WIRE Tap Read online

  WIRE Tap

  WIRE Tap

  A novel by

  Jack Dillon

  WIRE Tap

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, institution or organisation alive or dead is purely coincidental

  Copyright 2017

  by Jan Domagala

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  WIRE Tap (ATLAS Force, #2)

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  Epilogue

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  Other books by

  Jack Dillon

  ATLAS series

  The Satan Strain

  SI6 series

  The Death List

  Crosshairs

  Prologue

  The corridor was dark. He could just about see down to the end where he knew the door to the room was.

  That was where the meeting would take place. Not the best place for a meeting but the person he was due to see was notorious for his paranoia.

  A lone figure stepped out from the shadows in front of him startling him for a second.

  The figure was male and huge; at least six feet eight tall with immense shoulders that he felt sure would touch the walls of the narrow corridor.

  “Stop,” the behemoth ordered, fear made him comply.

  “I’m here to see the General, my name’s...” he said. A hand the size of a small island was thrust up in front of him stopping any further comment.

  “No names, you know the drill,” the giant warned.

  The smaller man simply nodded not daring to speak, fearing his voice would give away his anxiety.

  A door was opened and a huge hand pushed him through.

  The room was slightly brighter than the corridor. He watched as the person he had come to meet rose to his feet from a chair in the middle of the room.

  ‘“Have you brought it?” he asked.

  The dark-suited man fished inside his jacket pocket and withdrew a flash drive. He held it out for the man to see.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will this do everything you say it will?”

  “Yes, it’s all there. All you have to do is access the file on there and follow the instructions.”

  The man he knew only as the General smiled.

  “What about my money?” the other asked carefully; the General was known for one other thing besides his paranoia, his temper.

  “Your money will be transferred to your account when I know this works,” the General said with a stare that chilled the delivery man’s blood. He was rooted to the spot not daring to say another word for fear it would bring on another show of anger.

  “We’re done here,” the General said with a dismissive wave of his hand as he looked at the flash drive.

  The man began to turn, but a massive hand clamped down on his shoulder impeding his progress. He thought his shoulder had broken from the casual impact and then another hand was placed equally tenderly on his other shoulder. Before he knew it the two hands were holding either side of his head and in a flash he was looking at the door without having turned around.

  When he realised what had happened it was too late, he was dead.

  The man’s body crumpled to the floor, his head turned around one hundred and eighty degrees, his neck snapped.

  “Dispose of that then bring the car around, we’re leaving,” the General said.

  1

  The large wall-mounted screen clearly showed the view through the head-cam.

  “How soon to contact with the hostile force?” asked one of the dignitaries viewing this demonstration.

  He, along with the other members of the Select Committee present in the War Room along with the President of the United States, Johnathan Warburton, was watching a scene played out in Point of View.

  “Contact in thirty seconds,” replied General Milton, a thirty-year veteran of the US military who was overseeing this exercise. He stood staring at the screen as eager to see what would happen as everyone else in the room.

  If this exercise was successful it would change the military forever.

  The atmosphere in the War Room was palpable. They all knew they were either going to witness something outstanding or it would be a complete failure. There was no middle ground for this.

  “Here we go,” President Warburton said as he clenched his hands together in anticipation.

  The POV was that of one man. He was in charge of a security detail looking after a visiting dignitary and they were watching events unfold as if through his eyes. For the purpose of this demonstration the dignitary was a member of the military too as were the hostiles they were about to engage.

  It was a five-man team and the POV glanced around to show those watching the placement of those involved.

  “Are we online?” Milton asked.

  “We are good to go, sir,” confirmed Walter Hopkins in charge of the demonstration. Hopkins was a genius who had developed a neural implant that would allow the host to wirelessly connect with computers and communication networks located within a five-mile radius. The program was called WIRE, or Wireless Interface Remote Extension. Another aspect of the chip was that they could communicate with other hosts, almost like telepathy. It allowed the hosts to act as an integrated unit.

  Hopkins sat at a desk in front of the large screen, a smaller monitor in front of him. A keyboard sang beneath his deft touch as he input signals to the assets through the system he was using.

  The picture suddenly distorted as if each corner had been held then stretched and twisted at the same time before righting itself just as quickly.

  Hopkins sat back taking his hands away from the keyboard like he thought he may get electrocuted.

  “What the fuck just happened gentlemen?” the President asked.

  Worried glances were exchanged around the room as they waited for the verdict from the brain in charge.

