End Zone

by D C Alden

  ’The NSA will find us in a heartbeat if you’ve screwed up, understand? And then we’ll both be dead.’ That got Wilson’s attention, so he pushed on. ‘I’m not asking for immunity, I want to make that clear from the get-go. I’ve committed federal crimes, terrible crimes. I want to go on the record, somewhere secure, far from DC, because if they find me, I’m a dead man. They have that kind of power.’

  ‘You’re talking about President Coffman?’ Wilson asked. His sharp eyes never left Mulholland’s. He could see determination there, and an obvious disgust. That was something he’d have to get used to.

  ‘Yes, the President, and others.’

  ‘You need to do this officially,’ Wilson told him. ‘Under oath. You need representation — ’

  ‘You need to act fast,’ Mulholland cut in. ‘The Shanghai nuke won’t stop them. Beijing was supposed to be next on the list, along with Mumbai and Istanbul.’

  Wilson paled. ‘What list?’

  ‘A list of cities, where the virus was to be deployed.’

  ‘Including Lubbock?’

  ‘That was a pre-planned outbreak,’ Mulholland told him. ‘You were meant to be the first victim, in the multiplex. It was Bob’s idea. He thought it would be ironic.’

  ‘Bob who?’

  ‘Bob Blake. Head of Kroll Industries.’

  ‘The Robert Blake? Holy shit.’ Wilson shook his head in disbelief. ‘And you’re telling me the White House is behind all of this?’

  ’To be specific, the Oval Office.’

  ‘My God.’

  The bell above the door chimed and a large group of seniors bustled into the diner, shuffling towards the booths and tables close by.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Mulholland said.

  ‘I have a contact at the FBI Field Office in Pittsburg. It’s a two hour drive, so we can be there by — ’

  ’No, not yet. Before I hand myself in I need to tell my story, Mister Wilson. To you.’

  The reporter looked confused. ‘You’ll be safe in federal custody.’

  ‘Don’t be naive. No, you need a record of names, dates, locations, everything. Then, in the event I have an accident — or I’m suicided — you can use it to bring the whole house down.’

  ‘An insurance policy.’

  ‘Correct. The Attorney General is clean, at least I’m pretty sure of it. After we’re done I’ll make the call. Then it’s all in the lap of the gods.’

  ‘Where shall we do this?’

  ‘I have an apartment down the street. The camera is already set up and I have a fast internet connection. I suggest you upload the files somewhere secure, a cloud-based service, something like that. And you need to make local copies too. Did you bring the hard drives?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Good. So let’s go. And put your hat back on. We’re just a couple of regular fellas going about our business, okay?’

  Mulholland got up from the table and headed for the door. In the reflection of the glass he saw Wilson hurrying after him.

  The sun had set and the sky was darkening fast. In the surrounding woods, night birds called to each other in the gathering gloom. It was a peaceful setting, and unusual for a meeting of such critical importance, but the Attorney General was calling the shots now. The phrase uncharted waters didn’t begin to cover what the country was going through right now.

  The road stretched empty in both directions, and Ray used the moment to work the travel-stiffness from his legs. Lubbock had given him a new perspective on life, and in particular his health. He’d made it out, but only just. If — God forbid — he ever found himself in that position again, he was determined to be in better shape that he was right now.

  He glanced over his shoulder, at the two Humvees parked in the deepening shadow of a disused ammunition storage bunker. Mulholland sat inside the rear vehicle, bookended by a couple of stone-faced FBI minders from the Pittsburgh Field Office. The blindfold had been temporarily removed, but the peak of his baseball cap had been pulled low to protect his identity from the two Marine drivers who chatted quietly a short distance away. His hands were cuffed, a physical restriction that President Coffman’s former Chief of Staff would have to get used to. Vanessa Holden, Pittsburgh’s Special Agent in Charge and one of Ray’s long-time law-enforcement contacts, paced up and down a short distance away, smoking a cigarette. She looked troubled because she was operating outside her normal chain of command and under the direct orders of the Attorney General, an unprecedented state of affairs for the FBI agent. As the executive jet had made its final approach into the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina, Holden declared that she was pissed at Ray for dumping Mulholland in her lap. Ray thought it was more than that; Holden was scared, the now-default reaction of anyone who learned of the enormity of the crimes committed by their Commander in Chief.

