The helicopter flew straight over DC, and in the black of night Cole could see the headlights of cars jamming every road in the city, the mass exodus of people from what would be the primary target of a missile strike against America.
The US defences were thought to be good, but nobody was willing to put it to the test. They would flee the capital, and watch from a distance. But what was a safe distance? The trouble was that nobody knew, which meant that the interstates were clogged as well, as nobody could decide where they were going.
Even from five thousand feet, the chaos on the ground was obvious. The use of the helicopter was an absolute necessity, and it wasn’t long before they were cruising over the Potomac River, the impressive neoclassical façade of the White House lit up before them.
Minutes later the helicopter touched down on the South Lawn, a Marine security detail lined up to meet them and escort them inside.
They were ushered directly to the ground floor of the West Wing, where they went through the normal security checks – metal detector and a physical search – before being taken into the Situation Room.
Established by President Kennedy in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs debacle, the room allowed the President to be updated on military and intelligence operations in real time. It also provided him with secure communications with US military theatre commanders and foreign heads of state around the world.
Moses, Arnold and Cole found themselves outside the thick oak door to the largest of the three conference rooms, where President Abrams held his daily national security meetings. The Marine escort, impeccable in his dress blues, knocked smartly on the door. It was opened from inside by another Marine, cut seemingly from exactly the same mould.
Cole, hands and legs still secured, looked into the room and saw President Abrams at the head of the large conference table. Around it were gathered the Vice President, the National Security Adviser, the various secretaries of State, and also the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trencher and Dorrell were also there, along with the Directors of the DIA, FBI and the NSA. The men and woman in this room were – at the moment at least – the most powerful people in the world, in charge of the most powerful country in the world. They all turned to look at the three men in the doorway.
President Abrams stood and addressed the table. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a little break shall we?’ There were murmurs of agreement; they had been sat down around the table for the past three hours.
Trencher and Dorrell, at the bottom of the table near the door as their relatively lowly status dictated, left the conference room first. Trencher embraced his two agents, and Moses and Arnold were both taken aback by his uncharacteristic display of emotion. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and the agents knew he didn’t have to say anymore.
Dorrell just shook their hands, but his gratitude for their efforts was equally sincere. He assured them they would be rewarded appropriately for their services.
Abrams finally managed to manoeuvre himself around the table, getting to the five men by the door.
‘Good evening,’ Abrams said to them, and then gestured to the small room next door, used for more private meetings. ‘Shall we?’
13
After his own sincere thanks, Abrams got straight into the meeting.
‘We’ll have to make this short,’ he said as they sat down, coffee already prepared on the small table in front of them. ‘We’re moving our command element to Offutt within the hour.’ Offutt Air Force Base was near Omaha, Nebraska and was, amongst other things, the home of the United States Strategic Command, the military structure responsible for the nation’s nuclear capability. There was also a nuclear bunker hidden deep underground, where the government administration would hopefully be kept safe if the country was attacked.
‘Has Offutt been made secure?’ Moses asked next. After outlining his vision, Hansard had spent the next part of the confession providing details about all of his agents. Offutt was one of the places that had been compromised by his people.
‘We’ve just picked them up,’ Dorrell answered. ‘He had three guys there, all key players, all with the right access codes.’
Cole was sat on an easy chair to one side, under the watchful gaze of the armed marine sentry. He was being ignored for the time being, and wasn’t surprised; he didn’t really know what he was doing here. He wanted to help, but wasn’t sure what role he could play beyond detailing publicly what his own role had been, and how it had been assigned to him by Hansard. He decided he would find out soon enough though.
‘Why?’ asked Arnold. ‘Surely the other heads of state within ERA will stand their forces down when they see the evidence?’
‘The good news,’ Abrams said, ‘is that we’ve already managed to dismantle much of Hansard’s network. We’ve still got to pick some of his agents up – some haven’t started their shifts yet, and so our people need to get them at home, and we’re having difficulty getting the information to a couple of the locations such as our tactical subs.
‘But we should get everyone by morning, that’s for sure, and even if we’re missing a couple, it won’t make a massive difference. Both our defence shield and our offensive systems should be ninety-nine percent operational. I don’t know what you guys gave that son of a bitch, but it damned sure worked. He spilled his guts about everything, and let’s be eternally grateful that he did.’
‘But?’ Arnold prompted.
‘But,’ the President continued, ‘we can no longer get in touch with ERA. There is no contact with any of the heads of state, their deputies, or their various secretaries of state. Our fear is that they have retired to their rumoured Joint Nuclear Command Centre, from where they will order their first strike, not even realizing that our defences and are own weapons are still operational.’
‘So what are our options?’ Moses asked reluctantly.
Abrams took a sip of his coffee, equally reluctant to answer. ‘If we cannot re-establish contact with ERA, then we have no choice. You know as well as I that our defence shield can’t cope with a direct barrage. We will have to launch our own missiles first, and then hope the shield can defend against any that still get launched by Europe. The best we can do is to keep our targets purely military, taking out their weapons sites and avoiding their cities.’
