The Lone Patriot

by JT Brannan

  THE LONE PATRIOT

  J.T. Brannan

  Published by Grey Arrow Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 J.T. Brannan

  The right of J.T. Brannan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First Edition

  For Justyna, Jakub and Mia;

  and my parents, for their help and support

  ‘A perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.’

  – General Valery Gerasimov,

  Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation,

  Military-Industrial Kurier, February 27, 2013

  ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’

  – Albert Einstein

  PROLOGUE

  1

  The President of the United States, Ellen Abrams, was dead.

  Long live Clark Mason.

  Mason congratulated himself once again as he surveyed the proceedings on the floor of the United Nations. He was seated at one of the many tables that occupied the gigantic hall of the UN General Assembly, waiting his turn to speak at this emergency session.

  He sipped water from his glass, still not quite able to believe that – after all his years of scheming, all his political machinations – he was now the US president.

  The most powerful man on the planet.

  It had been gifted to him too, by those Iranian-sponsored terrorists, their hundreds of chemical-weapons-filled drones that had attacked Wembley Stadium in London and – at a stroke – wiped out half of the world’s leadership.

  And how was he going to repay Iran for inadvertently making him president?

  Well, he was going to invade that Islamic sonofabitch Republic and destroy it completely; the reason this meeting had been called in the first place.

  He finished the water, wishing that it was cognac.

  ‘I must stress, in conclusion,’ said the man standing in front of the nearly two hundred UN representatives, speaking from behind the marble-faced lectern, ‘that direct Iranian involvement in this unspeakable attack has yet to be proved to any measurable degree. And yet our cities are being bombed, and our people are already being killed in retaliation!’

  There were murmurs and mutterings from around the room, but this was the UN, and whoever held the floor had to be allowed to speak – even when it was somebody as universally hated as Mohammed Nabavi, President of Iran.

  It was notable, Mason thought, that Nabavi was here himself rather than – as he often did – sending a lower-ranked member of the government to represent him.

  It must mean that he was scared about something.

  And rightly so, Mason thought with a grin. Rightly so.

  ‘The Americans,’ Nabavi said, pointing a finger across the room at Mason, ‘are leading a coalition whose only intention is to get vengeance for something they think we did. And so how many people are going to die as a result? How many innocent men, women and children?’

  Mason felt his blood boiling, his anger rising. Who the hell was Nabavi to question him? After what he did? And now here he was, pointing his finger at Mason.

  Well, fuck you Nabavi, you son of a bitch!, Mason thought angrily, hands pressed hard onto the lip of his table. Fuck you, and your damned country!

  ‘I will remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that this unprovoked attack on our sovereign nation has no UN backing, and is completely illegal, not to mention immoral. And so I would like to seek a motion to end this aggression by the US-led coalition with immediate effect; and what is more, our Islamic Republic demands that reparations are made for the damage that has already been done. This entire affair is a dangerous overreaction by President Mason and his allies, and directly affects world security. There are only air strikes now, yes, but where will it end? I demand the cessation of all hostilities against us, until a thorough and impartial investigation is carried out into the terrorist incident in London. Thank you.’

  There was no applause for the Iranian president as he stood down from the lectern, even from what had been his allies in previous such meetings; indeed, there was not so much as a single clap.

  Mason wasn’t surprised; too much had happened, too much had changed, for anyone to want to be seen supporting Nabavi. Iran was in danger, they all knew, and they didn’t want to be next.

  Nabavi glared at the American president as he returned to his seat, but Mason could see more than anger in the man’s eyes. There was fear there too, genuine fear, and Mason was pleased. The man should be scared, he thought as he stood and approached the stage himself. There was certainly a lot to be scared about.

  As the eyes of the world’s gathered leadership settled upon him, Mason didn’t allow himself to rush; he merely shuffled the papers he had carried with him to the lectern, basking in the moment.

  He looked across the room, saw the anger there, the hate; and not for him, not for the United States. For once, almost everyone in the room was with him.

  No, the hatred in the room, so palpable, was for Iran.

  For what they had done.

  Hell, Mason believed that if he tabled a motion to launch a nuclear strike at Tehran, it would be supported.

  But that wasn’t what he wanted; not exactly, anyway.

  Iran would be punished, but not by atomic weapons.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Mason began in his deep, soothing tones, the same voice he used to get women into bed and the same voice that had carried him through his political career. ‘You all know why I am here. President Nabavi has claimed that Iran was not involved in the attack in London, but this is clearly not so and it is my intention to prove it. And when I have proved it, it is my further intention to ask for UN approval for coalition plans to invade the Islamic Republic of Iran, further to ratification by the Security Council.’

  There were a few sharp intakes of breath, Mason noted, but on the whole, the room was quiet; they all knew what he wanted, after all, and most of them would be prepared to support him.

