A child who spent much of his time grounded in his room because of mischievous acts, quite a few of them in fact, and who had soon learned to unlock doors and windows when he was bored.
He opened the door and stepped out.
At the Bosnia, Srpska and Brčko tri-border, the riots were out of control, the people forcing their own militaries back into the Brčko District safe zone in an attempt to get to the besieged Internationals. Where Bosniaks and Serbs happened to chance upon one another, violence broke out, too. The Russian Federation’s defense minister hastened its forces’ advance into the district, citing no choice lest people of the two nations meet and clash, instigating war, lest the violence seep to his own country, which had the right to protect itself, and lest the remaining peacekeeping force be harmed, which he felt compelled to prevent, of course. At the same time, the forces he had deployed along the Russian Federation’s border with Srpska began their determined move forward.
In IDSD Missions’ war room and in the IDSD HQ, Joint Europe Commands and White House situation rooms, there really was nothing to say, nothing to do, as the most volatile area in Europe erupted in violence before the eyes of those watching.
In Mission Command, silence reigned alongside tense anticipation as Oracle spoke last words to the teams prepared to move in on Cres, deep in the water and high above in the air.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It’s all black, was the first thing Ambassador Sendor thought. And it was. He was surrounded by blackness—black walls, a black ceiling. And there was no one there, even though he had steeled himself to face guards, guns, an onslaught. He took a few hesitant steps forward, not understanding. There was nothing there. He seemed to be in a huge, square room, with nothing but walls and a high ceiling far above him. The only light came from what looked like scattered spots where the ceiling met the walls. Spots aimed at him. Or rather at the wall behind him, the wall of the room he had just left, and the door, now open, in it.
He walked along that wall, perplexed. Reached a corner, turned and continued to walk. Another corner, another wall. Another corner, then another one, and there was the open door just ahead. He walked to it and peeked inside the room, his prison cell, then took several steps back away from it and looked up. At the ceiling. His ceiling, which he was looking at from the outside, the ceiling of the larger, black room looming above it. He had been held in an especially built room within a much larger structure, he realized in surprise. Like a set in a film, he thought. And where was everyone?
He rounded the impromptu room again, heading to where he had seen the entrance to a wide corridor in the wall, the real wall of this huge black room or whatever it was he was in. He stood in place for a long moment, looking at the corridor. It didn’t make sense that he was here alone, surely there had to be someone else here.
But no one was coming, he heard no footsteps. He was surrounded by silence. He braced himself and stepped into the corridor, constantly looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was coming after him. Like the room, the corridor was spotted with lights built into the ceiling at regular intervals. Finally reaching its end, he stopped, and his jaw dropped. He was standing on a strip of rough concrete stretching to both his sides, and ending, a short distance ahead, at the edge of dark water. He looked up. The ceiling here was also black, but ahead, on the other side of the water, it met a wall that was not, nor was it neatly smooth like the others in this odd place he was in. It looked natural. Chiseled rock perhaps? He couldn’t begin to guess where he was. There seemed to be no way out, but there had to be one, whatever way his captor had used to come and leave, him and the others Sendor had encountered in his captivity.
He took several hesitant steps forward, to the edge of the concrete strip he stood on. Just under him, beside steps that led down, a miniature submersible bobbed silently in the water.
“Is that what you were looking for?”
Sendor started and whirled around. His captor was leaning on the wall behind him, to his left, an amused smile on his face.
“The way out, isn’t that what you want?” his captor asked again. “A one-person submersible will do the trick.”
“I don’t understand. What is this place? Where is everyone?” Sendor asked, too confused to be afraid.
“There is no one. They are all, let’s say, gone,” his captor said with a coldness that made Sendor’s skin crawl. The captor pushed off the wall and walked along it, never veering off to approach him. Taunting him. “I suppose I should not be surprised that you got out, George. You are, after all, a resourceful man.”
“Is this when I die?” Sendor found himself strangely calm.
“Yes.” His captor pulled a handgun from inside his jacket, then looked at it with interest. “I don’t use these much, you know. That really is not my job, I have people for that. But I know how to use one. Quite well, in fact.” He stroked the gun with his other hand. “IDSD-issued. IDSD bullets.”
“You are framing IDSD for my death?” Sendor, unaware of the full details of the events that had surrounded his disappearance, tried to put what few pieces he had together.
“That we did days ago. I suppose you could say this is the final touch.”
“Why now?”
“Sorry?” His captor turned his eyes back to him, his eyebrows raised.
“Why are you doing this now? I thought I was leverage. You said you intended to keep me alive.” Sendor found that he needed to understand, to somehow make sense of his own death, of the pain that would be caused to so many who needed him. To the people he loved. Anger bubbled inside him, anger at the futility of it.
“Yes”—his captor sighed with regret—“I had hoped to keep you here longer. Much, much longer. But things have become too complicated. And I have my orders.”
“Orders?” Sendor focused. “I thought you were the one giving the orders.”
His captor’s eyes turned cold. “It seems I have said too much. No matter, you will, after all, die here.”
