Spy Thriller: The Fourteenth Protocol: A Story of Espionage and Counter-terrorism (The Special Agent Jana Baker Book Series 1)

by Nathan Goodman

  The smoke that obstructed their view also provided cover. They had to move, and Kyle knew the time was now. He jumped up and said, “Move! Move now! We’re going.” But as quickly as he was up, he collapsed on the landing in front of them.

  “Kyle!” screamed Cade.

  Kyle’s injuries were far worse than he knew. He could barely inhale, his head was spinning, and all the energy in his body felt like it was draining out. He couldn’t get up and began coughing up blood. The unfamiliar salty taste in his mouth shocked him.

  “Take this,” he said, as he handed the automatic weapon to Jana then pulled off the fanny pack, which contained extra clips of ammo. She started to refuse, but knew her duty had to supersede her emotions. She grabbed the MP5 assault rifle and pack then assumed a cover position below, aiming down the stairwell from where gunfire was still coming.

  “Damn, I’m cold.”

  “Kyle, no!” pleaded Cade.

  Kyle’s eyes went slack then fixated on a spot just above Cade’s shoulder. His eyes closed as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  “Cade, take this,” he said, handing Cade a nine millimeter handgun.

  “No. What? No, man. No,” said Cade, incredulous to what he was seeing.

  A tiny smile formed across Kyle’s mouth. His hazy eyes locked and a certain peace began to glow in them. Then Kyle shook his head violently and snapped himself out of his daze. He grabbed Cade’s shirt with both bloody hands.

  Cade was shaking his head. “No. No. No, man. No. Don’t you do it. Don’t you leave me.”

  “Take it, damn you. Take the gun,” said Kyle.

  “Cool Mac! No, don’t leave,” said Cade. “I can’t do this. I’m not a federal agent.”

  Kyle paused then blinked one time.

  “You are today,” he said. With that, his gaze floated away. The slight grin returned as dimness formed in his pupils. It was like watching the sun slowly disappear over the ocean’s horizon as the burnt orange glow faded to darkness. And Cade knew. He just knew.

  41

  Jana’s movement was mechanical as she pulled off Kyle’s radio and earpiece. Then she ripped open his blood-soaked outer windbreaker, revealing the Kevlar vest underneath. She tore free each Velcro strap and wrestled the vest off of Kyle. She threw it over the top of Cade’s head and attached it to him.

  Cade yelled over the gunfire, “What are you doing? No, put this on you.”

  But Jana was having none of it.

  “No. It’s you we’ve got to get out of this building. You have the data, and you know how to interpret it. Now pick up that weapon. We’re going, and we’re not stopping for shit.”

  “But . . . I can’t. Kyle . . .”

  Jana knew time was short. The smoke screen that hung in the stairwell would soon dissipate and remove their only cover. She fired several rounds down into the stairwell. The battle raging a few floors above them intensified. Even over the gunfire, she could hear people yelling. She fired three more rounds, then turned on Cade and slapped him, hard.

  “Listen to me, goddammit! Pick up that fucking weapon! I don’t give a shit what you were ten minutes ago. Right now, you’re a soldier, we’re going down that stairwell, and you’re going to shoot any damn thing that moves. Now stand up!”

  Jana took his hands and oriented them correctly on the handgun.

  “Hold tightly, point, then squeeze. Keep your eyes open. If anything happens to me, don’t stop. Get out of the building. Find Uncle Bill. We’ve got to get the data to him.” Then she yelled into the radio. “Paula D, Paula D, this is Baker. Agent down, agent down. Kilo Item Alpha, Kilo Item Alpha”—the signal for KIA, killed in action. The words bounced across her lips like the rhythm of a drum. “Any friendlies below level twelve better get the fuck out of the way, we’re coming down hot.”

  Outside at the command post, a junior agent monitoring cameras and other equipment burst in on Supervisory Special Agent Murphy.

  “Ah, sir, you might want to take a look at this.”

  “Not now, goddammit, not now,” he said, then keyed his mic. “Roger that, Baker, all teams are converging on your twenty to draw fire away from you. No friendlies below you.” Then, referring to Uncle Bill, he said, “We have verified, package pickup is on scene. I say again, package pickup is on scene. God speed.”

