Critical Error

by Murray Mcdonald

  He walked back from the briefing room refusing to take any questions from the press. His speech had contained everything he wanted to say at this very sad time. As he closed the door on the Oval Office, alone for the first time for many hours, he sat in the President’s chair. His chair. Behind the iconic Resolute Desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes. And finally, he smiled. It was his. After decades of kissing ass and sucking up, he had made it. The highest office in the land.

  A catalogue of calls he had received and was required to return was basically a list of every President and Prime Minister from around the world. They were all anxious to ensure that America was still their ally and that President Russell would only improve their relationship. One call stood out from the others. He was not a head of state or government but President Russell knew that he held just as much sway.

  “Ben, how are you my friend?” asked Russell.

  “Mr President.”

  Russell instantly noted that ‘Andrew my dear boy’ had been dropped.

  “It’s good to hear from you. How are you?” enquired Ben.

  “As well as can be expected.” Russell thought it best to play down his elation.

  “Of course.” Ben was no fool and knew exactly how President Russell was feeling. He knew him better than Russell knew himself. “I know how close you and the President were.”

  “Thank you, Ben.”

  Formalities over, Ben turned to business. “A couple of quick updates for you.”

  Russell was about to stop Ben in his tracks He was president and didn’t get involved in detail any longer but just as he was about to speak, he thought better of it.

  “OK, shoot!”

  “OK.” Ben could sense the reluctance. It seemed Russell was already getting a little over comfortable in his newly found position. “If you’d rather I updated somebody else, I would understand, Mr President.”

  Russell realized that his tone had not hidden the feeling that that was now being beneath him.

  “Absolutely not. I’m sorry, it’s just been a very long day.”

  Ben was going to have to watch Russell very carefully. He’d give him a little while to settle down but it was important that he did not forget his place and who his real friends were.

  “Firstly, I’m very relieved to say that we may have a lead on the nuclear weapon heading towards America and secondly I have an address you wanted.”

  Russell ignored the lead and jumped straight to the address. “Baker’s address?”

  “Yes, my operative’s no longer in the vicinity and with you being President, it removes some of the concern as regards Ararat. However, James Murphy’s a friend and I’d greatly appreciate your trying to save him.”

  “I promise that we’ll send only the best people, rest assured.”

  They ended the call and Russell called Johnson with the details, emphasizing that extra special care was required. It was extremely important that nobody, he emphasized, nobody, should be left breathing.

  Ben made a call himself but his man wasn’t picking up. He left a message and hoped he’d get it in time.

  Chapter 52

  James Lawson could seriously do without having dinner with the French President but it had been planned some months earlier and Lawson was very keen to get his hands on a major French utility company. The deal was worth billions and the payback in synergies within his own organizations was being measured in months. It really was too great an opportunity to miss.

  He had spent the last hour calming down John Mellon. The death of the President was as great a shock to the Horsemen as to everyone else and had certainly made their plan almost impossible. Russell would, as Mellon put it, prefer to have a tree hugging leftie lesbian than him as a running mate in the coming election. Mellon had been assured of his place as President as long as everything had run to plan. This was definitely not to plan. A conference call had been arranged with his counterparts and all five came on line as planned. He wondered at the technology. He was flying almost 600 mph and 40,000 feet in the air but could still video conference, it was beyond him.

  “How’s the new jet, James?” asked Koch.

  “Very nice, glad I went for the 650, just a little more comfortable and certainly faster than the 550.”

  Harkness did not rise to the bait. He had just ordered a Gulfstream 550 himself.

  “Gentlemen, what the hell are we going to do?” Mellon was in no mood for the one-up-manship bullshit.

  “He obviously outflanked us. I’ll give him that,” offered Hathaway.

  “Personally, I didn’t think he had the balls,” said Koch who knew him best.

  “I don’t think he has,” suggested Lawson, the first to put any doubt as to Russell’s guilt on the table.

  “You don’t think he did it?” asked a surprised Harkness.

  “I know he didn’t do it. There is no way Andrew Russell grew enough balls to take down a sitting president. Jesus, he almost wet himself over the Baker fiasco.”

  Silence followed as each of the attendees considered the viewpoint. It was Mellon who broke the silence.

  “That, my dear friend, is exactly what we need to find out. While Russell has someone like that at his side, we’ll be sidelined.”

  “Sidelined!” exclaimed Koch angrily.

  “Absolutely.” Lawson was not one of the world’s richest businessmen for no reason. He read people, understood how their thought processes worked and used it to his advantage. “Trust me, you put a call into his office and I guarantee you the little shit will be too busy to see you.”

  “Never.”

  “We’ll see but anyway once we find out who did it, we need to take them down and we’ll get our pawn back.”

  “Now gentlemen, if you don’t mind, I need to grab some shut-eye before I land. Good evening.”

  Half an hour later, Ben Meir was reading through the transcript of the videoconference. He had been keeping an eye on the Horsemen for some time and had his comms team keep a close eye on anything they got up to, particularly as a group. Ben knew the whole sordid detail of their plan to make Mellon VP and ultimately President. He of course had no intention of allowing the right-wing fascist to come anywhere near the presidency. It was Mellon who would have an unfortunate accident, not Russell.

