Ghost:

by James Swallow

  The grim certainty threatened to weigh him down. For the moment, there was nothing he could do about that. His only hope was to wait, to watch and be ready to seize on any opportunity that presented itself. He was still alive, and that meant he could resist, he could fight, perhaps even escape.

  Marc stared into the middle distance, eyes focused on a string of numbers stencilled on the side of a crate. The figures didn’t mean anything to him, but they pulled up recollection of the bracelet tattoos on Kara Wei’s arm, and the twin of it on the body of the dead hacker he’d seen in the morgue at Mater Dei.

  41 57 on her wrist, 57 46 53 on the dead man’s. Marc dismantled the digits in his head, trying to find a connection, a common element. If they were digital map coordinates, he guessed that would put them somewhere in Eastern Europe. It was hard to be sure, but that didn’t feel like the right call.

  Each group contained one prime number. He added them together, multiplied them, and rearranged them. It passed the time, one more mystery on top of all the others, until slowly Marc understood he had been looking at it the wrong way.

  If Kara and Wetherby shared the tattoos, they must have shared something more. The ink signified that intimate connection, and the numbers were personal. They had to be a secret only they could intuit. A code that only two computer hackers would understand.

  He straightened, the airframe creaking as the cargo plane made a wide, slow turn. ‘Not binary, that’d be too obvious,’ Marc muttered to himself. ‘So what does that leave? Has to be hex.’

  Closing his eyes, Marc visualised a hexadecimal grid and counted it out, feeling the kick of discovery as he realised he was on to something. Hex was a Base 6 numeral system that only mathematicians, computer programmers and other high-end nerds tended to use, allowing the representation of long strings of binary ones and zeros in a couple of numbers or letters. It could also be a way to signify alphanumeric text, if correctly converted. And more importantly, it fitted with the kind of geekish, too-smart-for-you attitude that hackers loved to adopt.

  He lost himself in working through the problem, losing track and starting over more than once. Without pen and paper to work on, it was harder than he expected, but after a while Marc managed to decode the dead man’s tattoo into three letters: W F S. Kara’s duplicate had just two: A W. Marc frowned, his initial enthusiasm quickly ebbing. Whatever answer he had expected to leap out at him, didn’t. Maybe his whole premise had been wrong from the start. Whatever the numerals meant, for now he was back to square one with them.

  Movement further down the cargo bay drew his attention. The Ghost5 team were strapping in and securing their equipment in place. The angle of the deck eased into a shallow tilt and he felt his ears pop as the Antonov began to descend.

  They were going to land. Through the metal of the hull, Marc felt the vibrations from hatches opening along the bottom of the plane as the undercarriage deployed, then the buffeting of the thicker air at lower altitude as it raced over the wing flaps. He expected Null or one of the Ghost5 crew to take him back to the seats near the front of the jet, but they ignored him, left him tethered to the wall to ride out the landing.

  It wasn’t a smooth arrival. Marc heard driving rain clatter hard off the Antonov’s fuselage as it fell out of the sky toward the runway, and his stomach swooped in sympathy as the big jet crabbed through powerful crosswinds. He could only see a sliver of the outside world through a window in the hull a few metres away. Marc caught glimpses of low buildings and bright lights glaring through the downpour, and then the plane touched down with a long, lingering crunch of tortured metal. The massive engines screamed into reverse thrust and gravity tugged him forward as the plane fought to bleed off its speed before it ran out of asphalt.

  Eventually the howling chorus from the engines flattened into a throbbing whine and they rolled on across the apron. The rain across the fuselage sounded like handfuls of gravel being thrown at a tin roof.

  A shadow fell across him and Null stood there, brandishing a folding survival knife. ‘Try to be clever again and I will cut you,’ he hissed, before leaning in to sever the restraint holding Marc’s bruised wrist to the support. ‘Get up,’ continued the hacker, and pointed with the blade. ‘That way.’

  ‘Whatever you say, mate.’ Marc massaged his aching forearm, trying to get the blood flowing again. He did his best to look tired and beaten – he was halfway there, after all – while keeping his head on a swivel to take in as much as he could. The clock on how long Madrigal would keep him alive was running into its last hour, he was certain of it. If he couldn’t find a way through this before it hit zero, that would be the end of him.