  ‘Here they come,’ Ray said, pointing at the distant lights heading towards them along the wooded road. Holden stamped on her cigarette, and they stood in silence as the approaching convoy drew closer. It was made up of three vehicles, two Chevy Impalas and a dark coloured Ford Explorer, all of them emblazoned with the Marine Corps Police livery. They rolled to a stop in the middle of the road, red lights flaring in the fading light. Engines idled as doors swung open. The men who climbed out were evenly split between business suits and combat uniforms. Ray didn’t recognise any of the suits and the military men wore no rank or name tags. All he knew is that they’d been sent from McDill Air Force Base in Florida and they were operating at the highest authority, albeit without the knowledge of the Oval Office or anyone on Mulholland’s list of known and suspected Coffman allies.

  ‘Here we go,’ Holden said under her breath.

  Ray’s heart rate climbed. He had a sudden vision of guns being drawn, of executions by the side of the road and his own body being tossed into the back of the Explorer on top of Holden’s and her FBI minders. Mulholland’s shocking and terrifying testimony had stoked Ray’s paranoia. The grey-haired man in the dark overcoat who shook Holden’s hand did little to allay those fears.

  ’Special Agent Holden, my name is David Parker from the Attorney General’s office. My colleagues here are from the Legal Counsel’s Office, and will bear witness to this exchange. The men in uniform are from Special Operations Command at McDill. They’ll be taking custody of the witness.’ He glanced over at the Humvees. ‘Where is he?’

  ’Second vehicle,’ Holden told him.

  ‘We’ll take it from here.’

  A couple of uniforms marched across the road and manhandled Mulholland out of the vehicle, while a couple of the suits used compact cameras to record the exchange. The baseball cap was tossed to the ground and a black hood went over his head, secured in place by what Ray assumed were noise-cancelling headphones. The leg irons were clamped on next, and then Mulholland was perp-walked across the road and secured inside the SUV. He never made a sound, and Ray was puzzled by a sudden and irrational pang of sympathy for the man. For Mulholland, the road ahead would be a very dark one indeed.

  ‘You must be Ray Wilson.’

  Ray took Parker’s offered hand. ‘Yes sir.’

  Parker looked at them both. ’So, this is as far as you guys go.’

  Ray swallowed, the hairs on his neck standing on end as he imagined a gun barrel aimed at the back of his head. Holden brought him back to reality.

  ‘Sir, with respect, I have to ask about jurisdiction here. This is a highly irregular situation — ’

  ‘Here,’ Parker said, reaching into his coat pocket. He handed Holden a plain white envelope. ‘Written authority from the Attorney General himself and countersigned by the Assistant AG. A copy will be made available to your Director in due course. You’re legally covered, Special Agent Holden.’

  She took it and nodded her thanks. Parker handed another envelope to Ray. ‘This is for you,’ Parker said. ‘It’s your security clearance.’

  Ray turned the envelope over in his hands. ‘But I di
dn’t — ’

  ‘This is a national security matter, Mister Wilson. Everything you’ve heard and seen here today, including your videotaped interview with Erik Mulholland, is classified until further notice. That means you don’t talk, period.’

  Ray swallowed his protest. This went way beyond his First Amendment rights. ‘I understand. So what happens now?’

  ‘Now we leave,’ Parker told him. ‘Thank you for your assistance. Someone may contact you in the near future, Mister Wilson. Please make yourself available when they do.’

  Parker and his team walked back to the waiting Chevys and climbed in. Ray followed him and Parker powered down the window. The men inside were silent, the Marine driver staring through the windshield. The radio spat bursts of garbled military traffic.

  ‘Make it fast, Mister Wilson. We have a plane waiting.’

  ‘One question; are we going to be okay? The country, I mean?’

