Lethal Sky

by Greg Barron

  Phantom Eye finds two within minutes, and lights them electronically, ‘sparkling’ them as targets on the GermCat’s synthetic aperture radar and IR units.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  FRENCH AIRSPACE

  LOCAL TIME: 0430

  ‘That’s it, we’ve got them!’ screams the pilot. ‘Can you see them Ronnie?’

  ‘Yes, like fucking Christmas trees,’ he growls. ‘I don’t know how that happened but I like it.’

  ‘The first one is fourteen kilometres ahead,’ the pilot says, ‘we’re putting the hammer down. We’ll close with it in three minutes.’

  The firing of the THOR system is controlled on a pistol grip incorporated in the right-hand arm rest of the gunner’s seat. Ronnie mutters, ‘I’m going to test-fire this thing while I get the hang of it again. OK?’

  ‘Go ahead. System armed.’

  Ronnie activates the laser-spot tracker, and turns his helmet-equipped head from side to side. The weaponry, mounted down between the landing gear, swivels, as does the field of view from both the FLIR and the video images inside the helmet. The LCD view shows cloud wisping past like balls of white wool. Through the display, everything is either a target, an obstacle or an asset. There is no beauty through the lens of a gun sight.

  Ronnie squeezes the trigger, for just a fraction of a second. The THOR beam streams out as a line of visible heat through the FLIR screen.

  The controller’s voice comes through the headset, louder now, and Ronnie lifts his left hand to the dial to adjust the volume. ‘We have advice that in order to produce the necessary temperatures to ensure the destruction of the payload you will have to maintain the beam on the UAV for up to ten seconds.’

  Having seen the automatic evasion technology built into the cluster drones, it seems to Ronnie that keeping one still for ten seconds will be all but impossible. ‘Understood,’ he says, looking down.

  ‘I see it now,’ Ronnie shouts. ‘Ten o’clock.’

  He tries to bring the THOR sights to bear, but the drone keeps out of his window of fire as if it knows exactly how the weapons system on the chopper operates.

  ‘Missile in the air,’ one of the pilots shouts, and Ronnie sees it too. Another one of those incredibly effective micro-missiles, flying straight as a chalk-line, easily discernible through the electro-optics of the helmet.

  Even small missiles, however, throw strong heat signatures, and the target acquisition sensor locks on almost immediately. Ronnie shoots with the THOR beam. The missile, its electronics fried beyond repair in microseconds, drops out of the sky like a stone.

  ‘Missile destroyed,’ Ronnie calls out, ‘now locked onto the drone.’

  ‘Good,’ the pilot’s voice is thick with tension, ‘’cos we’re close to max operating altitude.’

  The FLIR guided tracker clearly identifies the target. Ronnie knows that, with four more to knock out, learning how to kill them will be essential. He begins by firing the beam for just a fraction of a second. There is a puff of smoke from the drone clearly visible on the screen. At first it does nothing, just continues to rise.

  It doesn’t know what to do. It hasn’t been trained for a beam weapon.

  A moment later, as if its processors have finished analysing the threat, it goes into a wild gyration. Dives away and up, then around several times — an impossible target, even for automated systems — before finally it resumes station some distance away.

  Again Ronnie fires, this time holding down the button for a full second. The drone takes evasive action instantly, identical to the last time.

  ‘Hey Julian, you making any progress there? Cos if you could turn those things off it would make my job a hell of a lot easier.’

  ‘We’ve got a partial crack, but a long way to go yet,’ Julian says.

  ‘OK. Keep at it. Guys can you launch a missile?’

  ‘We’re carrying eight AIM-92 Stingers, but only four are UHTMs — that’s all we had in the country. You want to use one of those?’

  ‘We don’t know if this one has a CBRN payload as well. If so, an HE warhead would just spread it all over the place. We’d better use the thermal warhead. Then we might know how to go about this.’

  ‘OK. Locked on and firing now.’

