Lethal Sky

by Greg Barron

  Obtaining a position with the CSIRO, he worked at the Australian Animal Health labs near Geelong, Victoria. Here, he first studied naturally occurring anthrax and botulism.

  His appointment to the newly completed REDPATH lab in Chatswood thrilled him. The lab is state-of-the-art, just two years old, Australia’s first dedicated bio-defence laboratory. Prior to its opening the designated lab for the identification of potential biological threats in Sydney was the Institute for Clinical Pathology and Medical Research at Westmead.

  Reaching the gates, Jan makes a fist with both hands, breathes deeply, and half closes his eyes, looking forward to the day more than he has for some time.

  Entering the facility is not a quick process, though Jan is used to it. The first stage is the outer clothing change and shower area. There, in a private room, Jan removes his clothing, showers, and dresses again in scrubs and lab coat.

  Next he moves through the airlock chamber, and into the limited access corridor that leads to the interior. On the right-hand side are doors leading to accessioning, another secure corridor, then culture areas and molecular biology. On the left are DNA sequencing labs, then another sealed biological safety room. Waste air is ‘cleaned’ through HEPA filters, then heated to three hundred degrees Celsius before being released into the environment, in a two-stage failsafe process.

  Jan moves through a sealed door and into a laboratory. Inside, the stainless steel pressure tank from the aircraft has arrived via conveyor from the accessioning area, where it underwent its own decon and airlock chamber entry.

  The room was designed from the ground up for extreme biohazards. In order to be decontaminated easily, there are no sharp edges, everything curved, stainless steel and glass in evidence everywhere. There are no windows, just fluoro tubes behind covers in the ceiling. The soft hum of the air purification system is constant.

  Two lab assistants are already in the room. One middle aged, one younger. One thin with greying hair. One blonde and a little heavy. Both are named Mary. Gossip at the REDPATH centre is that Jan likes to work with them because it saves him having to remember more than one name, something he is notoriously poor at.

  In truth, Jan likes working with them because they are qualified, competent and no-fuss workers who don’t talk very much. His agile mind sorts them simply, but silently, into ‘old Mary’ and ‘young Mary’.

  Jan and his assistants first prepare the Class III Biological Safety Cabinet where the work will be done. This one is the size of a small bedroom, protected by inch-thick glass, but cluttered with equipment. Everything they will need is carried in — optical and fluorescent microscopes, spectrophotometers, ELISA plate readers, and even sundries such as wipes. Entry is via double-door autoclave.

  The spore tank itself is carried from the conveyor into the BSC and placed in the most convenient location. Finally, consulting a checklist to make sure nothing has been forgotten, Jan seals the cabinet with the airlock levers, taking care to make sure it seals effectively.

  The first task is to use the robot arms inside the cabinet to remove the spore tank from the protective bag. The manufacture of the tank, he notes, is below the standard of stainless steel work Jan would expect from an Australian workshop, but it is impressive, nonetheless, nine hundred millimetres length and four hundred diameter of gleaming 316 stainless.

  The spores are sampled from the tank with an MMIC-EOD Monica remote case entry and sampling system. Monica is a stainless steel unit that resembles a giant industrial stapler. It is designed to insert a self-sealing probe into any vessel containing hazardous chemicals or biological material. The eight kilogram drill head is attached via umbilical cord to the Main Control Unit.

  Jan orchestrates activities via a laptop computer, while the two Marys, working in the adjoining BSC, prepare dozens of petri dishes with their coating of blood agar suitable for anthrax. Blood is a vital component of the agar, mainly because of the iron content along with some vitamin co-factors. It is mainly, however, manufactured from seaweed.

  He scarcely dares breathe as the enclosed shell closes over the drill head, then feels the vibration as the bit itself starts to bite. Stainless steel, however, is resistant to all kinds of puncture. A minute passes, and the drill starts to squeal, growing blunter and sliding over the surface. Jan cannot stop now, unable to break the seal in case the bit has already penetrated far enough to release spores. He increases the pressure remotely. It does not matter if the diamond-tipped drill bit is damaged, despite the thousand-dollar price tag. This is far more important.

