Cyber Terror (2 page)

138 people were huddled together in groups, standing on the wings or the partially submerged chutes. A few passengers had slipped off the wings and into the water. Or perhaps, fearing that the
plane was about to sink or explode, they’d decided to swim for the shore.

A ferry, several pleasure boats and a couple of rescue craft made their way to the stricken aeroplane within three minutes of the crash landing. Amateurs and professionals alike plucked stranded
passengers from the wings, the water and the chutes which had detached from the aircraft to form life-rafts. The coming and going of boats continued until all of the passengers and aircrew of
Flight LH6681 were safely back on land.

Under the circumstances, the toll of injuries was light: one heart attack, four head wounds, several cases of exposure among those dragged from the water, one serious laceration to the arm, a
broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. The flashbacks, panic attacks and sleeplessness would hit many of them later.

The waterlogged Airbus was towed to Leith Docks and moored there while the on-scene investigation began.

Waiting for the traffic lights in Highgate Village to turn green, Jordan Stryker looked up. For some reason, he wondered if he could punch his way out through the top of his
car in an emergency. He didn’t know. He couldn’t do it with his left fist. He didn’t have to attempt it to know that the reinforced metal roof would be too strong for flesh and
bone. He didn’t yet have the same instinct for his false right arm. He knew that, if he shoved it out of the window of the moving car and let it slam into a concrete lamp post, his bionic arm
would come off worse. If he walloped a pedestrian or cyclist, he’d damage the person more than the robotic gadget attached to his right shoulder. But he hadn’t yet worked out his
limitations. He might be able to smash through the roof and he might not.

The lights changed and Jordan accelerated.

Straight away, a police officer on a motorbike indicated that he should pull over and stop. The policeman took off his helmet and strolled up to Jordan’s jet black Jaguar. “Get
out,” he demanded.

Jordan sighed and did as he was told.

The traffic cop looked him up and down with an expression of disdain on his face. “You’re young.” He seemed to have decided already that Jordan had committed a driving offence.
A teenager in a flash car was all the evidence he appeared to need. “Your licence, please.” Then he smirked and added, “As if you’ve got one.”

“Yes, I’ve got one,” Jordan replied calmly.

Jordan Stryker was fourteen, but the date of birth shown on his driving licence made him seventeen years old. He was a much modified boy with a modified ID, driving a much modified Jaguar XJ
Sentinel.

More than a year before, an explosion had wiped out his immediate family and almost destroyed him. An underground organization called Unit Red had taken care of him, rebuilt his broken body and
given him a new identity. Now, Jordan was part human and part machine. He had a robotic right arm, brain implants that gave him acute hearing, a fantastic sense of smell and a connection to the
internet, as well as bionic eyes with a range of wavelengths. Whenever he wanted, he could turn on his night vision or the terahertz technology that allowed him to see through material. He used his
enhancements as an agent for Unit Red, tackling the bad guys who were beyond normal law. It was also Unit Red that had given him his car and driving licence.

The police officer examined the licence, stared at Jordan and then studied the card again. Plainly, he was struggling to believe the first four digits of Jordan’s licence number. They
formed a code that told him Jordan was not to be hindered. “This means...”

Jordan nodded. “Let’s not talk about it here. I didn’t nick the car and I’m not a joyrider. Despite appearances. I need to get going.”

“Right.” The traffic cop returned the licence and muttered, “Sorry to...you know.”

“No problem,” Jordan replied with a cheeky smile.

He started the engine again and turned into Swain’s Lane. He could set the electric car to run in silent mode, but it had an electronic sound generator wired into its motor. The gadget
monitored the revs and produced a synthetic engine noise, modelled on the powerful purr of a supercharged V8 engine. It alerted pedestrians to the car’s presence.

Jordan let the Jaguar roll down the hill to Unit Red’s headquarters in Highgate Cemetery and halted by the locked garage doors. Using one of his brain implants, he thought the password
into the on-board computer. At once, the car transmitted the electronic key to the garage door and it eased open. Jordan steered the car slowly up to its recharging point in the engineering
workshop and the door slid down securely behind him.

He walked through the house and took the lift down to the underground rooms, heading straight to the bunker because Unit Red’s boss wanted to see him.

When he entered, Angel looked up from his monitor. Even sitting, the chief looked impressively tall. He was in his late thirties, lean and self-assured. “Good,” he said, seeing
Jordan. “I know you were putting the car through its paces, but I ordered you back because something’s come up. I’ve just been handed a new case. The usual agencies aren’t
getting anywhere, so it’s come to us. I think it’s one for you.”

Jordan sat down opposite Angel. “Oh?”

He nodded. “You won’t remember the Edinburgh Airport incident – and the pilot’s heroic landing in the river – because you were still out of commission, learning to
master your arm. Never mind. Basically, a plane lost all control in mid-air. You can access the details on the system.” He tapped his workstation. “A month before that, there was
another incident. A flight took off from Quito en route to Amsterdam. Same thing. Within minutes, an electronic fault brought it down with a full load of fuel. There wasn’t much left to
investigate after the explosion. And there was total loss of life.”

“Quito? Where’s that?”

“Ecuador.” Angel continued, “In one case, an explosion and fire stopped the experts diagnosing exactly what happened. In the other, water ruined the electronics. The
planes’ black boxes weren’t specific. Both recorded an unknown electronic fault that crashed the flight system. So, in the absence of solid evidence, what are the possibilities? How did
someone knock both planes out of the sky?”

“Just a minute,” Jordan said. “How do you know it was done on purpose? Maybe something just went wrong with both planes.” Thinking of one of his mum’s sayings, he
added, “Accidents happen.”

