Once through customs and into the public terminal, Conner Rafferty sensed he was under observation.
He made for a café, ordered a coffee and sat in an open area. Cloak and dagger was exhausting, and he’d had enough. It was time to announce himself.
He waited ten minutes enjoying his long black coffee while watching for someone to approach. When nobody came, he ordered another coffee.
Another five minutes passed. Still no one came so he read his copy of an American current affairs magazine he’d purchased in Abu Dhabi. The articles were many and alarming. North Korea had surrendered to the United States. The legal and illegal global trade in arms had shrunk to nothing. Ukrainian loyalists had murdered the Russian President, the Prime Minister and several high-ranking politicians leading to a civil war in Moscow. Scientists had perfected clean nuclear fusion using only water as fuel. Economists had predicted all forms of hydrocarbon fuel would become redundant in the next five years. Driverless cars would replace all human operated vehicles in two years. The mysterious worldwide illness now claimed 2.2 billion lives with most of the casualties being the elderly and the chronically ill. In six months, the world would adopt a single currency called the ‘Banks’ leading to a steady-state economy operating in all corners of the new Nation Earth. A mass migration was about to commence with citizens from many developed nations moving to underdeveloped countries. These skilled people would train locals in new global skills for the new world order while living, working and assimilating in the same communities to build a single global and inclusive Culture.
Conner should have felt shock by these developments, but he no longer could. Unusual and unpredictable had become the new normal.
Sensing he was being scrutinized, he looked up from his magazine and coffee. A man had sat opposite without Conner being aware. He was tall, dark-haired, good looking and muscular. Conner would have made a pass if the circumstances weren’t dire and the man were ten years younger. There were many bruises and cuts on his face and limbs, and bandages covered his left forearm. He had about as many injuries as Conner. This caused Conner to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” the man asked in an Australian accent.
“You, Simon Ashcroft,” Conner replied with a smirk. “You’ve taken a beating. I suspect your story is as nerve-wracking and fantastical as mine.”
Ashcroft nodded. “And I take it you’re Conner Raffety?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You have the data we discussed?”
Conner patted his pocket, then his pack. “I hope your intentions are honorable, Simon. Too many good people died just so I could bring this to you. Way too many.”
“Too many people died here too.” Ashcroft nodded towards Conner’s magazine. “On the surface the world might look like it is sorting itself out. But new forces could destroy it in an instant if we don’t act soon, and together.”
“I know.” Taking a deep breath, Conner leaned forward and said, “You’re talking about Shatterhand?”
Ashcroft’s face turned grim. “Where is this data center located? This ‘source’ location as you called it?”
“The facility that houses Shatterhand’s mainframes?”
“That one, yes?” Ashcroft’s stares were intense. His face became as cold as stone.
“The facility is in Australia. In the Northern Territory. A few hundred kilometers outside of Darwin.”
Distracting Conner, a slim, Middle Eastern woman in her early forties wearing a dark business suit rose out of her chair from where she sat nearby. She stood next to Simon and said in an American accent, “We have what we need. The question now, is, do we take Rafferty with us?”
Simon stared at Conner for a long moment as he considered his options.
Conner returned the stare refusing to break eye contact. It was exhausting fighting, convincing and arguing what needed to be done. He would not persuade these people they needed him. They had to work that out for themselves. Plus, there was always the upside if they didn’t want him. If they left without him, he could rest, and that wasn’t so bad.
Without breaking eye contact, Simon said, “I presume you’ve made copies of all information you brought?”
Conner grinned. “Headed towards multiple contacts across the globe by now. If we fail, others might succeed in our place.”
“Smart.” Simon pressed his hand into the table and stood. He looked to the American woman. “We take him with us.” He took Conner’s bag and the three of them walked from the International Terminal out into the heat and humidity.
A four-wheel drive pulled up driven by an Indian woman. The three climbed in and drove into the short-term car park. They parked at a spot towards the back. Simon threw Conner a bag. Conner opened it finding a fresh set of clothes.
“You know what to do,” Simon said turning away.
Conner stripped then dressed again in his new outfit that was too big for him. The American woman downloaded the contents from Conner’s many data storage devices. Then his every possession except for his real passport went into the bag which Simon dumped in a bin. They wrapped his passport in aluminum foil which the American woman pocketed.
They drove to the cargo terminal and into a hanger. A long-range Gulfstream G200 executive jet was being prepped for flight. Apart from the air and maintenance crew, Conner noticed two more women, a mother and daughter judging by their similar facial structures. They were standing nearby and waiting. It wasn’t difficult to recognize them from their photo as Alan Irvine’s wife and daughter.
Ashcroft joined the two women, and the three began a hushed conversation. Both women appeared concerned. Each glanced Conner’s way more than once.
Conner noticed Ashcroft and the daughter touch hands for a moment. He considered if they were in love.
“Can I get names?” Conner asked.
“Sure.” Simon pointed to each of his team “This is Peri Keser. That’s Saanvi Dara. The two with me are Casey and Clementine Irvine.”
