Primary Command

by Jack Mars

  “It’s ready,” he said.

  “Maybe you should just leave that thing here,” Luke said.

  Swann shook his head. “We only have two of them. There can’t be one for Luke Stone, and one for everybody else.”

  “Carry on, fellas,” Don said. “Stone, excellent job this morning. You did this agency proud in a trying circumstance. I’m going to want a full report of the action sequence, and an assessment on your team’s performance, as soon as you can. It doesn’t have to be today. But don’t forget we do have a meeting with your friend Murphy this afternoon.”

  “Oh, man,” Luke said.

  “No rest for the weary,” Don said, and then was gone.

  Luke looked at Swann.

  “Nice job today, Swann. You got me what I needed, when I needed it. That’s all we can do, right?”

  Swann shook his head. “The things that go on… people would never believe it.”

  Now Swann went out.

  Luke held the phone pressed to his ear. He waited while the call bounced to Pluto, across the solar system and into the heart of the sun, then back to earth. He was not looking forward to this conversation, but it had to be done.

  Becca’s telephone began to ring. Her voice came on right away.

  “Luke?”

  “Hi, babe.”

  “Oh Luke. I am so glad to hear your voice. I was waiting for your call. I saw you on the TV news.”

  That couldn’t be right. At least, he hoped not. His mind went to the Russia operation, the alleged bloodbath… “You saw me?”

  “In West Virginia. The news helicopters were zooming in on the house. I saw you come out with a group of your people. Everyone had SRT on their backs. They didn’t identify you, but I saw you. They said the FBI Special Response Team found the president’s body. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “It was my team that found the body,” Luke said. He took a deep breath and sighed it back out. “We acted on a tip and went in by helicopter at dawn. Me and another guy were the first ones in the door.”

  “Oh my God, sweetheart,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

  Luke nodded. “I am, too.”

  “Are they providing you trauma counselors?”

  Luke smiled. He nearly laughed. Talk about a question flying in out of left field. This wasn’t sophomore year in high school. They were not providing trauma counselors. He pictured himself walking into Don’s office and asking to see a trauma counselor. His smile broadened into a great big grin.

  Suddenly, he loved her all over again. He loved her so much his heart nearly broke. He wanted her to never know what went on in his life, the things he’d seen and done. He wanted to shield her from that information forever, and he never wanted his son to know, either. He wanted them protected, and far away from any of this.

  “Luke?”

  “Um, things have been moving pretty fast, hon. We just got back here a little while ago. I think, uh… the whole country’s going to be in mourning. Plus we have this whole confrontation going on with—”

  “But you saw the body,” Becca said.

  “Yes, I did. And I’m going to have to process that, I know.”

  The bodies he’d seen! David Barrett had been a pretty inoffensive corpse. At least he was more or less in one piece. Luke had seen bodies that looked more like linked sausage meat than people. He’d seen faces lying on the ground like rubber masks, utterly divorced from the person to whom they’d once been attached. He blinked to clear his mind of these images.

  “You’re my hero, Luke. I realize what you’re doing is very important.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart. You’re my hero.”

  “When can I see you?” she said. “I miss you so much. I want you to be here with the baby.”

  “Well, yesterday it looked like I was going to get a few weeks off. I’m not sure that’s on the table anymore. But my dream is to be out at the cabin with you and Gunner, just the three of us…”

  “Just the three of us,” Becca said. “That sounds so nice.”

  “It’s nothing against your mom…”

  “I understand, Luke. It’s better when we’re alone. It’s just with you being gone so much, and the depression…”

  “I know,” Luke said. “And we’re going to work it out. I’m going to be in meetings this afternoon, but then I’m going to ask Don if time off is still in the cards…”

  “Whatever happens,” she said, “just know that I love you. I’m sorry that we fought. I love you more than life itself.”

  “I love you too,” Luke said. “I love you so much.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  12:30 p.m. Montreal Daylight Time (12:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

  Old Montreal

  Ville-Marie

  Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  At some point, Lawrence Keller was going to need food.

  There was a tiny grocery store just around the corner. This being Montreal, they were fanatics about fresh bread. Also, they had wine and nice cheeses. The stall out front on the sidewalk was usually piled with attractive fruits and vegetables.

  Keller could climb down the narrow stairway here in his building, four stories, exit onto the charming old cobblestone street, turn left, and the store was probably no more than two hundred feet away.

  It spoke volumes about his state of mind that he could not bring himself to do it. He had brought in a few things when he arrived last night. Cream for coffee. A loaf of bread, and a stick of butter. Half a dozen eggs. Oranges and bananas. It wasn’t enough. It was not going to last.

  He sat on the couch with his Sig Sauer in his hand. He hadn’t gotten dressed. He had barely moved all day. He had looked out the window a few times, down at the street. It was early summer and the neighborhood was crowded with tourists. The crowds would give Keller’s killers perfect cover. Keller could get knifed in the back just walking down the block.

