Hacked (9 page)

Social media’s take on the crisis, accessed from my phone, didn’t help much (and was badly written):

shoot it down POW!
(On Snapchat with a picture of a pointed finger.)

he needs putting in an assylum

my aunty lives in London I dont want her to
die

is this are 9/11?

got to be a hoax

we had 7/7

scared to death

As I went in the kitchen, Mum, without looking up from the sink, said, ‘There’s a lunatic threatening to bomb London. I’ve been on the phone to Uncle Rob. He says he’ll stay out of the city.’

I got Dad’s summary as I passed the living room. ‘That cyber criminal’s a bloody fanatic.’

El’s question, from my doorway, was, ‘Do you think he’ll pick Buckingham Palace? I would.’ Odd child.

I said the minimum. Like a tyre that had been pumped up too much, any more pressure – such as
having a normal conversation with my family – and I’d burst. I needed to see what ‘the terrorist’ had to say for himself, on my own, in my room, with the door shut.

There it was, confirmed online for the world to see. An unspecified target in London would be the site of a missile hit at noon on Monday 7th April. That was tomorrow. As I read the details I did yogic breathing – one of the things Mum taught me back when I needed ‘taming’. In front of my eyes, real time journalists turned the anonymous perp into Dronejacker and a celebrity cyber criminal was born. Why he picked London was the source of endless speculation. I waded through to find the original source, rather than the spin.

Did he have a lot of face or what? Dronejacker had hacked the BBC News page and delivered his message that way, dead on noon. It had been taken down but not before being screenshot and relayed by every
webwatcher
and news service. The words were brief, but the more I re-read them, the more I could see Angel typing them.

The US Predator drone is in London. I haven’t decided where to direct the missile strike yet. How does it feel, Londoners? Knowing you might be on a job or shopping, and boom! Look to the sky at twelve noon Monday 7th April and think about all the people who are scared every day, like you are now, because of killer drones flying above them.

It’s impossible to describe how I felt, so I won’t bother, except to say that there was a period of mental self-harm before I picked up a pencil (presumably a deeply symbolic act rejecting my foray into cyber crime) and started to work through what I knew, and what I thought I knew, and what I thought. I followed the dominoes as they fell, one by one:

– fainting in biology

– going out with Soraya

– helping her out with credit

– word of my hack spreading throughout Dan’s life and KP’s

– meeting Angel online

– getting closer

– Ty having his accident

– Angel suggesting the council CCTV hack

– and then the spy satellite

– meeting Angel’s ‘friends’

– him challenging me to hack a drone

– sending Angel the lines of code

– Angel vanishing

– Dronejacker appearing.

That was how it looked to me, but how did it look to Angel?

I made two working assumptions. Firstly that Angel
was
Dronejacker and secondly that he wasn’t a l33t grey hat, but a script kiddie with a black hat. Why involve me if he could do it himself?

So … Angel decides to steal a combat drone for
some crazy reason, but doesn’t know how. Angel goes online and puts himself about (it’s not good when you start borrowing phrases from your dad), he gets to know lots of hackers, and follows up any random chats he can turn to his advantage. In my case, Ty’s accident gives him the opening to suggest a hack and see how good I am. I impress him. He gets close to me – we spend time together, gaming and chatting. I keep coming up with the goods, so he gives me the ultimate test. And I fall for it.

Whatever Angel needs he commissions – like a nifty line of code that programs the drone to take a specified route to wherever, like a fake video that convinces the American flying the thing that it’s crashed.

When Angel has tricked his ‘friends’ into providing each element, all he has to do is put them together, and he can take control of a drone. The operators are fooled by the dummy feed and put together a search operation, but that takes a while. Meanwhile, the drone makes it to the UK. A drone is the size of a small plane. Angel hides it until he needs it – they’re tricky to land so he probably keeps it flying around. They’re hard to detect – that’s one of the things that makes them good for spying.

All in all, good job, as he would say.

Working out that I wasn’t the only mug didn’t make me feel any better. We’d been socially engineered, helping Angel prise open the windows round the back
of the palace while the beefeaters were manning the front gates.

So, I’d worked it out. Big deal. That left the burning question. The question I didn’t dare ask myself … because I had no answer.

What the hell was I going to do?

The advice from the government department responsible for crazies that threaten the Great British Public was to keep calm. There was no evidence that Dronejacker was anything other than a delusional character taking advantage of the fact that a drone had been ambushed. There was also no evidence that the drone was even over British air space. People should carry on about their business as usual. Inspirational advice!