“Irvine?” Conner asked feigning ignorance to their identities. “As in Alan Irvine’s wife?”
“And daughter, yes.”
“I… thought you might be…” Conner didn’t know what else to say. He knew what one of them would eventually ask of him. But how do you tell a family that terrorists had tortured their husband and father only days ago, then killed them in the most horrific means possible?
“You know about Alan Irvine?” Casey asked, her voice raised. Her expression carried fear and hope in equal measures. “Do you know where my Dad is?”
“I met him, yes.”
“He didn’t come with you?”
“Someone killed him,” Conner blurted. “I’m so sorry.”
For the moment the two women stared at him. Shock had immobilized them.
Then they sobbed, held each other tight and cried.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
Conner didn’t know why, but his mind turned to his own estranged father, and a mother he had barely known. The image of Nahla Asem bleeding out in the desert came to him, her last moments regretting a lifelong denial of her true nature. Then the Colombian girl who didn’t want to die in the Amazon jungle, just before terrorists murdered her.
“How… How did it happen?” Clementine choked.
Conner couldn’t respond.
“Conner? Please? Tell us?”
“Someone shot him!” Conner said trying not to sob himself. “It was quick. Sudden.”
Casey nodded, accepting the news. “Who killed him? Do you know?”
Conner shuddered. “Islamic State terrorists… in the Emirates…” He’d prepared himself for the lie. There was no way he would ever reveal the real circumstances behind Alan Irvine’s death. “A sniper. He died instantly.”
The women couldn’t talk.
“You’ve got a story to tell,” Simon interrupted patting Conner on the shoulder while he gave the mother and daughter a grim but understanding smile. “But it will have to wa
it. We need to get airborne.”
“It’s all here,” Saanvi looked up from the laptop she’d used to confirm Conner’s data. “A secure facility in the semi-tropical bushland of Northern Territory, as he said. About three hundred kilometers outside of Darwin.”
“It all looks legit,” Peri added in her matter-of-fact tone from where she stood looking over Saanvi’s shoulder. “The information provided is extensive. He’s telling the truth.”
Conner looked to each member of this strange group. He felt like he was the odd man out. And yet he recognized a mismatch of people brought together under the oddest of circumstances, to achieve a common goal that might, for once, do good in the world.
He realized he was one of them now.
“Of course I’m telling the truth!” he exclaimed. “What else is left to tell?”
CHAPTER 42
Timor Sea
Despite his exhaustion, Simon barely slept during their flight to Australia. The rest of the team, including their newest member Conner Rafferty, had given in to their exhaustion and enjoyed deep slumbers while they could. But much played on Simon’s mind. While he felt concern about what dangers they might face in the outback, he was also excited to be heading home. His children Katie and Rebecca and their mother Melissa were in reach. They were still two thousand kilometers apart — they lived in Sydney on the east coast — but for the first time in a long time they were all in the same country. The thought of reuniting, an abstract possibility until now, seemed real.
He also knew Shatterhand might have murdered his family already and fed false information regarding their safety to GhostKnife. There was the real possibility Katie, Rebecca and Melissa were already casualties in the insane war being fought across the globe and he would never know the truth of their fate. Until Simon saw and hugged his ex-wife and daughters again, he felt resigned that he would never be at peace.
Double-guessing the motives and morality of a super-intelligent being was beyond him, and every human on the planet. He had to put Katie, Rebecca and Melissa out of his mind until he could take steps to find them again.
He focused instead on their journey and what he had learned.
The first leg of their flight from Bengaluru to Singapore had been one of sharing. Everyone had told their story, what they had learned, the dangers they had faced and what they had each lost. When the last story ended, Simon no longer had any doubts concerning the people he had teamed with. GhostKnife had been deliberate in bringing these good and brave people together for the endgame. Shatterhand was their target and as a united force they would bring it down.
While the engines hummed, and the aircraft rocked in the high-altitude winds, Simon stared through the tiny cabin window. He could see the nighttime lights of various offshore platforms and floating compressor stations in the distant ocean. The Timor Sea held some of the largest natural gas resources in the world. The petrochemical companies here had invested billions of dollars in extracting hydrocarbons from the ocean bed. But with fusion technology now a viable reality, Simon wondered how long the gas platforms would remain operational.
Peri Keser had sat in the chair opposite Simon since Singapore. She’d dozed on and off for most of the flight. Now she was awake and scrutinizing him.
“I feel I owe you an apology, Peri,” Simon said.
She blinked several times. “How so, Simon?”
“I underestimated you. I see now you’ve done a remarkable job. I couldn’t have convinced a global oil company to smuggle us into Australia, no questions asked.”
“That was the easy bit,” she said with a barbed tone.
Peri seemed lonely, but also a person who kept herself alone even when she craved company.
“Now I’ve seen you with malaria, and without, I’d realized I’d assumed the sick Peri Keser was who you really were. I see I was wrong, and I apologize for that.”
She raised an eyebrow. Was she expecting him to say more?
“And I’m sorry about Rashid, and Paul. If you’d been in charge, they might not be dead now.”
