Blackout

by Chris Ryan

  'It's men, Luke,' interrupted Kate.

  Luke looked up at her. Her red hair was tumbling down her neck, and her eyes were staring right into his. The perfume, noticed Josh. The perfume was drifting across the space between them, sweetening the fetid air of the smelter.

  'What?' said Luke, his gaze darting up towards her the way a puppy's eyes flick up to its owner.

  'When you're a bit older you'll realise that men talk a lot of rubbish. They sit around in bars, saying they've nailed this girl and that girl, done this deal and that deal. Usually, it's just bullshit.'

  Josh laughed. 'Usually? It's always bullshit.'

  'You think those kids didn't get money off Starbucks and the rest? Is that what you're saying?'

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  'I think it happens,' answered Kate. 'I just suspect it happens a lot less often than the people in the chat rooms say it does.'

  Luke nodded. From his expression, Josh could tell that he was disappointed. Part of being a teenager, he reflected. One by one your illusions get chipped away, like the paint being stripped off a piece of wood. Get used to it, pal. Life has a lot more disillusion in store for you.

  'Whatever, that's what Ben and I thought. I guess we were naive. We figured we could hack into some corporate system, maybe they'd pay us some money just to go away'

  'Porter-Bell, right,' said Josh. 'That's where you started.'

  Luke nodded. 'There's kind of a buzz about it in the chat rooms. Hanging Bell, they call it, because they come down so heavy on hackers and because it's so tough to get into their systems. We figured we'd have a crack. After all, what did we have to lose? Nothing. It's not like we have girls calling us up for dates every night. We just hang out, playing witn our computers.'

  'The Three Cities Attack,' said Kate. 'That was you?'

  Luke remained silent for a moment. A look of fear crossed his face, as if a nasty memory had just broken through. 'We got lucky, I guess. That's the thing about hacking. You just try different things, and see what works. They got firewalls, barriers, everything you can think of around this system. But Luke and I designed this worm. You know what a worm is?'

  Josh shook his head.

  'It's like a piece of software that tunnels into a system and comes out the other end. You wrap the instructions inside another bit of code, and that's what allows it to get through. The system doesn't recognise what's coming through.'

  'Like hiding a gun inside a laptop or something when you're going through Customs?'

  Luke grinned. 'Just like that. Usually they don't get

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  through. The firewalls are built to detect worms, along with everything else the hacker can throw at them.'

  'But this did?' asked Kate.

  'Well, we did a couple of dozen, and they kept getting thrown right back at us. Then we made it. A perfect worm. It sailed right into their system, undetected, and then, once it was inside, the thing unwrapped itself. And for a few minutes we had control of their system.'

  'So you did The Three Cities Attack?' Josh asked.

  Luke nodded. 'Ben and I planned it together. We figured we needed something pretty spectacular, something that was going to grab their attention. So we figured London, Paris and New York. They all use Porter-Bell software for their power grids, and they all use the latest version, which was all we had access to. So we switched it all off.' He flashed a smile at Kate, and Josh could tell that he was trying to impress her. 'It was a hell of a buzz, I can tell you. All that power, and all that chaos. All caused by Ben and me. We got a hell of a kick when we watched it all on TV.'

  'Until people started saying it was terrorists,' said Josh.

  'That frightened us a bit. I guess we hadn't really thought very much about what kind of reaction there might be.'

  The light was fading from the ceiling. It was past eight, Josh noticed, and the burning heat of the day had already subsided, replaced by the chill that descended on the wilderness at nighttime.

  'We contacted Porter-Bell,' continued Luke. 'We didn't use our real names or anything. We're not that stupid. We just set up a dummy Internet address, told them we had access to their software, and told them to be in touch if they wanted to do some business.' He paused, as if trying to sort out all the memories lodged in his mind. 'They told us to get lost at first. Said they'd been contacted by hundreds of cranks from all over the world asking them for money. So we gave them a couple more demonstrations. We didn't

  I

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  turn the juice off for a whole hour. Just for a minute or two at a few places. Nothing to make the evening news.' Luke clicked his fingers together. 'But enough to let Porter Bell know we had the power.'

