Counterstrike

by Peter Jay Black

  A horn sounded.

  Jack turned and watched as a blue campervan pulled alongside a group of startled tourists.

  He hurried over to it and climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Hey, Noble.’

  ‘Hi.’ Noble eased the van from the kerb and drove down the Mall. ‘I’m sorry, but I have a meeting in an hour with Rindine. I think they’re tapping my phone too, so this was the safest way to tell you.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jack said. ‘Does that mean you’ve found something?’

  ‘I’ve got some good news.’ Noble handed Jack a piece of paper.

  Jack unfolded it. It was a scan of a magazine article. The headline read, ‘Mystery of Cold War Prison’. He glanced at Noble. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Read it.’

  As they drove through London, Jack read the article.

  It was dated 22 November, and it was an interview with some crackpot called Cameron who claimed to have been a spy back in the sixties.

  Jack sighed and looked at Noble. ‘This guy’s nuts.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Keep reading.’

  Jack’s eyes continued down the page and then he gasped.

  Cameron also claimed he’d been held against his will in a top-secret government prison. And the name of that prison had been ‘The Facility’. Cameron wasn’t sure exactly where the Facility was located, but he knew it was under an oil refinery.

  Jack folded the paper and stared at Noble. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘I asked Rabbit on the Cerberus forum for help. He cross-referenced the term “The Facility” with all his archives, and that one article came up.’

  Jack nodded.

  Why didn’t I think of doing that?

  Rabbit had a lot in common with Obi – he believed in virtually every conspiracy theory going. Rabbit also thought that the world would end with biological weapons being unleashed on the general public. He reckoned this would happen in the next ten years, and Obi agreed with him. Rabbit fully intended to be one of the few who survived – he was already saving money to leave London.

  With Armageddon playing heavily on his mind, Rabbit had also taken it upon himself to collect every newspaper, magazine and book documenting world history. He had a vast archive – hundreds of hard drives filled with data that he’d scanned and intended to take with him to his new life. Then he’d watch the rest of the world burn from a distance.

  Noble handed Jack another piece of paper.

  Jack squinted at it. Scrawled in red biro was a name: ‘Brett Peters’.

  Jack looked up. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘That is the name of the Facility’s director.’

  Jack’s eyes widened at that. ‘Really?’

  ‘I spoke to Cameron,’ Noble said. ‘I pretended I was another reporter and said I was very interested in his story. Cameron told me that he was in the Facility from 1963 until 1990.’ Noble took a left, checked his rear-view mirror and continued. ‘1990 is when they closed the Facility as a prison and he was moved to Holloway. They finally let him out in 2005.’ Noble nodded at the paper in Jack’s hand. ‘That’s all I got from him – Brett Peters. And that he supposedly stayed on as director of the Facility after it changed its purpose.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Cameron doesn’t know.’ Noble turned down another road and said, ‘But I’m sure you’ll track him down.’

  Jack called Obi, relayed the name of the director and asked him to start gathering as much detail as he could.

  When Jack got off the phone, he looked over at Noble. ‘Do you think this guy will talk to us?’

  Noble shrugged. ‘It’s worth a shot.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jack said.

  Noble smiled. ‘You’re welcome.’

  • • •

  It was just gone noon by the time Jack returned to the bunker. Slink and Wren were still playing on the racing game.

  Wren was laughing while Slink looked red-faced and angry.

  ‘Do you keep losing?’ Jack asked him.

  ‘He hasn’t won a race yet,’ Wren said, with a manic giggle.

  Slink grumbled under his breath, went to go around a corner and his car spun out and hit a barrier. He roared in anger as Wren sailed over the finish line.

  ‘Have you two been playing that all this time?’ Jack asked. ‘You’re supposed to be relaxing.’

  ‘This is relaxing,’ Wren said. ‘Not for Slink though – he’s lost like, fifty races so far.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a cheat,’ Slink grumbled.

  ‘I am not. You’re a bad loser.’

  Jack went over to Obi. ‘Any luck finding the director?’

  ‘No.’ Obi gestured at the browser window in front of him. ‘With just a name, the births, deaths and marriages database was no help. “Brett Peters” returned, like, a million results.’

  ‘But that’s all we have to go on,’ Jack said, leaning against Obi’s chair. ‘Cameron hasn’t made this easy for us, has he?’ He let out a breath. ‘I guess that leaves us only one alternative.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Repository.’

  Obi stared at him. ‘Are you flippin’ serious? Have you forgotten what happened last time we tried to break in there?’

  ‘No, I remember,’ Jack said, rubbing his temples. ‘But we don’t have any other choice, Obi.’ He squinted at the time on the screen. ‘We’ve got until tonight to track down this guy and find out what’s in that mystery room.’ That would then give them one more day to sort out everything else.

  Breaking into the Facility had so far been about tackling one problem at a time, but time was something they were rapidly running out of.

  Jack turned to the games area. ‘Guys?’

  Slink and Wren looked over at him.

  ‘We have a major mission to do.’

  • • •

  Jack stood across the road from Dryford Square. It was sectioned off, with high brick walls topped by metal spikes and an imposing wrought iron gate. It was just starting to get dark.

