WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Treyborne’s face was grim as he entered the bridge, where the Asset and his troop leaders were now going through the day’s events.

  He saw Navarone and the other leaders noticeably tighten up as they saw his face; they instinctively knew something was about to happen.

  And when Treyborne raised his H&K MP-10 submachine gun in the direction of the mysterious agent, they all immediately followed his lead and went for their own weapons, until they were all trained on the man they knew only as the Asset.

  Mark Cole looked around at them, not making any sudden moves, hands rising slowly in surrender. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.

  Treyborne shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry, son. I really am. But I’ve just been ordered by our attorney general to place you under arrest and bring you back to the United States for questioning on charges of assassination, treason and murder.’

  Cole nodded his head in understanding. Someone had talked.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, looking around at the confused but determined faces of the men surrounding him. ‘But you were right before. We do know each other. And before you go through with this, maybe I should tell you who I really am.’

  The Lion emerged from a cell in the second basement of the Ministry of Interior building, hood, robes and camera equipment stored safely back in the briefcase he carried at his side.

  Abd al-Aziz Quraishi had just made another recording for his followers throughout Saudi Arabia and around the world, another call to arms under the banner of Arabian Islamic Jihad. As he waited for the elevator that would take him back up to his fourth floor office, he reveled in the irony. The basement cells were for torturing enemies of the regime, and here he was, inciting revolt from within. It was beautiful, a poetic justice that could only come from Allah.

  As he rose upwards through the building, cell phone service was restored and he felt a vibration in his pocket. He took out his phone and read the message, anger rising instantly to the surface.

  The Americans had re-taken the Fu Yu Shan.

  He controlled his breathing, his self-mastery overriding his initial anger immediately. What did it mean? What would they be able to learn?

  At a push, they might get Suprapto to talk, and he might let slip that he was hired by Jemaah Islamiyah to hijack the ship. But it was unlikely in the extreme that they would be able to find out that Jemaah Islamiyah had in turn been instructed to hire the pirates by the Lion’s own organization. And even more unlikely that they would know about the crate, or be able to find out what was in it. And they certainly wouldn’t know that the crate was now in an AIJ safe house, under the protection of Amir al-Hazmi, the Hammer of the Infidel; being examined by a team of loyal scientists in an underground laboratory while his volunteers waited above to be called to action.

  But it was a matter for concern nevertheless, and as soon as Quraishi was back in his office, he placed a call to al-Hazmi on his secure phone.

  ‘Amir,’ he began in his melodic voice, ‘there have been complications. We will have to move our timetable ahead. Tell the scientists to start the procedure.’

  He received confirmation from his trusted second-in-command, and replaced the receiver.

  Everything happens for a reason, he considered as he paged his secretary for a cup of jasmine tea.

  If the timetable was being moved up, then it could only be the will of Allah.

  The West would just have to fall sooner than planned.

  PART FOUR

  1

  Dan Chadwick wasn’t looking forward to this. The flight from Dallas/Fort Worth International was nearly nineteen hours, and his destination wasn’t exactly the Caribbean.

  He’d never been to Dhahran before, and yet the thrill of discovery was noticeably absent. It was, after all, in Saudi Arabia – an Islamic country still ruled by a monarchy with its strict shariah law, and not one he had ever had a desire to travel to. And yet Dhahran was the seat of Saudi National Oil, the world’s largest oil company, and was therefore a very common destination for executives from his own company.

  Chadwick had only joined Texas Mainline Oil last year, and this was to be his first meeting with his opposite number at Saudi National Oil. But the unexpected call from Ezzard Kaplan, TMO’s chief executive, had been unequivocal; Chadwick was to drop everything and make his way to the airport for the flight to Dhahran that very evening.

  His meeting was to be with Abdullah Al-Zayani, Senior Vice President of Finance, Strategy and Development; a potential investment deal was in the offing between Saudi National Oil and Texas Mainline Oil, and Kaplan wanted Chadwick – as TMO’s Vice President of Finance – to start discussing the money. Chadwick could see why Kaplan was keen – the deal could potentially be worth over a billion dollars a year to the American company.

