Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  ‘Busy setting up the Whitechapel sim. Ready to run in…’ she checked her watch, ‘sixty seconds. Hey, how is my creation doing back in the main room?’

  ‘You mean that’s not you in there doing that cyberattack?’

  She shook her head as she cleaned the lenses of her VR glasses. ‘No, that’s the Fox Princess and her raccoon army, remember? And darling, no-one calls it a cyberattack anymore. It’s called a DDA. A digital direct action.’

  How could I forget? ‘Well, when I looked, they were laying waste to Northrop’s and the MOD’s best laid plans and that’s for sure.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Erm… where are these creations of yours staying at any one time?’

  ‘Everywhere and nowhere. Raccoon City. The basements of Russian university mainframes; the deep web; a broom cupboard in JPL. All over.’

  ‘Acha.’

  ‘And that’s where it stays, on the quiet, until I summon it. I don’t want a repeat of something like the 2009 South China botnet war.’

  ‘The what?’

  She handed me a set of VR glasses. ‘Never mind. Mask up, we’re going to foggy old London Town.’

  I placed the glasses on my head. ‘Before we dive in, what are you using?’

  She blinked. ‘Second Life, the data from our helicopter sweep, and VBS2.’

  I laughed. ‘Virtual Battle Space 2?’

  She nodded. ‘Yep. D’you know it?’

  I had to chide her. ‘Babe, I was part of the KTS team that tweaked that for the Ministry of Defence! Has it got the ARMA2 engine?’

  ‘Yeah. Bit clunky and I’ve made some adjustments, but –’

  ‘Well then, let’s go!’

  She tapped at her netbook, ensconced in its Zero Trace bag. A Windows Sysinternal screen blinked into life, then some black nested windows. White text flew across black backgrounds. She held up her hand like a mad conductor. ‘Wait one. OK… good to go.’ We donned our VR glasses and faded in.

  30.

  My eyes were shut. I steeled myself for another sojourn in my other half’s Loony World. I opened my eyes.

  I looked around. A misty street. People in Victorian clothes bustled past.

  ‘Ooops; hang on a sec –’

  I turned to see Bang-Bang, or rather her Fox Princess incarnation, twitching her whiskers and black nose and fussing with some dials. ‘Sorry babe, wrong era. Hold on –’

  The surroundings blurred and swooshed. ‘OK. Heyyy, take a look now!’

  I looked around again. And drew breath. It was uncanny. Perfect. Like a moving snapshot of Commercial Road taken not one second ago. People walked by. Traffic flowed, stopped at lights, moved away. ‘Holy shit. It works.’

  I looked back at her. ‘Hang on a minute – isn’t the Fox Princess out there on their screens? How come you’re…?’

  I tailed off. She spoke. ‘I know. And here too. Every time I log into anything virtual I look like this. I can’t turn it off.’ She looked nonplussed.

  Her avatar took my arm and flicked her other paw, and some PDFs and a black command screen came up. ‘Watch from the left to the right, here’s what I loaded into the mix earlier today. Hopefully we can get some results. Firstly, population data and attack data from HOLMES 2. Secondly, Rossmo’s model of criminal buffer zones. And lastly, a population-based bees algorithm…’

  She tapped the command screen. ‘The algorithm needs a number of parameters to be set. Such as – number of scout bees (n), number of sites selected out of n visited sites (m), number of best sites out of m selected sites (e), number of bees recruited for best e sites (nep), and so on.’

  Code flew on the little black screen.

  ‘1: Initialize the population of solutions xi,j

  2: Evaluate the population

  3: cycle=1

  4: repeat

  5: Produce new solutions (food source positions) υi,j in the neighbourhood of xi,j for the employed bees using the formula υi,j = xi,j + Φij(xi,j - xk,j)…’

  ‘OK that seems to be working… and now we drop in the programming I was working my little fox-like butt off in Second Life…’

  Two swarms of shimmering darts appeared in the air before us. One set was blue, one red. Below them, some smaller swarms of white dots materialised.

  Bang-Bang returned to her virtual panels. ‘While that’s setting up, we factor in the section of the population our killer is looking for. Dark-haired females…’

  The crowd flow adjusted around us. ‘… and then we factor it back out, as crowd levels affect how the killer might behave. Weight of traffic.’ She looked sideways at me and twitched her nose. ‘Get me?’

