WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Navarone’s blood went cold in his veins. One hour? He’d calculated he had at least six hours left; long enough to free the prisoners and be long gone before the B2s arrived. ‘One hour?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘We thought six, Command. What happened?’

  ‘Cobra element was staged ahead, Rattlesnake, two pieces based at Whisky Papa, over.’

  Despite the highly encrypted digital radio, Treyborne still used code words, never willing to trust technology. Navarone knew that Whisky Papa was the Western Pacific, and Treyborne was referring specifically to the US military base at Guam, which combined the Joint Region Marianas naval installation with Andersen Air Force Base.

  Navarone’s pulse raced. Guam was only two thousand miles away from North Korea; just three hours of flight time.

  ‘Authorization for Cobra element has been given, Rattlesnake, do you copy? Element is already en route to your destination. You need to evacuate immediately, I repeat, immediately, do you copy? Over.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Navarone answered in a shaky voice as he peered out of the window of the laboratory, saw the prisoners begin to congregate in the square.

  Thousands of them.

  ‘I will evacuate immediately, sir,’ he said. ‘Over and out.’

  He replaced the handset and breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly.

  An hour would have to be enough.

  3

  ‘So what do we know?’ dos Santos asked.

  ‘Okay,’ Olsen said, ‘again I can’t go into the specifics of where this intel came from, but I think we’ve got a good idea of who’s behind it. I know time is of the essence, but I’ll start at the beginning, to give you all the information.

  ‘We have reason to believe that Arabian Islamic Jihad is now in possession of the weapon which was heading for Pakistan. We don’t know how – perhaps due to the North Koreans’ own efforts to find Islamic proxies, maybe information flowed both ways over the years – but it transpires that the terrorists learnt of the weapon’s existence and realized how useful it could be if a real terrorist organization got their hands on it.

  ‘Now,’ Olsen continued, ‘they couldn’t very well just waltz right in to North Korea and steal it. And so – with what we assume must have been full foreknowledge of the RGB operation – they waited until the weapon was en route to Pakistan. Knowing the transport ship would pass through Indonesian waters, the AIJ then asked their contacts in Jemaah Islamiyah to arrange the hijacking of the Fu Yu Shan.

  ‘Jemaah Islamiyah then subcontracted the job to the pirate group Liang Kebangkitan, who performed the actual hijack. Arief Suprapto – the pirate leader – and his gang were allowed to keep the ship, the crew and the cargo, except for a single crate – the crate from North Korea, which was put on board at Dalian.

  ‘This crate found its way – via private jet – to Saudi Arabia. It’s yet to be confirmed, but it seems that funding for the AIJ has come in the most part from money unknowingly siphoned off from Saudi National Oil profits by its Vice President of Finance, Investment and Development, Abdullah al-Zayani.

  ‘Through al-Zayani, we’ve identified a possible candidate for the leader of Arabian Islamic Jihad. We’re just awaiting confirmation of this.’

  Richards could feel all eyes in the room turning to him, their glare knowing, judging, accusing. But when he looked around, he realized he had been imagining it; all eyes were still locked on General Olsen.

  But who was the person they suspected? Was it Quraishi? And if it was, what would that mean for him?

  Richards’ guts stirred as he considered his options. Should he say something? Should he admit to his knowledge? If he said something now, before he was accused outright, would things go easier for him?

  Or was Olsen just fishing? Maybe he had no idea who it was. Richards had never heard of this al-Zayani character before, and had no idea if he could lead US intelligence to Quraishi. And if they were sure it was Quraishi, Olsen would definitely have said something by now. Wouldn’t he?

  Richards decided to take the initiative, just as he’d been taught at West Point all those years ago.

  ‘From my meeting with Quraishi,’ he began tentatively, ‘I’m not sure we can trust the man fully. I’ve known him for a while, but he seems to have changed. He was talking about some pretty wild things – about the House of Saud, that is. Treasonous things really.’

  ‘What are you saying Jeb?’ Olsen asked.

  ‘I just think we need to keep a close eye on him, that’s all,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t very forthcoming with information on the AIJ, and I think he knows more than he’s letting on.’

  Olsen nodded his head. ‘That’s interesting Jeb, thank you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In actual fact, that’s very helpful – Quraishi is the man at the top of our list for heading up the AIJ.’

  Richards could see Olsen holding his gaze, as if checking his reaction. And once again, he wondered if anyone suspected him. But on the other hand, why would they? And he had just covered himself by selling out his old friend anyway.

  ‘But that information doesn’t leave this room,’ Olsen said. ‘Does everyone understand that?’

  There was muttered acceptance around the table, and Olsen moved on.

  ‘Getting back to the weapon,’ he said. ‘As far as we can tell, it was then taken on to a safe house by a man known within the AIJ as the ‘hammer of the infidel’, an enforcer for the Lion who goes by the name of Amir al-Hazmi. A lifelong terrorist scumbag, and a real piece of work.

  ‘The threat, of course, is that the AIJ plan to use this weapon against the United States. We think that the safe house might be a base of operations, where people can be injected with the weapon and then sent out, possibly – probably – to America. The Lion – possibly Abd al-Aziz Quraishi – has been quite clear that he wishes to wipe out the ‘Great Satan’ once and for all – and this weapon gives him the opportunity to do just that.