  If he went out into the street, he was an easy target. If he ordered food in, the assassins could push their way past the delivery man when Keller buzzed the front door open for him.

  Keller understood. He was all the way gone in paranoia now, but he had every reason to be. These people were heartless killers. Wallace Speck, the dark lord himself, commanded them. They had murdered the president. There wasn’t much to stop them from murdering Lawrence Keller.

  An observer seeing him on the couch would probably think that Keller had sunk into a depression so deep he was nearly comatose. He seemed to be staring into space. But inside, his mind was alert and active.

  It raced through his memories, like a computer searching its own data banks. If there was a solution to this problem, it was stored inside Keller’s mind. He was in Canada, a two-hour flight from DC. They were going to find him here, that much was certain.

  He had taken care to hide this place, but everyone made mistakes. In this day and age, it would be almost impossible not to. The new technologies, programs like ECHELON, meant that they could harvest Keller’s communications. They could run algorithms that looked for matches, through IP addresses, GPS locations of cell phones, credit card transactions…

  He had heard ECHELON referred to as an “eavesdropping program.” It wasn’t an eavesdropping program. It was a monstrous vacuum cleaner. It was a giant fishing trawler that cleared out the ocean of life. ECHELON ate everything.

  Had he always kept Lawrence Keller and Kevin Lawrence’s communications completely segregated? Had he never sent a Kevin Lawrence email from a Lawrence Keller IP address? He couldn’t guarantee it. Once they matched the two men’s identities, it wouldn’t take long for them to find this flat. Indeed, they might have already found it.

  Maybe he could leave the country. Assuming he made it to the airport, from here he could fly almost anywhere. He could go to a country that had no extradition treaty with the United States—Cuba, maybe, or Venezuela. But Kevin Lawrence didn’t have a passport. Which meant that Lawrence Keller would have to do the traveling. Which meant credi
t card transactions, itineraries, security checks…

  That was out of the question. If they knew he was there, they could reach him in Havana or Caracas almost as easily as they could reach him here.

  Across from him, the TV set was still on.

  Mark Baylor, the new president of the United States, stood in front of a camera in the Oval Office. His hair was white, much whiter than you might expect for a man his age. His face was serious, saddened, but also determined.

  Behind him and to his right a large American flag was draped. To his left was the Resolute Desk. These were nice subtle touches, of course, the kind of thing Keller himself would do.

  Mark Baylor was president now. The Oval Office, the flag, the desk, these were timeless symbols of America. They were the trappings of power. They almost made it seem as if Mark Baylor had always been president.

  Baylor was tall, like David Barrett himself had been. But he was much broader. He looked like a man who had played the linebacker position in high school, became sedentary, but never stopped eating like an athlete. The cut of his suit covered it pretty well, but he was not a thin man.

  Lawrence Keller, who had been a long distance runner for most of his adult life, did not like fat people. He was not a racist. He was not a sexist. He had no opinions about anyone’s religion or personal habits (within reason), but he had a real prejudice against fat people. All that excess meat made him uncomfortable.

  “My fellow Americans,” Baylor said.

  David Barrett was dead. He was gone. And this man had played some role in his death, just as Lawrence Keller had, just as Wallace Speck and God knew who else had. It shouldn’t be allowed to stand.

  “This has been a painful day for all of us,” Baylor said. “I stand before you humbled by the enormity of the tasks ahead of us, as well as angry and grief-stricken at the death of my good friend and predecessor, David Barrett. I have struggled since this morning to make sense of this terrible tragedy, and to find words to express my feelings to you about this great man, and about the difficult steps we must take to honor his memory.”

  Keller was only half listening. David Barrett. He was a long way from a great man. He was mostly a self-centered but well-meaning bumbler, who had somehow parlayed family wealth, connections, and good looks into a stint in the most important job on earth. He could have kept the job, but he was undone by his own fatal flaws.

  The things that David gotten up to. He had an embarrassing man crush on the old Special Forces colonel whose operatives had saved his daughter. Did it make sense to feel indebted to the man? Of course it did. But Barrett was like a teenage girl with the man’s poster on her bedroom wall.

  Colonel Donald Morris, one of the original pioneers of Delta Force. That’s who the man was. And he was a legend. Keller could picture him well enough. Steely blue eyes, flattop haircut, square jaw. He should play himself in a movie. In fact, he should play a caricature of himself in an absurd comedy.

  Morris had retired from the Army and ran a sub-agency of the FBI now. He called it the Special Response Team. A handful of his operatives had crashed a helicopter in the rugged upper peaks of the Sinjar Mountains, wiped out a group of Al Qaeda in a firefight, and somehow brought Barrett’s daughter Elizabeth back alive.

  They must be madmen. Killers. And they would have nothing to do with the likes of Wallace Speck.