It wasn’t working judging by the trending on Twitter of #7april and #terrorist. It wasn’t working judging by the traffic cameras on the arterial roads out of London and the M25. Chock-a-block. The city was voting with its feet, or to be more exact, wheels.

I heard footsteps coming up our stairs but with my door shut there was no chance of identification. There was a knock on my door, and in the gap between the rap and a voice saying my name I had a sudden panic that it would be the police.

‘Dan!’

‘Come in.’

It was Ty, and behind him, Joe. It only felt marginally better than if it had been the cops.

‘Let’s go somewhere,’ said Joe.

I thought about saying ‘Walls have ears’ in a hushed, spy-like tone but decided it might inflame the situation, so I grabbed a black hoodie, shouted, ‘Going out for a bit,’ to the house in general and trooped out of the front door. I walked in the middle, hood up, with my armed guards either side. We headed for the park.

‘Joe told me,’ said Ty.

‘Cheers,’ I said.

Ty shoved me and I stumbled. ‘Shut it, Dan. He’s worried, and so should you be.’

‘Really?’ I said, wide-eyed with pretend surprise.

‘Leave it out, Dan,’ said Joe.

‘Explain,’ said Ty, ‘from the beginning.’

We sat on the roundabout, which Joe occasionally pushed with his foot to keep us slowly circling. As ordered, I went through the dominoes, and in between emphasised my complete ignorance of any sinister plot.

‘If Angel had asked you to jump in a lake, would you?’ said Ty, sounding like someone’s mum.

Angel once typed that – it was a joke. Not so funny now.

‘It doesn’t matter why he did it,’ said Joe, ‘not now. What matters is what he does next.’ A fair summary.

They both looked at me.

‘Dronejacker isn’t definitely Angel,’ I said,
half-heartedly
.

‘So you’re not going to do anything?’ said Ty. ‘Just see what happens?’

He was waiting for me to declare I’d leave no stone unturned to stop the London bomber. He’d be waiting a while.

‘Dan, listen, if there’s enough of a chance Angel’s for real, you have to confess.’

Unbelievably, Joe’s word went straight through all the decision areas of my brain to its conscience. I missed a beat. Was he really suggesting I, Dan Langley, should ring … the police, the FBI, MI5, Southmead Police Station, 101, 999, Scotland Yard, Sherlock Holmes?

‘Joe’s right,’ said Ty. ‘If you come clean they’ll be much more lenient with you.’

I hadn’t even considered confessing. Did that make me a psychopath, or sociopath, or plain old nutter? Causing havoc and taking no responsibility.

‘No one will believe me,’ I said, after a complete revolution of the roundabout. ‘They’ll think I’m a terrorist.’

‘What’s the alternative?’ said Ty. I pitied his future brain-surgery patients, asked to choose between a radical life-threatening operation and a slow decline, with no sign of compassion.

‘But I could end up handing myself in and finding out that I was nothing to do with any of it … that it wasn’t Angel at all.’

‘And thousands of people, kids, grandmas, whatever, might die if you don’t.’

‘Might,’
I said.

Their silence was more condemning than any words. I pictured my dead grandad, and Ty’s great-grandma (who had whiskers like a cat) and Mandela, then Malala, the fifteen-year-old girl that got shot by the Taliban but says she doesn’t hate them, and the woman coming out of the Tube station after 7/7, her face covered in white burn dressings …

‘We’ll come with you,’ said Ty.

It took some time to sink in. As it did, my body sank with it. I leant back against the pole in the centre of the roundabout and let all my organs hang off my skeleton.

We circled again. The swings were to-ing and froing – entertaining ghost children. The sun was setting, pinkish sky. The gate was shut, keeping out unwanted dogs, keeping in pre-school children. Not that there were any.

We circled again.

‘Don’t make us do it for you,’ said Ty.

He was threatening me. I looked at him – a pillar of society. Neat, fair hair with the quiff just so, clever, responsible, dressed in beige chinos and a dark green jumper with a zip-neck – preppy-look, I think they call it. Even his scar was tidy. A world away from his
any-old
-iron dad. I switched to Joe. Cool, street, edgy. An image of myself flashed in front of my eyes – a mug shot. Words to go with it – odd, geeky, outsider.

Joe dug his heel in and we ground to a halt.

‘You’ve got vital information,’ he said. ‘You
have
to give it to the police.’

A burst of Darth Vader interrupted their attempt to convince me. It was Ruby. I picked up.

‘Dan, something’s up, isn’t it?’ she said. Too much to deal with. I cut her off. Vodafone could take the blame. If Pay As You Go King turned out to be King of Drones she’d never speak to me again, anyway.

