by Rob Jones
“I said it’s nothing, really. Just a pain in my legs, is all.”
“It’s a pain in your legs and you say it’s nothing… This could be something to do with the elixir, Alex! You can’t just ignore this.”
“Sure, I know that, but there’s no time for that now. We have to stop Kiefel from destroying America!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Vincent Reno watched out of the window as the Learjet 31 touched down at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans on the outskirts of the city around midnight. The tires of its main undercarriage squealed on the asphalt and sent up a puff of white smoke into the dark Louisiana night.
The Frenchman was last to leave the aircraft, with Hawke, Scarlet, Agents Doyle and Taylor and the SWAT men walking ahead. As he stepped outside onto the apron he immediately noticed the much higher humidity down here in the Deep South.
Hawke wiped sweat from his brow. “Reminds me of my jungle training in the rainforests of Belize. That was a long time ago… when I was a much younger bloke.”
“Another era then,” Scarlet said with a smirk. “Didn’t you train against velociraptors back in those days?”
“By the way,” Hawke said, deadpan. “Your sense of humor called and asked when you’re going to find it again.”
Vincent moved between them and put his heavy arms over their shoulders. “You crazy English guys love each other really, oui?”
Agent Doyle spoke a series of commands into his headset and gave the signal to move out. They wasted no time in climbing into the Jeeps and speeding out of the airbase on their way to the processing plant.
Their journey took them through the French Quarter of the city which was usually buzzing with jazz and people drinking and partying on Bourbon Street but tonight the nationwide curfew had brought a blanket of grim silence over the Big Easy.
Somewhere, in the far distance, Vincent heard the sound of an unknown man singing Amazing Grace from a rooftop. The words carried in the silence, and left a surreal end-of-the-world feeling in Vincent’s mind as they moved through the deserted streets and drove along the impressive causeway north across Lake Pontchartrain.
They reached St. Tammany Parish on the north side of the estuary and closed in on the target. Here, the land was still mostly below sea level, and the night was even hotter and more humid than back at the air base.
Vincent watched the flat, featureless landscape flash past as they continued to race north. It was a hot night, and the drab olive-colored trees reminded him vaguely of Provence. His mind drifted once again to his sons. It was all he needed to get the focus and determination required to terminate Kiefel and his underlings.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a call to Marseille. He hadn’t spoken to Monique for longer than he could remember, but now seemed like as good a time as ever. Like millions of other people in the world, wherever she was she had probably seen the YouTube film of Dirk Partridge and would be scared. He needed to reassure her and the boys that they were doing all they could to end the threat.
It rang for a long time, but there was no reply. He nodded his head sadly. Caller ID had struck again. Monique probably thought he was drunk and calling from a bar in Algiers like the last time. He switched the phone off, put it back in his pocket and glanced outside.
He stroked his handlebar moustache and after a moment to clear his head he loaded his trusty PAMAS G-1. The idea of his children being exposed to this nightmare and turned to stone filled him with a barely controllable fear, but he fought it back. It was what the Legion had trained him to do. There was always time to drown your sorrows, but now was never that time. Now was always about fighting.
“No one home?”
He turned to see Hawke beside him. “Not this time, mon ami. I expect they have gone to her mother’s.”
Reaper wiped the sweat from his brow and readied his weapon as they pulled up as near to the perimeter of the processing plant as they could get without giving themselves away. It was a thick mangrove forest. They shut the engines off and climbed out the Jeeps with their weapons.
Doyle was technically in charge of the operation, but had been briefed by Hawke on the best ingress strategy. Now, he led the team around the far edge of the mangrove forest and over the scrubby dead grass which formed a boundary between the processing plant and the rest of the world. Here, on a raised bank, they were able to establish a good overwatch position from which to survey the plant.
Hawke took a night-vision monocular and scanned the plant. “I see the Presidential limo down there. Its rear door is still open and it looks like it’s been abandoned.”
“Anything else?” Doyle asked.
“No, which is what worries me. Where is Kiefel’s transport?”
“Only one way to find out,” Scarlet said.
They reached the perimeter fence and with the aid of a pair of bolt-cutters they were through and crossed the outer zone in seconds. Vincent now saw why Kiefel would choose such a place to weaponize the bacteria – not only was it miles from anywhere but the place itself was labyrinthine in its construction.
As they got closer the true scale of the place dawned on them. The plant was a vast compound of various buildings, storage units and chimneys, all reflecting the bright Louisiana moonlight on their rusted metal exteriors. The wild jumble of buildings stretching all over the expansive compound was not exactly conducive to an easy search and rescue mission.
“Let’s get in there!” Vincent said. “You think I want to be in this country any longer than I absolutely have to, Doyle?”
Hawke suppressed a laugh.
Doyle smiled. “Oh yeah, and I wish I lived in France so much.”
The American Secret Service agent gave the order to move forward, and they headed straight across the enormous car park. Once it would have been full, but now the factory’s disused status had turned it into real tumbleweed territory. Moments later they were pushing into the plant itself, where they fanned out and each took their own section to search.