  The jet’s engines were still winding down, but already the Ghost5 hackers were back at their computers, reaching into the systems that the repurposed Arquebus software had penetrated. He glanced around, searching for Kara, but once again there was no sign of her or of Madrigal.

  Madrigal’s toy boy, the muscular German, snapped out orders to the sallow-faced girl hunched over a custom laptop. ‘Pyne, are you listening to me? Make sure the switching systems are all looped. Keep them out of any critical reset until we’re done.’

  She nodded, her head bobbing like a bird’s. ‘The reverse shell exploit is in play. All good here.’

  The German jabbed a finger at another one of the hackers and made a throat-cutting gesture. ‘Hit them.’

  ‘What now?’ Marc turned to see Lucy being marched up the length of the plane toward him. She jutted her chin in the direction of the computers. ‘Let me guess. They’re doing the San Francisco blackout again?’

  ‘Worse,’ Marc said grimly. ‘This time it’s everything at once.’

  On a repeater screen set up by a series of computer towers, a display showing the spidery lines of Seoul’s metropolitan subway system turned, in fits and starts, from steady blue and green to a warning orange. Segment by segment, the city’s rail network failed, and Marc imagined it like veins in a body clogging with clotted blood. Intersections and crossovers blinked bright crimson, and alert panels filled with strident Korean ideograms popped up all over the screen.

  ‘Those are trains?’ said Lucy, aghast at the horrible possibilities the images represented.

  ‘Andre,’ said the German, glaring at the guy in the parka. ‘Anything coming up?’

  The other hacker nodded. ‘Getting pictures now.’ He showed his teeth. ‘Here. This is a good one.’ Andre migrated a blurry video clip to the repeater screen. There was no sound, but the view showed the interior of a subway carriage populated by early-morning commuters and hungover revellers heading home after an all-nighter. Marc’s gaze caught on a couple of drowsy teenagers propped up against one another, young lovers with their arms interlinked, heads bowed. Without warning, the video spun wildly as the phone shooting the images went flying. When it settled, the people in the carriage were scattered everywhere, doused in broken glass, lit by flickering emergency lights. ‘That was outside Itaewon station. Ran off the rails at the turn.’

  ‘Make sure you put anything with visible fatalities at the top of the churn,’ ordered the German. ‘We want people to see the blood.’

  ‘You heartless fuckers!’ Marc’s fists clenched in rage. ‘No one has to die for this!’

  ‘Yes they do,’ Andre replied, eying him over the top of his screen. ‘Otherwise it is for show.’ He shook his head and returned to his keyboard. ‘It has to be real.’

  ‘Get them out of here,’ said the German, beckoning to two figures in black combat gear.

  Marc saw the M4 carbines in their hands and looked up into the faces of Fox and Cat. Both of them were clad in tactical gear that bore no markings, wearing heavy boots and armoured gloves, with the same throat-mic comms rig he had seen on them during the earlier assault.

  Cat gestured with the assault rifle. Marc saw that her pupils were dilated and guess that she was dosed on painkillers to negate the effect of the injury Lucy had inflicted on her.

  Lucy, of co
urse, wasn’t about the miss the chance to remind her of that. ‘How’s the arm?’ The other woman responded by jabbing her in the gut with the M4’s barrel, and she coughed and staggered back under the blow.

  Fox shoved Marc toward a hatch in the side of the fuselage, and as he approached it thudded open, turning into a short stairway down to the tarmac outside. Marc deplaned first, pulling up the collar of his jacket at he stepped into the rain. Wind whipped around under the high wing of the Antonov and the hangar it was parked in front of, so the downpour seemed to be coming from every direction at once.

  Waiting outside were a handful of other armed men and women, all of them dressed in the same kind of black ballistic-cloth oversuits as Fox and Cat. Most wore full-face combat helmets with bulbous low-light vision units set on the brow, but a couple of them went bare-headed. Like the assassins, they were Koreans, and they shared the same hard-eyed, machine-like quality to their expressions.

