by Jack Mars
“Why don’t I just pull right up?”
“Sounds fine.” There was a sound of a brief scuffle as Ed pulled Nigel away from the window. “Get up here, man. Get ready to feed me.”
Luke waited a few seconds, eyes on that building. The road wasn’t terrible here. It was a straight run right to the doorstep.
“Ready?” he said.
“Oh yeah.”
He stomped on the gas and the truck peeled out in the sand. It tore free and moved like a shot, building speed as it headed toward the building.
On either side, wrecked buildings zipped past.
The fighters, distracted by the Russians, didn’t seem to notice Luke’s truck right away. But then they did.
They scattered, pointing, just as Ed’s gun opened up above Luke’s head. It was a loud, ugly blat of automatic fire, combined with the Christmas jingle of spent shells falling to the pickup bed.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.
Ed didn’t release the trigger for anything.
An ISIS fighter shredded to pieces. Another. Another. They died with their guns on their shoulders.
One man managed to pull a pistol. He crouched behind the sandbags and aimed for the cab.
Luke accelerated.
A gunshot whined off the hood.
The truck went up over the sandbags, crashed into the man, and ran right over him. A body flew over the top of the cab and rolled down off the hood—Nigel. The truck came down the other side of the bags then ground to a halt.
Luke reached to the passenger side floor—his MP5 was there. As he ducked, his window shattered in on top of him. Someone out there was still alive, and firing. He crawled out the passenger side and onto the ground.
A second later, Ed vaulted over the side and crouched on the ground next to him.
“What happened to Nigel?”
“I don’t know. He just flew away. I guess he forgot to hold on.”
Gunfire pelted the truck from the street side. Behind Luke and Ed, the front doors to the building were shattered and wide open.
“We gotta get inside,” Luke said. “You ready?”
“Ready.”
Luke waited half a beat. “Go!”
He popped up and fired across the street at the shooters, give them full automatic. One got hit and went down. The others ducked behind the burnt-out shell of a car. Ed jumped up and ran for the doorway.
Luke dropped again. He popped out the spent magazine and let it fall to the ground. He slammed a fresh one in. From the doorway, Ed was firing now.
Luke got up and ran. He burst through the doors and dove for the floor. He rolled into a corner, turned back to the doors, and was ready to shoot from the ground.
Ed ducked back as gunfire strafed the entryway.
Then they were both up and moving down the corridor. There was a stairwell to the left. They checked it—nothing.
Maybe those guys outside were the last ones left in here.
“Here we go,” Luke said.
They bounded down the stairs. This was the part Luke always hated—trapped in a stairwell, nowhere to go when the shooting started. But there was no one here.
They exited the stairs and came out into another hallway. And that’s when they heard the screams. Bloodcurdling shrieks echoing back to them.
They pressed their backs to the wall and moved along, slowly now, quietly. The lights in the hall were out, but there was an open doorway up ahead. The outlines of it almost seemed to glow. The screaming was coming from there.
They approached it. Neither man said a word.
People were screaming inside that room. People were moaning. More than one person was in physical or psychic agony.
Luke dashed across to the right side of the doorway. Ed pressed himself against the left. Luke held up a fist and Ed nodded.
Luke held up one finger.
Two…
Three.
They burst through the doorway, Ed first, Luke half a step behind.
It was a slaughterhouse. All around the room, prisoners in orange jumpsuits were chained to the walls. There were at least forty of them.
Two men in black masks were moving from prisoner to prisoner, stabbing them in the torso, and sawing at their necks with a serrated blade. They were moving systematically, from left to right, killing the prisoners before the Russians could rescue them. At least a dozen prisoners were already dead, headless, bled out. The floor was awash in their blood. To the right, the living prisoners did whatever came naturally to them—they screamed, cried, scrabbled to the end of their chains, sat in shock, curled into the fetal position.
Luke and Ed pulled their pistols. They walked silently to the men in the black masks. At the moment, they were sawing the head off a prisoner who was already dead. One man held the head by the hair, while the other sawed away. They were so intent on what they were doing that they paid no attention to the killers coming up behind them.
Ed didn’t say a word. He turned his gun around and clocked the man with the knife in the back of the head. The man staggered, tried to stand up, and Ed hit him again. Then again. The man slid sideways to the floor.
His partner looked up. There was no fear in his eyes—only surprise.
Luke punched him in the face. When the man fell backwards, Luke kicked him in the head. One, twice, three times. Both of the guards rolled on the stone floor, gripping their heads, half awake, in pain.
“You believe this?” Ed asked. He gestured at the carnage around them. He was standing over the prone guards.
“I’ll believe anything at this point,” Luke said.
All around them, the able-bodied prisoners struggled to their feet. They came and stood above the two murderous guards. The prisoners were barefoot, gaunt, with haunted eyes. First there were four, then six, then a dozen. One took his own thick chain, kneeled behind the first guard, and wrapped it around the man’s throat. The guard’s eyes went wide with fear.
