by Jack Mars
“I’m right here.” The phone went dead.
Luke looked at Kerry.
“Suppose you’re the Secret Service,” he said. “And you’re protecting the president of the United States. You’ve probably got a couple of armored SUVs parked out front, and a few guys walking around with guns, don’t you? You’ve got snipers in the high places. Maybe a Black Hawk hovering around with heavy weapons poking out of its snout?”
Kerry smirked.
Luke looked at the rest of them. “Okay, SRT. Eyes sharp, heads on a swivel. It could just be practice today, but if so, let’s make it a good one. Are we clear?”
“Clear,” they said as one.
Luke looked at Kerry. “Clear?”
Kerry shrugged. “Clear.”
“Thirty seconds ETA,” the pilot said. “We have a visual on the target. Cabin door locks are disengaged. Prepare for disembark.”
* * *
“Go!” Luke shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”
A thick rope depended from either open doorway of the helicopter. The chopper was in a low hover over the dirt driveway leading to the house. It was a vulnerable position to be in. If they were attacked, the chopper had no weapons with which to fight back.
Luke could easily see the big white house from here, sitting over a steep drop-off to dense foliage far below. Except for a bleak yellow light on the first floor, the windows were like dark eyes in a skull.
C-Team went out on either side. Luke looked at his watch. 4:12 a.m. He tapped the green START button on his stopwatch function. He waited three seconds.
“Out!” he shouted. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
The next two, the battering ram team, dropped over the sides.
Luke poked his head out the doorway and glanced below him. All was clear. He looked at Kerry, across from the cabin from him.
“A-Team!” he shouted. “Out!”
He went over the side. A second later, maybe two, he touched down onto the dirt road. He looked around, getting his bearings. The first four to drop were ahead of him, running up the short hill toward the house, moving fast.
He unslung his shotgun and started running. Across from him, spread out about twenty yards, Kerry ran, keeping pace.
Up ahead, C-Team split up, the woman taking the left side of the house, the man taking the right. B-Team sprinted up the stairs to the big wraparound porch. Firewood was neatly stacked on a pair of runners along the wall.
The two men stepped to the front door with the heavy battering ram. It was a swing-type ram, each man holding the handle on each side. They didn’t make a sound.
Luke sprinted up the stairs one second ahead of Kerry. To his right, the world dropped away down the dark mountainside. He caught a glimpse of the sleek black SRT chopper circling out.
Just ahead, the two men reared back and swung the ram.
BAM!
The door exploded inward and came apart. The rammers tossed their flashbangs and ducked back.
Three…
Two…
One…
BANG! BANG!
The timing was perfect. Luke saw the flash of light and heard the stun explosions. The floorboards shook under his feet. He burst into the open doorway an instant later. Smoke lingered in the air and he plowed through it.
“Down!” he shrieked. “Down! Get DOWN!”
An instant later, Kerry was behind him, screaming the same thing.
Their voices echoed through the house. Luke moved through a wide open space. The ceiling in the atrium was two stories high, with a double bank of stacked windows granting a view across the steep stark valley. There were lights in the distance, perhaps a small village or a camp of some kind.
Luke passed through some white Greek-style columns. He moved quickly, taking cover behind the wall. He was just outside the wide doorway to a great room. Across from him was a large stone fireplace. The floors were polished marble. A tall lamp in the corner was on, giving off a circle of yellow light.
Behind him, he could hear the electronic lock on the shattered door.
Beep… beep… beep… beep… beep… beep…
Then the men with the battering ram. They had entered the house.
“Down!” they screamed. “Police! Get down!”
Luke stopped. He kept his gun up and ready, but he stepped slowly into the room. Four men were here. Three men were on the floor, blood spread out around their heads, congealed, tacky. Two of the men wore light windbreaker jackets and jeans. One wore a blue tracksuit.
Luke barely saw them.
There was another man here. He sat in a blue and white flower-patterned oversized armchair. He was very tall, slim, with salt and pepper hair. He wore a pair of jeans, white sneakers, and a dark cotton V-neck T-shirt. It was incongruous to see him dressed that way. Luke was accustomed to seeing him in suits.
He had a dark gag in his mouth and a blindfold over his eyes. His wrists appeared to be bound behind his back. His head was slumped to one side. He had the unmistakably boneless body posture of a dead man, just as dead as the men on the floor. His face was pale, with a tinge of green. In the gloom, Luke could see blood on the chair, and he could see the darker stain on the man’s dark shirt. Even so, he couldn’t get a sense of the cause of death. Was he shot? Was he stabbed?
Behind Luke, Kerry had just entered the room.
“Oh my God,” he said under his breath.
“Search the house,” Luke said. “Right now. Tell C-Team to establish a defensive line facing the road as best they can. Then take B-Team and search this entire goddamned house. Who’s the medic on this operation?”
Kerry was still standing there, staring at the body.
“Paige.”
“The woman?”
Kerry nodded. His eyes never moved from the body in the chair. He spoke absently. “She was an emergency room RN at some point. Before that she was a field combat medic with the 10th Mountain Division, something along those lines. I don’t know. I just met her a week ago.”
