The information from France Telecom had included a set of directions originally supplied by Abdullah Mahmoud, Abbas’ alias, when he had applied for the landline to be installed. Though somewhat ambiguous, at least in the dark and silent village streets, the directions did eventually lead Richter and Dekker to a narrow, winding road that snaked away up the hillside. In the distance they could see a single light burning, but even through the night-vision glasses it was impossible to tell if it was from an uncurtained window or was simply an exterior light some farmer had forgotten to switch off.
The last thing they wanted to do was alert their quarry, so as soon as Ross was reasonably sure that they had identified the correct road, he ordered the three Espaces parked in a layby about a quarter of a mile from the village. Everybody climbed out and gathered round Ross and Dekker, who had the laptop open again and was re-checking the directions supplied by France Telecom. ‘Any idea what the opposition strength is likely to be?’ Ross asked.
Richter shook his head. ‘At least one person, but we have to assume that there will be a team of people to support him. I’m guessing, but it could be anything from two or three to a round dozen. Obviously at least some of them, possibly all of them, will be armed.’
‘Assault tactics,’ Ross said, ‘will have to be left until we see the location itself. All we got from France Telecom was the address of the house. We have no idea whether it’s a new two-bedroom villa or a three-hundred-year-old six-bedroomed maison de maître. But it’s fair to say that in this part of France old houses greatly outnumber the new properties, so the chances are that it will be an old stone property with solid doors and fairly small windows, none of which is good news from our point of view.’
‘What about weapons?’ Richter asked. ‘I can see the Hocklers, but have you got anything heavier in case these comedians are living in some sort of fortified manor house?’
‘We’ve got half a dozen G60 stun grenades left, plus one M79 launcher and three high-explosive grenades.’
Richter nodded. ‘Excellent. That should make short work of any French front door.’
‘The M79 is still in the car,’ Dekker said.
‘Get it, please,’ Ross said, and a trooper trotted away obediently.
Richter glanced round at the faces of the SAS troopers. ‘The weapon on the Anton Kirov was dangerous enough,’ he said, ‘but it was only one bomb, albeit a big one. This time we’re playing for much bigger stakes – if this Arab decides to carry on where Trushenko left off, he could quite literally start a Third World War, effectively destroy America and return western civilization to the Stone Age. We don’t mess with him. We have just one chance to do it right, and we have to stop him – permanently.’
Hammersmith, London
Baker still had the connection open to the Krutaya mainframe and had been working on the system ever since Richter had left the suite. He had been alternating his efforts between trying to locate Dernowi’s backdoor code and getting into the Weapon Control module with Administrator status. Unfortunately, he had got precisely nowhere with both tasks.
Just after midnight, local time, he watched impotently as Dernowi used his backdoor code to get into the system again.
St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Once they had all checked their weapons and equipment, Ross divided the men into two groups and led them silently up the twisting road towards the single light they’d seen from the edge of the village. All around them the countryside was dark and totally silent, as if nature herself was holding her breath.
When they were about two hundred yards from the light, they stopped, and Ross and Dekker used their night-vision glasses to inspect the target. What they saw was an L-shaped house with a single light burning above what was presumably the main door. They could see no lights in any of the rooms, no sign of life anywhere, and the shutters over all the windows were closed. Ross murmured orders through the radio, and the troopers began an even more stealthy approach, using the cover provided by the hedges and trees that lined both sides of the road.
Colin Dekker, who was leading the first group, suddenly stopped and stood erect beside one of the two stone gateposts that guarded the entrance to the property. ‘This is the wrong house,’ he said into his radio microphone.
‘Are you sure?’ Ross asked.
‘Yup. Unless we’ve got the name wrong. According to this name plate—’ he gestured at the stone pillar in front of him and the garden of the property beyond ‘—this house is called “Les Deux Cèdres”, and those two trees over there are probably the cedars in question.’