  On the other side of the gate was a small building, and through the window Jack could make out two guards sitting in front of a bank of monitors.

  Beyond the gatehouse was a central green flanked by three houses on the left, three on the right and another three at the back.

  What most people in London didn’t know was that these houses were an illusion. In fact, they were actually one giant building filled with offices and conference rooms.

  Dryford was where the government’s top officials and military met to discuss covert operations and the world’s fate.

  But Jack wasn’t interested in any of that. No, what he wanted was access to the Repository – located in the basement of the Dryford complex.

  The Repository was an old-fashioned archive full of top-secret documents dating back to before World War One.

  Jack knew that details on the Facility’s old director – and maybe the Facility itself – would be in there somewhere, and all the Outlaws had to do was get inside and find them.

  His stomach clenched at the memory of the last time they’d tried that. Just over a year ago they’d needed information about a corrupt high-level policewoman who was selling inside information to criminals to help them avoid capture and prosecution.

  When Jack and the Outlaws had tried to break in, they’d failed at the front gate. Only the day before, Dryford had upgraded its security system, and by the time Charlie had built a device to overcome it, it was too late.

  Luckily the overall mission had ended in success and they’d exposed the policewoman’s activities.

  Second time lucky.

  Jack’s eyes drifted to the middle house on the left of the square. According to Noble, the way down to the basement was through that door. Jack only hoped the rumours the last time around had been right – that the old paper archives were scanned and recorded digitally. Otherwise they might as well give up now – they simply didn’t have the time to search mill
ions of physical records looking for details on the director, the Facility, or Medusa.

  A hooded figure approached Jack.

  Charlie lowered her bandana. ‘Hey, Jack.’

  ‘How’s the car coming along?’

  ‘It’s parked round the corner.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I had to check it’s working.’ She sounded defensive. ‘You wouldn’t like it if we broke down on the way to the Facility, would ya?’

  ‘Good point.’ Jack let out a puff of air. ‘Thank God something’s gone right. Anyone ever tell you you’re a miracle worker?’

  ‘Not this week.’

  Jack noticed she looked sad. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘I dunno. I suppose it’s just been tough being back at Dad’s garage, you know?’

  Jack rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘I really appreciate what you’ve done for us and I’ll do my best to make it up to you.’

  ‘You don’t owe me anything.’ Charlie looked across the road at Dryford Square. ‘You sure you want to try this again?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Did you give the device to Slink and Wren?’

  ‘Yep.’ She pulled a smartphone from her pocket and handed it to him. ‘The app you wrote is installed too. It should at least get us past the gate.’

  Jack looked at the gatehouse. In the top-left corner, where the roof met the wall, was a black box with a star logo printed on it.

  Jack raised his hood and bandana. ‘OK, guys,’ he whispered into the microphone on his headset, ‘let’s do this.’

  Two figures dressed all in black darted from a nearby alleyway, hurried across the road and over to the oak tree next to the wall. The bigger of the two jumped up and pulled himself into the lower branches. When he’d braced his feet, he turned around and helped the smaller figure up to join him.

  Jack glanced around, but he didn’t need to worry – Slink and Wren had been so fast no one had spotted them.

  He returned his attention to the tree and watched as they shimmied along a branch and over the wall. After a few moments they both dropped silently on to the roof of the gatehouse.

  Jack held his breath and peered in through the window – but the guards hadn’t heard anything.

  Slink and Wren hurried to the edge of the roof and Slink sat down. He uncoiled a rope, fixed one end through Wren’s harness and tossed the other over a thick branch above his end. He then looped the other end of the rope through his own harness and gave it a few yanks before he nodded at her.

  Without hesitation, Wren dropped over the edge of the roof and Slink lowered her down a metre or so.

  She hung in front of the black box on the wall, pulled a screwdriver from her belt and unscrewed the box’s front cover, exposing the wires inside.

  Jack glanced at Charlie. ‘You’re up.’

  Charlie pulled a sketch she’d made out of her pocket and spoke slowly and deliberately into her headset, ‘Right, Wren, follow this carefully – at the top of the box there should be a connector with . . . eight wires.’ Charlie looked up at Wren and she nodded. ‘Clip the corresponding wires to the blue, green, yellow and black ones.’

  Wren removed Charlie’s device from her hip bag and unravelled the wires. She then did as asked – clipped each wire in turn – before finally wedging the device above the alarm box and pulling up a small antenna. ‘Done,’ she breathed.

  Jack watched the guards as Slink hauled Wren back on to the roof. Then he held up the smartphone. ‘Let’s see if this works.’

  He clicked on a blue icon and the interface appeared on the screen. The app was now connected to Charlie’s device. Jack tapped the first button and heard the electronic lock on the gatehouse door click.

  One of the guards frowned, stood up and tried the door handle. He then turned to his companion with a confused expression and said something.

  The other guard picked up a phone.

  Jack pressed the second button on the app.

  The guard tried dialling several times, checked the phone was connected at the wall, then slammed it back into its cradle.

  He unclipped a mobile phone from his belt and looked at the display.

