by Jack Mars
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
8:15 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
The West Wing
The White House
Washington, DC
“Mr. President, do you understand what I’m telling you?”
A dozen men moved quickly down a wide hall lined with Greek-style columns. Their footsteps echoed on the marble floor. They were headed for the main entrance of the building. Secret Service were among the men, flanking them in the front and rear.
Mark Baylor had gone numb. He had cut himself shaving this morning. He never did that. He was having trouble focusing. He glanced down at the man speaking to him. It was a small bearded man in a three-piece suit. His name was Ronald Griffin, and he was the head of the White House legal team.
“Tell me again,” Baylor said.
“Everything is okay,” Griffin said. “The interview will take place at FBI headquarters. You are a person of interest and not a suspect. Keep that at the top of your mind. Also, your entire legal team, including myself, will remain with you throughout the interview.”
“Okay,” Baylor said.
“And your Secret Service detail will remain with you at all times, even if you are arrested.”
“If I’m arrested ?”
“Mark, I’m going to be very frank with you.”
Baylor didn’t like that. A second ago, Griffin had been calling him Mr. President. Now he was calling him Mark. That was a rather sudden downgrade.
“I consider this a hostile interview,” Griffin said. “We requested a transcript of the questions from the FBI nearly an hour ago, and they’ve refused to provide it. I’ll caution you now that they’ve taken Wallace Speck into custody, and we believe he’s going to become a cooperating witness. We know Lawrence Keller is already a cooperating witness.”
Baylor tripped over his own feet, and a hand steadied him from behind. Wallace Speck was cooperating with the FBI? Wallace Speck? Wallace Speck was as guilty as the day was long. He was a one-man crime wave.
The thought of Speck testifying…
Griffin went on. “Whatever the nature of your relationship with those two men, I urge you not to discuss it with the FBI at this time. This is an informational interview, and you have no information to provide about them. You are merely a person of interest. Remember that you are not under arrest.”
“And what if I am…” Baylor said. He could barely get the words out. “What if I’m arrested?” He felt like he might start crying at any second. He had never been arrested in his life. He was a Baylor. Baylors didn’t get arrested.
“If you happen to be arrested, your situation actually improves,” Griffin said. “There is an immediate protocol that goes into effect. We terminate any further questioning, and we drop the façade of cooperation. You are no threat to anyone, and you’re too prominent to be a flight risk. A reasonable bail will be set, and we will post it immediately. You’ll be back out within an hour or two. And as I indicated, your Secret Service detail will remain with you throughout the process.”
Griffin paused.
“Also, keep in mind that it’s an open constitutional question if a president can even be arrested, or charged with a crime. If they arrest you, they’ll be treading on very shaky ground. That’s why I’m confident that—”
“Oh God, Ronald,” Baylor said. “Is this what we’re reduced to? Shaky constitutional questions?”
Griffin nodded. “I’m the first to admit it’s a minefield. But we’re going to navigate it, and we’re going to come out the other side.”
“That’s very comforting,” Baylor said.
“I’m not your security blanket, Mark. I’m your lawyer.”
Baylor stumbled along. There was no feeling in his legs now. He had no idea what Wallace Speck did or didn’t do. He hadn’t known that David Barrett was going to be murdered. How could he know a thing like that? He wasn’t in on any of this.
The FBI probably wouldn’t arrest him. That was good, he supposed. On the other hand, how did you remain president when the FBI questioned you as a person of interest in the murder of the previous president?
Simple answer: you didn’t. There were too many forces aligned against it. The media, the public, the Congress. The opposing party would never stop calling for your head. Your own party would race for the exits. The liberal wing had already been questioning his legitimacy yesterday afternoon, before any of this had happened.
From now on, and forever, Mark Baylor was radioactive.
The group was approaching the main doors. Outside, there was a line of waiting SUVs. The sky was bright out there. Somewhere, in a different reality, it was a sunny summer morning.
As the doors opened, tall men in dark suits reached to take Mark Baylor by the arms and guide him to the open rear doors of an SUV.
He let himself go limp and allowed strong hands to lead him toward his new life, whatever that may be.
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
5:30 p.m. Moscow Daylight Time (9:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
Strategic Command and Control Center
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russia
The place was mostly empty now.
A small crew continued to run operations here in the War Room, monitoring events in far-flung places. But everything was quiet. There were no flashpoints. Dead Hand had been rescinded. The order to destroy Nome had been cancelled.
