Terminal Black

by Adrian Magson

  Then he remembered the power line from the sub-station. It wasn’t the original, he was certain of that, which meant it had been laid recently. And no way would Kraush have risked relying on using the original connectors.

  But Rik was ahead of him. ‘We disrupt the power,’ he said, ‘disrupt the hackers to put them off, and it’ll bring the guards out to see what’s wrong.’

  They moved across the rear of the building and found where the power line approached the building. Rik pointed to a large box structure against the rear wall of the building.

  ‘It’s a transformer,’ he said. ‘But it’s not big enough. They’re probably using it for basic lights and power points, but the supply wouldn’t be constant enough for a bunch of servers and computers.’ He ducked his head to one side, closer to the building. ‘Hear that?’

  Harry listened and picked up a low-level rumble emerging over the wind noise. A vehicle engine? He glanced up at a window above them. It had a crack in the glass revealing a jagged line of light.

  ‘They’ve got a generator on the inside,’ said Rik. ‘Probably brought in on a truck.’

  ‘Great,’ said Clare. ‘How do we deal with it?’

  ‘Easy.’ Rik grinned and reached round to a square section on the side and flipped it open. ‘Ready?’ There was a click and the light in the window went out.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Harry led the way to the far side of the building and edged along the wall. Rik followed with Clare bringing up the rear. The relative quiet here was almost a shock. Sheltered by the building, the wind noise had dropped and the snow was falling in a gentle, near-serene pattern.

  Harry stopped and held up his hand. There was the outline shape of a side door just ahead, and he could hear voices coming through the fabric of the building. It sounded as if someone was panicking while another voice was telling everyone in a shut-the-fuck-up voice to calm down.

  Looking beyond the door to the front of the compound Harry could see the rear end of the coach. The lights were off, but even as he noted this a beam of torchlight played momentarily over the vehicle from the front door.

  The three of them sank to their heels, waiting to see if anyone was going to look down the side of the building. But nobody did and the torchlight went off.

  Harry turned and said, ‘Clare, you’re with me. We go inside and chase everyone out, loud and fast. When they’re clear you stay near the door to deal with opposition and Rik, you get to work on the servers. I’ll watch the back.’

  He waited for them to acknowledge, then stepped forward and tried the door handle. It turned without a sound and the rumble of a generator turned into a steady roar. The voices must be coming from the next room over.

  The open door emitted a heavy smell of diesel and oil, and a rush of warm air like a working garage. The room was in darkness save for the flicker of red and green LED warning lights on a panel. Harry switched on his torch, shielding the lens with his fingers. He was looking at a space of about fifty feet long and twenty wide, with a shutter door at the front end. A large yellow generator sat squarely in the middle of the floor with cables running to the far side and through a crude hole that had been knocked through the adjoining wall. Heavy sacking had been jammed around the cables in the hole, no doubt to guard against the intrusion of diesel fumes. Elsewhere the remains of rotting work benches sagged against the walls and electric sockets hung from the ceiling, and everything was covered in bird droppings and grime.

  Harry walked across to a narrow door in the opposite wall and listened. Voices, louder now but still muffled. Order was being restored. He motioned for Rik and Clare to approach the door, signalling that they would all go in and fan out.

  The door swung open smoothly on oiled hinges. Another empty space. But this one had trestle tables with bottles of drinking water and fruit juice, biscuits and other assorted snacks. Nerd food, he thought; but no sign of proper meals … until he spotted a pile of crushed pizza boxes in one corner. And further back were piles of sleeping bags and backpacks.

  This was where the hackers bedded down and ate between work sessions. He turned to Rik and whispered, ‘Does this look real?’

  Rik peered past him and nodded. ‘I guess. They normally work them in short bursts to avoid burn-out.’

  Directly across from them was another door, with a faint light showing around the edges. The voices were louder now. Harry moved across the room and hoped nobody chose this moment to come for a bag of Pringles or whatever the local snacks were called.