  Jack glanced up at Slink, but he’d already set up the phone signal jammer and rested it on the edge of the roof.

  Jack smiled at Charlie. His app, linked to her device, had worked perfectly. They now had complete control of Dryford Square’s security system, and the two guards were trapped in the gatehouse with no way to call for help.

  So far, so good.

  Jack looked up to the CCTV cameras on poles, pressed the next button on the app and their LED lights went out.

  He grinned. ‘You know what, Charlie? We could rule the world with this.’

  ‘Don’t get cocky, Jack,’ Charlie warned. ‘You’ll jinx it.’

  ‘OK, I’m going in.’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ Charlie said.

  As Jack crossed the road, he swiped his finger across the screen. The front gate swung open as if by a magical command, and he strode through.

  The guards watched him through narrowed eyes.

  With a feeling of calm confidence, Jack tapped the next button on the app and the light inside the gatehouse went out. ‘That’s better.’

  Slink lowered Wren to the ground and the two of them jogged over to join Jack.

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Slink said, as the three of them marched up the road together.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Jack pressed another button and the street lamps went out.

  Slink laughed and shook his head. ‘These people, controlling everything through computers . . . Well, not very clever, is it?’

  Jack nodded. Truth was, Slink was right – the more sophisticated and computer-controlled the world became, the easier it was to take command of everything once you’d hacked into it. He only hoped that once they got inside he’d find the info they needed so easily.

  Jack pressed the next few buttons on the app and several more CCTV cameras deactivated.

  He stopped and turned to the central house. It was narrow, with stone steps leading up to a front door.

  Jack glanced around, but Dryford Square was empty. He slipped the smartphone into his pocket – from here on, they wouldn’t be able to use it. ‘Follow me.’ He bounded up the steps and stopped at the front door.

  ‘Now?’ Slink whispered.

  Jack nodded and kept a lookout as he set to work.

  A couple of minutes later, the lock clicked. Slink straightened up and opened the door.

  Jack turned to him. ‘Here’s where you wait and keep an eye out.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Jack and Wren stepped into a hallway.

  There was a tiled floor, a flight of stairs leading up and a narrow hallway to the left with a door at the end. Jack put a finger to his lips and they silently crept towards it.

  Jack pressed his ear against the door, but there was no sound apart from his own blood pounding in his ears, so he opened it and peered down a flight of stone steps.

  He flicked on his torch and gestured for Wren to follow.

  At the bottom, they stepped into a vast space filled with hundreds of filing cabinets. Against the nearest wall were several computers and scanners.

  Jack hurried over to them and sat down. He fired up the nearest computer.

  LOGIN NAME:

  PASSWORD:

  Jack had neither.

  He slid a USB pen drive into the slot, rebooted the computer and used a cracking program to bypass the security.

  Once he was into the system, Jack opened the main hard drive and a search box. He typed ‘Brett Peters’ and hit Enter. A few seconds later, one result flashed up on the screen.

  ‘Well, this is easy.’ He smiled at Wren and opened the file.

  Name: Brett Peters

  DOB: 25 December 1934

  Title: Special Operations Director

  ‘It’s him.’ Jack’s eyes scanned down the page – it
listed hundreds of projects the director had been involved in since the early sixties. He’d even overseen the renovation and construction of Dryford Square.

  Towards the bottom of the page was a mention of the Facility, and below that Brett’s contact details and address in London.

  Jack was about to commit them to memory when he gasped.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ Wren asked, glancing around.

  For a few seconds Jack could hardly believe his eyes. Then the reality sank in. He groaned and pointed at the screen. ‘Look.’

  It read, ‘Status: DECEASED’.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Wren whispered. ‘The guy’s dead? This whole mission’s been a waste of time?’

  Jack couldn’t respond.

  How long ago did he die? Jack wondered. Months? Years?

  They were too late, and Wren was right – they had wasted time. Precious time they couldn’t afford right now.

  Jack was about to search for any information he could on the Facility when suddenly an alarm sounded.

  He leapt from the chair and shouted, ‘Go!’

  They raced up the stairs, back along the hallway and Jack threw open the front door, but Slink was nowhere to be seen.

  They hurried from the building and had just reached the bottom of the steps when Slink went sprinting past them.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jack called after him.

  ‘Tried to stop them getting out.’ Slink thrust a thumb over his shoulder.

  Jack looked to his right – running up the road were the two security guards.

  ‘Oh, great.’ Jack raced after Slink. ‘Come on, Wren.’

  The three of them sprinted up the road, away from the entrance, with the guards in hot pursuit.

  If they ran around the square, perhaps they could find another way out.

  Suddenly there was a loud screeching sound.

  Jack glanced over his shoulder as a car flew into Dryford Square, slid sideways then raced towards them.

  The guards shouted and leapt out of its way as it shot past.

  Jack braced himself for the impact, but as the car drew alongside them he suddenly recognised it and its occupant – it was a red Ford Escort with Charlie behind the wheel.

  She rolled down the window. ‘Get in.’

  Jack, Slink and Wren threw open the doors and dived into the car.