WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘I’m afraid the Hammer can’t come to the phone right now,’ Cole said. ‘He’s dead.’

  No. It couldn’t be.

  The voice on the other end of the line was the man he had met in Riyadh, the covert agent Jeb Richards had warned him about.

  Mark Cole.

  The Asset.

  But how had he found the safe house?

  In the next instant, Quraishi realized that this was how the US authorities had destroyed his plan – Cole had discovered the safe house and fed them the information held there. And the safe house had everything. Identification, flight plans, medical information. Everything.

  Quraishi’s heart sank. Had Cole really managed to kill al-Hazmi? It seemed impossible; but he had seen the man in action, and Quraishi was forced to admit that perhaps impossible was the wrong word.

  But then he remembered the one piece of information that was not recorded back at the safe house; the identity of the twenty-first recipient of the injected virus.

  It had been a last-minute change of plan, but Quraishi had seen the opportunity and seized it.

  He was now very glad that he had done so; it gave him one last chance, one last hope in his crusade.

  He prayed to Allah that the last suicide bomber would remain undiscovered; the damage he could create would be the worst of all.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Quraishi said with as much bravado as he could muster. ‘This is not the end, my friend, it is not the end at all. I have more options than you think.’

  ‘If you’re talking about the last suicide bomber,’ the voice fired back at him, ‘then we’re one step ahead of you on that, I’m afraid.’

  Could the man be telling the truth? Did they know who it was?

  But Quraishi reasoned that it was just bluster – if he really knew, he would have said who it was.

  Quraishi laughed mockingly. ‘Do not give me that,’ he said. ‘The truth is that you have no idea, no idea whatsoever, who that person is.’ He laughed again, confidence rising in him once again. ‘And you won’t know right up until the moment that the spores erupt and he sends your accursed nation back into the dark ages.’

  Quraishi suddenly remembered about the intelligence services which might be tracking him, and hung up immediately, pleased to have got the last word in.

  He looked around the apartment one final time.

  No matter what happened to his last hope, the man he believed could take the fight right to the enemy’s doorstep, Quraishi himself knew he had already outstayed his welcome here.

  It was time to move.

  Cole heard the dial tone and replaced the handset.

  The trouble was, Quraishi was right – he had no idea who the last bomber was.

  But Quraishi had said he, so at least Cole knew that it was a man. Unless Quraishi had purposefully been trying to mislead him?

  He sighed. Quraishi seemed so confident. Why? What made this last person so special? What were they going to do? Where were they going to attack?

  When Cole realized which target would have the most impact on America, he suddenly understood who the bomber could be.

  And the unbelievable part of it was that he might not even realize it himself.

  10

  There had been a great deal of mutual backslapping throughout Conference Room One as the confirmed kills of each and every identified terrorist had been fed back to the security council throughout the afternoon.

  But the specter of the unknown bomber hovered over all of them, souring the mood considerably.

  Richards watched everyone closely, pleased that nobody was eying him with any sort of suspicion. Not yet anyway; but he was sure that in the weeks and months to come, congressional hearings would thoroughly investigate his relationship with Quraishi.

  He would have to move some money around, make the trail so hard to follow that the authorities would simply give up before they got to him; but he still intended to stay in Washington. If he left now, his guilt would be obvious to everyone.

  He watched President Abrams talking again on the telephone, then turning to whisper something to General Olsen. What the hell were they talking about now?

  He saw Olsen speak into his own telephone, issuing what looked like urgent orders, then looked back to Ellen Abrams and nodded his head.

  While Richards was still trying to figure out what was going on, the doors to the conference room were opened and a squad of Marines entered at a run.

  What the hell?

  They were wearing masks and what looked like NBC suits; half were armed with assault rifles, the other half held restraints.

  What the fuck were they doing?

  Richards watched in open-mouthed wonder as they stormed across the room, weapons up and aimed . . . at him?

  And then the Marines were right there in front of him, and the men without weapons were grabbing him, pulling him out of his chair, tying up his body even as they hauled him away, speechless, from the conference room.

  President Abrams observed Jeb Richards through the portal glass in the door of the basement bunker.

  He was screaming at her, hands pulling at his hair as he stormed from one end of the bunker to the other.

  She had no idea what he was saying; she only hoped that Cole was wrong about him.

  But the date of the last injection matched the date that Richards had been in Riyadh; and he had been there to visit Quraishi. Who else could Quraishi have injected, that would be able to wreak so much havoc on the United States?

  If Jeb had been injected, and the spores erupted while he was in the White House, then most of the country’s senior government figures would be infected.

  It certainly made sense, but Abrams didn’t want Jeb Richards to be immolated by flame throwers on a whim; she wanted to make absolutely sure, which was why she had ordered him to be quarantined in the specially converted bunker.

  And once the on-site experts were properly suited up, they would enter the bunker and try and examine the man.