“Before Quito, whoever did it announced there’d be a disaster. He didn’t say where or what type. He was making sure we knew it was deliberate. It was terrorism, not an
accident. After Quito, he demanded a ransom or he’d do the same in Britain.”

“So we refused to pay up and he went ahead?”

Angel shook his head. “The government wouldn’t admit it publicly, but they dropped five million precisely where it was supposed to be dropped. It wasn’t touched and he hit
Edinburgh anyway. This isn’t about money. It’s someone who gets kicks out of making us squirm and pay up. When I say
someone
, I mean a man, woman or a group of people. I’ll
play you his sound clips in a minute. But first...”

“How he did it?”

“Yes.” Angel stood up and walked up and down behind his desk. “The real answer is, we don’t know. But our computer specialists have come up with three possibilities.
Black-box recorders couldn’t distinguish them. A cyber attack, a hardware Trojan, or an e-bomb.”

Jordan looked blank. He’d heard of a cyber attack. That was a fancy name for hacking and computer viruses. He didn’t have a clue about the other two.

“There’s no evidence anyone hacked into the aviation computers, but it can’t be ruled out. A Trojan’s harder to pin down. You’ll get a full briefing later, but
it’s a microchip that was sabotaged with a bad circuit when it was made. It can be activated at any time, turning the microprocessor into a time bomb.”

“Aren’t chips tested before they get put in planes – or anywhere else?”

Angel nodded. “But there’s no way of detecting a single extra circuit among millions of genuine ones on a chip. The kill switch only makes itself known when it’s triggered. By
then, it’s too late. The chip’s dead and whatever was relying on it is down and out.”

“And that’s called a hardware Trojan?”

“Yes. The third possibility’s an electromagnetic bomb.” Angel sat at his desk again. “Did you know you could down a plane, or even bring a city to its knees, in a
fraction of a second without firing a single shot, spilling a drop of blood or blasting a single building? That’s an e-bomb for you. It’s simple to make and it doesn’t leave a
trace. It’s a strong burst of microwaves and it’d burn out all circuits and crash every computer within a few hundred square metres.”

“Does that mean it fries chips?” Jordan said, with a smile on his face.

“This is serious, Jordan.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“The pulse creates a power surge in circuits, like giving all electronic gear a heart attack.” Angel sighed. “Cyber warfare, a hardware Trojan or an e-bomb could trash an
aircraft’s power and control systems at a distance. Or worse. Crippling a few planes and killing the passengers is bad enough. But we could be facing the end of civilization.”

“That’s a bit...”

“Extreme? Not really,” Angel said. “Think about it. Society – civilization – depends on computers and technology. If someone could disrupt crucial computers,
it’d be the end of everything. Energy generation and distribution. We’d have no power. Then there’s pumping stations. They’d grind to a halt. That means no drinking water
after half a day and no petrol or diesel transport because there’d be no pumps to refuel vehicles. No deliveries. Supermarket shelves would empty in two or three days, no supplies of drugs
would get to hospitals. So, no water, no food, no medicine, no power. Emergency generators would only work till they ran out of fuel. Health care and hospital services would collapse in seventy-two
hours. How long do you think we’d last after that? How long before people riot on the streets?”

“I see what you mean.”

“Remember, there’s no heating, no telecommunications, no internet, no emergency services. Sewage wouldn’t get pumped away. Banks, stock exchanges and just about every other
business would go into meltdown. The armed forces rely on communication, so they’d be out of it as well.” He raised his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. “Need I go on?
That’s not just a spanner in the works. It’s chaos and complete breakdown. Pretty much the end of civilization as far as I’m concerned. Experts tell me it’d take four to ten
years to recover from an attack like that.”

Jordan remembered his mum once saying that civilization is only three or four meals away from anarchy. At the time, he hadn’t understood. He did now, though. “If it’s such a
big deal, why are you giving this job to me?” he asked.

“Because you’ve got an extra incentive to sort it out.”

“How do you mean?”

“Society depends on technology. So do you. An e-bomb would scramble your circuits. If you’ve got a Trojan chip inside you, you could be crippled at the flick of a switch. Or a hacker
could break into your systems and disable you. That’ll spur you on, to say the least. But you won’t be on your own. I’ll give you all the backup you need. Now,” he said,
“do you want to hear him – or her? The police called him Short Circuit.”

Jordan nodded and sat up attentively.

Accessing the sound file through his computer, Angel explained, “His first message – before the crash in Ecuador – was short and not very sweet. He simply announced in advance
when something bad was going to happen. This was his second. Like the first, it’s heavily distorted. My sound gurus tell me it’s been through several stages of manipulation to disguise
the voice. Before you ask, background noise has been filtered out. Apart from the sound of an aeroplane taking off and that’s probably been layered over the top to remind us of the threat. It
doesn’t mean he lives near Gatwick or Heathrow. Or Edinburgh.” Angel struck the
Enter
key to play the file.

Angel turned down the volume. “He’s finished his main rant. It goes on – in huge detail – about the mechanics of dropping the money in Kingston...”

“Kingston?”

“Upon Thames. Surrey. Anyway, you can check it out later, if you like. It came to nothing. He didn’t pick it up.”

The voice could have come out of a synthesizer. It wasn’t natural in any way. The terrorist could have been male or female, young or old. Any accent was lost in the distortion. It could
have been an English, American, Australasian or Canadian voice. It could have been Scottish, Welsh or Irish.

“Have you heard from him since?” Jordan asked.

Angel nodded. He stopped the recording and set up another. “This is the latest.” He clicked on the file.