‘What the fuck was that?’ shouted Jeb Richards.
The rest of the room was silent, having just watched the horrific beheading of Brad Butler with a mix of shock and utter helplessness.
The group consisted of James Dorrell, Jeb Richards, and John Eckhart. They were in Eckhart’s office in the far corner of the West Wing, getting a first look at this horrific video before Eckhart briefed Abrams in the Oval Office.
‘Wait,’ Dorrell said. ‘There’s more.’
It had been one of CIA’s technicians who had first come across the video circulating on various extreme websites, and Dorrell knew that action had to be taken immediately, before it went viral and was appearing across the mainstream media. His contact at Al Jazeera was agreeing to give him twelve hours before broadcasting the tape, but that was all.
The three men watched as the menacing hooded figure, drenched in blood and holding Butler’s severed head as the corpse lay in a deep scarlet river, began to talk calmly to the camera. The words were Arabic, and had been digitally altered to disguise the voice and thwart electronic recognition systems, but the calmness of the voice – straight after carrying out such an horrific, bloodthirsty act – was disturbing beyond all measure.
‘What does it mean?’ Eckhart asked, and Dorrell passed around translated transcripts of the speech.
‘Let the death of this infidel,’ Richards read from the transcript, his voice dull with shock, ‘this disgusting pawn of the Western disbelievers, be a warning to America and any nation that sides with the Great Satan in the ongoing battle of good against evil.’ Richards choked on the last words, disbelief on his face; he screwed up the paper and threw it across the room. ‘Son of a bitch!’ he shouted, hurling the ball of paper across the room. ‘Son of a fucking bitch! Who the fuck do these rag-heads think they are? They can just kill a man, hack off his fucking head, and then threaten us? They –’
‘Calm down Jeb, please,’ Eckhart urged, hands up. ‘We need to keep cool heads on this one. There’s more.’ Eckhart pulled up his own transcript and started to read. ‘Arabian Islamic Jihad takes responsibility for the merciful killing of this vile pawn of American propaganda, and hear this, my people – the day will soon be here when the Great Satan is brought to its knees, and a glorious Islamic caliphate will triumph once and for all.’
Dorrell nodded. ‘Yup.’ He sighed. ‘That’s what it says.’
‘Have Butler’s family been notified?’ Eckhart asked. ‘The last thing we need is them to hear it on Fox News.’
‘His wife and kids are being brought in as we speak,’ Dorrell confirmed.
‘Okay, so just who in the name of holy fuck are Arabian Islamic Jihad?’ Richards asked. ‘Have we heard anything about them before? Do we know anything about them?’
Dorrell shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not much on the radar, no,’ he admitted. ‘But you know those rumours of a well-funded al-Qaeda off-shoot, responsible for those attacks in Muscat, Riyadh and Dubai?’
Richards and Eckhart nodded their heads in unison. The attacks on Western interests in the Arabian Peninsula had been spectacularly violent – a car bomb at a football game, a casino machine-gunned, and a five-star hotel levelled by a dozen suicide bombers – and no group had yet claimed responsibility.
‘Some of my boys think that they’re related, they think this AIJ organisation is just getting started, but the signs are that they’re planning something major, those attacks in the Gulf are just the prelude.’
‘Should we be worried?’ Eckhart said.
‘Well John, you know Islamic terrorism’s been dying down over the past few years, and a lot of that’s been due to a weakening in the leadership of key groups, especially al-Qaeda. But that doesn’t mean extreme beliefs aren’t there anymore, and it’s left a power vacuum that needs to be filled. Now,’ Dorrell stated, hands spread wide, ‘what we have are rumours about a new group we need to watch out for, one with a lot of money behind it – maybe from rich oil families, maybe from somewhere else – and this video, the first concrete evidence we have of Arabian Islamic Jihad’s existence. But now we have a name, we should be able to find out more. Once we’ve left here I’m on my way to brief Bud in on the situation and ask for his help identifying AIJ message traffic.’ Bud Shaw was the Director of the National Security Agency, America’s incredibly powerful electronic surveillance organization.
