by Jack Mars
He shook the image from his head.
Ismet was President once again, as he had assured Colonel Musharaff that he soon would be. In the end, Musharaff and his henchmen had toppled the government for less than twenty-four hours. Their lightning attacks had been well planned and carried out. But with no popular support, and only a very narrow slice of the military joining their ranks, their movement had collapsed very quickly.
The odd thing was that Musharaff knew this would happen. He said so himself. Anyway, how could he not?
Ismet shook his head. Musharaff had always been a baffling character.
“Just up ahead, sir.”
They passed through a set of double doors into a large great room. Large didn’t really describe it. Monstrous was closer. There were dozens of sitting areas, each with a sofa and chairs arranged around a small plush carpet. There were many fireplaces. The ceiling was three stories high. Ismet had never entered this room before. He had not been aware of its existence until now.
A man stood in the room, out in the open on the stone floor, away from any of the sitting areas. He had a thick white mustache. He still wore the uniform of the Turkish Air Force. Perhaps his intention was to have been a military dictator?
“Musharaff,” Ismet said. “I see you are alone. What happened? Did your friends desert you?”
“Batur,” the man said. “You are a dupe and a fool. The Russians have made you their instrument.”
Ismet shook his head. Musharaff was insane, seeing conspiracies everywhere. There was no truth to this at all. Ismet was an enemy of the Russians. He’d had no contact with them except to lodge a complaint when they stole the Turkish islands. He had appealed to the Americans for help, but none was forthcoming.
Musharaff was dangerous, not just to Turkey, but to the world. Only a lunatic would launch the apocalypse over three tiny islands. One day the islands would be returned. Diplomacy would accomplish this. Perhaps every man in this room would be dead before that happened. Certainly one would.
“I will bring my case before the Turkish people,” Musharaff said. “They will see you for the traitor, and the Russian stooge, that you are.”
Ismet said nothing.
“I will have my day in court,” Musharaff said.
Ismet finally shook his head. “No… you won’t.”
He made a hand gesture to the men nearest him. It was little more than a wave, and in ordinary circumstances wouldn’t mean anything. Today it meant:
I’m done here.
A lieutenant stepped up to Musharaff, placed a small silenced pistol against his temple, and pulled the trigger. The colonel barely had time to flinch. Despite the silencer, the gunshot echoed in the vast space around them.
An instant later, Musharaff lay on the marble floor, a pool of blood spreading around his ruined head like the halo of a Christian saint. Ismet touched the corpse with his toe.
“Please,” he said, as he turned to leave, “dispose of this trash. And make sure the room is made clean again.”
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
October 25
8:45 a.m.
9th Arrondissement—Paris, France
The man’s name was Mustafa Zarqawi.
Sometimes, people called him Jamal, or even the Phantom. He thought perhaps he would not go by these names again, maybe not for a while, maybe not ever.
He awoke alone in his bed, light streaming in from the window above his head. A girl had been here, but she was an office girl, and must have arisen early and left for her job. Mustafa smiled at the sunlight. This was a modest apartment, but a beautiful one, in a lovely old building. It was a nice place to bring young girls.
He stood and padded barefoot through the living room and into the kitchen. He wore nothing by a pair of tight underwear and a thin T-shirt. The rooms he passed were green with plant life—the light here was perfect for growing things.
In the kitchen, he placed the coffee pot on the burner. There was bread and butter. A simple breakfast, but more than enough for him. He placed two slices of the bread into the toaster. His hand touched the lever to press it down.
Someone was behind him.
He stopped. There was a shadow back there, a wrong one. He had spent so much time in this place, even the shadows were his friends. But not this shadow.
Mustafa reached for the cupboard, moving slowly and naturally. Nothing out of the ordinary here. There was a large gun on the top shelf. He reached, brought it down, and spun to face his attacker.
A large black man stood there, in the living room, just beyond the threshold.
No, the man wasn’t large. He was a giant. He was tall and his shoulders were massive. His chest must be a full meter across.
He wore jeans and a black T-shirt, both of which clung to his muscular frame. He was pointing his own gun directly at Mustafa’s head.
“Hi, Jamal,” the man said. “Careful with that gun.”
Something moved to Mustafa’s left. A man emerged from the bathroom, this one a white man with blond hair and a three-day growth of beard. He was tall and muscular, but nothing like the black man. He also held a gun, pointed at Mustafa’s head.
“Triangulation of fire,” Mustafa said.
“Yes,” the white man said. “You don’t even stand a chance.”
“Do I know you?”
“Luke Stone,” the white man said.
“Ed Newsam,” said the black man.
Mustafa nodded. “Ah. That was always a concern. Am I off to prison now?”
The two men said nothing.
There was a choice here, Mustafa knew. There was always a choice, even at the end. When all other choices were extinguished, the last thing available was to choose how to die. Was he afraid of death? Yes, he supposed so. Was it because he was afraid to meet God? No, that wasn’t it. If he was honest with himself, he was afraid that when he arrived on the other side, there would be no God there to greet him.