The prisoner looked up at Luke and Ed, his eyes darting from one to the other.
“Please do,” Ed said. “I left him alive for you. We’re not taking prisoners today.”
The prisoners moved in, holding the guard’s arms and legs down, one man to each limb. They did the same to the other guard. A prisoner picked up the discarded serrated knife. Soon the guards were lost, hidden behind a wall of prisoners. Sounds emerged from that crowd, the sounds of two men dying slowly.
Luke went into the center of the room. He took a deep breath and called out two words, hoping against hope for an answer.
“Mark Swann?” he said. “Is Mark Swann here?”
A long moment passed.
Then a skinny man off to the right, sitting slumped against the wall with his head dropped to his chest, raised a hand. He looked up, saw Luke and Ed there, but didn’t seem to register them. He didn’t seem to register anything.
“Here. I’m Mark Swann.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
7:45 a.m.
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
“There’s nothing we can do about Pankisi Gorge,” General Robert Coates, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “If the warheads are there, it doesn’t matter. There’s no way we can get there.”
Susan looked at Kurt, who was standing at the front. His eyes looked empty, numb, like a man trying to direct traffic at the Indy 500.
“Kurt?” she said.
He shook his head. “We’d have to send planes. At this point, anything we put in the sky in that region is liable to get shot down. Or worse, the Russians will think we’ve launched an attack.”
“Can we contact the Russians and let them know? Maybe they can take them out.”
Kurt looked at his aide Amy. She shook her head.
“We’ve been trying to contact Russian strategic command all morning. Communications are down. They are observing radio silence, and they are not answering our calls.”
“Okay,” General Coates said. He raised his voice.
“I want to tell you all something. It’s an announcement of sorts.”
The entire room turned his way.
“In the past five minutes, I have informed all Pentagon staff that we are moving to DEFCON 1,” he said.
Susan stared at him. Her mouth was agape. She realized this and closed it with an audible snap, her teeth clacking together. The general had gotten up and left the room a few minutes ago. She had assumed he had gone to the men’s room. The United States had never gone to DEFCON 1, and this man had sneaked out of the room to do it.
“Full readiness stance across all sectors and all services,” the general went on. “With no contact from the Russians, we have to assume that nuclear war is imminent. My next order will be to initiate massive and devastating first strikes from which the enemy cannot recover.”
“General, stand down,” Susan said. “Please.”
He shook his head. “It’s too late for that. I’ve also called for the immediate evacuation of this facility, which should have already begun.” He closed the ledger in front of him. His aides were packing up their things. “All essential staff should make their way to Cheyenne Mountain Complex by whatever means still available. I wish you all Godspeed.”
“General, this is treason. I am the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States.”
He shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Susan jumped up. She was hardly aware of what she was saying. “You can be shot for this, General. And I promise you, when everything is said and done, I will see to it that you are. I’ll even do it myself.”
The general stood and stared at Susan. He pointed a finger at her. “You are a very silly woman. There is no time left for your dithering. I pray that it hasn’t cost us our lives, and the future of our country.”
He and his aides moved toward the doorway.
“General—”
“Good day, Ms. Hopkins. Feel free to spend it however you wish.”
Ten seconds later, Coates and his entire entourage were gone.
The Situation Room was dead quiet now. No one moved. Blank faces and big eyes turned their gaze to Susan.
Kat Lopez was standing nearby.
“Kat,” Susan said. “Call upstairs and alert the Secret Service. I’m the President of the United States, and I’m in command. I want General Coates and his entire staff arrested before they leave the building.”
* * *
“I’ve got them,” the tall man said into his radio. “Moving through the main hall.”
His name was Chuck Berg.
He was thirty-eight years old, and had been in the Secret Service for more than twelve years. Six months ago, he had been on the Vice President’s personal security team. He had saved her from almost certain death in the Mount Weather disaster. Now that she was President, he was the head of her home security detail.
Just ahead of him, a dozen men moved briskly through the stone hallways of the West Wing, headed for the main entrance of the building. They were military men, in dress greens. At the head of the group was an older man, who Berg knew to be General Robert Coates, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Copy that. We have them on video.”
“On my signal,” Berg said.
“Copy.”
The group was approaching the doors. Outside, Berg knew there was a line of waiting SUVs.
“Now.”
Instantly, Secret Service agents appeared from the left and the right, guns out, emerging from side hallways and doors. Another group came bursting in through the main entrance.
“DOWN!” agents screamed. “GET DOWN!”
The military men were not a combat unit—they were desk jockeys. They offered token resistance—some pushing and shoving—but soon they were all on the floor, face down, wrists clamped behind their backs. The Secret Service trained for these confrontations all the time.
Berg walked up to the group and found the general, his forehead pressed to the floor.
“General Coates?”
The old man turned his silver head to get a look at Berg.
