Overkill (70 page)

Dekker looked up and grinned at him. ‘Tell me about it. OK, your Mr Simpson has been busy while you’ve been poncing about over France in your executive jet. Where he got them from
I’ve no idea, but there are three V6 Renault Espaces parked outside this hangar full of fuel and ready to go. They’re our transport. Then he kicked Lacomte and Lacomte kicked France
Telecom into action, so we now know the exact address this Dernowi guy is using. I got that a few minutes ago by email from London. We also,’ Dekker added, ‘know Dernowi’s name,
or at least the name he used when he applied for his landline telephone.’

‘Which is?’ Richter asked, as Dekker snapped the laptop closed and pulled out the data cable that linked it to the mobile phone.

‘Abdullah Mahmoud.’

‘An Arab. That makes a lot more sense. Anything known on him?’

Dekker shook his head. ‘Nothing yet, but we’ve got traces running through all the allied databases. It’s probably an alias, so I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

‘And where is he?’ Richter asked.

‘A charming little place called St Médard. Apparently, it’s a hamlet near a village called Manciet, on the N124 beyond Auch, and it’s about a hundred and ten clicks west
of here on pretty average roads, according to the map, so we’d best get moving.’

Buraydah, Saudi Arabia

Sadoun Khamil had left his computer running, and the Internet connection open, but he’d left the room for a few minutes to instruct one of his men to prepare him
some food and drink for what he anticipated would be a very long night. Three minutes after he’d walked out, his email client software emitted a soft double-tone that indicated receipt of an
email, but it was another six minutes before he returned and checked the screen. Decrypting the message took a further four minutes, and then Khamil hunched forward and read the text with great
care.

The response from Pakistan was all that he had dared hope. The al-Qaeda leaders had approved the immediate implementation of
El Sikkiyn
. The issue of the
fatwa
would follow, as
would the leaked details of the Russian operation, but Khamil’s instructions were clear and unambiguous – he was to instruct Abbas to complete the final phase immediately.

For a few moments, Khamil did nothing but re-read the message to ensure that he had made no mistake. He considered sending Abbas a message in clear, or even telephoning him, but decided that he
would follow the agreed procedure. He composed two short paragraphs to Abbas, added the text he had received from Pakistan, and encrypted the entire message. He pasted the apparently corrupted text
into an existing email marketing message, chose a suitable route and pressed the send button.

He left the computer running and the door to the room open, so that he would hear if any further email messages arrived for him. Then he walked into the main room where four of his men were
sitting cross-legged on the floor watching an Arabic-language broadcast on the television. He instructed them to switch on the satellite receiver and watch the American CNN station. That, he knew
from past experience, would probably be the first channel to break the news. If, that is, there was enough remaining of CNN to make any kind of a broadcast after
El Sikkiyn
began.

Friday
Gascony

The roads were nothing like as bad as Colin Dekker had feared, and the three Renaults were able to hold their speed at well over one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour
for most of the time. Richter claimed he was still half-asleep, which was not much of an exaggeration, so he navigated from the roadmap while Colin Dekker drove.

Like most of France after about seven in the evening, the villages that the convoy swept through appeared deserted, doors firmly closed, shutters secured, no lights showing. Léguevin,
L’Isle-Jourdain, Gimont and Aubiet. Auch was different, simply because it was bigger, and they saw couples and small groups of people walking the streets. Then they were through the town and
back on the empty country roads. St-Jean-Poutge, Vic-Fézensac and through Dému, and then an almost arrow-straight road to Manciet.

‘According to this map,’ Richter murmured, as Dekker pushed the speed up to just over one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, ‘this is an attractive country road with
spectacular views to the south over the valley of the River Douze.’

‘Fascinating,’ Dekker replied. ‘More to the point, how far have we got to go?’

‘About six kilometres to Manciet, then another two up to St Médard. Eight clicks in total, which is just about five miles.’

