongst them the dismantled pieces of her tablet. “Crap!” she shouted, “”the tablet is here but it is not operational. They took it to pieces. Some of the internals look to have been deliberately destroyed. I guess they managed to hack into it and extract what they needed.

  Bob was on the ladder, looking into the attic with a flashlight and pistol. “It’s clear” he declared. “That is only three. Where is the fourth?”

  Fawzia looked out of the shattered window at the woodland to the side of the cottage and then the edge of the field behind it. Seconds later she saw a figure weaving swiftly across the pasture back towards the village.

  “One of them must have got out somehow. I’m on it!” She raced back down the stairs and through the front door. “You get the prisoner in the yard to the helicopter and then search the place and make sure all the evidence is secured.” With pistol in hand she set off after the terrorist across the fields.

  “Hang on!” shouted Bob down the microphone, “we need you here in case we can put the thing back together…” but it was too late. The Major was already sprinting away from the cottage.

  Whoever she was chasing was pretty fit. She followed the figure using night vision goggles as it ran steadily down the hill through the fields. It was hard to tell if she was gaining ground at all. The figure darted towards a woodland area adjacent to a country lane. Fawzia worried that they must have parked their vehicle there and that she was not going to catch up on foot.

  Her radio came to life again. It was Bob. “Both white males here are dead. We have captured Fatima Ali.

  “Okay,” Fawzia replied, “I am still in pursuit but I am going to need back up.”

  “I have four soldiers hot on your heels and we are scrambling the helicopter” Bob shouted back.

  The fleeing figure had reached the woods and moved swiftly through the trees. Then she spotted it. The blue Mazda CX5 was parked on the grass between two large dark bushes. She raced to intercept but instead of entering the car, the figure darted further into the trees and disappeared. Fawzia approached the vehicle slowly, pistol in hand. Peering over the rear hatch window confirmed that it was unoccupied. She could see from the red flashing indicators on the doors that it was locked and alarmed. There was no sign of the terrorist or another driver.

  She could not afford to lose this person. The easiest way for them to get away now would be to double back and drive off if she went further. Equally they might already be running to a rendezvous with another vehicle. Suddenly she heard the unmistakable sound of a polyphonic ring tone. It came from somewhere to her right, where a small area of raised ground led to the top of a steep embankment. She moved swiftly and circled about a hundred metres around the side to get a look at her quarry. In the poor light it was hard to make out, but the figure was crouched low and clearly still had an automatic weapon. Moving nearer, Fawzia heard a whispered exchange on the phone. The language wasn’t English but she couldn’t recognise it. She could tell, however, that it was a female voice.

  Fawzia unlocked the safety on her pistol. It was, she thought, now or never whilst the terrorist was pre-occupied. It was a mistake. The click of the metal switch had been enough. In one swift movement the terrorist fired a hail of bullets in an arc, rotating a full 360 degrees. In a reflex reaction Fawzia hit the floor. There was a click as the weapon emptied its magazine followed by a dull thud as it was thrown to the floor. When she looked up, the woman was already running back down the embankment towards the CX5.

  Fawzia tried to pick herself up and lift up her pistol but somehow couldn’t get her balance. It was only then she noticed that something had happened to her left leg. She felt queasy as she realised that she had been hit. There was fresh blood over her left boot and a tear in the fabric of the ghost suit. It was hard to tell the extent of the injury but the pain was increasing steadily. She put her weight onto the leg to see if it would hold. Clearly no break she thought. She looked down again. The growing red patch on the suit seemed to stem from the calf muscle. Injury or not, she had no choice but to go after the woman. By the time he had begun to move the fleeing figure had reached the Mazda. Fawzia took aim from the trees. She was 25 metres away and the priority was to immobilise the car. She emptied the whole magazine from the automatic into the tyres. The engine started, stuttered and it rolled forward but only made 50 metres before the car was down on it rims. Even at that distance she could hear the wheels grinding on the stony ground. The woman dived out of the vehicle and began running before it came to a halt. Moving with an ungainly gait Fawzia set off in pursuit. She ditched the empty pistol. To her left she saw four figures about a hundred metres behind her racing to make up the ground. Every step was painful and she could sense the warm red liquid dripping into her boots. Ahead of her the woman had reached one of the many cycle routes which cover the area and was running for all her worth westwards. “Get after her,” she screamed to the four soldiers as they raced past her. She felt her head pounding and the onset of nausea as her leg gave way under her.

  Suddenly there was the deep thump of rotor blades in the distance. The fleeing woman looked in that direction and then at the soldiers closing on her. She seemed to hesitate for a moment. She then raised her weapon and took aim at them. The rotor sound was getting louder.