‘So …?’ Ty was staring at me.

I was in a corner.

‘It’s not a game, Dan. It’s for real,’ said Joe. ‘Angel’s for real.’

A ton of revolutions later, we had a plan of sorts – one that didn’t involve me getting the electric chair. Ty summarised, with Joe adding bits in.

‘Call Crimestoppers from a phone box and tell them everything you know,’ said Ty. He rubbed his eyes. Tiredness was still a real problem, thanks to the white van.

‘Except your name,’ said Joe.

‘If they want evidence – to prove you’re not a hoaxer, agree to call back with some,’ said Ty.

‘From a different phone,’ said Joe.

‘I haven’t got any evidence,’ I said.

‘The code,’ said Ty.

‘I can’t send it down the telephone wire,’ I said, then quickly changed my tone. ‘I could spoof an SMTP address and send them an email with the code.’

‘Won’t they trace it to you?’ said Joe.

I shook my head.

‘Play it by ear,’ said Ty.

‘If you’ve told them all you know, whatever happens afterwards isn’t down to you,’ said Joe.

‘It’s still partly his fault,’ said Ty, prefect material through and through.

‘Let’s do it,’ said Joe.

‘Now?’ I had an unexpectedly high voice.

‘The deadline’s tomorrow lunchtime,’ said Joe. ‘There’s no time to waste.’

Oh yes there is … Think, Dan. Think quickly.

‘I can’t. I need to think about what to say.’

‘The truth,’ said Ty, getting fed up with me.

‘You wrote some code that let you control a
spy
drone, and gave it to someone called Angel. That’s your script,’ said Joe.

Something about the way he said it jogged an idea and sent a little current of hope through my grey matter.

‘Actually there’s something else I need to try first. If Angel did use my hack to steal the drone, I might be able to use it too … maybe get it back.’

We had a short burst of raised voices. Joe saying, ‘Have a go.’ Ty saying, ‘No, leave it to the police. You’ve done enough damage.’ Me insisting I had to try.

‘I’ll have a quick look for the drone before I call the police – just in case. Then I’ll use VoIP to route the call through a website from home, that’s as good as a call box … better, in fact. I’ll do it when everyone’s asleep. Promise.’

I hated the way I was begging, but there was a risk I’d be frogmarched to Southmead Road, and I hated that idea more.

Ty and Joe looked at each other and made a telepathic
agreement without any discernable facial movements or hand signals.

‘You’d better,’ said Joe.

‘Let us know what happens,’ said Ty.

‘And let’s meet tomorrow,’ said Joe. ‘Nine? On the corner?’

‘Done,’ said Ty. ‘I’ve got to go.’ He stepped off the roundabout. ‘I’m bushed.’

‘If you’re in the clear, I’ll buy you a bacon sandwich,’ said Joe.

The gate clanged as we walked through it. A few streets on, we went our separate ways. I had no intention of sticking to the plan, or at least not the confessing bit. I loped home in the dark, enjoying the drop in temperature, got a packet of chocolate digestives and a Coke and set to work.

Hope is a marvellous thing.

My window into the military server via the base station was still there. Good. Once inside, I set about replicating the hack that let me control the combat drone, but … two biscuits down, I’d already failed. The way had been locked down, barred and grilled. That meant two things. Firstly, I had no chance of finding the stolen drone. Secondly, someone somewhere — cancel that. Secondly, a cyber expert in the US Government’s defence department had found the breach. And that meant they were, quite possibly, on Angel’s trail. And if they were, a confession from me wouldn’t help, because they already knew what I knew. All good.

The downside of my discovery was less pleasant to consider. If it wasn’t Angel that was threatening the home of Big Ben, the only other person to have used that particular route in was me, so they’d be on my trail. If I hadn’t been so thorough in covering my tracks, that would have been a more alarming thought. Routing through six third-party servers spread across the world made the chances of finding me miniscule. I wondered whether Angel had been as careful … Probably not. If he couldn’t write the code, he wouldn’t know how to avoid leaving footprints either. They were bound to be on to him.

It was a relief when my logical brain concluded that no action was the best plan. For all I knew, they were arresting Angel right now. By the time I saw Joe and Ty in the morning, the papers would be rejoicing in the dominance of good over evil, praising UK security for standing tall in the face of terror. (I’d make a good journalist – headlines just come to me.)

Making quips in my head in the middle of a crisis made me think of how Grandad was still cracking jokes on his deathbed. Maybe it was genetic … Whatever, it had to be better than the alternative, which was to collapse, wailing, ‘I’ve ruined my life. Sob. Sob.’