by Karl Weber
Anna sighed. “So other than a username, we have no idea who the Deep State’s mole is.”
“Another question for another day is what I say. Besides, we just found out that the Deep State plans to kill the president in front of his biggest supporters tomorrow.”
“Any chance we could get him to cancel the event.”
“I doubt it. He’s been talking about this event for too long to cancel at the last minute.” Jack groaned . “And informing the Secret Service to what’s going on will be tough considering the chief of staff at Homeland Security is with the Deep State.”
“Do we have video from the VR conference that we could use to expose Donavan and the rest?”
“I wish we did. Unfortunately, capturing video and audio of a virtual meeting isn’t possible from a technical standpoint. At least not yet anyway.”
Anna sighed. “So what are we supposed to do then?”
Jack thought about Anna’s question for a moment before answering even more suave-like than his usual self. “Simple. We’re going undercover.”
Chapter 10
Jack couldn’t remember the last time he wore a tux. He wore a business suit almost every day of the week. However, this situation called for a tux, as he was to help oversee security for President Huckleberry. The president was holding a social gathering for his biggest donors in the conference center at the Tucker Hotel & Casino located in Tampa Bay, Florida.
The table Jack was sitting at was located on the opposite side of the room from the podium where Huckleberry would do his thank-you speech. He’d chosen that table to allow himself a better view of anything that could happen. The whole event was taking place indoors where there were fewer factors to keep track of, and that helped ease Jack’s nerves.
He leaned back in his seat and watched the guests pour into the conference room. All the men dressed in tuxes with the women dressed in expensive evening gowns in varying colors. They took their seats while Jack watched with a bored look on his face. That was until the sight of Anna emerging from the crowd made his eyebrows shoot up.
Anna walked towards him wearing a black-lace evening gown. Jack had always found her greatly attractive, as he never minded the sight of a woman who had good curve appeal in a pants suit. However, the evening gown only accentuated Anna’s beauty; it was the only thing except maybe her tac suit that gave such emphasis to her curves, which Jack loved. He admired her exquisiteness as he stood up to pull out her chair.
Anna flashed him a warm smile. “What a gentleman.”
“Am I ever not?” Jack teased.
Anna playfully rolled her eyes in response.
Jack returned to his seat and took a moment to admire the fact that her gown was also backless.
Anna took the next few moments observing the crowd until noting in the corner of her eye that Jack had been admiring her the entire time.
She looked at Jack and smiled. “I hope you’re not looking at me because you think I’m a suspect,” Anna kidded.
Jack gave off a grin. “I’m not sure, Miss Perkins. You definitely have the means to keep a man’s attention,” Jack said while pulling the slit back on Anna’s dress revealing her thigh holster containing her Brigham 2031.
“I’d say there’s some truth to that,” Anna said seductively while rubbing Jack’s thigh.
Jack kept his grin. “I might need to hold you for interrogation, Miss Perkins.”
Anna matched his grin. “You just might, Mr. Shepard.”
An hour later the event had properly kicked off. The elegantly decorated conference room was filled with Huckleberry’s biggest financial supporters who were seated around the large open room with President Huckleberry at center stage giving his thank-you speech.
Inside the security room were two Secret Service agents along with two other security staff that belonged to the hotel. They watched Huckleberry talk on the main monitor while the monitors off to the sides displayed the feeds from the hotel’s underground parking garage. That was where the president’s limo was parked and on standby if he needed to be quickly evacuated.
The hotel guards sat in their seats watching the monitors while the two Secret Service agents stood behind them with their arms crossed. One of the agents looked over his shoulder when he saw the door to the security room open in the corner of his eyes.
He turned his head and raised an eyebrow when he saw nothing but thin air. That was right before he and everyone else in the small room was met with a barrage of gunfire. It came from a suppressed fully automatic weapon that dropped all of them before they could even react. Their blood was sprayed throughout the floor and walls. Brass bullet cartridges were littered all over the floor next to the open door.
Suddenly a figure dressed in a Spectral Covert Tactical suit instantly became visible to the naked eye. He tightly held an AK-12 assault rifle with a suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. His MAG boots crunched over the discarded casings as he made his way to the bloodied control console.
The room still stank of gunpowder mixed with the smell of blood.
He set the AK-12 on the table next to the console before bringing up the SCU attached to his left wrist. After a few taps on the SCU’s holographic screen, every monitor in the room turned black.
“The cameras are blind. You’re both clear to proceed.” The voice was deep and scratchy.
“Roger. Heading into the conference room to place the diversion now,” a male voice responded.
“Roger. Proceeding toward the garage now,” another male voice responded.
“I’ll rendezvous with you there.” He turned to leave the room as he swapped the magazine in his AK-12 for a fresh mag. Work was still left to be done.
Huckleberry had almost all eyes belonging to the crowd of well-dressed people on him. He was always great at capturing and holding people’s attention, which always served him well in his campaign rallies. Anna was one of the many who kept her eyes on Huckleberry. She had a lot of respect for the man and was, of course, grateful for everything he had done for her and Jack.