Even so…
He pulled the gun down and nearly aimed it at the big man.
He saw the flashes from the muzzle of the man’s gun. One, two, three. Only later did he hear the gunshots, or feel the pain.
Then he was on his back on the kitchen floor. The two men stood over him. Mustafa thought briefly about his gun, but he no longer knew where it was.
The pain wasn’t bad, and it was already fading.
As he went into the black, a last thought came:
I’ve never been shot before.
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
October 27
11:03 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington, DC
“The rats are still on board this ship,” Luke Stone said.
Susan watched him sip the coffee an aide had brought him. They were in the high-backed chairs in the sitting area of the Oval Office. Outside the tall windows, it was a sunny fall day. Susan wore tan slacks, a white dress shirt, and a blue jacket—business casual attire. Her hair was in a ponytail. She felt good. Sleep would do wonders for anyone.
And things were looking up—they’d had a diplomatic breakthrough with the Russians. Right now, Kat Lopez was working with about a dozen planners to create a series of Russia—America Friendship Day events. Food festivals, sporting events, parades… Susan loved that kind of thing.
On a deeper level, both she and Putin had committed to talking on the phone one day a week, for at least fifteen minutes, even if there was nothing to talk about. They would talk about the weather, if it came to that. And on a frivolous level, next week’s cover of Time magazine depicted Susan as the Great Negotiator.
“I’ll take diplomacy over nuclear war any day,” was the quote that would apparently go with her photo.
The most bitter Congressional campaign season in modern American history was set to end in ten days, and God only knew how that was going to play out. However, right now, at this moment, things were pretty first rate. Today was a good day to be Susan Hopkins.
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But Stone? That was hard to say. He had just returned from ferocious combat, again. An old friend of his—Bill Cronin—had died in the fighting. He and his partner Ed had survived a helicopter crash. Judging from his report, they had gone on to kill dozens of opponents. These things had to weigh on a person, didn’t they?
Susan stared at him. He seemed different from before. He had let his beard grow during the days he was away. His steely blue eyes peered out from atop a blond beard and mustache. His hair was getting a little bit long. He was retreating back to the caveman looked he sometimes sported, retracting into it. To Susan, that suggested he was about to disappear again.
Stay a little while, why don’t you? she wanted to say.
“What does that even mean?” she said. “We have rats?”
“Two days ago, in Paris, Ed and I eliminated a man named Mustafa Zarqawi.”
“I thought you two went to France on a vacation.”
Luke smiled. “Call it a working vacation. A little business, a little pleasure. Zarqawi was a Pakistani, and once upon a time he was an agent of the intelligence services there. He went by the name Jamal, and was sometimes referred to as the Phantom. I have reason to believe he was the mastermind behind the theft of the warheads.”
“Shouldn’t you be sharing this with our own intelligences services?” she said.
“I would, but I also have reason to believe he’s been working for our intelligence services. Elements of them, in any case.”
“What reason is that?”
Luke’s face was impassive, giving her nothing. He gestured at the walls of the room. “I wish I could tell you.”
“Oh, come off it, Luke. There are no bugs in this room. And even if there are, you of all people don’t need to worry about it. Everyone values what you do, and what you just did. Okay? I thank you. Everyone thanks you. The nation owes you a debt of gratitude, one that will probably never be adequately repaid.”
She raised her voice and directed it to any hidden microphones.
“Do you hear that, dummies? Luke Stone is the best agent America has! We owe him a debt that we can never repay.”
Luke said nothing.
Susan lowered her voice. He had her half-convinced that the microphones in his mind were real. “I go out on a limb for you,” she said. “You do know that, don’t you? My advisers… well, I’ll just say I have advisers who are not in your fan club. They’d like to see you lose your job, and I tell them no, Luke Stone is too valuable. But then you do something like chase stolen nuclear weapons to Syria, when they’ve in fact gone the other way. And then you disobey my direct orders…”
“I went to save a friend of mine, who also happens to be an American intelligence asset, the best in his area of expertise that I’ve known during my long career.”
Susan sighed, sat back in her chair, and placed her hands on top of her head. She stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling was a deep rotunda, and she sometimes felt she could lose herself in it. Luke Stone was a difficult person, and still… she liked him. She was even attracted to him, she realized now. He was intelligent. He was uncompromising. He was exasperating. He was unpredictable. He was about as brave as a human being could be.
And he was handsome. Not in a Tommy Zales way—no one in real life was that handsome. More in a rugged way. He was weathered—the lines of experience were written all over his face. He was a serious person, as serious as Tommy was silly. Luke could kill Tommy with one finger, of course, but would probably refrain from doing so unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Do you believe this man was working for the United States when he stole the warheads, if he actually stole them?”
Luke shook his head. “I have no idea. I certainly didn’t say that, or even suggest it. I only said that he’s done work for elements of the United States intelligence apparatus, and probably recently.”
“And you killed him?”