Colonel Viktor Chevsky stood looking at the big open space and smoking a cigarette. He breathed deeply. Several janitors were sweeping the floors and cleaning food packages and soft drink cans from the computer stations.
The American Speaker of the House, next in line for the presidency, had apparently called as soon as the recently departed president had been taken into custody. He had ordered a unilateral military stand-down, and he hoped the Russian Federation would join him in this.
Chevsky shook his head. The Americans! So superior in so many ways, yet they couldn’t seem to decide who their president was and whether or not they wanted to fight. They might never know how close they came to the end of everything.
And the Russians? Their response to all of this had been yet another disaster. The military was completely unprepared for conventional war with a major power. There was confusion and infighting at all levels of command. The evacuated defense minister had been murdered on the helipad by the man tasked with carrying the nuclear codes.
It was black comedy.
And that humorous little murder would probably spell the end of Chevsky’s career. After all, he had handpicked Gregor for the assignment. Even so, he might as well try to slip his own neck out of the noose. There were other, perhaps better, necks to blame.
“Let the record show,” he said, speaking to the aide standing behind him, who instantly scrawled his words on a notepad in shorthand, “that Corporal Gregor was suffering from undiagnosed combat stress stemming from his experiences in the Second Chechen Campaign. Gregor was failed, and the state was failed, by the military medical authorities whose job it is to detect the symptoms of this very serious ailment. A reassessment of the processes by which troops are evaluated for psychiatric illnesses when returning from combat is in order.”
He stopped. He looked at the young aide.
“Is in order ,” Chevsky said. “That sounds weak.”
“Yes sir,” the aide said. “Perhaps something stronger. Must be undertaken ?”
Chevsky nearly laughed. What did it matter? In the military, out of the military? Reassessments that were in order, or that must be undertaken?
Chevsky had picked Gregor because Gregor’s record showed he was good at killing. It was a bad decision. He should have picked someone who was good at carrying a suitcase. He might lose his rank, but the days when he could be shot for incompetence were long over.
He smiled at the aide. “It nice to be alive, isn’t it?”
The aide nodded. “Yes sir. It is.”
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
July 4
6:45 p.m. Eastern
Daylight Time
Queen Anne’s County, Maryland
Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay
“Stone, you call this rare?”
Luke looked at Don Morris. Don’s appearance was beyond strange. He was wearing a pink Polo shirt and blue madras shorts. He had deck shoes on his feet with no socks. The clothes fit his muscular body well. He could be on an ocean sailing team. He could be in an L.L. Bean catalog, the idealized version of someone’s outdoorsy granddad. But Luke had never seen him like this before.
Don had a can of beer in one hand. And one of Luke’s hamburgers in the other.
Luke was standing at the big double grill, masterfully grilling burgers, hot dogs, sausages, and vegetable shish-ka-bobs for the guests, of which Don was a prominent one.
Luke shrugged and smiled. He took a chug of his own beer. “It’s not alive anymore, if that’s what you mean.”
“I like my burgers with a heartbeat, son. I might have to show you how to do it on the next one.”
Luke shook his head. Nobody was taking over his grill. “Un-unh. On the next one, I’ll just wave the raw meat over the fire for a few seconds.”
“That’ll do it,” Don said. “All right, Stone. I’m not supposed to fraternize with the help, but here I go anyway.”
Luke watched as Don headed downhill to the patio. Was Don a little drunk? It seemed so. And why not? It was a day to celebrate. The SRT was on its way up. Wallace Speck was singing like a bird. The FBI had rolled up his entire operation.
In the end, Mark Baylor hadn’t been charged with a crime, at least not yet. There didn’t seem to be any evidence that he knew anything. But his presidency was so thoroughly compromised in the eyes of the public, there was such a shadow over him, that he’d had to resign. Now the liberal wing was coming. Luke didn’t know how he felt about that, but he knew the SRT had been responsible for taking Baylor down, and everyone else knew it as well.
Down on the patio, Don did a little jig. Yeah, he was drunk. Don’s wife, Margaret, was here, but Becca’s parents kept attaching themselves to him. Luke smiled.
Audrey and Lance were nothing if not social climbers, and Don was the founder of the Special Response Team, the legendary pioneer of the very concept of special operations, and one of the founders of Delta Force. He could picture the two of them at a dinner party with their rich friends:
“Well, we were chatting with Don Morris the other day. You know, the Don Morris…” Like chatting with him at a barbecue meant they owned him.
Either way, they were on their best behavior today, and Luke would take it.
