Authors: Alan Jacobson
59
U
zi tapped away on his keyboard as Rodman consulted the GPS and exited the motorway. “Time to pack up, Uzi. They’re gonna be here in ten minutes.”
“I’m close. It’s—Wait, there it is. Got it. Get Santa on the phone.”
A few seconds later, Rodman put the call on speaker.
“Talk to me,” DeSantos said.
Uzi started shutting down the third laptop while he spoke. “Only got a few minutes. We’re just outside the base perimeter. But I’ve got some answers and I don’t know when I’m going to be able to contact you after we’re airborne. And we need to set an RVP.”
“Carter suggested we set the Rendezvous Point for the Thames. No CCTVs. Harder to track us. Makes sense, so pick us up there.”
“Uh, last time I checked, Santa, that’s a long freakin’ river—like a couple hundred miles.”
“Somewhere near city center. I’ve got flares. Look sharp.”
“No problem. I’ll make it work.”
“You said you’ve got something for us?”
“I do.” Uzi shoved the laptop into his backpack and then shifted the phone from his shoulder back into his left hand. “That CLAIR message. It was definitely spoofed to make us think it came from the Home Secretary, or at least the Home Office. But some of the information in the packets didn’t match up. The location and date/time packets appeared to be pasted in, like they mixed in identity tokens from another Home Office message.”
“That makes you sound like a freaking genius,” DeSantos said, “because I’ve got no idea what you just said.”
Uzi climbed back atop the milk crate seat in front of his laptop and opened an email. “Bottom line. I was able to locate the true origination point of the message. I’ve got an address for you, but you’re not going to like it.”
“I already don’t like it.”
“Then you’re
really
not gonna like it. It’s the Shadow Home Secretary’s
house
. His personal computer.”
60
V
ail leaned closer to the phone.
“What did you call it—the
Shadow
Home Secretary?”
“I’m sending the address to Reid right now,” Uzi said. “And yeah, that’s how the cabinet directory listed the address. Monty Gallagher, Shadow Home Secretary.”
“What the hell’s a Shadow Home Secretary?” DeSantos turned to Reid.
“Part of the shadow cabinet. Basically, the shadow cabinet’s senior members of the main opposition party scrutinize their corresponding ministers in the government. They create alternative policies and hold their counterparts accountable for their actions.”
“So the Shadow Home Secretary keeps the Home Secretary on her toes?” DeSantos asked.
“More or less. He looks over her shoulder on policing, national security, immigration—everything she’s responsible for. And if the opposition party’s elected to government, the Shadow Home Secretary often becomes the new Home Secretary.”
“Wait,” Uzi said. “Did I hear Reid right? If the opposition party takes over, the Shadow Home Secretary can become the new Home Secretary?”
“That’s what he said.”
“That’s our motive right there,” Uzi said.
Vail stopped walking and brought them together in a huddle. “This might be a power grab. The Shadow Home Secretary sends us off to kill Walpole, a minister who’s clamping down on policies that the more extreme parts of government don’t want to see passed. He eliminates the threat and then frames the prime minister and a couple senior members of the government by giving the media a photo of us—the people who murdered Walpole—and labels us international terrorists. The prime minister is guilty by association, and he resigns. His government falls and the opposition takes over.”
Reid shook his head. “Not exactly. You’re right—by discrediting the prime minister, they’d discredit the governing party. But the only way that the government can ‘fall’ is if the matter were so serious—and this obviously qualifies—that the opposition parties bring a motion of no confidence. Basically, when it passes, the government falls. Assuming the opposition party does well in the new election, it takes over. But they’re not aligned with the extreme parties of the government.”
“That you know of. Tell Carter to pick up the Shadow Home Secretary—”
Reid’s brow rose. “On what?”
“Find something,” Vail said. “An unpaid parking ticket. Start sweating him and show him the proof that Uzi just emailed you.”
“The docs he got by
hacking
secure government servers?”
“C’mon, Reid,” DeSantos said. “You’re a spook. You know how to do this. Bluff him.”
Reid nodded. “I’ll tell Ethan to pick him up.” He pulled out his handset and started dialing.