  ‘Let me take you back to the beginning,’ Mason continued, ‘and the callous, barbaric atrocity that started this whole thing – the murder of seventy-six people in a terrorist attack in London that targeted both a synagogue and a school.’ Here, Mason paused for emphasis. Everyone knew what was coming, but the horror could never be lessened. ‘And need I remind you that the vast majority of the dead were children? From an elementary school, aged from four to eleven. Four to eleven,’ he emphasized through gritted teeth, and the anger was real. ‘Babies.’

  Mason looked around the huge UN auditorium, saw that everyone was focused on him, and him alone.

  ‘It was assumed that this was a “lone-wolf” operation,’ he continued, ‘the work of just three young men with no outside backing, all of whom died during the attack. I will not honor them by mentioning their names here. But evidence gathered by our intelligence services soon indicated that it was anything but an ungoverned atrocity. No,’ he said with a wag of his finger, ‘it was all meticulously planned, by much higher powers than those three young murderers.’

  He ignored the fact that most intelligence services, both British and American, had failed to make the connection, and it had been Force One – the unit he had been trying to close down – that had actually made the discovery. More specifically, it had been Mark Cole – the group’s commander – who had hunted the leads down.

  Mason still didn’t know how he felt about Cole and Force One – after all, he had spent many months trying to bu
ild a case against them, in order to bring them down. But a large part of that had been because he had seen it as a way of getting President Ellen Abrams impeached, for authorizing what he believed to be nothing more than a covert death-squad. But now Abrams was gone, and he was president anyway, and he wondered if perhaps the unit might not be useful in the war to come. And they did still have that damned videotape . . .

  He shrugged off the thought, took a sip of mineral water, and continued with his speech.

  ‘Javid Khan was discovered near the scene of the crime, and pursued through London, killing a police officer in the process. Khan was an officer in the Pakistan Army, before going AWOL and becoming a unit commander for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Fell off the radar and was discovered by British intelligence entering the UK just a few months before the attack. Unfortunately, they lost track of him too, until he was found near East Lane Primary School.

  ‘Further investigations revealed that Khan had provided the weapons for the three killers, meeting a shipment at Southampton docks. Grenades, pistols, assault rifles, even a rocket launcher,’ Mason added with disgust. ‘There was another crate he offloaded from the docks too, but I’ll get to that in a little while. Let’s concentrate on that first crate for now.

  ‘The weapons were shipped by the Agostinis, a Corsican crime family operating out of Marseilles. And they had been provided with the weapons by Radomir Milanović, a Serbian arms dealer. And do you know,’ Mason asked as his eyes scanned the hall, ‘who ordered these weapons from Milanović?’

  He paused again, took another sip of mineral water, before redirecting his gaze toward the Iranian president.

  ‘The order came from a man named Mohammed Younesi,’ Mason continued, answering his own question. ‘The commander of the Office of Europe, part of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security’s Second Directorate of Foreign Operations – in other words, the department of Iranian intelligence dedicated to orchestrating terrorist activity in Europe.

  ‘Now,’ Mason added with a theatrical chuckle, ‘we’ve all heard today President Nabavi’s protestations that Younesi was working on his own, that the operation wasn’t authorized or recognized by anyone in the Iranian government, but this is both preposterous, and demonstrably false. US intelligence has documents – which will be made available to everyone – detailing exactly how far up the chain of command this thing went.’

  It was true, too – between Cole’s actual presence at MOIS headquarters in Tehran, and his daughter’s computer skills, they had all the evidence they would ever need to pin this thing on the Iranians. The Islamic Republic had been caught red-handed, and Nabavi’s excuses were merely a last-ditch effort to save his government and way of life from annihilation.

  ‘But as we all know,’ Mason continued gravely, ‘the death of those poor children was only the first part of the Iranian plan. The second part relied upon our own humanity; they knew that we would honor the fallen, that everyone would want to commemorate the dead. And so when the memorial event was organized at Wembley Stadium in London – nearly a hundred caskets laid out on the field, tens of thousands of mourners in the seats, the gathered leaders of fifty nations ready to express their sympathy, their solidarity – it played directly into the hands of the Iranians.

  ‘And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where the second crate shipped by the Agostinis to the United Kingdom came into play. It was filled with sarin, a deadly nerve gas supposedly ‘stolen’ by terrorists from the Iranian chemical weapons factory at Shahid Dastgheyb; of course, it was really stolen and shipped by MOIS agents, again as documentary evidence shows incontrovertibly.

  ‘The sarin was then loaded onboard two hundred small drone aircraft, each drone carrying five hundred grams of the nerve gas, equaling a total payload of one hundred kilograms – all aimed at the crowd of mourners gathered at the stadium.

  ‘The drones were remotely piloted by six members of the Havanirooz, Iranian Army Aviation – supposedly defected to ISIS, but in reality still under the orders of the Iranian military.

