Strike Matrix

by Aiden L Bailey

“Okay Delta Three, stay on him.”

  “Copy that.”

  She could hear the contempt in Pfündl’s tone, but now was not the time to question his attitude.

  “Delta One, this is Alfa Three,” came Dawson’s voice over the radio waves.

  “Go ahead Alfa Three.”

  “Yankee One is two hundred meters east-northeast of your current position. The vehicle has stopped. You should have eyes on them at any moment.”

  “Copy that Alfa Three.”

  She soon spied the parked four-wheel drive through the throng of cars and buses and the haze of diesel. Pushing through opportunist gaps in the traffic she arrived to see Gridley-Brooks and Ndulu Adebayo, both armed with semi-automatic pistols, disappear south into the narrow streets that led inside the Dharavi Slum.

  Abandoning the moped, Peri advanced on foot toward the white Mahindra. They had slashed all four tires deflating them. She drew her SIG Sauer and primed it for firing, then snuck a look inside.

  The windows were open. They had snapped off the gear stick. The only person inside was Claire Skaffen, unconscious and sprawled across the back seat. A torn piece of cardboard lay thrown across her chest with ‘YOUR PROBLEM NOW’ written in black pen.

  Heat rising with her anger, Peri checked Skaffen for a pulse and breath, both of which seemed normal. She peeled open an eye revealing dilated irises. She gave no response. A bruise on the side of the head showed where someone had pistol-whipped her into unconsciousness.

  Peri knew all too well the game Gridley-Brooks was playing. He would have spotted Peri pursuing him, so had abandoned Skaffen knowing that Peri could now not abandon her. That strategy would afford the two men a decent head start, and a gain on the bigger prize, Simon Ashcroft.

  Peri knew if she left the woman alone someone might rob, beat her or even rape her. Gridley-Brooks was counting on Peri’s compassion.

  For three long seconds, she screamed into her hands.

  She would not allow second-rate mercenaries to get the better of her.

  “Delta Four?” she called for Cassian.

  No answer.

  “Delta Four, do you copy?”

  “Delta Four is not responding,” came Wilks over the comms. “Suspect agent down.”

  Peri paused, taking deep breaths to calm her foul mood. She had sent Cassian to collect Visser. If the South African mercenary had regained consciousness, he would have easily outmatched the young recruit.

  Peri hyperventilated. The need to be sick was overwhelming. With an empty stomach she tried to retch, unable to find relief in vomiting.

  A minute later, despite the white flecks of light appearing in her vision and the acidic taste in her mouth, she searched the four-wheel drive until she found a stainless-steel water bottle. After guzzling half its contents, she doused her head and neck with the rest. The fluids cooled her, lessening her headache and clearing her vision. For the time being at least, she could think rationally.

  She called the one person she trusted. “Alfa One?”

  Paul Szymanski cleared his throat over the radio channel before answering. “Yes Delta One?”

  “How quickly can you get the back-up team to my position?”

  “Nine minutes Ma’am. I sent them in twenty minutes ago.”

  She grinned. At least someone on her team was working with her, preempting what she needed. “Good work Alfa One. I give you five minutes.”

  “Five minutes, that’s not possible Ma’am.”

  “That’s all you have because I can’t secure this location any longer than that.”

  Peri considered her options for pursuit even though it was a risk leaving Claire Skaffen alone. The woman might regain consciousness in the next five minutes and flee the scene, or the criminals that frequented the nearby slums might mug or murder her. Yet as much as Peri hated the thought of doing so, leaving Skaffen now was a risk she felt compelled to take.

  Peri took off at a run, disappearing into Dharavi.

  Determined, Peri was single-minded in her focus. By the end of today Simon Ashcroft would be her prisoner, or he would be dead, even if it killed her.

  CHAPTER 16

  Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

  Corniche Beach resembled Miami, except for the absence of bikini-clad women, muscular and shirtless jocks working out, and people in general. It looked like a billion dollars project to transform sand dunes into a modern, unnaturally clean metropolis, complete with rows of elegant skyscrapers and fancy facade pathways, and then nobody had come. But nothing could stop the waves of airborne sand that drifted everywhere, including inside Conner’s clothes.