  Abrams was of two different opinions on what she wanted the outcome to be. On the one hand, she had known Jeb for years and – despite his theatrics – she liked him; it would be devastating if he had been injected, knowingly or unknowingly. But on the other hand, if it was him then the mystery would be cleared up, and their search could stop.

  As she watched him pacing up and down, pausing every once in a while to scream at the window, she decided that she felt sorry for him either way.

  Richards didn’t know what the hell these people were thinking. He knew he hadn’t been injected with anything.

  When he’d first seen the Marines coming for him, he’d thought that they must have found out about him taking payments from Quraishi to assist in suppressing information about the upcoming attacks. What had surprised him beyond credulity was the accusation that he was the mystery twenty-first bomber.

  What the fuck were they thinking? Who the fuck did they think they were?

  ‘Yeah, you!’ he screamed at the porthole, only partially aware that the people outside couldn’t hear him. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? When I get out of here I’m gonna tear all of you a new asshole, you hear me?’

  Tears started to well in his eyes and he collapsed onto the floor, head on his knees.

  It was crazy, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  But a voice in the back of his head kept reminding him of something, of the man he’d met at the hotel the night before his meeting, the one who had taken him out to the illicit drinking rooms, the high-class brothel afterwards, and then . . . then . . . what?

  Richards had to admit that he had no idea what had happened the rest of that evening. When he had woken in his hotel bed the morning after, he’d had one hell of a hangover, and had put down his patchy memory of the previous night to having a few drinks too many.

  But could it have been for some other reason? Had he been drugged? Had he been taken to the laboratory and injected with the bioweapon?
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  Could it be true?

  For the first time, Richards felt the cold fear in the pit of his stomach.

  He had sat in during all those briefings about the North Korean bioweapon – what it did, how it worked.

  Was it going to happen to him?

  He leapt up off the floor, banging on the porthole glass; only this time, he wasn’t shouting insults.

  He was shouting for help; and he was shouting for mercy.

  The NBC personnel had arrived and were preparing to enter the chamber, and Abrams was about to return to the conference room when she saw it.

  At first Richards stopped shouting, stopped moving; and then his face went bright red, as if he was holding his breath.

  His eyes bulged in their puffy sockets, and Abrams saw the NBC leader bar the way for the rest of his team. ‘No,’ she heard him say through his mask, ‘not now. It’s too late. We stay outside.’

  And then Abrams watched the most horrific thing she had seen in her entire life, as the rest of Richards’ skin reddened and he started to scream, eyes threatening to pop straight out of his head, teeth crumbling and falling from his mouth.

  And then the skin split, the flesh itself sloughing away from the man’s bones as the virus ate away at him from the inside.

  And as the flesh dropped to the floor in pieces and clumps, Abrams saw the spores released from inside his body; like pollen floating in the air, there seemed to be millions of particles spreading through the bunker like a plague of insects, until she could barely see him.

  But then his skeletal fingers appeared at the porthole, scraping down the glass and leaving a trail of blood and loose skin, and Abrams could swear she could hear his screams now, even through the armor plating.

  And then the plague lifted slightly and she saw his ruined face; skinless, fleshless, unrecognizable.

  The spores covered him again, and he was gone.

  ‘You were right,’ Cole heard the voice of President Abrams announce, thousands of miles away.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘We got him into the bunker just in time,’ she breathed, obviously still shaken. ‘He . . . He’s gone.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Cole said, and meant it. Traitor or not, it was no way to go.

  But, he reasoned, better him than the whole of the National Security Council.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Abrams said next. ‘This is the third time you’ve saved my life.’

  ‘It’s becoming something of a habit,’ Cole agreed.

  ‘But thank you. I mean it.’ She breathed out slowly once more. ‘If that virus had hit when he was with us, I can’t imagine what would have happened. The Lion might still have won.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ Cole said. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘No,’ Abrams replied in a more positive tone. ‘Now, is there anything I can do for you?’

  Cole paused as he heard noise coming from above; shouted orders, booted feet. The Saudi authorities had found him.

  Seconds later, the door was kicked open and a squad of armed men rushed in, a captain at the front, his pistol up and aimed squarely at Cole’s head.

  ‘Yes,’ Cole said into the telephone, ‘I think you might be able to do something for me.’

  He held out the receiver to the captain.

  ‘It’s the President of the United States of America,’ Cole said to the man. ‘For you.’

  EPILOGUE

  Chang Wubei greeted the Defense Minister with a sigh. ‘So it is over,’ he said.

  ‘For now,’ Kang Xing agreed. ‘For now.’ He regarded the young man closely though his hooded eyes. Chang Wubei was one of the People’s Republic of China’s four Vice Premiers, and a man some thought might one day rise to the top post, supplanting Tsang Feng as president to become the nation’s Paramount Leader.

  Kang was one of those who believed that this would happen; was in fact doing everything in his power to make it happen. But not for Chang’s sake, and not because he thought Chang would make a good leader; it was because the man was easily led, and Kang was the one who would be doing the leading.

  But Chang liked to think that he was in charge, and Kang was happy to play along.