‘Good,’ Eckhart said. ‘Good. When I brief Ellen, I’ll keep it simple. When this gets out, the public will freak out, but I guess that’s her problem.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t envy her.’
‘Hey,’ Richards complained, ‘nobody asked her to apply for the job. She knew what it meant when she put her name forward.’
‘Do we know the provenance of the recording?’ Eckhart asked, ignoring Richards’ barbed comments. ‘Can we trace it?’
‘I’ve got my people working on it, and that’s another thing I’m going to ask Bud to help with,’ Dorrell answered.
Eckhart nodded. ‘Okay, that’s good enough for me for the time being.’ He sipped from his cup of coffee, then looked back at the two men. ‘Do we have anything else?’
‘Other than the Fu Yu Shan? Just the rumours about an attack on South Korea,’ Dorrell said.
‘Details?’ Eckhart asked.
‘Not yet, but I’ll keep you posted.’
‘Damn rag-heads,’ Richards grumbled. ‘Korea’s welcome to ‘em if you ask me. In fact, they can keep ‘em. If they’re blowing shit up over there, that’s less work for me here. Am I right?’
Dorrell and Eckhart exchanged glances.
Unpalatable though Richard’s words were, neither man was able to argue with them.
3
Park Hae-sung pushed through the door of the Vietopia and immediately saw his target ahead, seated at a table with a ridiculous-looking man in a pink t-shirt.
Park was not a patient man at the best of times, and believed that direct action should be used wherever possible. A sixth degree black belt in the Korean martial art of taekwondo and a fifth degree in hapkido, much of Park’s outlook on life was determined by the theories of the martial arts.
Whereas taekwondo was a hard, aggressive art, characterized by a spectacular variety of powerful kicking attacks, hapkido was considered a ‘softer’ method, more defensive in nature and using the opponent’s energies against them using many of the same principles of Japanese aikido.
Park was a taekwondo man through and through.
Like now, for example. As leader of the four-man special operations team which had just been called into action from their home base in Singapore, Park had been charged with determining the location of a pirate hideout by getting information from a man called Wong Xiang.
And while it was true that a subtle approach might entail less danger, he had not joined the Third Bureau of the RGB to avoid danger; he had put himself through the hell of selection and training so that he could throw himself into the thick of the action, and be rewarded for it. Major Ho expected results, and he would get them.
With two of his men left outside to guard the street, Park nodded to his partner, Chae Hyoon-seok, and approached the arms broker with his 9mm handgun already raised.
Cole was down on the street in under a minute, a Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger he’d bought earlier in the city palmed by his side. He wished he’d brought some weapons with him from Cambodia, but he’d been unwilling to travel with them; since the hijacking of the Fu Yu Shan, airports throughout Indonesia were undergoing thorough security checks in a bid to find any cargo which might be being shipped around the area.
The dagger would have to do.
He saw the two men left outside, eyeballing him as he crossed the street. Cole made a show of ignoring them, fumbling in his pocket for the keys to his rental.
The trouble was, he had no idea who these people were. If they were Chinese, they could well be from the PLA special forces, which made them US allies under the Mutual Defense Treaty; and if they made Wong Xiang
talk, then wouldn’t that be a good thing?
And yet for some reason that Cole couldn’t quite articulate, he had a bad feeling about these guys; something about them was off, and Cole had learnt over the years to listen to his instincts. If his gut was telling him something, it was probably his subconscious taking in millions of pieces of information, sorting and deciphering them in fractions of a second and making a decision based on evidence that his conscious mind simply had yet to process.
He knew that the two men would be able to spot a fellow operative, and so stumbled slightly, throwing his balance off intentionally; not so much as to appear drunk, but just enough to disarm the men slightly, disguise his true ability.
But it was no good – the men were too well-trained, too sharp to be deceived, and Cole watched as they started to draw their venerable yet highly reliable Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistols, eyes locked onto him.