  Jan hears the pop of the bit striking through. Now, as the drill bit withdraws, he manipulates the integral camera arm into the tank. All three pairs of eyes focus on the tank.

  The image on an LCD monitor enlarges. ‘Pale pink-brown powder,’ he says, ‘consistent with a typical aerosol endospore carrier like bentonite. Alright, I’m going to remove a few grams, then we can get to work on it.’

  The sampling is automated, passed through the Monica equipment via a tube. Jan steps back and watches old Mary, using the robotic arms to work inside the cabinet, smear the powder evenly with a sterile glass spreader onto the petri dishes, then place them into an incubator inside the cabinet. Jan adjusts the temperature to thirty-five degrees Celsius with five per cent CO2.

  Six small circles of blotting paper, each impregnated with a different antibiotic, are each applied to the agar of five more petri dishes. These are also placed in the incubator, sealed in a plastic container. This is the tried and tested method of discovering a bacteria’s sensitivity to antibiotics.

  Heaving a sigh of relief to have reached this stage, Jan walks away from the cabinet towards the coffee room. First indications are that Sydney has had a lucky escape — that this is the real thing.

  TWENTY-SIX

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 0010

  Travelling in the back of the car, a notification flashes up on Badi’s Toshiba tablet that a VOIP call is coming in. The face that appears on the screen is well known to him. If the tablet hadn’t recognised his features the call would not have been allowed through.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Sargon. In Australia.’ The code name is taken from an ancient Assyrian king.

  ‘Go ahead, Sargon.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard the news yet. Djamil is dead and Australian police have the plane, including the package.’

  Badi feels rage rise like hot liquid in his veins. ‘Imbeciles and fools. It was the perfect plan. How could anything go wrong?’

  ‘It was the woman, Marika Hartmann. The news channels showed footage of her entering the plane — hanging from one of their helicopters.’

  ‘Damn her to hell. Where are you now?’

  ‘Bazaya and I are at the hotel, watching the television news. Should we disperse as agreed?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m going to give you an address in the seaside suburb of Bondi. Go there, both of you. Watch the house and wait until I give you instructions. When the time is right you are going to hurt this woman back. Do you understand? You are going to hurt her very badly.’

  BOOK TWO

  The near-term concept of swarming consists of a group of partially autonomous UAS [Unmanned Aerial Systems] operating in support of both manned and unmanned units in a battlefield while being monitored by a single operator. Swarm technology will allow the commander to use a virtual world to monitor the UAS both individually and as a group. A wireless ad-hoc network will connect the UAS to each other and the swarm commander.

  United States Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009–2047, Headquarters, United States Air Force, Washington.

  0200 (Zulu) London Airspace / Alt 19600m — Vis range 403480m / Wind SSW 5–10 knots — Temp (ground) 09°C /

  Finding the name of the Most Wanted Man in the World was no easy task. Phantom Eye watched and listened from the sky as Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, was tried in a court of law and hanged for war crimes at Idlib Central P
rison, the scene of so many of his atrocities. The pathology laboratory tasked with his post-mortem posted a sample of his DNA on security databases across the world.

  The match that followed astounded HUMINT — Human Intelligence — operatives across the world. DNA material taken from skin flakes on a pillow used by the Most Wanted Man in the World matched that of Bashar al-Assad. From studying his genome HUMINT knew that their target did not share the same mother as Bashar al-Assad’s legitimate children. The Syrian ex-president, they determined, must have had a mistress, and the Most Wanted Man in the World is her son.