  Conner spotted gates and fences to the northeast sections of the beach permitting access to families with children, and shielded from view by a long, high fence. Signs warned away single men and male groups. Perhaps everyone was in there.

  Scratching his head, he considered the duplicities of the scene before him. He was always trying to find fault in everything, but if he was honest with himself, he knew he was the ‘wrong’ element in this picture. Gay men were just not welcome in the United Arab Emirates. He was the element ‘at fault’.

  When Nahla finished feeding the parking meter, she joined Conner under the shady trees in the parkland, separating the shop fronts from the sandy beaches. “Where’s this place we’re supposed to be meeting McIntyre? Jasmine Kebab House? Restaurant?”

  Conner grinned. “I don’t think we need to worry about that.” He pointed towards a lean and muscular African-American in a white business shirt, tan shoes and tan suit pants hurrying towards them. His mirrored sunglasses reflected the bright sun that lit up his face. The straight-line of his mouth and visibly tense jaw projected the seriousness of a Secret Service agent reacting to an imminent threat against the President. In his right hand was a compact pair of binoculars. He was the only human within a hundred meters. He didn’t slow his pace as he passed Conner and Nahla. In a commanding Californian accent, he said “Follow me.”

  The tall man didn’t slow, leaving Nahla jogging to catch up. Conner, with his longer legs, still had to walk faster than his usual pace. Within a minute the three stood in the hot sand at the water’s edge, near the single men’s and group’s beach. Gentle ocean waves looked like they didn’t have the energy to do more than nudge the baking sand. A floating fence about forty meters distant was there to keep the sharks out or the people in.

  The American took his binoculars and stared across the ocean.

  Conner stood next to the man, straightening his posture to match the confident stance the American projected. “You’re Tom McIntyre?”

  “I could be.”

  “I’m—”

  “No need. I know who you are. Conner Rafferty, Irish journalist, and your friend is Nahla Asem, Jordanian journalist.”

  “You got our message then?”

  He nodded, lowering the binoculars and turning to Conner. Everyone’s darkened sunglasses hid their eyes. No one could tell who was looking at whom.

  “You’ve obviously checked us out,” Conner spoke when everyone else seemed reluctant to. “I guess that means you’ve figured out we’re not crackpots. And since we’re meeting out in the open, I’m also guessing Shatterhand worries you—”

  “You are Tom McIntyre? CIA?” Nahla asked, jumping in to ensure she was as much a part of this conversation as the two men.

  The man’s head turned slowly from Conner to Nahla and back again. “Cell phones? Show them.”

  Both Nahla and Conner did as instructed. As they had planned earlier, their devices were off. They wanted the CIA man to know they were serious with security.

  “Take out the SIM cards, and the batteries. Then we can talk.”

  They showed him as they did so.

  McIntyre set off again at a brisk pace along the shoreline, regularly raising his binoculars to scan distant objects. Conner tried to assess what the man was looking at, but he seemed interested only in the cloudless blue sky.

  When they h
ad walked a hundred meters and the few single bathing men were too far away to hear their conversation, they stopped again. “What do you know about Shatterhand?” McIntyre demanded rather than asked.

  Conner shrugged, “Where to start? Shatterhand is an NSA sanctioned operation, a new technology to gather intelligence and impersonate real people, anywhere on the planet, with perfect video resolution.” He watched McIntyre’s face, looking for any expression or shudder that might reveal where McIntyre’s interest lay. But he gave nothing away. The CIA had trained the man well. “Am I on the right track?”

  “The U.S. government does not discuss military or intelligence matters with the public, and certainly not with journalists.”

  “Okay,” Conner sighed. “What if I throw names at you? You tell me if they mean anything, or not. Your choice.”

  McIntyre was as silent as he was motionless.

  “Stephen Ashpool?”

  “You mean Simon Ashcroft?”

  That got a response. “Is that his real name?”