Fifty-five minutes after driving out of Blagnac Airport, almost on the stroke of one, the three cars swept into the village of Manciet, headlights blazing, and immediately turned hard right onto
the D931, north towards Eauze. St Médard lay two kilometres in front of them.

Le Moulin au Pouchon
, St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Like Sadoun Khamil in Saudi Arabia, Hassan Abbas had left his computer switched on, waiting for the decision from al-Qaeda. Abbas received at least thirty emails every
day, and eight times since he’d sent his message to Saudi Arabia he’d rushed back into the rear bedroom when he’d heard the warning announcing the receipt of an email. He’d
checked, and then deleted, them all.

The ninth message was different, not least because its apparent origin was Germany, and Abbas scanned it swiftly, looking for the tell-tale ‘corrupted’ section of text. He found it
about halfway down, highlighted and copied it, then ran the decryption routine to unscramble it. The plain text appeared on the screen and Abbas leaned forward to read it, simultaneously pressing
the ‘Print’ button which would send a copy of the text to the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet. He read Sadoun Khamil’s instructions, and the copy of the message from the al-Qaeda
leadership, with increasing satisfaction. Then he read the whole email again, twice, just to be certain. ‘Allah be praised,’ he murmured, and stood up.

He removed the single sheet of paper from the printer and took it down the stairs and into the living room, where Jaafar Badri and Karim Ibrahim, two of his three bodyguards, were sitting
watching a French game-show on the television. The fourth bodyguard – Saadi Fouad – was asleep upstairs.

‘My friends,’ Abbas said, his words ringing with the monumental significance of the announcement he was about to make, ‘tonight we will strike a blow at the infidels from which
they will never recover. Our leaders have instructed me to implement
El Sikkiyn
immediately. Within hours, America and Russia will be smoking ruins. Allah be praised.’

Abbas smiled in satisfaction as his companions echoed his prayer, then turned back to the stairs and the task he was going to perform.

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Le Moulin au Pouchon
took some finding, not least because, as appeared to be common practice in France, most of the streets didn’t appear to have names and
the houses lacked both names and numbers. Presumably the locals knew where they were going, and visitors just had to ask a local – easy enough at midday, but impossible after midnight.

The information from France Telecom had included a set of directions originally supplied by Abdullah Mahmoud, Abbas’ alias, when he had applied for the landline to be installed. Though
somewhat ambiguous, at least in the dark and silent village streets, the directions did eventually lead Richter and Dekker to a narrow, winding road that snaked away up the hillside. In the
distance they could see a single light burning, but even through the night-vision glasses it was impossible to tell if it was from an uncurtained window or was simply an exterior light some farmer
had forgotten to switch off.

The last thing they wanted to do was alert their quarry, so as soon as Ross was reasonably sure that they had identified the correct road, he ordered the three Espaces parked in a layby about a
quarter of a mile from the village. Everybody climbed out and gathered round Ross and Dekker, who had the laptop open again and was re-checking the directions supplied by France Telecom. ‘Any
idea what the opposition strength is likely to be?’ Ross asked.

Richter shook his head. ‘At least one person, but we have to assume that there will be a team of people to support him. I’m guessing, but it could be anything from two or three to a
round dozen. Obviously at least some of them, possibly all of them, will be armed.’

‘Assault tactics,’ Ross said, ‘will have to be left until we see the location itself. All we got from France Telecom was the address of the house. We have no idea whether
it’s a new two-bedroom villa or a three-hundred-year-old six-bedroomed
maison de maître
. But it’s fair to say that in this part of France old houses greatly outnumber the
new properties, so the chances are that it will be an old stone property with solid doors and fairly small windows, none of which is good news from our point of view.’

‘What about weapons?’ Richter asked. ‘I can see the Hocklers, but have you got anything heavier in case these comedians are living in some sort of fortified manor
house?’

‘We’ve got half a dozen G60 stun grenades left, plus one M79 launcher and three high-explosive grenades.’