  It did mean, however, that the pressure would be on right from the start, and Chadwick knew that the nineteen hours aboard the plane would be spent in harassed preparation for the endless meetings ahead.

  At least he would have the comfort of the executive lounge before setting off, he considered as he stepped out of the company limousine, into the baking Texan heat, right outside the terminal’s entrance. Maybe he could start the day off with a nice martini to steady his nerves.

  Jim Yancy watched the limousine pull up to the main airport entrance, coming to a smooth stop right outside the door. The trunk was popped open and the bags whisked away even before the passenger had been let out by the uniformed driver.

  It was definitely him – Dan Chadwick of Texas Mainline Oil.

  Right on time.

  Yancy nodded at the man opposite him, who held up the hypodermic needle and nodded back.

  He then checked out of the van’s blackened windows once more, turned to the man next to him and nodded again.

  The van’s side door was immediately slid open, and Yancy burst into action.

  Chadwick watched as assistants came to take care of his bags, and started to move slowly towards the electrically sliding doors of the airport terminal.

  He was still thinking about that dry martini when everything changed.

  The first thing he heard was the noise of a vehicle pulling up behind him; then a door sliding open; and then the he felt arms reaching out for him, a sharp stabbing sensation in the side of his neck; and then there was nothing at all.

  Lt. Commander Nelson Iboria nodded to Lieutenant Yancy, who held the unconscious body of Dan Chadwick, and banged hard on the partition to the van’s cabin, alerting the driver. The van pulled away immediately, heading for the airport exit.

  From Chadwick stepping out of the limousine, to being drugged and unconscious in the moving van, had taken no longer than four seconds – a short enough period of time for any witnesses to doubt the possibility of what they had seen. It had been like a magician’s illusion, a trick which nobody would be able to fathom. And now Chadwick was safely in the van, the next part of the plan could commence.

  The operation had been planned by Commander Treyborne with incredible speed, but time was definitely of the essence and Iboria was just glad that he’d got to play a part in it. After all, it wasn’t strictly speaking an authorized mission.

  But, as Treyborne had explained to all the men, it was absolutely vital to American interests that Chadwick be intercepted at the airport; and that was good enough for Iboria. Let the politicians play their little games in their ivory towers, but when there was work to be done, Iboria was the man to do it.

  And – authorized or not – Dan Chadwick of Texas Mainline Oil was now in the custody of SEAL Team Six.

  Mark Cole strolled through the gates of Dallas/Fort Worth International, his passport bearing up to the scrutiny of two independent sets of airline security.

  He was now travelling as Daniel Jordan Chadwick of Dallas, Texas; the real man would soon be comfortably ensconced in the nearby Hyatt Regency for the duration of the operation, courtesy of Commander Treyborne’s Red Squadron SEALs.

  Back in Sumatra,
Treyborne had been all set to arrest Cole; but when Cole had told him who he really was, Treyborne’s old friend Mark Kowalski, the SEAL commander had been so surprised that he had listened to Cole’s entire story – his recruitment into the SRG, his time in prison, his rescue by Charles Hansard and his new identity.

  Treyborne had known Cole was on the level; after all, he’d been the best man the commander had ever worked with. And so he had continued to listen as Cole explained what they needed to do.

  It was clear that the hijacking wasn’t all it seemed, but it was also equally – and unfortunately – true that certain people at the White House didn’t want to know about it, and would make any further operations difficult to get off the ground. Plans probably would get made, but not rapidly enough to deal with the situation effectively.

  Cole’s name was muddied by the accusations, and – despite the safe retrieval of the Fu Yu Shan and its crew – anything he said was going to be regarded as tainted. In fact, it seemed that some elements on the National Security Council were questioning how Cole had managed to find the pirate lair in the first place, insinuating that perhaps he was involved in the enterprise somehow himself.

