Dominic Conlon - Silent Warpath

‘Of course — I can’t do everything myself. In fact you’re going to meet them soon, so you should know a little bit about them.’

Natasha began to reappraise her initial impressions of Sean. ‘Who are they?’

‘There’s a guy called Lomax. He’s my link with London. And we have an IT whizz-kid called DD. He was studying here in the States.’

‘What does he do?’ Natasha was intrigued.

‘We know Ben’s death was connected to something Ben discovered. I showed DD a copy of your letter. He thinks Ben discovered someone was stealing tapes in order to recreate your computer systems.’

‘I never gave you a copy.’ There was concern in her voice.

Sean coughed. ‘I know. I, er, made a photocopy.’

‘You see why I don’t trust you.’

‘I do.’ There was a long silence as they drove through the night.

‘He thinks they created a virus tailored to your project’ Sean said at last.

Natasha looked up in alarm. ‘How much do you know about the project?’

‘We think it’s related to a new type of submarine. It carries some kind of weapon which can be used many times without having to be replaced.’

‘Is that all?’

‘That’s pretty much it, regarding the project’ answered Sean. ‘But we found out some interesting information about who might be behind the sabotage.’

‘Who?’ Despite her tiredness, Natasha was interested.

‘Well we know Jack Langham was involved.’ Sean looked across at Natasha. ‘He was the one who stole your computer tapes.’

‘I can’t believe it — Jack? Why would he do that?’

‘We found evidence he was being blackmailed.’

Natasha’s mind started working overtime. Perhaps Sean’s story was true after all. ‘Did you find anything else?’

‘We traced two of his associates to a company called Advanced Marine Agency located at Newport. It’s a small company and who owns it isn’t clear — there’s a maze of shell companies DD is looking through.’

Natasha sat back. ‘I’m amazed you’ve found out so much in such a little time.’

‘I told you — that’s what I do. We have only one other item, the name of the big guy you saw me with earlier. Chris Schaeffer. You remember I told you he’s the leader of the team that have been chasing you for the last week or so.’ Sean turned to look at Natasha. ‘We want to know who he works for.’

Natasha was quiet for a while, thinking back. ‘So Ben was on his way to see me, when this gang tried to kill him.’

‘I believe Ben wanted to talk to you about what he had found. They arranged the accident with his motorbike and murdered him before he could talk.’

‘Sean, I think he couldn’t trust anyone at work.’

‘Maybe he’d discovered that Langham was part of the scheme.’ Sean started thinking about the motivation. ‘Why do you think they are after you?’

Natasha looked uncomfortable. ‘We all felt desolated at Ben’s death — he was really well liked. Anyway, I started to look at the data that had been collected on the project, especially in the moments before…’ Natasha looked at Sean.

‘Something went wrong?’ Sean hazarded a guess.

‘Yes, something went wrong.’ Natasha thought for a long time before clearing her throat. ‘We were testing the submarine off the coast of South America. Everything went well to begin with. Then we lost contact with the submarine’s support ships. At first we thought it was due to bad weather. After a period it was confirmed that the ships involved in the sea trials were lost at sea. We know several people died.’ Natasha looked sad. ‘We watched the project crumble all around us. That was when I decided to investigate.’

‘And did you find anything?’

‘Nothing at first. But then the pieces started to form a pattern. It was as if a computer virus had infected the system only moments before everything started to go wrong.’

‘I can understand your concern’ said Sean gently, ‘but wasn’t someone responsible for making sure those sort of things couldn’t happen?’

Natasha nodded. ‘Yes, that was Jack Langham’s job. With such a secret project we took the highest level of security precautions. An ordinary computer virus wouldn’t have stood a chance. I began to think that this virus had been specially crafted for the purpose of taking over the miniature sub’s mission. It was as if someone had planned all this beforehand.’

‘How much time would they need?’

‘Well, if you say they had a copy of our systems, it probably wouldn’t take very long at all. A month, maybe.’

‘How do you think the virus was introduced?’

‘I remember that there was a blip when the sub’s mission was being uploaded’ she said with a pensive look. ‘I found out one of the packages was much larger than it should have been. I realised then it was a virus.’

‘Who could have done all that?’

‘It could have been any one of half a dozen people at SeaTek, including Jack. Or possibly one of three people on board ship. But I suppose we can rule out anyone on the ship, because the first thing the sub did was to sink it.’

‘Not necessarily’ said Sean. The person who loaded the code might not know what was in it. He just might have been paid to deploy the virus, not to write it.’

‘I can see that’, said Natasha.

‘Ben was on their trail. And when you found out about the virus, they tried to kill you too. Your cabin made the ideal spot — secluded and remote.’

Natasha shivered.

‘I’d like you to meet a member of the team. His name is DD, but in real life people call him Nerd.’

DD glared at Sean. Then he turned to look at Natasha. He was stunned at how beautiful she looked.

Natasha smiled sweetly and frowned at Sean. She stuck out her hand.

‘Pleased to meet you DD. Don’t let him get to you. He’s just plain Mr. Grumpy.’

DD shook her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. Don’t worry, he doesn’t bother me, either’ he said bravely.

Sean held up both hands. ‘Don’t let me get in the way of a beautiful friendship. I’ll leave you two to get along.’

Natasha removed a pile of printouts from a chair and sat down. They swapped small talk for a minute.

‘Sean told me about a company you’re investigating — AMA.’

‘Advanced Marine Agency’ said DD eagerly. ‘We still don’t know who owns it, but we suspect the rest of the company aren’t aware of what this group is up to. Someone really high up knows what’s going on though.’

‘Do you have any names yet?’

DD looked pensive. ‘No-one high enough yet. But in the words of an old spy, if I told you who they were I would have to kill you.’

Natasha smiled at DD’s weak joke. ‘Look DD, I don’t need to know. But why can’t you just turn over the information to the authorities?’

‘We could.’ DD took a sip of his coffee. ‘But the people involved would soon get wind and pull the plug. Within an hour they would implement their backup plans and your FBI would be left with nothing. Providing we can keep this low key, we have a chance of going after the kingpin.’

‘Have you turned up any hard evidence to implicate anyone?’

DD shook his head. ‘That’s part of the problem, all we have at the moment is a small network of inter-connected personnel who orchestrated a program against SeaTek. But I am working on something at the moment that just might be more substantial.’

‘What is it?’ Natasha peered over DD’s shoulder.

He pulled out two tapes from the rucksack. ‘Trophies from our last escapade.’ He slid one into a boxy unit attached to his computer. The mechanism took the tape and it disappeared inside. A red light came on and Natasha could hear clicks and whirrs as the tape spooled. She watched a progress bar mark the time the computer took to read the tape.