  The NSA initiated a process called Link Analysis, a study of spatial and temporal links in Bashar al-Assad’s movements and associations from his time as a medical student onwards. The data included geolocated photographs found in his palaces, news reports of his activities, and daily orders recovered from the Presidential Guard, from whom his bodyguards were drawn, including a helicopter unit regularly flying an Mi-17 Russian-made VIP chopper north from Damascus to a seemingly innocent location.

  This analysis, fed through a computational tool known as Dijkstra’s Algorithm led to a villa in the Alawite stronghold of the An-Nusayriyah Mountains, a place surrounded by cypress forests and olive groves.

  The controllers sent Phantom Eye to circle overhead, watching the villa. The drone searched for cell phone signals. Even in airplane mode, even with the power switched off, Phantom Eye can ‘ping’ a phone and locate it, then download its hard drive and message records. If that doesn’t work it creates a virtual cell phone tower that the phone locks onto in a process called gilgamesh.

  Phantom Eye used HyperSpectral imaging to study the estate, creating a ‘datacube’ describing the chemical composition of surfaces. Grass. Iron. Stone. It looked under the surface of ponds in the gardens, all the way to the mud floor.

  Using optical cameras, Phantom Eye watched and recorded servants labouring in the flower beds. It saw a woman in her late fifties walk the grounds, often at dusk. It used its heat-sensitive, infrared eyes to watch her sleep alone in her bed. It watched her clean her teeth; her most intimate personal acts.

  Meanwhile, the giant drone’s smaller cousins, tiny quadrocopters — backpack portable units called Wasps — peeked through windows from just a few hundred feet, lower at night. They recorded HD video footage of framed photographs on the walls. One of these showed the Most Wanted Man in the World with his father.

  Phantom Eye watched from twenty kilometres up when Delta Force and British SAS troops descended on the villa in the latest generation UH-60 Black Hawk stealth-enhanced helicopters. Thirty men to catch one old woman.

  Phantom Eye’s cameras recorded the shootout with her bodyguards. It saw the woman run. HUMINT wanted her alive. They would use her as bait. They would use her to bring the Most Wanted Man in the World out of the shadows.

  The late Bashar al-Assad’s mistress, despite her years, ran two hundred metres, to a cliff above the river. The Special Forces troops on the ground had no time to cut her off. Phantom Eye’s cameras recorded how the woman’s clothes fluttered as she jumped, and her body lying spread-eagled at the base of the cliff. Its sensors catalogued the changes as her body cooled, and the cessation of electrical activity as her brain died.

  HUMINT combed the house. Despite the loss of the woman, they now had a history. They had a name.

  The Most Wanted Man in the World, who had made a fool of British Intelligence, was now confirmed as the illegitimate son of Bashar al-Assad. His full name, according to a birth certificate dated some thirty years earlier, was Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani al-Assadi.

  HUMINT seized documents, childhood trophies and computer files. Cash and gold bullion. Psychologists wrote profiles, and investigators compiled reports.

  HUMINT learned that every month a sum of money was paid to the dead woman through a company owned by the already suspect EMK Corporation.

  Phantom Eye knows what he eats, the books he reads. They know that he controls a multinational company, fed with endless hidden funds from the former ruling families of the Middle East.

  Now it knows that he is on the move.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPPING FOREST, ENGLAND

  LOCAL TIME: 0030

  Ross Craven grips the stubby joystick on the control unit, sees the lit-up machines dance like stars far out over the hills. Tonight marks the end of week-long durability tests that have been largely successful.

  Ross has been the major shareholder and Chief Executive Officer of Chevalier Aerospace for the eight years of its existence. He was once a design engineer for aerospace and weapons giant BAE Systems, and it was during that time that the ‘cluster drone’ idea germinated. He worked on concept drawings, specifications and CAD diagrams in spare and idle moments, until a restructure in the company made him redundant.

  Furious, he poached two colleagues and set up in a disused warehouse in Enfield. He managed to interest the Department of Defence enough to enable assistance that included strategic testing, and some funding.

  Now, his house mortgaged down to the last nail, Ross has functional prototypes, and is on the cusp of wooing major local and international defence buyers.