  The flame trail from the missile shows up clearly on the screen. As soon as it nears, however, the drone does a backflip, then drops towards the ground a thousand feet, fires three or four flares and emits a stream of chaff. Finally it turns 180 degrees to return to a station close to where it started, while the missile explodes on a flare far below.

  As soon as the drone stops, Ronnie squeezes the trigger and the beam pokes out across the sky. Holding, holding, three, four, five seconds. Confidence replaces uncertainty.

  Now smoke pours out of it. The drone is clearly dying, but the ten seconds needed will still be difficult.

  … seven, eight seconds, the drone starts to glow white hot, then to fall, and only sophisticated electronics allow the beam to stay on target as it drops, now throwing a tail like a comet.

  ‘That’ll do, let’s go,’ yells the pilot. ‘We’ll kill the other one and get back to London.’

  ‘Wait,’ Ronnie urges.

  Nine, ten seconds and the drone is no more than a puddle of molten steel and titanium falling earthwards. Any life forms within that casing have been incinerated at temperatures far beyond any chance of survival. Finally Ronnie releases the trigger, hand curled unnaturally with the force with which he held it. ‘OK, target destroyed. Let’s go find number two.’

  SIXTY-FIVE

  IRISH SEA

  LOCAL TIME: 0430

  Marika wakes in darkness, lying on her side, arms secured behind her back and her mouth closed tightly with duct tape. At first she feels an overwhelming sense of panic. The gag makes her feel like she is drowning.

  Her hands and ankles are secured with plastic cuffs. Somewhere in the distance she can hear voices. The texture of the surfaces and the slight give of suspension as she moves tell her that she is in the boot of a car. There is the sensation of movement, but the car engine is not running.

  That realisation confuses her. At first she thinks that the car is in the back of a truck, but the sound of distant engines is different — heavier and more powerful. The motion is different too. Pitching, rolling. Then the unmistakeable crash of a wave against the bow.

  She is in a car, but it appears to be rolling through a seaway.

  A car ferry then, but where?

  Before they stabbed her with the hypodermic they were heading for Wales. The town of Fishguard maybe. From there high-speed ferries set off around the clock, bound for Ireland.

  Why Ireland?

  Badi had proudly informed her that the next phase of the attacks would be against the United States. Somehow Ireland is to be the launching pad. She stops moving, trying to get her breathing under control, but the atmosphere is stuffy and thick.

  Many years ago she travelled on one of these ferries. The cars are kept deep in the hold, loaded via a giant ramp. All the passengers will be up on deck, in their sleeping cabins, or in the restaurant. Badi will be there too, with Cassie playing the part of the trophy wife in her designer dress.

  The car will probably be unattended. That means that if she can loosen the cuffs and somehow trigger the boot, she can get out of here. Go to the captain, set up an alert.

  Marika swallows. It will be hard but not impossible. Even a late model Mercedes must have a toolbox in it somewhere. Pulling her knees up into her chest she extends her bound hands to search one end. Grunting a little with the strain she finds a small compartment with elastic cargo netting. No hidden hatches. Nothing that might hide a toolkit.

  Turning herself around completely she searches the other side, finding an almost identical space at that end. Again the elasticised netting, handy for containing loose luggage, but no toolkit. There is only one more possibility — the spare wheel cavity underneath the false floor. The problem is to access it while her own weight
bears down on top. She has never looked in the boot of a car of this model before, but in her experience the false floors are made of relatively flimsy plywood covered in carpet. From the flex in the floor underneath her, that seems to be the case now.

  Changing position again, she grips the edge of the floor and tears upwards as hard as she can. A huge chunk of floor breaks off in her hand. The next is harder and smaller. Sweat beads her forehead and breathing grows more difficult. The Mercedes factory seals their boot lids only too well, and the air is stale. Exertion is making her work for oxygen.

  Moving up, she tries for the upper corner. This is going to be more difficult than expected, she realises. Where the hell is PJ? What’s going on? Again she starts to panic and it takes time to get herself back under control.

  Now, she tells herself, no one is going to save you. One piece of floor at a time, you are going to find those tools.

  She grips another section, and with all the strength in her shoulders and arms, she tears until it breaks, almost weeping with fatigue and the need for air.

