“So I’m afraid they were most definitely our missiles and were ultimately fired by a Russian, although absolutely not on behalf of the Russian government.”
Jack believed everything Ilya was telling him. It wasn’t just that he had promised on the life of his grandchildren, something Jack knew was sincere, bit it was far more simple. It was the only thing that made any sense of what was a crazy and fucked up situation. But it did leave him with one major issue: he was about to obliterate a Russian factory, which he now knew was most probably unwarranted.
“I also appreciate you need to be seen to be doing something,” said Ilya out of the blue and much to Jack’s surprise.
“What are you saying?” asked Jack.
“Someone is trying to start a war. If you don’t react, they may try something even more elaborate. You also need to show that you’re in charge and will not tolerate our aggression.”
Jack remained silent, and Ilya went on.
“I am clearing the Almaz-Antey factory and will begin an investigation into the missile systems’ fault as of tomorrow morning. Until then, the factory will be deserted.”
Jack could not believe Ilya had just offered up the factory that they had already decided would be their retribution. He considered the possibility of a leak. Somebody could have already alerted Ilya but the timings were too tight. He considered the situation in reverse and to be honest, it was what he would have done. Ilya was a man whom Jack had always respected and with every interaction, his respect had grown.
“You will have to show genuine outrage and threaten repercussions,” counseled Jack.
“Oh, I will, but rest assured, the anger will be for whoever is playing us against each other.”
“Likewise,” replied Jack. “We should also keep to a minimum those aware of our communications.”
“Of course,” replied Ilya before giving Jack a list of numbers to contact him privately, at any time, night or day. Jack reciprocated and both men ended the call far happier than they had started it.
Ilya walked back into his meeting. The room silenced instantly in anticipation.
“Not good,” announced Ilya. He had thought long and hard about just how much he could trust his inner core. It hadn’t taken long. He couldn’t, at least not totally. However, the more pressing question was whether they were capable of orchestrating the actions that had led their country to the brink of war. The answer was a very categorical ‘no’.
The light bulb moment hit him like a sledgehammer. Why it had not been his first thought staggered him. His predecessor was a man who had taken corruption to levels never seen since the Roman Empire. His friends and KGB acquaintances littered the world’s rich lists, as the oligarchs, created under his rule, profited from the endless pool of Russian natural resources. The election result with Ilya Chernov as winner had shocked the nation and the world. Somehow, a genuine and honest politician had won. The attacks from his predecessor following the result had been relentless. Everything he had tried to change would attract a flood of negative articles in the press, all sponsored by the previous president. However, all that had stopped, eighteen months earlier. All dissent had just ceased, not gradually but suddenly. Since then, nothing had been heard from the previous president. Even with Ilya’s anti-corruption campaign seizing and imprisoning many of the oligarchs, the former president remained silent. Ilya had his number one suspect. He considered sharing his suspicions but thought better of it. He had other business at hand.
“I want the Almaz-Antey factory cleared of every living soul,” he announced matter-of-factly.
“Did he say he’s going to bomb the factory?” said Dmitry in panic.
“No,” lied Ilya. “But if I were him, I’d bomb the shit out of it,” he added honestly before leaving the room.
***
Jack replaced the receiver and immediately contacted his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Kenneth entered the Oval Office, just as the call went through.
At the sound of a voice on the other line, Jack raised his finger to his lips, stopping Kenneth from talking.
“Mr. President?”
“Chairman,” replied Jack with a smile. “One change to your plan.”
“Yes, sir?”
“No warning before the missiles hit.”
The instruction was met with silence.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” replied the chairman uneasily. He considered questioning the decision but his job was to carry out his president’s orders, not question them.
“You can’t do that!” blurted Kenneth, interrupting the conversation. The Chief of Staff was not a yes man.
Jack waved him off angrily. “No warning,” he reiterated and hung up.
Kenneth looked on furiously; it was he that would have to deal with the fallout from the mass slaughter at the Russian factory. He would be fielding the calls and trying to spin why the Americans hadn’t felt it necessary to warn defenseless workers.
Jack checked that the line was disconnected before briefing his Chief of Staff on the plan he had just hatched with President Chernov. Kenneth’s face paled the more Jack talked.
“That’s unbelievable,” he said in response. “Are there any clues as to who?”
“Not a clue, but this doesn’t leave this office and I want the FBI and CIA directors in here now. Wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, they drop it and get here yesterday. Understood?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” he replied, still shaken from the revelations.
“Well?” prompted Jack.
Kenneth realized he should be moving. He got up, left the Oval Office and hurried to his own. He had calls to make. On the way, he managed to type a short text. It was hurried and somewhat panicked but the message to the recipient was loud and clear:
“They’re not buying it, start operation Z.”
Chapter 22
It had taken Butler half an hour to find and hotwire a truck. It had taken him another two hours he didn’t have to find Swanson. The pool of blood that decorated the location of where he had left her to fend for herself caused a pang of guilt like none he had felt before. He had searched the area thoroughly, even beyond the distance he believed a person who had lost that amount of blood could have conceivably travelled. With a heavy heart, he had to accept that she was gone.