  This door opened to reveal an almost demonic scene from a sci-fi movie. Blue-ish light from many screens pulsed up to the rafters, lighting up the faces of the hackers, most of them bending to their task and seated in two rows at trestle tables. Cables snaked like spaghetti across the floor in the gloom, and two figures were moving about behind the operators with hand-held torches, stopping occasionally to look down at a monitor and murmur instructions. Harry thought at first that they were guards but realized they were more likely to be supervisors.

  Nearly all the hackers were young and most were male, with a handful of women. There was little about them to stand out, and they would have passed by in the street without being noticed, dressed in heavy jumpers, trousers and boots.

  They were so intent on their work that none of them noticed the newcomers enter the room.

  Harry went left towards the rear, while Clare went right, sliding along the wall, the pallor of her face picking up the nearest bank of blue-tinged light. Rik waited by the door, checking out the servers and monitors.

  Something immediately struck Harry as wrong about this scene: hackers and equipment as expected, but no guards. It wasn’t right.

  Then he realized someone was watching him. It was a man seated three places in from the end, facing him, eyes wide open at the intrusion. He wasn’t at a keyboard or monitor, but sitting at a blank space on a table with his hands resting on the surface.

  A guard. A gun lay in front of him.

  Before Harry could react a single gunshot rang out, the sound shocking in its intensity. Everything stopped instantly, with screams taking over amid the thud and clatter of chairs falling over as people jumped to their feet.

  Rik had stepped into the centre of the room, his gun held high. He looked wild and almost other-worldly in the reflected light, and shouted, ‘Quiet!’

  To emphasize the order, he fired directly into an unused monitor on a side table, blowing it apart. More screams, but this time quickly silenced.

  The guard hadn’t made any move towards his gun, but stayed absolutely still. Harry motioned him to get up and move away from the table, which he did in slow motion, holding his hands out to the side. Trained to a point but not to the point of suicide.

  ‘Outside,’ Harry said calmly in the silence, stepping over and retrieving the man’s gun. ‘Leave your places and go. Sit in the coach.’ Amid a volley of queries and objections, a few who understood him began heading towards the door, scrambling past others who didn’t. To encourage them Harry raised the assault rifle. The remainder quickly got the message and began to move.

  Clare followed, then kept watch at the door as the last one left. Rik, meanwhile, was already at work at one of the laptops.

  ‘How long, Ferris?’ Clare called out. ‘Only there are some bodies out there not on the bus. I think they’re armed.’

  ‘How many?’ Harry queried. It couldn’t be Perry’s men, not up this close … unless they’d joined forces with Kraush.

  ‘Three at least, possibly more. One woman.’

  Irina, Harry thought. Hooray for equality. Kraush would be around somewhere, too.

  ‘Give me a couple of minutes,’ Rik replied. ‘The signal’s not great.’ He’d barely finished speaking when a shot came through the front door and slammed into a keyboard, scattering the pieces into the air. Simultaneously, a window near where Harry was standing shattered and an object hit the floor and rolled, leaving a trail of heavy smoke behind.

  H
arry swore. Smoke grenade. Next they’d come in all guns blazing. It depended how serious they were. Kraush must have decided it wasn’t worth trying to save anything and simply wanted to close them down, maybe grab the equipment.

  As if to confirm it he heard a heavy motor burst into life outside. The coach; the hackers were abandoning ship.

  But not everyone was leaving. A window along the side wall smashed and another smoke grenade bounced in, coming to rest under one of the trestle tables and leaking a malevolent plume of thick, acrid smoke.

  Harry went over and kicked it into a corner. ‘Rik?’

  ‘I’m getting there,’ Rik said calmly. ‘Can’t you fight them off or something? I need more time.’

  Up by the front door Clare was trying to get a clear view of the numbers outside, but finding it hard. It was snowing more heavily now, carpeting the front yard and beginning to fill in the tyre tracks left by the coach, and whoever was out there had picked their positions carefully. There was some movement across the road but it was indistinct and she didn’t want to risk hitting an innocent drawn by the excitement.

