Dominic Conlon - Silent Warpath

Neither Lomax nor DD replied. Sean looked at DD. ‘Have you found out anything else about the target?’

‘No — not yet. Nat and I are going to research it as soon as I finish looking at the tapes.’

‘Any other news?’ Sean continued.

‘Yep — I’ve broken through’ replied DD.

‘I’m all ears DD.’

‘Well, I’ve set up a rule on their email system to copy any email they send to my private mail account.’

‘Are they likely to discover what you’ve done?’

‘No’ said DD. ‘I’ve used server side rules to blind copy every outgoing email in the account. So even if they get replies it won’t be obvious that a copy has been sent.’

‘OK, anything else?’ asked Sean.

‘I’ve dropped some keystroke loggers onto a number of their PCs.’ DD noticed Sean’s puzzled look and continued. ‘Keystroke loggers do exactly what they say — they log every keystroke and mouse movement into a file. Then every so often they send the file off to my email account without the user’s knowledge. It’s very difficult to detect.’

‘OK — any problems?’

‘I discovered that the firewall is open only at set times of the day and all traffic through it is monitored. I had to adjust the key logger to pretend that all the information it’s sending out looks like part of the normal flow of traffic. And I had to make sure it never sends out information when the firewall is closed — it would be discovered straight away, otherwise.’

‘Great. Anything else?’

DD shook his head. ‘I didn’t get time for anything else — I was rushing to get all that done before the gate came down.’

‘Well, I suppose that will have to do for now’ said Lomax.

‘Don’t be so negative’ Sean replied. ‘DD’s worked wonders, now all we have to do is log on to collect the information.’

Sean looked at DD. 'That's right, isn't it?'

DD agreed, avoiding Lomax’s gaze.

‘Look here’ said DD, pointing to the map. The coordinates I have from the file is this box in the Barents Sea. At the top and to the east we have the Svalbard islands, owned by Norway.’ Natasha watched as DD’s finger moved across the map. ‘Over to the West, the area is bounded by Franz Josef Land, which is Russian.’ DD’s finger moved downward. ‘And to the south we have Novaya Zemlya — Russian again.’

For the last two hours Natasha and DD had gone through an on-line catalogues of world ships, plugging in details of tonnage, beam and length. Natasha flipped through the list. ‘Look DD, we’ve found cargo ships, bulkers, small container ships and tankers. They’re all commercial ships — none of them are military.’

DD thought for a moment. ‘It may be too obvious, but the chances are the ship is Russian.’

Natasha agreed. ‘But none of the ships we’ve found are due to cross that area of the Barents.’

‘It can’t be any of them, then’ said DD despondently.

‘You know, if I wanted to make a point by sinking a commercial ship, I wouldn’t choose any of them either.’

‘Why not?’ DD asked.

‘Because they’re all too small. If I sank an oil tanker it would create an environmental disaster, but the tonnage is too small.’

There was a minute’s silence before Natasha spoke again. ‘Listen Dee, suppose for a minute it isn’t a ship we’re looking for.’

No-one had called him anything but “DD” before. The fact that Natasha had bestowed her own nickname gave him a big kick. Even so, what Natasha said was puzzling. ‘If it’s not a ship, then what is it?’

‘Could it be a sub?’ asked Natasha hesitantly.

DD shook his head emphatically. ‘Too big. I don’t know of any submarine that big, unless it’s Chinese or something.’

Natasha smiled at DD. ‘Humour me — let’s just suppose there is a submarine that big. You said it might be Chinese. We should be able to check that out quickly, shouldn’t we?’

‘OK’ said DD, ‘but I think you’re going to be disappointed.’

Within five minutes DD found the answer. ‘There’s a series of Russian nuclear powered attack submarines which they call the Akula class’ said DD excitedly. ‘Length is 175 metres, beam is spot on at twenty metres and displacement when surfaced is also within the limits.’

DD looked at Natasha and beamed. ‘Bingo!’

Natasha hugged DD. ‘Dee, you’re a genius!’

DD had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘It was your idea, remember? We’ll need to let Lomax and Sean know what we’ve found out.’

Natasha looked pensive. ‘OK, here’s another question. How did they know this submarine is going to be in the area the day after tomorrow?’

‘Maybe they’ve got access to Russian intelligence.’

‘They must have’ agreed Natasha. ‘But let’s suppose that Cetus got held up and couldn’t make it on time.’

‘I see what you’re getting at!’ exclaimed DD. ‘Which means…?’

‘Which means the Akula is based in that area for a while.’

‘Right again!’ said DD. ‘I’ve heard that some subs are given an area to patrol — I think it’s called a bastion. They stay there for several months, or until they’re told to go somewhere else. They just sort of stooge around, in case they’re required to release a missile or two.’

‘It all seems to fit’ agreed Natasha.

‘Cetus is programmed to attack as soon as it makes contact with the Akula. Just how good are its weapon systems?’

‘Dee, I’m not able to talk about it.’

‘Oh’. DD couldn’t hide his disappointment.

Natasha’s head moved from side to side slowly. ‘No, you really don’t understand. Nothing in the code you’ve seen could tell you just how destructive it is.’

DD looked at Natasha anxiously. ‘What, you mean like an atomic bomb? Is it some kind of atomic weapon?’

‘I can’t tell you.’ Natasha’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘I don’t know that much myself, only what the engineers had to tell me so I could interface my software with it.’

‘…And that was?’

For a whole minute, Natasha reviewed what she felt she could say. The ever present feeling in the pit of her stomach was like a conscience, warning her to say nothing. But if she was going to find Cetus, she would have to share what she knew. She drew a deep breath.

‘It’s not an atomic weapon. It can only be used underwater because it relies on generating sound waves that can be focused over long distances.’

DD waited, but Natasha was not forthcoming. ‘OK, so it relies on sound waves. What could be so destructive about that?’

‘Oh Dee, you just don’t know — I don’t know all the details myself and I was working on the project!’

‘OK, but can you tell me what you do know?’

Natasha hesitated. ‘I’m not supposed to, but since we’ve been working on this together I think maybe now is the time.’

She bit her lip, then continued. ‘The weapon is a bit like the guided bombs they dropped on Iraq and Afghanistan: the ones that can be guided in to a building to the nearest metre. The weapon can be focused on either surface ships or submarines. It transmits energy in the form of sound waves. There’s a receiver that picks up returns and adjusts the frequency of the waves its sends. It finds the frequency of vibration of the enemy and literally shakes the ship to death. The engineers told me that once it’s targeted it can make rivets pop and weld seams come apart. It’s worse than any torpedo. Once it locks on target it’s difficult to shake off and the ship will soon take on water and sink.’

DD thought for a moment. ‘If all it’s doing is generating sound waves under water, it could go after any number of ships.’