  The junior agent interrupted again, “Sir, I think you really need to see this.”

  Murphy wheeled around, “What in the hell is so damned important, son?” Disdain hung thick in his voice like frozen molasses. “I’m in the middle of a goddamned firefight at the moment.”

  “Sir, we’ve got incoming,” said the junior agent.

  Murphy squinted at him.

  “Incoming.” It was more of a statement than a question. “What in the Sam Hill are you talking about?” He walked over towards the laptop’s screen muttering, “We ain’t back in ’Nam, son.” But there on the radar screen was a small, moving blip trailing across the digital outline of buildings. The blip disappeared only to reappear in a new location. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s an inbound,” said the junior agent. “And it’s not one of ours. It’s flying so low the radar is barely picking it up. But it’s definitely heading this way.”

  “Wait, what the hell are you talking about?” said Murphy. “It’s an inbound what?”

  “It’s air traffic, sir. Likely a chopper weaving its way in between the buildings to stay under the radar, but definitely coming in hot. It’s headed right up our six.”

  “Air traffic?” said Murphy. “But . . . can you identify it?”

  “No, its transponder is off, but based on its outline, attitude, speed, and the way it’s weaving in between buildings, I’d say it’s a helicopter gunship.”

  Murphy looked like he had seen a ghost.

  “A gunship. Oh shit.” Barking into the mic, he yelled, “All cooks, all cooks, this is Paula D. We’ve got company. We have inbound air traffic, definitely a hostile. All cooks on the outer perimeter prepare to repel. Traffic is inbound from the south. It’s on the deck. If it stays on course, it will come right up our six on Peachtree Street.”

  Radio confirmation replies echoed back from all stations as sniper pairs turned their guns southward towards downtown Atlanta. Murphy pointed across the room at another agent. “Get me the tower at Dobbins Air Force Base, priority alert. Move, dammit!”

  A few blocks north on Peachtree Street, an early model Honda Odyssey minivan sat idling. Inside the van was a lone driver whose hands rested across the “spare tire” he carried around his waist. He was in his fifties but looked a little older, with thinning, unkempt, salt-and-pepper hair. If the thick, graying beard had not obscured the outline of his entire mouth, one would have noticed bright orange crumbs left behind from a package of half-eaten peanut butter crackers still sitting on the seat.

  If Stephen Latent had been standing on the sidewalk, he would have shaken his head and laughed, saying, “Same old Bill.” Bill Tarleton had roomed with Latent during their last couple of years at Georgetown. Latent would say that Uncle Bill, as he had called him, was brilliant on a level he could never comprehend. Yet, Bill’s free-thinking, unassuming air, and disheveled appearance made him look like more of an aging hippie than a senior leader in the National Security Agency’s cryptography branch. When Bill was a junior analyst, he had written some code algorithms that even the senior-most code breakers in the agency had been unable to crack. It was brilliance like that that catapulted his career to higher and higher levels within the agency.

  One thing was certain. Latent no longer knew whom to trust. But the one person he could always trust was Bill Tarleton. They had been together during the absolute best times in their lives. Back then, they were so full of energy, so full of ideals. The goals were clear, and both of them thrived at Georgetown. Now, things were so complicated you didn’t even know who the enemy was.

  There weren’t many people who understood Bill in those days. He was a quiet gu
y. He’d never had an interest in the limelight that his stellar academic achievement afforded him. When graduation neared, Bill received offers from more top think tanks than anyone. Latent would find job offers lining the trash can underneath the desk in their tiny dorm room, still unopened. Latent secretly stashed all of them. There were offers from all over the world for ever-increasing sums of money. Yet, Uncle Bill was only interested in the arrival of one letter—one from the federal government.

  When the envelope came, Bill stared at it for a long while. When at last he opened it, the expression on his face remained stoic. But then Latent saw something he’d never seen before. He saw Bill Tarleton crack a little smile. For the first time in three years, Bill Tarleton actually smiled. After that first smile, Bill stood up and walked out of the dorm without saying a word. He then proceeded towards another first; he got drunk. Blind, stinking drunk. Finally, it was Latent’s turn to hold someone’s head over the toilet.