  Marc looked them over as he walked. He knew their kind. Black-ops specialists, operators who worked in the margins with ruthless efficiency and robotic focus. They didn’t have the slack, casual braggadocio of most private military contractors or the world-weary and resigned manner of career soldiers. It was unsettling, the way the lenses of their helmets tracked the prisoners as they were marched toward the hangar, the silent tilt of their heads and the small motions of their hands.

  As he passed one of them, Marc tried to make eye contact, but the glassy visor remained dark and impenetrable, adding to the alien impression the operators gave off. They were talking to each other, he realised. The helmets had to have built in radio rigs, but they were sealed so that no sound could be heard by anyone outside. All the more to ensure these killers could operate in stealth and silence.

  He looked back over his shoulder at Lucy and she gave him a look that said be careful.

  Up ahead, the hangar doors were rolling open and weak yellow light spilled out. They were on the very farthest edge of the airport, close to the northerly shore of the artificial island on which it had been built. The cargo hangar was remote enough from the airport proper that Ghost5 and their allies from the DPRK would be able to work without drawing attention from the control tower. In the gloom and the rain, bad visibility would conceal them perfectly.

  The yellow glow revealed another aircraft within the cavernous shelter. Like the Antonov, it was a giant among its kind, even if the big jet still dwarfed it. Marc recognised the bullet-shaped nose and twin ducted intakes of a heavyweight transport helicopter, a Russian-made Mil Mi-26 that ran under the NATO reporting name of ‘Halo’. Eight drooping rotor blades hung over the slate-coloured fuselage, and aside from an identification number, the Halo had no distinguishing marks of any sort.

  Marc surveyed the machine as it was rolled out behind a tow-tractor, looking up to the high cockpit and wondering for a moment what it might be like to fly. His skills with helicopters, earned during service with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and later as part of MI6, were limited to aircraft of much smaller size. Anything he had flown could have fitted inside the Halo’s cargo bay and left room to spare.

  ‘What the hell is this for?’ said Lucy, from the side of her mouth.

  ‘No idea,’ Marc admitted, and he pointed at the hull. The grey shade was new and patchy in places, a sure sign that it had been applied quickly. ‘See that? Fresh paintjob. They don’t want anyone guessing where it’s from.’

  ‘You have an inkling?’

  He nodded. ‘Only two air forces in this region fly them. Russia—’

  ‘And North Korea?’ she said. ‘Must be a loaner from Kim.’

  An unmarked truck was parked deeper in the hangar, and there were a few more of the black-clad soldiers standing by the rear, loading weapons and making ready to move out. One of them strode over, carrying two helmets identical to the others, and handed them to Fox and Cat. The shooters hooded up, and becoming the same faceless automatons as the rest.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Marc demanded, staring into the blank masks. ‘Come on. You brought us in here. Speak up.’

  ‘Inside the truck.’ He turned as someone else entered the hangar behind them. Kara straightened her blood-red leather jacket and hefted a sling bag over one shoulder as she came closer. She pointed at the vehicle. ‘Get changed.’

  The silent soldiers parted to allow them to approach, and Lucy looked into the back of the vehicle. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s that or a bullet,’ snapped Kara. ‘Your choice.’

  ‘Where’s Madrigal?’ said Marc. ‘Curtain up on the finale, and she’s not around?’

  ‘She doesn’t tell me everything,’ said Kara. ‘The next stage has to be triggered before we go.’

  ‘And what’s that going to be?’ Marc fixed her with a hard look. ‘Drop a few planes out of the sky or some other shit like that?’

  ‘Power grid,’ offered Lucy. ‘Kill the electricity across the city and mass mayhem will set in.’ She glanced at Kara. ‘Am I right?’

  Kara said nothing, but her expression gave the answer. She looked away, digging inside the bag. ‘You better do what I told you.’

  ‘And what if we don’t?’ Marc took a step toward her, and Fox raised his rifle. ‘What if we tell you to go fuck yourselves?’

  ‘Lucy’s brother.’ Kara paused. ‘Madrigal will do what she said she would. End him.’

  ‘Bitch.’ Lucy ground out the word between her teeth, but at length she climbed into the back of the truck. Marc followed her, knowing that neither of them had a choice. Inside they found two sets of tactical gear identical to the outfits worn by the North Korean black-ops squad.

