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

wondering how much longer you’re going to take with this fairly simple exercise,’ he replied.

‘As long as it takes, Sammy. You know I always do a good job.’

In fact, Sami Dawood was keeping a very close eye on the time, but also on the progress of the exercise, which he did as a matter of routine for every training mission that he planned and supervised.

But on that day he was working to a rather different deadline, one that he knew would explosively mark the end of his military career in America, as well as end the lives of an extraordinarily large number of citizens in Washington D.C.

And what he was waiting for right then was a call or maybe a text message from the Iraqi freedom fighter he knew only as Abū Tadmir. A message that would tell him the final preparation, the final link, was now in place and that he could move on to his own personal endgame. What he would do then would ensure that his name would be revered throughout Islamic history as one of the greatest shahids of all time.

Chapter 49

South Capitol Street Heliport, Washington D.C., and Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America

The drive to the heliport, which on a normal day and in normal traffic conditions would have taken about ten minutes, maybe even less depending on how you caught the traffic lights, took them almost half an hour. The taxi Rogers had hailed on the street got jammed almost as soon as they moved off, and after remaining stationary for about five minutes, the two men got out and walked.

Then Morgan spotted a police car with an officer at the wheel, half on and half off the pavement at the end of D Street, and they jogged over to it. Rogers produced his FBI credentials and a few seconds later they were on the move, the driver clearing a path with its lights and siren. Even so, they had to double back a couple of times and take to the side roads to avoid streets that were completely jammed with stationary vehicles.

And all the way Morgan fretted that they were losing too much time as the unknown and unknowable deadline drew invisibly closer. He wondered if the blackouts and the inevitable chaos that had followed as the traffic lights stopped working had been specifically intended to frustrate the movement of law enforcement personnel trying to locate and arrest Sadir. But realistically, he knew that there had to be much more to the blackouts than that.

As the police car pulled up on the street outside the heliport, the growl of its siren dying away to a whimper, a black painted helicopter dropped out of the sky and settled onto one of the parking spots, its metal skids separating slightly as the weight came off the rotor.

‘That’s our ride,’ Rogers said. He thanked the police officer for getting them to the heliport about as fast as anybody could have done in the circumstances, and then they strode quickly to the entrance.

Inside, William Clark was already waiting for them, holding what looked like a sports bag but which he opened to reveal a couple of Iridium satellite phones, two Glock 23s in .40 S&W calibre with belt holsters and an unopened box of .40 cal ammunition. Although the 9mm Glock 17 and 19 are extremely popular personal weapons in America, the FBI and many American police forces have opted for the heavier calibre Glock 23 because the .40 calibre S&W ammunition offers much better stopping power than the smaller round. No law enforcement officer ever wants to shoot a suspect, but every law enforcement officer also wants to be certain that if he does have to fire, the person he’s shooting at will be taking no further part in the proceedings after being hit. The 9mm round simply does not possess sufficient kinetic energy to always ensure that this will happen.

Rogers glanced in the bag and nodded. ‘Good thinking. I’m a big fan of redundancy, and you can never have too many guns.’

Clark had grabbed a Bureau car and caught a break with the traffic, getting down as far as the junction of 4th Street with M Street in the Southwest Waterfront district before he reached the end of another jam, and even then the lights and siren fitted to the FBI Suburban meant that he had been able to keep moving, albeit slowly.

As soon as the pilot of the Bell 407 gave the appropriate signal to the ground marshaller, the three men ducked involuntarily under the rotor disc, as everybody approaching a running helicopter always does, and then climbed into the back of the THU chopper. They sat down, strapped in and pulled on headsets so they could hear each other above the roar of the Allison turboshaft.

The Tactical Helicopter Unit is the FBI’s elite rotary wing division, attached to the equally elite HRT, the Hostage Rescue Team, and employs some of the most highly skilled helicopter pilots in the world, trained to fly in all weathers, in all conditions, and in all possible locations including tight spots that most regular chopper pilots wouldn’t even consider landing in. The hop from the heliport to Bel Air was hardly going to be the most taxing flight that particular pilot had ever made.

‘No news yet from Woodstock or Harrisonburg,’ William Clark said to Grant Rogers.

‘But the local police are mobile, yes?’ Rogers asked.

‘Yes. I think the biggest problem is that while, thanks to Mr Morgan here, we’ve had triangulation of their locations, that only indicates the buildings they were in, not the actual apartments, and checking the map it looks to me as if they probably are in apartment buildings. It’ll just take time to look at everyone in each block and haul out the suspects. And from what you said, they might already have headed for the hills, so we may already be too late.’

‘We might still get them,’ Rogers replied, ‘even