  But no matter what the politicians said, Cole was happy that Treyborne still trusted him. The SEAL commander believed what his old colleague told him about Arief Suprapto’s information, and – to Cole’s delight – was willing to stand by what he’d told President Abrams; the leads to both Jemaah Islamiyah and North Korea should be followed up.

  Cole knew that the NSC would be slow to follow up on the first; after all, the only evidence to link the hijacking to Jemaah Islamiyah had been Suprapto, who was now dead. And so Cole had suggested that he follow up the lead himself; he could do so quickly, and such undercover work was his specialty.

  The connection to North Korea was easier to sell to the men higher up the chain, and Treyborne had managed to convince first Scott Murphy, the DEVGRU commander, then General Cooper, and finally General Olsen, that he should be allowed to assign some of his men to an investigation.

  And so – to both Cole and Treyborne’s immense relief – DEVGRU’s Red Squadron had received unofficial authorization from General Olsen to follow-up on the leads stemming from the container which had been taken on at Dalian, and the two mysterious sailors who had boarded with it.

  But for Cole to pursue the leads to Jemaah Islamiyah, he was going to have to avoid being arrested by the SEALs; and it had therefore been agreed that he would manage to ‘escape’ the island and go on the run.

  Cole was immensely grateful to Treyborne; he knew any help he received with this part of the mission – such as the abduction of the real Dan Chadwick – would be completely unauthorized, and potentially illegal. It was a big ask, but Treyborne was a patriot first and foremost, and understood that something big was about to happen; and if he could help, then he would, and hang the consequences.

  And so Cole had ‘fought’ his way off the small island and escaped the SEALs who were supposed to arrest him.

  He had immediately started making his enquiries, checking out local airports and downloading flight plans and logs while also scouring intelligence databases around the world for information on Umar Shibab, Suprapto’s alleged Jemaah Islamiyah contact.

  And it was the confluence of these two factors which had led him to Abdullah al-Zayani and Saudi National Oil, and his current task of impersonating Dan Chadwick.

  Decryption and translation of Shibab’s recent emails by the NSA showed several messages regarding financial transactions between Shibab and Dhahran Mainframes, an engineering subsidiary of Saudi National Oil. And at the same time, Cole’s research into recent flights from the Sumatran mainland to places of interest revealed that a private jet had left Kuala Namu International Airport, in nearby Medan, for Saudi Arabia just two days after the Fu Yu Shan had been hijacked. And what was especially interesting about the plane was that it was registered to the Orex Chemical Company which – like Dhahran Mainframes – was also a subsidiary of Saudi National Oil.

  Further digging revealed that – after all the cut-outs – the man who’d signed off both the transactions through Dhahran Mainframes and the private flight by the plane owned by the Orex Chemical Company was Abdullah al-Zayani, Senior Vice President of Finance, Strategy and Development at Saudi National Oil.

  Cole immediately realized that this al-Zayani could potentially be a chief financier of terrorism; perhaps embezzling funds from the fabulously wealthy oil company to fund an extremist group of some kind or another. After all, when a company was valued at over a trillion dollars, and made a further billion dollars every single day, who was going to miss a measly twenty million here or there? And the Senior Vice President of Finance, Strategy and Development was the perfect man to siphon off funds and make sure the crime was never discovered.

  The only problem was finding out which group al-Zayani was financing; if Cole could find that out, he would be one step closer to locating whatever weapon had been stolen from the Fu Yu Shan.

  He had been in touch with his old friend Ike Treyborne, and together they had hatched a plot to get Cole into a meeting with al-Zayani. It had been complicated, but they had discovered a potential business venture between Saudi National Oil and a relatively young US company called Texas Mainline Oil. Seeing the opportunity, an urgent meeting had been arranged for Chadwick to meet his opposite number to discuss numbers. Both sides thought that the meeting had been the idea of the other; the reality was that Treyborne’s men had arranged the whole thing. And because Chadwick was new to the company and had never been to Dhahran before, Cole would be able to assume his place with nobody ever the wiser.