  ‘I get ya.’

  I was watching the blue and red darts. They were swooping on and devouring the white dots in graceful arcs among the road traffic. The swarms shrank, grew. The white dots were all gone.

  She nudged me. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they, Riz babe. They come from a thing called Boid Particle Systems. Punch in a few algorithms and nature is easy to simulate.’

  Suddenly the blue swarm seemed to become aware of the red swarm. A looping engagement began. The blue swarm prevailed, subsumed it. It zipped around us, performed aerobatics, divided into two.

  ‘Yayyy!’ said Bang-Bang. ‘The blue swarms are ready. Triumph of the fittest.’

  The blue swarms hung and glittered in the dank, simulated air.

  Designations lit above the two swarms. The symbols for Alpha and Beta. She folded her paws and looked at me. ‘Let’s see where they go.’

  We followed swarm Alpha down the road, dodging round stickily slow traffic.

  ‘I'm guessing you've added infomorph coding?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Correct the peasant here, but weren’t the original models aiming to find where the serial killer lived?’

  She took my hand. ‘C’mon, we’re losing them. Of course. But this model shows where the killer hunts. Although these are infomorphs, who learn as they go, you won't find them going off on a tangent. These are swarm infomorphs... that hunt like serial killers.’

  ‘Ya Allah.’

  We headed right, then left, down teeming backstreets and simulated kitchens; we stopped at some simulated pallets of Jolly Boy rice. Bang-Bang looked up at the swarm. It was stationary.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Here what?’

  ‘Here’s where he’ll wait to pick a victim.’

  ‘Right here?’

  She pulled down Google Earth. A globe started spinning before us. She tapped it; it expanded like the Death Star and froze. Some coordinates hung in the air. ‘Yep. I’m counting on it. This is Court Street E1. 51 degrees 31’ 07.85” North, 0 degrees 03’40.25” West.’

  She twitched her nose and smiled. ‘We’ll call this Ambush One.’ There was a beeping sound from the air above us. Some script editor panels came to life and a strange skull-face raccoon icon started jittering on the control panel.

  A panel of text lit up. It read “Bomb 20 reporting in.”

  She sighed and typed back. “Get a grip. You are not a bomb. Stand by.”

  I tapped the text block. ‘They’re speaking English now?’

  ‘Yeah. They’ve been learning. From online media. Films and stuff.’ She peered into the screen and squinted at something, then stood back. ‘Ah. OK. When you see Stewart, tell him to look in the shared documents folder on hub four. He’ll find a .txt note script that could turn off the air conditioning in the data centre. All the cooling. You know what that can do.’

  I did. Meltdown.

  ‘He’s doing his nut trying to figure out how your stuff got in.’

  ‘So he should. The last attack vector was through his own works smartphone’s GPS software. They take everyone else’s phones off them at reception, but…’

  I knew the basics of this one, at least. Instead of directly using GPS satellites, most mobile devices received ‘assisted GPS’ signals from cellular networks to fix their location. These A-GPS messages went over non
-secure internet links, and could be switched for messages from an attacker. In this case, FlameLite.

  The virtual crowds and traffic fanned around us. Bang-Bang’s Fox Princess avatar tapped away at panels. I looked up at the swarm of… ‘Holly. Are they really bees?’

  She followed my gaze and thought for a bit. ‘No. They’re not bees. They’re just swarm programs. But they act like bees. Programmable bees.’

  ‘OK. How is this different from the other analysis software?'

  ‘Very different. It’s predictive.’

  ‘What, using the data from just two murders?’

  ‘Three if you count Victoria Park, yes. But I can also load it with traffic patterns, tube population, all kinds of stuff... and something else.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It can kind of bend time. Watch.’ She spun a dial and the landscape began to whoosh like timelapse film, but with a twist. Before us, directly at Ambush One, murders began to take place. Cinematic, cartoonish blood flew. Screams.

  ‘Holly. Stop it.’

  She was grinning.

  ‘Holly. Stop it!’

  The landscape froze and went to monochrome. We remained the only people in full technicolour.

