The Sixth Day (A Brit in the FBI #5)(51)

“It’s shooting at us, Nicholas, get down!”

People were screaming, running, the cops firing up at it, but it was so fast no one could get a bead on it.

Nicholas didn’t get down. He stood tall and squeezed three shots. The drone zipped away, then stopped, hovering over the buildings, as if mocking them.

Nicholas ran after it. Whoever was flying the drone was an expert, and he dodged between buildings as he ran, ducking behind a van, scooting around honking cars, his eyes never leaving the drone. Mike was on his heels, yelling, “Left at the corner, it’s stopped. Wait, now right!”

They juked and jived, ducking bullets, another two blocks before the drone seemed to be slowing down. Nicholas realized it was running out of juice.

Mike ran up to his left. “Is the sucker out of battery power?”

“Yes. Adam said it would only have twenty-five minutes or so. If we can keep up with it, we should see it drop out of the sky. Unless your sharpshooting skeet skills are honed—”

Mike grinned as she raised her small Glock, aimed at the drone, stopped dead. “Look, there’s a bird, it’s heading right for the drone.”

“Doesn’t matter. Fire, Mike, bring it down.” But before she could get off the shot, the bird dove at the drone. At the last second, it pulled up. It flared its wings to slow, legs underneath it, talons out, and snatched the drone from the air with its feet. Its wings flapped once, hard, and soared away with the drone held tight.

Mike pulled up short. “Holy crap, did you see that? That bird saved that frigging drone.”

Nicholas pulled up beside her, watching the falcon wing away. “The question is, if it was one of ours, why didn’t it destroy the drone. Why did it fly away with it?”

The bird and the drone were out of sight.

Mike said, “Because it’s not ours. Bird and machine belong to the same people.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


A typical unmanned aircraft is made of light composite materials to reduce weight and increase maneuverability. This composite material strength allows military drones to cruise at extremely high altitudes. Drones are equipped with different state-of-the-art technology such as infra-red cameras (military UAV), GPS, and laser[s] (military UAV). Drones can be controlled by remote control system or a ground cockpit.

—Dronezon.com

MI5 Headquarters, Home Office

Thames House

12 Millbank

Westminster, London

Nicholas said, as they rode the elevator up, “MI5 is manic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many agents running around. At least we got an elevator for just the two of us. I can’t wait to get my hands on a keyboard and find out exactly what, and how, this hack was performed. I plan to write a new encryption for our phones that will keep us safe.” He tapped his temple. “Wait—I do believe a possible solution has presented itself to my brain.”

She poked his arm. “I knew it, modern technology is no match for you. Maybe you should go into business like Ardelean did with Radulov. Make millions off your code. Mama needs a new pair of shoes, or you could buy me a BMW, like yours.”

“Not new shoes for you, new boots. I don’t want to take Ardelean’s path—sorry, Mike, not enough excitement in the business world, no knockout arguments with you, no hand-to-hand fights with bad guys. I wonder how long Griffith will take to copy the hard drives?”

“Okay, new boots, and yeah, I’d give it up, too, for knockdown drag-out arguments with you. Griffith won’t take long, not since she has a crush on you.”

“Agent Caine, are you jealous?”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, focus. I’m still wondering about that falcon yanking the drone out of the air and disappearing with it.”

“There you go, just like a woman, always changing the subject. You’re definitely jealous. Want to get revved up? Want to fight about it? Those new boots, maybe for Christmas?”

She laughed, and he couldn’t help himself, he gave her a quick kiss as the elevator doors opened to three interested faces.

Adam was waiting for them when they arrived on the fifth floor, in Harry Drummond’s outer office. “Hey, it’s good to see you guys. I’m all up and running, and, man, do we have a problem. I need another hour at least, but I’m close to finding the hole. I’m trying to establish a clear and safe channel that we can use to talk to Gray in New York. Oh, by the way, he and Zachery and Lia and Savich are all on board. They know what’s happening and they’ve started taking measures on their end to secure comms. I think there is an errant piece of code in both FBI-N.Y. and FBI-D.C. servers, but I don’t see it’s been activated, yet, which is a nice favor. We can do an end around the software, establish a clear channel, and wait to see if it’s opened.

“But here, in MI5, it’s activated, and everything’s wide-open. Information that’s supposed to be internal is feeding out through a pipeline to whoever built this hack. I gotta say, it’s pretty cool.” He looked at Mike. “Well, um, no, not cool at all.”

“Can you secure the British Security Services?”

“I’m working on it, Nicholas. Once I have the channel between New York and us secured, then I can turn to the MI5 and MI6 systems. This is going to be huge, like Duqu, and Duqu 2.0 that unraveled Kaspersky, though I think this breach of Radulov is going to be even worse.”