Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (14 page)

“Perhaps, but
don’t go rushing in and spooking the guy.
  We need his equipment
intact.”  This was directed at Small.  “I need you to make sure comms
stay open with whoever’s in Durban.  Do what you need to do to convince
Gordon to help you.”

The team headed down to the car
park and climbed into the van.  During the thirty minute journey, Farsi
used his smart phone to get an overhead view of the target building. 
Gordon lived in a side street off the main road, which would make evacuation a
lot easier, and as his building was towards the end of the street they wouldn’t
have to clear too many homes.

His team consisted of
surveillance specialists, and he briefed them on the mission.

“The building in question is
number twenty-seven, and we’re after the occupants of flat three.”  He
selected two of the team and gave them the job of cordoning off each end of the
street and preventing people from entering the area.  “If anyone asks, an
automated system in the pipeline detected a leak beneath number twenty-seven. 
That should satisfy them if they start wondering who called us in.”

He instructed the other three
members of the team to go from house to house and clear them.

“Two houses either side should
be enough,” he told Rob Zimmerman, the surveillance team leader.  “Once
they’re empty, converge on the target.  We’ll leave his flat until last.”

Everyone acknowledged their
roles and they did a quick comms check before they arrived in Mercia Road.

*
* *

Carl Gordon saw the British Gas
van arrive on his monitor but it held his attention for nothing more than a few
seconds.  He’d installed the CCTV camera to spot the police arriving, not
utility vehicles, and he returned to his attention to the website he was
working on.

His attempts to sort out an
issue with a troublesome web control were interrupted again as another flash of
yellow moved across the monitor, and on closer examination he now saw a man in
a high-visibility jacket shepherding people towards the end of the road. 

 Gordon moved from his
office to the living room and looked out of the window, where he saw yet
another figure extending a roll of tape across the entrance to the street where
temporary barriers were already in place.  Below him, two more people were
heading towards the entrance to his building.

It was obvious to Gordon that
the street was being evacuated and his first concern was his equipment. 
His office was a small second bedroom and one wall was dedicated to servers,
which he kept on a purpose-built air-cooled rack.  The metal frame of the
rack was wired up to a capacitor which could send a massive electric current
through every box, frying the hard drives instantly.  It would mean
thousands of pounds of equipment would be rendered useless, but it was rather
that than incriminating evidence falling into the hands of the police.

He hit a few keys to save his
recent work to an online storage system before priming the anti-intruder
device, something he did every time he left the apartment.  Once he closed
the door to the office, the device was activated:  The next person to
enter the room would have just ten seconds to hit the Cancel switch, and they
could only do that if they knew about it and could find it.

He walked back to the window in
time to see his ground-floor neighbour carrying her two cats towards the
cordon,
and from behind him came a loud banging on the door.

“British Gas!
 
We’ve got an emergency and need you to leave the building!”

Gordon grabbed his coat and
opened the door, but through habit he left the chain on.

“Got any ID?”  He asked
through the small gap.

The man in the hallway seemed
unimpressed with the request, but he held up the card hanging around his
neck.  Gordon was satisfied with the comparison, but his attention was
drawn to the other man in the hallway, who had his finger on an earpiece which
fed down into his collar.  At that moment he realised he was facing more
than utility workers and he tried to slam the door closed.

It barely moved.

Hamad Farsi had seen the look of
panic suddenly appear on Gordon’s face and had stuck his steel toe-capped boot
into the gap, quickly bringing up the bolt cutters he’d placed beside the
door.  The thin chain offered no resistance and Farsi shoved his way into
the room, drawing his Taser as he moved.  His target hesitated in the
middle of the room for a second before heading at speed for a door off to his
right-hand side.

The electric barb hit Gordon in
the thigh just as he reached for the handle and his legs gave way beneath
him.  He tried to raise his arms to protect his face but they reacted like
jelly, and he smashed into the door nose first, leaving a trail of blood as he
slid to the floor.

