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

And there’ll be no problem with the identification. I can just set the Reaper’s transponder to squawk emergency, 7700, and that’ll make it stand out like a dog’s balls on any radar set that can see it.’

‘Do it,’ Gordon said, pulling out his mobile phone. ‘Do it right now.’

Chapter 77

Fort Drum, Jefferson County, New York, United States of America

The so-called ‘rogue’ Reaper touched down entirely without drama on runway 21 at Fort Drum’s Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield a little over three hours later, its weapons payload intact and undamaged.

The emergency squawk had allowed a completely faultless and easy identification of the UAV while it was still as far south as Baltimore. The handover had involved a prolonged telephone conversation between Lewis Gordon and Major Oscar Paulson. It was a most unusual situation, and the worst-case scenario would have seen the handover to the GCS at Fort Drum failing and the Predator continuing, entirely out of control, before crashing somewhere in a ball of flame. Eventually, the best solution they could come up with was to engage the drone’s autopilot again, keep it at 45,000 feet and steer it due east. That way, if Fort Drum couldn’t establish control, the UAV would simply fly out over the Atlantic Ocean and continue heading east until it finally ran out of fuel.

When Morgan shut down the computers in the improvised control suite, an action that would sever their communication with the Reaper, there followed an anxious three or four minutes while Paulson’s men attempted to establish a link with it.

And when Paulson came back on the line and uttered a simple three-word sentence: ‘We have control,’ the house at Fairview erupted into cheers and clapping.

Chapter 78

United States of America

Ben Morgan acquired something of a souvenir from the house at Fairview. The FBI team had searched the bodies of Mahdi Sadir and the two anonymous Chinese males and had recovered what appeared to be insulin vials and testing and injection equipment from Sadir’s corpse. None of them actually believed the Iraqi had been a diabetic and, even if he had been, he certainly wasn’t going to need insulin now.

‘This could be important,’ Morgan had said to Lewis Gordon, and explained what had happened back in the UK with the deaths of the SAS soldiers and the terrorist while in custody. ‘I think this is probably what Sadir used to poison those men, and I’d like to take some of these vials back with me. Porton Down might find the contents interesting.’

‘Fine with me,’ Gordon had replied. ‘I’ll send a couple to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, out in Atlanta, and maybe a couple to Fort Detrick right here in Maryland. They’re both in the dangerous bugs business, one way or the other.’

The damage in Washington was both extensive and expensive to rectify, the high-powered NNEMP devices working with remarkable efficiency. Something like half the cars and other vehicles on the streets had ground to a halt as their electrical systems burnt out, buildings suffered failures of lighting, air conditioning and elevators, and the vast majority of computerised systems and almost anything that incorporated electronic circuits were severely damaged or destroyed. The clean-up would take a long time and cost a lot of money.

But on the plus side, the loss of life had been minimal, less than twenty people having been killed by the explosions of the devices and another thirty-five or so injured, while a further dozen had died in related traffic accidents and the like. All in all, fewer than one hundred citizens of Washington had died or been injured as a result of the NNEMP attack. Of course, that didn’t stop the papers and the media savaging the police, the armed forces, the government and anybody else they could think of to blame for what had happened. But no details of the so nearly successful but ultimately aborted Predator attack were released, or ever would be.

The three hackers whose actions had caused the initial blackouts in DC – Karim Ganem, Jamal Halabi and Talat Wasem – were all arrested by American police officers and charged with numerous offences relating to cybercrime and held in custody pending their trials. All would eventually be found guilty and receive a combined total of 187 years behind bars.

The identities of the people who had fabricated the NNEMP weapons were never established, and no arrests were made.

Ben Morgan, Natasha Black and Barbara Simpson received the grateful thanks of the American government for what they had done, individually and collectively, to help thwart the attack. The only tangible benefits they received were three upgrades to first class for their flights across the Atlantic back to London Heathrow and home.

Chapter 79

Two months later

Southern Iraq

Rashid had weathered the storm caused by the failure of Mahdi Sadir’s ambitious attempt to strike back at America, but only just.

It wasn’t the fact that the attack had failed that had caused such despair in the hierarchy of the Islamic State. It was the fact that they had committed the bulk of their treasury to the purchase of hundreds of thousands of put options, all of which had expired worthless when the stock markets around the world had failed to collapse. Because he had been so certain that the attack would succeed, Rashid was blamed publicly and privately for what had happened, his judgement had been called into question and his position in the hierarchy hotly disputed.

But he had survived. And he knew there would be other attacks, and other shahids, and other opportunities to bloody the arrogant face of the Great Satan. It was just a matter of picking a suitable target and devising a method – a simple one, with few opportunities for it to fail – and a date to carry it out. Recruiting the shahids would probably be the easiest part of the entire operation.

In the meantime, Rashid decided that he would maintain a low profile, and not get involved too deeply with any other operations