  Hopkins cautiously placed his hands on the keyboard then input a few commands. When everything seemed to be normal he carried on glancing over his shoulder and said to the room, “Everything seems fine, must’ve been a temporary glitch.”

  Milton asked, “Has it affected the system in any way?”

  Hopkins seemed not to hear but when Milton repeated his question more forcefully he said, “No General, we’re fine.”

  The action on the main screen started.

  Hostiles numbering eight attacked trying to nullify the guards and capture or kill their charge.

  The Protection detail began working as a team; they wo
rked together as one unit with one brain co-ordinating all thoughts. It was like they belonged to some sort of hive mind.

  One of the defending group was about to be attacked from behind but turned just in time to see off his attacker. There was no way he could have known except that his teammate saw him and, without uttering a sound, communicated that he was in danger. To Hopkins this was clear evidence that his system was working perfectly.

  Within moments of the attack starting it was over with no casualties to the Protection detail or their charge, yet every member of the Hostiles team were down or captured.

  It was a resounding success which heralded a round of cheers from the group watching from the safety of the War Room.

  Milton walked over to Hopkins and clamped a meaty hand on the seated man’s shoulder. He turned to see the General standing over him. His face split into a wide smile as he said, “Well Hopkins, you did it.” He offered him his hand and he took it feeling it almost crush in the large man’s grip.

  President Warburton came to stand next to the two of them. “I guess you’re as pleased as I am with these results, General?” he said to Milton.

  “I had my doubts, sir, but this demonstration allayed most of them. I think we need to run some further evaluation tests before we go all in though,” Milton replied cautiously.

  Turning to Hopkins Warburton asked, “How soon before the combat trials can be run?”

  “We just need to run the numbers through the computer to see if there were any anomalies, once we have all the data we can start processing the new chips. Conservative estimate is a week but it could happen sooner but no guarantees, sir.”

  “Okay then, General, there you have it. I would suggest you finalise your volunteers for the final tests so that you have them in place when the good doctor here has done his part. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I’m off to another meeting,” Warburton said. He was soon surrounded by his private Secret Service detail as he left the War Room.

  “AND YOU’RE SURE NO one detected your intrusion?” the man known as the General asked.

  The smaller man looked up from the keyboard, glanced at the behemoth standing at the General’s side and haltingly said, “I am certain, sir.”

  They were in a darkened room illuminated only by a dim light embedded in the ceiling and by the brighter lights of the bank of computer monitors arrayed around the room.

  The General moved away but the behemoth remained staring at the seated man. The General was deep in thought as he pondered the possibilities, the endless potential of what he now had. Those he answered to would also be pleased.

  With a turn towards the man, his mind made up, he said, “Okay, leave it in play. We will use it when necessary and soon. You did good work here today.”

  The seated man feared the worst and it showed in how he tried to shrink back against the console he was seated in front of. He never took his eyes off the huge man in front of him. He was aware of the General’s penchant for terminating employees in the most literal sense once their value had been used, and he was afraid this was now his fate too.

  Recognising the man’s fear the General said, “Oh don’t worry, you get to live, for a little while longer anyway. I still have use of you.”

  He turned and with a wave of his hand summoned his guard as he left the small room.

  “Now get some rest, you look tired, then get back to work. I’ll be in touch,” he said over his shoulder as he left the room.

  2

  Colonel Jack Flynn sat bolt upright, a scream bursting from deep within his chest. He felt constricted as the duvet was tangled around him.

  Sweat glistened off his naked body in the darkness of his bedroom, the only light streaking through his partially closed curtains from a street light outside.

  As his breathing slowed he waited for the dream that had wakened him so violently to recede into the dark recesses of his memory. Most bad dreams vanished when the waking mind tried to access them, not this one though. This one was still as visceral as when he experienced it first-hand.

  Tossing his covers wide he threw his legs off the bed and sat on the edge. It took him several seconds of deep breathing to get his mind back under control. The nightmare wasn’t just some fabricated horror his mind threw at him while he was unsuspecting in the folds of a deep sleep, this was a memory of something he had experienced, lived through, something he knew would trouble him for months, maybe longer.

  There was nothing he could do about it now though. The memory was from his last mission, a case he considered still open. Technically it was closed and a win for the organisation he worked for, ATLAS Force, but certain aspects of it still troubled him.

