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

Chapter 67

Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

The two CCTV cameras mounted at the front of the detached property meant that the SWAT team would have to go in at the back, but Morgan was wondering if there was another option.

‘Maybe we should do a bit of divide and conquer,’ he suggested.

‘Meaning?’ Rogers asked.

‘There are two cars outside, and my guess is there are at least two people inside the building, maybe more than that. Before your people kick in the back door, let me go and knock at the front. If one of the occupants comes to the door, that’s one less person for your SWAT guys to cope with at the back. I can just be a lost Englishman wondering how to get to Bel Air.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because, Grant, I’m the only person here who isn’t wearing a full set of combat gear or who doesn’t look like an FBI agent.’

‘That’s true, but I don’t think—’

‘Good idea,’ Gordon interrupted, and handed Morgan a beige-coloured ballistic vest. ‘Put this on under your jacket. It’s a Modular Tactical Vest, or MTV, and it should stop anything up to a nine millimetre.’

‘That’s encouraging. Suppose he aims a forty-four magnum at me?’

‘Then I guess this isn’t your lucky day.’ Gordon’s wide grin showed a lot of very white teeth. ‘Seriously, the two guys covering the front of the house will cover you as well. If somebody carrying a bazooka opens it, they’ll take him out before he can pull the trigger. Just remember to stand well away from the door once you’ve knocked on it.’

Morgan shrugged his jacket back on over the heavy ballistic vest, nodded to Rogers and Gordon and strolled off down the road towards the target property. As he stepped off the street and started walking towards the house, he pulled out his phone and sent a text to Angela Black. It just said: ‘Call now.’

He heard the mobile ringing as he reached the house and stepped onto the porch.

He gave three sharp knocks on the door and stepped half a dozen paces to one side, to make sure he was out of the firing line of the two SWAT team snipers.

Chapter 68

Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

Sadir sat down again, and almost immediately his mobile phone began to ring. He stared at it for a few seconds in surprise, because he had thought he’d switched it off after activating the electromagnetic bombs located across DC, then shrugged and answered the call.

‘Hello?’

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ a chirpy female voice with an unusual accent said, ‘I wonder if you’ve considered changing your long-distance provider. We have some spectacular deals this month, with some of our rates slashed to less than half the normal cost. If you’re interested in seeing our tariffs we can—’

Sadir powered down his mobile and tossed it to one side. He’d received enough marketing and cold calls in the past to know that listening to them was a complete waste of time, even if you were a genuine customer, and he was a long way from being that.

A sudden movement caught his eye and he looked up at the CCTV screens on the wall. A figure was walking straight towards the front door of the house. A man, quite smartly dressed as far as he could tell from the tiny image. Probably a salesman of some sort, parking his car on the street and then going door-to-door with a pocketful of brochures and a smart line of chatter. The man rapped three times on the door and then stepped to one side, waiting expectantly.

Sadir ignored him. He switched his attention to the navigation screen for the Reaper. It showed that the drone was just inside twenty miles from the centre of Washington, and that meant it was time to initiate the final phase.

He accessed the autopilot settings and set the UAV into a powered descent to 15,000 feet, high enough to keep it out of range of the heavy machine guns that he knew were scattered on the tops of buildings throughout Washington, but low enough for him to identify suitable targets for the laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles hanging on the stores’ pylons below the Reaper’s wings. In point of fact, he had no specific targets in mind. He would simply aim the bombs and the missiles at the largest crowds he could see on the ground and then release them.

American weapons of war would be unleashed upon the civilian population of the capital city to devastating effect.

Chapter 69

Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

Special Agent Vernon Wayne had identified the ideal way in as the French doors at the back of the house which gave access to the garden. They were an obvious weak point in the property and were almost certainly where any prospective burglar would have wanted to try his luck, which was probably why the rear camera had been positioned above them. But whereas a burglar would have tried to open the doors, perhaps with a lock pick or a pry bar of some sort, the SWAT team had a rather noisier, but infinitely more effective, way of getting inside.

In fact, they had a couple of options. They could wrap plastic explosive around the lock on the doors and detonate it, which would allow them entry but might still require the doors to be pulled open and would add precious seconds to the time it would take them to get inside. So they picked the second option, to remove the glass from the doors to allow them to step straight through them.

Working as quietly as they could, two of the SWAT team taped a double length of orange Primaline 5 detonating cord, a thin, flexible plastic-covered tube of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) – high explosive – around the edges of the glass of the French doors. Detcord is a high-speed fuse normally used to trigger other explosive charges, but unlike other fuses it explodes rather