  ‘And even though our men and women made a heroic attempt to stop this attack, unfortunately –’

  Mason stopped, looked down as he seemed to gather himself, and it was only partially an act; the Iranian plan really was as horrific as they came. But eventually he looked up, eyes unfocused in the middle distance, and continued.

  ‘Unfortunately, ten drones managed to get through our defenses, and dropped their evil payload on the crowd below, a crowd gathered only to mourn the passing of children already murdered by the Islamic Republic of Iran.’

  The hatred in Mason’s voice was palpable, and it was an emotion shared by most of the men and women gathered in the UN auditorium.

  Mason shook his head and let out a long, slow breath.

  ‘The result,’ he continued at last, ‘was catastrophic. I won’t give the details here of how the gas works, but suffice to say that dying from such an attack is unpleasant in the extreme. And at Wembley Stadium, the death toll was seventy-four thousand, two-hundred and ninety-eight people – men, women, and yes, more children – massacred by the Iranian regime, including thirty-seven national leaders.

  ‘Like many countries represented here, the United States has faced appalling losses, not least of which was the death of our own president, my predecessor Ellen Abrams. This has thrown the entire civilized world into a chaos that it has never before experienced, which is one thing; but let me repeat that number I mentioned previously, so that we are all clear about exactly what President Nabavi and the Islamic Republic of Iran have done.

  ‘The death toll in London was over seventy-four thousand innocent people; and all so that Iran could take out our Western leadership structure, and blame it on the ‘terrorists’.

  ‘It was perfectly planned, ingeniously executed, and – if we let it be – incredibly effective.’

  Mason took on board some more water, then shook his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘But it is only effective if we let it be,’ he said with his deep, grave tones. ‘And I for one propose that we do not let it be. We know that it was not a terrorist attack, we know that it was planned and approved at governmental level within Iran; and we cannot let it lie.’

  Mason thumped his fist down on the lectern.

  ‘We will not let it lie!’

  He scanned the crowds again, looking for approval, glad when he saw it.

  ‘It is therefore the proposal of the United States of America to lead a coalition of allied forces in a full invasion of Iran, in order to remove the government of the Islamic Republic, as represented here by President Nabavi. You all know that the US Congress, at my direction, has recently passed legislation titled “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Regimes Sponsoring Terrorism”, which gives us our own legal authority to pursue Iran in this matter, but we would like multinational consensus.’

  He didn’t need to add that the desire stemmed from the aftermath of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, when the United States was harangued in some quarters for its perceived unilateralism. If the UN didn’t back him, he would invade Iran anyway, of course; but it would be nice to have a strong legal position to back himself up with the international community.

  ‘So our demands,’ Mason continued gravely, ‘are this – either Iran willingly surrenders its key government personnel, including its so-called Supreme Leader, to face trial on charges of mass murder, and to dissolve the Islamic Republic to make way for a democratic regime put in place by an advisory body, led by the United States and its allies – or, subject to approval by the UN Security Council – we will invade the country and impose these measures by force.’

  The response from the gathered leaders started with the agreeable nodding of heads, followed by sporadic clapping which – in turn – led to outbreaks of wild applause, and even cheers.

  Mason looked around for Mohammed Nabavi, and was unsurprised to see the man’s seat empty.

  The Iranian preside
nt probably had no wish to be lynched.

  Mason smiled grimly. Nabavi would get what was coming to him soon enough, anyway.

  Yes, he thought happily, the whole of Iran would soon be getting exactly what was coming to it.

  2

  ‘We are still waiting orders, Alexei,’ said Colonel Boris Ludenko, as he pulled up the collar of his parka against the December chill.

  Ludenko was the commander of the 137th Reconnaissance Battalion, an elite part of what was already regarded as an elite unit, the 4th Guards Tank Division of the Russian Ground Forces. Major Alexei Volkov was his second-in-command, as ferociously capable as he was legendarily impatient; hiding under camouflage tarpaulin waiting for instructions was the man’s worst nightmare, as Ludenko well knew. But when the battle finally came, he knew he would be able to trust Volkov with his life.

  ‘You heard about the UN summit, I presume?’ Volkov asked with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘I saw the news,’ Ludenko said. The troops – along with their vehicles and support units – might have been in hiding, but they were still in friendly territory and, underneath the tarpaulins, they could still enjoy many of the comforts of home. Television, radio and wireless internet access were just some of them. How much longer such a situation would last, however, was open to debate.

  ‘Then we will be on the move soon, no?’ Volkov probed.

  Ludenko shrugged his big shoulders, accepted a steaming mug of borscht from an orderly, and looked back at the major. Volkov hadn’t been party to everything that was going on in Moscow – not even Ludenko had been, in fact – but both men were experienced enough to put two and two together. They knew, therefore, that their future mission would depend to a large extent on the results from the current UN meetings.

  ‘President Mason has given Iran an ultimatum,’ Ludenko said. ‘Remove its entire governmental machinery, along with its religious leadership, and the coalition won’t invade. So perhaps there will still be no war.’