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Cyberstrike
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Cover
Title Page
Prologue 18 April 2010 Six miles south-west of Tikrit, Iraq
25 April 2010 Iraq
Chapter 1 Ten years later Vektor, Koltsovo Naukograd, Novosibirsk Oblast, Siberia, Russia
Chapter 2 Six months ago Lewisham Central, 43 Lewisham High Street, London
Chapter 3 Six days ago Above Oxfordshire
Chapter 4 Present day Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 5 River Thames, London
Chapter 6 Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 7 River Thames, London
Chapter 8 Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 9 River Thames, London
Chapter 10 Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 11 North of Lambeth Bridge, London
Chapter 12 Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 13 North of Lambeth Bridge, London
Chapter 14 Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 15 North of Lambeth Bridge, London
Chapter 16 Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Chapter 17 London
Chapter 18 Metropolitan Police Marine Policing Unit, Wapping High Street, London
Chapter 19 Heathrow, West London
Chapter 20 EDF Data Centre, London
Chapter 21 Near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
Chapter 22 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 23 Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Chapter 24 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 25 Heathrow Airport, London
Chapter 26 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 27 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 28 Tysons, Virginia, United States of America
Chapter 29 Tysons, Virginia, United States of America
Chapter 30 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 31 J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 32 Washington D.C. and Damascus, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 33 J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 34 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 35 J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 36 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 37 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 38 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 39 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 40 J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 41 4 July – Independence Day Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 42 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 43 J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 44 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 45 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 46 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 47 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 48 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 49 South Capitol Street Heliport, Washington D.C., and Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 50 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 51 Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 52 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 53 Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 54 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 55 Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 56 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 57 Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 58 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 59 Forest Hill, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 60 Washington D.C., United States of America
Chapter 61 Forest Hill, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 62 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 63 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 64 Fort Drum, Jefferson County, New York State, United States of America
Chapter 65 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 66 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 67 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 68 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 69 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 70 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 71 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 72 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 73 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 74 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 75 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 76 Fairview, Harford County, Maryland, United States of America
Chapter 77 Fort Drum, Jefferson County, New York, United States of America
Chapter 78 United States of America
Chapter 79 Two months later Southern Iraq
Author’s Note SINCGARS
Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt and the GAU-8/A Avenger
Abū Omar al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi
A kunya
Vektor, Gosudarstvennyy Nauchnyy Tsentr Virusologii I Biotekhnologii (Vector, Russian State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology) Koltsovo Naukograd, Novosibirsk Oblast, Siberia, Russia
Theory of flight
Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing (JSFAW)
Hawala
Allāhu akbar
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division
Task Force Black
Anonymous
Donald Trump and the US Federal Depository Library website
Nanotechnology
Panhandler/panhandling
Security clearances and SCI – Special Compartmented Intelligence/Information
Independence Day and the Declaration of Independence
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones
SSR Secondary Surveillance Radar
Hijacking or taking over a drone
Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapon (NNEMP)
Acknowledgements
The Ben Morgan Thrillers
About the Authors
Also by James Barrington and Richar
d Benham
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Prologue
18 April 2010
Six miles south-west of Tikrit, Iraq
It’s not easy to kill a man who doesn’t exist, but Captain Nick Montana and the Allied soldiers under his command were going to try.
The name Abū Omar al-Baghdadi had drifted in and out of reality in Iraq for most of the previous decade. Sometimes he was acknowledged as a real and active flesh and blood terrorist, but at other times he seemed to be something more akin to a mythical Robin Hood character, an insubstantial holy warrior-like image created to inspire and rally the forces of radical Islam.
But whatever the truth about this elusive figure, the previous day the coalition forces surrounding the isolated ISI – Islamic State of Iraq – safe house about six miles outside Tikrit had received solid intelligence that stated the man – or a man the informant had claimed to be Abū Omar al-Baghdadi, which wasn’t precisely the same thing – was somewhere inside the building. And the chance of either killing him or laying his ghost to rest was too good to miss.
Attacking a compound comprising a large house inside a stone boundary wall, a house that was known to be occupied by heavily armed ISI fighters, was a potential recipe for suicide, so the American and Iraqi soldiers surrounding the building weren’t going to just amble over and knock on the door. Or even strafe it with machine-gun fire. They had an entirely different plan in place.
The two senior officers of the coalition force were lying side by side under cover just over two hundred yards away, studying the building through binoculars.
The word ‘desert’ reached the English language – late Middle English, to be precise – either from the French word deserter, which was itself derived from desertare in late Latin and originally from desertus, or possibly direct from the ecclesiastical Latin dēsertum, a participle of the verb dēserere, meaning ‘to abandon’. Originally, the word meant ‘an abandoned place’ in the sense that it was not occupied by people, hence ‘deserted’, but over the last century or so it has acquired its present meaning: an arid and usually sandy expanse of land.
