Clare shook her head. ‘No. I checked with Katya. The site’s on a virtual island between the motorway and thick trees, so there’s only one way in and one out.’
That was an added complication. ‘Fine. Let’s take it easy.’ He could see all the way down the side of the building to where Kraush’s car was parked. ‘Drive out as if we belong,’ he said. ‘If Perry’s still there we need to lose him before taking Sally to the airport. I haven’t worked out the rest just yet.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Mitchell breathed, her faced flushed. ‘Compared with what I usually have to put up with, this is fun.’
‘How did this Perry bloke know where to come?’ said Rik.
‘According to London he’s got local contacts,’ Harry said. ‘They didn’t follow me here, so I’m guessing they must have latched onto Kraush and his crew, who haven’t exactly been trying too hard to cover their tracks.’
Clare said, ‘Par for the course for Russians here. They treat the country like their own back yard.’
Then, as they neared the front corner of the building, she stamped on the brakes. Two men appeared by the side of the road in front of them, arguing loudly. One was a security guard, who was being forced backwards by one of Kraush’s men. The security guard seemed to be trying to take the heat out of the discussion by making calming gestures, but Kraush’s man was clearly spoiling for a fight and stiff-armed him away before making a vicious fingertip strike at his throat. The guard barely managed to brush it away and reached for his side, where he carried a pistol and a short baton.
‘Go left,’ said Harry, pointing to a parking lane to avoid the two men. Another guard had appeared and was hurrying to support his colleague, while a couple of cops standing by a squad car were also on the move. The last thing Harry needed was to get caught up in the middle of an argument. With Kraush’s men ready for a fight and the number of armed officers around, this had the potential to go badly wrong.
Which it quickly did.
Before Clare could get moving again, Kraush’s man drew a pistol and fired two shots in the air. The sounds drew screams of alarm from people in the entrance and across the car park. Both security guards reacted instantly by holding out their hands to their sides and making gestures for the man to lay down his gun. There were too many people about for this to escalate without incurring innocent casualties. But the two police officers had different ideas and began running off to each side to draw the man’s fire while reaching for their side-arms.
Kraush’s man reacted instantly. He calmly shot the nearest officer, hitting him in the shoulder, then swivelled and shot his colleague before turning to aim his weapon at the two security guards.
Just then a slim figure in a blue uniform appeared out of the hospital entrance. She walked at a fast pace towards the men, arm extended, and shouted a warning, her voice clear and steady.
It was Katya.
‘No,’ Clare breathed desperately. ‘Don’t …’
Both Kraush’s men saw her coming, and the one who had fired the shots turned his weapon on her. Before he could pull the trigger Katya dropped to a crouch and fired twice, the reports so close they rolled into one. As he fell back, his colleague also began to reach for his weapon. But he was too late. One of the wounded policemen and a security guard fired together, their combined shots knocking him off his feet.
In the ensuing silence, Katya turned and checked the car park for other attackers, before going across to the two aggressors and kicking their guns away.
Harry glanced towards the entrance, where he had spotted Perry’s car.
It was no longer there, just a wisp of grey exhaust smoke lingering in the air where it had been parked.
‘Go,’ said Harry. ‘Before they close the area down.’
Clare looked at him, then towards Katya, who was directing two more police officers who’d come running from the building to investigate. She was clearly torn between concern for her partner and getting away from here before the republic’s militsiya – police force – descended in a heavy show of force and corralled everyone and began demanding documents.
‘She’s fine,’ Harry said. ‘You’d only be in the way.’
She nodded and hit the accelerator, taking them up to the exit road and out. When they reached the main road there was no sign of Perry’s car. But there was a cluster of blue and white lights approaching in the distance accompanied by the mournful wail of sirens.
‘You did well to convince Kraush to bring you to the hospital,’ Harry said to break the silence, glancing at Rik in the visor mirror. They hadn’t manged to talk yet and he wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he’d get after knocking Rik off the bench.
