Lethal Sky

by Greg Barron

  The rear passenger window opens and a man’s head and shoulders appear, a hand holding one of those toy-like but deadly plastic guns. PJ sees the puffs of gunsmoke, as if time and the rest of the world are standing still for him. He aims his weapon at the tyres. Nothing happens — probably foam filled again.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he screams into the GU, ‘they’ve got Hartmann. Are you tracking them, Brown Dog?’

  ‘Can’t see a thing. Just noise, sorry. Fireworks, whose fucking bright idea was that?’

  PJ sprints after the vehicle, fists pumping with each step down Southend Pier road. He catches a glimpse of it turning onto the Esplanade in front of a knot of traffic, powering down the road at high speed. He falls to his knees, screaming her name, tears falling down his cheeks.

  The fireworks stop, the noise soon replaced by a clatter as a chopper starts to descend onto the roadway, disrupting the fog. PJ stands slowly. The chopper is a make and model he’s never seen before — some new American design perhaps.

  The loadmaster leans out from the interior. ‘Paisley Johnson?’ His voice is very British, but impersonal.

  ‘Yes. Thank Christ you’re here …’

  ‘Samuel said that it’s time. Get in. Hurry.’

  PJ mounts the chopper, settling into a seat in the back. ‘I’m glad someone’s on the ball. They’ve got one of ours. Quick, down the Esplanade. There’s still time, hurry.’

  The man next to him says nothing as the chopper rises off the ground. There is none of the usual vibration and shuddering before it tilts and starts forward movement, smooth and fast over the fog.

  ‘My orders are to take you to Samuel.’

  ‘Not yet. We can’t let them take her. They’ll kill her.’

  ‘You were told that we were coming for you.’

  ‘No way. Not now. I can’t let her go.’

  ‘You were told you had to leave everything behind. No attachments. If you really want this, that’s what you need to do.’

  ‘You can’t take me now — we’ve got a madman trying to kill half the population of Europe.’

  ‘That’s precisely why we need you right now.’

  PJ peers through the fog at the traffic on the Esplanade. ‘Surely we can find her. The car was silver. There was a van too. You have to follow.’

  ‘Sorry … orders.’

  The helicopter banks hard, then gathers speed, eerie under the bright stars and moon, the white blanket below. PJ puts his face in his hands and weeps like a child.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 2345

  At eleven forty-five pm the first blow is struck, the signal that will reverberate around London, and the world, Eddie thinks to himself.

  In the suburb of Waltham Forest, London, a man drives a van along Hoe Street, then into Lea Bridge Road, mounts the footpath, driving up under the front porch of the al-Islam Mosque. The driver’s door opens and a man runs from the vehicle. Two minutes later the van explodes.

  No worshippers are inside the building at the time, but a youth group is sleeping over in a meeting room, and dozens have been killed or injured.

  The mosque structure collapses, fire finishes it off. Dozens of ambulances attend, paramedics carrying bleeding teenagers out on stretchers. Police, ambulance officers. The media begins its usual macabre focus on the death toll.

  Eddie parks his car two blocks away, outside the red-brick walls of a high school, the sports bags full of guns in the boot. He walks down the street towards the mosque, not hurrying. Apart from not-so-distant sirens, the night is eerily quiet, with just occasional people hurrying past or huddling in doorways, talking in soft voices.

  Soon, you fuckers, your homes will be in flames.

  The mosque is a ruin. Firemen with hoses stream water into the flames. The scene is intoxicating, emergency services’ flashing lights mingling with the leaping flames and headlights.

  We did this, Eddie thinks to himself. We’ve struck the first blow.

  There is a crowd behind the police barriers. Women shriek and wail, men call out, shaking fists and waving arms in front of their bodies.

  Eddie’s heart hardens with resolve. This is the reality of the path he has chosen to take. He looks at his watch. Time to go and assemble with the troops. Now it will truly begin.

  FIFTY-SIX

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 0130

  Marika has been knocked unconscious before, but unlike on previous occasions, this time she morphs into rapid-eye-movement sleep. No coherent dreams but images and snatches: people and places that she would rather forget, and others she holds close to her heart.

  Finally, with a jolt, she wakes in the car, keeping her eyes closed for a moment, as if reluctant to face reality. At length, however, the truth is impossible to ignore, the pressure of plastic cuffs on her wrists a powerful reminder. Her mask is gone, but she can still feel where the straps dug in to the back of her head.

  Her first sight is of the redheaded woman, Cassie, turning to look at her from the front seat. She wears oversized Marc Jacobs sunglasses with the white dress that Marika sees now might well be a Dior.

  ‘Sleeping Beauty wakes at last,’ Cassie says.

  Marika says nothing, turning as Badi, next to her on the bench seat, removes his sunglasses and brings dark, vulpine eyes to bear on her.

  ‘Hello, Marika Hartmann. It’s nice for us to see each other again, don’t you think?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything worse, to be honest, you parasite.’

  ‘Whatever you think, our destinies appear to be intertwined.’