  ‘Get changed,’ Kara repeated, watching them from the truck’s open doors. ‘Quickly.’ Nearby, Fox and Cat turned their attention elsewhere, and Marc guessed they were listening to a radio message over their discreet comms channel.

  Lucy stripped down to her T-shirt and underwear, shrugging on the close-fitting tactical gear with the swiftness of an experienced professional. Marc followed suit, tossing aside his jacket and scuffed black jeans, stepping into the scratchy, ballistic-cloth over suit. The gear’s fit was snug, and he stretched experimentally before putting on the boots.

  He and Lucy exchanged looks. Whatever happened next, it seemed the two of them were going to be closer to it than either would have liked.

  Marc jumped down from the back of the truck and waited for Kara to make the next move. ‘Hold out your right arm,’ she ordered. He did as he was told, and from the sling bag Kara produced a device that resembled an electronic ankle tag. She snapped it into place around his wrist and he felt metal contacts on the inside face bite through the sleeve into his skin. ‘Galvanic induction,’ explained the woman, her voice carrying. ‘You try anything – you run, grab a weapon – Madrigal is going to know. That cuff will put out enough charge to drop you.’

  She moved to Lucy and put a similar device on her. ‘You really don’t feel anything about this, do you?’ said Lucy, glaring at Kara as she worked. ‘All those smiles and friendships back at Rubicon, that was an act.’

  ‘Everything people do is an act,’ Kara said, distractedly.

  ‘Was it like that when you were with him?’ Marc threw out the question, deliberately fishing for a response. ‘The numbers, Kara.’ He saw the bracelet tattoos in his mind’s eye again, and the image of them shifted, became clear. ‘The numbers that are letters . . . Yeah. I think I got it.’

  She walked back toward him, glancing nervously toward Fox, Cat and the other silent soldiers. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘A and W,’ he went on. ‘I just figured it out. Alexander Wetherby. Obvious, when you think about it. The ink . . . People don’t make that a part of themselves unless there is a deeper meaning behind it. Not unless they—’

  ‘Don’t say it.’ For one brief moment, Kara’s expression shifted back to that of the vulnerable, real, human person he thought he knew. ‘Don’t say love. You don�
�t get it.’ He saw pain and regret in her eyes, and then it vanished as a mask of indifference fell back into place.

  ‘The other letters. W, F and S.’ He stared at her. ‘That’s you, isn’t it? Song. The person you used to be.’

  ‘Wong Fei Song is the name I was born with. It’s who I always was,’ she corrected. Kara thrust an armour vest into Lucy’s arms and tossed her a small radio earpiece. ‘Put those on. Do what Madrigal tells you.’ She turned to Marc with the same items for him, but rather than hand them over, she put the vest on his shoulders and fastened it herself. It rested uncomfortably there, pressing into his ribs, as if something wasn’t fitting correctly. Before he could stop her, Kara leaned close and looped the radio unit over his earlobe.

  Her lips were very close to his face, and when she whispered to him, he could barely hear her. ‘This is all I could do,’ she said quietly.

  What hell did that mean? She pulled away before he could question her.

  Marc watched Kara jog back toward the parked Antonov. By now the Halo had been hauled out on to the apron in front of the hangar, and the running lights blinked on as the helicopter started up. The silent black ops troops began to board via a hatch at the rear.

  Fox pointed toward the Halo, and reluctantly Marc started walking. ‘I guess we don’t get helmets,’ said Lucy, coming up alongside him.

  ‘She wants someone to be seen,’ he told her. ‘We’re the lucky marks who get to be the faces caught on camera, yeah?’

  Lucy filed that thought away without comment. ‘Any time you want to dazzle me with some clever improvised plan, go right ahead.’

  ‘What, you can’t come up with an idea on the fly for a change?’

  She managed a smirk. ‘I shoot stuff and I hit people. You’re supposed to be the smart one.’

  There was a click from the comms gear and Madrigal’s voice was in their ears. ‘Cute. You two should get a room.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Marc spat reflexively, his mood darkening.