‘Can we get someone to their command centre? Show them the evidence physically?’ Arnold asked.
‘Despite our best efforts,’ Dorrell answered, ‘we’ve never been able to find out where it is. So the reality of the situation is that we have no way to get there, no way to show them the evidence.’
Abrams turned to Cole. ‘Which is why you’re here, Mr Cole – or whoever you really are. These gentlemen assure me that you want to help, is that true?’
Cole looked the President straight in the eye. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘The people in the other room have no idea who you are,’ Abrams continued, ‘and if you help, then we can maybe keep it that way. Because if they find out, then your life won’t be worth living. Do you understand?’
‘Perfectly,’ Cole replied, not wanting to tell the man that his life was already not worth living, not in his eyes anyway.
‘Okay,’ said Abrams, clapping his hands together, ‘so here’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. As a part of the British intelligence system, and one of Sir Noel Hansard’s top people, do you know where the Joint Nuclear Command Centre of the Euro Russian Alliance is located?’
Cole thought long and hard, time passing slowly. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty.
After a minute, Abrams grew impatient. ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know or don’t you?’
Cole finally answered, his voice level and calm. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t.’ He saw the looks of disappointment, of horror at what might happen the day after if they couldn’t get the evidence to the ERA leadership. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘I think I might be able to find out.’
14
They were flying low in a Boeing AH-47 Chinook, a US Marine vers
ion of the venerable helicopter that had been modified for assault operations. It was based at the nearby Blount Island Command in Jacksonville, Florida, but its passengers and crew were now ‘feet wet’ over the Carribean, and Cole took his final opportunity to check the silenced Heckler and Koch submachine gun cradled in his lap. He finished, satisfied, and noticed the rest of the men in the cabin were doing the same.
The eight man Force Recon section was well-trained, prepared and experienced, and it was a change of pace for Cole to be playing as part of a team once again. Ever since joining Flashlight – what seemed now like a lifetime ago – he had been forced to work alone for the most part, or in small sections of two to four operatives at most. But now he was back to what could be described as ‘normal’ operations, although most military personnel would still consider such actions the sole purview of ‘elite’ troops.
Back in the White House situation room, Cole had told the President about the computer vault under his home back in the Caymans, and how it was directly linked to the intelligence service mainframe computers of pretty much every country in the world – and definitely those of the ERA nations, at least. He had told Abrams that the location of the JNCC would be on there somewhere.
Abrams had asked if Cole could send a message somehow through his system, but unfortunately it was for research only – if communications had been suspended, then he would not be able to make contact either.
So it was decided that Cole would travel back to his house and access the computers there. Once they had the location, the evidence would be physically taken there and presented to the ERA leadership. The only trouble was that the house was being guarded.
When Moses and Arnold had got Cole’s name, they had sent a local CIA team to the house in Cayman Brac. They had been rudely escorted away from the property by two men with English accents, and they saw more both inside and around the perimeter. They had obviously been sent there by Hansard to guard the premises in case the Cole family came back, but also to secure it if the Cole family was killed – Hansard would have had to send a team of technicians to dismantle the computer vault before anyone else could have access to the property.
President Abrams was about to leave for Andrews Air Force Base, where the Presidential plane would whisk him and his top staff to the relative safety of Offutt. It was therefore decided that Cole would accompany him to Andrews, escorted by Moses and Arnold, and from there would be taken by fighter jet to Blount Island Command.
At the US Marine base in Florida, Cole would be seconded to a Force Recon team, which would launch an assault on the house. Moses and Arnold were to accompany him in a non-combat role, and when Cole accessed the computers, they were to verify the information and send it straight to Abrams at the Strategic Command base at Offutt.
Although the two CIA investigators were attending in a supposedly non-combat capacity, Cole noticed that they too carried weapons and were outfitted in tactical combat gear, faces camouflaged. They obviously didn’t fancy going into a potentially ‘hot’ situation in their suits and ties, and Cole couldn’t blame them one bit.
‘T minus five minutes,’ the Force Recon commander, a Captain who went by the call sign ‘Cherokee’, intoned in a calm, controlled voice.
Cole started to control his breathing. They would be there soon.
The helicopter approached overland, coming in from the hilly ground to the rear of Cole’s house. An attack from the sea would have given away their position too early, both visually and aurally. As it was, the bluff covered both the sight and the noise of the twin-rotored Chinook until it was almost on top of the expansive beach-side mansion.
The eleven men, dressed in black assault gear, masks and respirators, were almost invisible as they fast-roped out of the low-hovering aircraft, zipping down the lines at a fantastic speed, one gloved hand on the rope, the other on their submachine gun.
Two pairs of Marines landed on each side of the house. Because the three other men were not really part of their team, they were not allowed to go on their own, and therefore each one had to attach themselves to one of the pairs.