Le Moulin au Pouchon , St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Hassan Abbas was taking his time, relishing the moment. He accessed the weapon control module and chose the ‘Total’ option, which would allow all the weapons on American soil to be detonated simultaneously. Then he took out a small black leather-covered book from his pocket and, in response to the automated prompts from the Krutaya mainframe, began carefully inputting the two twelve-digit authorization codes that were required to activate each weapon in turn. Detonation would not take place until all two hundred and three nuclear weapons had been enabled.
St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Richter had left his mobile phone switched on, but with the ringer silent and the phone set to vibrate when a call was received. As Ross and Dekker regrouped their men and prepared to advance further up the lane, he felt the tremor in his pocket, pulled the phone out and pressed the button to answer the call. ‘Richter.’
‘You’d better be quick,’ Baker said, his voice high and panicky. ‘That bastard Dernowi’s on the system again and he’s just accessed the Weapon Control module.’
‘Can’t you change the authorization codes – you know, the same as you did with Trushenko?’
‘No. He’s got a higher access level then me. The moment I did anything like that he’d know I was an intruder. He’d simply delete Modin as a user, kick me off the system and then get on with detonating the weapons. It’s better if I don’t do anything. At least that way I can see what he’s doing.’
‘And what is he doing?’
‘He’s chosen simultaneous detonation. He’s going to trigger all the American weapons at the same time.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Richter said. ‘OK – stay on the line.’ He looked round and gestured urgently to Ross and Dekker. ‘Dernowi’s on the system again,’ he said, ‘and he’s going to fire all the American weapons simultaneously. We have to act immediately. Are you sure this is the right road?’
Dekker nodded, his face visibly pale in the dim moonlight. ‘If the France Telecom directions are right, yes.’
‘Right,’ Richter said. ‘We can’t do this with kid gloves, not now, so we have to risk alerting these fucking Arabs.’ He pointed a few yards up the road at a telegraph pole and shone his torch at the cross-trees at the top of it. ‘Those cables are probably the ones carrying Dernowi’s transmissions. Shoot them off it.’
‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ Ross asked.
‘Damn right I am,’ Richter said. ‘Do it now.’
Dekker gestured to a trooper who walked up, aimed his silenced Hockler at the top of the telegraph pole and squeezed the trigger. The weapon made a popping sound, alarmingly loud in the darkness, and wood splinters flew from the cross-trees. One cable fell, then a second, and the third and fourth together. Another trooper ran over, used his torch to locate the cables in the hedgerow, then severed each of them with his knife.
‘You still there, Baker?’ Richter snapped.
‘Yes.’
‘OK. We’ve just cut some telephone cables. Is Dernowi still on-line?’
There was a pause that seemed to last minutes as Baker looked at the computer screen in London. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘The connection’s been dropped.’
Richter breathed again. ‘Good. We’re definitely in the right place,’ he said. ‘Baker, is Simpson still t
here?’
‘Yes,’ Baker replied shortly. ‘I think everyone still in the building is here in the Computer Suite.’
‘OK, just as a precaution, get Simpson to contact Lacomte and tell him to disable all the mobile phone cells in this area, as soon as possible.’ Richter grabbed the map Dekker had been using. ‘That’s within, say, a fifty kilometre radius of Mont de Marsan, and for at least the next two hours. This bastard may have a mobile phone as well as a landline.’
‘It’ll take time,’ Baker replied.
‘I know, so best you get started. Disconnect now, but call me immediately there’s any other sign of Dernowi.’
Le Moulin au Pouchon , St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Like Dmitri Trushenko had done in the Crimea, Hassan Abbas looked at the screen of the computer with considerable irritation. The double-computer icon in the Taskbar at the bottom right of the screen had abruptly vanished, taking his connection to the Krutaya mainframe with it. The sudden disconnection didn’t surprise him because he had experienced similar problems in the past with France Telecom, and he knew perfectly well that line failures were by no means unusual in rural France.