  “As you know,” Baylor said on the TV, “David Barrett was kidnapped during an attack on the White House carried about by Russian nationals with links to organized crime. For more than twenty-four hours, we engaged in increasingly fruitless conversations with the Russian government, in an attempt to secure the former president’s safe return. Our attempts at a diplomatic solution were with an eye at preserving peace between our two countries.

  “You will note that the nature of the attack makes it obvious that it was deliberately planned many days, weeks, or even months in advance. And the president was kept prisoner at a house purchased more than two years ago by a Russian operative. I am now at liberty to tell you that the corpses of three men other than the president were found at the house. All of the men were Russian nationals, all of them with ties to organized crime or Russian intelligence.”

  Baylor paused, looking directly into the eyes of the American people. Lawrence Keller sighed. They were really going to sell this as a Russian assassination, and then they were going to sell the war they had wanted all along.

  He was angry. Of course he was. But he was also helpless, and he thought he might start to cry again.

  “It seems nearly certain that Russia has undertaken a surprise offensive on American soil. We are still investigating, but the facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. I’m sure the people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications of this offensive.”

  Baylor raised a hand.

  “I ask for your patience while we conclude our investigation. In due time, soon, all of the facts will be revealed. I have directed our security personnel to expel the Russian ambassador and all of his embassy staff here in Washington. I have also directed that the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, and all of her embassy staff, be expelled from New York. That will happen shortly.

  “We are still in contact with the Russian government, and we have requested a reasonable and transparent accounting of their actions in recent days. If we do not receive one, and their response thus far does not inspire confidence, as Commander in Chief I will be forced to direct all branches of our armed forces to prepare for war.”

  He paused again. Despite the horror of what was unfolding, Keller had to admit that Baylor was doing well. He was convincing. The man had probably been rehearsing his entire life for just this moment—the day he could threaten the Russians with annihilation.

  “I have complete confidence that we have the best military in the world. If it comes to war, no matter how long it takes, I know the American people will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the utmost, but will make it certain that treachery like this never takes place again.

  “We will discover the perpetrators of this terrible crime, and we will punish them with fire. If those perpetrators are found to be the Russian government, their intelligence operatives, and the organized crime figures they use as their pawns, then so be it.”

  Baylor’s gaze was steel now. To Keller’s mind, it was almost as if he was doing his best Don Morris imitation.

  “So be it,” he said again. “We do not shrink from a challenge. We are the greatest country on earth. The determination of our people will overcome the obstacles set before us, and we will gain the inevitable victory, so help us God.”

  Keller muted the TV again.

  A moment later, the image switched from the Oval Office back to the newsroom. The talking heads were ready to begin. They would parse Baylor’s every word. Keller could practically recite their lines for them.

  President Baylor had been strong. He had been decisive.

  He was waffling. He seemed in shock.

  He seemed ready to carry the weight on his broad shoulders.

  He’s rattling the sabers.

  Did he declare war or didn’t he?

  He toed the line perfectly.

  He should have done more.

  What the pundits didn’t know, or would refuse to say, was that Mark Baylor was an amoral crazy person who would love nothing more than to give the generals exactly what they wanted—free rein to blast the Russians back to medieval times. Baylor was paying lip service to the idea of an investigation, to the idea of being patient.

  The war would be declared soon, maybe after it had already started.

  Keller’s life was in danger, and all day he could think of almost nothing else. But now he was confronted by a larger, more terrifying fear.

  He had been in the Situation Room with this president, and the advisors that he favored and
kept close to him. Keller had seen it before, up close and personal.

  Mark Baylor was capable of starting World War III.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  1:55 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  Headquarters of the Special Response Team

  McLean, Virginia

  Three cups of coffee hadn’t done anything.

  He moved through the bustling hallways in a near daze. A hand reached out and touched his arm. He turned to look and it was Trudy.

  Her hair hung down in soft curls. Her pretty eyes were behind her crazy red librarian glasses. She wore a blue blazer and dress pants.

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Neither one spoke. To Luke, it wasn’t necessarily awkward. He wasn’t sure what it was. The office activity swirled around them. It was a hectic day. This morning’s raid had returned the SRT to the glare of the national spotlight. All of these people were working as quickly as possible to put that glare elsewhere. Thankfully, it wasn’t going to take much.

  Russia and the United States were on the precipice of war.

  He thought of Becca and Gunner. He had just talked to her… when? Whenever it was, the new president hadn’t spoken yet. She must be having a freak-out at this moment. He didn’t blame her. If he wasn’t so tired, he’d probably be ready for one himself.

  He needed to call her again.

  In front of him, Trudy smiled, but her smile was tentative. She looked at him closely. “Are you okay?”

  He smiled in return. “I am very, very tired.”

  “You seemed to have gotten some sleep.”

  He shook his head. “I did. Thank you. You saved my neck. But between the trip to Russia, the operation this morning, the dead president we found, and the world on the verge of—”

  “I have something to tell you,” she said.

  Above all words, those were the ones he dreaded hearing.