[Luke Stone 02.0] Oath of Office

by Jack Mars

  Omar shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  Ismail slid a gun from inside his jacket. It had a long silencer attached to the end. Two of Omar’s bodyguards stood nearby, but made no move. They simply stood impassively, hands clasped in front of their bodies.

  “The King told me that when you were young, you were one of his favorites. Very exuberant. Everyone was delighted by you. But now? You must understand… there is a special relationship between the Kingdom and the United States. The relationship cannot be placed in jeopardy.”

  Ismail raised the gun and pointed it directly at Omar’s face. Omar’s heart skipped in his chest. Looking at the barrel of the gun was like looking into a deep, dark hole in the Earth, one that went down forever.

  “Ismail…”

  “I will count on you to accept my apology,” Ismail said. “We all have our orders.”

  “I was a soldier for Allah,” Omar said. “I was a prophet.”

  He glanced again at the bodyguards. It was almost as if they were somewhere else, at a long speech or formal event of state—somewhere very, very boring.

  “Now you are a liability,” Ismail said. “And the King wants to cut his losses.”

  Omar stared down into the black, black hole. It seemed that now would be a good time to take action, to run, to fight, to try anything at all. But he couldn’t bring himself to stand. He had no feeling in his legs.

  “Goodbye, my friend,” Ismail said. “I will always cherish our time together.”

  A burst of flame erupted from deep inside that hole. It was blue and orange, and it seemed to lick the outer edge of the tunnel, like the tongue of a great beast.

  It was the last thing Omar saw.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  3:45 p.m.

  United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC

  “He wants to do what?” Richard Monk said.

  Susan sat behind the desk in her office. She felt calm, and good. She was with Richard and Kurt Kimball, wrapping up what seemed like a few loose ends. For the first time in days, no one was downstairs in the Situation Room. Susan had sent everyone home. It was time. The place smelled like a barn.

  Michaela was at the Malibu house with her father and her sister, surrounded by dozens of Secret Service. Rare for Malibu, the house had quite a bit of empty land on either side of it, but even so, all of the houses within a mile had been forcibly evacuated.

  There was going to be some screaming at the next Malibu town council meeting. Susan smiled at the thought.

  “He wants to interrogate the prisoner,” Kurt Kimball said. “The one who was in charge in the Los Angeles warehouse. The one who calls himself Adam.”

  “Tell him no,” Richard said. “That’s my vote.”

  Kurt shook his head. “I don’t think you get a vote, Richard. I brought it up to ask Susan about it.”

  “Luke Stone is out of his mind,” Richard said. “He’s a valuable agent, I see that. But he’s also completely insane. You should see his service record. Have you looked at it? I have. In normal circumstances, he shouldn’t even be allowed in the same building with the President. He’s a danger to himself and others.”

  Susan took a deep breath. For an instant, she felt like Mother Nature, refereeing between her sons Winter and Summer.

  “Why does he want to interrogate the prisoner?” she said.

  Kimball shrugged. His bald head gleamed under the overhead light. “He thinks there’s going to be another attack. The FBI has been questioning Adam for hours, but he insists he has nothing more to give them. He’s been demanding to see a lawyer.”

  Kimball cleared his throat. “Stone thinks he can get more information from him.”

  Richard threw his hands in the air. “He wants to torture him. Is that what you’re saying? Stone is asking the President of the United States to hand over an important prisoner to him, so he can torture that prisoner. Susan, you can’t do this.”

  For the time being, Susan ignored Richard. “What do we know about Adam?” she said.

  Kurt looked at his tablet. “Basically? Nada. His fingerprints and DNA don’t match anything we have on file. We’re checking with Interpol, with Scotland Yard, with the Saudis, and with the Russians. So far, nothing. He’s about thirty-five years old, appears to be of Mediterranean descent, and he speaks English fluently, but with a slight accent. The CIA has language experts listening to tapes of him being interviewed, to see if they can take a guess at his first language. No one believes he’s a Saudi, if that’s what you’re wondering. The only reason we know he was in charge at the warehouse is because the other prisoners told us. In general, he’s a complete enigma.”

