by Rawlin Cash
The CIA knew it. The NSA knew it. And the Saudis knew it.
And it went back further. First Lady Nancy Reagan, who was the face of the Just Say No anti-drug campaign in the eighties, received a donation of one million dollars from the Saudi King in 1985. In 1989, Barbara Bush’s literacy campaign received a million dollar check. The fact that the donations jumped from a million a pop to over twenty-three million for Clinton’s pet project coincided exactly with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Saudi need for American intervention in the region.
But it went back still further. In the seventies, the Saudis purchased an entire bank in Georgia, First National, just so they could restructure President Jimmy Carter’s business loans.
Hunter had his finger on the trigger.
He wanted to pull it.
This fucking guy fucking owned America.
Or at least he thought he did.
But today was not going to be his day.
The Crown Prince was a world player at the highest level. Hunter had killed people at his level before, but not without a direct order from above.
He could see Bin Faisal’s face. He could make out the logo on his rose-tinted Gucci sunglasses. He could make out the pattern on his tie.
He pictured the bullet hitting his head.
He didn’t love violence. Hunter wasn’t a sniper because he enjoyed seeing the bullet strike. It was his job. He did it because he was good at it. His grandfather had drilled it into him. If you were good at something, and they need you to do it, that’s what you did. That was how you put food on the table. That was your calling. Your livelihood.
All that money. All that influence. That fucker.
Hunter had seen the receipts. The media coverage. For over seventy years, the New York Times and the Washington Post had been writing puff pieces on how every new Saudi leader was a reformer and a modernizer. Just two months ago, the New York Times had written what was basically a love letter to the Crown Prince, despite the fact he was on the cusp of starting the worst famine in modern history. But then, the Saudi government maintained one-hundred-thousand subscriptions to both the New York Times and the Washington Post, essentially bribing them to the tune of almost a million dollars a week. That bought a lot of fucking silence. The Saudis maintained similar subscription levels to the LA Times and the major newspapers and media outlets in London, Paris, and Berlin.
It all came down to dollars.
It was that simple.
With an output of twelve million barrels of oil every fucking day, half a million barrels every fucking hour, and a price per barrel fluctuating between fifty and one hundred dollars, you could literally own the world.
It might look like presidents, and media outlets, and major corporations owned the world.
But looks could be deceiving.
There was always something beneath the surface.
It was an age of information, of openness, of transparency, but there were still secrets.
There were lists of the world’s richest people. The real time listing of the world’s richest people put Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, at the top. He had a personal net worth of 131 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was personally worth 65 billion. Warren Buffet, 89 billion. Bill Gates, 99 billion. The Koch brothers were each worth 52 billion.
The Saudi royal family was not on the list. Its net worth, controlled by the King and Crown Prince and concentrated in the hands of approximately two thousand loyal members, all linked by blood, was estimated to be well over two trillion dollars. That meant the Saudi royal family was twenty times richer than the world’s richest man. In fact, the Saudi royal family was richer than the entire Forbes rich list. They were richer than all other billionaires on earth combined.
The Saudi royal family was so rich they were worth more than the 2018 posted profits of the world’s five hundred largest corporations combined.
“Fuck it,” Hunter said.
He put his finger on the trigger. He took aim. He accounted for atmospheric conditions. For wind.
And then he dropped the gun and rolled. Call it instinct. A sixth sense.
The second he moved, a bullet smashed into the concrete air conditioner housing he was using for cover.
One of the drones had seen him. They’d stopped patrolling the embassy airspace and three of them were headed in his direction.
He’d been made, and the next bullet was already airborne.
Forty-Nine
Hunter backed further into the air conditioner housing. It was concrete and provided good cover but he couldn’t stay there.
There were dozens of drones in the air. Any one of them, if it got a line of sight, could guide a bullet to his position.
His M2010 was loaded with .300 Winchester Magnum cartridges. They had fifty percent more range than the 7.62 NATO rounds used in an M24. They were bottlenecked magnums, introduced by Winchester in 1963 and based on the .375 H&H Magnum that preceded them. The case length was 2.62 inches. The overall cartridge length was 3.34 inches. He was also using heavy, 220 grain Sierra MatchKing Hollow Point Boat Tail bullets. They were capable of a muzzle velocity of 2,850 feet per second. They were a hard-hitting, low-drag ammo, highly accurate at long range and easily capable of taking down a moose or large elk. The effective range was fifteen hundred yards. They would be supersonic to about fourteen hundred.
Hunter thought about it. The ammo hadn’t come from the CIA. He’d taken it from his private cache and had in fact purchased it illegally six months earlier from a special tactical unit officer inside the Chattanooga, Tennessee Police Department.