  And so it was. That one envelope. The only one Bill had opened. Although he wouldn’t say, Latent knew that it was a job offer from the NSA. Bill never had an interest in money. He would serve his country and serve it in a way that would change the direction of code breaking in the United States for the decades that followed. Bill revolutionized cryptography, and tonight, he was the only person on the face of the earth that Stephen Latent could trust.

  42

  Shots came from above and below now, but most were fired wild. No one was able to see much in the dense smoke. Jana placed her hand on Cade’s shoulder and yelled over the noise, “We can’t stay here. Cade, we can’t stay here. Listen to me. He’s gone, Cade. There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

  But Cade’s face was hard and glazed—like just-fired pottery.

  Jana grabbed his bloody shirt. “Cade!” she yelled. “Kyle would want us to get the hell out of here! Come on. We’ve got to go!”

  Cade looked at her and nodded the nod of a defeated man.

  “Stay right behind me!” Jana yelled. “Remember, you’ve got to get out and get the data to Uncle Bill. Don’t stop for me. You’ve got to keep moving.”

  Jana jumped up and ran down the stairs, her feet devouring three and four steps at a time, firing the assault weapon. Shots were flying all around them as tiny shards of cement peppered their faces. Jana hugged the outer wall as she descended past an open stairwell door, firing several rounds into it as they ran. She tripped across something on the ground and barely caught herself. Cade was not so lucky. He tripped and flew forward, knocking Jana to the ground beneath him. She pushed him off just seconds before a dark shadow emerged from the smoke below.

  A voice yelled, “Baker, no!” a millisecond before she pulled the trigger. It was an HRT agent whose squad jumped to assume cover positions above. The firefight from above intensified as HRT operators engaged with CIA officers attempting to descend the stairwell.

  The gunfire was so loud and smoke so thick, no one heard or saw the white phosphorous grenade bounce down the stairs this time. When it detonated, the two agents up the stairwell and one crouched in front of Cade were killed, their bodies having acted as a shield. Jana yanked Cade off the ground, and they ran downwards once again, coughing violently against the acidic smoke.

  Cade struggled to breathe and thought he would pass out, but kept to his feet. The farther down they went, the clearer the air became. At the bottom, they were both panting and out of breath.

  Cade said, “Jesus, I can’t breathe. I feel like a sledgehammer hit me in the back.”

  Jana spun him around and found what she’d expected, a bullet embedded in Cade’s flak jacket. He’d been hit squarely in the back, but the vest had stopped the bullet.

  “You’re okay, that vest just saved your life.” Jana barked into her mic, “Paula D, Paula D, this is Baker. We’re coming out! I say again, we’re coming out. Hold your fire, over.”

  “Roger that, Baker. All posts, all posts, this is Paula D. Hold your fire, hold your fire.”

  A few blocks away, Uncle Bill jammed his foot onto the accelerator and barreled towards the pickup point. Jana crashed through the stairwell door into the Thoughtstorm lobby and braced for whatever might be there. She turned and headed towards the side exit and then heard a shot. She wheeled around, weapon forward and fearing the worst. There Cade stood, the handgun Kyle had given him still pointing at the body of a CIA officer now quivering on the ground. A tiny swirl of smoke eased its way out of the barrel. Jana grabbed Cade around the collar and pulled, running to the exit door. Once outside, three HRT operators crouched against the shiny marble exterior as the white minivan sped towards them from the left and screeched to a halt. One of the agents yelled to her, “Come on! Let’s move!” But it was impossible to hear his voice over the loudest sound Jana had ever heard.

  Echoing between the buildings, the whump, whump, whump sound increased in volume tenfold as an Apache helicopter gunship rocketed around the buildings from the right. All hell broke loose. HRT agents from several directions opened fire on the gunship. Rounds were bouncing off its thick plate steel skin and bulletproof glass. The gunship’s twin mounted cannons erupted, fire spewing from their barrels. Bullets chewed into the black pavement like a hammer tearing into a clay pot. Jana knocked Cade backwards into the building. Rounds ripped right up the sidewalk and tore into the building’s core. There was an explosion. Jana looked out, frantically scanning for the minivan. When she spotted it, her stomach sank. The gas tank erupted into a ball of flame as the fifty caliber machine guns chewed the vehicle apart. Farther to her left, blood and body parts were strewn about. The HRT agents on the ground never stood a chance.