  “Susan, the answer is no,” Richard said.

  She turned to him. “Excuse me?”

  He folded his arms. “This is the United States. The answer is no. The man has been arrested. He has rights.”

  Susan had grown more than a little tired of Richard over the past few days. He seemed hell bent on clinging to ordinary rules at a time when ordinary rules no longer applied. He also seemed to have lost track of who worked for whom.

  “Richard, would you have a million people die because we didn’t do everything we could?”

  “There’s no evidence that scenario is even on the table. All the intelligence we have points to the idea that attacks are over.”

  Susan tried again. “If Luke Stone is concerned…”

  “Luke Stone! Come off it, Susan. Luke Stone is good at some things, but thinking isn’t one of them. He’s a maniac! If you intend to hand a prisoner over to him a day after he shot a member of the Saudi royal family…”

  Richard didn’t seem prepared to finish his thought.

  Susan turned to Kurt.

  “Give the prisoner to Stone. Tell him I don’t want anyone physically harmed.”

  “Physically…”

  Susan nodded. “Correct.”

  “Susan!” Richard said.

  She looked at him. His face had turned red. He looked like a cartoon drawing of a small child with steam coming out of his ears.

  “Richard, it’s been a very stressful week. I think you could use some time off. Why don’t you take a couple of weeks?”

  She wanted to give him an out, a way he could go away, blow off steam, and maybe even come back. A couple of weeks might give both of them some perspective. It was a different country right now. Maybe Richard was better suited to another task. Or maybe he would return refreshed, energetic, and ready to play hardball with the big boys.

  Instead, he said:

  “Make it a month.”

  “Let’s try this,” she said. “You just go and I’ll call you when I need you.”

  “Done,” he said. He walked out of the office, closing the door hard behind him. It was almost a slam, but not quite. Richard had been a good chief-of-staff for five years. But he wasn’t tough. In the current environment, he was a liability. He couldn’t even slam a door a hundred percent.

  Susan felt a momentary pang at his exit, but within seconds, it started to fade. They would work it out, or they wouldn’t.

  She looked at big, bald Kurt Kimball again. He looked back at her with a new respect. She demanded that respect, she thought. She felt it for herself. She was a new person now. A stronger, much tougher person than she ever thought she could be.

  “The prisoner,” she said. “I thought you wanted to give him to Stone?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  2:15 p.m. (5:15 p.m. Eastern Time)

  Over the Pacific Ocean, near Los Angeles, California

  “Do you know who I am?” Luke said.

  The man called Adam was slightly overweight. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the Little Bird’s tiny cargo hold as the chopper gained altitude. He wore a yellow and white Nike T-shirt and blue jeans. He had sandals on his feet. His head was covered by a black bag. His wrists were zip-tied behind his back.

>   Luke crouched near him. The man ignored the question, so Luke gave him a punch in the side of the head. The man’s head jerked to the side.

  “You call that a punch?” Ed said.

  Luke looked up at Ed. Ed was still strapped in a standing position at his gun. It was either that or lie on the floor for him.

  “I’d have you do it, but for obvious reasons that isn’t possible right now.”

  Luke turned back to his prisoner. “Adam, I’m speaking to you. Do you know who I am? It’s an important question.”

  “You aren’t allowed to hit me,” Adam said. “It’s against the Geneva Conventions.”

  “Last I checked, we weren’t in Geneva,” Luke said. He pulled the heavy bag off of Adam’s head. Adam’s hair was mussed, standing up in weird tufts. His eyes squinted against the sudden bright light.

  “Can you see me, Adam?”

  The man nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can you see where we are?”

  Adam glanced around. “We’re in a helicopter, a small one.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “They told me. I’m being transferred to another custody. From the FBI to… some other agency. I told them it was useless. I have said everything I can say. There is nothing more to tell.”