  Memories creep in from the dark recesses of her mind. His skin, illuminated by passing streetlights, has a dull pallor, as if the shininess has worn away, exposing the lustreless layer — the truth beneath.

  He appears to be in tougher physical shape than the last time she saw him. Sinews show through in his arms and neck. His muscles are like sheaves of straw beneath his skin.

  Hatred is not a sufficient word for what she feels. It can’t even begin to sum up the burning hot acid that now flows through her veins.

  ‘Enjoy your last hours,’ Marika says. ‘No one can do what you are attempting to do and survive.’

  ‘Won’t I? I already have. It’s too late,’ Badi says. ‘You may have won in Sydney, but those five drones are now about to destroy the great cities of Western Europe. The joke is that it is your own weapon — turned back on yourselves.’

  ‘You won’t get away with it …’

  ‘On the contrary, I can and I will. In the meantime, however, there’s more. You and I have a mission which we are about to embark on.’

  Marika looks up and sees a road sign. They are on the M4, heading west towards Wales. A van is travelling just ahead of them.

  ‘Our mission concerns what my Islamist friends used to call the great Satan. The United States of America.’

  They ride in silence for some time, then she feels a prick in her arm, turns suddenly, and watches as a hypodermic needle is plunged into her skin.

  ‘My apologies, but I will feel much better if you are incapacitated for some time.’

  The needle’s contents shoot into Marika’s veins, and she feels herself drift back into a groggy and unsatisfying sleep.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 0130

  On Julian’s last day of freedom in London, nine months ago, he watched paramedics carry the bodies of Leisel and her father out of their Bermondsey house on stretchers. He was taken into custody minutes later, frightened and grieving all at once. Days of interrogation and intimidation from his former employers had followed.

  Any doubts Julian has about his current status are dispelled by finding that his escort has come for him in a white VW HM Prison Service prisoner transport. He sits in the back, thoughts flowing through his head, wondering if they have changed their minds about killing him, or locking him away for life. His only real regret would be that he wouldn’t hav
e time to share the multimedia clip saved on the laptop that sits beside him on the seat.

  At Vauxhall Cross they take him through a once familiar doorway and into the lifts, passing through the security checks that, on this occasion, include a full pat-down. It feels surreal as he walks into the DRFS offices. Once, in another life, he had come here every day to work — had felt himself a valued and competent member of the team.

  They escort him to the Blair Room, and sit him down at the table. Tom Mossel is frightening enough, standing at the head, but Will Grace, the Watcher, also hangs over the table, his face set in permanent disapproval.

  ‘Hello, Julian,’ Tom Mossel says.

  ‘Hello.’ His voice is weak in reply. The hammering of his heart will not stop. His lungs burn with mingled shame and fear.

  ‘Since you, by allowing access to classified information from our servers to our enemies, are partly responsible for the crisis gripping the world, I am going to allow you the chance to help us in our hour of need. Believe me, you wouldn’t be here if we had a choice.’

  Julian’s throat is dry. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Do you remember the cluster drone project that you helped run a security study on a couple of years ago?’

  ‘Of course. Ross Craven …’

  ‘Ross Craven is dead. His widow identified the body this morning. At least one of the technicians you worked with is also dead. The cluster drones were spoofed by the same group that killed your girlfriend and her father.’

  ‘Spoofed? The whole cluster? They must have had inside help.’

  ‘We’re looking for a man called Faizan Benabi. We believe that he was the key.’

  ‘Faizan, of course. They call him the Magician,’ Julian breathes. ‘Yes, he could do it.’

  ‘To cut a long story short, those drones now, almost certainly, have a payload of high-grade viable anthrax spores. They have been deployed from a ship in the Thames Estuary, and are right now either on their way to their destinations, or have entered a standby mode over the target cities waiting for the morning when people are heading to work.’

  ‘Which cities?’

  ‘Two will start over Boulogne and head into France. Three will start over London, leaving a trail of spores across a swathe of this country. Information we have from an eyewitness to tests undertaken at sea, along with the work of an Australian microbiologist, tells us that this strain is lethal — we’re looking at deaths in the tens of millions. Large areas of Western Europe and England will be laid to waste for decades.’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Can we take control of the machines back again?’

  Julian runs his hand over his forehead. His mind has been in creative mode for so long that it takes an effort to bring his analytic brain to the fore. ‘Maybe.’

  Tom Mossel sits stock-still, ready to absorb every word. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Years ago the NSA built a back door into the standard AES encryption algorithm so that we had a weakness to exploit. You would remember the furore when Edward Snowden released that snippet of information.’

  Mossel inclines his head. ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Most military hardware could be exploited through that weakness. Chevalier decided that they had to go a step further, to make them safe from any kind of electronic attack.’

  ‘Even from the Americans themselves,’ Mossel adds.

  ‘Exactly.’ Julian smiles wryly and goes on. ‘The drones use an ad-hoc 802.11-2007 wireless network, encrypted with what’s known as a Diffie-Hellman key-agreement protocol. It works by all parties having a secret number. There’s also a public number. Each unit on the network combines the public and secret number in such a way that they can’t be separated again. They then send them to each other and add their secret part to what they’ve received.

