James Barrington - Overkill

There was a pause as the President digested this information. ‘Thank you, General,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

‘Sir? What are your orders?’

‘I said I’ll be in touch. There are factors here that you will not be aware of, General, and I have to consider very carefully exactly what to do next.’

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

In the bedroom of Le Moulin au Pouchon the sniper suddenly stopped his rhythmic assault on the outhouse, but kept the rifle muzzle pointed straight up the hill as he stared through the Starlight scope.

‘Are they there?’ Ross asked.

‘Yes. I can see four figures behind the outhouse, now all standing up.’

‘Excellent,’ Ross murmured, then spoke into his microphone. ‘Dekker, Ross. SITREP?’

‘It’s over. One dead, we assume he was the bodyguard, and the other’s wounded and out of action.’

‘Right,’ Ross said. ‘I’ll let London know.’

The bullet had taken Abbas just below the right shoulder and the force of its impact had tumbled him away from the laptop computer and against the wall. Richter gestured to Dekker to watch the Arab, and turned his attention to the laptop.

He was no computer expert, but it was obvious even to Richter what Abbas had been trying to do. He studied the screen for several seconds. At the top of the screen the heading ‘Weapon: Albany, New York’ was displayed. Below that appeared the message ‘Authorization Code Six Accepted. For final Verification, Enter Authorization Code Two’, and below that was an oblong horizontal box with space for twelve digits. Nine of the twelve spaces were already occupied by an asterisk symbol.

Richter touched the ‘Esc’ or ‘Escape’ key. As he had hoped, the screen display cleared and both the message and the oblong box vanished. The screen simply displayed the Albany weapon control page, but the system just sat there, waiting for his input.

‘Thank God for that,’ Richter muttered, and pulled out his mobile phone. He switched off silent ringing and punched in the direct line number for the computer suite. Baker answered almost immediately.

‘Baker.’

‘Richter. It’s over. I’m looking at this Arab bastard’s laptop, and we stopped him just before he detonated the weapon at Albany.’

Even over the mobile phone network, the sadness and horror in Baker’s voice were unmistakable. ‘Pity you didn’t get to him a few minutes sooner,’ he said. ‘It’s all a bit confused, but according to CNN a nuclear weapon has just exploded in Abilene, Texas.’

Richter said nothing, just sat back on his haunches, snapped the phone shut and put it back in his pocket. He looked across at Dekker, who was covering the Arab with his Hockler. Dekker had kicked Abbas’ Glock well out of reach, and had hauled the wounded Arab up against the wall of the outhouse where he sat hunched and groaning, but conscious.

‘We were too late,’ Richter said. ‘This bastard managed to detonate at least one weapon in the States. God knows how many people he’s killed, or what the Americans will do now.’

Richter stood up, walked across the outhouse to where the Glock lay on the floor, bent down and picked it up. Showing no emotion, he walked back to where Abbas sat, placed the muzzle of the pistol against the Arab’s left kneecap and pulled the trigger. The report of the shot echoed from the stone walls, and was followed immediately by a howl of pain from Abbas. ‘That,’ Richter said, ‘is for Abilene.’ He transferred the weapon to Abbas’ right knee and fired again.

‘Albany?’ Dekker asked, looking at the information displayed on the laptop’s screen.

‘Albany,’ Richter agreed. ‘I know he didn’t detonate it, but it certainly wasn’t for want of trying.’ As Richter squatted down in front of the groaning Arab, his mobile phone rang again. ‘Richter.’

‘It’s Baker. It’s only just dawned on me – you said that you had Dernowi’s laptop?’

‘Yes. It’s right here beside me, connected to a mobile phone. When we took out the landlines I suppose he had no option but to use the mobile.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Baker said impatiently, ‘but the point is that you have a link to the Krutaya mainframe using the laptop, and with Dernowi’s access level you can disable all the weapons.’

‘I can try,’ Richter said doubtfully.

‘It’s not a problem. I can talk you through it right now.’

‘OK,’ Richter said, and sat down on the stone floor in front of the laptop.

‘Right,’ Baker said. ‘first you access the—’

‘Oh, shit,’ Richter muttered, and looked in irritation at his phone. The battery strength was fine, but the signal strength read zero. He snatched up Abbas’ mobile and looked at that. The battery was about two-thirds exhausted and, like Richter’s Nokia, it was reading zero signal strength. Lacomte had taken his time getting the mobile phone cells switched off, but he had finally managed it.

There was nothing more Richter could do with the laptop, so he removed the data cable, switched off Abbas’ mobile phone, and put the computer, phone and cable into the Samsonite case. Then he walked back to where Abbas was sitting groaning against the wall. He pushed the muzzle of the Glock under Abbas’ chin and forced the Arab’s head up.

‘You’re Dernowi, I presume. I’ve got a couple of questions for you. First, what’s your backdoor code for the Russian computer?’

Abbas opened his eyes slowly and looked at Richter, then very deliberately he spat in his face. At first Richter didn’t react at all, then he brought his left hand up, wiped the spittle from his cheek, then moved the Glock down and fired a bullet through Abbas’ right thigh.

‘Let’s try that again, shall we?’ he said, raising his voice over the Arab’s screams. ‘What’s the backdoor code?’ Abbas shook his head, still howling.

‘You’re going to die here,’ Richter said, ‘but it’s up to you how. Tell us what we want and it will be a single bullet, then oblivion. Carry on like this and I’ll just keep shooting bits off you until you pass out. Fun for me, but definitely not for you. So, what’s your backdoor code?’

The Arab shook his head again. ‘I will never tell you,’ he murmured, his voice low and cultured, with a pronounced Home Counties English accent. Looking at him, Richter suddenly realized that he wouldn’t, that he was looking at a committed martyr. ‘OK, then why choose “Dernowi”? Why a Yiddish name for an Arab, and why “The Prophet”?’

Abbas almost smiled. ‘It was an old joke,’ he said. ‘That was all.’

‘And why all this? Why were you trying to detonate weapons the Russians had planted in America?’

Abbas was losing blood quickly from his multiple wounds, and Richter knew he had only minutes before the Arab lost consciousness for the last time. ‘To start a war, of course,’ Abbas said, his voice barely audible. ‘The Russians were stupid. They knew nothing of our plan. They thought we just wanted to humiliate America, to threaten them with the bombs. We wanted America destroyed, but for Russia to be blamed and destroyed in her turn. At a stroke, we would eliminate the world’s two superpowers, and allow the full blossoming of the Arab world. The Arab nations would arise as the new world leaders and we would finally fulfil our destiny. That is why we conceived this plan, and that is why we paid for everything, why we bought the Russians.’

Richter sat back, hardly believing what he had heard. ‘So you and your camel-shit-eating masters were going to sacrifice the populations of America and Russia, and probably most of Western Europe, just so that a bunch of flea-ridden sand Arabs could rule the world?’