He instructed the computer to re-dial his Wanadoo Internet access number, and watched as the Dial-Up Networking dialog box appeared in the centre of the screen. He pressed the ‘Connect’ button, and the system reported ‘Status: Dialing’. Seconds later the status message read ‘Disconnecting’. Abbas clicked on ‘Details’ and read the brief message ‘There was no dial-tone’. Something was wrong, he realized, with a sudden chill. Losing the connection to Krutaya was one thing, but losing the line completely was quite another. He grabbed the telephone beside the computer and pressed it to his ear. Silence. He depressed the receiver rest a couple of times, with no result.
Abbas was no fool. He got up, walked swiftly to the top of the stairs and shouted down. ‘Arm yourselves. The house may be attacked imminently.’ He walked into the main bedroom and paused beside the bed only long enough to shake Fouad awake, then moved swiftly over to the shuttered windows. He opened the window, then carefully eased one shutter open and peered out into the darkness, eyes and ears attuned for the slightest unusual sight or sound. Nothing, apart from the usual faint noises of the night.
Abbas pulled the shutter closed again and walked across the landing. Downstairs he could sense the tension, could hear his men murmuring quietly, and the metallic sounds as they checked and cocked their weapons.
‘Lights out,’ he called, ‘and prepare.’ Then he turned and walked back into the rear bedroom. He grabbed the leather Samsonite case containing the laptop computer and mobile phone, opened it and quickly checked that everything was there. Then he snapped the case closed, walked out of the bedroom, locked the door behind him and pocketed the key.
St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
‘That must be it,’ Dekker muttered. ‘Yes,’ he added, swivelling his night glasses to the postbox standing by the roadside. The letters on the box were hand-painted, faded and weathered, and partially obscured by a bush, but he could just make out the last part of the name ‘Pouchon’.
They had followed the twisting road that climbed up out of the village to the north-east and were now the better part of a mile outside St Médard. In front of them, clearly visible in the faint moonlight, was a square white house sitting in a small garden just off the road on the outside of a right-hand bend. The walls were white-washed and looked as if they were solid stone and thick. The front door looked old and heavy, and Ross had been right about the windows – they were small and square and, predictably, tightly shuttered.
But there were some signs of life inside the property. Faint vertical and horizontal lines of light showed behind and through two of the shuttered windows on the ground floor on the left-hand side of the front door, but even as they looked the light was extinguished.
‘Anyone here think they’ve just gone to bed?’ Dekker asked.
‘Not a chance,’ Richter snapped. ‘They’ve just lost the connection to the Russian mainframe and by now they’ll also know that the landline has been cut. No doubt Dernowi or whoever’s in charge has told the bodyguards to expect an attack. That, anyway, is the way I read it. They’re certainly awake, and they’ll be alert.’
‘Right,’ Ross said. ‘Mr Beatty is probably right, but even if he’s wrong we still have to assume that they know we’re out here. Normally we’d wait and try to ascertain exactly how many of them there are inside, and where they’re likely to be found. Tonight, we can’t. I don’t like going in blind, but in the circumstances I don’t see we’ve got the slightest option. Colin – do you disagree with that?’
‘No. We have absolutely no choice.’
‘So, we use all the firepower we’ve got and try to finish it as quickly as we can.
Le Moulin au Pouchon , St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Abbas walked swiftly down the stairs into the tiny hall. A nightlight was burning in a power-point, and by its dim light he was able to check that his three bodyguards were ready. ‘You are prepared?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Karim Ibrahim replied. ‘We have checked the explosives and set the tripwires. All is correct. We have put the extra ammunition in our bags.’
Abbas nodded his approval, and glanced at his watch. ‘You are certain, sayidi?’ Badri asked. ‘You know we will be attacked?’
Abbas shook his head. ‘No, and I hope I am wrong, but the telephone line is not working and that concerns me greatly, now that we are so close to success.’ Abbas turned to Fouad. ‘Saadi, set the floodlight time-switch for three minutes, then follow me. And switch off that nightlight – there is to be no light inside the house at all.’