After searching part of the isomerisation plant, Vincent heard Doyle’s voice over the radio – he and Hawke had found what they were looking for.
By the time Vincent arrived, Doyle was in already in a rage.
“Damn it!” Doyle screamed. “They’ve moved out.”
Vincent felt his anguish as he watched the American agent walk across the room and behold his old boss and mentor for the first time. Now, frozen in stone forever, Dirk Partridge stared into eternity, lifeless. Someone had slid Partridge’s bifocals back onto his stone face. A form of casual mockery which they all knew was the ultimate act of disrespect.
“I swear I’ll kill them all for this!” Doyle said.
Then they heard a creaking sound above them. They spun around and aimed their weapons on the air-conditioning duct grille.
“Don’t shoot! Please, don’t shoot, man!”
“Get down now!” Doyle screamed.
A man in a security guard uniform lowered himself out of the duct and landed with a gentle thump on the desk. He clambered down to the ground, his terrified face drained of color.
“Who are you?” Doyle asked.
“Name’s Logan. I was working tonight’s shift with Jenny Sanchez…” The man looked at his former colleague, now no more than a granite statue. “We got separated and when I ran out of bullets I hid up in the aircon ducts. I did nothing to save her!”
“What happened here, Logan?”
“They used the equipment in the distillation unit to weaponize the bacteria. That thing… I’ll never forget what it looked like as long as I live…”
“We need more details than that.”
“Whatever the hell they extracted from the head they installed into a couple of canisters. They said they were going to spray LA and New York with them.”
“Where, exactly?”
“The place in LA belongs to the big boss – Kiefel, his name was. God damn it, that guy was crazy!”
�
��And what about New York?”
“I swear I don’t know – they never said no more about it.”
Hawke frowned. “Great – New York – that narrows it down.”
Vincent sighed. “So what now?”
Hawke took a second. “You take Kim Taylor here and some SWAT and get over to LA. Me, Cairo and Doyle will go to New York in the meantime. We’ll get Alex and Ryan to work on the specific locations while we’re in the air.”
Vincent shrugged his shoulders. “It’s as good a plan as any.”
“So let’s get on it.”
*
The Learjet cruised thirty-five thousand feet above Virginia on a bearing of forty degrees. It would be landing in New York in a little over an hour and Hawke tried to clear his head. Now, he knew a man like Klaus Kiefel was capable of anything, and taking him out before he could execute the President or release the bacteria over Manhattan would be the greatest challenge he had faced.
Behind him, he heard Scarlet Sloane talking to Agent Doyle. A thin smile appeared on his lips when the next image in his mind was that of a cougar stalking a bunny rabbit. He had no doubts about Doyle’s ability to fight a man like Kiefel, but defending himself against Cairo Sloane was a different matter altogether. On that score, the smart money either stayed in his pocket or backed Scarlet.
His mind turned to his other friends – those who were elsewhere in their own corners of the world, fighting other battles. He wondered how Vincent and Kim were holding up flying over to California to take out Kiefel’s underlings and stop the annihilation of LA… then he thought about Lea, hunting down her past on the Irish coast – was she alone? He wished he could help her, but he guessed she didn’t need it. Then, at some undefined moment, exhaustion finally overtook Joe Hawke and he started to fall asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Charles Grant had faced many challenges in his life, from his time commanding a unit of special operations men in Vietnam’s Khánh Hòa province all the way through his acting career, his time in the Senate and then the ultimate fight to the Oval Office itself. Tonight, however, he knew he faced the toughest test of his entire life – and perhaps the final test. Knowing the whole nation was watching, he steeled himself, determined to die with dignity. He knew this moment would be carved in history for eternity.
Now he watched, helpless, as the terrorists moved around him on the rear deck of the Perseus, Kiefel’s super yacht. They had landed a few moments ago, having flown up from New Orleans out of a private airfield, taking full advantage of Kiefel’s capacity to persuade Kimble to let their plane pass. Now, they were preparing for the final broadcast – Charles Grant’s death. He knew it was no coincidence that Klaus Kiefel had moved the show to the Perseus – while the Americans were dealing with Manhattan and Los Angeles being turned into a statue park, he could slip into international waters.
He watched the German with disgust as he launched into another lecture on the many failings of America, but the final horror was only now revealed as Kiefel commanded Jakob to tie the President into his chair and position him on the deck so there was no way to tell they were in Midtown Manhattan. This meant it was time to die.
Kiefel raised his hands and used them to frame Grant as if he were checking the ergonomics of a piece of furniture. “Ja… das ist perfekt, nicht wahr?”
Jakob nodded, humorless, while Angelika smiled and made a comment in German too fast for Grant to catch.
Kiefel turned to Grant and grinned.
“I hope you’re ready for your close-up, Charlie – it’s Showtime!”
*
The atmosphere in the Situation Room was grim when the appointed hour arrived and everyone gathered around the plasma TV. President Kimble in particular looked very nervous, and had to lean against the desk for support as the image they had all been dreading flicked to life on the screen.
“Greetings America!” Kiefel said. He was standing beside Charles Grant who was now tied to what looked like a deck chair. He was gagged and blinking wildly in terror.
