WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘Hold the gate!’ Navarone shouted to Xie through his radio. ‘I need to get in there!’

  He looked at his watch as he dropped the binoculars and sprinted for the stairs.

  He had just twenty minutes left before the valley – and the children – were blown off the face of the earth.

  Major Stan Harris checked the readouts on his instruments as he piloted the huge flying wing that was the B2 Spirit stealth bomber over enemy territory, all too aware that he was invading a country with an unknown anti-aircraft capability.

  The technology of the B2 was incredible – from its shape, specially designed to reflect radar signals, to the cooling vents which processed the exhaust fumes before releasing them from its top-mounted vents, every element of the airplane was aimed at avoiding enemy detection.

  But nobody knew just how advanced North Korea’s detection systems were. Its military spending was vast, a colossal percentage of its GDP, and Harris worried that a small fortune would have been spent on protecting the secretive nation from attacks just like this one.

  But he still had a job to do, and Harris was going to do it no matter what; he would get the stealth bomber over its intended target, and the man sat right next to him in the cockpit – Lieutenant Colonel Matt Gleason, the mission commander – would initiate the release of the 30,000 pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator which sat in the huge weapon bay below them. The other B2 plane in the raiding party, which fitted in right behind them, would then drop the second MOP and reduce the target to rubble – whatever it was.

  They were close now, and Harris felt his pulse rising ever so slightly – fifty-five beats per minute rather than its customary fifty.

  It was enough to tell him that the target was just around the corner.

  ‘Flamethrowers?’ Abrams asked with a mixture of disbelief and outright horror.

  Ken Jung shrugged. ‘If we have to,’ he said defensively. ‘Remember, if the suicide bombers have left, if they’re already on their way here, then – if we manage to find them – we’ll need to contain them quickly if we’re gonna have any chance of stopping them. We won’t have any idea of when they were injected, or how long we have until the spores erupt. Of course we’ll try and quarantine them if possible, but if not’ – he shrugged his shoulders again – ‘well, we know that intense heat will destroy the virus.’

  ‘I can only imagine how that’s going to play on the evening news,’ Abrams said, shaking her head sadly. But what choice did she have? Mobile HAZMAT units were already on their way to the nation’s busiest airports – low-key, to avoid bringing any attention on themselves – and USAMRIID were preparing to tackle the virus if it ever got out into the open.

  Security was being scaled up at all ingress points to the United States, and medical personnel were being recalled from leave across the country. Abrams knew they wouldn’t be able to keep such a mobilization away from the press for long; she just hoped it would be long enough.

  Still shaking her head, she picked up the phone and placed a call to Olsen. ‘Pete,’ she said, ‘I need you to initiate something immediately.’ She paused, gathering herself before she continued. ‘I need you to get teams to every airport. Armed with flamethrowers.’ There was a beat pause as Olsen responded. ‘Yes, you heard me right,’ Abrams said. ‘Heat kills the virus and – Heaven help us – those awful weapons might be our last chance, if it gets to that stage.’

  After Olsen confirmed the order, Abrams replaced the receiver and looked at the experts gathered round her. ‘Now,’ she sighed, ‘does anybody have any good news?’

  The men and women sat around the table in the Oval Office looked at one another, but nobody said a word.

  2

  As the Eurofighter Typhoon continued its supersonic cruise across the barren deserts of the Saudi interior, Cole tried to think about what he was going to do when the aircraft was in position, tried to concentrate on his future actions.

  And yet all he could think about was the past.

  The journey reminded him far too much of his last supersonic flight, aboard the secret US airplane known as the Aurora – a craft which had delivered him from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington DC to the cold skies above Kreith in Austria. A hypersonic journey of over four thousand miles in little more than an hour, which had ended when he’d been jettisoned from the bomb bay doors at 120,000 feet. A suicidal jump, but one he’d survived; he’d had to, he’d thought at the time – the lives of his family depended upon it.