He was confident in the ammo. What he wasn’t sure of was whether it could bite through the armor on the drones. The drones were new to him, different from the one’s used in the attack in Virginia, but they looked a lot like modified MQ-9 Reapers. He knew the Saudis had access to the MQ-9, despite the congressional export ban, and his instinct told him the drones in front of him reverse engineered much of their technology.
The MQ-9 was designed to be heavier, stronger, and more capable than any predecessor drone. It was the first true hunter killer available to the Air Force. It was equipped with a 950-shaft-horsepower turboprop engine, had a max speed of three hundred miles per hour, a range of over eleven hundred miles, and a fully loaded endurance of over fourteen hours.
Hunter’s mind was on two things. First, if any of the drones made a visual on him, they were probably equipped to guide a sniper bullet. Second, they were carrying their own weapons payloads.
While these drones were smaller than the Reaper, they still looked formidable. There was over a dozen of them and they were positioning themselves around his location.
He tapped on the concrete housing that was protecting him. It was solid, built in the sixties, eight-inches thick. But it wasn’t enough.
Regular MQ-9s were equipped with seven hardpoints capable of carrying AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs, five hundred pound GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition, AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, or a British designed Brimstone air-to-ground missile.
These drones had a single hardpoint and Hunter had no idea what they were armed with. He wasn’t going to wait to find out either.
He needed to get off that roof.
He jammed the stock of his rifle into the air conditioner and stopped the fan blades. It was a large, commercial unit and he climbed past the fan and into the ventilation shaft. There was a twelve foot drop immediately inside and he leapt down, taking his rifle with him. He fell the twelve feet to the first bend in the shaft and a moment later, the entire structure above him exploded.
Flame blew down the shaft and he had to cover his face with his arm. He could feel the hair on his head and arms singe.
He continued down the shaft just in time to avoid the next explosion. He dropped another few feet and was able to find a grate leading to the top floor of the building. He leapt through and found himself in a corridor lined
with apartment entrances. The fire alarm had gone off and sprinklers sprayed water down on him.
People rushed from the apartments, filling the corridor. Hunter walked through the crowd, moving against the flow, and the fact he was carrying a rifle barely registered.
The corridor ended at a blank wall with a door to either side. He kicked open the one on his left and called out, “This is a forced evacuation. The building is on fire.”
There was no one inside. It was a nice apartment, minimalist style, monochromatic, the kind of place he would have liked if he ever settled down long enough. He walked around the sofa to the east-facing window and partially opened the blinds.
He could see the embassy across New Hampshire Avenue, the grounds out front, and a single chopper. The president had been turned back. The drones were still buzzing around the embassy in a swarm.
They were moving in coordination and Hunter knew that each had to be controlled from a remote location with its own UAV operator. Each operator would have multiple screens, piloting and targeting computers, radars and communications equipment. There was no way all of that was inside the embassy.
He wondered if it was on US territory.
How did the Saudis get permission for them?
Had Meredith already given them new powers?
These were advanced, military-grade drones armed with air-to-ground missiles flying over Washington DC, and as far as Hunter could tell, they were getting their orders from the Saudis.
“Fuck you,” he said as he set up the rifle and took aim at the drone closest to him.
He aimed at the rear propellor. Three shots in rapid succession, the glass in the window collapsed, the bullets hit their mark, and the drone began to spin out of control. He allowed himself the luxury of watching it go down. It was the size of a small car and smashed into an office building across the street, shattering glass all along the building’s face. Then it veered back out over Virginia Avenue and when it hit the ground, it skidded along the street, tearing through the concrete. Traffic swerved to avoid it and some vehicles went off the road. It came to a halt in the center of an intersection where a pickup truck immediately rammed into it.
Hunter withdrew to the corridor and used the service staircase to get back to the roof. He had to use his sidearm to blow open the lock.
He opened the door slowly, just a few inches, and found another of the drones through the scope.
It was high, out of range, but he watched it and waited.
It was drifting in the direction of the White House.
Fifty
Hale wanted to commandeer a chopper at the Pentagon.
“I’m still the fucking director of the CIA,” he told Fawn as they made their way down the corridor. “I’m not taking a fucking cab.”
Fawn thought it was bold, they’d just been released from DoD custody, but it worked, and minutes later they were circling the White House.
“Marine One is in the air,” the pilot announced over the comms as they circled the airspace.
“Arriving or leaving?” Hale said.
“Arriving. We’ve been cleared to land after it.”
Confronting Meredith was a risk, but they had no choice. Hunter wasn’t going to kill her unless they were certain she was part of the plot. This was the fastest way of finding out. If she arrested them, Hunter would be able to deal with it.
“You sure about this?” Fawn said through the comms as the chopper descended.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it herself. She still remembered the look on Meredith’s face back at the bunker. There was something there that Fawn couldn’t quite put her finger on. Meredith was in on something. She had to be. An explosion made her president and everything she’d done since was in the direct interests of Saudi Arabia.