“If you’ve got someone you can trust,” Vail said, “have him start going through the Shadow Home Secretary’s phone records, emails—you’re going to find at least one accomplice, maybe more.”
“How do you figure?”
“I doubt he has the technical expertise to reroute and piggyback secured signals. Or whatever Uzi called it.”
Reid brought the handset to his ear. “Good point.”
“Let’s get moving,” DeSantos said. They started forward, headed for the station.
Uzi’s voice crackled from the speaker. “I had the same thought, Karen. I’ve got a tracer program running, but we’ve gotta shut it down in a minute. Buck can hire an independent hacker he trusts to finish what I’ve started but I—” A beeping sound interrupted him. “Hang on a second. I think we’ve got a hit.”
“Hot Rod,” DeSantos said. “While Uzi dicks around with that, where do we stand on the crop duster?”
“I got Mac over at Geospatial to give us some satellite time. He’s looking at a live feed, but it’s gonna take some time. A crop duster only needs a tiny airstrip of compacted dirt. That could be almost any rural area.”
“And that’s the problem,” Uzi said. “Trying to find these bastards means scouring huge swaths of the country for active infrared signatures moving around a single-engine biplane agricultural aircraft. Not as easy as it sounds.”
“Obviously not,” Vail said.
Who said that sounded easy?
“My buddy’s got a friend with the Royal Air Force,” Rodman said, “pretty high up. I’m gonna give him a call, alert him we’ve got intel on a small craft ready to deploy a chemical weapon. They can notify whoever should be notified. I’m sure they’ve got more eyes on their skies than we do.”
“Definitely have something here,” Uzi cut in.
“Would you like to share?” Vail said. “We’re getting close to the tube, and once we go down, we’ll lose you.”
“And
we’ve
got a meet,” Rodman added, “any minute.”
“Fine, fine,” Uzi said. “I had a program looking for unusual activity going to or coming from Monty Gallagher’s PC or phone—emails, calls, texts, anything—to see who it’d lead us to. One person stands out, a spike in texts and phone calls over the past week or so. That’s not a smoking gun by any stretch, so I looked into this guy’s background while running a different program to search his PC to see if anything interesting came up.”
“Boychick,” DeSantos said. “Get to the point.”
“It found about a dozen encrypted files, all using the same encryption scheme that’s on Gallagher’s computer. We don’t have time to decrypt them, so I picked the smallest one to see what we’d get.”
“And?”
“And I found the smoking gun.”
61
“I
t’s a database of names,” Uzi said. “What do you want to bet that it’s your stolen list of intelligence agents.”
Reid lifted his brow. “Read me a few of them.”
They heard the click-clack of a keyboard.
“Pearson, Marsdon, Hanley, Spicer, Rigo—”
“Bloody hell, that’s it. We’ve got to secure that hard drive, see who he’s sent that list to—”
Rodman’s voice boomed through the speaker. “Uzi, we’ve gotta go.”
“Okay, okay. Just need another minute.” More keyboard work.
DeSantos leaned closer to the phone. “Hot Rod, did you get through to that air force contact?”
“I left a voice mail on his cell for him to call me back. But he doesn’t know who the hell I am, and I couldn’t reach my friend to give him a shout.”
“Uzi,” Reid said, “Who’s this guy, the one who had this list?”
“Name’s Richard Price. And he’s a—”
“Holy shit. He’s a junior minister, very bright guy.”
“With an interesting background,” Uzi said. “Double major from Cambridge, computer programming, political science. That probably says all you need to know.”
“The hacker who got elected to the government,” Vail said, “combining his talents to influence policy.”
“I’ve zipped and encrypted everything,” Uzi said. “It’s on its way to you, Reid.”
“This is it,” Reid said, stopping in front of The Globe restaurant, which Vail remembered reading had been around for two centuries and had served Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. “That’s one of the main entrances.” He nodded across the street, where there was a blue Baker Street station sign mounted above the doorway. “We’ll avoid that because of all the cameras, and go down here.” He placed his hand on the long wrought iron fence that bordered a staircase bearing a sign that read, “Pedestrian Subway.”
Another series of beeps blared from the speaker.
