Alias (8 page)

Despite the enormity of what I was about to do, I made myself behave exactly as normal. The trick was not to think, just act. Quick goodbye to Dad, short conversation with Mum – without meeting her eye, school suit on – but soon to be replaced by jeans. Usual last-minute bolt up the stairs to fetch something I’d forgotten – this time it was the letter, which I put on my pillow.

I nipped round the back of the house, got my rucksack and walked to the roundabout, hoping no one I knew would see me before I got a lift. My wish was granted – as soon as I stuck out my thumb a red Golf stopped. It was a youngish bloke going to Bedford. Suited me. I told him I had an interview. Seemed more sensible than telling him I was on the run. Not that I intended to run anywhere. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. My horizon pretty much stopped at the date I’d chosen for London to go
kaboom!
My grandma’s birthday – or thereabouts. Details like dates of birth, addresses, times were pretty fluid in the mountain village. Maybe I’d go back there … when it was all over.

As we joined the A5, he sped up. I had a sudden crazy death wish. If we crashed, I wouldn’t have to be the one to take a stand. Mum and Dad could grieve for me and then carry on with their little lives. It would be easier all round …

Safely in Bedford, I changed out of my suit and dumped my phone – turned off, of course – in an industrial wheelie bin, so I couldn’t be found using the GPS. I kept the one I’d bought when I became Angel in case I needed to make a call. I bought a panini and made myself eat it in the hope that it would settle my stomach – which it did.

The fear was there, but rather than crippling me, I felt alive.

The journey went better than I could have expected. A train to Cambridge, two more lifts, lots of small talk and a bus, and I was in Fakenham, Norfolk. I bought enough food for a couple of days and enough make-up for a beauty pageant, and then walked the half a mile along the lonely road to the house we’d stayed in. Not one car, tractor, van or bicycle passed me. A good omen.

I crept around the outside of the house first to make sure there hadn’t been a last-minute booking. Nope. Deserted.

The code for the key safe hadn’t changed. The alarm was off, as expected – the housekeeper had told me she didn’t like messing with it.

I dumped my bags, checked the Wi-Fi was still connected – yes – and then collapsed on the sofa.

Mum and Dad wouldn’t start to worry until Sunday evening, when I didn’t arrive home. If they called the police, no one would do anything. Every year 140,000 teenagers go missing, that’s 383 every day. I would be a statistic. Full stop. When they got round to making enquiries, people would mention my unsettled behaviour after the ‘trouble’ in Yemen. The Sherlock deduction would be that I’d run away. No one would think to mention a place we’d only been to once. I was safe for the moment. I’d given myself ten days, after which Samiya and Angel would both be history.

My true identity was bound to come out. If Hugo didn’t betray me, the security services would eventually get there. I couldn’t wait to see Samiya’s life story in the headlines, making people understand why the drone wars had to stop. By that time I’d be using my alias, Saffron. Practising her life story by saying it out loud as I wandered around the house was a priority, as was creating her face.

I got into a little routine. Each morning I’d scrutinise a different part of the plan – paying particular attention to anything that could go wrong and making contingencies. After lunch I’d put on one of the ancient DVDs that were left in the house – because you can’t think all the time. I watched
The Hunger Games
twice and
Love
Actually
repeatedly.

For dinner I stuck to simple stuff because there was Nothing, capital N, in the kitchen, not even a flake
of chilli. While I ate, I reviewed the same aspect I’d studied in the morning. Check. Double check.

In the evenings I tried different looks in front of the mirror – smoky kohl-rimmed eyes and red lips … false lashes, glossy lids and nude lips …

It was odd seeing myself with foundation-smoothed skin, blusher-enhanced cheek bones and sultry eyes, and a relief to wash it all off in the bath before dozing in the enormous bed. I didn’t think about the fact that my parents had slept there. Everything to do with home was locked up in a corner of my brain – it was the only way I could stay strong.

Using Tor to stay anonymous, I Googled my name and Angel’s. Dan was leaving messages for Angel everywhere we’d ever been. He was desperate to find me, and it wasn’t because he was missing me …

I also kept an eye on the bookings page to make sure no one was planning a last-minute romantic weekend at my hide-away.

Every other day I went food shopping, using different stores and going at different times so I didn’t ever see the same cashiers. I also varied my route and made sure no one saw me enter the property. I didn’t chat to anyone, but wasn’t in the slightest bit lonely. It’s lonelier to be an outsider in a group than not in a group at all.

No one came to the house, not to shove a flyer through the door or check the meter.

Three days before my chosen date of 7th April, everything was ready.