Richter nodded. ‘Excellent. That should make short work of any French front door.’

‘The M79 is still in the car,’ Dekker said.

‘Get it, please,’ Ross said, and a trooper trotted away obediently.

Richter glanced round at the faces of the SAS troopers. ‘The weapon on the
Anton Kirov
was dangerous enough,’ he said, ‘but it was only one bomb, albeit a big one. This
time we’re playing for much bigger stakes – if this Arab decides to carry on where Trushenko left off, he could quite literally start a Third World War, effectively destroy America and
return western civilization to the Stone Age. We don’t mess with him. We have just one chance to do it right, and we have to stop him – permanently.’

Hammersmith, London

Baker still had the connection open to the Krutaya mainframe and had been working on the system ever since Richter had left the suite. He had been alternating his efforts
between trying to locate Dernowi’s backdoor code and getting into the Weapon Control module with Administrator status. Unfortunately, he had got precisely nowhere with both tasks.

Just after midnight, local time, he watched impotently as Dernowi used his backdoor code to get into the system again.

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Once they had all checked their weapons and equipment, Ross divided the men into two groups and led them silently up the twisting road towards the single light
they’d seen from the edge of the village. All around them the countryside was dark and totally silent, as if nature herself was holding her breath.

When they were about two hundred yards from the light, they stopped, and Ross and Dekker used their night-vision glasses to inspect the target. What they saw was an L-shaped house with a single
light burning above what was presumably the main door. They could see no lights in any of the rooms, no sign of life anywhere, and the shutters over all the windows were closed. Ross murmured
orders through the radio, and the troopers began an even more stealthy approach, using the cover provided by the hedges and trees that lined both sides of the road.

Colin Dekker, who was leading the first group, suddenly stopped and stood erect beside one of the two stone gateposts that guarded the entrance to the property. ‘This is the wrong
house,’ he said into his radio microphone.

‘Are you sure?’ Ross asked.

‘Yup. Unless we’ve got the name wrong. According to this name plate –’ he gestured at the stone pillar in front of him and the garden of the property beyond
‘– this house is called “
Les Deux Cèdres
”, and those two trees over there are probably the cedars in question.’

Le Moulin au Pouchon
, St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Hassan Abbas was taking his time, relishing the moment. He accessed the weapon control module and chose the ‘Total’ option, which would allow all the weapons
on American soil to be detonated simultaneously. Then he took out a small black leather-covered book from his pocket and, in response to the automated prompts from the Krutaya mainframe, began
carefully inputting the two twelve-digit authorization codes that were required to activate each weapon in turn. Detonation would not take place until all two hundred and three nuclear weapons had
been enabled.

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Richter had left his mobile phone switched on, but with the ringer silent and the phone set to vibrate when a call was received. As Ross and Dekker regrouped their men and
prepared to advance further up the lane, he felt the tremor in his pocket, pulled the phone out and pressed the button to answer the call. ‘Richter.’

‘You’d better be quick,’ Baker said, his voice high and panicky. ‘That bastard Dernowi’s on the system again and he’s just accessed the Weapon Control
module.’

‘Can’t you change the authorization codes – you know, the same as you did with Trushenko?’

‘No. He’s got a higher access level then me. The moment I did anything like that he’d know I was an intruder. He’d simply delete Modin as a user, kick me off the system
and then get on with detonating the weapons. It’s better if I don’t do anything. At least that way I can see what he’s doing.’

‘And what is he doing?’

‘He’s chosen simultaneous detonation. He’s going to trigger all the American weapons at the same time.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Richter said. ‘OK – stay on the line.’ He looked round and gestured urgently to Ross and Dekker. ‘Dernowi’s on the system again,’
he said, ‘and he’s going to fire all the American weapons simultaneously. We have to act immediately. Are you sure this is the right road?’

Dekker nodded, his face visibly pale in the dim moonlight. ‘If the France Telecom directions are right, yes.’