  SIXTY-SIX

  SYDNEY

  LOCAL TIME: 1500

  Jan Sloven, like so many Sydneysiders, grew up near the sea, in his case near the cliffs of North Curl Curl. His elder brother, Robert, and his friends had a place where they could jump from a stone ledge into a gap where the sea rushed in, deep, fast and crested with white.

  Even the descent to the ledge took guts, and when it was Jan’s turn he stood high above the water, spray crashing in white storm-bursts against the cliffs, Robert’s friends all stood, watching him, bare-chested in multicoloured board shorts, laughing and prodding each other. Jan remembers how his knees shook, eyes widened, and how despite himself he started to blubber, and when Robert came to lead him away he tried to bury his face in his shirt.

  Jan was not like him — not raw-boned and suntanned, free and uncomplicated. Jan preferred poking around in the rock pools, sticking his finger into sea anemones and watching periwinkles leave trails in the sand. The sea itself was frighteningly huge, loud, and seemingly endless, boiling over Long Reef and out to sea, and then stretching endlessly to the horizon.

  Every year, in the Christmas holidays, the older boys would try to make him jump, always with the same result. Tears, shame, and laughter. Then at the age of thirteen he finally did it, flexing his knees and leaping out, falling through the air and spearing into the water. He never did it again. Once was enough, climbing back onto the rocks, hair slick with salt water, grinning with achievement and the sick-to-the-stomach thrill of it.

  Today, as they empty the contents of the Controlled Specimen Cabinet into the BSC, he feels the same giddy power as when he jumped into the sea that day. The same weighty rush to the earth, the awareness of fragility, and the sense that this is a marker on the road to something bigger.

  They wear white Saint-Gobain ONEsuit protective gear; a fully enclosed system that includes compressed air cylinders, while they make the transfer. One at a time they remove trays of microbes in maintenance cultures. Endospores. All the deadliest pathogens collected over decades of research at laboratories across the country.

  ‘There’s no need for this any more,’ Jan says, ‘we have the sequences. Keeping the living microbes is a dangerous luxury. Someone, someday, will use them.’

  Finally the living archives lie open in the BSC, and the seals are closed. After testing the main room for leakage during the transfer, Jan and the two Marys watch as a mixture of chlorine dioxide and catalysts spray through the built-in nozzles into the cabinet.

  ‘How long do we give it?’ old Mary asks.

  ‘Forty-five minutes.’

  Jan sits and watches the cultures die. There is nothing to see, of course, but he can imagine it happening at the microscopic level. Chlorine dioxide is a highly effective oxidising agent. As it comes into contact with the bacteria it breaks up the bacterial cell by ‘stealing’ electrons, weakening the molecular bonds that keep it together.

  The spores are more resistant, because of their hard shell. Liquid sodium hypochlorite is pumped into the pressure tank itself through the original sampling hole.

  The LSS-253 has become a human enemy to Jan — an extension of Istikaan himself. It gives him great pleasure to watch it die.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  LONDON

  LOCAL TIME: 0500

  The chopper blades, fighting for grip in the rarefied atmosphere, tilt and Ronnie can feel the forward motion. The coordinates of the second drone have been synced with the main aircraft guidance systems, and an estimated time to target appears with the other digital information coming up on the internal screens. Three minutes.

  ‘Get onto Boulogne-sur-Mer ATC and ask them to clear all civilian traffic,’ the pilot is telling control. ‘Get everyone out of there. I don’t want to knock out any Cessnas.’

  ‘Already done. Every flight grounded.’

  Ronnie feels the particular tension that comes before any form of combat, and searches his mind for a song that sums up this situation. He carries a catalogue of music in his head: Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica, Quiet Riot and Black Sabbath. Extreme metal like Cradle of Filth. Even the big bands of the modern era — post-hardcore outfits like Northlane and Silverstein. He loves them all. Uncompromising, concerned with the big themes of life and death.

  ‘OK, we’ve got visual on cluster drone number two,’ says the pilot.