But Rik seemed fairly cheerful, and rubbed at the side of his face with a wry smile. ‘Simple, I did what you told me and played the victim. As they were picking me off the ground I mentioned the name Cicada and threw up. Not sure in which order but it did the trick, especially when one of the guards examined me and said something. After that it was all systems go.’ He grinned, which was more like the old Rik Harry remembered. ‘Perhaps I should train as an actor.’
‘Best not,’ Clare muttered. ‘Katya said you were crap.’
Harry didn’t join in; he’d been watching his side mirror and now saw a familiar shape a long way back, peeling out of a side road.
Perry.
‘Head for the airport,’ he told Clare, ‘and make it quick. We’ve got company.’
Clare drove fast, weaving through the traffic and regaining the motorway. Perry’s car was still there, but being held up by other vehicles.
‘What do they want?’ Clare asked.
‘If London was right, Perry has orders to stop us.’ He looked across at her. ‘If you can, stop tight in front of departures.’ He turned to Mitchell and said, ‘Sorry – this is going to be fast dismount.’
She gave him a smirk and said, ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’ When Harry failed to come up with a response she hefted her holdall. ‘Everything’s good, don’t worry. Fast dismounts are par for the course where I work, although not always this close to the ground.’
They hit the approach road into the airport at speed. Clare didn’t bother signalling, hoping to throw the following vehicle off balance with a late manoeuvre. It didn’t quite work but there was no time for anything fancier. All she could hope for was that other traffic would act as spoilers. She followed the road up to the terminal building, the car’s tyres squealing on the smooth surface, and stopped in front of the doors to departures, where security guards were on patrol and watching the vehicle arriving.
Mitchell jumped out and slapped the roof and was gone before Perry’s car came into view. Clare pulled away and headed for the exit, waving gratefully at a couple of other vehicles both heading for the space left and ended up blocking the road behind them.
‘I think you pulled there, Tate,’ she commented, and took the road curving round the other side of the parking area towards the motorway.
Harry grunted but said nothing. He was studying the road leading to the terminal building and saw Perry’s vehicle storm into view and come to a stop behind traffic. He figured they had a couple of minute’s grace before Perry worked out what had happened and set off in pursuit.
‘Motorway coming up,’ Clare announced. ‘Where to?’
‘Where they won’t expect us to go,’ Harry replied. ‘Back to the zone.’
She looked at him. ‘But that’s a dead end.’
‘That’s exactly why they won’t expect us to go there. They’ll expect us to go to ground in the city until we can arrange evacuation to London. The city is where Perry has his contacts; they’d find us in no time. He’ll also have this car’s number by now so we might as well go where we can do the most good.’
‘I don’t get it.’
Rik leaned forward from the rear seat. He was grinning and said, ‘He’s got a plan. And it’s probably going to get noisy.’
FORTY-FOUR
The industri
al zone wore a heavy layer of silence, as if every living creature was aware that danger was on the loose. The desolate atmosphere was helped by the first signs of a thin fall of snow, although it hadn’t settled yet, adding to the muffling of sound as if a blanket had been thrown across the landscape.
Harry directed Clare to the same spot in the trees he’d used before and made sure the car was well camouflaged before leading her and Rik through to the building containing the loft space he’d found earlier. ‘Wait here until I give you the all-clear,’ he said softly, and disappeared inside, listening for any sounds to betray the presence of unwanted visitors. He climbed the steps to the loft and found the sleeping bag and rations undisturbed, with no trace of footprints in the thin layer of dust he’d scattered when leaving last time.
Harry left Rik to point out to Clare the building where he’d been held, then the three of them made themselves as comfortable as they could and settled down to wait for Katya to call.
When she did so, it was to say she had got away from the accident unit without a problem.