  “Do you know whose custody you’re being transferred to?”

  Adam stared into Luke’s eyes. “Yours, I suppose.”

  Luke nodded. “Very good. And who am I?”

  Adam’s eyes were flat and emotionless. “A torturer. One who never learned the art of interrogation, and so tortures instead. You can torture me, of course, but it will do you no good.”

  Luke shook his head. He gave it an element of sadness. “Wrong. I’m not a torturer.”

  “Then who are you?”

  Luke smiled. “There’s another Ebola attack coming, isn’t there?”

  Now Adam smiled, but his smile was less certain. “I told the others everything. I am useless to you.”

  Luke took Adam’s head in his hands and turned it toward the open bay door where Ed stood. Ed’s body was all muscle. His face was all sharp cliffs and drop-offs. Behind him was nothing but wide blue sky, and the shadows of whirring chopper blades. They were very high now.

  “You see that big man there? What sort of man does he look like? An interrogator? A torturer?”

  Ed stared at Adam. He didn’t smile. His body language was relaxed, but his eyes were somehow huge, white, and hard. There was no mercy in them, no sympathy, no emotion at all. Ed looked like a man who would take a break from eating lunch, snap someone’s pencil neck, then go right back to eating.

  “He looks like a killer,” Adam said. His voice made a subtle change. A small amount of his confidence, or his ambivalence, had suddenly seeped away. It had been replaced by a note of concern. “A psychotic killer.”

  “He’s a janitor,” Luke said. “So am I. When something, such as yourself, becomes useless to our superiors, what do you suppose they call that something?”

  Adam turned back to Luke. Something new was creeping into Adam’s dark eyes. It was fear. Luke could see that Adam was starting to realize something. Adam was vulnerable. He could die just like anybody else.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Luke jabbed him sharply in the side of the head with two fingers. He raised his voice. “When things are useless, what do you call them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Luke jabbed him again.

  Adam squinted and jerked his head away. “I don’t know!”

  “Ed?” Luke said. “When things are useless, what do you call them?”

  “Garbage,” Ed said.

  Luke smiled again. “Thank you. Useless things are known as garbage. Okay, Adam, now what do janitors do?”

  Adam’s face began to turn red. He closed his eyes. He tried to take a deep breath.

  Luke jabbed him again, harder now. Adam flinched.

  “What do janitors do, Adam?”

  Adam’s face became a grimace. A sudden earthquake moved through his body, then stopped. He was starting to break. He wasn’t quite there, but Luke was just getting warmed up.

  “Open your eyes, and I promise I won’t hit you.”

  Adam slowly opened his eyes. His eyes were rimmed with water. He breathed rapidly now. He seemed like a man who couldn’t catch his breath.

  “You feel that pressure in your chest, Adam? Your heart is becoming constricted. Stress will do that to you. Don’t have a heart attack, okay? I don’t want you to miss this. I want you to experience every second of it.”

  Luke stared at his prisoner and counted to ten. Adam’s breath slowed down a beat.

  “Good. Very good. Now tell me, what do janitors do?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “Ed?”

  “They take out the garbage.”

  A stray tear rolled down Adam’s cheek. His jaw clenched.

  Luke smiled again. “They take out the garbage. Of course that’s what janitors do. Ed and I are janitors, and we take out the garbage. Useless things. We get rid of them. You weren’t transferred, my friend. You were released. As far as the FBI knows, you left their custody, and then…”

  Luke raised his two empty hands, palms upward.

  “Who knows?” Ed said.

  “Who knows where Adam went?” Luke said, and shook his head. “Nobody knows.” He paused to let that sink in. “You’re already dead. That’s the unpleasant fact of the matter. Ed doesn’t exist. I don’t exist. And neither do you. Not anymore.”

  Luke directed his voice to the cockpit. “Guys, how high are we?”

  Jacob’s eerily calm voice: “About ten thousand and climbing.”

  “And how far out are we?”