  “This is public information. Simon Ashcroft is the world’s most wanted cyberterrorist. One hundred million U.S. dollars reward for any actionable intelligence that leads to his capture. Stephen Ashpool is one of his aliases. Want to know more, Google him.”

  Nahla nodded. “Is he the man impersonating your President? Started after insurgents shot down Air Force One nineteen days ago in Bagram, Afghanistan?”

  McIntyre was about to speak, but raised his binoculars and once again scanned the skies. “The U.S. government does not discuss military or intelligence matters with the public.”

  “But you’re not denying it?” Conner kicked at the sand lazily, sliding his hands in his pockets to look casual and chilled. McIntyre was naturally intimidating, but Conner didn’t want the man to know that his cold and aloof manner was bothering him. It was more than that though, McIntyre was seething with bottled rage, and yet that rage didn’t seem directed at either Nahla or him, but at something else.

  “The U.S. government does not—”

  “Yeah, we get it,” Conner interrupted. “What about Alan Irvine?”

  That name caused McIntyre to flinch for the briefest instance. He hid it so well Conner would not have noticed unless he had been watching for that reaction. “That name means nothing.”

  “Are you sure? Our information says he is a director with the NSA. I’m guessing he’s instrumental in developing the Shatterhand program.”

  McIntyre snarled. “You two are wasting my time. Unless you have real intelligence to share with me, we’re done here.”

  Nahla spoke calmly, “We’re not wasting your time, Mr. McIntyre. We came here to inform you of a real threat. The Islamic State has nuclear weapons and are planning to detonate them soon in key cities across the Middle East.”

  The CIA man kept staring. His expression suggested he was fuming internally. “You have target cities?”

  “You believe us?”

  “I didn’t say that—”

  “You asked for target cities. I’d say you do.”

  “I’ll ask again, do you have locations?”

  “No.”

  “Dates? Times?”

  “No. We have no information like that,” Conner countered. “All we can tell you is that my source was the same source that provided us with the names of Ashpool — or Ashcroft as you call him — Irvine and yourself.”

  “Who was the source?”

  Nahla shook her head. “No, Mr. McIntyre. We’ve given most of our information, and you’ve given us nothing.”

  He growled again, his frustration now directed at her. “It doesn’t work like that, Ms. Asem. The U.S. Government discusses neither military nor intelligence matters with the public. And you two are public citizens, not even American citizens at that. You are floundering around in a country that is not your home where you have no rights at all.”

  Conner shook his head, feeling the heat on his scalp and shoulders. At that moment, he would have done pretty much anything for a glass of iced beer. “Okay, mate. We’ve done our duty passing on this information. It means something to you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come all this way to meet with us. Nuclear weapons. Islamic State. Rising insurgents across the Middle East. We’ve told you everything we know. Now it’s your problem.”

  “This is all fantasy.”

  “It’s not! I know you are afraid of what—”

  “Who said anything about being afraid?” McIntyre shouted aggressively, momentarily losing control of his rage. He didn’t wait for an answer. He stepped closer to the lapping waves and stared through the binoculars. Conner looked in the same direction, but all he could see were seagulls.

  “Want something to be afraid of?” He pointed to the birds. “Try taking a photo.”

  McIntyre hurried from them. His anger suggested it would be a bad idea to follow.

  When he was beyond their line of sight, Nahla turned to Conner and said, “That was tense, and not at all what I expected.”

  “He knew though. Did you sense it? Everything we said to him, he already knew all of it.”

  She nodded. “I agree, except for the nuclear weapons. We threw him on that one.”

  Conner raised his hands to shield against the sun and looked at the birds. The last time he had seen a flock this large had been on a beach in Ireland where another tense and confidential conversation had gone down. One that had provided Conner with information that had brought him to the Middle East.

  “What are you looking at?”

  He squinted. He swore he could make out a drone in the flock, about the same size as the birds with four propeller arms, and cameras attached to an undercarriage. “Drone, see, in the flock?”

