Viper Nine Read online

  ‘Shouldn’t we be passing this up the chain?’ Wells asked. ‘If nothing else, they can warn whoever they’re targeting.’

  Pope snatched at his thickening stubble. ‘Yeah, why not let the bloody spooks handle it?’

  ‘Because this is our chance to catch them in the act,’ Driver said, the cobwebs of sleep falling away.

  ‘And besides,’ Lim added, ‘we know the intelligence agencies are compromised. Viper Nine are bound to be listening.’

  Driver leaned into the screen. ‘Great work. Keep going.’

  ‘I’ve already made arrangements for your flight. Pickup info on its way.’

  Driver cut the call and shifted off the table. ‘Belgium it is.’

  Chapter 15

  Ardennes Forest, Belgium

  Ardennes Supply Base North wasn’t on any map, be it ordinance or Google. Neither did it advertise its existence, other than a series of discreet road signs on approach.

  Entry to the facility was through a secure steel gate and the check of a permanent guard sentry. Yet there was nothing else to flag up that the base was anywhere worth caring about.

  It was the place where nothing ever happened, in a province where outdoor pursuits were the main attraction.

  The base itself amounted to little more than a series of six storehouses, three either side with a barracks at the far end. Personnel numbers were skeleton-sized. After all, the fewer people who knew about the base, the better.

  Staff Sergeant Mills knew that, as he smoked the end of a cigarette around the back of Storehouse Four. Yet it didn’t make his job any more exciting. Especially when there was real action out there, being fought, or not fought as the case may have been.

  Mills didn’t understand why his government and those of his allies didn’t just hit back already. These so-called cyberterrorists can’t have been that hard to track down.

  He flicked the end of his cigarette and resigned himself to a long, uneventful shift. Not what he’d had in mind when he’d signed up to the US Army. Though, on second thoughts, it was better than being shot at in the Middle East. And surrounded by lush, dense forest and the smell of pine, the climate was a damn sight cooler too.

  As he cast an eye over the surrounding treetops, Mills heard a female voice calling his name.

  It was Corporal Jedynak, her butch frame striding into view around the side of the storehouse.

  She was breathless, like most of the soldiers on the base, not used to running. ‘We’ve got a problem with the security systems.’

  ‘What kind of problem?’

  ‘A big one. The whole base is down.’

  ‘Shit,’ Mills muttered to himself. His yearning for something to do not so strong now that he had to do it.

  He trudged in Jedynak’s wake to the main building. They took the stairs down into the basement, into the server room.

  A young soldier, Piper, stood with his hands on hips, chewing on a lip.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Mills asked him.

  ‘Everything’s down, sir. Security, landline and satellite communications…’

  ‘Do we know the cause?’ Mills asked.

  ‘Some kind of electrical overload,’ Piper replied. ‘Or at least that’s my best guess.’

  ‘What if it’s, you know… a hack?’ Jedynak asked, still short on breath.

  ‘Out here?’ Mills replied with an incredulous sigh. ‘All right, I’ll call the contractors.’ The Staff Sergeant read a number off a sticker on one of the servers. He punched the number into his phone and held for an answer.

  * * *

  Jana gave Kovac the nod as she picked up her phone. In the passenger seat of the parked van, he waited in silence alongside Graf.

  ‘JCA Systems,’ Jana answered, bright and breezy. ‘How may I help you today?’ She paused a moment. ‘Certainly sir, I’ll have an emergency team come right out.’ The young hacker nodded to Kovac. ‘Their systems are down. We’re on.’

  Graf turned the ignition and started the van.

  Kovac scooped a radio off the dash. ‘Good to go,’ he said.

  As both vans pulled out into the road, the Serb drummed an anxious finger on the sill of the door. He checked the navigation screen on the dash as it guided them to their destination.

  They were twenty minutes out – perfect timing. Kovac and his men didn’t want to arrive too early after all. Jana had rerouted the call to the JCA Systems service centre to her own phone.

  Now it had to appear as if they’d been despatched from the nearest Ardennes depot in Verviers.