  ‘Hacking the D-H protocol isn’t too hard when the secret numbers are small — say ten digits. Even with twenty or thirty digits a brute force attack can get results fairly quickly — but when those numbers are large, you need serious computer power. We can achieve that by using massively parallel computing resources. In this system, the public number is around 300 digits and the private one more than 100. It’s called a discrete logarithm. I can write a script in PERL to orchestrate the decryption process, and link it back to the servers here to start computing, using a Ku-band satellite link.’

  ‘And you did this once before? When you tested their security a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Yes, but they have upgraded the encryption since then. It will be harder, even with the kinds of hardware we have at our disposal. Not only that, but Faizan might have boosted the security still further, so we have no chance of getting them back.’

  ‘We have one of the junior technicians upstairs with the latest versions of the Chevalier operating software. He can help you with anything you need.’

  ‘Good,’ Julian says. ‘I was going to ask about that — we’ll need it to issue commands to the UAVs once we get into the network.’

  ‘Can you do it from here?’

  ‘No. The range of their wireless network is about thirty-five kilometres, depending on the terrain and weather conditions. I would have to get closer than that to try to crack my way in. Any ideas on how we can do that?’

  ‘Chopper. We’re getting a CBRN machine ready now.’

  Julian feels weak at the prospect of working in such an unstable platform. ‘So what happens if and when I take control, remembering that I will have to do this several times, possibly in five different locations if the UAVs are all outside network range. Is it safe to try to land them?’

  ‘If there’s time — the main thing is to find them, and we’ll destroy them on-site.’ Mossel crosses his arms. ‘This is outside my area of expertise, as I’m sure you’ll understand. I’ll get more advice.’ He pauses. ‘I’m placing a lot of trust in you. That trust is warranted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll try,’ Julian says softly. ‘That’s all I can do.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘A few things. The tech can help me out.’

  ‘Get to it then.’

  When Julian Weiss has left the room, Tom Mossel turns to his workstation. The email notification flag is up, one of dozens he has received in the last few hours. Most of them require just a quick read. Others he forwards to Will Grace to deal with. This one looks interesting.

  URGENT: Further clarification of chromosomal analysis of genetic material belonging to Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani al-Assadi.

  While a full report is not yet available the author considered some findings important enough to communicate in précis form.

  Further analysis of DNA material belonging to the subject has shown that while he has XY chromosomes like any normal male, he has what appears to be a 46 XY abnormality. This is a mutation in a gene found on the proximal arm of the X chromosome, affecting a protein known as androgen receptor.

  The resultant condition, commonly known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, prevents a male body responding, during the development phase, to male hormones.

  Further investigations will attempt to judge the severity of the condition in this individual.

  The door opens, and Will Grace walks back in. ‘The chopper is ready to go in five minutes.’

  ‘Have you read this report?’ Mossel asks.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Now what was the name of the drug Badi had stashed in the safe aboard the Isra?’

  ‘There were a range of drugs, including Valium, but mostly testosterone sir. And syringes to introduce it intravenously.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Mossel shakes his head, runs one hand over his eyes. ‘I’m too old for this Will.’

  ‘Too old? Not at all, sir. Who thought up the idea of counting birthdays, anyway? It’s a stupid concept.’

  ‘The years pass, Will, whether you count them or not.’

  ‘Age is purely experience, nothing more. That makes it an advantage.’<
br />
  ‘To a point, but old bones get tired. I start to think about sitting these old bones down in a salmon lake in Scotland with nothing to worry about but getting a bite. Seriously, Will, they’ll pension me off, after this. Too many failures, even if we avert disaster I have to carry the can for this bastard getting away from us — our failure to stop them getting their hands on the spores.’

  ‘You’ve done your best sir. We all have.’

  ‘I know. But our best just wasn’t good enough.’

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  WALES

  LOCAL TIME: 0230

  The Mercedes and the van come to a stop at a roadside rest area, deserted and swept by a strong breeze that carries the scent of the ocean.

  Badi turns to look at the female agent on the seat between himself and Cassie. Her eyes are closed, and she breathes gently through her nose.

  Cassie reaches out a forefinger and touches Marika’s cheek, eyes staring, fascinated, moving on over the slope of her nose, her cheeks, touching the soft skin under her eyes, then the side of her throat, just below the ear.

  Badi watches, fascinated, as Cassie explores the woman with the touch of a lover. ‘You like doing that, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s just like she’s dead. But she’s kind of beautiful — all soft and still warm.’ Then she turns to Badi. ‘Maybe you should kill her now.’

  ‘No, we’re going to put her in the trunk.’

  Cassie shakes her head. ‘You really should kill her — she’s dangerous.’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘I’ll do it if you want me to.’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  Businesslike now, Badi issues orders. The men lift Marika out by the shoulders and legs, while the driver opens the boot, placing her inside gently.

  ‘Check that there’s nothing in there she might use as a weapon if she wakes up,’ Badi snaps, before returning to the back seat. Car doors slam and the engine starts back up.