  And yet he’d failed to save them, could see even now how their heads erupted from the gunshots, how the blood had flown across the pine-walled games room of his old friend’s house. A house he had thought was safe; a friend he had thought he could trust.

  The images poured through his mind, and he was unable to stop them; he’d done so well up until now, managed to avoid the dreams, avoid the thoughts, the nightmares, the fears. But now all of the adrenalin and stress of recent events was erupting within him, threatening once more to push him over the edge, drag him back to where he was when he’d been slowly killing himself in the bars and nightclubs of Thailand.

  His head throbbed, and he could feel his pulse quickening, straining in his chest, hammering so hard he thought he would pass out; the oxygen mask he wore suddenly seemed constricting, threatening, and he knew he was going to be sick right inside it.

  His hands went to the mask to rip it off his face, but his fingers failed, grasping at thin air as his mind collapsed and his vision faded, the thought of innocent blood flying through the air the last thing he saw before he passed out completely, body inert in the jump seat of the jet airplane as it carried him towards Mecca.

  Jeb Richards felt the sweat pouring down his face, despite the chill of the air conditioning.

  Did anyone suspect anything? Quraishi was gone, vanished into thin air; the Saudi authorities had failed to arrest him, or even to locate him.

  He thought he’d managed to deflect the initial enquiries nicely, offering up his own suspicions on Quraishi before he was asked about his meeting. But if the attack went ahead, any subsequent investigation would surely reveal Richards’ prior knowledge.

  Or would it? Richards exhaled slowly and picked up his glass of wine, gulping it down as he waited for Clark Mason to arrive. Things were frantic at the White House, but Richards had managed to get a table at the nearby Café du Parc, a little French bistro on Pennsylvania Avenue. After all, he had to eat, didn’t he?

  Richards let his mind examine the possibilities. If the attack went ahead, then millions of people would be killed – maybe himself included. What remained of the federal government would be a shambles, and it would take years to rebuild the country; and it would probably never be the same again. In such a situation – if he managed to survive – it was unlikely that anyone would still care about investigating who knew what. They’d all be too busy just trying to survive.

  But such a scenario wasn’t exactly reassuring. So maybe he should just make a run for it? Avoid the plague that was coming, take the money he’d been given and escape?

  But what if the attack was prevented? Would it be possible for him to create a new life somewhere else, without the authorities catching up with him? Because if he made a run for it, they would definitely do everything within their power to find him.

  He poured himself more wine and took a large sip. It was difficult; the best he could hope to do was damage limitation. He would have to hope that the attack didn’t work; and then he would have to hope that his own role would remain undetected. The death of Quraishi would help with that, he realized. His brow knotted in concentration, he understood that he would have to do all he could to help find Quraishi – and make sure that he was not arrested and interrogated, but was just killed on the spot like bin Laden before him.

  It would be useful to get Mason’s take on the situation, he thought as he sat back in his chair, scanning the small restaurant. Where the hell was the man, anyway?

  It was
then that he saw the maître d’ approaching his table.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I am afraid your guest has just telephoned with his apologies. He won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid.’

  Richards said nothing, just waved the man away.

  So, Clark Mason had abandoned him already. Was it because of his meeting with Quraishi? Did he suspect a connection, and was severing ties with Richards just in case?

  His shoulders slumped and he pulled his tie away from his neck, slurping at his wine to combat the encroaching heat.

  He wasn’t an introspective man by nature, nor one to second-guess his own actions.

  But, he finally admitted to himself, he might well have made an error of judgment when he decided to play Russian roulette with America’s security.

  He just hoped he would live to regret it.

  Captain Xie Wei had come back into the sprawling camp with Navarone, even as the rest of Red Squadron’s Bravo Troop led the four thousand prisoners to the relative safety of the western forest.

  Both men raced through the camp with desperate speed, jumping over dead bodies like hurdles on an athletics track, their focus on one thing, and one thing only – the small building which housed the children.