Cole went with the team at the front of the house, and before his feet had touched the sandy beach outside the front door, he had loosed off four subsonic rounds in rapid succession. They drilled into the chest of a man who had been standing sentry by a palm tree off to the side, unnoticed by the Marines. Cole couldn’t blame them; he had been hard to spot, and Cole only saw him when the man had moved to aim his own weapon. The sentry was dead before Cole’s boots were on terra firma, and Cole paid him no more mind as he raced forward with the Marines, throwing a ‘flash-bang’ grenade in through one of the patio windows as the other two did the same.
They continued racing forwards as the grenades exploded, the sound, light and smoke disorientating anyone who happened to be inside. The men didn’t stop as they reached the house, kicking straight through the French windows.
Cole saw two men straight ahead, their eyes streaming, hands covering their bleeding ears, weapons dropped to the floor. Within two seconds, Cole had shot them both in the head, killing them instantly. Cole scanned the area, and saw that his two partners had done the same; three other bodies sprawled on the floor, bullet wounds in their foreheads.
They were in the large open-plan living area, and through the smoke Cole could see how the blood was running across the wooden floorboards, congealing around the edges of the Persian rug.
‘Clear!’ one of the Marines shouted, and this was echoed by both his partner and by Cole.
Cole had provided the team with the layout of the beach house. It was a single-storey dwelling, which made such an assault easier, and was laid out with a large central living section and two wings. One team were to clear the central section from the rear, whilst another two were to sweep in through the two wings. Cole and his pair were clearing the central section from the beach-side front, and the plan now involved them clearing another two rooms of the main section before all four teams liaised in the main hall in the centre of the house.
Cole therefore led the men towards the kitchen. One of the men stood to each side of the doorway and threw more flash-bangs into the room, and then Cole kicked through the door, instantly targeting and dropping the two men lying in wait there. They were dead before the Marines were in the room, submachine guns tucked tight into their shoulders. ‘Clear!’ he shouted, and this was confirmed again by the men as they rushed through, spreading out to each side.
Cole then led them through into the utility room. ‘Clear!’ he shouted again, and again the two Marines echoed the call, even as they heard unsilenced gunfire somewhere else within the house.
They moved cautiously forwards to the door to the main hall, again fanning out on either side. They opened the door and one of the Marines span into the doorframe, weapon held high as he moved through, followed first by his partner and then by Cole.
They spread out through the large oval hall, their ominous black forms stark against the white plaster walls, going into cover positions where they trained their weapons on the other entrances to the hall.
Moments later another team appeared through the east wing, along with the short CIA agent known as Arnold. Only seconds after that, the two-man section from the rear emerged, followed shortly after by the team with Moses, the tall black CIA man, who came in from the west wing.
‘Clear!’ they all called, and then their attention was caught by the cackle of static in their ears as a message came in from the chopper hovering above.
‘Two men entering from the rear, armed; I repeat, two men entering from the rear.’
Cherokee nodded at two of his team, who raced off towards the action. He gave orders to the other men, who spread out through the house to secure it from any further attacks, leaving Cole with Moses and Arnold. ‘Okay,’ Cherokee said, sounding hoarse and strangled through his respirator, ‘get what you need, then let’s get the hell out of here!’
Moses and Arnold were both s
urprised by the obviousness of the sliding book in the study that revealed the passageway to the computer room, but were more impressed with the security precautions displayed further down.
They saw Cole take off his respirator and lean forwards for the iris scan, and the CIA agents did the same, feeling stiflingly hot in the Caribbean night, loaded down as they were with their combat equipment.
As the door opened, the two men observed as Cole raced straight ahead and took a seat in front of a bank of computers that looked like something straight out of the NSA’s secret research lab.
‘How was it?’ Arnold asked Moses. Although both men had been active field operatives, it had been long ago.
‘Clean. Had to clip one,’ he said with regret.
‘Me too. One of the guys managed to get a few rounds off, but luckily the grenade must have hurt his aim. These Recon boys sure know their stuff though.’
‘They sure do,’ Moses confirmed.
Sitting behind the computer screen, his fingers working overtime on the keyboard as he tried to access the relevant systems, Cole had to agree. The Recon boys were good. Not as good as British special forces of course, but good all the same.
As he pulled up network after network, he had to keep his mind off where he was, what this building had meant to him. It had been his home, his family’s home. He had bathed his children as babies here, had played ball with them on the beach; he’d held them when they were ill, and laughed with them when they were happy. He had helped Sarah with the dishes in the kitchen, and made love to her in the bedroom. His whole new life had been made here, and now it was destroyed, in pieces; and his family had no life left at all.
A tear formed at the corner of his eye, and he blinked at it, trying to remove it. There was still work to do, and he had to concentrate; he had failed his family so far, but perhaps he could still make them proud as they looked down on him from above. If he was successful, there was still a chance that millions more could be saved from joining them.
Seven Day Hero Page 41