The drone strike relied on sewing together thirteen separate elements – unlucky for some. I had the lines of code I needed to get into the US Military network and hack the drone, I had the fake video showing the drone crashing, the warning written, the code to take down the BBC home page, the route mapped from Germany to Norfolk and then from Norfolk down the coast to London, and the commands to fire. I had computers infected with bots, ready to bring London Transport’s ticketing site crashing down. I’d repeatedly checked the timing plan. I’d thought of everything, thanks to Sayge. Our practice runs at planning attacks had been invaluable for thinking things through and paying attention to detail.

Two days before, I had diarrhoea. Classic case of nerves.

Doubt overwhelmed me.

I thought about going home, saw myself arrive at the front door, felt Mum’s tears on my face as she wept with joy, heard myself say I was sorry, watched Dad kiss my forehead, let him take my bag …

Hijack day came.

Sunday 6th April. A little bit of tapping and the drone was under my control. More tapping and the live feed was replaced by a video of the UAV crashing. I put in the GPS co-ordinates and the drone knew where to go. That was all it took. Autopilot did the rest. I almost sympathised with the drone operators. It couldn’t have felt less like I was wielding a weapon, or less like a war.

While the killing machine skimmed over the water towards British airspace, I made myself sleep for two hours. Being tired made for poor decision-making. I woke to find an independent site was already circulating a rumour that an American Predator had crashed in woodland somewhere in Germany. The fake feed had done its job!

I hadn’t expected the news to leak so quickly, but it made no difference. For the foreseeable, the military would be looking for a wreck.

I checked the GPS co-ordinates of the drone every half-hour to make sure it was still keeping a low profile, looping over the trees of the Norfolk countryside. The whole point of stealth drones is that you can’t
detect them using radar. You can see them with your eyes, but the population of Norfolk is small and the sky is big. It was a calculated risk.

Online, word spread.

Was it a crash? Or a hoax? Or a cyber plot?

Wait and see!

Despite the temptation to get on with it, I stuck to my timing plan. The warning went up at noon, replacing the BBC News home page – courtesy of the sucker who thought Angel wanted to put up a plea for a cancer charity.

Pandemonium.

I watched the fallout from the squidgy sofa. In no time #April7 was trending on Twitter and I had yet another name – Dronejacker. Nice tag. Stories about drones dominated the media, just as I’d hoped. All sorts of theories appeared online, fun to read, most far from the truth. It was a
Guardian
journalist, a woman, who first suggested that Dronejacker was someone
who had a personal problem with America’s ‘drone wars’.

The term ‘collateral damage’ started to appear.

Finally, a year and a half after my grandma’s murder, I’d got the world talking about civilian deaths attributed to UAVs.

Life felt brilliant. There was I, only eighteen, single-handedly bringing London to its knees. The first ever collateral damage from a drone strike in Britain was hours away. Maybe the last ever collateral damage in Yemen was a step nearer too.

I was watching the late news when I got an unexpected message from the Secretary of State, delivered by the BBC no less.

‘
…
British Government does not negotiate with terrorists but in this instance the threat to the general public combined with the explicit nature of that threat has impelled the Secretary of State for Defence to ask for a dialogue. In this unprecedented move
…
’

Dialogue was
exactly
what I’d wanted a lifetime ago, when no one would listen. The offer had come way too late.

I responded to the government using the BBC’s Twitter feed, bang on midnight (using 149 characters) – another little trick I’d learnt from a pal.

I made myself sleep again, although the adrenalin meant that it was fitful and full of crazy dreams. It was a mistake to have left such large chunks of time in the plan, but I hadn’t imagined it would go so smoothly. I half-wished I’d flown the drone straight to London, but the chances were it would have been spotted before I had time to get everyone good and scared. Patience would pay off in the end.

My alarm went off at five in the morning. I made French toast and ate it at the breakfast bar with both the telly and my browser trained on the news.

There was a lot of speculation about what the target might be, ranging from Buckingham Palace to Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. No one was even close.

The icing on my Predator cake was to bring London Transport to a halt. At ten-thirty I activated the botnet that a whole community of hackers had helped me to build and launched a DDoS on London Transport’s central servers. The ticketing system collapsed in front of my eyes.

Before I had a chance to congratulate myself, Twitter went ape – loads of hashtags referring to a statement on the BBC. I clicked.

The entire site had been taken down to send another message to me. This time it wasn’t the government.

There was an image from Google Maps together with the GPS co-ordinates of the house I was in.

What?

I had to read it twice, the second time out loud. Dan Langley knew where I was. And he’d told the world.

NO!

The shock was physical. I stood motionless for who knows how long, paralysed by panic.

Then my electric circuits zapped back into life. I grabbed my computer and the folder containing my new identity papers, fetched my wad of cash and my purse and ran out of the front door. I turned onto
the road, thought again, and ran round the back and into the field next door. I followed the line of the hedge. It was a smart move because less than a minute later a fast car came from nowhere. I saw the roof as I was climbing a fence – it was a squad car. I ran through the next field and caught my breath for a minute by a gate that led out to a country lane.