  ‘Imagine it,’ Olsen said gravely, ‘a dozen, two dozen, suicide time bombers boarding planes to the US completely undetected, with no way to trace them, the bioweapon already ticking away inside them. They land, they move to areas with large populations, attend big public events, the time comes and’ – Olsen’s hands opened wide across the conference table - ‘boom, their skin erupts, the spores spread, infect thousands, then millions, then . . . well, you get the picture.

  ‘We’d have to close ourselves off completely to the outside world, quarantine ourselves to make sure it didn’t spread beyond our borders. Could we manage that? And what would it do to us if we could? Our economy? Our people? How long would it take for us to recover?’ Olsen sighed as he contemplated the situation. ‘Could we recover?’ He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘I just don’t know.’

  The melancholy was only momentary; then his backed straightened, his shoulders squared, and he faced the men and women around the table.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it is with no hint of overstatement that I say that this is the worst crisis we have faced as a nation since 1962. Our very existence is threatened.’

  Richards’ stomach turned as he thought about what he had done; he had assisted a madman in a plan which could kill US citizens not in the low thousands as he’d been led to believe – and which he was mentally and morally able to accept – but in the tens of millions.

  He sagged in his chair and made the decision to hold his tongue. What would he say anyway? Sorry everyone, I’ve known about Quraishi for years. I even know about the attack he’s been planning, but it’s okay – I only thought he was going to use a dirty nuclear bomb, not this crazy bioweapon shit.

  Yeah, Richards thought, he was better off just keeping his mouth shut and hoping for the best.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Clark Mason said with uncharacteristic bluntness; and for the first time since the crisis began, Richards found himself wishing that his new-found friend would keep his mouth shut too. ‘Where’s all this intelligence coming from? We seem to know one hell of a lot all of a sudden
.’

  ‘And you have a problem with this?’ President Abrams responded acidly.

  Mason nodded his head vigorously. ‘I do if it means we’re violating international law. Am I right, Milt?’

  Mason turned to Milt Staten, the Attorney General, who looked around edgily and shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘There’s been a presidential finding,’ Staten said almost guiltily. ‘Due to the serious threat to the primacy of the United States and the clear and present danger posed by this bioweapon, we’ve instigated emergency procedures giving us . . . well, more latitude in our actions abroad.’

  Mason shook his head in disbelief. ‘And I’m hearing this now?’

  ‘There wasn’t time before,’ Abrams interjected, bringing the matter to a close. ‘You will appreciate the urgency of our situation here.’

  Mason continued to shake his head but backed down, accepting the situation for what it was.

  Across the room, Richards watched him, understanding what was going through the mind of the Secretary of State. The look of anger – of betrayal – that had flickered across his eyes when Staten had spoken bode ill for the Attorney General; Mason’s memory was long, and equally bitter.

  And Richards also knew that Mason would be watching the unfolding events with a very close eye; if anything went wrong, he would be the first one to point the finger and try to get some political capital out of it.

  Richards could almost read the man’s mind –

  It’ll serve the bitch right.

  But, Richards figured, that was if Quraishi’s plan didn’t wipe them all out in the first place; even Mason would be hard put to get political capital out of the situation if he was a fleshless corpse lying in a ditch with a million others.

  ‘At least,’ Mason said eventually, ‘tell me that you know where this al-Hazmi is, where this safe house is.’

  Richards watched Olsen exchange uneasy glances with James Dorrell and Bud Shaw, before turning to Mason.

  ‘We’re working in it,’ he said with a confidence he obviously didn’t possess. ‘We’re working on it.’

  4

  Abd al-Aziz Quraishi had sensed something was wrong straight away.

  Eventually – miraculously it now seemed – he had at last managed to escape from the American agent; Dan Chadwick, Mark Cole, the Asset; whoever the hell he had been.

  The man had turned out to not be entirely invincible after all; the shattered remains of The Globe restaurant falling on his head had seen to that.

  Quraishi himself had been escorted under armed guard from the Al Faisaliyah building, ushered into a waiting vehicle where he was ferried directly back to the headquarters of the Ministry of Interior. He was keen to get back, anxious to lambast the Air Force commander for the reckless actions of his pilots.

  But then he had felt the first warning signs; a tightness in his gut, a rising of the hairs at the nape of his neck. A part of him told him to ignore it, that it was just the after effects of the adrenalin which had been coursing through his bloodstream all afternoon.

  But the other side of him – more cautious, more powerful – told him that he had been discovered. He had no idea how or why – or even if he was right to think such a thing – but his instincts told him to run.

  As the conscious part of his mind took over, listening intently to his inner instinct, he had started to recognize where these feelings were originating from.

  There was an increased security presence at the ugly concrete building, armed personnel patrolling the corridors, checking visitors; Quraishi had been able to see them even as his car passed by the front entrance, on its way to the subterranean parking lot.

  But it wasn’t just the personnel at the Ministry; it was the men who accompanied him in the car. They were as obsequious as always, but behind that façade of respect, Quraishi had sensed something else altogether, something insidious and frightening; he had sensed the magnetic attraction of predators to prey. And, he had realized with growing horror, Quraishi himself was the prey.