But that look on her face.
It wasn’t fear.
It was terror.
They landed after Marine One cleared the pad and were escorted directly to the Oval Office.
Fawn recognized the agents who escorted them. They’d been Jackson’s men less than a week ago. Whatever Meredith was up to, she hadn’t had time yet to replace them. That was a good sign.
“I know you,” Fawn said to the lead agent.
“That’s correct, ma’am. I escorted you into Raven Rock.”
They walked on and for some reason Fawn said to the agent, “Hopefully nothing like that happens today.”
The agent nodded and Hale turned and gave her a strange look. They arrived at the door to the oval office and were ushered through.
Hale made a point of holding the door for Fawn.
“Agent Aspen,” he said.
She was feeling strange, reckless, like she was at the end of her tether. She entered the office and the look on Meredith’s face told her everything.
Meredith was pale, distraught. The stress on her face was palpable. There were dark bags under her eyes and she looked like she’d been crying.
She looked at them from behind her desk, the Resolute desk, and she was so small. Something told Fawn this wasn’t the mastermind behind three presidential assassinations. For the first time, she was glad she hadn’t shot her.
The desk looked big enough to swallow her. It had been a gift from Queen Elizabeth in 1880, built from the timbers of the Resolute, the ship of the doomed British exploration of the Arctic that was abandoned in 1854.
No one spoke.
Hale was looking at Meredith, eyeing her up like she was a viper.
Fawn already knew she wasn’t.
“You can barely see over that thing,” she said.
It took Meredith a moment to catch her meaning, then her mouth quivered, ever so slightly. She wanted to cry.
“We’re all on the same side,” Fawn said, stepping slowly toward her.
Meredith looked to the window as if afraid someone might be watching them, and Hale picked up on it.
He stepped toward the window but Meredith stopped him.
“Don’t,” she said.
Fawn looked at him. They didn’t know what was going on but something was very wrong. The president of the United States shouldn’t look like she was afraid of her own shadow.
“Is everything all right?” Fawn said.
She went around the desk and put her hand on Meredith’s arm. Meredith seemed to collapse emotionally the moment her hand touched. She threw her arms around Fawn and before Fawn knew what was happening, Meredith was weeping silently into her neck.
“Shh,” Fawn said.
“Don’t speak,” Meredith said into Fawn’s ear. “They’re listening to every word.”
Fawn let go and looked into her face. Meredith looked back, scared, alone. She pointed at her ear and mouthed to Hale that they were being listened to.
Hale nodded.
“We were arrested,” he said.
Meredith looked at Fawn. She couldn’t explain the arrests. They needed to get out of that office.
“Would it be acceptable to you, Madam President,” Hale said, “if we had something to eat?”
“They can bring us something,” Meredith said, her voice thin and quiet.
“President Jackson and I used to eat in the kitchen sometimes. There was a cook down there that made scrambled eggs like you wouldn’t believe.”
Meredith said nothing. Fawn took her by the arm and led her to the door. They went down the corridor and through some service doors to one of the building’s many kitchens.
When they got there, the kitchen staff took note and cleared out.
Hale looked firmly at Meredith.
“All right,” he said to her. “What the fuck is going on?”
“It’s not me,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t do this.”
Hale looked at Fawn and then back at Meredith.
“What are you saying?” Fawn said to Meredith.
“I’ll tell you exactly what happened,” she said. “You know I have a daughter right?
”
“Fifteen years old. Goes to boarding school in Florida.”
“Her name is Grace.”
“Right,” Fawn said. “So what happened?”
“The night of the State of the Union. It was about seven. It was dark out and I was still getting dressed for the event.”
“At your home in Silver Spring.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone with you?”
“Yes. My guest for the event, Mark Caplan.”
“The man you’ve been seeing.”
“Right, he’s a lawyer. Anyway, he left the house for a quick trip home. I’d left the earrings I wanted to wear at his house. They were my mother’s. He went back to get them for me.”
“And what happened?” Hale said.
Fawn looked at him. He was in interrogation mode, playing the bad cop.
“There was a knock at the door. I went to answer it, but when I saw who it was I refused to open the door.”
“Who was it?”
“Are you familiar with the Saudi operative, Jamal al-Wahad?”
“Yes,” Hale said, giving nothing away.
“He was holding my cat. Princess. There’s a window by the front door. He was looking at me through the glass. He stood there with the cat in one hand. He was holding her by the neck. Then he crushed her neck in his fist. He just held her out and killed her, let her die in his hand while I watched.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I mean, I just stood there. I cried.”
“You didn’t report this?”
“When the cat was dead he dropped her on the doorstep and then held a piece of paper up to the glass.”