  As the van rolled along the quiet, sweeping A-roads through spinach-green forests, Kovac smoked another cigarette and prayed for good fortune.

  * * *

  Driver rode up front in the lead SUV, one of two laid on for them by Anna. How the woman arranged everything so fast, she’d never know. Mo’s programme, Zeus, helped. It allowed almost instant access to systems all over the world. Which meant they could commandeer transport, weapons and supplies at a moment’s notice. All without leaving any trail behind. Yet Anna was still a superwoman in Driver’s book.

  Minimum fuss. Maximum efficiency. That was Anna. She’d always been the same, from their time together at Langley, to the present day. If you needed a car, a train, a plane, a satellite re-tasking or a local asset, you went to Anna.

  At the wheel of the SUV was Baptiste. He liked to drive. ‘It relaxes me,’ he said, gunning the SUV along the fast, sweeping roads of the Ardennes region.

  ‘Anyone know what we’re looking for?’ Wells asked from the backseat, an M4 rifle on his lap.

  ‘No, but whatever’s waiting for us, we’re late,’ Driver replied, checking her watch.

  ‘This could all be a wild goose chase,’ Wells replied, surveying the landscape. ‘They probably changed their plans after Berlin.’

  ‘We can’t take that chance,’ Driver countered.

  ‘Nice to see your head’s back in the game,’ Baptiste said, eyeing Driver from behind the wheel.

  She glared back in reply. He noticed it but ignored it, steering the SUV through an S-bend at a cool ninety miles per hour.

  ‘Can someone tell treacle tyres to speed up?’ Pope interjected over the comms. ‘Any slower and I’m gonna go back in time.’

  Driver turned in her seat to see Pope at the wheel of the tailing SUV, frighteningly close to their rear.

  Baptiste cursed the Australian in French.

  ‘I heard that,’ Pope replied.

  ‘Yes, but you didn’t understand it,’ Baptiste muttered.

  ‘He said, “Shut your ass up and focus on the road”,’ Rios said, jumping into the conversation from the rear of the second SUV.

  ‘How far are we out?’ Lim asked from the same car.

  ‘ETA in five,’ Driver replied, double-checking the magazine in her rifle. ‘Game faces on.’

  ‘My game face is my only face,’ Pope replied. ‘I haven’t got another.’

  ‘Shame for the rest of us,’ Lim said, as they sped deeper into the surrounding forest.

  * * *

  The van rolled to a stop outside the gate to the military base. As expected, a pair of sentry guards stepped out of their hut in front of the sliding steel gate to greet Kovac. Also as expected, it wasn’t a warm welcome from the pair in military-green fatigues. These men – both of them young and imposing with dark, shaved hair – were paid to be suspicious.

  Kovac leaned out of the window. ‘We got a call. Said you’re having a problem with your security systems?’

  ‘In the base, yeah,’ one of the guards replied.

  The Serb could tell by the look in the soldier’s eye he was the senior of the two.

  ‘What about the gate?’ Kovac asked. ‘Can we get in?’

  ‘Perimeter runs off a different system,’ the guard replied. ‘That’s still working, but the rest is down.’

  Kovac smiled the friendliest he knew how. ‘Well let’s get that fixed for you.’

  ‘Right after we inspec
t your vehicles,’ the senior of the two guards continued.

  ‘Of course,’ Kovac replied with a smile. ‘Part of the drill, right?’

  The guard didn’t engage in his attempts to build rapport. Instead, he stuck to his task. The Serb respected him for it. The guard would have made a good addition to his own team.

  ‘Open up the van guys,’ Kovac instructed his team in the second van. ‘Routine inspection.’

  As the sentry guards moved to the rear of the van, Kovac hopped down onto the concrete. He joined them at the back and opened up the doors for them to inspect the interior.

  Inside the van, it looked like one would imagine. Tools, equipment, wiring and diagnostic equipment, with Jana on a rear passenger seat wearing a smile.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, computer on her lap.

  The senior guard nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Okay, next one.’