Peri broke eye contact and looked away. “I appreciate what you’ve just said, Simon, but I don’t blame you. We’re all operating on limited intelligence. You’re only doing what you think is best, which is all any of us can ever do. Hindsight doesn’t always serve us well. It often makes us think less of our accomplishments than we should.”
Simon nodded, impressed at Peri’s articulateness and insights. “Well, you guess better than I do. So, I vote you to be the agent in charge. As far as I’m concerned you are now the leader of our ragtag group.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
Simon couldn’t remember her smiling before, not like this, and he liked it. She seemed more approachable and human when she was happy. “So, Peri, now you are in charge, what is the plan?”
She grinned like she had been thinking through her plan of action for a while. “I’ve looked over Conner’s data. Since we now know the location of the Shatterhand Fortress—”
“‘Fortress’?” It was his turn to raise a questioning eyebrow.
“You got a better name? Because I’m using it.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “We need a subtle approach to get inside. Just the five of us. We use the same plan you used in Mumbai. We get Casey inside to look at the Shatterhand code, shutting it down once and for all—”
“Five of us?” Simon interrupted. “I’ve meant to ask, what is the real reason Saanvi went her separate way in Singapore?” Peri had explained her earlier decision as getting word to the CIA in Langley, but Simon felt there was more to Saanvi’s departure.
“Yes, I have a different mission for her.”
“What?”
“I went over everything we’ve learned again and now no longer believe the Mumbai data center maintained any of Shatterhand’s core functions. I think the AI built it later after it got free. If its core program relies on quantum computing to operate, then I think Shatterhand constructed that facility — and the others in Sydney, Dublin, Santiago, Abu Dhabi, Cape Town and Washington D.C. — to improve its computing processing powers across the world, so to speak. Crippling each data center slows Shatterhand’s operating capabilities, but doesn’t shut it down.”
Simon grinned. “So, you’re sending Saanvi back to the CIA? To organize teams to neutralize each data center and make it less effective overall?”
Peri nodded.
“And if we do not neutralize this ‘Fortress’, Saanvi will coordinate second, third or more teams to finish the job?”
Peri took two bottles of water from the cabin fridge. She handed one to Simon, and he took it. The cabin felt warm and stuffy after many hours in the drying air conditioning. Water would help hydrate them. “I also believe it is important that our team infiltrate the Fortress as quickly as possible,” Peri continued. “If we’ve stayed off both GhostKnife’s and Shatterhand’s radar until now then they won’t know we are in Australia, or guess that we even know about the Fortress. That’s an advantage we have to maximize.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“However, once Shatterhand knows our intentions, it will up its security. Wouldn’t even surprise me if it brought in all of the Australian Army and half the Chinese air fleet to defend itself. We need to get as close as we can before it realizes what we are up to, minimizing the window of opportunity for it to strike back.”
Simon drained his bottle. “That sounds like a good plan.”
There was a ding waking everyone. The pilot announced they were only minutes from touching down at the onshore processing facility’s private airport outside of Darwin. Everyone needed to buckle up, put their seats in the upright position, and prepare for landing.
Peri took a seat at the back so she was facing forward for landing. Conner and Clementine stirred in their chairs and rubbed their eyes, but otherwise remained where they were. Casey switched seats and sat with Simon. She held his hand tight. “Are you ready for this?” she asked with a trepid grin.
“I am,” Simon answered. When she expressed concern, he said, “Believe me Casey, I am.”
After a smooth landing they taxied to the hangers. The lights of the distant onshore liquified natural gas plant were visible on the horizon through the tiny cabin windows.
“I’m home again,” Simon whispered.
Casey squeezed his hand. “When this is over, the first thing we will do is find your family.”
Simon looked to her, elated. “You know I want you, don’t you?”
She touched her abdomen. “You want your children, more than you want me. I will not stand in the way of your relationships with them.”
“I want both.” He leaned over and kissed her. “I think I love you. I do love you.”
For a moment she was still. Then her jaw dropped. She lit up like a candle and hugged him tight. “Oh Simon. I love you too.”
They kissed, small pecks at first, then longer and more passionate embraces.
“I can’t have children,” she whispered into his ear when they came up for air. “Does that bother you?”
“Not at all!” Simon remembered what she had told him earlier, about three miscarriages with her ex-boyfriend. At thirty-four years of age her circumstances didn’t bode well for her having children. Not that they had discussed the possibility. Their relationship was too new for that, or at least it had been until this moment. “Casey, I want nothing more than you.”
“But I want a child of my own,” she whispered again so no one would overhear them. “Can you accept me, knowing I will always pine for what I never had?”
“Again, yes,” he said without hesitation.
“I hate to break up you two lovebirds,” Conner interrupted, on his feet now that the seat-belt lights had switched off. “But I think we have an unwanted welcoming committee.”
Simon and Casey stared through the tiny windows. Police officers surrounded the Gulfstream in full black riot gear, body armor and assault rifles. They were officers of the Australian Federal Police’s Special Response Group. Tactical specialists for high risk incidents such as taking down terrorists.
Strike Matrix Page 29
