STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books

by JT Brannan

  Cole saw the draw, and angled his body away as Albright slashed horizontally towards him. He slashed through back the other way, and again Cole narrowly avoided it.

  When he came back through from the other direction, Cole was ready for it, and managed to parry the knife arm, then grabbed the man and pulled him forwards onto a head-butt.

  The force of the blow broke the plastic nose guard instantly, and Cole saw how the nose itself then sloughed off, leaving an ugly, gaping wound right in the middle of Albright’s face. In addition to the empty eye socket and the damaged, shaven head, the man looked grotesque.

  Cole slipped then, losing his balance on the steep ground, and the two men toppled over. Albright lost his grip on the knife, and both men grabbed each other as they went down, their momentum carrying them down the slope.

  They eventually broke through the tree line onto the steep hillside, their bodies now rolling and turning at an ever increasing speed as they tumbled downwards, bouncing from side to side off tree stumps and rocks whilst all the while keeping a death-grip hold on one another.

  The two men tried to punch, bite, head-butt and gouge each other as they rolled at sickening speed down the snow-covered hill, but they were moving too fast to do any real damage to each other.

  Eventually, however, the ground started to even out and their momentum slowed. Cole was the first to react, turning their bodies so that Albright was underneath as they glided to a stop by a clump of rocks sticking up through the deep snow.

  Albright struggled underneath, but Cole dropped his head down heavily onto the man’s face again, dazing him even more. Moving quickly, Cole pinned Albright down with his legs, and reached across to the rock pile, picking up a big, heavy, metallic lump.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ Cole yelled as he brought the rock down onto the face of his family’s killer. ‘Fuck … ing … son … of … a … bitch!’ he yelled, punctuating each word with another massive strike of the rock. He kept repeating the phrase again and again, not stopping even when the man’s head split open like an over-ripe melon, not even when his remaining eye bulged out of his head and the bloody grey mass of his brain started to leak out of the back of his smashed skull.

  Cole kept on smashing the rock down even after there was no head left at all, and he was just beating it uselessly down into the bloody, greasy snow.

  Eventually, exhaustion caused him to stop, and he slumped forward, chest heaving.

  And then he remembered his family, and all that had happened, and he reared backwards and screamed across the mountains.

  59

  Ten minutes later, Cole was back upstairs in the house.

  Sarah, Ben and Amy had all been executed with head shots from close range, but he had to be sure. He couldn’t simply leave the scene, escape without first checking.

  But within seconds, it was clear there was nothing to check. They were dead, 9mm rounds having entered and exited their heads and blowing their brains all over the walls and floor.

  Cole wept uncontrollably as he gathered the bodies together, cradling them in his arms, holding them together, a family again, reunited at last.

  Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his body convulsed with the pain of his emotions; and still he held the bodies, held them close, as if his own warmth, his love, would somehow bring them back to life.

  And then he heard the pained words from behind him, and he turned his head.

  Stefan Steinmeier sat propped in the corner of the room, still alive, hands uselessly trying to push the grey, looped sausage of his ragged intestines back into his body as he choked on his own blood.

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ he said, spitting blood from between gritted teeth with each word.

  Cole looked at his old friend with pure, unbridled hatred, unable to speak, to respond. Sorry? The gut shots were nothing. Stefan was going to be a lot more than sorry, Cole decided, that was fucking guaranteed.

  But as Cole finally released his family and began to stand, he saw Steinmeier smile, and Cole suddenly realized that the fatally injured man wasn’t talking about what he had done, but about something he was about to do.

  ‘Hansard … won’t send the money to my family … unless you’re all dead.’

  And then Cole’s eyes went to Steinmeier’s lap, and he finally saw the remote electronic button, hidden within the mass of bloody viscera leaking from the man’s gut.

  And then Steinmeier depressed the button, the house erupted in a huge orange fireball, and Cole’s entire world was consumed by flame.

  PART FIVE

  1 May 2019

  Parliament House of Singapore

  Applause rang out in the main chamber of Singapore’s Parliament House, a modernist building with a prism-shaped roof situated across the Singapore River from Raffle’s Place.

  President Ellen Abrams breathed a sigh of satisfaction as she held the gold fountain pen and finally signed the Mutual Defence Treaty, which had now been re-modified to include a tripartite agreement involving the People’s Republic of China.

  After her agent’s attempted assassination attempt and Mark Cole’s timely intervention and information, Abrams had managed to open up Danko and Feng enough to listen to her story.

  To their credit, they had listened, and the three leaders had met soon after to discuss in depth what had happened, to establish the sequence of events, how things got out of hand so quickly, and what could be done in the future to ensure such a situation would not arise again.

  Russia and China sent over investigative teams of their own, and Abrams’ version of events was finally accepted by all sides – it had been an internal coup, arranged by Vice Admiral Charles Hansard.