‘She’s clear,’ Clare relayed to Harry and Rik with evident relief. ‘The two security guards backed her up and said they’d be dead like one of the cops if it wasn’t for her intervention. One of them used to be in the Presidential Security Service – the SBP – and recognized her. The surviving cop also swore she saved their lives. She made a report to her boss and he said he’ll make sure she doesn’t face charges.’
‘Good,’ said Harry. ‘Where is she now?’
‘On her way here. I’ll go and wait for her by the car.’
‘All right. But keep your head down. We don’t know if Perry’s in the area. If he sees you he won’t bother asking questions.’
‘No worries.’ She gave him a sideways look and drew a semi-automatic from her jacket, then disappeared down the steps.
‘She hasn’t changed much,’ said Rik. ‘Still bolshie.’
Harry couldn’t disagree. ‘We might need that before this business is over.’
They sat in near silence while they waited for Clare and Katya. Rik had turned in on himself, which Harry assigned to the after-effects of his capture and release. In normal times he’d have spent time talking him round, but this wasn’t a normal situation. Whatever Rik was dwelling on wouldn’t be solved in this cold and alien space, and he just had to hope the younger man would respond well when the time came to act.
A scrape of sound signalled Clare and Katya’s arrival, and they were soon up the steps and sitting down. Katya was carrying a dark blue canvas sports bag which she put to one side. She wore a tense look on her face but seemed fairly relaxed, although Harry had seen those conflicting signs before on faces following a firefight. You went over the event time and time again because you couldn’t help it, reliving each frame in turn and wondering if you couldn’t have done something different.
‘You OK?’ he asked. ‘You did well back there.’
She nodded. ‘I’m fine. It all happened too fast to think of anything but reacting, the way I was trained to do.’
He nodded. As a professional government bodyguard she would have been schooled to the highest standards. The Russians were no more interested than anyone else in having their personal safety guaranteed by amateurs. He didn’t entirely believe she was fine and, by the concerned expression on Clare’s face, neither did she. But it was something he would have to accept.
‘What do you know of these hackers?’ Katya asked Rik.
‘I haven’t seen them up close,’ he replied. ‘They’re in a building across the road from here.’ Rik gestured in that direction and looked at Harry with a question.
‘Tell her,’ Harry said. ‘But keep it short and sweet.’ He stood up and went over to a peephole in the structure from where he’d been able to keep an eye on the central road through the zone and the two main buildings where the opposition were holed up. The air was filling with swirling snow, making observation difficult, but that went both ways and the opposition would find it just as hard to keep watch on their perimeter.
Rik nodded. ‘Kraush and the woman named Irina are both GRU. They drew me out of London and the two men you shot are all part of an active service unit. They told me they had two assignments: one was to find out what I’d seen in the MI6 files and second, if I didn’t talk, it was to mount a three-tier offensive cyber attack on the UK.’
There was a brief silence, during which nobody reacted. Harry still thought it sounded crazy, but he knew as well as any of them that times were changing and nothing was guaranteed any more.
‘They’ve assembled a team of outsiders,’ Rik continued. ‘It’s not the way they normally operate, but this is different.’
‘What do you mean?’ Katya wasn’t being openly sceptical, merely seeking clarification.
‘The GRU is military and hierarchical. They have their own experts and trawl their universities for candidates and train them up. It’s the way they’re structured.’ He looked at Katya. ‘You know that, right?’
Katya looked uncomfortable. ‘I know it but I find it difficult to believe that Moscow would do such a thing,’ she said. ‘Wanting to see inside your MI6 files, of course that would be normal. You do the same back. But a cyber attack?’ She shook her head, clearly conflicted at the idea. ‘Why would they?’
‘What else did Kraush say about the attack?’ Harry put in. He had to get this out rather than being side-tracked in supposition and doubt.
‘Random Cyber Disruption is the first level. They use malware to target companies, public utilities, local authorities, distribution chains – but that’s small-scale, designed to be a short-term nuisance.’
‘And the second?’