  Navarone knew they had to rescue them – if they couldn’t, then they were as good as dead. When the B2’s MOPs dropped on the camp, the survival rate would be zero.

  Navarone knew it was crazy – he had already risked everything to lead the prison break, and had ensured the hopeful survival of thousands of previously doomed prisoners. But it wasn’t enough; a building full of children couldn’t just be abandoned; it just couldn’t. How would he look his sisters in the eye again, knowing that he’d failed to do everything in his power to help those kids?

  Images of his two sisters flashed through his mind, and he felt his legs pumping even harder, speed increasing until at last he was there, Xie just behind him.

  In the distance, he could hear the blasts of Claymores and the screams of injured soldiers. And above them all, the sky grew dark as rainclouds moved in, the ominous sounds of thunder rumbling through the valley.

  He could see eyes opening wide behind the windows, small hands pushed through the shattered glass, pulling uselessly at the steel bars which held them captive. The pain, the terror, the hopelessness on their faces almost broke Navarone’s heart; but he ignored their cries for help, and raced to the locked door.

  The door was steel, and conventional – nothing armor-plated. Navarone pulled down the shotgun he’d brought with him, aiming at the hinges.

  Without being told, Xie started shouting at the kids through the window in Korean; Navarone knew he was telling them to stay back from the door.

  ‘Jake!’ Xie called suddenly, just as Navarone was going to pull the trigger. ‘We’ve got company!’

  Navarone looked past the building, saw the first soldiers staggering out of the eastern forest, heading for the prison camp, rifles at the ready.

  Shit.

  ‘Hold them off!’ Navarone ordered Xie, just as the heavens opened above them and the rain began to fall in a torrential downpour.

  Navarone pulled the trigger an instant later, already soaked to the skin. He fired four solid slugs, two to each hinge; then kicked the door down with one powerful thrust.

  The building before him consisted of only one room, a rough brick dormitory containing about fifty children; at a glance, from about six to twelve years old. Why, Navarone didn’t know, and at that moment, didn’t care; all he wanted was for them to get out as fast as possible.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted, dropping the shotgun and pointing outside. ‘Go, now!’

  It took a few moments for the spell to break, for the children to accept what they were seeing; and then they were pouring towards him, past him, racing out into the camp grounds, heading for the open gate on the far side of the camp.

  It was then that Navarone heard the first shots, 7.62mm rounds from the soldiers’ Kalashnikovs; followed an instant later by the return 5.56mm fire of Xie’s Colt M4.

  Navarone watched the children flee across the camp parade ground, saw two of the youngest drop as bullets hit them, and quickly pulled his own Colt M4 off his shoulder, stepping around the small brick building to unleash hell on the Korean soldiers who’d shot them.

  3

  The sounds that filtered through Cole’s earpiece were like pieces of an intricate puzzle he didn’t have a hope of completing; they led only to confusion and helplessness.

  But slowly, the mist began to clear and he could at last recognize the sounds as words, although the meaning remained indistinct and far away.

  ‘Sir?’ the voice seemed to say, although Cole still could not understand what the word meant, or where it came from. ‘Sir?’ the voice asked again urgently. ‘Are you okay sir?’

  Okay? Cole wondered. Am I okay?

  He shook his head; he could still see the blood, and shook it harder to dislodge the image.

  ‘I’m returning to base, sir,’ the voice said in an authoritative tone, and in a fraction of a second everything was clear to Cole, the threat of returning to Riyadh crystalizing everything in exquisite detail. He had passed out, he remembered now, the thoughts of his family too much to bear; and it was the pilot’s voice speaking to him in those frantic tones, informing him of their return.

  ‘No!’ Cole screamed back through the mask. ‘No!’ he ordered again. ‘Don’t go back. Please, I’m fine,’ he continued in as reasonable a tone as he could muster.