All I could do was keep running, but more cars would arrive, with more police, and dogs. The road was too dangerous, but going across country would be too slow.

A Land Rover came along, ancient, I stepped out into the road with my thumb out. He carried on past … and then stopped.

Hallelujah!

I climbed up into the passenger seat to find a stereotypical ruddy-faced farmer in a waxed jacket.

‘Thanks very much,’ I said, using every ounce of self-control to keep my voice steady.

‘If it hadn’t been me, it’d have been no one,’ he said gruffly.

‘It is quiet round here,’ I said, amazed that he couldn’t hear my heart booming.

‘That’s the way I like it.’

Neither of us said another word.

I was in a super-tight spot, but thanks to Dan the police were looking for a boy, not a girl. I had a window of time to get somewhere busy and disappear.

A car raced up behind us. I looked round just as
the siren shattered the quiet. The farmer tutted, pulled over slightly, and let them go past. I concentrated on breathing. In and out. Nice and slow.

From nowhere a helicopter appeared, flying low, like my drone. I kept my stare straight ahead.

The farmer dropped me in Wells-next-the-Sea, without noticing I had no shoes on. Seriously, I had no shoes. And no chargers. And no phone.

My phone!
My brain made the connection.

Way before I even knew he was going to be useful, when he’d offered to get me credit, I’d given Dan my number – or rather the number of the phone I used as Angel. He must have used the GSM network, or maybe triangulated my position from the power levels … He was brilliant and determined, I knew that. But I didn’t expect him to use his skills to betray me. It was crazy. Surely I couldn’t fail because I’d overlooked eleven digits?

Don’t think about that now.

I bought a pair of Vans and a brown satchel big enough for my laptop, tried not to look shifty – which was virtually impossible – and caught a bus to Cromer. It was only a third full, but I sat next to an old lady. My brain couldn’t work out whether I’d left any clues to my real identity, but worst-case scenario I had, so it was safer to appear to be with someone else.

We chatted about the floods, because she said it took her mind off the poor people in London and ‘that wicked terrorist’.

Every single sentence was an effort. The adrenalin wasn’t helping me this time. It was killing me.

Noon came and went. London, no doubt, sighed with relief. But I wasn’t finished yet. As soon as I could get back online, the strike was going ahead.

In Cromer, I had my hair chopped off by a trainee – the only one with a free appointment. I ignored her attempts to talk –

‘Going anywhere nice tonight?’

– so I could think.

I was gutted that Dan had betrayed me. Our friendship had felt real. I’d assumed, because he was the one who’d actually hacked the drone, he’d be the last person to confess. Surely he was risking a jail sentence …? I’d clearly underestimated his conscience. As I watched my long dark hair fall onto the grubby lino flooring, I wondered whether he’d have been quite so ready to turn me in if he’d known about the murders.

‘Is that all right?’ asked my stylist.

She was overweight and spotty, wearing black leggings and a tent of a top, but my hair looked great. A short bob with a fringe – it changed me completely.

‘Lovely, thank you.’

Next door was an outdoor shop, so I bought a cagoule.

I couldn’t decide whether to stick to public transport and risk the police being at the station or hitch and risk a lift from a nosy parker.

Which was safer?
No idea.

I headed for the train station, but took a left because there were two police cars parked outside.

They were closing in on me.

I needed to act randomly so they couldn’t double guess my next move.

Get a grip.

I walked along the road, only turning when a T-junction forced me to make a decision. I wondered whether to try to find a shed or a garage to hide in.

No
.

My instinct told me I had to get as far away as possible.

Eventually I found myself on the outskirts of the town, where I dithered for a bit at a bus stop, pretending to read the timetable.

Every vehicle that came along made my heart race. My chances of escaping were getting slimmer by the second.

I glanced up at a black car travelling way too fast in my direction. Forced my stare back to the timetable. It braked. I waited for the doors to open … saw myself in handcuffs with a hand forcing my head down as I got into the back … but it carried on past the thirty-miles-per-hour sign.

I looked back to where the car had come from. There was another sign stuck in the hedge, a square hand-painted one.

As I got closer I could see it was an advert for one of those caravans that sells egg baps and coffee in
polystyrene cups. I walked the mile there almost as fast as if I’d run.

There was a lorry, a blue Mercedes van and a battered BMW. I opted for the lorry.

‘Student, are you?’ the driver asked as we pulled out of the lay-by.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’ve had plenty a student willing to hop in there,’ he said, indicating the bed behind the front seats.

Gross. That was the last thing I needed.