With the weight of Swanson’s life on his shoulders, it was with renewed vigor that he made his way back to Washington. He had to get to the president. No matter what they threw his way, he was going to see the man. He owed it to his country and he owed it to Agent Swanson. She had believed him, she had stuck her neck out for him, she had died because of him. He had left her collapsed against a tree. He assumed Chan had given up, cleared out before all hell broke loose over the RV fire and shooting. He had assumed wrong; she would have been a sitting duck. He thought back to the blood, pints of it. They must have slit her throat. That amount of blood only ever followed a major arterial bleed, femoral or carotid - shot to the leg or her throat slit most likely. He pictured the last time he had seen her, collapsed, immobile against the tree. It would have been the easiest kill in the world to walk up and slit her throat. He punched the steering wheel, wishing it were Chan’s skull. He hadn’t left her to be killed, he comforted himself. He had genuinely believed Chan had gone. He had left her because time was of the essence. He had a country to try and save. He left her to make her own way back.
The image of her head tilted back and blood gushing from her gaping throat jumped into his mind. His subconscious was clearly telling him to cut the bullshit; her death was on him.
Butler blinked his eyes to clear his vision. The road ahead was not going to be easy. Chan had been on Butler’s tail since he had left the CIA two years earlier. Butler had been an analyst for the CIA, specifically within the financial services sector. He monitored military suppliers within the ‘Communist states’. A far cry from his earlier role, Butler had been a victim of the end of the Cold Wa
r era and the surge in radical Islam. His specialty had been the Soviet Bloc. He spoke Russian, Czech, Polish and numerous other former Soviet era languages, along with Chinese and North Korean. As a field officer, he had lived in a world where every move, every conversation had been a risk. The cloak and dagger world of subterfuge in foreign cities had been replaced by a computer and a desk in New York where the greatest risk to his well-being was the temperature of his coffee. Running agents had been replaced by the mind-numbingly boring task of running numbers.
The monotony of his new role was matched only by his stubbornness to reach his thirty years’ service and receive a full pension. After having risked his life, day in day out, for over twenty-five years, he believed it was the least he deserved. The fact that he could have earned five times his salary in private service was irrelevant. The full benefits of the pension were, as far as he was concerned, worth the three years of pain. He had resigned himself to just sitting it out, nine to five Monday to Friday. How hard could it be? The majority of the population managed to do just that for over forty years.
After a week, he had seriously reconsidered the value of a pension. After three weeks, he had joined every thrill-seeking group he could find in the New York area. From parkour to base-jumping and white-water rafting, Butler was gaining his thrills for once outside of work. Although in his early fifties, he was showing most of the youngsters in the groups a thing or two about fitness, strength and agility. Parkours had quickly become one his favorite, moving from point A to B as quickly as possible and negotiating obstacles as fluidly as possible. It worked his mind as well as his body. Movements had to be calculated quickly and executed with precision. Strength and speed were vital in ensuring he landed in one piece. At times, a few of his moves had him wishing his base-jumping parachute was at hand but after a short while his confidence had him attempting jumps that most winced at. At fifty-two, he had never felt so alive while doing sport and at fifty-two, he had never felt so brain dead as when he was at work.
The rather innocuous and easily missable sale of one of China’s microchip plants had been initially nothing of note, just another item of information that came across his desk. The plant, years earlier, had manufactured chips for the Chinese Air Force and as a result was on a watch list. As far as Butler could tell, it hadn’t manufactured a military component in over ten years. Two weeks later, a news item had reported a spike in the cost of computer equipment due to a shortage of computer chips. As the item played out, Butler thought about the sale of a microchip manufacturer in a report just two weeks earlier. The former military chip supplier was one of the largest manufacturers of computer chips in the world. Shortly after its sale, commercial chip stocks had dwindled.
The following day in the office, he had investigated further. A quick search on the internet had revealed that the Chinese manufacturer had not been the only chip manufacturer sold around the same time. A number of US-based chip manufacturers had also been purchased. However, as these were domestic rather than foreign sales, the CIA had no interest in them and so they had not passed his desk. Curious over the sudden sale of chip manufacturers, a bit more digging had uncovered the sale of the US manufacturers. Ten, in total, had been bought by one company - America’s Trust. Fully aware of the Trust’s wealth and desire to rebuild America, Butler, although surprised that microchip companies would be high on their list of priorities, had shelved his interest. News of the Trust’s purchases no longer made the front half of US newspapers, such was the voracious appetite for tackling the critical infrastructure problems of the US. The Trust had made it clear from day one that its sole purpose was to protect, maintain and improve the critical infrastructure of the US. Overnight, it had taken ownership of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan and had promised the citizens of America that the Trust’s trillions of dollars would ensure the future-proofing of the systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, that were vital to the United States.