  The market leaders in unmanned aerial vehicle technology have been, up to now, the Americans and Israelis. China is catching up with their ‘Sharp Sword’ stealth UAVs, and France has been flying their Dassault, Lehmann Aviation and Nord Drones for years. Now, however, Chevalier is leapfrogging the competition, with a concept so exciting that the others will scramble to catch up, but first they will have to step around thirty-nine individual patents.

  Ross Craven calls his brainchild, or children, the UMMUSCSD — Unmanned Multi Unit Single Control Station Device — already entering defence industry lexicon as the cluster drone. Based on a quadrocopter design with four rotors, the units have incredible speed and exceptional load-carrying capabilities. The hydrogen fuel cell power system gives the units exceptional range and durability.

  Not only that, but each cluster of five drones can be controlled together or separately, capable of attacking an enemy force, each working semi-autonomously to defend itself or attack a pre-programmed target — an exact colour match of a uniform, for example. Each drone is shaped like a shallow cylinder, with retractable legs, and four arms holding the turbines at concentric angles. Each unit weighs ninety-three kilograms, and measures thirteen hundred millimetres in diameter not counting the turbine arms. It can stay in the air for up to eighteen hours and can travel at a healthy one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour for short distances.

  The UAVs can be equipped with light missiles such as the BAE APKWS smart 70mm rocket, tear gas, or even a modified grenade launcher, limited only by the payload and resulting cap on ammunition. One round of testing also focused on civil control — the ability to hover over a rioting crowd, for example — to pick out known ringleaders via facial profiling software and target them with rubber bullets or mace.

  The cluster can be sent into enemy territory ahead of an invasion force, gathering information, knocking out installations, monitoring troop movements … the possibilities are endless. A game changer in many ways. Each unit has an automatic mode, where it avoids trouble, shuts down some or all systems, and waits for instructions at a specific height, or continues travelling.

  Another new technology is an electronic ‘sniffer’ unit. This makes the drones capable of locking onto a particular smell. A human target, for example. This means that an individual or cluster can follow a group of humans or a convoy of vehicles, firing when the opportunity presents itself.

  The search and rescue modes, he suspects, will be a huge selling point, the five units able to create a search grid based on the target-speed characteristics and devising a widening search pattern. Not just downed pilots, but lost children and fishermen will also benefit, particularly the latter due to the cluster drones’ thermal imaging equipment, able to pinpoint a warm body in a cold sea, day or night.

  Ross, confiden
t of the value of his product, is looking forward to the wining and dining. The ‘live’ tests with the money men. The shadow always is the mountain of debt — the payments that threaten to unravel everything. Once he has a firm order, the bank will fall into line, but right now everything is a house of cards. A delay of even one week could bring it all crashing down.

  Over the last two decades, Ross has seen UAVs develop from something unusual and exceptional to a ubiquitous technology with countless uses, from traffic reporting to weather forecasting. It is rare these days for a major criminal apprehension not to be attended by one or more drones.

  Even the damn news networks are using them … Amazon is delivering books with them …

  Ross raises one hand and scratches the side of his cheek, his eyes flicking over the various screens of the MGCS — Mobile Ground Control Station — built into the rear of a van. The station console consists of a tracking screen, ‘Head-Up’ and ‘Head-Down’ displays, a map screen and a text communications read-out. Sophisticated electronics have made the old Predator-style sensor operator unnecessary, almost all camera and munitions now under autonomous control.

  This is private farmland on the edge of London, leased by the company for the tests. The test area is framed by hills, with a ridge leading down to the River Lea. The grass is deep green and beautiful, the ground darkening where it meets Epping Forest.

  With a twist of the joystick, Ross sends one UAV after another high into the air, the process continuing until all five hover together. Now he switches to joint control so all five respond. Up, down, across. Attack. He watches them swarm around an imaginary target. This is the beauty of this new creation.