The Rift by Rachel Lynch (good book recommendations txt) 📕

The building was overly warm, but he didn’t mind; he was used to more heat than a Paris summer threatened. He greeted the three men working quietly at desks. The final design was ready to fly, and there was an excited charge to the atmosphere. Ahmad approached the desk of the man who was adjusting some final touches to a quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It was the size of a football and weighed three kilos. It had four arms, each with three tiny rotor blades. The technology had been in wide circulation for years, but it had been ISIS that first used them as weapons in Syria, to attack Russian forces successfully. Russia, in return, was scrambling to create their own force of armed UAVs to tackle the growing threat. All it involved was taking a small UAV that any hobbyist could order from the internet, and arming it. However, this quadcopter went one step further.

Mustafa, who hadn’t been invited to the warehouse, had invented facial recognition software to be incorporated into the little machines via an on-board computer. It had taken two years for the designs to become a reality, and finally, they’d get to see one fly and perform. They were using Ahmad’s facial features to fire up the final demonstration, and the men poked fun at him, asking if he was ready to be a guinea pig.

‘As long as it isn’t armed,’ he joked. He picked up the contraption to admire it. He couldn’t believe how light it was and asked if they were sure it could do the job. The men, who each had a specific skill set, acted offended and gathered around to show Ahmad their pride and joy, pointing to the kit fitted to the device that they’d each contributed.

‘This is a DJI Mavic 2 Pro – only the best! It has a thirty-five-millimetre lens – they sell for fifteen hundred dollars.’

‘I think they’re worth a bit more now,’ said Ahmad. The men laughed.

‘How does it avoid things we don’t want it to bump into?’ Ahmad asked.

‘Here, these are the sensors. It can detect shrubbery, birds, power cables and other drones. It’s highly sensitive – let’s fly it.’

Ahmad stood with his hands on his hips. The quadcopter was placed in the middle of the floor and one of the men held a remote control.

‘What’s the range of that thing?’ Ahmad asked.

‘This is a handset, but it can be controlled via computer, and, like mobile phones, it has unlimited range when it finds a satellite.’

Ahmad raised his eyebrows and whistled. He wanted to see it in action for himself before he filmed it to send to Fawaz and his cousin.

‘Come on, then.’

The copter rose off the ground gently, and the blades made no sound at all. The tiny landing gear retracted, and it flew up to the ceiling but stopped suddenly.

‘Was that you?’ Ahmad asked.

‘No, it registered the ceiling.’

It flew around easily, and Ahmad gazed in wonder at the grace of it. There was a mixture of expressions and gestures, all appropriate and expected from a group of men playing with a toy, except this plaything happened to be deadly.

‘I’m activating the facial recognition now,’ the controller said. It was a solemn announcement, and everybody hushed. Ahmad looked at the flying device and waited. There was a pause as the aircraft hovered in the air. Its movement caught them by surprise and it made its way around the room over their heads. Within seconds it had moved towards Ahmad, and he stepped back. It kept coming and stopped about a foot from his face. He felt the wind whip from the propellers and smiled. Only now could he hear a slight rumbling buzz from the motor. A red light appeared on the front of its main body.

‘It’s armed.’

‘What happens now?’ asked Ahmad.

‘It will be programmed to explode when the red light goes on after facial recognition is confirmed.’

‘How much explosive is needed and can it carry it?’ Ahmad asked.

‘About the size of half a pack of butter and we’re loading nails in there too.’

‘Excellent. Do it again, I want to film it,’ Ahmad ordered.

Chapter 48

Twenty armed police surrounded the entrance to the garage. Three went up to the roof to secure any escape routes as Helen and Sylvia watched on their screens. Several raids were happening simultaneously. This one, on the garage where the lorry had pulled in after its long journey from Marseilles, and others on the addresses supplied by Farid to Helen. They’d moved to a control room downstairs that could handle the volume of simultaneous material. Six screens filled the wall and each had live footage of the progress of the Gendarmerie Nationale armed response units.

‘What’s the latest?’ Helen asked Sylvia.

‘There’s been no activity around the property since surveillance was set up,’ Sylvia said.

‘Shit, do you think we missed them somehow?’ Helen asked.

Last night, she and Grant had waited in the shadows, watching the lorry pull into the garage and the doors close behind it. It couldn’t have gone anywhere else. It was while they were sat outside the building that she’d brought him around to the idea that they needed to join forces on this. Khalil could be talked round. The fact was that neither of them knew where his son was, but with shared effort and cooperation, they had a better chance of finding him alive. They had to work together to find Hakim, as they only had the precious little time until Peter Knowles and his team had no option but to move in and take Fawaz down, even if Hakim still hadn’t been found.

Of course, they both knew that Interpol would go ahead regardless of having Khalil on board or not. They didn’t need his blessing to do their jobs, but they’d much rather he was on their side and not trying to deal with Fawaz alone.

Helen and Grant were creatures cut from the same cloth: their