  Kovac accompanied them to the rear of the second van. He took a quiet breath as he pulled on the handle of the first rear door. Throwing the door wide open, Kovac stepped aside.

  The guards reacted and reached for their weapons. A volley of fire from inside riddled both guards dead with high-calibre bullets at close to point-blank range.

  Kovac opened the second rear door and an eight-strong team of masked men clambered out. He hurried to the lead van and pulled his own ski mask from the glovebox.

  Graf was already wearing his and operating the front gate from the security hut. He tossed Kovac a rifle and led the assault team through the gate as it rolled open to the left.

  As they ran across the wide-open entrance to the base, it wasn’t long before the cavalry came running.

  Soldiers poured out of the barracks and the main building. Yet Kovac and his unit were already in position, taking cover by the walls of the storehouses, left and right. They opened fire, cutting down the first line of defence before they had chance to get organised and repel the invasion.

  Kovac fired and moved, leading his troop and advancing through the complex. He’d missed the feel of combat. The adrenaline in the veins. The sound and fury of high-powered rifles. The acrid tinge of propellant lingering in the nasal passages. There was something beautiful about the whole thing.

  In fact, the ex-Marine was almost disappointed when it ended so soon. Standing among the dead, with barrels still smoking, Kovac looked across at Graf. ‘Sweep the rest of the base. I don’t want any surprises.’

  The German nodded, beckoned a trio of men forward and they jogged onwards in search of stray survivors.

  Kovac turned to see both vans pull onto the base, Jana at the wheel of the first. He waved them towards Storehouse Four. It was an unassuming, dark-green building with steel doors built to withstand an RPG.

  Jana hopped down from the van with her laptop. She strode to the giant door. In seconds, she had it sliding open with a metallic rumble, power to the base restored. The lights came on and Kovac and his team stood before a vast array of hardware.

  Everything was stacked and labelled, as if for their convenience.

  The Serb stepped into the storehouse, the air cold and a smell like war. He breathed it in deep and took in the surroundings. To the left were a row of three Humvees. To the right, high-rising stacks of rifles and RPGs. And to the back of the storehouse, rows and rows of miscellaneous equipment. But all this was surface dressing.

  The real trophy lay in its own housing in the centre of the warehouse, in a giant cubic vault constructed from titanium steel.

  Jana typed one-handed as she carried her laptop between left-hand and elbow.

  Kovac looked her way, impatient to get inside the vault.

  ‘One second,’ she said, hitting enter on her keyboard.

  With a heavy clunk, a panel lit with a red LED shifted to green. Kovac spun the chunky wheel on the door to the left. The door opened outwards of its own accord.

  Viper Nine’s leader stepped inside and surveyed the bounty before him. He felt a tingle of electricity on the nape of his neck, a rare smile forming in the corner of his mouth. It was the irreplaceable thrill of raw, unadulterated power.

  Chapter 16

  If the road signs on the approach to the base hadn’t raised an alarm in Driver’s mind, the sight of two dead sentries did.

  ‘A military base? Why wasn’t it on the map?’ Wells asked from the rear of the SUV.

  Checking the navigation screen, Driver saw they were at their destination. Baptiste slowed and made a left turn into the base. He swerved at the sight of the two bullet-torn bodies.

  ‘Prepare for contact,’ she said, a firm grip on her rifle.

  The security gate was wide open at the entrance to the facility. The scene in the near distance one of carnage.

  No sooner had they sped through the front gate, they took on a round of fire. The bodywork of the SUV thunked with hot artillery. Baptiste swerved right. Pope went left. It was the smart, instinctive thing to do. Parking the SUVs behind the nearest storehouse wall and jumping out onto their feet. Driver led Wells and Baptiste to the corner of the storehouse.

  She laid down the first round of fire as a group of eight masked men in black continued their onslaught.

  Driver took one down early. Pope the same from his own covered position behind the opposite storehouse wall.

  ‘Move, move, move,’ she yelled over the comms, breaking cover in tandem with the Australian. They ran to the next storehouse along and stayed tight to the wall, resisting intense force.