  Parker looked up at him in the darkness. ‘JFK once said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I can assure you right here and now that the forces of good are gathering as we speak. Have faith, Mister Wilson. Good night.’

  Ray stood his ground as the vehicles swung around him in a squeal of tyres and headed back to the distant runway. Holden stood next to him, and together they watched the convoy’s tail-lights until they disappeared.

  ‘Strangest day of my career, no question,’ the Special Agent told him.

  Ray tapped the envelope in his hand. ’Worse thing is, I can’t tell a soul. So, what now?’

  ‘We fly back to Pittsburgh. I can make a stop at Dulles if that’s where you need to be?’

  ‘Much obliged,’ Ray told her. He kept his voice low as they walked back towards the Humvees. ‘You know, I’m still struggling with all of this. Our own president, for god’s sake.’

  ‘C’mon, Ray. It wouldn’t be the first time a sitting president has ordered the murder of innocents. It’s merely a question of scale. Must be a bitch for you, though, sitting on a scoop like this one.’

  ’Some stories are best left untold,’ Ray told her. They climbed inside the leading Humvee and the driver pulled away, the other vehicle following behind.

  ‘Back to the aircraft, ma’am?’ the young buzzcut asked.

  Holden nodded. ‘As fast as you like.’

  Ray turned to the Special Agent. ‘What’s the hurry?’

  Holden’s face was lost in shadow. ‘I need to get home, make plans with Tommy and the kids. In case those forces of good that Parker spoke of are unsuccessful.’

  Ray didn’t respond. Instead he watched the passing woods, the shadows between the tress now dark and impenetrable. The scene reminded him of his escape from Lubbock, and that same fear and uncertainty returned once more. Vanessa’s being prudent, he told himself, and he wondered if he should adopt a similar mindset, make his own plan. Perhaps he would. Perhaps he should, but the more he considered it, the more he preferred to hang his hat on Parker’s words, the advice he’d shared before his car had pulled away.

  Have faith…

  It was pretty much all Ray had left.

  Three Stretchers Outside Flagstaff

  They couldn’t use the roads because they had no idea whom they could trust.

  The area was remote and sparsely populated, and the people who lived there might’ve been asked to watch for strangers, to write down license plate numbers and take photographs if they saw any out-of-state vehicles nosing around the area. To be a good neighbour and pick up the phone.

  Some of those people would be civilians, recipients of the occasional gratuity, courtesy of the benevolent billionaire who lived on the secluded ranch in the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona. And then there were the park rangers, an organisation of more diligent observers, some of whom might’ve been duped into believing they were helping to protect the privacy of an American patriot.

  So the roads were out.

  The sky above the Kaibab National Forest was not.

  The deployment involved four aircraft, two C-17 Globemasters and two V-22 Ospreys. The C-17s had taken off from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, transporting a Joint Special Operations Task Force comprised of assaulters from SEAL Team Six’s Red Squadron and operators from Delta Force’s D Squadron. After three hours and twenty-eight minutes, the C-17s landed at Kirtland Airforce base in New Mexico, where the JSOTF HQ and Delta Force recce troop elements disembarked. The HQ team was driven straight to the 58th Special Operations Wing where they would set up their Tactical Operations Centre, while the Delta operators boarded two waiting V-22 Ospreys. Shortly afterwards, all four aircraft lifted off into the night sky and headed west. After another hour of flight time — and taking slightly different courses — the C-17s levelled out at ten thousand feet above the Grand Canyon.

  Inside each aircraft, the two-minute warning sounded and the Special Forces teams went to work, switching from the C-17s inline feeds to their portable oxygen bottles. They checked equipment, then each other for signs of hypoxia and decompression sickness. The High-Altitude-High-Opening jump was being performed much lower than usual, but these men never took anything for granted. Separated by eleven miles of freezing night air, assaulters and operators on both planes gathered near their respective ramps, their clothing and equipment buffeted by the wind, their experienced eyes searching the mountainous terrain, the distant clusters of city lights, and the bright, looping necklace of Highway 64 far below. Everything in between was a black void.