Luke glanced behind Kerry. B-Team was already here, also staring. There were three men with Luke in this room, highly trained, experienced, but also slack-jawed, as if in shock from a particularly gruesome battle.
“Okay, never mind the defensive perimeter for the moment. Get Paige in here.”
Luke looked at the other two men. “The two of you,” he said. “Search the rest of the house! Go!”
Their feet began to shuffle, and their eyes began to pull away from the sight in front of them.
“Now!”
The men snapped out of their reveries. Their body language became alert, and suddenly, they were professionals again. They lifted their shotguns, turned, and disappeared. A few seconds later, he could hear them kicking down doors and moving through rooms. He heard a pair of boots pounding up a staircase.
Luke pulled out his satellite phone. He pressed the speed dial for Swann again. He waited while the phone did its thing.
Swann picked up. “Number one best Chinese food.”
“Swann, we got big problems,” Luke said.
“Tell me about it,” Swann said. “Where are you?”
“We’re in the house.”
“Meet any resistance?”
Luke shook his head. “No. Not so far.”
“Okay, look. I’m guessing you guys tripped an alarm on your way in. There’s a line of SUVs that just disgorged from the NSA station at Sugar Grove. They’re going hell bent for leather, but it’s going to take them a while to get there. Worse news is there are two Apache helicopter gunships headed your way from the south. Beats me where they came from, but they’ll be on top of you in five minutes. Don told the SRT chopper to find a place to land and surrender to whoever pulls guns on them first. No sense making a run for it and getting shot down.”
“Swann…”
“There are flashing lights much closer than the SUVs, moving your way. I’m guessing local sheriffs or maybe state police. Ah, wait a second. I just lost my feed…”
>
“Swann, I’m gonna need…”
“Okay, somebody kicked me off the satellite. We’re blind again.”
“Swann, shut up a second.”
Swann stopped. When he came back on again, he sounded a tad petulant. “Okay, Stone. How can I help you?”
“I need media attention. Tell Trudy to go big. Doesn’t matter who gets here first, CNN, Fox, local news outlets, the National Enquirer , I don’t care. But we need them here, on the ground, at this house, before this place gets overrun by government spooks. We’re gonna hold it as long as we can, but if they come with force, eventually we’ll have to surrender. Something’s been happening here, and I’m afraid our own people, American intelligence assets, were in on it.”
He took a deep breath. He was about to continue, but Swann was already talking.
“Uh, media’s not our department, Stone. I know what Don’s going to say without even having to ask. All inquiries are dealt with by the media liaison office at Bureau headquarters downtown. I mean, there’s a very clear delineation of tasks. We really are a sub-agency of a much…”
Swann was saying something more, but there was a sound behind Luke that caught his attention.
He turned and Paige was there. Out of the helicopter and with her helmet off she was a small blonde, pretty, her hair tied in a bun. Her face said she was older than she had appeared earlier, certainly older than Luke.
That made sense. An Army medic, a hospital nurse, and now dropping out of helicopters and kicking down doors with the SRT. She had done a lot. Not for the first time, Luke felt a burst of admiration for Don’s acumen. He had a knack for finding and deploying the right people.
Paige’s mouth was half-open as her blue eyes darted from body to body. She seemed surprised, but not shocked. She was keeping her emotions in check. She had seen this before.
“Can you give me an estimated time of death on these bodies, without stepping all over this crime scene?” Luke said to her.
She shrugged and nodded. “I can estimate based on rigor mortis. I can also cut one man’s pants open and take a rectal temperature. I can do that without moving the body or touching any wounds. Should be very minimally disturbing to the scene. That’s only one body, but I’d say it’ll give us a ballpark idea for all of them.”
Luke pointed at one of the men on the floor, the one furthest from the center of the room. He was already lying on his side.
“That one,” he said. “Nobody cares about him.”
Swann’s voice over the phone was growing irritated. “Luke, what are you…”
“Swann, I need a forensics team,” Luke said. “I’ve got bodies here. I’m about to get an estimated time of death, but I need real forensics, a medical examiner, the whole nine yards. I need someone in authority to come in here and shut this site down. Someone we can trust. Tell Don I’m requesting the Bureau to send a team here, ASAP. I feel certain the FBI was not in on this, and I think we can trust in that. I need them fast, though. Preferably from a field office that’s near here.”
“Luke…”
“The president is dead, Swann. Okay? Did you hear me? The president is here, and he’s dead. So get me what I asked for, all right? Yesterday, if you don’t mind.”
Luke hung up the phone. His heart was racing.
“Full rigor mortis, including arms and legs,” Paige said from the floor behind him. “No evidence that rigor has begun to decline. Body temperature 74.3, roughly the same as room temperature. A good guess is this guy has been dead between twenty and twenty-four hours. Lividity suggests he died right here where we found him.”
Luke checked his watch. Four twenty a.m. According to the stopwatch, C-Team had jumped from the chopper eight and a half minutes ago.
He tried to get his mind straight, think of the many things he was probably forgetting. He knew he had to start preparing to hold off all comers, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene in front of him.
The dead man in the chair was President David Barrett.