  'Then they wanted to play ball?' asked Josh.

  'You bet. Once they knew we weren't just cranks, that we had a way into their system, they were all over us. Wanted to meet up right away. But again, Ben and I weren't that dumb. We knew we had to play it cool. I mean, what we were doing was illegal. And we wanted a lot of money. Five million dollars. Enough to set us both up for the rest of our lives. So we arranged to make a swap on a neutral piece of ground. They'd give us the money. We'd give them the worm.'

  Luke looked up towards Josh, his eyes suddenly dark and intense. 'Then you showed up.'

  Josh thought it was like watching a film you'd first seen as a kid: the outline of the story was dimly familiar, but you couldn't colour in any of the details. 'What the hell was I doing there?' he said.

  Luke shrugged. 'Search me, man.'

  'What did I say? I must have told you something.'

  'I don't know how the hell you found us,' continued Luke, glancing between Josh and Kate. 'Ben reckoned it might have been because we were using a dummy Internet address we'd set up with one of the British Internet service providers. We didn't want to use an American one because we might have been traced. And^we figured British was best, because that way we'd understand the language.'

  Josh could feel something stirring within his mind. As Luke explained the sequence of events, more memories were flooding back. Fragments of meetings, orders and journeys were flashing through his brain, lighting up a path that had until now been shrouded in darkness. 'That's how we got you,' he said. 'British Intelligence were onto you as soon

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  as the power got switched off in London. The British are bloody nervous about a terrorist attack on London, and we assumed it was our old pals at al-Qaeda. We were monitoring Internet traffic, and came across your e-mails to Porter-Bell. Then we used our search powers to get the ISP to tell us where you were.'Josh clenched his fists. Suddenly he knew what he had been doing in America. 'I was sent out here to find you.'

  Luke grinned. 'You succeeded. And that's when things turned interesting.'

  'What did I want?' asked Josh.

  'You said that you were an SAS agent, sent over to the US because one of the cities attacked was London. Your task was to track us down and make sure it never happened again. You also had to find out who it was, because the British Government was convinced that al-Qaeda was planning to use our software to launch an attack against them. If there was any possibility of al-Qaeda getting hold of this software, that had to be stopped from happening. So that was your mission. To find us, and to get the software before anyone else did. You told us that every intelligence agency in the world was trying to track us down, and so was every terrorist group. Your intelligence was that al-Qaeda was trying to capture us, because they wanted the software to launch their own attacks. If we went to the meeting with Porter-Bell, you said, we'd be killed almost certainly'

  Josh shrugged. 'Makes sense.'

  'Then you offered us a deal. You said that if we could help you track down the al-Qaeda man who was looking for us, you'd arrange for us to be smuggled out of the country, and we could keep whatever money we managed to squeeze out of Porter-Bell. You said that no one was really interested in us. So far as you were concerned, catching the al-Qaeda people on our trail, that was what you wan
ted to do.'

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  'Did I mention a name?'

  'What name?' asked Luke.

  'The name of the al-Qaeda operative who might be tracking us.'

  Luke passed for just a fraction of a second.'Azim. A guy called Khalid Azim.'

  Azim, thought Josh. I was trying to capture him all along. And I still am. Except this time I want him dead.

  'You took that deal?' asked Kate.

  'Ben and I figured we were running out of choices. We'd already noticed strange things happening, around town, around our school. There were rumours of Federal agents checking through the state. We suddenly got a sense of what we'd unleashed. Everyone in the world was looking for us. If we were to get out alive, if we were to get our money, then we needed help. And you were the only guy making an offer.'

  'So what did I want you to do?'

  'This Azim guy, he was your main focus. It was him you wanted.'