“Uzi,” Rodman said, “ignore it. Our ride’s here, and he can’t wait.”
“Okay, okay. Reid, listen to me. The program just got another hit. Wes Collingsworth. I’ve run out of time, so the rest you’re gonna have to—”
“Wes Collingsworth, you sure?”
There was a click and the noise of shuffling feet. “I just shut everything down, but yeah, that was the name.”
“Wes is a friend of Carty’s—of Carter’s—from JTAC. I know him, too. Bloody hell.”
Vail shared a glance with DeSantos. They both knew that JTAC stood for the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre.
This just keeps getting better.
“Good luck with that,” Uzi said. “Sounds like you’re gonna need it. Signing off. Karen, Santa, see you two over the Thames.”
62
A
s they walked into the station, looking down to avoid the entry cameras, Reid’s phone rang. He answered it as they swiped their Oyster cards.
He listened a second, then said, “You sure?” He swiveled around, his eyes searching the area.
“What’s up?” Vail asked.
He rotated the handset away from his mouth and quickened his pace. “It’s Ingram. The Met’s CCTVs picked us up, they’ve got a fix on us. They’re a block away. We’ve gotta move, get on a train. At this point, doesn’t matter which direction. We have to change our location.”
They wound their way into the bowels of the station, passing through its myriad tunnels, passageways, and levels. Built in 1863, Baker Street was a mix of modern retrofit and antique fixtures, with nods to its Sherlock Holmes literary celebrity. Cameras were everywhere—cameras readily accessible to Scotland Yard. If they knew Vail and DeSantos were nearby, they’d be doing a search of all video feeds coming in from the station’s cams.
They neared the platform that Reid led them to: they wanted the Bakerloo line, he told them, exiting at Paddington. He said it was a short, four minute ride.
A moment later, a train was rumbling toward them. Once inside, Vail sat down heavily. “Hopefully no one’ll be waiting for us when we get off.”
“Ingram said the Met’s got an alert out to all officers and CO19 units. They’ve got checkpoints set up around town. We should avoid cars, taxis, buses, and trains.”
“So naturally we’re on a train,” Vail said.
“Perhaps you wanted to walk?”
“It’s a short leg,” DeSantos said. “Not like we had a lot of choices.” He took a seat beside Vail, facing Reid, who’d sat down across the way. “What’s this mail railway you mentioned?”
“A ‘secret’ underground rail system designed to move mail across London. A six or seven mile trip from its east end to its west end. The trains only go about thirty-five, forty miles per hour, but the best part—the most important thing for you—is that it’s underground, and there’s no CCTV. Well, there are cameras, but they closed the railway in 2003, so they’re not being used.”
Vail looked at the overhead graphic showing the station map. The last thing she wanted was to miss their stop.
“You sure it’ll still run?” she asked.
Reid shrugged. “Wish I could tell you for sure, but yeah, they supposedly only mothballed it. I’m told the controllers go down there periodically, fire things up and run the trains. It’s a good emergency system.”
“And how are we supposed to ‘fire things up’?”
“I was down there a few years ago and watched a demonstration they did. Hopefully it’ll come back to me.”
Hopefully?
The tube’s public address system announced that they were approaching Paddington Station.
“This is us,” Reid said. “Let’s see if we can throw them off. Cover part of your face. An eye, your nose. Looks a bit suspicious, but it supposedly prevents the facial recognition from, well, recognizing you.”
The train stopped. The “Please mind the gap” announcement began as the doors parted.
“Stay close,” Reid said. “I’m going to try to lead you out of here without too much drama.”
Yeah. I’m not holding my breath.
63
U
zi and Rodman stuffed all their equipment into a black backpack and left the van, which Rodman had meticulously scrubbed before heading off toward Suffolk.
A US Air Force troop carrier was idling parallel to their vehicle, lights off. Uzi peeled back the canvas cape covering the rear of the truck and they climbed inside. A uniformed man sat there, gear off to the side. He extended a hand and Rodman took it.
“Trip, good to see you.”
“Another time, Hot Rod, I’d say the same thing. But you’re putting me in a real bad way. The risk—”
“Has been huge. For
us
. In the next few days, when things start coming out, you’ll be telling me how much you appreciate what we’ve done here.”