  She moved back just as a round snapped through the door at floor level. Someone hoping for a ricochet. She didn’t bother returning fire; it would only draw a response and without a decent target she’d be wasting rounds on snowy air.

  Harry appeared across the doorway. He had a wet handkerchief clamped over his mouth and passed her a scarf left by one of the hackers and a plastic bottle of water. She soaked the scarf and wrapped it around her face. It wouldn’t help much but it was better than sucking in smoke.

  Harry ducked back across the room and through the side door into the generator room. They needed a way out and couldn’t afford anyone getting inside. He peered through the outside door just as a figure ran into view, backlit by a careless torch from the front of the compound.

  Harry fired twice, the sound of the suppressed shots lost under the chugging of the generator. The figure yelled and rolled before disappearing into the dark. Hit or miss, he couldn’t tell.

  He slipped outside and closed the door behind him, listening to the sighing of the wind. Snowflakes splattered across his face, heavier now and colder with a sharp touch of ice. This was going to be both a help and a hindrance.

  He saw another figure towards the rear and turned, ready to fire.

  ‘Tate – it’s me!’ Katya’s voice, urgent but surprisingly calm.

  Harry took his finger off the trigger and moved to meet her. ‘Why are you still here?’ he said. ‘You should be miles away.’

  She shook her head. ‘They found my car and disabled it. I only just avoided them. One of them has been injured – an Englishman. But I don’t think seriously.’

  That had to be Perry. ‘We’ve cleared the building and Rik’s working on the servers.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘No idea. It’ll be done soon and we can get out of here. Are you armed?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t have many shots left.’

  He handed her the gun he’d taken from the guard inside, then turned and scanned the darkness. Unless they were equipped with night vision goggles, the opposition would be finding it just as tough operating in this kind of weather. But they had the advantage of knowing where everyone was, right inside the building. Even as he thought it they heard the rattle of gunfire coming from the front and far side of the building, and the tinkle of breaking glass. Kraush and Perry alike must have decided to ignore the possibility of attracting attention in favour of ending this in a fusillade of fire. He hoped Clare and Rik were keeping their heads down.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, and began moving towards the rear.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We need to put them off before they storm the building.’

  They made their way to the side, expecting some opposition, but all was quiet except for the continuing sound of shots at the front. Harry moved quickly and came to a stop near the front corner. Gun flashes were coming from at least four points in the darkness, and he realized why: they were concentrating their fire on the front door and raking the building in a sustained fashion, laying down a withering curtain of lead that would soon kill anyone inside. There was no response from Clare and he hoped she was safe.

  Harry waited for a heavy flurry of snow, then moved out towards the road through a gap in the fence. Katya was right behind him. This put him almost at right-angles to the line of guns. Katya saw what he was doing and moved across the road, hunkering down by a tangle of fencing on the far side.

  A gun opened up close by, the flare off an assault rifle lighting up the man’s face. It was all Harry needed and he squeezed his trigger, the two suppressed shots lost in the wind. The other gun fell silent and Harry was on the move before the other side found his position.

  One down.

  Katya, meanwhile, had disappeared into the darkness to await the same opportunity. Seconds later, after another burst of fire from near the road, two unsilenced shots sounded, drawing a scream of pain and a rattle of fire which arched into the air as the gunman lost control of his weapon.

  Two down.

  There was a shout, followed by silence.

  ‘Katya?’ Harry risked a call but knew it was pointless.

  He heard a click and turned. Two figures were standing a few yards away. In the flare from another burst of fire from behind Harry they were just visible, dressed in winter jackets and boots, with ski hats pulled down low. Both were armed with semi-automatics. One was tall, the other shorter and stocky.

  Kraush and Irina.

  Then Kraush moved to reveal that he was holding someone by the scruff of their jacket, slumped against his leg.