At the same time, Cole broke into a sprint towards the two men; Chinese agents or not, they were about to shoot him in cold blood, and Cole could now feel justified in any action he might take against them.
He raced between the cars and chopped the callused edge of his hand down onto the forearm of the first man, making him drop the gun which was still only half-way out; at the same time, he slashed across at the second man, aiming for the throat.
But the agent moved with seemingly superhuman speed, dropping his gun – near useless now at this distance – and stopping Cole’s arm with a vice-like grip around his wrist, stiletto blade just an inch from his throat.
Cole felt a blow to the side of his head from the first man, a powerful shot from someone who knew what he was doing, and he felt his knees buckle beneath him, even as the second man twisted the knife from his grasp.
The first man aimed a fast roundhouse kick at his head, but Cole managed to slip underneath, taking hold of the man’s groin and violently twisting his testicles, shooting out a low side-kick to the second man’s knee.
The man with the mangled groin stifled a scream but fell to the sidewalk, and the second jammed a foot into Cole’s leg to stop the kick, jabbing the pointed blade of Cole’s dagger towards his face.
Cole slipped his head to one side, aiming his hardened fingertips in a dagger thrust of his own. The blow caught the man just next to the solar plexus, his jacket putting Cole’s aim off slightly, but it was enough to stun him momentarily.
Not knowing what was going on inside the restaurant, Cole knew he had to end this encounter quickly; but the men were damned good, and wouldn’t make it easy for him.
He turned to kick the first man, but to Cole’s surprise, he was already back on his feet, launching a vicious spinning kick of his own towards Cole’s head.
Cole knew the blow would be aimed at his temple; a killing technique, and one of the trademarks of the martial art of taekwondo. Cole wondered for a brief instant if the men could be Korean – and if so, what the hell their interest in this could be – and then ducked inside the kick, catching the kicking leg under one arm and scooping up the man’s body with the other, kicking out the supporting leg from underneath him.
Manhandling the expert martial artist, Cole threw him directly into his colleague, both men crashing to the concrete.
Knowing he would have just moments before the men were back on top of him, Cole turned to the restaurant and ran.
Park could hear something happening outside, but knew his men could take care of it. All four of them were not only experts in unarmed combat, but were also crack shots and superb knife fighters. Whatever problem they were having wouldn’t be a problem for long.
Wong Xiang had seen Park by this time, looking up from his menu to see the two North Korean agents stalking towards him, staff members already backing away to one side, fearful of what was happening.
Wong took in the sight of the pistols in the men’s hands and immediately went for his own.
Park fired once, a shot which took the man in the pink t-shirt right between the eyes.
Between the sound of the shot and the time when the man’s body finally toppled backwards to the floor, the whole restaurant erupted into chaos; the staff were running for the kitchen, customers were either rooted to the spot in fear or else throwing themselves to the floor or backing away to the front door.
‘Stop!’ Park called out in broken English. ‘Everybody down on the floor!’ he ordered. ‘Now!’
His gun never left Wong’s head, and Chae rushed forward to disarm the man, pocketing his expensive SIG-Sauer 10mm. Chae’s own gun now at the man’s head, he forced the broker to stand.
‘Whatever you’re being paid,’ Wong said evenly, ‘I’ll be able to beat it. Trust me.’
Park smiled; not a friendly gesture, it was the smile of a predator about to consume its prey. ‘Not everyone is motivated by money, Mr. Wong.’
‘Come on,’ Wong persisted, ‘everyone wants something. What do –’
Park saw then that Wong was just playing for time; first he saw the man’s eyes flicker behind him, then he saw Chae turn to look in the same direction, gun immediately leaving Wong’s head and aiming over Park’s own shoulder.
Park’s head turned just in time to see a Caucasian man running towards him at high-speed.
Cole’s tackle took Park right off his feet, and Cole kept the man going backwards until he crashed Park’s body into Chae’s, knocking both men to the floor.