Trip frowned, then pulled out a duffel bag from beneath the seat.
“But we’re grateful for your help,” Uzi said. “Getting out of here would’ve been a whole lot harder, if not impossible.”
Trip grunted. “Don’t thank me yet. You’re a long way from being out of this. There are a million things that can go wrong—starting the minute you stepped into the back of this truck. Trust me, you don’t want to know all the ways you can fuck this up.” He unzipped the canvas bag and removed a couple articles of clothing. “Assuming you’re not shot down and I’m not court martialed, you owe me a beer stateside someday.”
“Deal,” Uzi said.
“Flight suits,” Trip said as he tossed them onto their laps. “You’ve got two minutes to get ’em on before we hit the base perimeter.”
Uzi and Rodman complied, slipping them on over their clothes.
“Assuming we get through the base’s security checkpoint, the flightline has tighter controls. There are other access points with video and electronic surveillance that require electronic passes. If we make it through all of those, the runways themselves are very isolated. But the Air Force is notorious for its overbearing patrols of the flightline. Wearing those,” he said, gesturing at the flight suits, “and acting like you know what you’re doing, we should be okay.”
As Uzi adjusted the fit atop his shoulders, he said, “So how’s this going to work? Can’t imagine we’re just gonna walk up to an Osprey and fly it away.”
“Short answer is yes, that’s basically what you’re going to do. Long answer’s more complicated. Aircraft stored out on the flightline are mostly ready to fly. At the end of regular flight ops, sometimes there are inserts—basically, big red plugs—that go in the intakes, pins for the landing gear, and various ‘remove before flight’ flags on certain gear. The planes are chained down and their wheels are chocked. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they’ll probably be fully fueled and ready to go.”
“Doesn’t sound ‘ready to go’ to me.”
“Removing the ‘red gear’ and chains only takes a few minutes,” Rodman said. “It’s not as bad as Trip’s making it out to be.”
“Look,” Trip said. “These are very expensive, very unique planes. The Air Force doesn’t want anything happening to them, right? That includes theft. Don’t forget that no one knows you here—you may be wearing the right uniform, but everyone here pretty much knows everyone else. You’ll be exposed while you’re unhooking the chains, removing the red gear, and boarding. Those are a very dangerous ‘few minutes.’” He gave Rodman a stern look.
“Just how many bullets are we going to be dodging?” Uzi asked.
Trip stole a quick look out a small grommet hole in the canvas covering. “The late night hours are usually pretty quiet for flying. Since you’re doing this after regular flight hours, the tower’s closed. Obviously that’s a big deal. So as long as you fly low and don’t turn on your transponder, no one’ll be able to track you once you’re airborne.
“So that brings us to your biggest problem. This is the busiest time for the maintainers. They’re in and out of the aircraft on the line throughout the night doing maintenance. So even if you’re able to remove the gear and get into the plane, it’s gonna be tough to start it up without drawing attention.”
“How quick can we lift off once we start the engines?”
“Not quick enough. But here’s the thing: when certain kinds of maintenance are done on the engines, they need to be turned on and run up to various power settings before they’re certified to fly again. Not many maintainers are certified to start these planes, especially for high power checks. But I’m the maintenance officer, and I’m certified. So I volunteered. I’m flying an important joint exercise tomorrow. No one questioned it.”
“So,” Rodman said, “you’ll be making a lot of noise on a plane nearby.”
“Right. When you start your engines, no one should notice.”
“How long will it take to get airborne?”
“If we do it right,” Rodman said, “ten, fifteen minutes.”
“And if we do it wrong?”
“Not an option. I can do this.”
“How many times have you flown one of these?”
Rodman’s face hardened, his eyes locking on Uzi’s. “Half a dozen.”
Uzi was sure he was unsuccessful in hiding his surprise. “I don’t know a whole lot about the Osprey, but I do know it’s a complex machine that’s had a number of crashes, mostly from pilot error. And you’ve only flown this thing six times?”
“You have a better idea,” Rodman said, “now would be the time.”
“Look sharp,” Trip said, peering through the canvas hole. “We’re here.”