The captor motioned for Sendor to move to the wall, while he himself walked to the edge of the water, toward his way out, the submersible that awaited him.
“Turn around,” he said.
“You want me to stand with my back to you? Why? Are you afraid to see my eyes when you kill me?” Anger mixed with bitterness.
“I couldn’t care less. But you need to die like they did.”
Sendor took a step forward, horrified, as he realized what his captor meant. “You killed them. You killed everyone on my jet.”
“Yes. Well, no, not technically. My people did. I was . . . otherwise engaged, you could say. My job was you.” Abruptly, the captor stepped forward, pushed the older man back roughly, turned him around to face the wall, and pointed the gun at the back of his head.
“Say your goodbyes, George. For yourself. For the world, you have been dead for days.”
Sendor held his head high and closed his eyes. So be it, he thought. He braced himself.
The shot came.
He heard it on the backdrop of the rustle of water but felt nothing. Next was the sound of the man behind him falling on the hard concrete.
“Go, go, go,” he heard the urgent shout, then running footsteps, and someone turned him around forcefully and held him with his back against the wall. He opened his eyes to see guns pointed at him by two men in full combat gear, another held by the man who was holding him against the wall with one hand. On both his sides, more armed figures were coming out of the water, running past him into the corridor.
The nozzle of the gun came down sharply. “It’s him, it’s him,” the man shouted, “got him,” and the ambassador heard the words echo all around him.
He looked, dazed, at the men who were now repositioning themselves to flank him, their backs to him, guns pointed outward, to protect him. More joined them, surrounding him in an impenetrable half-circle.
The man who had spoken was patting him down, “Sir, are you injured? Do you require medical atte
ntion?”
“No, no, I’m . . . no.” He tried to focus, turned his head at shouts coming from inside this place where he had been held captive, as the other men cleared it.
“Who are you?” He pushed at the man, inching back into the wall. He’d had enough of captors.
The man grinned, white teeth a stark contrast to his camouflage-painted face. He reached for his arm and ripped off the cover that hid the Internationals’ flag. “Captain Reynolds, IDSD Defense Force-Europe Fourth Special Mission Unit, Amphibious Ops Team, sir. It’s all right, we’re here to take you home.” He motioned to his people, and they began to lead the ambassador toward the edge of the concrete, where two underwater transports had come out of the water.
“No, I have to go, I have to . . . where are we? What is this place?”
“You’re on Cres, the Croatian island, or rather under it, in a concealed hideaway built by the people who took you on the rocky foundation created when the island was destroyed.” Reynolds waited until he was sure the ambassador understood what he was saying. The elderly man looked disoriented. Not surprising, considering what he’d been through. He spoke soothingly, mistaking the ambassador’s rambling for fear, a need to escape his captivity. “First Special Mission Unit’s Air Assault Team is topside securing the area. You’re safe now, sir. And we’ll be leaving soon. Part of my team will stay here to finish clearing this place, but I’ve got orders to get you to safety and then to Brussels.”
Sendor grabbed the captain’s arm. “No, please, the treaty. I have to go to them, that man said . . . I can stop it, I can, is there really a war?”
The captain looked at him. “Pretty damn near, sir. They think you’re dead, the Russians made it look like we killed you, to create a mess.”
So what his captor had said was true. “How long has it been? What day is it? No, it doesn’t matter. I can stop it. I have to try. Please.”
The captain scrutinized him, then nodded. “Let’s see what we can do, then, Ambassador.”
In IDSD US’s Mission Command, Oracle broke simultaneously from Sendor and the Special Mission Units at Cres and nodded at Emero, now on-screen.
“We have a go,” he relayed, and in the Federated States of Micronesia, Pohnpei and its surrounding islands went dark, losing all communications and power, its defense systems rendered useless for a long enough time to allow Combined Special Ops Task Force-Micronesia to launch simultaneous raids on the historical mansion above Kolonia and on the gated community containing the homes of the Yahna extremist faction’s members. Minutes later, US Global Intelligence confirmed it was moving on Yahna inside the United States, its counterparts in the additional designated arrest sites worldwide following in cascading order.
In Mission Command, Oracle never took her eyes off all active fronts on the screen.
On the platform that formed the artificial addition to the island of Cres, IDSD Defense Force-Europe First Special Mission Unit’s Air Assault Team canvassed the area around them, but there was nothing to find, no danger there, nothing to do but secure the place. In the structure hidden under their feet, their peers found the room the ambassador had been kept in. Behind a concealed entrance in the corridor he had gone through they found well-organized quarters that would allow a large number of people to remain hidden in this underwater hideaway, including well-stocked storage rooms. The only technology found was the closed system that allowed the prisoner in the internal room to be watched, there were no means there of communicating with the outside world. But then, the structure had been built in the first place to have no footprint that would allow it to be detected from the outside. Nor was there any way to physically access it other than by using submersibles such as the one the man they had killed had intended to leave in.
By himself. They found the bodies of three apparent guards and an unarmed old man in the hidden quarters.