  ‘What happened?’ Chang demanded. ‘I still do not understand why we helped the Americans.’

  ‘We had to,’ Kang explained patiently, as if to a child. ‘When the weapon was stolen and the Korean RGB’s plan was dead in the water, what profit was there in it for us? We could have used the unification of Korea in various ways, but a terrorist attack on America? It would have changed the status quo too much; far too much. And so – with the knowledge we had regarding Camp Fourteen – we were able to salvage something from the situation by helping our American allies.’ He shrugged. ‘We could not foresee the hijacking of the Fu Yu Shan.’

  Chang nodded his head in thought. ‘Is it true that General U was executed?’

  Kang nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘My sources tell me that U Chun-su was killed by firing squad for his ‘repeated failures’. The North Koreans also believe that Major Ho Sang-ok was killed in the blast that destroyed Camp Fourteen.’

  ‘But he wasn’t?’ Chang asked in surprise.

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Kang said, aiming to impress the young man with his knowledge. ‘The Americans have him.’

  Worry clouded Chang’s features. ‘Will he tell them about us?’

  ‘Ho doesn’t know anything about us,’ Kang said confidently. ‘I brought the plan to them carefully, through agents. Ho knows nothing that could harm us.’

  ‘Does President Kim know that it was an American attack on the camp?’

  ‘He knows that it is only the Americans who could have done it, but he has no proof; and without proof, he can do nothing.’

  ‘Shall we provide him with proof?’ Chang asked.

  Kang shook his head in response. This was exactly why Chang needed guiding; he had yet to learn how things worked, how long-term strategy should be used.

  ‘No,’ Kang said, ‘remember the plan. We must think long-term if we are to achieve the Chinese supremacy we both dream of, and which that idiot Tsang Feng is too weak to attempt. We will use this knowledge when it suits us to do so, yes?’

  Chang nodded his head, and Kang could see that the man barely had a clue as to what he meant.

  But that suited Kang just fine; he had more than enough plans for the both of them.

  Cole looked across the café at the man sitting in the corner, sure it was him.

  He was in the Fifth Arrondissement of Paris, the so-called Arab Quarter which was home to many of the French capital’s vast Arab population.

  Beyond the Middle East itself, France had one of the highest concentrations of Arabic people in the world, and was a perfect place for an Arabic terrorist mastermind to lose himself, if all avenues had been closed to him back home.

  Which, in the case of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, they had been.

  It had taken months of effort by the CIA and the NSA, but their staff had literally worked round the clock to locate Quraishi, who had become overnight the most wanted man in the world.

  There had been false lead after false lead, but eventually a customer at this café had thought he’d recognized another regular from the e-fit pictures that were shown almost daily on the news channels, showing how Quraishi might look with various disguises, or even with plastic surgery. It had been the one with the grey hair and long beard that had matched.

  The customer had gone to the local gendarmerie, who had reported the sighting – along with hundreds of others, none of which were expected to bear fruit – to the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence.

  After a week of waiting for authorization, a surveillance team had started shadowing the old man from the café; and although they found nothing suspicious, they had found him similar enough to the modified pictures to report the finding to the American CIA.

  A CIA team had then received permission to run
its own surveillance, and soon discovered that the old man was careful to leave no fingerprints anywhere they could be taken from, and performed a great deal more counter-surveillance than most retired Arabic men who had nothing to hide.

  And it was then that James Dorrell notified President Abrams to tell her what they had found, and ask for further instructions.

  And President Abrams had turned the information over to the commander of America’s newest first-strike paramilitary intelligence agency, known internally only as Force One.

  As well as getting Cole out of Saudi Arabia in a hurry, President Abrams had also listened to something else that he wanted – to get back into full-time work with the American government, as head of his own agency; a spearhead against the ongoing war on terror.

  And its first mission was going to be dealing with The Lion of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

  Abrams had agreed to Cole’s request, which is what led to him sitting in the window seat of the homely little café, looking over his menu at the old man in the corner – a man who had wanted to kill millions of people, who had wanted to wipe America off the face of the earth.

  Cole adjusted his weight in his chair, thinking of how the previous months had changed him. Gone was the self-loathing of his Thailand incarnation; gone too were doubts, the insecurities, the fears that had plagued him throughout that last mission.

  He had come out the other side a different person, resolved to the fact that his family was gone, and they were never coming back; he had reacquired his calling in life, and had made the decision to follow that calling as passionately, as furiously, as professionally and as courageously as he could.

  He had healed physically over the past few months as well, his ear fully rebuilt and his arm almost as good as it was before. There were jokes that he’d had more surgery than most movie stars and models, and Cole had laughed along, because the jokes were true.

  But now, after months of waiting, he had his target in his sights.

  He moved, gesturing for a waitress, sure to move himself into the old man’s field of view; watched as the man tried to conceal his recognition, the spark of fear that passed through his eyes. Continued to watch as the old man got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled through the café, past the counter and towards the rest rooms at the rear.