  Ronnie is studying it. ‘It’s not moving — doesn’t seem to want to take any evasive action.’

  They hover, less than a hundred metres away. The thing is asleep, expending just enough energy to keep aloft.

  The pilot: ‘Let’s put a UHTM Stinger up its arse and see what happens.’

  A song comes into his head. A Judas Priest number — an eight-minute monster of a song called, ‘The Future of Mankind’. The title fits, and the first muscular chords play in his mind.

  ‘Ordnance launched.’

  Ronnie watches the drone disappear in that extreme temperature fireball.

  ‘Hey, we got lucky. Cluster drone number two destroyed.’

  ‘Wonder why that one was so easy?’ Ronnie says.

  The co-pilot chimes in, ‘These things were still at the testing stage, and since when has a defence contractor ever made anything that works perfectly the first time?’

  ‘OK, we’re heading for London. So far, so good. Maybe this won’t be so hard after all.’

  Julian shakes his head. ‘I’m pretty sure that was some kind of malfunction. They won’t all be like that.’

  In Ronnie’s mind he hears Rob Halford’s soaring voice clamber into the first chorus, and thinks to himself that maybe, just maybe, they can stop this thing from happening.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  ROSSLARE HARBOUR, IRELAND

  LOCAL TIME: 0600

  The van, followed closely by the Mercedes, rolls out of the Rosslare Ferry Terminal and through the town towards Wexford, Ireland. A mile up the road, Badi points with his forefinger to a roadside layby. ‘Pull over here, check that the woman is still alive.’

  The sun has already risen, shining on deep-green paddocks on either side of the road, divided by stone walls. Here and there he sees a copse or flock of sheep, heads up, still chewing, staring at the stopped car.

  Two of the men leave the car and open the boot. ‘Sayyid, I think she’s dead, and she’s torn the place up. Come and have a look.’

  By the time Badi has made his way out of the car, however, Marika has opened her eyes and is struggling to get up.

  ‘No such good fortune,’ Badi says, ‘she’s alive. You stupid bitch, look what you’ve done to this car.’ The underfloor divider has been ripped to shreds, and the boot is full of scraps of wood, plastic and grey carpet.

  Badi leans down, strips off the gaffa-tape gag then turns to his men. ‘Put her in the back seat where she can get some air. No point having a body to dispose of until we’re ready.’

  SIXTY-NINE

  LONDON
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br />   LOCAL TIME: 0600

  The Thames creeps out of its bed, thief-like, and runs into the streets, brown and steeped in the residue of its metropolitan environment.

  The city, battered by the march of the modern equivalent of jackboots, is too busy to care, even as the brown flood carries litter from the streets along in a tide. Volunteer groups walk the sandbagged levees and pray that they will hold, while to the north the Crusaders fight a war against a changing world.

  ‘Here they come!’ someone shouts, as the ranks, marching down the road, become visible.

  Eddie looks from side to side, sneering at the columns of soldiers and police that sweep towards them. Like the others, he wears a gas mask on his face. Of East German manufacture, it is a superb unit, with good seals, comfortable straps and anti-fog glass.

  This is the core of the attack. These men coming down the street are a crack SO15 squad, supported by militia troops in battle dress, holding rifles. Iveco troop carriers follow behind them, and even a trio of old Saracen armoured cars, diesel engines humming.

  ‘OK, you lot,’ Eddie calls. ‘Here they come. It’s time for the fight of our lives and our principles.’

  The road is blocked with burning cars, black acrid smoke chugging out in choking columns. Yet, armed immigrant youths keep on coming, pouring through the alleyways, often with machetes or other improvised weapons, along with a few guns. Most of the shops are burning, and there is hardly a window intact down the half-mile length of street.

  The riot police reach the car barriers, one of the Saracens bumping the nearest out of the way. Then the police and troops pour through.

  ‘Get right up with them,’ Eddie shrieks, ‘so they can’t use their guns.’ A moment later he leads a running mass of men into the fray. A few rifles discharge, plastic bullets flying through the air. Some of his men fall or cry out with pain.