  Bullets zinged by, inches away. Driver whirled around the corner and opened up the M4. Soon Wells and Baptiste were on her shoulder, Pope inflicting more damage on the enemy.

  Driver counted fast. The intruders were down to six – an even fight. Running dry on ammo, she felt a firm tap on the shoulder.

  Wells took her place, laying down fire. As Driver ditched the empty clip, she peered around the corner and saw two vans parked with their rear ends to storehouse number four.

  With Pope, Lim and Rios advancing across the way, she took a moment to think. Whoever was in number four, they needed to get in there.

  Baptiste took over from Wells and Driver tight to the side of Storehouse Four.

  The Russian caught one of the masked men in the chest as he found himself empty. Driver took her chance and sprinted around the next corner, as far as Storehouse Six.

  The scene was too hot to get a close-enough look, but a large man appeared with a large warehouse trolley to the rear of one of the vans. The trolley carried just one item, labelled with a model number – MXK52-7.

  Driver took aim at the large invader, only for a second man to appear and unleash a torrent of gunfire in her direction. The accuracy of his shot pinned her behind the wall. By the time she thought it safe to peer around the corner, the two men were climbing in the vans, a young woman in a mask hopping up into the back behind them.

  Both vans pulled away from the storehouse in a screech of tyres, with shots fired from open passenger windows. As Driver took cover, she saw one of the invading force jump onto the side of the van in a bid to hitch a ride. The man who’d followed the trolley-pusher out of the storehouse delivered an elbow-smash to the hanger-on’s face. His head snapped back as if his neck was broken. He lost his grip and tumbled to the ground, coming to a rest as if dead.

  With the vans speeding by, Driver came out of hiding to engage two masked invaders left behind. Lim beat her to the punch with the first and Rios the second.

  She whirled around to see the vans disappearing through the gates, the name JCA Systems printed on the side.

  Driver memorised the plates. For all the good it would do. These were serious pros. High-level players. No longer was it a case of cyberhackers hiring muscle. It could only be the muscle hiring the hackers to do their bidding.

  As she and the team scrambled for the SUVs, Driver wondered if Viper Nine was an invention of Vesuvius. From the limited exposure she’d to the secretive organisation, this seemed right out of their playbook.

  But there
was no time to debate the issue in her head. Nor to wonder what Viper Nine wanted with a US military supply base in the middle of a Belgian forest.

  They had to get to their transport. But as she reached the passenger door, there was a problem. A big one. The security gate to the base was rolled shut in front of them.

  ‘They locked the gate,’ said Wells.

  ‘Hang on, I’ve got an idea,’ Pope replied over comms.

  Driver turned to see him run for the open storehouse. He appeared moments later with an RPG launcher over a shoulder.

  He prepped the weapon, took aim and fired. A grenade shot out of the launcher in a swirl of white smoke, screaming past Driver’s SUV and slamming low into the gate.

  The explosion shook whatever birds where left in the trees into the sky. A fireball ripped upwards and black smoke curled into the air. It cleared seconds later to reveal a flaming hole in the gate. Was it big enough? They were about to find out.

  As Driver and Wells jumped in the SUV, Baptiste spun the wheel and accelerated towards the gate.

  ‘You think we’re gonna fit?’ Driver asked.

  ‘We’ll fit,’ Baptiste replied, his eyes laser-focused on the hole in the gate.

  Driver gripped the door handle tight and braced for impact. The SUV caught the charred, jagged steel on either side, but squeezed through, out onto the road.

  Driver looked over a shoulder. The second SUV popped out behind with Lim at the wheel.

  ‘Uh, is Pope with you guys?’ Rios asked.

  ‘I thought he was with you,’ Wells replied.

  ‘Shit, we forgot him,’ Rios said. ‘Maybe we should—’

  ‘No time, keep going,’ said Driver, as Baptiste arrowed the SUV past a hundred. ‘He’ll understand.’

  * * *

  Pope stood with mouth agape and rocket launcher smoking over a shoulder. Unbe-bloody-lievable.

  ‘They left me behind, the fucking bastards. That’s the second time they’ve done it.’