  It was decided by all three countries to cover up what had actually happened – better that the world never knew anything about it. When the various members of Hansard’s group were located – some just asleep in bed, confident they would never be caught, others trying desperately to leave the country – they were offered plea bargains. They were forced to resign their positions, in return for secret confessions of their roles, and such information was critical in convincing Danko and Feng about what had really happened.

  Because the entire incident was being covered up, the reason for those people leaving their positions was given as merely part of a general reshuffle of the US administration on Abrams’ part, due on the one hand to the assassination attempt on her life – which had been blamed on Mancini as a crazed, lone assassin – and on the other to the changing global power structure.

  As the members of Hansard’s alumni left their powerful positions, it was seen around the world as nothing more than the usual political manoueveruing. Those business men and women in the group were also forced to resign from their respective companies, and a variety of false reasons were given for these resignations, none of which aroused the least bit of suspicion from the world’s press.

  The group needed to be punished on some level though – and although many in the US, Russian and Chinese governments felt that some ‘accident’ should befall them, it was decided that this would perhaps not be wise in the long run.

  Instead, the members’ assets and business interests were seized secretly, out of the eyes of the press, with near to two billion dollars of personal wealth being rescinded to the US government, which dispersed a large sum as compensation to the families of those killed in the attacks in Sweden, and put the rest towards administration costs for the tri-nation pact that was now being signed.

  Abrams smiled as she sat back down in her straight-backed leather chair, watching as President Danko approached the gilded lectern to add his own signature to the treaty document. It pleased her immensely that the Alumni’s personal money, instead of helping fund, and then being heavily increased by, a new Cold War, was instead helping to bankroll a Mutual Defence Treaty between the three concerned nations.

  As Danko moved to the side and President Feng took to the lectern, Abrams’ thoughts drifted back to the Alumni, and to Vice Adm
iral Charles Hansard. It was frustrating in the extreme that the man had not yet been found, despite the best efforts of the US, Russia and China. Their police and intelligence services had spent the last few months scouring the known world for the fugitive, but to no avail. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air.

  Abrams also thought it was regretful that Mark Cole – or ‘the Asset’ as he had been known to her all these years – seemed to have perished in Austria whilst trying to rescue his family. She had actually cried when the report had come through. It wasn’t just that he had saved her life; he had postponed reaching his own family to do so, and Abrams couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for their deaths.

  The Force Recon team had got there too late. They had been armed and ready to go in hard, but on arrival they had discovered the whole place swarming with police and other emergency services, the house totally razed to the ground.

  They had therefore left their weapons behind and walked in unarmed, showing their military credentials to the men at the police barrier. They had been allowed in and wandered about the site, noting the parachute canopy lying on the garden lawn, the six dead men in the tree line, the six spread around outside the house, empty cartridge cases littering the grounds.

  Upon coming to the house, it was clear that evidence wouldn’t be quickly forthcoming; the onsite crime scene investigators told them that there were traces of a variety of different body parts throughout the burnt and collapsed structure, but due to the temperatures involved, it was doubtful whether they would ever be completely sure about who had been inside.

  Further investigation back in the United States had shown Cole to be a diving instructor living in the Cayman Islands, but Abrams knew who he really was. The Asset was the United States’ own spearhead warrior, a top-secret resource that had been used as a precision weapon by the nation for many years.

  It was a shame, she thought as she stood once more; he had been a good man.

  But all three leaders were on the podium now, shaking hands and exchanging kisses on the cheek as the world’s press filmed and took pictures; for it was the most important treaty signing they had witnessed in their lifetimes, and one that would help ensure a more stable world in a more promising future.

  Hilton Cancun, Mexico

  Jerry Adams spat at the images on the television screen, disgust written plain across his face.

  ‘Sons of bitches!’ he shouted, slamming his fist on the wine table next to him, toppling his champagne flute.

  The others in the room hardly noticed his outburst, as they all felt exactly the same way; it was their money that was funding this travesty! And now they had been left almost penniless, in a country – their country – that had climbed into bed with two age-old enemies!

  All of the ten remaining members of the Alumni were gathered together in the Villa Beach Suite of the Hilton Cancun. They had been arriving throughout the morning, and some had already been drinking heavily as they watched the continuous press coverage of the Mutual Defence Treaty signing.

  Their lives since New Year had been hell – they had lost their major assets, their business holdings, even money straight from their bank accounts. Forced out of their jobs, some had been forced to sell their houses, others their cars.

  As nothing was known of their involvement in the recent goings-on, they were still making money on the after-dinner speech circuit, and some had written autobiographies; but the bottom line was that two hundred thousand a year was far, far removed from the billions they used to have, and the tens of billions more they had hoped to get in the very near future.

  They had not met, seen or even spoken to each other since that last meeting before Mancini’s failed assassination attempt, but had all agreed to fly to Cancun in order to meet with Charles Hansard.

  Nobody in the group knew where Hansard had gone, or how he had escaped detection; all they knew was that he had recently contacted them on their secure communications network, sending an encrypted message for them to travel directly to the Hilton in the famous Mexico beach resort of Cancun.