“I’m Agent Charles Berg, commander of the White House security team. You and your men are under arrest, and will remain in my custody until this crisis passes.”
Coates’s eyes were venomous. “I am the commander of the entire Armed Forces of the United States.”
Berg shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. I think you must be aware of that.”
“You’re a traitor!” Coates nearly spit the words at him.
Now Berg almost smiled. “No, sir. You’re the traitor.”
Berg turned to the agents closest to him.
“Lock these guys up, including the general. Confiscate all phones, tablets, and electronics. No communication with the outside, and no leaving their cells for any reason. I want them dropped into a hole.”
“I’ll have your job,” Coates said.
Berg doubted the general was going to have his job, or anything else, for a long time. Treason was something they took seriously around here.
“General, I’ll deal with you and your men later.”
“If there is a later,” a Secret Service agent said.
Berg shrugged. “If there’s no later, I guess we won’t have to deal with them at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
2:20 p.m. Mediterranean Time (8:20 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
al-Raqqa, Syria
They brought the prisoners, the ones that could walk, to the surface. They were fastened together in a daisy chain.
Ed cut Swann loose from the rest with a pair of bolt cutters. Swann’s face was bruised and swollen. He was dazed, unsure—he didn’t seem to recognize who Ed and Luke were. That was okay. It was shock. It was self-protective.
Swann was alive, and for the time being, that was enough.
But they had bigger things to worry about than Swann.
“They can’t send anyone to Pankisi Gorge,” Mika said in Luke’s ear.
“Why not?”
“They’re afraid that any American planes near Russian airspace will look like a first strike.”
“So why don’t they just call the Kremlin and tell them?”
“Communications are down.”
“Ugh.”
Luke looked out at the street and thought for a moment. There were running gun battles very nearby, maybe two blocks over. Everything here was dead. No, that wasn’t quite true. Movement caught his eye below his feet and to the left—just in front of where they had crashed the truck. A man was crawling out of a pile of sandbags.
It was Nigel. He was still alive.
“Nigel! Over here! Get out of the street!”
“What?” Mika said. “What?”
Nigel made a shuffling run toward Luke, stumbled up the steps and into the building.
Luke’s mind raced. There was still a chance they could get out of here, but that window was closing quickly.
“Mika, I need you to find me an airport, one with a plane parked there. It’s got to be close to where we are right now.”
“Luke, the Russians have the only airport in the city. It’s just to the west of town. They’ve established a base there.”
Luke shook his head. “No good. Find me something smaller.”
To Luke’s right, a block away, a small rocket whistled into a shattered building, blew another giant hole in it. A handful of ISIS fighters scattered, firing machine guns in the direction the rocket had come from.
The Russians are coming.
“There are no other airports, Luke.”
Luke turned and walked down the hallway. Ed was there, systematically cutting the chains of the prisoners, freeing them from one another. Luke spotted Swann, sitting on the ground against the wall. His knees were up near his head. He was staring at the ground.
Luke went to his friend and kneeled in front of him.
“Swann.”
Swann didn’t even look
up.
“Swann!”
He grabbed Swann by the hair, pulled his head up, and slapped him hard across the face.
“Swann, wake up!”
Luke sensed Ed right behind him. Ed coming up behind you was like a violent thunderstorm coming up behind you.
“Hey, man. Don’t do that.”
Luke raised a hand. “Ed, trust me. We need this guy. He has to snap out of it, if only for a minute.”
“Swann!”
Swann’s eyes finally focused on Luke. “What?” he said, his voice annoyed.
Luke nearly kissed him. “I need a small airport, an airstrip, anything like that, but it has to be close to where we are.”
“Where are we?” Swann said.
“Al-Raqqa, Syria. The southern edge of town.”
Swann seemed to think about that for a moment. “Sure. I spotted a tiny airstrip to the southeast of this town when I was going over maps… whenever that was. It’s just a little scratch in the Earth. You’d almost never see it unless you were looking for it. There’s no tower or anything. There’s barely even a runway.”
“How far?” Luke said.
Swann shrugged. “I don’t know. Five miles?”
“I love you, Swann.”
Luke popped up and moved back toward the front of the building. “Mika, did you hear that? Five miles to the southeast. An airstrip. I need you to find it on a real-time satellite map. Can you do that?”
“I’m already doing it,” Mika said.
Luke poked his head out the front doorway. It was quiet out there now—dead quiet. He looked at the pickup truck. It seemed a little worse for wear, pockmarked and dented, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was still operational. The tires were intact, at least.
“I found it,” Mika said. “I’m zooming in. It’s just south of the highway on your way east from the city. There’s something there. Right off the runway. There’s a sand-colored tarp or awning, and it’s covering something.”
“Is it a plane?” Luke said.
“Sure looks like one.”
* * *
Mitchell Baker had always gone where the money was. Until very recently, that had seemed like a good idea.