  And so he had instructed the driver to pull over outside the front entrance, telling him that he would go straight inside that way; he was in a hurry, he’d said, and didn’t want to waste time with parking.

  He could sense that the men in the car were uneasy, but had received no orders on what to do in this situation; Quraishi was a respected government figure after all, and still had power over them.

  Eventually, the driver had agreed, and pulled in towards the curb. One of the guards had moved to open the door; presumably to get out and escort Quraishi inside. But before the armored car had even braked fully to a stop, Quraishi had thrown his own door open and was running, losing himself in the crowds who passed by the Ministry building; the same crowds Quraishi had observed from his fourth floor office window for years, their eyes cast down; scared by the Mabahith, disgusted by the concrete edifice which housed it.

  As the crowd parted to accept him, closing round him as if with a mind of its own, Quraishi could just about see the men back at the car emptying out, guns raised, eyes scanning out for him as they reached for their radios, asking for orders; and Quraishi had known he’d done the right thing.

  And now, hours later and safe at last – ensconced in an apartment in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, six hundred miles away from the dangers of Riyadh – Quraishi considered the options for his future.

  Reliable colleagues had confirmed that a warrant had been made out for his arrest back at the Ministry. Apparently the Americans had information which suggested a link between himself and Arabian Islamic Jihad and – true to their corrupt, hateful form – the Saudi government had agreed to whatever the US demanded. After all, Quraishi was only a minor relative of the House of Saud, and therefore completely expendable in the face of the ongoing good relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States, and the Ministry of Interior was more than happy to offer him up on a plate if it made the Americans happy.

  Quraishi wondered how the link had been made – was it through Mark Cole, the agent killed back in Riyadh? Had he told his superiors about him? Or else was it through some other means?

  Quraishi shook his head as he was served a cup of jasmine tea by one of his many mistresses. He was married, but it was just for show; he considered himself personally bound to Allah alone, and would have no problem in leaving his wife and children behind. He kept mistresses as he appreciated the comforts of female company, but they too meant nothing to him.

  No, he thought, it no longer mattered how he had been found out; all that mattered was the end-game.

  And his recent conversation with Amir al-Hazmi had reassured Quraishi that – whatever happened to him personally – the end-game was going to be exactly what he had planned.

  His beloved martyrs would spread themselves willingly throughout the most populous cities of the United States, putting themselves in a position to cause the greatest amount of havoc, and would then allow the ultimate sacrifice to be made.

  Their bodies – mere vessels now for the valued North Korean bioweapon – would erupt and release their spores into the atmosphere, infecting thousands of people unwittingly, who would then go on to infect millions more.

  The idea was so beautiful, so incredibly pure; almost the entire population of the United States would be wiped out in weeks.

  The Great Satan annihilated in one fell swoop.

  Once again he thanked Allah for the providence which had brought the Korean weapon to his attention in the first place.

  It was years ago now, he remembered as he relaxed into his wicker armchair, the fan above him dissipating the worst of the evening’s heat.

  He had still been with the Mabahith at the time, and it had been brought to his attention that North Korean agents had been working in the area, attempting to recruit Islamic terrorist cells.

  Intrigued by what the North Koreans were doing in the Middle East, Quraishi had ordered a full-scale, yet covert, investigation. It soon beca
me clear what they were up to; they were eager to foment trouble in South Korea, and to then blame it on Muslim extremists.

  Further investigation led to Quraishi committing his own agents into North Korea, which eventually revealed some of that nation’s ultimate plan; to use a weapon in order to help unify their country, and blame it on Middle Eastern terrorists.

  And when it was revealed to Quraishi what weapon was being developed there, his own plan began to appear almost unbidden in his mind.

  He had already begun to establish Arabian Islamic Jihad, had started plans for terrorist actions all over the world; but when he caught wind of the North Korean bioweapon project, he put his own jobs on hold. For the most part at least – he still authorized some operations so that his men could be kept enthusiastic and well prepared. But he decided to keep the AIJ much more low-key than he had originally planned; at least until the time came for the greatest terrorist act of all time – at which stage, the name of Arabian Islamic Jihad would be remembered for the rest of human history.

  He had killed many of the agents who had brought him the information; some had started to wonder why he wasn’t doing anything with the information they were supplying, and others – especially those from the General Intelligence Presidency, the government’s key foreign intelligence agency whose members Quraishi had seconded – were becoming openly suspicious of his motives.

  He had denounced the men as traitors, tortured them to death in the Ministry’s basement; in fact, it was ironically his treatment of these ‘double agents’ which had resulted in his promotion from Chief of the Mabahith to Assistant Minister of Internal Security.

  With full knowledge of the RGB plan to infect South Korea through the use of an Islamic terrorist proxy, it just remained for Quraishi to organize for the theft of the weapon en route to Pakistan.

  And now, through the will of Allah, the weapon would have an even better use; a sacred use, one for which the people of his beloved Arabia would certainly rejoice.

  For the United States and the House of Saud would fall, and Arabia would be free once more.