Who else was here? Ed had come with his new girlfriend, Cassandra. At first, Luke thought Ed had showed up with the supermodel Naomi Campbell. That’s how beautiful Cassandra was. Swann was here, solo, as was Trudy. The whole group was standing, talking with Becca, who was holding…
No, Trudy was holding Gunner. She and Becca were chatting and laughing about something.
Luke took a deep breath. It was hard to…
“Stone.”
Luke turned and Murphy was standing there. He must have just come out of the house. He wore jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. He was tall and thin and unassuming, drinking his beer. You would never guess in a million years the kind of fighting skills this man was harboring.
“Murph… ready for another one?”
Murphy nodded. “Yeah.”
Luke gave Murphy a hamburger, well-done.
“Thank you.”
They stood for a moment, the silence stretching out between them. Murphy was quiet, Luke knew, not a conversationalist. In fact, he was an enigma. A mystery. It was impossible to guess what went on inside his mind, and Luke sensed that he liked it that way. Luke wondered if Murphy had ever found a way to enjoy his life, even a little bit. It didn’t really seem that way.
Luke looked out at the water of Chesapeake Bay. Tonight at sunset, there would be fireworks out there. Luke’s body was healing, and he felt really good for a change. Don had given him several days off, and he was sleeping a lot. This morning was the first time since the Russian operation where he had awakened and wasn’t in a great deal of pain. The pain was still there, but not enough to immediately take a pill.
Becca hadn’t even pressed him about his injuries. She must have assumed they happened during the Montreal operation. She was busy with the baby and happy for this time together, and the fact that her husband’s gunshot wounds were healing nicely didn’t even seem to be on her radar.
“How did they know?” Murphy said. “That’s what I keep coming back to. How did they know?”
“In Montreal?” Luke said.
“Yeah.”
Luke shrugged. “They were probably following Keller. They were planning to hit him when the time was right, then we stepped in, so they moved on it. That’s about all I can think of. Don is clearing the SRT headquarters of bugs pretty much constantly.”
Murphy nodded, but didn’t commit to anything. If he agreed with Luke’s assessment, he wasn’t going to say it. If he thought the SRT was riddled with CIA spies, or the offices were contaminated with bugs, he wasn’t going to say that either.
“Well, it was a hell of an operation anyway.”
Luke lifted his beer and they clinked cans.
“Cheers to that, brother.”
“I enjoyed it,” Murphy said, and finally he cracked a smile. “I have to thank you for that. It’s nice to be one of the good guys again.”
Luke watched Murphy walk down to the group on the patio.
One of the good guys.
Bad guys over there, good guys over here. Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is but to do and die. It was easy to believe these things once, but getting harder all the time. He stared up at the sky for a long moment. It was a big world and people were constantly trying to carve it up to their own advantage. There were sinister forces always at work, and the next dark mission was always right around the corner.
He gazed past the patio and out at the waters of Chesapeake Bay again. Today was the Fourth of July. And it was a beautiful day for a barbecue.
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PRIMARY THREAT
(The Forging of Luke Stone—Book #3)
“One of the best thrillers I have read this year.”
--Books and Movie Reviews (re Any Means Necessary)
In PRIMARY THREAT (The Forging of Luke Stone—Book #3), a ground-breaking action thriller by #1 bestseller Jack Mars, elite Delta Force veteran Luke Stone, 29, leads the FBI’s Special Response Team as they respond to a hostage situation on an oil rig in the remote Arctic.
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PRIMARY THREAT is a standalone, un-putdownable military thriller, a wild action ride that will leave you turning pages late into the night. The precursor to the #1 bestselling LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES, this series takes us back to how it all began, a riveting series by bestseller Jack Mars, dubbed “one of the best thriller authors” out there.
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--Midwest Book Review (re Any Means Necessary )
Also available is Jack Mars’ #1 bestselling LUKE STONE THRILLER series (7 books), which begins with Any Means Necessary (Book #1), a free download with over 800 five star reviews!
PRIMARY THREAT
(The Forging of Luke Stone—Book #3)
Jack Mars
Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising three books (and counting); and of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising six books (and counting).
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (book #1), which has over 800 five star reviews, is available as a free
download on Amazon!
Jack loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.Jackmarsauthor.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!
BOOKS BY JACK MARS
LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)
OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)
SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)
OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)
PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)
OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)
HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)
FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES
PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)
PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)
PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)
AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES
AGENT ZERO (Book #1)
TARGET ZERO (Book #2)
HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)
TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)
FILE ZERO (Book #5)
RECALL ZERO (Book #6)