He nodded. “Yes. It was the prudent thing to do. The guy was slippery.”
“But now we’ll never know who he worked for, or what he did.”
Luke smiled. “I didn’t say that either. That’s you talking.”
Susan took a deep breath and shook her head. This discussion wasn’t going anywhere.
Luke seemed to realize it, too.
“Hey,” he said. “I hear you threatened to shoot the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That’s fun. You gonna go through with it?”
Now Susan smiled. “It was the heat of the moment. He was trying to seize control of the military, and that made me angry. Anyway, I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I’ve certainly never executed someone. But if anyone had it coming…”
“It was him,” Stone said.
They both laughed.
A long pause passed between them.
“I could teach you,” Stone said.
“To shoot a gun?”
He nodded. “Mmm-hmmm.”
“Then I can kill General Coates if I want.”
“Sure.”
She pictured herself at a weapons range with Luke Stone. And she imagined the tabloid headlines when that little story leaked out. President Handles Super Spy’s Gun.
“It sounds like fun, Stone. Let’s do that some day.”
He was already standing up to leave.
“I’ll pencil you in.”
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
October 30
2:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Fly Guys Indoor Skydiving Center
Baltimore, Maryland
That looks like fun.
Luke stood outside the glass wind tunnel, watching Gunner. The instructor, dressed all in white—white jumpsuit, white helmet, white shoes—held Gunner in a horizontal position as the wind ramped up. Gunner wore a red jumpsuit and blue helmet. He had thick goggles on his face and was grinning from ear to ear. His arms and legs were already splayed out.
The helmets were mic’ed, and the voices played through speakers mounted on the walls out here in the viewing area.
“Ready, Gunner?” the instructor shouted.
“Yeah!”
“What? I can’t hear you!”
“Ready! I’m ready!”
“All right! One… two… three… GO!”
This was the fifth time Luke had brought Gunner to this place, and by now the kid was an old pro.
When the instructor released him, Gunner instantly flew toward the ceiling, three stories above his head. He did several somersaults before diving headfirst toward the ground, stopping bare inches from the floor. Then, upside down, the boy spun around and around the outside edge of the tube, as though he were in a giant blender.
Each move gave Luke a mini heart attack.
Luke had done more than a hundred real skydives in his life. He had dropped into enemy territory, sometimes under fire. He had been on high-altitude jumps, night jumps, free falls, and he had flown wingsuits. He had never done anything like the kinds of moves Gunner was making inside that glass tunnel. It looked like the kid was dancing in there.
Later, they stopped for hamburgers at a fast food joint. They sat in a booth near the window. The light was already fading from the sky. The days were getting shorter. Winter was coming on. It made Luke think of Becca. She’d had two chemotherapy treatments so far, and she was refusing to see him. Luke had to pick up and drop off Gunner at her parents’ house.
“Dad, how come you never go in the jump tunnel?”
The question shook Luke from his thoughts. He shrugged. “I just like watching you do it. You’re better at it than I’m ever gonna be.”
“I thought you did a lot of skydiving.”
Luke nodded and slurped his soda through a straw. “I have. But this is kind of different from jumping out of a plane.”
“Can we jump out of a plane one day?”
“Sure.”
“When?”
The kid was amazing. Always pushing, always pressing for more.
Don’t ever lose that.
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nbsp; “When you’re a little older.”
Gunner seemed thoughtful at the idea of becoming older. He lapsed into a studied silence. He chewed on his double cheeseburger. He shoved a few fries in his mouth. Finally, he seemed to come to a conclusion.
“Things are changing, aren’t they?” he said.
Luke nodded. “Yeah. They are.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Luke thought of Mark Swann, currently an in-patient at a private mental hospital in Bethesda. Luke and Ed had visited him there the other day. He was in bad shape. He was on drugs to keep him calm, but even so, all he could talk about was his time in ISIS captivity.
The heads, man, Swann had said. That’s the worst part. I can’t get them out of my mind. I see them when I close my eyes. Those crazy bastards. They chop people’s heads off. All the time. If you guys hadn’t come when you did…
Swann had closed his eyes and started to cry then. Soon, he was just sitting there, abject, like a little boy, his body shaking, tears streaming down his face.
In Luke’s experience, Swann was probably done. It took a long time for people to come back from trauma like that, if they ever did.
Trudy was gone, off in the world somewhere. Don Morris was in prison. And Becca…
Life, man. It just chewed people up, and it took them away.
“Dad, is Mom going to die?”
The kid and his questions—it was like being on the witness stand sometimes. “We’re all going to die one day, Monster.”
“Is she going to die soon?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said. “I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that.”
Luke watched Gunner’s face, and his eyes. There was a lot going on in there, behind the scenes. Gunner had things he wanted to say, but he wasn’t saying them. If Luke knew the kid at all, Gunner had about a hundred questions lined up, ready to be asked. And he wasn’t asking them. His world had become a very dangerous place in the past year, and Gunner was treading carefully.