  The soldiers dived for cover as they heard the crack of the gun but the bullets went over them. She then turned and raced away again. The chase resumed for a further minute before the whole scene was suddenly illuminated by a searchlight from the rising helicopter. A fierce downdraft from its rotors blew everything that was not nailed down across surrounding countryside. There was a screech of tyres around the corner as three police cars blocked where the track met the minor road ahead of her. The lead soldier suddenly knelt and raised his rifle. She stopped and turned to fire back but the 100 grain bullet smashed into her right shoulder. It tore through muscle and tissue before exiting into the stone wall behind her. The hydrostatic shock throughout her body stopped her f
rom any further action and the force threw her back into the wall. She collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Fawzia was lying back up the cycle track. On her radio she heard “Suspect down and detained.” There were shouted instructions but she was already beginning to slip in and out of consciousness. Then out of nowhere Bob arrived at her side.

  “Mission accomplished?” She mouthed at him. He was busy trying to stop the bleeding from her leg and spoke between deep breaths. “Two dead, two captured. The tablet looks like it has already been unlocked Major. Whatever was on it, they have accessed the information.” She looked at him with a sense of frustration and despair. He administered a shot of morphine from his medical pack. Then the ground began to spin under her and a dark cloak fell over her mind.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  At 9pm exactly the garage door opened and the truck pulled out. The sides were now covered in familiar decals and the lower half had been spray painted green. New number plates and a black roof wrap completed the transformation. It was every inch a popular rental truck. Inside Li and Keller completed the final testing of the weapon whilst the other two sat in the cabin and drove out of Bristol. They were still in the suburbs when the garbled message came through on the phone. It was a breathless Kirstin. Keller took the call. Speaking in her native Danish she told him about the attack on the cottage and confirmed they had broken the tablet security and transmitted successfully to Shanghai. Keller was fluent in most north European languages but before he could ask questions the phone went dead.

  Li was preparing the firing sequence for the device. He could see the expression on Keller’s face and hear the agitated voice on the other end of the mobile. When the conversation stopped abruptly he put his laptop down on the truck floor. “Problem?” He asked in English.

  Keller nodded; “Fatima’s team have been killed or compromised. They cracked the tablet and sent all the information to Shanghai but the next part of the operation will have to be done remotely.” He looked very concerned.

  “Is Fatima dead?” Li said quietly.

  Keller raised his eyebrows and shrugged; “I don’t know. The phone was cut off. I guess we have to assume they are all dead or captured. I had better tell Ahmed.” He slid the partition to the front cabin open. Cyrus was driving and Ahmed Ali was studying a map of the area. He broke the news as dispassionately as he could. He saw the Egyptian’s shoulders drop slightly but otherwise he was impassive. “We go on. It is the will of Allah what becomes of them,” he muttered.

  Keeping away from the motorways they steadily drove North East and kept to a series of minor roads where there were less people and CCTV cameras. The journey would take nearly twice as long, almost two hours, but avoiding detection was the priority. At 11pm the truck pulled into the residential area of Galileo Gardens in Cheltenham. The pleasant housing estate was within a few metres of the perimeter of GCHQ. Most of the occupants were preparing for bed and lights were going on and off as they moved about the house. Ali checked his watch. He would have phoned Fatima but now the co-ordination of events rested with Shanghai. A quick call, a brief exchange of code words and then the timing confirmation, 11.22 precisely. He pocketed his phone. Li opened the roller shutter and the two of them pushed the device forward on its rails and screwed on the extension tube. Ali dropped out of the front cab to help Cyrus pull four mountain bikes out of the truck side door to the pavement. Then he joined Li and Keller. The three of them checked again the angle of the mortar tube in the back of the truck. They all agreed on the settings and then, under cover of darkness, ran to the bushes and pulled out their night goggles. Behind the raised earthworks and shrubbery cover they reached a concrete block wall and clambered up to see over the top. Keller checked his watch and Li punched in the final four digit code on the remote weapon control.

  The truck rocked as the mortar launched the device over the perimeter defences at GCHQ. It travelled in a low arc and as the three of them watched, it plummeted earthwards into the very heart of the GCHQ complex. It hit the roof of the main building and went through two floors. At 11.22pm and three seconds, it detonated. The shock wave rocked houses a kilometre away, shattering nearer windows and greenhouses. That section of the main GCHQ building collapsed and the basement below, containing a number of transmission cables and a power relay system was completely destroyed. All fourteen occupants working on the ground floor were killed outright. A further eight guards on the inner cordon were fatally struck by debris. Dozens were wounded.