  More memories. The meetings with Ben and Luke. Josh could recall talking to them slowly, winning them over, earning their trust the hard way: by listening to them, understanding what they wanted, then doing his best to deliver. 'You and Ben took off for a few days, I remember that,' he^ said. 'We figured out a safe place in the mountains for you to lay up. Then we fixed the meeting with Porter-Bell. But we left a trail of clues on the internet as to where and when the meeting would be. Enough clues that we could be certain that Azim would also be there on the day to try and get the software from us.'

  There was a breath of excitement in Josh's voice as he recalled the events of those few days. He'd discovered that Azim was in the area, tracking down Luke to steal his software for al-Qaeda, and he'd realised that this was his one

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  chance to catch him: the night he'd escaped his clutches on the Afghanistan border could be buried for ever. 'That's when I'd get him. Then I'd spirit you away. You'd get your money, and I'd catch one of the most wanted terrorists on our list.'

  'We camped out the night before the meeting with Porter-Bell in the mountains,' said Luke, taking up the story. 'Sunday, May thirty-first. All three of us were sitting around a campfire, like a bunch of desperadoes. Man, it was fun. "We swapped this code, just in case anything happened and the three of us got separated.'

  Josh grinned. 'That was when we discovered we both liked The Clash.'

  'And all the other 1970s rock greats,' said Luke. 'Proper music, as my mom likes to call it.' He fell silent. 'And then you fucked up, man. When the shit went down, you weren't there for us.'

  Josh remained silent.

  'What the fuck happened, man?' said Luke, his voice turning ragged. 'Why weren't you there for us? We trusted you, man. We fucking trusted you with our lives.'

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  TWENTYFOUR

  Tuesday, June 16th. Night.

  Josh could see the pent-up anger in the boy's eyes. The story had been with him for days now, a noxious stew of betrayal and anger.

  Believe me, thought Josh, if I could turn back the clock, I would.

  He remembered that they had been standing at the side of the road. It was an empty stretch of track, deep in the heart of the Arizona wilderness. Josh knew the ground intimately by now. It was the same place where Kate had found him after he'd been shot. The same place he'd been back to with Marshall. The same place where Ben had been murdered.

  Josh had scouted it out the day before. The ground next to the road was completely open but there was some cover in the boulders, where he was planning to lay up and provide covering fire when it was needed. He had equipped himself with an MP-5, issued to him by the British consulate in Los Angeles. And he had a stash >of stun grenades in case the battle turned rough.

  'You remember now, don't you?' said Luke accusingly.

  Josh nodded, but remained silent. What had taken place in the next few minutes was now playing vividly across his mind. It was a scene, he suspected, that would remain etched on his soul until he sank into his grave. There are many terrible things that can happen on a battlefield, he reflected

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  bitterly. A hundred different ways to die, and a thousand ways to get wounded. But there is nothing worse than betraying a comrade.

  'It went like this,' said Josh. His voice was hushed, as if he were speaking in church. Outside, he could see the stars starting to brighten up the night sky. He could see both Kate and Luke tracking every word. 'Luke and Ben were sitting at the side of the road. You looked innocent, young. A couple of boys exploring the wilderness, maybe hitching a ride. I had the moves all worked out in my mind. The Porter-Bell people were going to come up, give you the money, and take the software. At some point, Azim was going to make his move. When that happened, I'd take him out. If there was any rough stuff from the Porter-Bell guys, I was going to take them out as well. Either way, I'd make sure you and Ben got out okay. If the plan went the way I wanted it to, Porter-Bell would have the software, so there'd be no more blackouts anywhere in the world. And I'd go home with Azim's scalp. A hero. At least, that's what I thought.

  'Azim was there somewhere. I'd tracked the man for six months through the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. I'd had him in the sights of my rifle once before. I could smell the bastard. I couldn't see him but I could sense him moving through the boulders and rocks like a breeze. He was out there somewhere. And when he showed himself, I was going to take him. The job would be finished. Properly, this time.

  'Then, at the appointed time, a group of three bikers pulled up at the side of the road. The leader was a big, burly man, with a ponytail and beard, driving a big Honda bike. He had two other bikers flanking him. I recognise him now as Flatner, although I didn't know that at the time.