‘It’s called Strategic Cyber Disruption, or SCD. It’s a step-up and targeted against government installations, major utilities and transport systems.’
‘What about our military?’ Harry said, keeping his eyes on the buildings opposite.
‘They’d be affected. They already rely on rail and road distribution for everything from personnel movements to weapons, munitions and equipment. Shut down the rail transport operations alone and they’d be unable to shift a thing. They’ve got their own haulage, but so what? SDC would also target traffic light systems. Imagine the area around any of the big cities if all the lights went to green: the chaos would be massive. Further out wouldn’t be any better, and trying to get around gridlocks for distribution purposes would be a nightmare.’
‘Go on.’
‘Then there’s the big one.’ He hesitated and stared at the floor as if looking into a deep, dark well.
‘Keep us waiting much longer,’ Harry murmured, ‘and I might just shoot you.’
‘I’m sorry, all right!’ Rik almost yelped. ‘This is hard for me; I was dragged into the middle of this … shit.’
Harry turned and held up a hand in apology. ‘I’m sorry. What’s level three?’
Rik hesitated as if he didn’t want to put voice to it. ‘Total Cyber Disruption, or TCD. Kraush used the word ‘Terminal’, like it was a computer game.’
Harry felt a chill around his neck.
‘It does what it says on the box. Everything would stop. No food, no water, no travel, no phones, no fuel, no communications. Nothing.’
‘Did you believe him?’ Clare asked. She looked in deep shock. ‘He might have been trying to frighten you.’
‘Well, he fucking well succeeded,’ he replied shortly. He looked at Harry. ‘Something I didn’t mention before: he told me if I didn’t talk they’d go after you … and anyone close to you. He showed me a picture of you in the street, taken a few days ago.’
‘Well?’ Katya said.
Rik nodded. ‘It could be done, yes. But whether it would … I don’t know.’
Harry didn’t want to believe it was that simple, but logic told him it was. Enter the new era of warfare. Disrupting a nation’s ability to feed and heal itself was damaging enough; kill communications and travel and absolute panic wo
uld follow. It didn’t take much to produce a tiny fraction of the chaos Rik was suggesting with snow on power lines and the wrong kind of leaves on the rail tracks; a targeted assault would be far worse.
‘How many?’ Katya said. ‘The hackers.’
‘Close on twenty.’
‘Why so many?’ Harry asked.
‘Burn-out. The work’s intense; not everyone can stand the pace. When they launch an offensive they go in fast and have to be ready to move on when they’re blown. It’s brutal.’
‘Where will the other groups be located?’
‘Central and eastern Europe mostly, because they’re easier to hide and control, like here. And they keep moving them around. They can uplift an entire group complete with hardware within a couple of hours, probably less, and put them on board a couple of trucks or modified coaches and take them to a new location. Another couple of hours and they’re up and running again.’
‘Like plug-and-play,’ Clare commented sourly.
‘Pretty much. Replicate that over the countries involved and they’d always have a group – several groups – operating with nobody knowing where they were.’
‘But they do get caught, don’t they?’ Clare asked. ‘We’ve heard about them.’
Rik looked sombre. ‘Some, sure. But they work on the basis that a few losses here and there is to be expected.’
Harry turned from his survey of the other buildings. Rik was right: it was based on an old military methodology more common to eastern nations than the west. Why invent a new system when the old tried and tested template worked so well?
‘It doesn’t matter what it is.’ He’d heard enough. This was talk for another time. Right now he couldn’t sit here chewing over the maybes and maybe nots. A coach had just pulled up outside the building opposite and was reversing into the compound at the front.
‘What’s happening?’ Rik asked, noting Harry’s sudden air of tension. He climbed to his feet and glanced out of the peephole, and swore softly. ‘That’s not good.’
Harry agreed. If they packed up and left now they’d simply set up somewhere else. It was time to do something before they disappeared.
Terminal Black Page 26