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

‘So we’re looking at a murder,’ Dave North said flatly.

Chapter 7

River Thames, London

Neither Hassan nor Khalid knew much about boat handling or had had much experience on the water, and the heavily laden cabin cruiser, the mass of improvised explosives causing it to ride much lower in the water than it should have done, was something of a handful on the fairly choppy waters of the Thames. Hassan worked the throttle to keep the speed high enough to more or less match that of the other traffic on the river, but slow enough that he remained in control of the vessel.

Khalid sat beside him in the stern cockpit, the fully loaded Kalashnikov AK-47, the weapon intended to ensure their mission was neither interfered with nor compromised, resting on the seat beside him and covered by a blanket.

In the event, they seemed to have attracted no unwelcome attention at all, and at just after two o’clock in the afternoon the cabin cruiser passed under Battersea Bridge. As it did so, Hassan picked up the mobile phone from the dashboard in front of him and dialled a mobile number from memory. Just like the phone he was using, the number he called belonged to a burner, an unregistered mobile.

His call was answered almost immediately.

‘As-salamu alaykum, Hassan,’ Mahdi Sadir said, the Arabic greeting meaning ‘peace be upon you.’ He knew exactly who was calling him because only Hassan knew that number. The other two cell members had a different number to contact him on.

‘Ma’a salama, Abū Tadmir,’ Hassan replied: ‘go in peace,’ a standard response. ‘We are on track and on time. We have just passed Battersea Bridge. River traffic is light, and we do not expect any delays.’

‘You have done well, my brother,’ Sadir said. ‘I do not expect to hear from you again. Allāhu akbar.’

‘Allāhu akbar,’ Hassan echoed, his voice rising in fervour as he said the words and ended the call.

‘We now have,’ he said to Khalid, putting down the mobile and again looking at the chart of the river he had mounted in front of him, ‘just over one mile to go. We have three more bridges to pass underneath before the river straightens up to take us direct to our target. Then there is the last bridge, Lambeth Bridge, and we must make our preparations and say our final prayers before we reach it. When we pass under that bridge we will be able to see our target coming into view ahead of us, and by then we must be ready. Completely prepared in all respects.’

‘Nothing can stop us now,’ Khalid said confidently. ‘Our action will bring London to its knees and send an unmistakable message of defiance to the Great Satan.’

‘We will prevail,’ Hassan concurred. ‘But we are not in position yet and there is still some distance to go. Keep alert and be prepared to react at a moment’s notice.’

Khalid nodded and reached down to rest his hand on the blanket concealing the Kalashnikov.

‘You can rely on me, my brother.’

Chapter 8

Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London

‘There’s no doubt about that,’ Morgan agreed. ‘But that does pose a lot of questions, beginning with how and who and why. Like how did he get infected – if that’s the right word in this case – and how was he able to fly the helicopter as far as he did? Why didn’t the drugs take effect a hell of a lot sooner? And that’s only the start.’

‘I might be able to help about the timing,’ North said. ‘If what the medical people found so far is accurate, then the payload was this lethal chemical cocktail and it was carried in the buckyballs. One of the medics suggested they must have been constructed so that they would dissolve a certain number of hours or even days or weeks after being administered, or maybe even because of some trigger.’

‘If there had been a trigger,’ Natasha Black pointed out, ‘the medics would probably have found it. We’re talking about something like a spike in one element of blood chemistry, something to start a reaction. For example, there’s a new treatment for diabetics involving nanoparticles that hold insulin but also a glucose-specific enzyme. When the level of glucose in the blood reaches a certain level, the enzyme starts to dissolve, which releases the insulin. The glucose level drops, the enzyme stops dissolving and the release of insulin stops, so it’s self-regulating. That’s the kind of trigger I mean. There are changes in blood chemistry at different altitudes, but these are quite slow and mild and you need to be a lot higher than most helicopters fly to even notice them. So I doubt there was a trigger. I think this was a timed release that just happened to take place while he was in the air.’

‘The nanoparticles can be made to dissolve with that accurate a degree of timing?’ Dame Janet asked.

‘According to what I’ve read,’ Natasha replied, ‘they can be prepped to dissolve anything from a few seconds to months after being administered. But I don’t know too much about this subject.’

‘Yeah, right,’ North said. ‘Anyway, at least we now know what killed O’Brien and how. Because this is such a new field, nobody really knows what can be done and what can’t, but that looks the most likely explanation.’

‘If you’re right about this,’ Dame Janet observed, ‘it sounds like there’s somebody out there who’s managed to turn nanotechnology into a weapon. But as far as I can see it’s nothing to do with C-TAC. Or do you know something we don’t?’

‘Probably not,’ North admitted, ‘but it is weird. And whoever did it nearly killed me, so it’s become kind of personal. But there’s nothing much I can do about it. I’m a soldier, of a sort, and I have this limitation: if it’s not big enough for me to shoot I kind of run out of ideas about how to deal with it.’

‘Hang on a