Farsi pulled out a pair of
plasticuffs and secured the prisoner’s hands and feet, and then dragged him
onto a sofa.  Two members of the team began securing the tiny flat, one
taking the kitchen and bathroom while the other started a search in the main
bedroom.

“Now why would anyone react like
that to the gas man?”  Farsi asked, but Gordon just looked at the three
men standing in his living room, his gaze shifting from one to the other. 
Zimmerman had his Beretta drawn and ready, while Gerald Small stood still next
to the wall.  This was only his second field assignment but he knew to
keep out of the way and not touch anything until he was needed. 

Farsi noticed Gordon glancing at
the blood-stained door and indicated for the surveillance officer to take a
look.  Zimmerman nodded, and he had his hand poised on the handle when
Small told him to stop.

“He
wants
you to go in
there,” Small said, having noticed the faintest of smiles forming on Gordon’s
face.  Zimmerman took a couple of steps back and aimed at the door, ready
to deal with anyone who came out, while Farsi stood over the prisoner.

“Who’s in there?”  He
asked.

“I want a solicitor.”

“I said who’s in there?” 
Farsi repeated.

“You broke my nose.”

Farsi grabbed Gordon’s hair and
pulled his head back, examining the man’s face.  “Hmm, looks okay to
me.”  He suddenly raised his arm and brought the side of his hand crashing
down on the bridge of Gordon’s nose.  The distinct
crack
was
drowned out by the prisoner’s yelp.

“Yeah, you’re right, it is
broken,” Farsi said, less amiably.  “Now tell me who’s in that room.”

“No-one!”
 
Gordon spat, blood spraying from his mouth.  “Open it and see.”

The two men finished up clearing
the other rooms and emerged shaking their heads.

“Where’s your computer?” 
Farsi asked, and Gordon nodded towards the bloodstained door.  “In
there.  Help yourself.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather trust my
colleague.”  Farsi looked over at Small.  “What do you think?”

“I think we should stick a
fibre-optic camera in there first.”

Farsi agreed and sent one of his
men down to the van to get one.  While he was waiting he decided to make
Gordon as uncomfortable as possible.

“I find it reassuring that the
first words out of your mouth were to demand a solicitor,” he said.  “Most
people would have asked what the fuck we were doing in their home, but you seem
to have been expecting us to call round at some point.”

Gordon said nothing, but his
expression told Farsi he’d hit the mark.  He let the prisoner stew for a
couple of minutes until the surveillance device arrived.  Small took it
and unravelled the flexible cable, then checked the screen to make sure he had
a good image.  Satisfied that all was working, he hit the record button
and played the cable under the door.

“No sign of anyone,” he said as
the tiny camera snaked along the floor.  “He’s got some serious hardware
in there, though.” 

Small used two dials to control
the direction of the camera, and as he moved it to the base of the rack he saw
the capacitor tucked away on the bottom shelf.  The cable wasn’t long
enough to get in any closer, but he knew what he was looking at.

“Where did you get the
capacitor?”  He asked Gordon.

“It was here when I moved in.”

Unlikely
,
Small
thought.  “Okay, what are you using it
for?”  He asked, although he was certain he already knew the answer. 
Gordon ignored him, and Farsi seemed confused and asked what the capacitor
could be used for.

“Think of it as a kind of
re-chargeable battery,” Small explained, “but rather than releasing its energy
at a constant rate, it purges instantly.  They are used on a much bigger
scale to replicate lightning strikes.”

“How big is this one?” 
Farsi asked.

“It’s not huge, but my guess is
that as soon as you open that door, everything in the room gets hit by a couple
of thousand volts.  Forensics might be able to salvage some of the data on
the hard drives, but if he’s using SSDs, everything will be wiped instantly.”

“SSDs?”