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ the pilot asked over the intercom. ‘I have a responsibility for you, and sometimes people are badly affected by these flights if they’re not used to it. Perhaps you need medical attention?’

  ‘I sure as hell do not,’ Cole said gruffly, remembering his assumed identity as a US congressman, ‘and I demand that you fly on towards Mecca.’

  ‘But sir,’ the voice came back, ‘it’s like I’ve been trying to tell you – we’re over Mecca now.’

  In wild-eyed panic, Cole looked out of the cockpit windows, straining his neck to peer down at the sprawling city below. It was true, he saw immediately; they had already reached Mecca. How long had he been out of it?

  But it didn’t matter now; all that mattered was action. And with a colossal force of will, Cole drove out the thoughts of his family, of how he had failed them, of the blood; in the moment he realized he was above his target, had almost missed it, he achieved a feeling of clarity, of unified purpose.

  The past was the past; there was nothing he could do to change it.

  But millions of lives depended upon the actions he would perform now.

  And with that pure clarity, his hand went to the lever next to his chair and pulled hard.

  The canopy instantaneously flew off into the skies above Mecca, followed just fractions of a second later by Cole’s chair, which was launched explosively upwards from the airplane cockpit.

  Cole struggled against the G-force of the ejection, and saw the pilot struggling to control the aircraft beneath him.

  Then he felt a jerk and looked upwards, pleased to see that the parachute had opened correctly and he was decelerating rapidly, descending slowly now to the streets of Mecca below.

  As the ejected chair swayed in the slight breeze, Cole took a deep breath, composing himself; as the dusty streets rose to greet him, he knew he would need all of his abilities for the battle to come.

  ‘Target acquired,’ Lt. Colonel Gleason advised Major Harris. ‘Keep this course and we’ll drop the payload.’

  Harris looked at his own instruments for confirmation. ‘Affirmative,’ he replied, ‘we will be over target in six minutes.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Gleason agreed. ‘Time to weapons drop six minutes.’

  As Harris confirmed positions and times with the second aircraft, Gleason checked and rechecked the target coordinates and their GPS location, and readied the controls.

  A part of Gleason wondered what the target wa
s; if it was populated, and if so, by how many people, what sort of people. But – as always – he censored his own thoughts, cutting them off before they began to trouble him. He had received his orders, and that was sufficient.

  He knew the target was in North Korea, and that would have to be enough; it wasn’t likely he’d be dropping a thirty thousand pound bomb on a holiday camp. The target was far more likely to be a weapons factory of some kind, probably dealing in nuclear material; and Gleason had no problem at all with obliterating such a place.

  It was close now, and getting closer by the second; Gleason placed his hands on the release controls, telling himself that – whatever the place was – it would soon be wiped off the face of the earth.

  Navarone knelt in the mud of the parade ground, rain beating hard around him as he aimed his assault rifle at the approaching soldiers.

  He squeezed the trigger in bursts, watched as the men dropped in front of him, blood spraying from their falling bodies and mixing with the dark rain as it hit the floor.

  Xie was next to him, firing his own weapon at the approaching soldiers; Navarone couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there anyway. He heard the pop of the 5.56mm rounds, saw the soldiers falling from the man’s shots.

  ‘Go!’ Navarone shouted above the roar of gunfire and thunder; and he didn’t have to look to know that Xie would be racing back towards the far gates, which the children had already reopened and fled through.

  Navarone kept on firing as Xie ran; then he heard the man shouting back to him – ‘Go!’ – and then Navarone was up and running as Xie provided the covering fire, ejecting his used magazine and slotting in a new one as he went.

  Navarone passed Xie’s kneeling form as he racked back the slide of the M4, raced further towards the gates, then stopped, turned, knelt and shouted, starting to fire as Xie got up and started running.

  Their retreat continued in this fashion for what seemed like hours – although it was merely minutes – and their effective tactics kept the soldiers in front of them pinned down.