Cyberstrike, James Barrington [short story to read .TXT] 📗

Of course, he himself had no way of telling whether or not the devices had worked, but he had no reason to suppose that they hadn’t. One way or the other, he would find out soon enough when the Reaper began its final approach towards Washington D.C.

Because now it was time to raise the curtain for the grand finale.

Chapter 61

Forest Hill, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

‘We’re missing something here, Grant,’ Morgan said. ‘Sadir had to use an EMP weapon at Syracuse to permanently knock out the ground communications with the Reaper so he could take control of it. But that’s only half the story. You told me that DC is well protected, with layered defences from fighter jets on standby all the way down to half-inch machine guns mounted in turrets on the tops of buildings, so well before that drone gets anywhere near the city somebody sitting at a radar set will notice, hit the panic button and punch a fighter or two into the air.’

‘Shit,’ Rogers muttered, immediately seeing what Morgan was driving at. ‘He must have planted another electromagnetic bomb back in DC.’

‘Not bomb,’ Morgan said, ‘but bombs. These devices have a fairly limited radius of action so he’d need several to take out enough of the city’s defences to give him a clear run for his attack. At the very least, he’d need to hit Andrews and Ronald Reagan and maybe Dulles as well to take out their radar systems, and to cripple any fighters on the ground.’

Rogers nodded, picked a name from the contact list on his mobile and rang the number. Then he shook his head, tried another, and then a third.

‘Number unobtainable,’ he said. ‘That’s the Hoover building and the base operator and the command post out at Andrews. This bastard’s already done it, hasn’t he? He’s already triggered the weapons.’

‘Which means the Reaper is probably already on its attack run,’ Gordon said, his earlier doubts about Morgan’s hypothesis clearly dispelled. ‘We need to move now.’

Chapter 62

Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

Mahdi Sadir had trained as a private pilot at an airfield in Spain where the weather could be guaranteed and had been awarded a EASA – European Aviation Safety Agency – private pilot’s licence, a PPL, allowing him to fly SEP – single engine piston – aircraft. That had been almost five years earlier, and since then he had hired aircraft on an irregular basis depending upon where he was in the world, just to keep his licence current and, much more importantly, to keep his piloting skills as sharp as possible. He now had over a hundred flying hours under his belt and could confidently follow the somewhat clichéd but vital axiom drilled into every pilot, to aviate, navigate and communicate, actions that applied to routine flying as well as what to do in an emergency. That meant he could take off, fly a route and land most fixed wing aircraft powered by a single piston engine and talk intelligibly to air traffic controllers while he did so.

But despite his familiarity with aircraft not dissimilar in size, shape and performance to the Reaper, he was finding controlling the UAV to be a far from easy task. In something like a Piper PA-28 Cherokee, an aircraft he had flown many times, he had unrivalled visibility and controls that responded to the slightest touch. And, more importantly, whenever he moved the control column or the rudder pedals he would actually be able to feel the effect of his actions through the seat: the changes in the effect of gravity when climbing or descending and of centrifugal and centripetal force when turning or manoeuvring. Somebody had once told him that that was where the expression ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ had come from.

But on the Reaper, there were obviously no physical sensations at all, no matter what he did with the controls, and his view forward was extremely restricted, limited to what the camera in the nose of the drone could see and display on the screen in front of him. So while he’d been sitting in the middle seat of the control suite that the two Chinese hackers had designed and built, for most of the time he’d been content to leave the UAV on autopilot, flying in a straight line at a steady speed and maintaining the same height, while he made his preparations for the attack.

He was able to plot the drone’s progress thanks to its GPS and INS – inertial navigation system – feeds displayed on a second computer screen, on which he had also overlaid the track that he wanted the Reaper to follow. The other thing he had done since he had shot Michael in the back was to access the weapon control module on the UAV to make sure that he had control over the Hellfire missiles and the bombs. He wouldn’t, of course, need to do any specific targeting – any old street full of people in Washington D.C. would do nicely – but he did need to make sure he could release the weapons when he needed to do so. And as far as he could see, that would be no problem. The now deceased Michael and Joseph had obviously done a very professional and comprehensive job, giving him control of all the functions of the fully-armed UAV.

Sadir switched his attention back to the mapping screen, where the symbol representing the Reaper’s position was still following the original straight-line track towards the private airfield where the Chinese delegation was waiting to receive it. The symbol was approaching the alternative track that he had input himself, the track that terminated in the heart of Washington D.C. He waited a few more seconds, then adjusted the autopilot, moving the desired heading through ninety degrees to track south-east.

Within a matter of minutes, the drone would be in a position to release the first of its bombs. And then