“He looks furious,” Anderson said.
The President’s executive secretary, Margot, dried her eyes with a gentle dab of her pocket handkerchief before turning away from the screen. “He looks scared, to me.”
“He looks confused,” added General McAlister, clenching his jaw.
Kiefel smiled grotesquely into the camera. “You know by now that I have the power to turn man to stone, and you also know I am prepared to use that power. Here, you see before you your former Commander-in-Chief, Charles Grant.”
Kiefel made a big show of looking at his watch. “It is incumbent upon me to tell you Mr Grant has less than an hour to live. How sad.”
Grant struggled against the ropes but they were too tight.
“After Mr Grant has been turned into a garden ornament for my estate, I will turn this awesome power on the American people. Only in this way will my mother be avenged.”
The image was cut and the screen went black.
In the Situation Room, all eyes turned to the President, but it was Brooke, still irritated at being summoned back to the White House by Kimble, who spoke next.
“Someone get me Joe Hawke!”
*
President Edward D. Kimble couldn’t seem to stop his fingers from drumming on the edge of the Resolute Desk. After the video of Grant on the yacht, he had returned from the Situation Room alone, more than a little shaken by what he had seen.
Now, he glanced at the imposing grandfather clock by the door – the same one Charles Grant had installed on his first day as Commander-in-Chief. He felt an uncomfortable wave of nausea rise in his stomach. If everything was going according to plan, his German puppet-master would be televising the execution of his predecessor very soon. All that remained then would be Kiefel’s pièce de résistance – his long-held desire to turn large swathes of the global population into a theme park full of human statues, starting with America.
Maybe, just maybe, Kimble thought… I could use my new power as the President to liberate Klaus Kiefel from his madness – permanently…
The thought was an intriguing one. Perhaps, he thought, he was settling into the Big Chair at last.
It was time to give Klaus Kiefel a call and put an end to the insanity.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Racing north, thirty-five thousand feet above America, Hawke and his team watched the latest film with equal revulsion. Scarlet had woken Hawke to see the live YouTube broadcast, and he’d watched it in a state of genuine disbelief. Before anyone could voice a reaction, the pilot communicated to them that the US Secretary of Defense was on an incoming call from the Oval Office. Seconds later they were gathered around the screen on the cabin partition wall.
Hawke watched as the Oval Office appeared on the screen. The atmosphere looked bleak.
“Joe, this is Jack Brooke. I take it you just saw the broadcast?”
“Us and the rest of the planet,” Hawke said.
“We need to work faster on this, Joe…”
“I know, Jack… I know.”
Hawke watched Anderson pacing up and down the room behind Brooke. He ran a hand through his graying hair. “We need to find out where the hell they are and in a hurry.”
“We have the location of the target in LA,” Brooke said. “Kiefel owns a luxury beach house in Santa Monica. He sent two of his people out there – his lover Angelika Schwartz and the Australian Alan Pauling, his tech guy. We already told Agent Taylor and Vincent Reno and they’re on their way.”
“But we’re still in the dark about the location in New York…”
Kimble was silent.
“Did you hear me, sir?” Anderson said.
“Mr President!” McAlister’s bassy voice filled the room. Kimble looked up, shocked, as if shaken from a reverie.
“Sorry, what?”
“It is critical we locate this place. We cannot let this maniac execute a former President live on the internet, not to mention whatever the
hell he has planned next.”
“Right, yes,” Kimble said. “What do you suggest, General?”
“Get this latest video analysed. I know the last ones gave us nothing, but if there’s anything on there at all – a certain type of unique sound, anything – then we might get something to go on, and then we can…”
“Wait a minute,” Hawke said.
Silence fell over the room and everyone turned to face the Englishman on the screen.
“What is it, Hawke?” McAlister said.
“Play back the video once again.”
“Which one?”
“The last one – the one we just watched a second ago. Play it back there and I’ll do the same up here.”
A staffer re-played the YouTube video and the same grim silence fell over the room.
“We’re wasting time!” Anderson boomed. “You heard him – he’s going to kill Grant any minute now!”
“No – look carefully,” Hawke said. “Do you see?”
“What is it, Hawke?” Kimble said, leaving his desk for the first time and walking over to the TV. ‘”What do you see?”
“Look at Grant – the way he’s blinking.”
“He’s terrified, God damn it!” Anderson said. “What the hell does that have to do with anything? Turn this off!”
McAlister stepped forward and raised his hand. “No – wait. I think I know what’s going on here.”
“And just what the hell is that?” Anderson said.
“Remember Jeremiah Denton?”
“Who?” Anderson said.
“You’re obviously too young to remember,” McAlister said. “Or too ignorant to know.”
“Wait just a God damn minute, General!” Anderson snapped. “I’m the Chief-of-Staff to the President of the United States and you will address me with…”
McAlister cut him off. “Ah, shut up!”
Anderson looked to Kimble for back-up, but the President shook his head and spoke. His voice sounded anxious. “Admiral Denton was a US Navy man, wasn’t he, General?”