  'Next there was a car. A Jaguar XJS, black. Not a car you see very often in Arizona. A man climbed out. In his late forties, maybe early fifties. He was dressed in blue jeans and

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  a loose-fitting white linen shirt. He had black aviator shades covering his eyes. I recognised him, of course. Ed Porter.

  'I was scanning the horizon. I had the rifle in my hand, and a set of binoculars. I'm a good shot, always have been. Show me a man's head at a range of up to five hundred yards, and I'll hit it ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Nobody knew I was there. Nobody could know. When Azim showed his hand, he was going to die.

  'I was hooked up via a scrambled mobile phone link to The Firm back in Vauxhall. I had told my commanding officer, a Rupert called Mark Bruton, exactly what I was going to do. He'd approved the plan. He'd told me he didn't believe that Azim was still alive, but if he was they certainly wanted him dead. And so long as I made sure the software was safely back with Porter-Bell so there could be no more blackouts, then they were happy with the plan. All I had to do was execute it.

  'Everything was set. I was certain that nothing could go wrong.'

  'But it did, man,' said Luke. 'You fucked up.'

  Josh nodded. He could feel the guilt passing across him like a dark cloud. 'Here's what happened,' he said softly. 'Luke and Ben were standing at the side of the road. Luke had his laptop in his hand. Porter approached both of you, with Flatner at his side. Porter was holding a black canvas bag in his hand. The money. Then everything started to move very quickly. Azim had hidden himself in the sand, just a few yards away.The bugger h^d literally buried himself, with just a straw sticking above the surface of the ground so that he could breathe. He rose up out of the ground like a zombie from its grave, clutching an AK-47 in his hand. In one swift movement, he strode up towards Ben, and jabbed the gun against his head. "There's dozens of us," he was shouting. "All over the area. Just give us the software, and drop your weapons, and you'll be okay."

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  'I had him. I had the bugger in my sights. In that moment, I knew that all I had to do was squeeze the trigger and he'd drop down dead. The shot was going to be a clean one, right through his skull. Nobody could survive a hit like that. Nobody.

  'Then this voice comes through on my earpiece. It was Bru
ton.

  '"You there, Harding?" he's shouting down my bloody ear. "You there?"

  "Here," I replied.

  'My gun was still trained on Azim at this point. I could still drop him. I just had to squeeze the sodding trigger.

  '"There's been a change of plan, Harding," says Bruton. "We reckon it's too dangerous to have a couple of teenage headbangers running around with the power to switch off the electricity in London or Paris or New York whenever they're feeling a bit bloody bored. HMG wants them dead."

  '"I gave them my word," I snapped back at him.

  '"Well, no one gives a bugger about your word," says Bruton. "Slot them. Now."

  '"With respect, sir, fuck off."

  '"You're heading for a fucking court martial, Harding," Bruton shouted back at me. "Now, si--"'

  Josh hesitated. He took a sip of Coke and chewed on one of the biscuits. Telling the story, reliving it exactly as it had been played out that day, had left him drained and exhausted. He glanced up at Luke: the boy's expression was turning from surprise to fascination. I'll make it up to you, Josh vowed silently to liimself. If I can . . .

  'I ripped the earpiece out,' continued Josh, his tone growing firmer all the time. 'I didn't want to listen to any more of that bollocks. Bruton was telling me to slot Ben and Luke -- it was a direct order. But I wasn't about to do that. No way.

  'I looked back down. I'd lost vital seconds arguing with

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  that idiot. It was chaos down there. Flatner and his two henchmen had pulled out their guns. Pistols. I recognised the make, Desert Eagles, the biggest automatic handgun in the world. One of them had grabbed Ben away from Azim. He was waving a gun at him. Two more Arabs had arrived as if from nowhere. Both of them were holding rifles. They were pointing them at you, Luke. They were trying to get the computer away from you but you were standing your ground.