Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

anyway – and we’ve established Sadir’s role. But we have no idea who the other two people are or what they’re doing, and we certainly don’t have probable cause to do anything more than interview them. Maybe we’ll get around to doing that when this is all over. But right now, I’m certain the danger is Sadir and whatever nasty little plan he’s concocted, and that’s what we need to get sorted.’

‘Okay,’ Gordon said, standing up, ‘let’s move it.’

Chapter 54

Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

Joseph, sitting on Sadir’s left, suddenly stood up, emitted a kind of strangled gasp and fell backwards, bouncing off the arm of the swivel chair he’d been sitting in and sending it sliding across the carpeted floor towards the back wall of the room. Sadir had seen the effect of his lethal nanobot cocktail numerous times and knew beyond doubt that Joseph was already dead. That just left Michael to deal with.

‘Joseph!’ Michael called out, springing from his own chair and stepping over to try to assist his friend and colleague.

Sadir also stood up, glanced across at Michael’s half-empty glass and realised he would need to assist the process of the Chinese man’s imminent death, and that he needed to act immediately.

As Michael bent over and tried in vain to revive his friend, Sadir reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a fully loaded Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol fitted with an Obsidian9 suppressor, an expensive unit optimised, as its name suggested, for the 9mm Parabellum round, the most popular handgun and submachinegun cartridge in the world.

It was a point-blank range shot.

Michael turned his head slightly to look at Sadir and opened his mouth, perhaps to call for help, and at that moment the Iraqi pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was like a hard slap, completely inaudible outside that room, but the effect on Michael was instant, dramatic and terminal.

The 9mm Parabellum bullet is not renowned for its stopping power, but at that range it didn’t matter. The copper-jacketed slug tore into the upper left-hand side of the man’s back at around nine hundred miles an hour, missing the spinal column by a couple of inches. It passed between two of his ribs and ploughed through his heart and right lung.

Michael slumped to the floor, not quite dead but fatally wounded, a hoarse scream erupting from his throat. His agony was short lived as Sadir pulled the trigger a second time, the bullet hitting his back only a couple of inches away from the first wound, and then a third time. But for that final shot, the Iraqi altered his aim and shot Michael in the side of the head. That’s when he finally stopped moaning and stopped moving.

Sadir stared down for a few seconds, looking dispassionately at his two victims. They were not the first people who had died at his hands, and as the events of this day were going to prove, they were certainly not going to be the last.

Chapter 55

Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

When they stepped back into the foyer, Ben Morgan was using his mobile, and held up his hand to Rogers as he ended the call.

‘I’ve had Natasha Black on the horn again,’ he said. ‘Something’s been happening up at Syracuse. The GCHQ monitoring system reports that Sadir sent his contact there a message in English about twenty minutes ago. The message read: “Log-on problems. Contact now established. Execute.” Three minutes later his contact at Syracuse texted him back. That message read: “Execution complete. Allāhu akbar”, and then that mobile shut down. So something’s going on there.’

‘What?’ Rogers asked.

‘I have no idea. About two minutes after that, Sadir rang another mobile number, but his call wasn’t answered because that phone went off the air almost immediately, and not long enough for GCHQ to get a confirmed location. But the initial trace suggested it was somewhere near Syracuse, certainly within about a fifty-mile radius. That mobile is also still off the air. All that sounds to me like other parts of the plan falling into place, though I still don’t know what the plan actually is.’

Morgan’s clearly English voice immediately attracted Gordon’s attention.

‘I presume you’re this Ben Morgan character who’s managed to stick a burr a couple feet up Charles Bouchier’s ass?’

‘Guilty as charged,’ Morgan admitted. ‘But right now Bouchier is the least of my worries. That second call Sadir made worries me because he could have been activating a bomb or something by ringing a mobile attached to an IED. I can’t think of any other reason why a mobile would shut down virtually as soon as it received a call. But I have no idea why a bomb or something at Syracuse would be part of an attack on Washington. It must be three hundred miles away.’

‘Morgan is the man who’s been getting the intercepts from GCHQ through a woman called Natasha Black who’s now working at the NSA,’ Rogers clarified.

‘I kind of guessed that bit,’ Gordon said. ‘You told me that this guy out at Syracuse sent another SMS today about a flight departure, or did I get that wrong?’

Morgan responded before Rogers could answer. ‘Exactly. He quoted an ETD, an estimated time of departure, and I’ve no idea how that links to Sadir’s message about log-on problems and establishing contact. Look, I don’t know this country, obviously, but I do know there’s an airfield at Syracuse and that ETD comment must refer to an aircraft. You don’t say ETD if you’re talking about catching a bus or a train or even driving a car somewhere.’

‘Unless he was just using it as a form of shorthand,’ Gordon pointed out. ‘I mean, using ETD rather than saying “the train leaves at two” or something. You’ve just said that your whizz-kids over GCHQ could accurately triangulate the location of these mobile phones as long as they stayed connected. So where exactly at Syracuse was the first