by James Phelan
These guys were The Business. Modelled on the venerable British SAS, Delta was comprised of specialist men in what composed the best trained and equipped force in the US Army. They were protected by the latest bullet-proof material in the world, in what was the technology’s first real deployment. Covered head to toe in Pinnacle Armour’s SOV-5000 Dragon Skin bodysuits, the small linked scales resembling the skin of the mythical beast. Pitted against small arms, they were all but invincible—even the Secret Service was yet to receive this gear.
The soldiers would put on their snowcams on the next flight, where they would ready themselves to deploy via high-altitude jump to their objective. Many punched each other’s fists and hooted in eagerness to be going out on what had been described to them as a live run, weapons hot.
44
PUERTO RICO
Secher easily passed for Hispanic in his disguise. With his deep tan, the lean Frenchman wore loose cotton clothing with a worn straw hat pulled down over his head, and old leather sandals completed the picture.
On the outskirts of San Juan, away from the beaches with their five-star hotels and casinos, amid the run-down neigh-bourhood and dirty streets, he stood with the throng of people waiting for lifts out of the city. Most opted for the overcrowded buses but he wanted something with the least human contact as possible.
He rode in the back of a truck filled with pigs, up through the hills, the forests either side of him. He held a small GPS monitor, checking the coordinates every few minutes. After two hours of bumping along the road in the beat-up truck, he tapped on the window of the cab and the driver stopped.
Secher passed him another ten-dollar note and stood on the side of the road as the driver disappeared around the next bend. Instead of the hunched-over figure that the driver had seen, the man by the road was now upright, purposeful.
Checking off the coordinates again, Secher put the GPS unit in his backpack and switched over his sandals for hiking boots. He took off, running into the jungle up the thickly overgrown mountain.
45
SOMEWHERE OVER THE NORTH ATLANTIC
The Gulfstream X flew at maximum speed, the sleek intercontinental corporate jet making the trip direct. In the cabin, Sefreid’s GSR security team opened packs of snow camouflage and unlocked cases of weapons and ammunition. Gammaldi got to choose an outfit from a pile of colourful civilian snow gear.
“You think I’ll stand out much in this?” Gammaldi said, trying on a Ferrari-red snowsuit.
“At least I won’t mistake you for a target,” Emma Gibbs said, laying out her snowcams to put over her full-body thermal undersuit. Her shoulder length chestnut hair poked through the hole at the back of her ever-present Yankees cap. The only female member of the GSR security detail easily earned the most respect, simply because she could shoot a target through the eye at five hundred metres.
“Used one of these?” Sefreid asked, holding a Falcon parachute up to Gammaldi.
“No, but if Lachlan can do it, it must be pretty foolproof,” Gammaldi said, taking the heavy pack. More than a parachute, the Falcon had its own GPS-guided electric motor that would drop the passenger within a metre of the pre-programmed target area.
“Once on the deck, we’ll cover you as you approach,” Sefreid said.
“Or…” Gammaldi nodded. “I can help provide cover, and a big ex-Green Beret like yourself can go knock on the door.”
The team laughed at his antics.
“Seriously,” Gammaldi said. “How about we all hang tight for a while and watch what’s going on?”
“Yeah, we’ll do that too,” Sefreid said. “But the caller into GSR said the answer to Fox’s investigation lay at the station, so at some stage we are going to have to go in there and see what’s up. And you know what Fox is working on better than anyone else.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gammaldi said. “Lachlan has probably been strangled to death back in NYC and now I—the last bastion of hope on this investigation for GSR—for the world!—am going into the lion’s den.”
“Look, it’s a remote listening post in Greenland,” Beasley said. “Probably totally automated.”
“Hey, you know a bit about communications stuff, how about you come trick or treatin’ with me?” Gammaldi was in Beasley’s face as he said this, still with humour but his eyes were almost begging the man in front of him.
“Ben, that might be a good idea,” Sefreid said.
“No problemo,” Beasley replied, dumping his pack of snow-cams and picking up a bright yellow parka. He gave a longing look at the .50 calibre rifle he wouldn’t get to use. “Didn’t bring my PSP to play with on this mission anyway.”
“Boys, rest easy. I’ll be covering your back,” Gibbs said, assembling her Accuracy International AW sniper rifle with its custom-extended ten-round mags. “I’ve yet to use Johnny in action. Ten per cent more accurate than my old boy.”
“You named your rifle Johnny?” Geiger asked, the ex-recon marine in the security team genuinely impressed. They all remembered John Ridge well, a soldier who had died fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with them in northern Iran last year. While the team were much like any other private security contractor force, in the seven years they had been recruited to protect GSR personnel, Ridge was the only member to have been killed.
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” Nods all round. That was respect, the pride weapon among the team, the protector in many ways, named for a fallen comrade.
46
THE WHITE HOUSE
Wallace sat in McCorkell’s office in the White House, a modestly sized wood-panelled room in the north-west corner of the first floor of the West Wing. Timber Venetian blinds let the bright mid-morning light slice through the room, adding to the relaxing mood that a scented bowl of maple-wood chips created.