  Ben had been reliving his call with Russell and it had made him very uneasy. The change in his demeanor had been obvious even over the phone. However, if what the Horsemen believed were true, it meant Russell had not turned, as Ben had thought, entirely to the dark side but it did mean that Russell probably unwittingly was going to be beholden to whoever had made him King. The Kingmaker was the person Ben worried most about and it was he that Ben would have to ensure was dealt with very soon. Otherwise, everything he had planned for Ararat could be in jeopardy.

  Ben picked up the phone. He needed to know exactly how the president had died and more importantly, who was there at the time of death.

  Chapter 53

  It had taken them the best part of a day to get there but at last the house lay before them. It had been over a thousand miles, by plane, car and foot, by far the hardest part. Neither of them were used to the thick mountain wilderness and would have more than a few scars to show for their efforts.

  “So, at any point, are you going to tell me what we are doing here?” asked Zak, just a little frustrated at the lack of trust being shown by the Sheikh. In fact, the Sheikh had told Zak to call him Benny, it sounded Italian and would cover his middle-Eastern looks without sounding Muslim.

  “Let’s just say that through my contacts, it has come to my attention that in that house is the Secretary of Defense.”

  “And?”

  “We’re here to get him!”

  The Sheikh removed his backpack and emptied its contents in front of them. There were two pistols, a few stun grenades, two pairs of Night Vision Goggles and a length of plastic explosives for blowing open doors.

  Zak was somewhat surprised
by the last few hours and couldn’t help wonder out loud. “I didn’t think you got involved at this level?”

  “If an opportunity arises and no-one else is around, I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” he replied with some irritation and handed Zak one of the pistols, a pair of Night Vision Goggles and a couple of grenades.

  The Sheikh was beginning to wish he had never involved Zak but with Deif sending a bomb to America, operatives were thin on the ground and he needed help. Once in position, just a few hundred yards from the house, the Sheikh ran through the plan. A few tweaks later they were ready to go. Darkness was falling and the lights were beginning to come on in the home below them.

  A phone ringing in the house alerted Mrs Charles Baker to the unwanted visitors. The alarm company alerted them to potential intruders. Mrs Baker thanked the alarm company very much and immediately told Clark and her husband about the call. There was little they could do. They certainly couldn’t call the police and their friends were miles away in Helena, the State capital.

  Following the call, Clark ensured all windows and doors were locked. It could of course just be deer or wildlife knocking the contacts but she didn’t think so. Coincidences were something non-professionals believed in. Somebody had found the location, it had only been a matter of time in any event.

  Just as the Sheikh was about to give the ‘go’ signal, he stopped. A bright spot had appeared on the side of the house. He knew it wasn’t coming from inside. It was a tiny spot almost undetectable to the human eye. In fact, it was undetectable to the human eye, he realized, as he removed the Night Vision Goggles. Where the spot should have been was nothing, no sign of any light at all. Putting the goggles back on, there it was, clear as day.

  He nudged Zak and pointed to the spot. Zak took one look and knew exactly what was happening. He scanned the tree line with his goggles and picked up the contacts he knew were going to be there.

  “Shit!”

  “Exactly, I think we should pull back, don’t you?”

  “Yep!”

  Both men began to crawl back, keeping their heads down and careful not to alert the others to their presence. Once at a safe distance and hopefully out of sight, they hightailed it back to their rental car parked just off the main road. They had no intention of being anywhere near the house when all hell broke loose.

  The Avenger had proven its worth already and having lost nearly twenty good men already, CIA Director Johnson was not taking any chances. A small team of the Clandestine Service had arrived in Montana earlier in the day and made its way to the mountainside house. Their job on this occasion was simply to paint the target for the weapon which would be dispatched from the Avenger some 20,000 feet above them.

  The laser designator was switched on as the Avenger came into range. Although naked to the human eye, there was no need to highlight their arrival. One minute after lighting up the target, they got the heads up that the weapon was on its way. As Ben had predicted, the Americans were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. A GBU-24 Paveway III bomb was making its way towards the house, Two thousand pounds that would turn the cabin into matchsticks if there were any pieces left large enough to be considered useful.

  The laser spotters took cover as they received warning of the bomb’s imminent impact. The operator watched as the bomb glided right into the side of the house exactly where the laser told it to. A microsecond later, the house ceased to exist. A demolition team would take weeks to do what was accomplished in less than a second.

  The Clandestine Team took one look at the area and devastation and left the scene. Although in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t going to be long before the locals came to see what had just woken up half the state. Their job was well and truly accomplished.

  A very pleased CIA Director informed his President of a successful conclusion to the mission.

  Chapter 54

  Paris, Charles de Gaulle.

