James Barrington - Overkill

Richter’s phone began vibrating again and he snatched it out of his pocket. ‘Richter.’

‘He’s back,’ Baker said shortly. ‘He’s calling from a mobile phone, and he’s gone straight into the Weapon Control module.’

‘You have to stop him,’ Richter said urgently, ‘because we can’t find him. Change one digit on each of the firing codes. He might think he’s mis-typed it when the system refuses to accept it, but even if he suspects that you’re doing it, it will still take him time to get you off the system.’

‘Right,’ Baker replied, and rang off.

‘He’s on the system again,’ Richter said. ‘He’s here somewhere, and we have to find him now.’

A trooper appeared at the foot of the stairs and called up. ‘Boss, the kitchen, please, immediate.’ Ross and Dekker ran down the stairs, Richter close behind. In the kitchen, five troopers lay flat on the floor, two obviously dead and three receiving treatment from their comrades. The faded carpet had been pulled back against the wall, and someone had opened the trapdoor.

‘Their bolt hole,’ Dekker breathed. ‘Where does it go?’

‘I’ve been down it, just to the bottom of the ladder,’ the trooper said, ‘and there’s a passage that runs underneath the house, but they must have gone up the hill, because the downward passage has a metal grille fitted across it. It’s real old, and real solid.’

Dekker looked at Ross. ‘We don’t go down it,’ he said flatly. ‘If they booby-trapped the doors, there’s no way there isn’t some sort of a nasty surprise waiting for us down there.’

‘There’s no point in going down there,’ Richter said. ‘They just used this to get out of the house. It has to lead to a building or just out into the fields somewhere.’

‘Right,’ Ross said. ‘Back upstairs, and see if we can pick them up with the night-vision glasses.’

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Badri and Ibrahim had barely moved since they’d reached the derelict outhouse. They stood, silent as shadows behind the ruined walls, looking down the gentle incline towards the old mill, which now stood ominously silent in the faint moonlight. Behind them, crouched on the floor, Hassan Abbas was hunched over the laptop, still working on the detonation sequence. The first code he’d input had been rejected, which he had put down to a typing error, but when the second authorization code that he’d taken extreme care to get right was also rejected, he’d realized the system was being tampered with.

The only way that could happen was if the other user on the system wasn’t actually General Modin, but someone who’d used his logon details to gain access, and who was altering the master list of authorization codes. And that, Abbas realized quickly, was something he could easily deal with. He exited from the Weapon Control module and checked the logged-on users. He found only one – Modin – which was itself unusual. Normally other users would have logged on, checked something or carried out some kind of maintenance task, and then logged off. But for the last several hours, only that single user had been on the system, and Abbas knew he had to be a doppelgänger .

That in turn meant that General Modin had been compromised and that some authority, presumably the same authority that had ordered its execution squad to attack the house, knew about Podstava . But what they didn’t and couldn’t know about was El Sikkiyn , although they were about to find out.

Hassan Abbas had a degree in computer science from Cornell University in the States, and was by any standards an expert. He had exactly the same authority on the Krutaya mainframe as the system designer, and could do anything he wished. He thought for a few seconds, then initiated a full system maintenance shutdown routine. This required the forced disconnection of all users apart from the initiator of the routine, and he watched in satisfaction as ‘General Modin’ suddenly vanished from the list of logged-on users. As a precaution, Abbas deleted Modin from the list of authorized users. Then he copied the list of modified firing authorization codes into the laptop’s word processor program before turning his attention once again to the Weapons Control module.

Le Moulin au Pouchon , St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

‘There’s definitely something there,’ Dekker muttered, his eyes glued to the night-vision glasses in the darkened bedroom. ‘About a hundred metres up the hill. It looks like a derelict building, but I can see at least one person in it, maybe two. I’m only seeing their faces.’

‘That has to be them,’ Richter said. ‘Take them out.’

The bedroom had only one fairly narrow window with a view up the hill, and it was immediately obvious that two men wouldn’t be able to shoot out of it at the same time. ‘Take the first shot as soon as you can,’ Ross instructed the sniper. ‘With any luck the second target may show himself straight afterwards, taking a look down here.’

The trooper nodded, opened the window and rested his Accuracy International PM sniper rifle as comfortably as he could on the sill and stared up the hill through the Davin Optical Starlight scope.

Richter’s mobile rang again, with the news that he had hoped not to hear. ‘It’s Baker. Sorry, but he ejected me from the system a couple of minutes ago, and I can’t get back in – he seems to have deleted Modin as a user. It’s all up to you now.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ Richter said, and snapped the phone off. ‘That was my computer man in London,’ he told Ross. ‘Dernowi has kicked him off the system, so we’ve got minutes at the most to sort this out.’

Even as he spoke, the sniper squeezed the rifle’s trigger and immediately brought the weapon back on target. ‘One down,’ he said, never taking his eye from the sights.

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Karim Ibrahim suddenly jerked backwards in a spray of blood and, in a slow motion that was almost graceful, span to the ground, his Kalashnikov clattering on to the stone floor beside him as the echo of the shot rang around the valley. Badri sprang across to his fallen comrade and looked down in disbelief. Ibrahim was dead, had been dead before he even hit the ground, a massive bullet wound in his face.

‘A sniper,’ Badri snapped, disgust in his voice, and rushed back across the outhouse to the ruined window. Keeping low and behind the wall, he pushed the muzzle of his Kalashnikov through the window and emptied the magazine down the hill towards the old house.

‘Stop,’ Abbas shouted, ‘stop firing. Now they know where we are. You cannot hit them, and I need you alive to keep me alive. Reload, and stay down and out of sight.’

Almost reluctantly, Badri crouched low and fitted a new magazine to his Kalashnikov. ‘Should we move on?’ he asked.

Abbas shook his head. ‘No. They would hunt us down like animals in the dark. To have killed Ibrahim like that, with a single shot, means they have image-intensifier sights and sniper rifles. They probably also have automatic weapons and grenades. We have two Kalashnikovs and three pistols. We have no choice but to make our last stand here.’ Badri nodded, but said nothing. ‘They cannot reach us directly from the house,’ Abbas said. ‘The undergrowth is too thick. Now they know where we are, they will try to work their way around and come upon us from behind.’ Abbas gestured urgently to the dark hillside at the rear of the outhouse. ‘Move over there and watch for them.’

Abbas had displayed an immediate tactical grasp of the situation, and of the intentions of Ross and Dekker. They’d both studied the terrain leading up to the outhouse through their night-vision glasses and had decided that it was effectively impassable without making their presence quite obvious, which would inevitably invite a stream of bullets from the surviving bodyguard. An approach from the rear was the only viable option.