“But Dad, if —”
The unit sent to kill them arrived like lightning. They were wearing all black with balaclavas and carrying identical Heckler & Koch MP7 submachine guns fitted with suppressors.
Alex saw them first over her father’s shoulder as the back of Special Agent Regan’s skull blew off and he fell back into the plates of food on the table with a tremendous crash. A second later shots rang out all over the front of the cabin and then they all heard a burst of submachine gun fire and saw Agent Walsh slump to the ground on the patio — a pool of blood forming around his silent corpse.
Hawke spun around, reaching for the Beretta M9 on the breakfast bar and screaming at Jack Brooke and his daughter to dive for cover. He ducked down behind the wooden bar as more automatic fire raked the wall of Brooke’s kitchen and sprayed all over the side of the living room. Shards of splintered oak panel burst all over the room as the bullets ripped through the furniture and walls. A large deer antler trophy was blasted from the wall above the fireplace and shattered on the hearth.
One of the men threw a grenade into the room and screamed at them: “Goodbye, Mr Secretary!”
Hawke saw it first and picked it up, hurling it through the open double doors of the living room where it exploded on the patio and blasted the glass from the windows and doors back into the room in a lethal shower.
Special Agent Coleman ran into the room, firing bursts from his handgun at the gunmen as he closed in on Brooke. “The car’s ready, Mr Secretary. We have to get you out of here, sir!”
“Like hell you do!” Brooke shouted. “You get my girl to safety first.” As he spoke he wrenched a Smith & Wesson .45 from an inside pocket and fired back at the men in the kitchen. He hit one of them, the three bullets exploding in his chest and sending him staggering back out the door where he collapsed on the porch steps.
“Look out!” Hawke tried to push Coleman to safety but it was too late. Another shooter in the garden had targeted the Special Agent and Hawke watched with horror as a small red dot laser-sight tracked up Coleman’s back and stopped on the rear of his head. Coleman was dead before he hit the floor, and still the bullets came flying.
Another gunman made some headway toward the double doors before Hawke used the M9 to drop him with a lethal neck shot. His mind buzzed as he considered the various options open to them. Clearly they were under massive attack, and it was also obvious the target, just for once, wasn’t him but the Secretary of Defense. He had no idea if other senior members of the US Government were also under attack, but focussed instead on defending Jack Brooke and his daughter. Everything else could be considered when they were safe.
The situation wasn’t new to Hawke — he had worked in high-level security positions before, the most prominent one being when he was charged to protect a delegation of British Government ministers on a trade mission to Zambia. It went well until the last minute, and then things could have gone a lot more smoothly. At the last minute everything went badly wrong for the British delegation, but why had always been a mystery.
It was during his time in Lusaka that he had met Zhang Xiaoli, otherwise known as Lexi Zhang. Agent Dragonfly had been in the country investigating some kind of problem that concerned the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, or that was how she had put it to him, at least. He had enjoyed her company. They made each other laugh, but they both felt the undercurrent of forbidden excitement, the subterfuge that was always there when dealing with an agent working for a foreign power.
That was then and this was now. Now he wasn’t defending a team of middle-ranking British Civil Servants, but the man who gave all operational commands to the Pentagon — the American Secretary of Defense, one of the most powerful men on the planet — and he was under mortal threat at the hands of a team of highly trained professional assassins.
But Hawke had no time to think about the bigger picture now. Right now his priority was to lead Brooke and Alex to safety, and he had to think fast.
“Jack, can we get to the garage from here?”
Brooke nodded. “Sure, but if you’re thinking about a car forget it. I don’t keep my cars in the garage. I use the garage as a workshop and all the cars are parked in the outbuilding across the yard and through the trees.”
“That’s handy,” Hawke said.
“We can get there through the garage though,” Brooke said. “But it’s going to be tough.”
Hawke nodded. “Sounds like we have no choice, but we have to do all we can to get you out of here — both of you.”
As the bullets traced over their heads, Alex held Hawke’s arm. “If anyone can do it, I guess that man’s you.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Hawke said, ducking to dodge another bullet, “but normally I have you on the other end of a headset telling me what to do.”
“All right, then,” Brooke said, checking his weapon. “Let’s do this. We have a country to save.”
CHAPTER THREE
Alan Pauling pushed his hand into the Cheetos and pulled out half a dozen of the neon-orange snacks. He stuffed them into his mouth before wiping the salty cheese on the side of his Hawaiian shirt. It was hot and humid in New Orleans — just his kind of weather — and he settled back in his seat and stretched his arms in the comforting warmth. It reminded him of home in Queensland, not that he’d ever be going back there. When all this was over, and his special skills were no longer needed, he was going to buy himself a large house on a small island somewhere very isolated.
Watching the crowds forming below in the street, Pauling hoped not for the first time that Novak had done his part of the job properly and got inside the Beast. They had all known that was the hardest part of the entire operation, and any screw ups wouldn’t be known until the big moment itself. He shrugged his shoulders and ate more Cheetos. They would know soon enough.
How many of these people would survive the next few hours? Pauling had no idea. He didn’t particularly care about any of them. The tiny handful of people he cared about were thousands of miles away in Australia. The Boss had told him that particular country wasn’t a target, at least not yet. The Boss had his reasons for striking America, but the Boss never talked about them to anyone and Pauling knew better than to ask.
Another mouthful of Cheetos and he cracked open a Pepsi Max. Alan Pauling had a technical mind, but was not a complicated man. As far as he was concerned, all he cared about was the Golden Rule, and that was whoever has the gold, makes the rules. After this job for the Boss, he would be wealthy enough to fly away and build himself his own personal fiefdom, somewhere tropical if he could help it.
And nowhere immediately downwind of the Eastern Seaboard. After today, that would be a big mistake.
He fired up his laptop and swigged from the can of warm Pepsi. Waiting for the software to load, he peered once again through the window at the hubbub seven storeys beneath him. Enjoy it while you can, folks, he thought. Pretty soon nothing but mayhem down there.
The principle was simple enough — exploiting a simple zero-day vulnerability to change the course of history. Pauling enjoyed his work, and his study of the target vehicle’s network architecture was especially interesting to him. The more sophisticated the system, the more vulnerabilities there were to attack and exploit, and that was what made this job so exciting. It didn't get much more sophisticated than this.
If the vehicle was connected to the internet, which it was, it was simply a case of acquiring the car’s IP address. That was where Novak came in. With that information, Pauling was able to rewrite firmware in a chip inside the vehicle’s navigation system and import his own code. With that done he would be able to control the vehicle through the exploited CAN bus. A simple hack of the night-vision camera on the front of the car would allow for a visual as he controlled the car, and after that, as far as the passengers in the target vehicle were concerned, Alan Pauling was God.