“Solid-State Drives,” Small
said.  “Normal hard drives store data on rotating metal disks, but SSDs
are more like chips or RAM, with no moving parts.  They are more resistant
to shock, such as being dropped, but they are susceptible to power
surges.  Zap one with a capacitor and you lose everything.”

Farsi looked at the
prisoner.  “Do you think you can wriggle out of this if you destroy the
evidence?”

Gordon suddenly found some
bravado, more in desperation than anything.  “I want to see the search
warrant.”

“We’re here under the Terrorism
Act 2000, we don’t need a warrant.  All that’s required is for me to
suspect that you’re a terrorist, simple as that.  No warrant, no
solicitor, no bail and we can hold you as long as we like.  How does that
sound?”

Gordon’s eyes grew wide with
shock.  “I’m not a terrorist!”

“Perhaps not, but while we
suspect you are, you’re royally screwed.  I guess the only way you can
prove us wrong is to give us access to your computers.”

Gordon’s eyes darted around the
room, searching for a way out of the situation.  He’d thought they were
there because of the hacking he’d done on behalf of his benefactor, the man he
knew only as B, but as far as he was aware he hadn’t accessed any networks that
were so sensitive that his actions could be labelled terrorism.  There had
been a few individuals’ computers and perhaps a dozen companies, but none of
them were risks to national security.

This led him to wonder just what
they were planning to charge him with.

“What is it that I’m supposed to
have done?”

“Collection of information of a
kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of
terrorism,” Farsi replied.  “We know you host a website for someone we’re
looking for, so you can add helping in the preparing or commissioning of a
terrorist act, too.”

“That’s got nothing to do with
me!”  Gordon shouted.  “I just host the site, that’s all. 
There’s no law against it.”

“You must have known he was up
to no good,” Small jumped in, “otherwise you wouldn’t have hidden behind a
dozen relay servers.”

The prisoner bit his lip as he
stared once more at his office door.

“If you’ve got any booby traps
in there, I suggest you disarm them now.”  Farsi said.  “You’re
looking at a long time in prison, so don’t add further charges by destroying
any evidence.  We already have proof that the website is being run from
this flat, and that will be enough to convict you.  However, if you play
nicely we might be able to convince the judge that your co-operation helped our
investigation.  You might get away with five years.”

The prospect of a long sentence
was the final straw.  He was built to manipulate ones and zeros, not fight
for survival in a prison environment. 

“I want immunity from
prosecution,” Gordon whined.  “I can’t go to prison.  I wouldn’t last
a week.”

“Not going to happen.  We
might be able to push for three years and you’ll serve just eighteen months,
with half of that out on licence.”

Nine months was still a long,
long time, and if word got out that his sentence had been reduced because he’d
given evidence against someone else, his cards would be marked.

There was also the backlash from
B to consider.  He’d met the man just twice:  The first time outside
the court when he’d offered Gordon work; and the second when he’d turned up
with his first cash payment.  On that occasion his new employer hadn’t
been as cordial.  He’d explained what he needed and asked if Gordon could
provide it.  The answer had been an easy “Yes”.  He already had a
server relay in place for his own file-sharing site, and setting up another
would be a piece of cake.  Finding ways into other people’s computers
wouldn’t be too challenging either, Gordon had promised – though it obviously
depended on the nature of the information.  He could get into the telephone
networks or National Health Service in seconds, but banks and government
networks were out:  Their firewalls and intrusion-detection systems were
simply too advanced.

B hadn’t needed anything that
secure, and the partnership had been sealed with the handing over of the money
and delivery of the caveat:  “When you take this money, you’re in for
good.  There’s no walking away when you get bored, and you never tell
anyone about me.  If I find out you’ve opened your mouth I’ll hunt you down,
and trust me, you don’t want that to happen.”

With his contact book containing
zero entries, Gordon had no qualms on that score, and the weight of the
envelope had felt good in his hands.  The money would enable him to buy
some of the equipment he’d only been able to dream about, and the threat was
soon forgotten.

Until now.