Overkill

he’d realized the system was being tampered with.

The only way that could happen was if the other user on the system wasn’t actually General Modin, but someone who’d used his logon details to gain access, and who was altering the master list of authorization codes. And that, Abbas realized quickly, was something he could easily deal with. He exited from the Weapon Control module and checked the logged-on users. He found only one – Modin – which was itself unusual. Normally other users would have logged on, checked something or carried out some kind of maintenance task, and then logged off. But for the last several hours, only that single user had been on the system, and Abbas knew he had to be a doppelganger.

That in turn meant that General Modin had been compromised and that some authority, presumably the same authority that had ordered its execution squad to attack the house, knew about Podstava. But what they didn’t and couldn’t know about was El Sikkiyn, although they were about to find out.

Hassan Abbas had a degree in computer science from Cornell University in the States, and was by any standards an expert. He had exactly the same authority on the Krutaya mainframe as the system designer, and could do anything he wished. He thought for a few seconds, then initiated a full system maintenance shutdown routine. This required the forced disconnection of all users apart from the initiator of the routine, and he watched in satisfaction as ‘General Modin’ suddenly vanished from the list of logged-on users. As a precaution, Abbas deleted Modin from the list of authorized users. Then he copied the list of modified firing authorization codes into the laptop’s word processor program before turning his attention once again to the Weapons Control module.

Le Moulin au Pouchon, St Medard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrenees, France

‘There’s definitely something there,’ Dekker muttered, his eyes glued to the night-vision glasses in the darkened bedroom. ‘About a hundred metres up the hill. It looks like a derelict building, but I can see at least one person in it, maybe two. I’m only seeing their faces.’

‘That has to be them,’ Richter said. ‘Take them out.’

The bedroom had only one fairly narrow window with a view up the hill, and it was immediately obvious that two men wouldn’t be able to shoot out of it at the same time. ‘Take the first shot as soon as you can,’ Ross instructed the sniper. ‘With any luck the second target may show himself straight afterwards, taking a look down here.’

The trooper nodded, opened the window and rested his Accuracy International PM sniper rifle as comfortably as he could on the sill and stared up the hill through the Davin Optical Starlight scope.

Richter’s mobile rang again, with the news that he had hoped not to hear. ‘It’s Baker. Sorry, but he ejected me from the system a couple of minutes ago, and I can’t get back in – he seems to have deleted Modin as a user. It’s all up to you now.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ Richter said, and snapped the phone off. ‘That was my computer man in London,’ he told Ross. ‘Dernowi has kicked him off the system, so we’ve got minutes at the most to sort this out.’

Even as he spoke, the sniper squeezed the rifle’s trigger and immediately brought the weapon back on target. ‘One down,’ he said, never taking his eye from the sights.

St Medard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrenees, France

Karim Ibrahim suddenly jerked backwards in a spray of blood and, in a slow motion that was almost graceful, span to the ground, his Kalashnikov clattering on to the stone floor beside him as the echo of the shot rang around the valley. Badri sprang across to his fallen comrade and looked down in disbelief. Ibrahim was dead, had been dead before he even hit the ground, a massive bullet wound in his face.

‘A sniper,’ Badri snapped, disgust in his voice, and rushed back across the outhouse to the ruined window. Keeping low and behind the wall, he pushed the muzzle of his Kalashnikov through the window and emptied the magazine down the hill towards the old house.

‘Stop,’ Abbas shouted, ‘stop firing. Now they know where we are. You cannot hit them, and I need you alive to keep me alive. Reload, and stay down and out of sight.’

Almost reluctantly, Badri crouched low and fitted a new magazine to his Kalashnikov. ‘Should we move on?’ he asked.

Abbas shook his head. ‘No. They would hunt us down like animals in the dark. To have killed Ibrahim like that, with a single shot, means they have image-intensifier sights and sniper rifles. They probably also have automatic weapons and grenades. We have two Kalashnikovs and three pistols. We have no choice but to make our last stand here.’ Badri nodded, but said nothing. ‘They cannot reach us directly from the house,’ Abbas said. ‘The undergrowth is too thick. Now they know where we are, they will try to work their way around and come upon us from behind.’ Abbas gestured urgently to the dark hillside at the rear of the outhouse. ‘Move over there and watch for them.’

Abbas had displayed an immediate tactical grasp of the situation, and of the intentions of Ross and Dekker. They’d both studied the terrain leading up to the outhouse through their night-vision glasses and had decided that it was effectively impassable without making their presence quite obvious, which would inevitably invite a stream of bullets from the surviving bodyguard. An approach from the rear was the only viable option.

Dekker and four troopers, followed by Richter, slid silently out of the front door of Le Moulin au Pouchon and ran up the road for about two hundred metres, then moved through the scrubby hedge and started up the hill.

Hassan Abbas leant back from the laptop computer, his fingers leaving the keyboard for the first time in what seemed hours, and for a few seconds he just sat there, deep in thought.

When El Sikkiyn had been conceived, the al-Qaeda leadership had insisted on the simultaneous detonation of all two hundred and three weapons placed on American soil. Abbas and Sadoun Khamil had both argued that it would be better only to detonate the majority of the weapons, leaving the others still in place and hidden, to be used as a lethal bargaining counter for the future.

But al-Qaeda believed that the only way that America could be induced to fire its entire nuclear arsenal at Russia, which was the prime objective of the plan, would be to ensure that America suffered an overwhelming nuclear attack, clearly originating from Russia. The American and Russian governments might be able to avoid a full-scale nuclear exchange if only a few weapons were exploded. They could, perhaps, negotiate some kind of reparation or settlement, particularly if the Russians could demonstrate that the attack had actually not been their doing. And that was not what al-Qaeda wanted. El Sikkiyn was designed to ensure the total destruction of both America and Russia, hence the single, massive strike.

The problem that Hassan Abbas was facing, as the executor of El Sikkiyn, was time. Ever since he had switched on the laptop, he had been trying to complete the detonation routine. But that required the inputting of two twelve-digit codes – twenty-four digits – for each weapon. It was a safeguard the Russians had built into the system, and there had been no way Abbas could reasonably argue against it.

The other problem was that before any weapon could be detonated, the user had to select ‘Individual’, ‘Group’ or ‘Total’ to determine whether just one or a number of weapons were to be fired. Abbas had selected ‘total’, but he’d only enabled thirty-two of the two hundred and three weapons, and he knew that there was no possible way he could complete the authorization sequence for all of the devices before the unknown attackers would have worked their way around to the outhouse and killed him.

Abbas leaned forward again, decision made. If he couldn’t carry out his orders, he would just have to do the best he could in the time he had left. At least, he thought, with a wry smile, nobody in al-Qaeda would be able to reproach him for it, because he knew with absolute certainty that he had only minutes left to live.

He flicked the touchpad and sent the cursor across the screen and cancelled the ‘Total’ detonation routine. With another swift movement he selected ‘Individual’ and chose the first target on the alphabetically sorted list – Abilene, Texas.

At the old mill, Ross looked at his watch for the eighth time since the group had left, then nodded to the sniper. The trooper squeezed the trigger of his rifle and sent the 7.62mm round screaming up the hill, to smash