Abbas turned and led the way into the kitchen. Fouad opened a wall cupboard and adjusted the floodlight time-switch as Abbas had instructed, then walked over and ripped the nightlight from its socket, before turning to follow the others out of the hall.
In the kitchen, Jaafar Badri hauled back the faded red carpet to reveal the flagstone floor below. Just off-centre in the floor was an old wooden trapdoor about three feet square, which Badri lifted. Then he reached down into the opening and clicked a switch. Dim electric lighting flickered into being, revealing a rusted steel ladder which descended into a rough-hewn vertical shaft, at the base of which Abbas could just make out the gleam of a trickle of water.
This was the unique feature of the property which had made Abbas select it. The house was called ‘Le Moulin au Pouchon’, but unlike many other similarly named properties in France, the building had actually been a working mill until the end of the nineteenth century. The passageway into which Abbas was about to descend had then been the watercourse which had channelled water under the house to turn the long-vanished milling machinery.
Years ago, the stream which had supplied the water had either dried up or been diverted, but the stone-lined watercourse was still in good condition. More importantly, from Abbas’ point of view, the watercourse led away from the house and up the hill to an old stone-built outhouse, some hundred metres distant, which had originally housed the sluices.
Abbas paused for a few moments before climbing down the ladder and looked at the three men with whom he had spent the last four months of his life. He shook hands with Badri and Ibrahim, but pulled Fouad into a close embrace before releasing him.
‘Inshallah we will meet again, Saadi, my friend.’
‘Inshallah, sayidi Abbas,’ Fouad murmured respectfully.
‘We should go,’ Badri interjected. ‘We may have very little time.’
Abbas nodded, but kept his eyes fixed on Fouad. ‘Yes, you’re right. Saadi – you know how much we are depending on you.’
Fouad nodded, but seemed to swell slightly at the implied praise. Abbas clapped him on the shoulder, then handed the Samsonite case to Badri and began to climb down the steel ladder. At the bottom he stood aside to let Badri and Ibrahim join him. Badri passed Abbas
the Samsonite, then moved away, up the old watercourse and towards the outhouse, torchlight dancing on the damp stone walls, his Kalashnikov in his right hand. Abbas followed and Ibrahim took up station behind him.
Behind them, the lights went out and they heard the sound of the trapdoor in the kitchen closing. Fouad would remain in the house either until whoever had cut the wires actually attacked the property or until it became clear that it had been a false alarm.
St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Ross had divided his men into two teams, one to hit the front of the house and the second, led by Colin Dekker, to work around to the rear of the property to try to effect an entrance there. It was comparatively slow work for the second team, because of the absence of any plans of the property or knowledge of the terrain immediately surrounding the target, and twice the troopers had to move back and approach from a different angle when they encountered impenetrable vegetation. Finally Dekker announced that they were in position.
‘Acknowledged,’ Ross murmured. ‘On my signal, we take out the front door, then get in and finish the job. As briefed, we’ll take the upstairs rooms. Colin, get through the back door as soon as you hear the grenade, and clear downstairs. Everyone, be very careful of blue-on-blue – we don’t want any more casualties. Wilson – don’t forget to aim the grenade at the stone beside the front door, not the door itself, or it’ll probably just go straight through it. Any questions, anybody not ready?’
There was silence on the net for a couple of seconds, then a blaze of light surrounded the old house as the eight exterior floodlights, installed as a precaution by Abbas almost as soon as they had moved into the property, kicked in.
‘Jesus Christ,’ someone muttered. ‘That’s fucked up my night vision good and proper.’
‘Right.’ Ross’ voice was crisp and sharp. ‘That’s a clear enough indication, I think. They definitely know we’re out here, so let’s not keep them waiting any longer. Three, two, one. M79, go.’
Overkill pr-1 Page 55