  It was Katya.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Harry swore. He’d been careless, assuming it was Kraush storming the building. Instead it must have been Perry and his team … with Kraush in the background quite happy to step back a pace and let them reduce the odds so he could move in afterwards and mop up.

  ‘Put down your weapon, Mr Tate.’ Kraush was pointing his gun at Katya’s head. ‘Or I’ll kill her.’ His English was near perfect, the accent there but his delivery measured and calm.

  ‘What do you want?’ Harry asked, desperately thinking of a way out of this mess and wondering if Katya was even still alive. He bent and placed the AK-9 on the ground.

  ‘Call on your friends to come out with their hands up and we’ll talk.’ Even as he finished speaking Kraush’s gun hand swept up and he fired without warning, the bullet crackling through the air past Harry. There was the thump of a body hitting the ground. ‘Local gangsters,’ he explained casually. ‘We offered them a deal to help us but they are also taking your countryman’s money. So greedy.’ He pointed with his gun across the road. ‘Call your friends.’

  ‘And get myself shot by whoever else is out there?’ Harry said. ‘How will that help you get Cicada’s details? That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  Kraush stiffened, his reaction telling Harry that he’d surprised the man. It was obvious he still needed that information badly to take back with him to his masters.

  ‘He’s bluffing.’ The woman, Irina, her voice sharply sceptical. ‘Don’t listen to him.’ She raised her gun towards Harry.

  ‘No!’ Kraush’s voice cut through the wind, stopping her. ‘We need confirmation from Ferris. Go and find the others and call them in … and the Englishman. Tell them to wait for us before going in.’

  Harry was surprised. So Kraush and Perry were working together. It was unexpected but maybe Perry’s local contacts had no choice: stay friendly with the GRU team or suffer the consequences from their bigger neighbour. Perry must have swallowed it for the sake of convenience. Either way he would accomplish what he’d been sent out here to do. Unfortunately, it looked like Kraush was already going against that agreement.

  For a moment it looked as if Irina was going to argue, but she held her tongue and stormed away into the darkness, calling out in Russian.
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br />   The silence after all the gunfire was intense, save for the hiss of wind through the trees.

  When Irina returned it was with just one man. He was dressed like the guard Harry had disarmed inside the building and looked scared, as if he knew he might be facing an uncertain future.

  ‘I couldn’t find the Englishman.’ Irina sounded almost petulant. ‘But I know he’s out there.’

  ‘No matter.’ Kraush looked at Harry. ‘Perhaps you could prevail on your friend Mr Perry to join us?’

  ‘He’s not my friend. He has orders to kill Rik Ferris … and me.’

  ‘Really? How very un-British. Almost Russian, in fact.’ Kraush gave a bark of laughter. ‘So now we will have to protect Ferris from him? Ironic, no?’ He pointed towards the building. ‘After you. And take this woman with you.’ He released Katya, who slumped to the ground. ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you both if you do anything stupid. We do not have much time.’

  Harry bent and picked Katya up. She was light and easy to carry, and he was relieved to hear her breathing. He walked across the road, slipping on the icy surface, and stopped a few yards back from the front door. As he did so a light came on overhead, bathing them all in a yellow glow.

  Harry felt Katya move against him and gently set her on her feet. She turned to face him and slumped against his chest, her legs almost giving way and grabbing at his waist to hold herself up.

  ‘Clare – it’s Harry,’ he called out, praying she was alive to answer.

  Silence.

  ‘Clare. I’ve got Katya. She’s hurt.’

  The door moved and Clare appeared, her face a pale oval against the dark. She stepped further into view, her face a mix of horror and concern. She was unarmed.

  Garth Perry was standing behind her. He was holding a gun to her head. His other arm was held in a rough sling, and he didn’t look happy.

  ‘This is getting silly, Tate,’ he said. ‘Where’s Ferris?’

  Harry didn’t have to act surprised. ‘I have no idea.’ He gestured with his head at Kraush and Irina. ‘You think I’m in charge here?’