  Agents atop the buildings illuminated huge spotlights to light up the Apache and zeroed their firepower on the more fragile tail section. The Apache roared forward just twelve feet off the street as it returned fire. To Jana, it seemed like it was moving in slow motion. That’s when she saw him. Seated next to the pilot and leering straight at her was the cold face she had photographed that first day on the streets of Atlanta. It was William Macy.

  As the chopper raged past, the spotlights and gunfire followed it. Jana grabbed Cade and ran out across the open street past scorching pieces of the destroyed minivan, then darted down a set of stairs to the MARTA train station below. Gunfire continued to rage on the street above. Jana and Cade jumped the turnstiles into the subway station and sprinted towards a train already in motion as it began to pull away. Jana ran alongside the train’s last car and fired her weapon twice into the glass, shattering it. Before the train could pick up too much speed, they jumped in through the opening. Thank God no one’s on this car, thought Jana. They collapsed, exhausted, and the train accelerated southward.

  43

  Jana’s mind wrestled with what it had seen. She was barely able to register the face in the chopper. It was William Macy’s face all right, and it was now frozen in her mind. She knew it was a face that would haunt her the rest of her days.

  Sitting on the train, they looked like they hadn’t slept in three days and had escaped a house fire. It was the point where mental exhaustion overtakes physical exhaustion. Cade sat in his flak jacket, and Kyle’s fresh blood covered his hands where a handgun still dangled. Jana’s face was bloody though most of it had dried. Neither had ever been in a similar situation to what they had just survived. Their emotions, held in check up to this point, bubbled near the surface. The brush with death crept up on them and tears began to roll off Cade’s face onto the dingy, rubberized floor, splashing without a sound. He was not ashamed. Jana held it together for as long as she could, but losing Kyle who had been such a friend was overwhelming. The southbound train rolled forward, unaware of their anguish.

  Jana did not know what to do or whom to turn to. They had to get the data into the right hands in time to prevent tomorrow morning’s terrorist bomb plot. Many of the HRT agents were dead. The ones still alive were in a torrential firefight inside the bowels of the Thoughtstorm building. Uncle Bill’s
minivan had been blown apart by the chopper. He was the only one they could have trusted with the data. And now, he was gone.

  Jana was afraid to use a radio or phone to call for help. What if the CIA was listening? How would she know if it was safe to disclose her location? What if they were somehow monitoring the FBI’s secure lines? If she was caught, they’d recover the stolen data that came at such a heavy price. Her training kicked in, and she took a quick physical inventory of what they had in their possession. Inside Kyle’s fanny pack were four fully loaded clips of ammunition for the MP5, and tucked into a side pocket were both of their cell phones. My cell phone . . . wait . . . what if they’re tracking my cell phone right now?

  “Cade, Cade. Our cell phones. They could be tracking our cell phones. Shit, we’ve got to get rid of our cell phones.”

  “Oh my God, you’re right.”

  “We can toss them out the window we broke to get on this train,” said Jana.

  “Wait, not yet. Let’s get off at the next stop. I’ve got a better idea.”

  Jana buried herself in thought. It was easier than facing the crushing loss of Kyle. Whatever happened, the CIA now knew their entire operation communicating with terrorists was compromised. There would be no more mass e-mails sent from Thoughtstorm containing what she assumed were instructions to terror members giving them their next assignments. And, since the e-mails would stop, the members of the terror cell would proceed to their final objectives. The only person that hinted at knowing those objectives was Rupert Johnston, and he was almost certainly dead. No, it was all too risky. She had to get Cade someplace safe so he could at least look at the data, and she needed somewhere where she could think. The train ambled south through the Atlanta city lights, swaying back and forth like the rocking of a baby’s cradle.