  ATLAS Force was an organisation that had been set up after the terrorist attacks on both the US in 9/11 and the UK on 7/7. It was a military tactical unit formed from the US, UK, Germany and France and it stood for Advanced Threat, Locate And Secure. The mission that had left him so troubled concerned a bio weapon, a variation of the VX nerve agent code named the Satan Strain. It had been released on a small island community from a lab located secretly beneath the ground killing everyone there. It had been a strategy for Dorian Ryder to bring attention to the island and procure his release. He had been the brains behind the atrocity and his idea had worked. ATLAS had been called in to investigate and during the course of that, Ryder and another soldier, Neelli Watulu had escaped. Jack had learned that these two had been experimented on during their stay in the lab becoming transgenic warriors. The horror of the Satan Strain getting free on a population larger than the island community was enough to give anyone nightmares, but it was his encounters with the Transgenic warriors he had trouble reconciling his mind with. These two were incredibly powerful and extremely hard to kill.

  At the end of the mission when the dust had settled and the VX had been safely recaptured, the bodies of Ryder and Watulu were stolen on their way to the morgue by a rogue element that ATLAS still had no clue about.

  What fuelled his nightmares was the sight of shooting someone but to then witness that same person getting back up to continue fighting, it was a true horror. To have to kill someone on the field of battle was something every soldier expected to face at some point and the consequences of that action were too horrible to imagine. Society relies upon such soldiers to fulfil the tasks they would rather not sully their hands upon. However, it was only recently the soldiers had started to face the consequences of those actions and the effects they had to deal with once they had done their duty. PTSD is now a recognised effect of combat and Jack was facing the knowledge that he too may be suffering from it.

  He got up off the bed and went into the bathroom. He turned on the shower; he knew sleep would not be possible for him that night so he decided to start his day early.

  This was the third time this month he had been woken by the same dream and the gaps between them were becoming shorter. The more he tried to bury the dream the more it fought its way back to the surface. Pretty soon he knew he would have to face facts and consult someone about it, but not yet and not today.

  His phone rang and as he picked it up he noticed where the call originated.

  “Jack, the General would like to see you, it’s urgent,” the voice of the second in command, Marta Johnson, said.

  “On my way,” Jack replied. He put down the phone and got in the shower.

  3

  Jack reached Headquarters located in a secret area beneath the streets of New York and attached to the United Nations building.

  He went straight to the office of General Wilbur Colclough, the man in charge. In his sixties, he was still trim and fit with salt and pepper hair that receded from a high forehead into a widow’s peak. His grey eyes were so pale they appeared sometimes to be colourless giving them an odd quality.

  In his hand he held a pen, a silver ballpoint, he had been writing with. He twirled it in his fingers looking up at Jack as he entered. He closed the file he had been working on and moved it to one side s
o he could concentrate on what he was going to do next. He was the epitome of ‘old school’, even in this age of technology where the iPad had replaced the notepad he remained faithful to ink and paper.

  “Take a seat Jack, you look like hell,” he said.

  Jack sat in front of the desk and waited for the briefing to begin. Colclough stared at him then said, “Are you sleeping enough?”

  Jack nodded saying, “I’m fine, sir,” then added, “What’s happened?” in an attempt to divert the conversation away from his problem that he feared was becoming more obvious.

  “If you’re sure?”

  Jack nodded once more not daring to speak in case he said something and his secret would be out.

  “Okay then. I had a visit from General Milton of the United States Army and one Walter Hopkins. They are running a secret operation called WIRE, Wireless Interface, Remote Extension. Basically they are hoping to plant a chip into the brain of every soldier to help them communicate on the battlefield with computers, communication networks and also to each other, if I’ve understood what they told me correctly.”

  “Interesting, sir, where do we come in?” Jack asked intrigued by the story.

  “They were running a simulation exercise earlier this week and noticed a glitch in the software. Nothing was mentioned to the observers at the time but it worried Hopkins enough for him to ask for our help.”

  “Hopkins, he’s the one who developed this I guess?”

  “Correct and the observers were, among others, the President of the US along with select members of the General Staff.”

  “What do they suspect caused the glitch?”

  “Hopkins thinks their system, a system that has the highest level of security, military grade firewalls and anti-virus software, was hacked.”

  COLONEL MARY QUI LOOKED up from the computer screen she had been working on.

  The VX strain of nerve agent they had recovered from Wexler and his AFF, called the Satan Strain, was proving to be more than just complex.

  She had come to the conclusion that whoever had contrived to engineer this monster must’ve been either a genius or a madman, or maybe both.