The Trust had only one remit, to rebuild a stronger America. It had no shareholders or owners. The American people were its beneficiaries. The Trust was seen as a safe pair of hands and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan’s Annual Report had become almost a Trust Annual Report, such was its level of ownership across the eighteen critical infrastructure sectors. In fact, a year earlier, it had been announced that the Trust would compile the Annual Report moving forward, taking on the responsibility from the Department of Homeland Security.
Why they needed the chip plants Butler neither knew nor cared. At least, that was, until he received his first call from the Trust, from a Mr. Smith. Butler had subsequently discovered that the Trust employed a statistically improbable number of Smiths of both sexes. Mr. Smith had called to inquire about his interest in the chip manufacturers. Butler had unceremoniously told Mr. Smith to mind his own business. With his interest well and truly aroused, he began to dig deeper. What he had uncovered had been nothing short of staggering. America’s Trust had purchased the Chinese plant, attempting to hide the purchase through a number of false companies and blind trusts. One thing the CIA could do well was tear down the bullshit.
The more he dug, the more he uncovered similar purchases across various sectors. Overt purchases of American manufacturers were either followed or preceded by secret Far East purchases. The chip manufacturers in the US, all defense contractors, remained open but all had stopped actual production. Research and design continued but actual production was being shipped overseas. The Chinese manufacturer, previously one of the world’s largest commercial chip manufacturers, had become the manufacturing plant for the ten US defense contractors, also purchased by the Trust. This explained the shortage in the commercial world and the spike in retail prices of commercial computers and equipment. What it did not explain was how it was conceivable that defense technology was being sent to a foreign manufacturer, breaking God alone knew how many regulations, statutes and laws.
Butler documented his findings and sent them to his supervisor. Nothing happened. He followed it up with a chaser. Nothing happened. He became all the more curious and began to dig further. His supervisor had then become very interested in what he was doing every second of the day. Every second had to be accounted for. Every second not spent working was a theft, a theft of time he was being paid for. Within two months of his initial findings, Butler was escorted off the premises, terminated for gross misconduct with a loss of all benefits and accrued entitlements. Twenty-seven years of service were over just like that.
It was the end of his career and the beginning of his enlightenment as to who and what the Trust was. After two years, he had tracked their progress, unraveled their bullshit and evaded their assassins. Chan and Smith, or whatever their real names were, had been the latest in a long line of Trust henchmen he had eluded. He had tried to make the authorities aware of what was going on but as time wore on, the line between the authorities and the Trust was becoming thinner and thinner. The Trust had bought the establishment, hook, line and sinker. Butler had no idea who he could trust anymore. Even if he could, why would they listen? The Trust was saving America. Who was he in all this? According to The Trust, he was a madman, intent on killing the president. Butler’s ‘therapist’ had alerted the authorities over a year earlier about his concerns with regard to his patient. Of course, the fact that Butler had never in his life been to a therapist nor even knew his accuser seemed irrelevant.
Although obviously inconvenient, it had highlighted a rather obvious route for Butler to take. The one person in the country with the power to actually stop the Trust, was the president. Butler’s only issue was getting to him while being number one on the list of would-be presidential assassins. Even Al Qaeda was lower on the threat list than he was.
Fortunately, the US government had trained him in just how to get to someone no-one wanted you to get to. Butler turned his attention to getting to the president. He had heard tell of secret tunnels from the White House. There were many. The problem was,
they weren’t really secret and so were exceedingly well guarded. He had delved further into the information available to him and found an obscure reference in Truman’s diaries to an extraneous architectural drawing of the White House, of which there was no public record. Butler was intrigued. A subsequent mention of an apartment being purchased just before remodeling of the White House had begun had him off and running. Joining dots that weren’t really visible was his specialty, and the discovery of the truly secret tunnel had been his coup d’état. What he hadn’t planned for was that the tunnel was a dead end. The capsule that surfaced from the tunnel into the president’s residence must have been locked in place when it was last used. No matter what he had tried, he could not get it to budge. That had been six months earlier. After days of trying, he had given up, but not without installing a motion sensor, in the hope that someone, preferably the president, discovered the capsule and used the tunnel.
Butler thought back to his first meeting with Swanson. Just as he had spotted President Jack King walking nonchalantly down the street, she had swooped. She had even spoken to the president, blissfully unaware, like every other person that night, of who he was. Except for Butler of course. Swanson was good; he had to hand it to her. He had not been aware of being followed or the trap closing in. Whether he had let his guard down because he was on home turf in the US was irrelevant - he had been trained to spot the spotters.
Swanson crept back into his thoughts and snapped him out of his daydream. He blinked. He was seeing her wherever he looked. He blinked again. She was where he was looking. That was why she had sprung back into his consciousness. She was sitting in the roadside diner he had just driven past. She wasn’t dead; he hadn’t left her to die. He spun a 180 and literally ran into the diner leaving the stolen truck with its engine running and door wide open. Swanson turned as he crashed through the door. The relief on his face was not reciprocated. She stared back at him with…what? He didn’t know her well enough to know, anger or surprise?
ALL ACTION THRILLER BOXSET: THREE MURRAY MCDONALD STANDALONE THRILLERS Page 12