  ‘Holly. Try running it without the Victoria Park murder. The feeling is the killer dumped the body there from somewhere else. It might not be the actual site of the murder.’

  She looked at me for a long while. She seemed to be deciding. ‘Alrighty.’ She paused. ‘Have you and Lennie still got that file on unsolved sexual attacks?’

  Of course I had. She waved a paw and my emails appeared before me. There it was. I had to admit, that was pretty cool. I tapped one and the document came up. ‘Got it here Holly. But you and me are gonna have to input them manually. How much longer we got?’

  ‘Half an hour. Riz darling?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re standing on my tail.’

  Thirty minutes later we were back out and looking at a printout of a map of Whitechapel. Swarm Beta had found two more sites, so now the map had three red circles on it. Ambush One, Two and Three. I studied the circles closely. Ambush One I’d seen already. Ambush Two was the School of Community and Health Services, EC1A 7QN. Ambush Three was St George's Leisure Centre, 221 The Highway, E1W 3BP.

  I looked up from the printout. ‘You sure, Holly?’

  ‘The program is sure, and that’s good enough for me. Let’s go.’ We left for the surface.

  31.

  We reached the ground floor and made for the exit. As we came out, the glass doors to the car park opened and a whole bunch of top brass came in. I saw some British Army high command, an admiral, and… ooops, some Americans. They looked like JSOC – Joint Special Operations Command.

  Bang-Bang giggled. ‘Gotta stay here for a bit babe, they want to quiz me about how FlameLite did it. They’re impressed and a little scared. Gotta talk them through some de-perimeterisation.’

  ‘De-what?’

  ‘De-perimeterisation. It’s all about protecting the system core now, rather than trying to protect everything.’

  ‘OK. See you at home. Try not to get rendered by any Yanks.’

  She laughed again. Then she picked up a copy of the Guardian from the lobby table and flicked at it. ‘By the way – worst right –wing bomb attack in UK history? You bad boy. That is… so hot. And congrats on getting your degree by the way!’ she whispered in my ear, and sashayed away.

  I shook my head. Then I clocked the reaction of the Corps of Commissionaires security guard at the reception, busy processing the visiting top brass. He’d seen the chevron on Bang-Bang’s fatigues and was also shaking his head and chuckling as he updated the register.

  I called over to him. ‘21st Century Army, mate.’

  ‘Yeah. All went downhill when we got rid of the self-loading rifle.’

  I wandered back into the complex to find Stewart. I needed to check out and get back to the office. Before me, like a colourful bloom, every monitor in the place was showing the animated NyanCat. I laughed to myself. 21st Century chaos.

  32.

  Three o’clock found me driving north back up to the office. I decided to stop off at Gibraltar barracks to see how the rest of the Blackeyes were getting on, and to see if I could get a proper cup of tea from the NAAFI. Besides, I needed a dose of normality after the madness of the digital ecosystem my wife was busy developing. Bees that weren’t bees, raccoons that weren’t raccoons, a neverland Whitechapel where the Ripper ran free…

  Here was the sign, and a right hand turn. “Royal Engineers Gibraltar Barracks.” I showed my MOD90 pass to the gate guard and he pointed at a low block on the left. ‘If you’re with that St Trinians lot, they’re in there. Good luck.’

  The gates slid open and I drove in at the regulation 10mph. I parked up and looked at the building block. I supposed I’d be best off heading for the most noise, I thought to myself, and headed in through the double doors. More squeaky polished lino underfoot as I made my way down the hall. Soon I could hear… I laughed. The posh received-pronunciation tones of your classic training film voiceover man. I even recognised the film from the audio. It was one from the Cold War called “Section Fire and Manoeuvre”.

  I gingerly pushed open the training auditorium door and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. Chaos. Fuzz was at the rear, on the projection landing, smiling to herself as she sorted through film reels. A paper airplane battle was underway in the projector beam and it looked like one side of the class was intent on killing the other. On the cinema screen, two seventies-era squaddies were doing their best impression of shrubbery and mulling over dividing up their section’s arcs of fire.

