Net Force - Tom Clancy [54]
Along with the Americans was a polyglot combined-unit comprised of Russian, Serbian, Chechen, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Chinese and Indian soldiers.
Plekhanov removed the clunky helmet he wore and ran one hand through his sweat-damp hair. He grinned. Historical accuracy fell down a bit in this scenario, since no Oriental countries had fielded soldiers in this area during World War I, even though Japan and China had been considered allies of the western Europeans battling Germany. Certainly there had been no Koreans or Thais-still called Siamese back then-nor Indians, unless perhaps the Brits had sprinkled a few Gurkhas or Bengal Lancers in among their troops. The British were odd ducks, so he supposed that might well have been possible. Plekhanovs research was not as thorough as it might have been, since it wasnt really necessary. While writing the software, he did recall reading a piece about how outraged the Brits had been when the nabob of Bengal, one Suraj-ud-Dowlah, sacked Calcutta in 1757. After the battle, the nabob had stuffed 146 captured Brits into a small and very hot room at Fort William. When they were released the next day, only twenty-three of them were still alive; the rest had died, most of them from heat stroke. Thus was born the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta.
Careful there, old man, you are drifting. Best you get back to the business at hand.
Plekhanov put his helmet back on, shifted his position from where he sat upon the empty wine cask and propped the rifle onto the ledge under the towers opening. He could have used the hiking scenario, but since he was taking direct action himself-there was nobody he could trust to do this particular job-he thought a more active imagery was appropriate. A German sniper picking off enemy troops at long range seemed eminently suitable. Poetic, even.
He chambered a round, and lined the scope up on a rather fat American officer who looked like a caricature of a Wall Street stockbroker, despite the military uniform. Even with the optics, the target was still somewhat small at the distance-nearly two hundred meters, he judged. The scope was zeroed in at one hundred meters, so he aimed a bit high, for the head, to allow for a little extra drop. He took a deep breath, held it, squeezed the trigger
In New York City, a currency tasking computer subcontracted to the Federal Reserve sent copies of all user ID codes admitted to every connected terminal-
Even as the fat American collapsed with a bullet buried in his chest, Plekhanov worked the bolt and shifted his aim. Ah. There was the White Russian, saber in hand, leading his men. Plekhanov put the crosshairs on the mans throat, held his breath again, fired-
In Moscow, the computer interlink responsible for balance-of-trade statistics with the European Commonwealth scrambled and went down-
There was the Korean officer, trying to get his troops to duck and cover. Plekhanov worked the rifles bolt, ejected another spent shell and chambered a fresh round. Goodbye, Mr. Kim-
A small setting inside the fabber making the new PowerExtreme mainframe computer chips at the Kim Electronics plant in Seoul altered, not enough to be noticed by the operators, but enough to change certain pathways in the chips silicon circuitry. The virus had a time limit, so the settings would revert, but a thousand chips would be affected before that happened, turning the high-end systems they would eventually control into electronic time bombs waiting to go off-
And here on the muddy French field was an Indian looking for a place to hide. Sorry, Punjab, old Wog, theres no cover there-
The newly installed computer traffic system in Bombay blew its triple-redundancy