No useful intel was found. What little was discovered and taken would be examined at a later time, in more appropriate settings, but would lead to a dead end. The guards and the old man were easily identified but turned out to be obscure individuals, registered as being Croatian citizens with no families and no known affiliations, nor any identifiers in their backgrounds that would have raised red flags. It looked as if they had been carefully chosen for the roles they played in the extremist faction’s plans. As for the man Captain Reynolds had shot, and whom Ambassador Sendor had confirmed was his main captor, he could not be immediately identified.
The Pohnpei raids, on the other hand, produced significant results. Not only the arrests, but also information, including elaborate plans, past and future, found in the basement floor of the mansion overlooking Kolonia. The findings were also enough to connect the extremist faction to the ambassador’s abduction and to the theft of Sirion, and included the names of at least some of those who had helped replicate the technology, some knowingly and some without knowing what they were helping to build.
The Sirion copy itself was not found.
In Washington, DC, the unmarked cars escorting Richard Bourne from USFID Plaza to the IDSD airfield, from where he would be flown to a secure facility in Brussels, skidded to a halt as a single missile from a UAV camouflaged as a civilian delivery drone hit the SUV he was in, instantly killing him and the USFID agents in the car with him.
In IDSD’s Mission Command, Donovan’s phone signaled an incoming call. He silenced it. It sounded again immediately, bypassing the lock with an emergency signal. He took the call and ended it after a brief conversation, his face set in a grim frown.
“I have to go,” he said, turning to Scholes. He stared at the phone, remembering Bourne’s warning. You don’t know them, they will find me, he’d said. “Bourne is dead.”
“ARPA’s Richard Bourne?” Scholes gaped.
Donovan nodded and glanced at Lara, who was facing the screen, speaking to Emero on her headset.
“Go,” Scholes said. “She’ll be here for a while. And Aiden knows what to do.”
Donovan looked at Lara again. Then he turned and left.
The underwater transport that carried Ambassador Sendor and several of his rescuers, Captain Reynolds included, was far too small in his opinion. And despite the heavily armed, dangerous-looking soldiers around him, this did not seem a vessel that could fight an onslaught.
“Are we safe in here?” He looked around him and shifted uncomfortably, still reeling with the realization that he had been held captive underwater all this time.
“We’re deep underwater,” the captain answered. “No one knows we’re here and we’re masked.” He glanced at a console beside him. “And we’re moving faster than you think, sir.”
Sendor was more worried about the small transport breaking apart in the water. He wasn’t very fond of small spaces. And he couldn’t swim. “Where are we going?”
The captain smiled. “Wait for it.”
Moments later the transport shifted. Going up now, it seemed, although Sendor wasn’t sure. He started with surprise as the upper half of the transport gradually became transparent, and he saw that they were indeed moving up, inside a much larger compartment, a huge one, in fact. Before long they were above water and moored alongside a dock, and the transport opened. He was helped out and stood gawking at the sight around him. Busy sailors moved around the transport he had arrived in and similar ones that hung suspended above water. It looks like a shipyard, he thought curiously.
“This way, sir.” Captain Reynolds led him, the rest of his team moving away in a different direction and two naval officers taking their places behind him and the ambassador. They stepped into an elevator that opened again almost immediately to show an austere passageway. The woman awaiting them was imposing in her captain’s uniform.
“Welcome to International Unity. Good to have you back safe and sound, Ambassador. I’m Captain Gaines.”
“International Unity?”
“We’re an IDSD Defense aircraft carrier. You’re now on Internationals territory, A
mbassador. You’re among friends. I suggest we get you to the infirmary, after which—”
“Please. Thank you, but I have to go back.”
“Go back?” Captain Gaines frowned at the distraught man and glanced questioningly at Reynolds.
“The peace treaty. I have to go back. I have to complete it. The treaty must be signed.”
“I’m afraid that’s a bit complicated,” the captain said carefully. She had been briefly updated about the conditions of the ambassador’s captivity, the isolation he had been kept in.
“I don’t . . . what day is it?” Sendor finally remembered to ask. “How long was I held captive?” He realized Gaines was regarding him with concern. I must sound confused, he thought. He couldn’t afford to have them think he was incapacitated, he needed them to listen to him now, before it was too late.
He forced himself to calm down and collected his thoughts. “I was held in isolation, captain, told nothing of what was going on in the outside world,” he explained. “I was not even told the day and time. Please, I need to know what is happening.”
Gaines nodded slowly and assessed the sober determination in the ambassador’s eyes. “All right then,” she finally said. “Why don’t we all go to my stateroom? I will update you, and we will see.”
“I have to go back,” Sendor said again once he was told everything. “I can do this. I can save them.” The passion in his voice was no longer the result solely of his belief in the treaty. It was, now, also a reflection of his anger and bereavement at the confirmed loss of his loyal assistant, his protective agents and the crew of his jet, who were murdered to prevent him from completing his work. They, and those who had died in the days since his abduction in the renewed hostilities instigated through the destructive actions of those who had taken him in order to instill fear and chaos in the people he had sworn to protect. Enough, was all he could think, now more determined than ever. Enough death.
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