  The device, which had resembled a large pressurised gas canister, was adapted from a tactical anti-ship weapon. The explosion was violently damaging but the real effect came from the electro-magnetic pulse it created. In a nanosecond and despite every shielding precaution imaginable, the whole of GCHQ was overloaded and shut down. It was exactly the same signature as a nuclear detonation although scaled down to impact over a few thousand metres. All over Cheltenham the lights went out. Even cars on the roads nearby had their engine management systems fried and came to a juddering halt.

  Ali, Li and Keller watched the explosion and then turned and hurried back down the embankment towards the housing estate. Running away into the night as the street lamps went out, they looked for Cyrus who stood by the kerbside with the four mountain bikes. It was the only means of transport that would be moving down the roads that evening.

  The pursuit helicopter on the pad at GCHQ was immobilised as its systems died even before it could react to the attack. The back-up generators on site had mixed fortunes. Half never started and the rest couldn’t deploy power as parts of the reserve grid were knocked out. Some battery power did illuminate the odd stairwell but even electronic watches and clocks near to the blast froze as though time stood still. A couple of miles away all the electrics in the police station and forward command post for Operation Lightening stopped working. The hospital computers and power systems all failed as did their back up. GCHQ went off the grid. Its last action was to inform Rose Garden that it had been taken out by a weapon of mass destruction. The whole of Cheltenham lay in darkness.

  Seconds before the electromagnetic pulse, some thousands of miles away in Shanghai, encrypted signals were sent to each of the three Rose Garden sites. It triggered a discreet piece of malware in the communication and security computers of each one. The tablet had done its work.

  The malware activated as the full defence sequence for the three sites was initiated. Everything was fully automated and designed to deal with the eventuality of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom. All those within each base were sealed in and communications limited to the single national emergency defence system. Or at least, that is how it appeared to those inside, but the messaging and command was now routed by the malware through Shanghai. Each site was under instruction to resist any form of physical assault or attempted entry by deception.

  General Fu looked at the reports flashing up on screen. He stood on the 25th floor of the TwoBitz building with a small circle of colleagues including the Diplomat. This had been an expensive investment in both assets and technology but for the moment it had handed him control of the only communications route into and out of the entire offensive cyber warfare capability of the United Kingdom. He allowed himself a smile. “Inaugurate the final phase” he instructed. Inside the room the technicians began to target other computer systems and seize control, ready to use them to provoke Rose Garden into a series of attacks. The United Kingdom was entirely at the mercy of the Directorate of Network Warfare and he intended to make the most of that opportunity.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Olsson had left the Range Rover in the pub car park in Woodstock outside of Oxford. It would, at the very least, cause his pursuers to wonder if he was heading for the site by Oxford Brookes University. At the moment anything to deflect and distract was useful. Benning and the Chinese had carried that off well. He’d had to admire the audacity of the plot. It was fortunate that he had earned their trust and that of Nia over
the preceding years. He had convinced them that he was well placed to assist in falsifying the evidence necessary to convince the Israelis. He also demonstrated he could work with them on preparing Lightening. Once he was inside the conspiracy he contacted his handler at the Russian Embassy. It had taken three days to set up a meeting, in a small gastro pub in Fulham. At first he wasn’t believed but over the next two weeks he produced sufficient photographic and digital evidence to intrigue his masters back in the FSB headquarters in Moscow. What he needed was to hijack the plot and turn the situation to Russian advantage. For a further ten days he heard nothing.

  Hours before the arrival of Ahmed and Fatima Ali in Hull he picked up an envelope from a dead drop in a bookshop in Islington. It wasn’t the news he wanted. He was on his own. There was deep concern in the Kremlin as to how the UK would react to another incident that even remotely looked like an attack on its soil. He could proceed only if any of his actions were non attributable to Russia and involved no one with any FSB, GRU or other state connections. If he could damage Rose Garden and the British renegades get the blame, then fine, but otherwise he was to stay out of it. His only consolation was that he was given the necessary advanced malware to destroy Rose Garden if circumstances permitted.

  Olsson had still been pondering what to do when the call came to attend the briefing in the Ministry of Defence. Almost instantly he took the decision to play along with the conspiracy. Within hours he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that decision. The news that Benning had been forced to go abroad was a worry. The whole subterfuge around the safe house had been set up in advance. On paper it seemed to work but when Nia appeared without the Major or her tablet then he had been forced to reassess his options. He felt he’d had to take the opportunity to act decisively against them all.