The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,15

harder. ‘Get back here! Roger needs medical help!’

‘We can use the emergency persona—’

Adam cut her off. ‘We’d have to wipe Syed’s. And if you don’t get him to the drop point before he wakes up, Roger will have been shot for nothing.’ He reached the intersection and rounded the corner. The two men were still running from him. Khattak took something from his clothing.

Not a gun; a phone.

‘Levon!’ Adam shouted as he ran. ‘The cell network – shut it down! Khattak’s going to warn the others!’

The satellite delay meant that Levon took a moment to respond. ‘What? I can’t— Adam, I haven’t got that much access yet!’

‘Anything you can do to jam his phone, anything!’ Khattak was struggling to enter a number from memory as he ran, his group’s contacts too risky to commit to a SIM card – but it still would not take him long to thumb in eleven digits.

Tony spoke. ‘Levon, can you give us a map of the local cell towers?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Do it, quick! Kyle, find the nearest cell tower – and use the UAV’s self-destruct to take it out.’

‘Seriously?’ said Kyle, surprised – and thrilled. ‘Awesome!’

‘Is Syed moving yet?’ Adam asked.

Holly Jo gave him the answer. ‘The van just left. But what about Roger?’

‘Either you can stabilise him, or you can’t.’ He didn’t know if the coldness of the statement was from Syed’s persona or his own.

He was closing on Marwat, but not quickly enough, the young man’s fear fuelling him. Beyond him, Khattak was forced to lower the phone to keep his balance as he wove between people coming the other way, but he brought it back up the moment he cleared them, his thumb finding another digit on the keypad.

In the office, Perez and Ware began first aid on Albion’s wound. Tony reluctantly looked away to Kyle’s screens. ‘Levon, where’s that damn map?’

‘It’s coming, it’s coming!’ came the frantic reply. ‘Okay, it’s on stream seven . . . now!’

Holly Jo overlaid the incoming data on the satellite image of Peshawar. Dozens of dots popped up. She zoomed in on those around the green symbol marking Adam’s position. ‘Kyle, I’m sending the nearest towers to you.’

‘Got ’em,’ Kyle replied. ‘Okay, closest one is . . . rooftop, a hundred and twenty metres west of the drone.’ He glanced at Tony for confirmation.

‘Take it out,’ Tony snapped.

‘All right!’ He took the UAV’s controls, re-angling its camera so that instead of looking down it showed the view ahead, and swung the drone round on a new course. ‘Can’t believe you’re finally letting me do this . . .’

The little aircraft dropped towards the rooftops. ‘There,’ said Tony, pointing. A six-storey building was home to a skeletal tower.

‘I see it.’ The phone mast grew rapidly as Kyle swept the drone in on its kamikaze run, aiming for the crown of antennae. But instead of crashing, he slowed the quadrotor sharply just before impact. It was built of lightweight materials, so simply ramming it into a target would have done little more than glancing damage.

The self-destruct unit would deliver far more. The explosive running through the UAV’s fuselage was intended not merely to wreck the machine but to completely obliterate it, preventing its sophisticated camera and computer systems from falling into the wrong hands.

Kyle flipped up a protective cover on the control console to reveal a red button. He stabbed it down, hard. ‘Bickety-boom!’

The feed from the drone’s camera went blank.

Khattak entered the final digit. He clamped the phone to his ear, looking back as he raced into an alley. Marwat was not far behind him; Toradze was catching up fast.

A voice from the other end of the crackling line. ‘Hello?’

‘Nasir, it’s Muhammad!’ Khattak gasped. ‘Tor—’ He broke off as a loud bang came from somewhere nearby, echoing off buildings. A grenade? ‘Toradze is working with the Americans! They’ve captured Syed!’

There was no answer. ‘Nasir? Nasir, can you hear me?’ Still only silence; even the crackle had gone. He looked at the phone’s screen. NO NETWORK. But he was in the middle of the city!

The explosion. Toradze’s associates must have destroyed the nearest phone mast, cutting him off.

But they would only have taken such drastic measures if they had been unable to shut down the entire network. If he got close enough to another mast, he could get a connection. The towers were dotted all over Peshawar – surely one couldn’t be far . . .

A rooftop! If he were clear of the surrounding buildings, he would get