  Roadrunner was sitting off to one side with the Birmingham lot. Her little acolytes. They were sifting through wads of purple-stained banknotes. Time to grip this situation, I said to myself, and marched right up to them. ‘Roadrunner, Sidra!’

  She looked up.

  ‘Yes doll!’

  ‘What did I ask you?’

  ‘Er... oh yeah hello akhi!’

  God help us. Now I had to embrace her in front of her whole crew. I extracted myself and picked my way between the two rival factions of the gang, Shooter Faction and Princess Faction. True to form, the factions had sat themselves on opposite sides of the auditorium and started a paper plane fight.

  I made my way up onto the projection landing. ‘Congratulations Fuzz on making Sergeant. Do I have to call you Sarn’t from now on?’

  She laughed. She was in full British Army DPM, with Sergeant’s chevrons on the tab on her chest. But apparently I was to disregard that. So I did. ‘No, Fuzz will do. So, waddya think of the show? Take you back?’

  ‘It does. What happened to the Defence Learning Portal?’

  ‘Down for repairs, Rizbhai. Which is why I had to dig the projector and these old films out. We could have done with your other half today. How’s she getting on?’

  I explained about the simulation, and the virtual swarms, as best I could. Fuzz grimaced. ‘OK. How long till she gets a result?’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe 36, 48 hours.’

  ‘OK. I’ve been talking to the Colonel and RPOC. They’ve cleared it so that the minute we know the EDL sniper’s in the area, we’re going in there. It’s gonna be a classic Military Aid to the Civil Power op. The police will set up a cordon, and we’ll do what we do best.’

  ‘And that’s OK with the powers that be?’

  ‘They haven’t got much choice, bhai. Most of the Met’s armed police are still on strike.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Pretty much everything, really. They’re going to get some other forces’ armed units down at some point, but until then…’ she went back to riffling through her briefing notes.

  I indicated the class. ‘Is this the new graduate intake?’

  ‘Worse, it’s the Midlands mob and some of our lot. Hang on a sec bhai-’

  She turned to the class, took a breath and shouted ‘SHAAAAT …
AAAARP!!’

  Silence. Fuzz regarded the serried ranks. ‘That’s better. OK, pay attention. We’re now going to be watching…’ she held a film reel aloft, “The Law of Armed Conflict.”

  The silence stretched. A paper plane landed on the carpet.

  ‘Yes it’s boring but it’s mandatory. The Defence Staff had a fit about us shooting all those prisoners out of hand; they said it was bad for PR. So watch it you must. Take notes, because I will be asking questions at the end.’

  Right down in the front row, Calamity started grumbling. ‘This sounds like it’s going to be extremely gay. Whoever heard of laws in killing? I mean is it like no gouging or pulling hair?’

  Suddenly my BlackBerry rang. I retrieved it from my cargo pants pocket, stared dumbly at the display, and then hit answer. ‘Riz, it’s Emlyn. We raided Jerry Hanlan’s last three known addresses. Last known mobile turned off too. He’s gone, boyo. Vanished.’

  33.

  DAY SEVEN

  The next morning the world and his uncle seemed to all convene at once on London Muslim Centre. It was the day of the much-heralded community engagement meeting. We had to fight our way in off the street through scrums of news teams, local reporters, mayoral staff, and several hundred people I’d never clapped eyes on before. Probably from out of town, I thought as we hurried up the stairs past a London Tonight camera crew. Everyone was running around like ants in a ploughed nest, mainly because of what had popped up on YouTube this morning.

  Or rather, EDLSniper’s YouTube channel. His 48 hour deadline had expired. There was a video, with no sound. It lasted for three minutes or so. It appeared to be from a vehicle dashboard cam. It showed the M1 rushing past. The vehicle was driving south, towards London going by the green motorway signs. It faded to a black, empty screen. It had received 5,310 hits.

  The meeting was packed to standing room, and chaired by the Mayor and some sketchy guys I’d seen before, from various pressure groups. The mayor brushed past me on the way in and gripped my shoulder. He indicated the sketchy guys. ‘Right bunch of Talebs. Sorry Riz. You do what you have to do and I’ll deal with them. This is smack-bang in the middle of the Boundary Commission trying to get our entire electoral ward removed. I don’t need the aggro.’