  “Oh, we’re about eight miles from shore.”

  “Let’s go to fifteen thousand feet, ten miles out, and call it good.”

  “Okay.”

  Luke turned back to Adam. Adam’s face was doing all manner of strange things now. He looked like he had almost swallowed a tennis ball, but didn’t quite manage it. His eyes were two big cow eyes.

  “A man like you probably doesn’t have many loved ones,” Luke said. “That’s good. Because you’re going to hit that water at terminal velocity, and your body is going to come apart like it smashed into a brick wall. There’s going to be so much blood it will bring sharks from forty miles away. In a couple of days, the leftovers will wash up on the shore, but they won’t be anything someone would want to bury.”

  Luke stood up. He grabbed Adam by the shirt and hauled the heavy man to his feet. Adam offered no resistance at all. Luke walked him over to Ed. Ed grabbed the man by the back of the shirt.

  Adam was shaking now. His whole body trembled.

  “Don’t kill me,” he said. He paused for just a second. “Please.”

  “Adam, you can’t kill what’s already dead.”

  Ed pushed Adam gently but firmly to the edge of the cargo door. It was a long way down. Below them, the ocean water shimmered. The direction they faced, there was no land in sight. Adam’s feet were right on the threshold. His hands were tied. Ed held him by the back of the shirt. Ed leaned Adam all the way out. Ed’s strong hand was the only thing keeping Adam in the chopper, and the fabric of the shirt wouldn’t hold forever.

  “Goodbye, Adam,” Luke said.

  “Wait! I know things. I can tell you.”

  “He’s useless,” Ed said. “That’s what he said a minute ago.”

  “No! I know things. I know about the final attack.”

  Ed shook his head. “He’s lying.”

  “No! Wait!”

  Luke raised his hand. “Ed, hold on one second.”

  He got right in Adam’s face. “Adam, you’re a liar, and I know that. Even so, I’ve been kind to you. What you have in front of you is an easy way to die. It’s a long fall, but you’ll pass out in a few seconds. By the time you hit, you won’t even know it. But if I bring you back down to the ground, and I find out you li
ed to me again…”

  “I won’t. I won’t lie. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “He told the FBI everything,” Ed said.

  Adam shook his head frantically. “No, I lied to them. I held back.”

  “I’m going to tell you this one last time,” Luke said. “This is an easy way to die. If you lie to me, you’re going to die in a very unpleasant way. I will keep you alive for a month while I kill you. By the time two days pass, you won’t be begging for your life. You’ll be begging me to kill you. Do you understand?

  Adam did the bobblehead nod. “Yes! Yes. I understand.”

  “Good,” Luke said. “Now tell me what you know.”

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  4:47 p.m. (7:47 p.m. Eastern Time)

  Staples Center Arena, Los Angeles, California

  The arena was rocking.

  Nearly 20,000 people filled the stands. In a few moments, the player introductions would begin.

  The man moved along a narrow tunnel beneath the arena. The ceiling, and the white cinderblock walls around him, seemed to vibrate as above his head, raucous dance music played and thousands of people stamped their feet.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  The man wore a backpack that held a metal canister. Inside the canister was a mixture of water, glycol, and a very dangerous virus. That was the fog juice. A hose ran from the canister to the fog cannon in his hands. When the fog juice heated, and he opened the valve on the canister, he could spray a thick aerosol vapor into the air. The fans loved to see their favorite players run out through the fog.

  He had worked here for long years. He knew this facility like he knew his own home, and he knew what the scene upstairs was like. He did not have to see it to know. He could picture it from memory.

  The arena was dark. The lights were out. Soon, flashing multi-colored strobes would shine to the ceiling. A spotlight would appear. The music would play and the drums would pound. And the starting players of the opposing team would walk out into the spotlight, a haze of fog lit up in blue and green behind.

  The fog would come from a large machine at the end of the court. Not this machine the man was carrying, though. This machine was a cannon. It was meant for a different kind of fog spraying.