Anna felt extremely obligated on both a professional and personal level in protecting the president’s life and didn’t want to think of the consequences if she were to fail. While she stared at Huckleberry like almost everyone else in the room, Jack was doing the opposite.
He was looking up and down, left and right, anywhere that a threat could present itself. Content with what he saw, Jack decided to take a quick break and savor the sight of the beautiful brunette sitting next to him. He took the moment to appreciate the sight of the woman he was happy to have as both his peer and romantic partner. He returned back to the job at hand. Not long afterwards he noticed a Secret Service agent enter the room from the rear near the table where he and Anna were seated.
The agent was holding a black briefcase in one hand as he walked toward the end of the room. Jack knew the name of every Secret Service agent present at the event, thanks to a prior briefing. Judging by the man’s blond military buzzcut, Jack quickly identified the agent as Victor Cox. Jack’s eyes followed Cox for as long as he could before Cox disappeared behind a large column. The agent reemerged back into Jack’s view shortly after, but without the briefcase.
Jack tapped Anna lightly on her shoulder to get her attention before he whispered to her, “Look left.” Anna complied. The couple watched Cox exit the room almost in a race-walk, as if wanting to get out as quickly as possible without making a scene.
“I thought Cox was assigned to the garage. What’s he doing here?” Anna whispered back.
“I saw him enter the room with a briefcase in one hand. He was quick to drop it off somewhere. Wasn’t long after I lost sight of him that he was making his way out of the room. Likely, he really didn’t want to be noticed.”
“Let me rewind the camera feeds and see where he dropped it,” Anna said as she brought up her SCU attached to her left wrist. Anna tapped on the holographic screen to bring up the hotel’s camera feeds. The feeds she brou
ght up were nothing but black screens. Anna raised an eyebrow. “Something’s wrong. I can’t access the feeds.” She continued tapping away on the holographic screen trying to fix the problem, but to no avail.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Jack declared while looking over Anna’s shoulder. “Go track down Cox. I’ll find out where and what he dropped. It could just be paranoia, but …”
“No reason to take chances. No need to explain.” Anna finished Jack’s thought. The couple nodded before they both got out of their seats and went separate ways. Anna walked out of the room in pursuit of Cox. Meanwhile, Jack walked toward the back of the room where Cox left the briefcase.
At the entrance and exit of the hotel’s underground parking garage was a guard shack where two Secret Service agents were present. The parking garage had been mostly vacated prior to the president’s arrival with the only vehicles left being the president’s limo and a few civilian vehicles that belonged to hotel staff. Only essential personnel were allowed in the garage while the president was on location.
A black van rounded the corner and slowly approached the guard shack. It came to a peaceful stop just short of the retractable spike strip that came out of the asphalt surface. The dark-tinted driver side window of the van rolled down, exposing the driver in black military fatigues with a balaclava covering his face.
The occupant of the front passenger seat was identically dressed and was holding a suppressed AK-12 in the direction of the agents at the guard shack. Both agents reached for their sidearms but were too late. Bullets ripped straight through the glass of the guard station before they tore through the flesh of the agents, who fell to the floor of the small shack covered in blood and broken glass.
The driver of the van reached inside the guard shack to hit the switch that lowered the spike strip blocking the van’s path. The driver hopped back into his seat, and the van sped away.
Chapter 11
Looking down, Jack scanned the area where he knew Cox had left the briefcase behind. After only a bit of searching, Jack spotted the briefcase hidden behind a column. He got down on one knee and laid the briefcase flat on one side. It wasn’t locked, so Jack proceeded to open it. He froze for a second after realizing what it was. The plastic explosive attached to the various electronic modules made it more than obvious. The briefcase was a bomb.
“Shit,” Jack muttered. Upon closer examination Jack saw a small digital screen with the word ARMED clearly displayed. Jack was pretty good with tech, but not with explosive devices, and he didn’t plan to start practicing now. He tapped on his earpiece. Anna needed to be warned that Victor Cox was a real threat. “Anna, we have a problem.”
Anna was making her way down the same hallway that she had seen Cox vanish down. She was walking as fast as she could wearing heels when Jack spoke up in her earpiece. She tapped on it to respond, “What do you mean?”
“The briefcase is a bomb. Watch out for Victor, he’s up to something.”
“Son of a bitch,” Anna uttered. She stopped in her tracks when she noticed a couple of bullet cartridges that stood out on the vibrant red flooring of the hallway. The casings were just outside the doorway to the security room. Suspecting danger, she reached underneath her gown and grabbed the Brigham 2031 off her thigh holster before slowly proceeding to open the door. She opened it and was repulsed when she saw the aftermath of the massacre that took place inside the room. “Everyone in the security room is dead.”
“What?” Jack wanted to make sure he didn’t mishear her.
Anna looked down at the casings that littered the floor. “Someone snuck up on them and shot them all to hell. Judging by the size of casings, I’d say it was with some sort of assault rifle. That was why the cams were down.” Slowly Anna stepped over the bloody corpses and avoided the pools of blood to make it to the control console. She had her SCU work its computer magic, and within a few seconds, the camera feeds were up again, including those for the garage.