  Sam and Rebecca sailed through customs and immigration. Their false identities worked perfectly. As Rebecca pointed at the link that would take her to her internal flight to Nice, it was time to say farewell. Sam was about to say goodbye when he thought better of it. He was a United States serviceman, retired but ultimately the job being undertaken by Rebecca was to safeguard the US and, as such, he had a duty to assist. He had already discovered that James Lawson was spending the day and evening with the president, so he was going to be hanging about in any event.

  “How far is Nice?”

  “About 90 minutes,” replied Rebecca.

  “So I could be back in Paris in plenty of time for a midnight visit to Mr Lawson?”

  Rebecca smiled. “I don’t see why not!”

  While Sam bought a ticket to accompany her to Nice, she called Ben. The news was not good. He informed her of the bombing of Baker’s hideaway, assuring her that he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. He then brought her up to speed on Deif.

  Rebecca watched as Sam paid for his ticket. She didn’t want him to leave. For the first time in a very long time, she was enjoying someone else’s company. If she told him about the bombing, he would leave immediately. She would hold off until after the job in Nice, she thought. Then she’d tell him.

  “Everything OK?”

  “Perfect. He’s still there, a team from the Paris office have been watching him.”

  “What, they’ve not taken him in?”

  “Oh no, he’s mine. I made someone promise me a long time ago that I would be allowed to take this guy down.”

  “We’ll be there by 12.30 and the last flight back is at 20.55, so you’ve got me for another eight hours.”

  “Excellent,” beamed Rebecca, fighting her better judgment.

  Having managed to secure his seat at the last minute, Sam was forced to sit next to a rather loud and annoying Brit who, by 11 am, was already on his fourth G and T and about whom, by the end of the flight, Sam knew pretty much everything. He was in shipping and had decided somewhat belatedly to take a last minute holiday down to Cannes. He’d been in business in Paris and just thought, sod it, what’s the point. He’d spent the last month trying to find a ship that could get a shipment from China to France, anywhere in France and had failed. In the middle of a worldwide recession, he couldn’t get hold of a boat. God alone knew where they all were. As far as he was aware, nobody had been able to find a ship for months, they were all at bloody sea. Of course they were at bloody sea, he had screamed as he recounted the story to Sam, they’re ships, that’s where they’re supposed to be! Anyway, with no ships to hire he’d thought sod it, a week in the sun and I’ll worry about it when I get back.

  Sam was very happy to reacquaint himself with Rebecca who laughed as he recounted his ear bashing. She, on the other hand, had sat next to the most charming gentleman who had offered her a trip on his yacht if she were free over the next few days.

  Sam couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit jealous as he thought Rebecca may be interested in the offer. He was very much relieved when she added the creep had given her a card after kissing her hand. She promptly produced the card and threw it in the nearest bin.

  A small toot alerted Rebecca to the Paris Head who was waiting for her in a small Renault Twingo. As far as Sam was concerned, all European cars were small but the French and Italians had, it seemed, made it an art-form. Sam squeezed into the back, all six foot two of him, into a space meant for what Sam could only assume was a small child under the age of five. Rebecca introduced Sam as a colleague and left it at that. Sam noticed the demeanor of the Mossad Paris Head who would be considered very senior within Mossad. Rebecca was very obviously his senior.

  The Paris Head briefed them both on the way to Deif’s location, some 60km away, in a small coastal village called Antheor. The villa was, as the Head described, rather spectacular. Set on the top of a small cliff, it was very secluded and extremely secure with only two points of entry. The main gate and a set of stairs that led up from a private beach to the main house some 50 meters up the
cliff. His men had used a boat and gone as near as they dare without being spotted. An eight-foot gate protected the entry point at the beach. The whole perimeter was surrounded by a security wall topped with razor wire. Its owner was a wealthy Arab, not on any watch lists, well, until then, of course. His name was Yousif Fayyad.

  “Jesus, all sounds a bit extreme.”

  “Actually it’s fairly standard down here. Most of these villas sit empty for eleven months of the year. Burglars used to have a field day but not anymore.”

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Sam.

  “Simple, we’re going to walk right up to the front door and invite ourselves in.”

  Sixty minutes later and after securing some handguns from the team on site, Rebecca and Sam, wearing shorts and t-shirts, did exactly that.

  Rebecca rang the bell next to the gate and waited for an answer. It never came. She knew Deif was still there. She rang again and again, making it clear she wasn’t leaving.

  “What?” came the gruff voice in very poor French.

  Rebecca had spotted the camera and knew she was being watched. “Yousif, it’s me, I thought I saw you were there,” she answered in perfect Palestinian Arabic.

  “Yousif is not here, I am a friend,” he continued to speak in French.

  “A friend of Yousif, is a friend of mine! I am Noor, buzz me in. Yousif always lets us use his pool,” she switched to French with an Arabic accent.

  “I’m sorry, I’m busy,” replied Deif, again keeping to French.

  “That’s OK, we’ll be quiet, I promise.”

  “Look, I’m very sorry but I’m very busy.”

  “Well I’m just going to stay here until you let us in.”

  Sam was embarrassed at her persistence and that was despite knowing why they were there.