  Hand signals were given and acknowledged. Final checks were made. Gloved fingers were flexed as all eyes turned to the Jumpmaster, to the amber light that glowed on the airframe above his head.

  Green light on —

  From the rear of both aircraft, a total of sixty-two SEALs, Green Berets and CIA paramilitaries stepped off their respective ramps and into the darkness. Chutes deployed within fifteen seconds and the teams formed up into high-altitude stacks, riding the gentle northern winds towards the Landing Zones thirteen miles away.

  To the south, the SEAL element drifted down without incident, spiralling lower until the wide field below was visible to all. Six miles to the west, the Delta element had identified their own LZ, a narrow but elongated meadow surrounded by stunted spruce and Scotch pines. The HAHO stacks separated and the parachutists followed each other down. As the earth rushed to meet them, ram-air parachutes flared and booted feet hit the ground running. Harnesses were unbuckled and shrugged off, and canopies left to drift across field and meadow. Time was short, and there were several miles of ground to cover.

  Further to the north, the Delta recce troops exited the V-22s and made their own cold and uneventful journey to earth. Their LZ was a vast, overgrown paddock located close to an abandoned ranger station, and they hit their target with silent, experienced accuracy.

  Soon after, the encrypted calls went out to the TOC back at Kirtland; three teams down and advancing to target.

  The assault was being monitored by two Gray Eagle UAVs, both of them mounted with the latest wide-area motion imaging cameras, giving the remote pilots at Creech AFB, Nevada, a crystal-clear, god-like view of the target and surrounding area. And there was a lot of information to process.

  The target was a huge, sprawling ranch that nestled in a wide valley surrounded by low hills to the north and west, and open pasture to the south and east. As the UAVs flew high, lazy circles above the target’s fifteen-thousand square acres, the Air Force pilots watched the three assault elements closing in on the main compound, a collection of barns, stables and equipment sheds, and thermal imaging revealed at least thirty armed hostiles within a hundred yards of the single-storey main ranch house. There were other patrols further out, moving on foot or driving along trails and tracks in open-backed pickups. There was no sense of urgency, no rapid, defensive deployments. For the private security force protecting the ranch, things were quiet, perhaps a little mundane.

  Watching the Joint Special Operatio
ns Task Force converging on their target, the airmen at Creech knew all that was about to change.

  The senior nurse switched off the monitoring equipment and the warning tone died.

  Bob Blake stood in silence for a moment, gazing at the jaundiced husk of a man with whom he’d spent half his life with as they’d built a multi-billion dollar empire from the ground up. He felt a little sad, and also a little scared; cancer cared nothing for wealth or status. Matt had spared no expense, but in the end the disease was unstoppable. Blake briefly imagined the financial rewards of a one-stop cure for cancer, but it wasn’t about money anymore; he’d need several lifetimes to spend what he’d already accumulated. Now, it was all about power, and once it had shifted to a single global throne, Amy Coffman would have to one day anoint a successor. Blake couldn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be him, but recently he’d displeased her majesty. The grand plan had hit a couple of snags, and now it was time to get it back on track.

  Matt’s medical team stood around the room, half a dozen solemn-faced carers and nurses, two of whom were misty-eyed. They’d been paid handsomely for their services, and their confidentiality agreements locked them into a lifetime of absolute secrecy, but Blake wondered how long that would last now that Matt was dead. They would’ve heard Matt’s drug-fuelled ramblings about depopulation, the H-1 virus, the garbled references to Mumbai and Shanghai. He wondered how many of them had joined the dots when Matt had clapped feebly at the TV as the news of Lubbock broke. Blake wanted to ask them, but it was pointless. They knew. Which was why they had to go.

  ‘I want to thank you all for your kindness and dedication,’ Blake told them. ‘I know Matt and his family appreciated everything you did for him.’

  ‘Would you like me to speak to Missus Sorenson?’ the senior nurse asked. Her name was Estevez, a spare, fifty-something Mexican health professional.