“Hi, Tas, sorry to keep you waiting,” McCorkell said, closing the door behind his guest as he entered.
“You know, in all your time here I think this is the first time I’ve been in your office,” Wallace said, looking around the sparsely furnished wood-panelled walls. “A cosy little sanctuary in the eye of the storm.”
“My office isn’t much to look at, I’m afraid,” McCorkell replied. “The West Wing is fairly run-of-the-mill compared to the rest of the House. Hell, I’m lucky my cubby hole has windows. The fact it has three makes it prime real estate on this floor—the VP’s office next door only has two!”
“Fighting over window numbers, now I know you’ve been in Washington for too long. Ah, nice mug,” Wallace said, referring to McCorkell’s chipped and tea-stained Oxford University mug. They’d met there in the seventies as MA students.
“Yeah, it’s my lucky one,” McCorkell said. “If the President wasn’t tied up in the Cabinet Room all day I’d take you into the Oval to say hello.”
“Another time,” Wallace said. “You guys still crazy busy?”
“It’s busy days, Tas, busiest any of us have ever seen,” McCorkell said. “There were only a few times in the Cold War when things were this frantic on a national-security front. My staff has doubled since the first time I was in this position ten years ago. And still we’re struggling just to keep up.”
“So much for a peaceful outlook for the twenty-first century,” Wallace said, taking a cup of tea from a White House catering staffer. “Thanks.”
“My money’s on the twenty-second,” McCorkell said, taking his mug once it had been poured. The caterer left and closed the door behind her.
“Not that you’re a betting man,” Wallace said with a smile.
“No, sir. How’s Fox getting on with his investigation of the murders—joined any dots yet?” McCorkell asked.
“It’s why I’m here,” Wallace said. “He’s got something that you may have to act on, but keep it close.”
“Oh? About time this friendship was a two-way street of valuable information,” McCorkell said in humour, but Wallace was al
l business this morning. “Of course, I know my releases to you are used wisely. What’s up?”
Wallace put his tea on the desk and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“The Euro Parliament group, Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty…” Wallace began.
“Yeah…”
“What do you know about them and Sianne Cassel?”
Half an hour later, McCorkell had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his office.
“Thanks for coming in,” McCorkell said, closing the door and sitting back down behind his desk.
“I was already on the Hill,” Admiral Vanzet said, putting his hat on the spare chair and leaning against a windowframe. “My back’s killing me at the moment, I’ll stand if it’s all the same.”
“Don, this is about something that could be getting huge,” McCorkell said, leaning over and handing Vanzet the list of names provided by Wallace. He decided to keep the NSA Greenland tip-off to himself until he had more to go on.
“Names of some French military, political and intelligence officials who are part of a planned coup in France,” McCorkell said as Vanzet read. “I want you to keep this on the quiet for the moment, keep it in the family.”
“I read you. Uniformed eyes only should be a new classification code,” Vanzet said. “Damn, some of these names are popular with folk in this town.”
“Precisely,” McCorkell said. “Listen, you got anybody who can do a pick-up and shake-down of one of these people?”
“When?” Vanzet asked.
“Yesterday.”
“That soon…”
“This is going down now.”
“I don’t know, Bill … a coup in France? Seems pretty outlandish,” Vanzet said. “Surely the Agency would have had a whiff of this before now?”
“They might have, Don, that’s my point,” McCorkell said. He watched as the JCS Chairman weighed up his options.
“Okay,” Vanzet said. “I can see you’re really serious about me keeping this close. It’s just with something on this scale, we haven’t heard a whiff of this from any source, and the amount of people in on it … What’s their objective, why the coup?”
“A Sixth Republic in France, followed by a redesigned EU,” McCorkell said. “Why? For the power it gives the newbies on the block. An opportunity for them to make the history books. Money, greed. Why do these things ever happen?”
“I get it,” Vanzet said. “How tight is your source?”
“Hasn’t led me astray before,” McCorkell said, leaning back in his chair.
“What’s the source’s role?”
“Investigative reporter,” McCorkell said. “US based. I trust him enough to see this as a problem worth spending some time on.”
Vanzet didn’t reply, he didn’t need to. He knew as well as McCorkell that the media often had access where spies couldn’t reach. That’s why the CIA, like so many intelligence agencies over the world, included journalists and NGO staff on their payroll. For those being paid, it would often mean some information coming their way once in a while; or, better still, access to areas and information otherwise unobtainable.
“We watch this guy in Germany,” Vanzet said, tapping a name on the list. “Defense Intelligence knows he’s acting as a middleman in buying NATO weapons and stocks from our base in Wiesbaden and selling them to the highest Middle East bidders—usually Iran. We can take him at any time and shake him down, but it will blow their sting to track and capture his buyers.”
“Take him. We need to confirm on this before I make this list a priority for the President’s attention,” McCorkell said.
“I’ll have the SSB unit on him to pick him up ASAP,” Vanzet said, referring to the Strategic Support Branch set up by the previous Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, as his own little CIA.
“Take him and shake him. If he cooperates, we can always offer him a deal,” McCorkell said. “He can go back to his normal criminal life if he cooperates with us, picking up his buyers as we see fit.”