As soon as the men hit the ground, Cole grabbed hold of Wong’s forearm and pulled him towards the rear of the restaurant, his cupped open hand slapping Chae’s rising head over the ear as they went.
But then a hand reached out and gripped Cole’s leg, tripping him. Cole went down, but as he fell, he managed to grab a fork from the next table. As soon as he hit the floor, he was already sitting back up, and jammed the fork deep into the hand which was holding his leg.
He felt, rather than saw, a fist hurtling towards him from the side, and managed to get back to his feet to avoid the blow, picking up a chair in the same movement and turning, letting the chair come crashing down over Chae’s head.
He pirouetted and kicked Park across the jaw just as he was standing, but the man’s resilience was astounding; he staggered backwards but took the blow and immediately responded by kicking the edge of the nearest table, driving it across the tiled floor until the opposite end struck Cole hard in the gut, doubling him over.
Park followed up with a hard roundhouse kick which whistled over the table top, but Cole rode backwards out of the way, intercepting the kick with his hand and jamming the leg down onto the tabletop. At the same time Cole’s hand snaked out to the next table, picked up a meat skewer from a customer’s plate, and jammed it down through Park’s extended leg.
The two men from outside were racing into the restaurant now, guns out, and Cole dived to one side as they opened fire, scrabbling with Wong across the littered floor to the double swing doors of the kitchens.
‘Who are you?’ Wong demanded as Cole ushered him through the cramped, steaming kitchen, staff members cowering on the floor; all except for one of the chefs, who launched himself towards Cole and Wong, a meat cleaver in his hands.
Cole sidestepped the attack and knocked the chef out with a clean punch to the point of the chin.
Hearing noise from behind, Cole stooped to pick up the cleaver and rotated, hurling it towards the doorway.
Cole was pleased to see the cleaver hit its mark, sharpened edge hitting the first man from outside right in the chest. The agent dropped to his knees, the life instantly draining from his eyes.
Cole pushed Wong towards the rear service doors – he wanted to question the arms broker, but he would have to be alive if Cole was ever going to be able to do that – just as the second agent from outside clambered over the body of his dead colleague, Browning up and aimed.
Cole sprang forward, one hand grabbing the man’s gun arm while the other struck out towards his throat with the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. The agent pulled
his chin down in response to the blow, but Cole used the distraction to grab his jacket lapel, dropping suddenly backwards, foot to the agent’s stomach, throwing him straight overhead in a flying somersault.
The man landed squarely on the hot plates, the scalding heat burning the man’s skin instantly, and he screamed as his body recoiled off the grill unit; but his body fell again, and the man had to sacrifice his arm, protecting his body as he rolled off, writhing in agony on the kitchen floor next to the unconscious chef.
Cole saw Wong reach the rear doors, and grabbed a handful of plates as the swing doors to the kitchen moved again, Park and Chae rushing inside, Park visibly limping from the skewer in his thigh.
Before they could shoot, Cole started hurling plates towards them one after the other in rapid succession, smashing into the walls, the doors, and the two agents themselves.
The men were forced to raise their arms instinctively to protect themselves, and in his brief moment of opportunity, Cole turned and raced for the fire exit, out in the open air and slamming the heavy door closed to the sounds of dozens of 9mm rounds which peppered the other side of the steel exit right behind him.
4
Cole saw Wong fleeing down the alleyway ahead of him and sprinted after the arms broker, catching up with him at the end of the block.
‘Xiang!’ Cole said, taking hold of his arm. ‘Where are you going? Those men are going to kill you, do you understand? I’m here to protect you!’ Cole hoped he could build trust with the man, capitalize on the situation so that he would be more likely to get information out of him later. If they survived.
Wong looked at Cole suspiciously. ‘But who the hell are you?’ he asked in confusion, events having erupted so fast he still hadn’t had time to mentally sort himself out.
Just then, the steel door crashed open at the other end of the alleyway, and Cole pulled Wong into the street with him. ‘Later!’ he said as they raced together out into the light traffic of Cikini 1.
WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 9