  He had not said what the meeting would be about, but hearing from him after so long had piqued the group’s interest, and they had all come as summoned.

  As the hours dragged on, and the TV coverage continued, and the drink finally ran dry, there was just one problem – Vice Admiral Charles Hansard was still nowhere to be seen.

  CANCUN, MEXICO

  Former US Vice President and Government

  Officials Killed in Fatal Accident

  By Jorge Michel

  An explosion rocked the beach at the Hilton Cancun Golf and Spa Resort late last night, as what is suspected to be a faulty gas pipe resulted in a fatal accident.

  A group of friends – alumni from the Joint Military Intelligence College in Washington, DC, which included the former Vice President Richard Jenkins as well as various recent members of the United States government – were on their annual get-together at the famous beach resort when tragedy struck.

  It is believed the gas pipe had been leaking all day, and had completely permeated the Villa Beach Suite in which the ten men and women were meeting. When a match was struck in the main living room at about 11pm, the result was catastrophic, an explosion which levelled the one storey beach suite.

  ‘It was one of those tragic accidents,’ said local Chief of Fire Investigation Manuel Paz. ‘The group had been drinking, partying, and just didn’t notice the smell, or chose to ignore it. The families have been informed.’

  Richard Jenkins had recently been forced to step down from his position of Vice President due to ill health, and other members of the group had recently left government service after the President’s latest cabinet reshuffle.

  Ellen Abrams, the President of the United States, will make a statement later today, but it is believed there will be a full state funeral for all the victims.

  Mon State, Burma

  Charles Hansard put the newspaper down on the trestle table by his side and sighed, before picking up his glass and finishing off the remains of the brandy.

  The article had gone on to list the names of the victims, and then gave brief biographies for each. Hansard had not had to read on – he had known each individual man and woman in the room, each one a part of his glorious Alumni group, each one now dead.

  What had caused them to travel to Mexico and meet up? Hansard smelled a rat, and immediately thought that it must have been a US military operation, disguised as an accident. It wasn’t enough that they had stolen the group’s money and used it to create a communist love-in with those red bastards in Russia and China; they – or rather she, as it was doubtless that bitch Abrams who had ordered it – also wanted the entire group dead. It might have been the sort of job Cole would have done, Hansard thought as he packed his pipe, except the fact that Cole was dead too.

  It convinced Hansard that he had done the right thing in fleeing – or as he liked to think of it, engaging in a tactical retreat. Being the mastermind behind the whole thing, Hansard would have been persecuted by the US government and hung out to dry, and they would probably have convinced Hansard’s old comrades to testify against him in a closed court. Jail would have been the best he could have hoped for, with death the more likely outcome – as evidenced by the recent event in Mexico.

  Hansard had therefore used a large chunk of his personal fortune – acting before the US government was able to seize any of it – to buy his way into the closed, secretive world of Burma. The ruling military junta was known for its ability to keep a secret, so long as the price was right, and Hansard had paid a handsome price. He had even been able to bring his private aide, Nicholas Stern, who would doubtless make Hansard’s own life easier by acting as the go-between for the greasy bastards who ran the country.

  Thinking of Nicholas, Hansard remembered that he had been a little too long in the kitchen – the bottle was now empty on the table, and he had asked Stern to bring another.

  ‘
Nicholas?’ he called through the house, the atmosphere thick as the wooden ceiling fans fought a losing battle against the tropical heat and humidity.

  There was no answer, and so finally Hansard pushed himself out of his rattan chair, wiping his brow as he moved slowly towards the kitchen.

  Burma wasn’t the worst place in the world, he thought, at least if you had money. The lush vegetation of the mountain highlands was sublime in its beauty, and the generals could get you anything you asked for.

  If he was going to stay here permanently, though, he thought as he wiped his brow yet again, he was going to have to get some air conditioning installed in this old colonial manor.

  Still thinking about putting in a request for the work, Hansard strolled into the kitchen and saw the body at his feet, lying sprawled and unconscious on the bamboo floor. It was Stern.

  Hansard turned slowly back round, and saw him.

  Mark Cole sat in the rattan chair, eyes burning coals in a badly scarred face.

  ‘Mark,’ Hansard began. ‘Well, well, this is a surprise. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Not for the first time,’ Cole said through his flame-scarred lips.

  ‘No,’ Hansard agreed as he walked back towards him, ‘not for the first time.’

  Cole stood, and now Hansard could see the full extent of his injuries, his skin ravaged by burns from the top of his left temple down the side of his face to his neck, and across the part of his chest Hansard could see under the white cotton shirt he wore.

  ‘You don’t look so good,’ Hansard commented.

  ‘My family look worse,’ Cole replied, the coals in his eyes flickering with a fire of their own. ‘I’m not even going to ask why. It doesn’t matter,’ Cole said in a flat monotone.

  Hansard opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. The man had already killed the rest of Hansard’s Alumni – for since Cole was alive, surely it would have been him in Mexico – and Hansard had no wish to join them. So for now, he would do as the man said.