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

city. One is probably going to the bend in the road near St Luke’s Church, because that’s the closest we could get to the base. Because a vehicle stopped there might look suspicious because there’s nothing in the area, nowhere for people to walk to, we’re going to stage a breakdown. We’ll back the vehicle off the road so that the back doors are pointing towards the target, then we’ll jack up one side of it and take off one of the wheels. That way anyone who sees it will assume we’ve just had a flat and taken the wheel away to have a puncture repaired.

‘The other two will be a lot easier because there are plenty of car parks in the vicinity of both locations, so we’ll just pick one where we can correctly position the van. Then we can just lock it and leave it. The other three slightly smaller weapons we’ll be leaving wherever we can find space around the centre of the city. We have got ideal locations already planned, but it will depend upon what’s already in the area when we arrive. If something is parked in one of the spots we planned, we’ll just find another suitable location as close as possible to it. But the positioning isn’t that critical, because the weapons are big enough to do what we want them to do more or less wherever they go.’

Sadir spent about another half hour checking and inspecting what the three men had done for their part of the operation, then confirmed that the final component of this part of the plan, the slightly different seventh weapon, was also fully prepared and ready to go. That was the smallest of all the devices, because Sadir had already identified a suitable detonation point and the weapon would be deployed against a relatively small target at a fairly short distance. And because it was intended to work independently of the other six, it had its own separate detonation system, not linked to the other weapons. It was also different in that Sadir intended to deploy it himself, and also initiate the firing sequence.

‘You’re a strong man,’ Ramli said, looking at the width of Sadir’s shoulders, ‘so you should be able to manage this without any help.’

He led the way over to another bench in the workshop where a visually similar but significantly smaller device was positioned.

‘As with the others, there are three main components: the steel jacket, the stator winding that fits inside it and the battery, and as long as you move them individually it shouldn’t be a problem. The steel jacket is the heaviest, so give that a try now.’

Sadir braced his feet slightly apart, got a good grip on the tubular steel jacket and lifted. It was heavier than he expected, but he was able to raise it clear of the bench, walk a few paces with it and then return it to its original location.

‘I can manage that,’ he said, panting slightly. ‘And have you also prepared the cover?’

Ramli nodded and picked a waterproof sheet off a nearby shelf. It bore an obvious camouflage pattern, grey and green and brown random splodges covering it. He also picked up about a dozen steel pegs and a wooden mallet.

‘You told us you were positioning this in a woodland setting. My advice would be to hide it in the densest undergrowth you can find, cover it with this sheet and then use these pegs to hold the sheet in place. That way, nobody will have any idea it’s there until the moment you trigger it. I suggest you try and drive the pegs home just with your feet, but if you can’t, use the wooden mallet. Wood on steel is a lot less noisy than steel on steel.’

About an hour later, Sadir left the house, the seventh weapon separated into its component parts and locked in the back of his Honda, entirely satisfied that everything had proceeded according to plan.

Still he worried all the way back to the parking garage in Washington that something would go wrong, that something he had not foreseen would somehow prevent the crippling attack on the Great Satan from going ahead. But by the time he reached his hotel room he felt better, calmer, and more certain that he was in control of his own destiny and that the operation was going to succeed.

He prepared a draft email using the web-based account he had set up. In it, he explained to the elders back in Iraq who would be reading it later that night exactly what progress he had made in the various phases of the operation and confirmed the date of the attack and the time it would be launched. That was important, because from the start this had been a costly enterprise, and as well as crippling America the elders also intended to reap as large a profit as they could from the event, just as Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda had done because of the 9/11 attacks. Back in 2001, al-Qaeda had used proxies to purchase large numbers of put options, mainly on American airline stocks, knowing that their value would fall calamitously once the method and the full extent of the attack had been realised.

This time, proxies would again be used to do the same thing, but not simply on airline stocks. Once this attack had been carried out Sadir expected that there would be massive and prolonged falls across every sector of the market. And not just in America. He guessed that once news of the attack was made public stock markets around the world would go into freefall within a matter of minutes. He had no doubt that the elders would also be buying put options in all of the major exchanges.

Chapter 33

J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America

‘I’m not entirely sure why you’re here,’ Grant Rogers said, looking across the table in the small interview room at Ben