* * *
“Be cool,” Luke said. “Don’t shoot anybody just yet.”
He stood on the wide porch of the house, at the top of the steps. He was speaking to Kerry, his partner in A Team. Kerry stood just behind him, cradling his MP5. The man made for good theater—big and brawny. With his thick beard and tattoos, he looked like a movie tough guy.
It was still dark, but faint light was just beginning to appear below the horizon to the east. There was nothing but forest and mountains out there. That and a hovering Apache helicopter, the guns on its snout pointed directly at the house. Even from this distance, the rumble of its engines and the beat of its rotors made the porch vibrate the tiniest amount.
Luke cast a wary eye at the chopper. If it wanted, it could take this place down to the foundation in a matter of minutes. It could turn Luke and Kerry to liquid in seconds.
A group of men, as many as a dozen, walked toward the steps. The lead man was big and thick. He wore a gray and brown uniform and a tall cowboy hat. He carried a shotgun. He was just a little paunchy, like he enjoyed a few drinks after work. He might have been in his forties, or maybe his fifties. It was hard to say.
Behind him and his group were several police cars with flashing lights. They also had a Bearcat armored assault truck.
When the man had come within ten feet of the stairs, Luke called out to him.
“Okay. That’s far enough.”
The man looked up at Stone.
“Sir, I’m Inspector Reggie Harris, with the Randolph County Division of Emergency Management. We are also the local extension of the Department of Homeland Security.”
His voice had a slight hillbilly lilt to it, polished enough to tell you this man was a professional, but noticeable enough to let you know he had emerged out of the backwoods and was keeping it real. He had nailed it. It must have taken some work to perfect that accent.
“Pleased to meet you,” Luke said. “I’m Agent Luke Stone, with the FBI Special Response Team.”
“Well, Agent Stone, I’m here to relieve you and your men. I have elements from my department with me, as well as units from the Randolph County and Pocahontas County police forces. We’re all empowered as regional deputies of the National Security Agency. You’re in good hands with us.”
Luke shook his head. He almost smiled.
“Inspector Harris, my team are here for the duration. This is a federal crime scene, and we’ve been ordered to hold our position and secure this site until—”
“Sir, my orders are to remove your team by force, if need be.”
Luke paused, then started again.
“Until FBI forensics teams and backup agents arrive here from Washington, and from Wheeling. I’m told the first units will be here within the hour.”
The man suddenly began to walk toward the stairs again.
“Sir, I’ll have to ask you and your team to stand down. We are the duly authorized representatives of the National Security Agency in this region. You can remove yourselves from that building, or we will remove you.”
Luke spoke fast and loud.
“Inspector Harris! Look to your left if you don’t mind.”
To Harris’s left, and Luke’s right, was a large window facing the stairs. In the dim early light, the details of that window hadn’t been obvious. But Harris looked at it now, and its lines became clear.
The window was open halfway, and Paige was there, kneeling on the other side. Her gun poked out at Harris and his men. Paige and the gun were mostly silhouettes.
“That’s Agent Paige,” Luke said. “She’s a highly trained special operator with experience in two combat theaters. Can you see what she’s holding?”
Harris had stopped. “It’s a gun.”
Now Luke did smile. “Oh, it’s more than a gun. It’s an MP5 machine gun, fully automatic. It’s a very nice weapon. Paige is a crack shot, she’s got forty rounds in the magazine, and I’ve seen her swap mags in just a couple of seconds.”
Of course he was bluffing. He had just met Paige this morning. She was holding Luke’s gun. He had never seen her swap magazines. He had no idea if she had ever shot one of those things in her life.
“She’s got the drop on you, wouldn’t you say? She could put eighty rounds into you guys with barely a pause.”
Luke took a deep breath, letting his chest rise and fall.
“You’ve ordered a gun to be pointed at brother officers,” Harris said. “I’ll have your badge for this.”
Luke nodded. “Maybe, but first that woman will turn you and your men into Swiss cheese. And she’ll do it on my go.”
There was a long moment of silence, no sound except the Apache helicopter, somewhere out there in space. Luke didn’t take his eyes off Harris.
“What I suggest you guys do is go back down to the gate and establish a security perimeter around this place. I’m told to expect a team from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms shortly. Those men will help you.”
Luke watched Harris’s eyes. Those angry eyes were becoming clearer in the gathering daylight. They darted from Luke to Paige, and back to Luke.
“Until they arrive, do yourself a favor and stay out of my hair.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
6:55 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Special Activities Center, Directorate of Operations
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
“I feel like you may be losing control over this situation.”
The old man warbled in that unspeakable voice of his. There was driveway gravel lodged deep in his throat. He had just finished smoking a cigarette down to the nub, and now he was using his trembling yellow fingers to light a new one with the dying embers of the old.
He took a deep suck on the fresh cigarette, as if the heinous thing emitted life-giving oxygen, instead of so many toxic poisons it was impossible to analyze or even accurately quantify them all.
“Of course I disagree,” Wallace Speck said.
“Oh?” the old man said. “I’d love to understand your position. You see, because what I’ve heard is the man’s body has been found by the FBI in a rather…”
