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

citizen, to burrow down into the underworld, the same as you did in South America, to try to find out what’s actually going on and who’s involved.’

‘How do you know I haven’t been radicalised?’

‘Anyone who calls a spade a bloody shovel and drinks Newcastle Brown for fun is too far gone to be converted, I’d say. I know you, Barbara. I can’t think of anybody less likely to suddenly decide that radical Islam and Sharia law are what the world really needs. Frankly, I’d be more likely to believe you if you told me you’d become a devil worshipper.’

‘Well I follow neither Mohammed nor the horned goat, Richard, so you can relax. I presume there’s a briefing document somewhere for all this, and somebody I can actually trust on the other side of the Pond?’

Boston slid a thick sealed A3 size package across the table towards her and followed it up with a much smaller but quite bulky envelope.

‘The briefing document is in the big envelope and you need to start reading through it right now, because you can’t take it with you to the States. You fly out on BA at five tomorrow, which means getting to Heathrow by early afternoon. For tonight we’ve booked you a room at the Marriott at Canary Wharf so at least you’ll be comfortable. A uniformed officer will meet you at the reception desk tomorrow at one thirty to collect the large envelope from you, and he’ll drive you to Heathrow for your flight. There’s a mobile phone inside the small envelope, with all the contacts from the briefing document already loaded in, plus a memory stick holding all the information, that’s the contacts and the briefing data. The phone and the memory stick are both password protected and the password is also in the envelope. Memorise it and then burn the slip of paper. Get the password wrong three times in a row and both devices will lock you out.’

‘Cattle class across the Pond, presumably?’

‘Regrettably, yes. Your cover, such as it is, is that you’re a tourist doing the world on a budget, so you can hardly step off the aircraft from the first-class section smelling of Bollinger and caviar. There’s five thousand US in cash in the envelope as well, plus a credit card that doesn’t have a limit. But we will need receipts for anything other than food, drink, transport and accommodation, and the bean-counters will be looking closely at meals in Michelin-starred restaurants, champagne, limousines and five-star hotels. You know the rules.’

Simpson nodded. ‘I do. Luckily I’m used to burgers, beer, buses and budget flophouses, so I’m sure I’ll feel right at home. Are you sure you don’t want me to go all the way and live as a street person?’

For a moment Boston seemed to give her question serious consideration. ‘Not unless you think it’s absolutely necessary, no. Though you could perhaps think about slipping into that persona when you start doing surveillance. Being invisible to almost everybody could be a useful tactic to employ.’

She nodded again.

‘So it’s back to the streets and the shit and the spying,’ she said.

‘It’s what you do best, Barbara.’

Simpson stared at him with a baleful expression on her face. ‘I think I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she replied, then tore open the large envelope and tipped the contents onto the table in front of her.

Chapter 3

Six days ago

Above Oxfordshire

It’s a truism that anybody can be taught to fly an aircraft, just as anybody can be taught to drive a car: the only variable is the length of the training process. Most people with some degree of natural flying ability can reach basic solo standard after about ten to fifteen hours in the air in a fixed-wing aircraft, though reaching the same level of competence in a helicopter will take a bit longer because learning how to drive an egg-beater without adding to the annual aviation accident statistics is a rather more complex process. But the majority of people can achieve a reasonable standard of proficiency in about forty-five to fifty hours.

The military doesn’t do it quite that way, as might be expected, and they take a hell of a lot longer. In the British Armed Forces, the usual route is to put wannabe pilots through a flying grading to see if there’s any chance of them making it out of the other end of the process in one piece. Then they get them up to a reasonable standard in a fixed-wing aircraft. That’s usually called something like elementary or basic flying training, and the embryo pilots emerge from that phase with just enough skill and knowledge to be dangerous to themselves and to anybody and anything else in the air. Even birds.

At that point they’re introduced to the bafflingly complex and unlikely flying machine that is the modern helicopter. Just like the bumblebee, it doesn’t look as if it should be able to fly. It’s probably also at about this point in their training that pilots are reminded that nobody actually knows how or why aircraft stay in the air. There are at least two different and mutually contradictory theories of flight, neither of which provides a complete explanation for the phenomenon.

Assuming their nerves can stand it, they then begin basic rotary wing training, intended to transition them from an aircraft with large and solid visible wings to keep it in the air to a bulbous object possessing no obvious means of support or lift apart from a rotor disk characterised by a small number of remarkably slender blades. If they get through that part of the process they move on to advanced rotary wing training and follow that up with operational training and finally conversion to type. That will familiarise them with whatever kind of helicopter is operated by their designated flight or squadron. And then they go front line, their training over.

Just as there are good drivers and bad drivers, the skill and ability of whoever is sitting