  Nahla looked, also shielding her eyes. “Maybe. Are you sure? Here, let me use the zoom on my phone and take a photo.” As she returned the battery and SIM card to her cell phone, Conner did the same. She zoomed in and snapped off a shot. Conner looked over her shoulder as she pulled up the photograph. It looked like a seagull.

  “I think we’re being paranoid,” responded Nahla. “There is no way that could be a drone.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Conner grimaced. He looked with his biological eyes. There was no mistaking it, it was definitely a drone, hiding in the flock.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think the photo you are looking at isn’t real. The NSA edited it to resemble a real bird.”

  “What, straight after I took it, they edited it?”

  “Yes… Sounds insane, right?”

  “Are you saying—?”

  “Yes. My bet is that’s an NSA drone, a shrunk down version. That’s how they know so much about what we’re all doing all the time, even when we think we are far away from anything that can observe us.”

  “That would be what McIntyre was afraid of. That’s crazy though! That means they are changing my photo, on my phone, almost instantly, before I even look at it!”

  Conner nodded. “Someone has warned McIntyre not to talk to anyone about Shatterhand, like I was. He’s being watched to make sure he doesn’t.”

  “But he still came all this way to meet with us?”

  Grinning, Conner said, “He did, didn’t he?”

  Nahla tried to speak, but she couldn’t find the words. Conner didn’t know what to say either.

  Her cell phone rang, startling them both. She answered immediately.

  “Yes…?” She looked worried. “Okay… See you there… Yes, will do.”

  “Who was that?” Conner asked when the call ended.

  “Tom McIntyre.”

  “Already?”

  “He wants to meet us, at the foyer of the Burj Lanihaya, as soon as we can get there.”

  Conner remembered the view of the imposing triangular mega-structure from his hotel room the previous night. “He’s changed his mind quickly.”

  “Or he never changed it. He didn’t want to say anything while those drones were watching.”

  Con
ner pulled his shirt away from his sweaty chest. “Good. That means it’s time to drive again, and your car has air conditioning.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Dharavi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

  Dharavi.

  Asia’s largest slum.

  The heart of Mumbai, home to a million impoverished people. A labyrinth of narrow streets, dirty lanes, open sewers and cramped huts. The densest sprawl of human population anywhere on the planet. A micro-economy of small-scale industries. Producers of embroidered garments, leather goods, pottery and plastic sold to a global market. A pressure cooker of multi-religious and ethnic groups. A breeding ground for typhoid, cholera and dysentery. A looming ground-zero for seasonal flooding, fire and violence-induced disasters.

  Dharavi. Mumbai’s dangerous heart.

  It was the one location in this vast megacity where Simon Ashcroft knew he held the advantage.

  He sprinted through the narrow streets, trying to recall which lanes were dead ends and which concealed shortcuts he could use to gain distance from his pursuers. There were bypasses between the various shanty houses and tunnels hidden behind the strategically placed crates of rubble but the crowds everywhere were dense. Smoke from cooking fires and tanning factories belched streams of dark vapors into the smog-clad skies. He passed startled people, snapping dogs and mud-soaked pigs. The smell of open sewers and the fumes of curing leathers was overpowering, causing him to gag as he ran. Potted flowering plants on balconies provided a bright but contradictory aesthetic to the otherwise depressing scene.

  It took ten minutes of fast, furious dodging down various alleyways and leaping across the open sewers until he reoriented himself to the general layout of the slum. The narrow passages lined with concrete walls and worn tarpaulins as makeshift verandahs was a landscape he had explored many a time in the past. Familiarity was reigniting his mental map of the land.

  A streak of light seared the sky, followed by an ominous crack of thunder. It had darkened dramatically in the last ten minutes without him noticing. Thin people in loose-fitting clothes looked up but paid little notice, for rain was common in this city. Torrential waters fell from the skies, descending fast and drenching Simon in seconds. People ran to get out of the rain, pushing past him through narrow passageways that were barely wide enough for one person. Some ran towards doors, darting inside and locking themselves in. A house would have been an ideal hiding spot because there were so many, but he could not escape quickly if cornered.