“Sounds workable.”
“Good, let me know as soon as you get some answers,” McCorkell said.
“What are you doing with these names?” Vanzet asked. “Hell, there’s a third of France’s military leadership on this list. If this pans out, it could get messy.”
“Has there been any out-of-the-ordinary French military activity?” McCorkell asked.
“Aside from their exercises in the South Pacific, nothing,” he said.
“Well, I’ll work these names some more from my end,” McCorkell said. “If you can get things quietly moving downstairs, I’ll be down when I can. Step up the surveillance of all French military assets, task with everything you’ve got spare in the Euro theatre and beyond. If it has armour, or weapons, or flies, whatever. We gotta get a head count of their main inventory.”
47
HIGH ABOVE THE NORTH ATLANTIC
“Okay, team,” Sefreid said as he tapped a map of the area. “Gammaldi and Beasley hump it to the station. Gibbs and myself take position six hundred metres to the nor-west.”
“Done,” Gibbs said.
“Yep,” Beasley added.
“Can’t wait,” Gammaldi put in, pulling on a red woollen hat.
“Geiger, you hang on the plane and touch down at Paamiut West airstrip, located about sixty klicks to the north. Nothing there but a refuelling depot, but we had a snow Hummer dropped there for us yesterday by a tour-hire company. There’s only one road into the NSA station, I want you to drive straight in, holding five minutes out ready for evac.”
“Got it,” Geiger said, assembling his M4 with underslung M203 grenade launcher.
“We all clear?” Sefreid asked.
“Crystal,” replied Gibbs on behalf of the team.
“What the hell is that?” Gammaldi asked, taking a step back as Beasley hefted a rifle the size of a cannon from a case that measured twice as long as Gibbs’ sniper rifle.
“Call me an anti-material boy,” Beasley said, holding up a .50 calibre depleted-uranium round. “With my thermal scope, if anyone needs a target taken out from behind a concrete wall at two kilometres away, just shout. Not that I’ll get to use it this time around.”
“Holla,” Gammaldi said, impressed by a rifle being assembled that wouldn’t look out of place on the deck of a battleship.
“Two k’s?” Gibbs asked. She was one of the best snipers in the world, and her deadly range topped out at around eight hundred metres.
“Believe it,” Sefreid said. “A Canadian sniper I served alongside with in ’Stan used one of these to take out a Taliban sniper at about two and a half klicks out. Target practically disintegrated.” Sefreid did hand motions to accentuate the point of impact and disintegration.
“Remember,” Gammaldi said, a meaty hand slapping down on the shoulder of Gibbs. “I’m the short guy dressed like Schumacher.”
48
NEW YORK CITY
Fox sat with Doug Pepper at Beasley’s workstation in the GSR security office. Sefreid had come on the high-frequency radio network right on time.
“We’re deploying in half an hour,” Sefreid said over the radio.
“Roger that, good luck,” Fox replied. “TW went down to Washington earlier today to give them a heads-up, so don’t be surprised if some good guys make an appearance.”
“Copy that, we’ll play it cool, out.”
Fox signed off too and switched the radio to standby.
“Doug, I’m just gonna pop down to the Four Seasons for a couple of quick ones,” he said, walking to the door.
“I’m on your six.”
“I’m just going downstairs, I’ll be fine,” he insisted, getting in the elevator. “You go do whatever it is you do when you’re not babysitting journos.” The doors closed and Fox was pleased to see the annoyed face of Pepper staying behind.
The Four Seasons restaurant was packed with early-evening livery, pe
ople having pre-show dinners and drinks. Fox managed to commandeer the far corner of the bar and ordered a beer.
“Hey there,” a woman next to him said. “Haven’t we met before?”
“Is that line seriously still being used?” Fox asked with a smile.
A tap on his shoulder turned his attention away.
Fox took them in within a second. Two guys, mid-thirties, clean-cut and nondescript suits. Open jackets, a sure sign there was a gun within easy access if necessary. One of them was familiar, and had a small plaster bandage on his forehead. Feds.
“Lachlan Fox,” the first guy said, his accent containing the plummy Boston tones of JFK. “We’d like a word.”
“Sure. Drink?” Fox asked, leaning his back up against the edge of the timber bar when the guys didn’t respond.
“Special Agent Andrew Hutchinson, FBI.” Hutchinson flashed his ID. “You’ve met Capel.”
“Yeah, sorry, mate,” Fox said, offering a hand to the other agent, which was refused. Capel had a face that would not have looked out of place in the bar scene in Star Wars. A face Fox would not forget from three nights ago on the ferry home. Was that only three nights ago?
“I’ve got a problem, Lachlan,” Hutchinson said.
“Three nights ago you turned up at a meeting with someone we’re interested in.”
“That so?” Fox responded. “What’s the problem?”
“Well, the problem is, now we have a dead body,” Hutchinson said. “A PI turned up dead this morning in Queens. His current surveillance case was you.”
“Okay,” Fox said, leaning back on the handrail to signal he wasn’t going anywhere. He wanted to say ‘That a fact?’ in an impersonation of Bogey’s Rick character from Casablanca but thought better of it.