Four Secret Service agents surrounded the president’s limo, each one taking a post at one corner of the vehicle. All four of them raised their weapons when they noticed the blacked-out van speed around the garage corner headed towards them. Before any of them could squeeze a shot off, however, they were shot. Bullets ripped through the backs of the agents standing guard at the rear of the vehicle. The van pulled into a parking spot across from the opening that led to the nearest hallway.
Victor Cox emerged from that hallway and looked down at his fellow Secret Service agents lying before him in pools of their own blood. In the corner of his left eye, Cox noticed a figure suddenly appear, holding a weapon. The figure across from him raised his AK-12’s barrel and pointed it at Cox. The situation was about to escalate until …
“Natural society is a façade,” Cox said nervously.
“And only God knows it,” the figure dressed like a Specter replied. Both parties immediately lowered their weapons.
“If you ladies are finished pointing guns at each other, would you mind lending us a hand?” said one of the masked figures who had just exited the black van. Cox and the Specter walked over to the van. One of the identically dressed masked figures pulled open the van’s sliding rear door to reveal three gagged men on their knees inside the van. All of them were wearing handcuffs behind their backs and, judging by their skin color, looked to be Middle Eastern.
One of the masked men looked toward Cox and the Specter, reaching his arm out toward the captives as if giving a presentation. “The three lucky bastards. All three of them are famous Islamic terrorists who later turned Dominion. The CIA captured them months ago from a black-ops operation hardly anyone knows about. We’d been keeping them detained in an off-the-records facility just in case they would become useful for a situation like this.”
“I could care less who they are,” Cox impatiently said. “Get them in place.”
The CIA agent scoffed underneath his balaclava before he and his buddy began offloading their prisoners.
“What the heck is going on?” Anna murmured. On the security room’s main monitor, she witnessed everything that was happening in the garage. A Specter? Anna asked herself. The voice she heard sounded vaguely remember, since she had been in the CIA’s recently disbanded Specter program.
During Anna’s tenure in the program, she could remember there always were around six field-ready Specters present at a time. The Specter she was watching on screen was obviously male, based on his deep, masculine, and scratchy voice. His build also looked slightly bulky. Anna couldn’t think of his name at the moment, but that didn’t matter.
The Specter was a traitor to the country, and she now had video proof of it. Although Anna figured that didn’t matter much if she couldn’t stop the assassination attempt on the president’s life in time. She tapped her earpiece before speaking up.
“Jack, the Secret Service agents guarding the president’s limo are down. I just watched them all gunned down by Cox and what looks to be a rogue CIA Specter. How are you doing with that bomb?” Anna looked at the monitor that displayed the conference room feed and saw that Huckleberry was off the stage, but those seated remained as if nothing were wrong. She also saw Jack and what looked to be a Secret Service agent crouched down next to the briefcase bomb with him.
“I just alerted the other agents about it,” Jack told her. “We pulled Huckleberry off the stage but didn’t alert the crowd to the threat to keep things contained.”
Anna looked back at the monitor that displayed the garage. She saw one of the captives taken out of the van right where the Specter had gunned down the unsuspecting Secret Service agents. The captive was relieved of his gag and handcuffs right before being shot three times in the chest by Cox with a suppressed handgun. The Specter crouched down and placed the AK-12 that he used next to the dead body, positioned as if it belonged to the dead man instead. This is a setup, Anna realized.
Before she spoke up to let Jack know what was happening, Anna noticed Cox had his finger o
n his earpiece like he was listening in to someone. “They found the bomb,” Cox announced to his fellow perpetrators. He must’ve overheard the radio chatter due to Jack informing the Secret Service about it.
“Blow it,” the Specter ordered.
“But we’re not read …”
“We will be. Just do it.”
Fearing for Jack’s life, Anna yelled, “Jack, the bomb is going to blow. Get away from it now.”
Jack took Anna’s suggestion to heart as he wrapped his arms around the Secret Service agent crouched down next to the bomb and pulled him away from it. “Everyone, get down,” Jack alerted the room as he ducked underneath the nearest table for cover. The briefcase exploded. The entire room shook. Every civilian in the room went into full panic mode. The entire room quickly fell to chaos as the sprinkler system went off showering everyone.
Amongst the chaos Jack could overhear the Secret Service radio chatter in his ear. “Escort the POTUS to the extraction point now.” They were referring to the president’s limo in the garage.
“Negative. The garage is not secure. I repeat, not secure.” It was Anna’s voice warning over the communication channel, trying her best to keep the president out of the ambush she could see was being set up. On the monitor that displayed the garage feed, Cox could be seen approaching the rogue Specter tapping on his SCU before Cox tapped on his earpiece.
“This is Cox. I’m in the garage now, and everything is secure on my end. Please disregard the previous statement.”
“Roger. The POTUS is being escorted your way now,” said by the voice that belonged to the Secret Service agent heading the team surrounding the president. There was nothing but static after he ended his statement.