  He hadn’t even had to disguise himself too much; his own photograph had been put on the expertly forged passport, and there weren’t any photos of Chadwick on the internet that anyone could check anyway. The fight with the Korean agent had left him with broken cartilage in his nose, but he’d managed to reset it by hand and it now looked as good as new; perhaps, he thought, even straighter than before.

  And so it was that Cole boarded the eleven o’clock flight to Saudi Arabia, and his meeting with the suspected terrorist financier known as Abdullah al-Zayani.

  If the man knew anything at all about the cargo of the Fu Yu Shan, who had it, and what they were planning on doing with it, Cole would do everything in his power to find out.

  2

  Abd al-Aziz Quraishi had to force himself to keep his eyes open; horrific though the sight was, he owed it to his sacred volunteers to witness firsthand what they would have to go through.

  He was in the small underground laboratory underneath the compound which was serving as the base of operations for this latest mission, being taken through the effects of the product by his team of doctors.

  The screams of the victims on the other side of the glass wall – people of no consequence found on the streets or in local jails and brought to the compound by Amir al-Hazmi – were enough to turn Quraishi’s iron stomach; they were worse than anything he’d ever heard in the torture cells of the Mabahith.

  Quraishi turned to the nearest doctor when – at last – there was nothing left to see behind the glass. ‘So you are satisfied you can control it for optimum effect?’

  ‘Yes,’ the medical professional replied. ‘It is everything you said it would be, and more. We can manipulate several variables, just as you wanted.’

  ‘Chance of detection?’

  The doctor smiled. ‘Zero. There is no chance at all.’

  Quraishi grunted in satisfaction and turned to al-Hazmi, who had also forced himself to watch the grisly spectacle. ‘Get me the martyrs,’ he said. ‘Bring them to the courtyard and I will speak to them all before they venture out on their blessed pilgrimage.’

  Al-Hazmi nodded. ‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘They will appreciate that you have come here.’

  Quraishi smiled. Of course they would; he was their spiritual leader, their inspiration. It was he who would unite them
with Allah, blessed as martyrs with seventy-two vestal virgins and an eternity of happiness.

  As al-Hazmi ran off to gather the volunteers, Quraishi pulled out his cell phone and dialed a secure number, the call made to a man several thousand miles away.

  ‘I need to see you,’ Quraishi announced. ‘As soon as possible.’

  Jake Navarone was nervous. Excited, but nervous. As the leader of Bravo Troop, he had just received the green light for a reconnaissance mission into North Korea.

  Navarone hadn’t batted an eyelid when they had let the agent known as the Asset ‘escape’; if that’s what Treyborne wanted, then that’s what he would get. And the agent had proved his mettle in battle, which was good enough for Navarone; what other measure of a man was there?

  And so while the Asset – whoever he was – had been off investigating the Jemaah Islamiyah connection, Navarone and his men had been following up on the North Korea angle.

  They had started with the two men listed on the crew manifest as Xiao Tong and Yan Yanzhi – the sailors who had been taken on at Dalian. The PLA special ops officers who had been seconded to the SEAL team were of enormous use here, using their contacts back in China to quickly establish that such men did not actually exist. There was no record of them anywhere, which lent credence to the fact that they were foreign agents, possibly brought on board to help protect the mysterious cargo which was also taken aboard at Dalian.

  Records at the port of Dalian indicated that the crate in question was registered to a Chinese company called Shou Zhing Electrical and apparently consisted of spare computer parts. And yet further checks by the Chinese also revealed that – like the sailors – the company didn’t actually exist at all.

  The investigation – authorized by General Olsen after receiving the unofficial green light by President Abrams – had continued quickly, Commander Treyborne getting a great deal of cooperation from Chinese intelligence.