And that was precisely what the two military officers, and all the soldiers under their command, were looking at. The terrain in front of their position was virtually devoid of vegetation, just the occasional stunted tree or bush that was somehow clinging on to life in the harsh environment. The ground was a mixture of sand and rock, the latter fortunately providing numerous places where the soldiers had been able to conceal themselves before the attack commenced, and which would provide a bare minimum of cover when they began their advance.
Beyond that area of largely level ground a large solid stone house, flat roofed and with small windows and two wooden doors visible from the vantage point chosen by the officers, sat inside a stone boundary wall about five feet high which entirely enclosed it. There were at least two gates that pierced the wall but the coalition troops had no intention of using them until most of the resistance had been suppressed. The stone of the building and the wall were the same whitish-grey colour as the rocky outcrops in the vicinity, and no doubt the building had originally been constructed from stones cut from the bedrock in that area. It looked completely solid and was by any sensible definition a hard target, which was why the coalition force was waiting for one particular event to take place.
About five feet behind the two officers, one of the US Army soldiers was listening to transmissions on his SINCGARS combat net radio, waiting for a specific report. He was a JTAC, a Joint Terminal Attack Controller. That meant he was authorised to control combat aircraft being used in close air support in battle, effectively using the aircraft as a lethal addition to the weapons he already had to hand. He’d already provided the ‘talk on’ to the pilot to precisely identify both the target and the weapons to be used. Now he was just waiting for one thing.
He stiffened as he listened to a message, then leaned forward very slightly and in a voice that was little more than a loud whisper said a single word.
‘Inbound.’
The American captain glanced at his Iraqi Army opposite number, who nodded. Then he turned back to face the soldier.
‘Clear it,’ he said.
‘Roger, sir.’ The soldier pressed the transmit key and spoke quietly into his microphone. ‘Boar Three One, you’re cleared hot. I say again, you’re cleared hot.’
He listened to the reply, then spoke again to the officer.
‘Ninety seconds, sir.’
‘Good. Pass it on.’
The soldier nodded and spoke just as quietly into the second radio he carried, the AN/PRC-148 MBITR handheld unit. All the soldiers in the combined force carried identical sets.
A minute later they all heard it.
The AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface missile is just subsonic, travelling at 0.93 Mach or 713 miles per hour, which meant they saw it at virtually the same instant that they heard it. There was a deafening roar from the Thiokol solid propellant rocket motor as the stubby white missile streaked over their heads and smashed into the side wall of the target property. The impact was followed instantly by the shattering explosion as the WDU-20/B shaped-charge detonated.
Lost in the sound of the explosion, they didn’t hear the roar as the second Maverick overflew them, but there was no mistaking the sight and sound of the missile hitting the target about a dozen feet to the right of the first impact.
But that, really, was only the prologue, the hors d’oeuvre that preceded the main course.
With a sound like some kind of massive fabric being torn apart, a steam of 30mm high-explosive shells screamed over the dusty ground at around half a mile a second to smash into the wall of the building, detonating in bursts of yellow flame accompanied by a noise like constant rolling thunder as the charges exploded. Windows blew inwards and stones shattered or simply disintegrated, shards flying in all directions.
An instant later, what looked like an old-fashioned light-grey aircraft with straight wings swept over the ground troops, its twin tail-mounted General Electric turbofan engines emitting a deafening scream. The nose of the plane was clouded in smoke as each salvo of shells was fired by the Avenger rotary cannon.
Abruptly, the firing stopped and the aircraft banked hard to the left, turned away from the target and pulled up into a steep climb, releasing a cluster of flares as a countermeasure against possible heat-seeking missiles, though no intelligence reports had suggested the ISI fighters in the safe house had access to Stingers or similar weapons. But it was SOP – Standard Operating Procedure – to always assume that your enemy was better armed and equipped and more competent and dedicated than you believed or expected. That way you didn’t get caught out.
Even before the A-10 Thunderbolt, affectionately known to the American troops as the Warthog, had vanished from sight, Montana was checking the target. The safe house was still standing, though obviously battered, and the second Maverick had blown a hole straight through the side wall.
‘Target as briefed,’ he said to the signaller. ‘Immediate execute.’
The soldier relayed the command and coalition soldiers stood up from their concealed positions and began to advance on the property, using overwatch or fire-and-cover tactics, one group dispersing and moving swiftly from one position to another while their comrades stayed in place to provide covering fire if required.
But there was no movement from inside the safe house. No resistance and no sign of any of the ISI fighters they had been told to expect. Or anyone else.
And then, suddenly, there was.
As the first wave of coalition soldiers reached around a hundred yards from the building they heard the unmistakable clatter of an AK-47 firing on full auto, which was perhaps slightly better news than the same weapon firing single shots. The Kalashnikov is the weapon of choice for insurgents and terrorists around the world because it is so rugged and reliable, but it’s not
the most accurate assault rifle, and especially not when firing on full auto, as the barrel lifts uncontrollably.