Critical Error (36 page)

Sam heard voices to his right and walked towards them. A guard opened the door as he approached and unlike his colleague, he was obviously far less confident in his colleagues. His UZI submachine pistol was raised immediately in response to the threat. Sam pulled the trigger on his already raised Sig and two shells ensured the guard would never pull his trigger. His lifeless body fell back into the room behind him and from the screams, it was clear that Sam had found his prey.

“Good evening, Gentlemen,” he offered as he strode into the room. “I believe you’ve been looking for my brother and I?”

Rebecca had made it back to the guesthouse without incident. She knew that the explosion was all bang and no power, nothing more than a glorified firework. However, it had been timed to perfection and coming from the Palestinian Embassy, it would look like a bomb that had failed to explode properly. It was therefore with some concern that she watched the news and discovered the President had been rushed to Walter Reed Hospital and was undergoing emergency treatment.

The more she considered the possibility, the more ludicrous it became. The explosion was miniscule and the President was in a vehicle that would stop a direct hit from pretty much anything. It just wasn’t possible.

“Ben, we have a problem.” She needed to know what to do. Killing presidents was way beyond her pay grade.

“What’s wrong Rebecca?” asked Ben, instantly worried by the sound of her voice.

‘I think I’ve really screwed up,” she offered.

‘Why?” he asked cautiously.

“I helped Sam tonight.”

“So?”

“The President was going to be there as well. As you said, I couldn’t let him get to the President. So I either stopped Sam or the President. I went with my heart rather than my head and went for the President and arranged a little diversion but I may have miscalculated.”

Ben began to laugh uncontrollably, to the point that Rebecca was furious.

“What??!!!” she screamed, forgetting where she was.

“I have it under very good authority,” he continued to laugh. “That President Russell was almost castrated this evening. It seems his Personal Assistant is very personal and while performing an oral act in the back of his limo, your little diversion caused him to jump and her to clench her teeth. She damned near took his dick off!”

“Seriously?”

“Yep, but obviously we don’t know anything about it!”

“Of course. Are they going to be OK?” she asked with genuine concern, failing to see the humor. Ultimately, she was responsible.

“They’ll be fine - he just needs some stitches and a couple of teeth removed while she needs her teeth replaced, if you know what I mean?”

“Unfortunately, yes!”

“How did Sam get on with the Horsemen?” he asked, changing the subject.

“The who?”

Ben kicked himself. “The four old men?”

“You said the horsemen?”

“No I said the four men.”

Rebecca could argue but she knew what she had heard. There was more to this than Ben was telling her. She dropped it but had every intention of coming back to it.

As she was about to reply, the door opened and Sam walked in, fresh as a daisy and threw her a huge smile.

“I’ll call you back Ben!” She hung up and rushed across the room to hug Sam.

“Well?” she asked, eventually letting go.

“Five down, two to go!” he answered simply and without explanation.

President Russell insisted on leaving. He had a country to run and a few stitches weren’t going to hold him back. That was part of the excuse, the other part was that the embarrassment was killing him. Every time a doctor or nurse smiled at him, he assumed they were thinking of what had caused his injury. Nancy had accepted his offer the second he had made it. Honey would be taking a role elsewhere in government and a substantial ex-gratia payment would ensure her silence for ever more. Russell was tempted to make it more air tight with a call to Johnson but she was an exceptionally beautiful young woman and so had decided against it.

Nancy sat by his side on the journey back to the White House, tut tutting at the state of his diary. It was going to take her the rest of the week to sort it out. The irony of his assistant actually running through his diary with him, following his previous car journey, was not missed as he accepted and declined a number of requests that had come in. His driver and his agent, the same ones as before, also noted the screen remained firmly down between themselves and the President.

“Saturday we have you going to Corpus Christi for the unveiling,” said Nancy.

Russell didn’t need to be reminded, it was down as the unveiling of a memorial, commissioned by the former President and in memory of the victims of the nuclear atrocity. It was rather ironic that it fell on the same day as a new atrocity was planned. However, it offered Russell an excuse to get out of Washington, just in case, and would give him a platform for a far bigger event. He would be naming his VP, as well as other positions.

“Best we fly down the night before, it’s going to be a big day,” he suggested.

Before long, they were back in the White House and CIA director Johnson was pacing the hallway as he waited for the President.

“What’s wrong?” asked Russell as Johnson followed him into the Oval Office.

“Koch, Harkness, Hathaway and Mellon, that’s what’s wrong,” he said, shutting the door.

“Christ, what now? They moaning about their babysitters?” he asked, slumping into his sofa and instantly regretting the sudden motion and impact.

“They’re all dead is what’s wrong!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” exclaimed Russell, not believing Johnson for a second.

“Definitely! Executed! One round through each of their foreheads. Bang, bang, bang, fucking bang.” He motioned each bang with an outstretched index finger and thumb.

“Your guys were watching them!”

“While you were getting your cock sewn back on, your secret service agents left the Alibi Club and left my guys swinging in the wind with their asses hanging out. Sam Baker waltzed in, popped the guys and disappeared.”

“Shit!”

“The explosion that had you jumping in the air was nothing more than a glorified firework, all bang no bluster. It was a sham, timed and placed to perfection. We did exactly what he wanted, pulled the secret service away from the Club.”

“But why not get
me
at the Club? He must have known I was going if he rigged the diversion?”

“Shit, hadn’t thought of that.”

The President pressed his buzzer. “Nancy, get me Henry Preston and Jim Gates, please.”

Five minutes later, the four were trying to work through why Sam Baker had not taken a shot at Russell.

The only conclusion any of them could come up with that made any sense was that Sam Baker did not know Russell was involved. It also meant that if he were unaware of Russell’s involvement, Johnson was probably in the clear also.

“Ah, one problem. We’re assuming he didn’t get anything out of the four before he killed them,” offered Preston.

“OK, back to plan A. I want Sam Baker dead,” instructed the President.

Sam woke up with a start. Despite the hour, only 4.00 a.m., he called his brother but assured him everything was fine. They had, as ordered, not ventured outside. Cabin fever was setting in but they would be good, he assured his younger brother. They would not go out.

He looked back at the bed and the stunning figure of Rebecca. It felt wrong and he knew it was wrong. His wife and child lay dead. He hadn’t even buried them properly. He knew strange things happened in times of crisis. You would do things that would otherwise not even enter your mind. Rebecca had kept him sane. She had kept his mind occupied, his thoughts alive and not with the dead. He knew he’d feel guilt and shame for what he had done but somehow it felt right as well. He stared at her sleeping figure and realized now was not the time. There would be time for mourning and recriminations later.

Sam spotted the Victor Annual in his backpack. Perfect, he needed something to occupy his mind. His mind ventured back almost 40 years as he read and followed the comic strips that told their stories of the British fighting the Germans. He smiled as one strip told the story of a spy caught behind enemy lines who managed to escape before he was interrogated and returned home. Nothing overly surprising other than the fact that the spy had a false tooth with a cyanide pill. He looked across at Rebecca to see if she was awake to tell her where Deif’s idea must have come from. She was sound asleep. He’d tell her later. The next strip featured a naval convoy taking vital supplies to the Russians who were valiantly fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. It was real gung-ho stuff, thought Sam. The British ships fought the harshness of the seas before being set upon by German fighter bombers. Without an escort, all was lost but in good old Victor style, they pulled something out the hat and what a something, thought Sam. He stared at the little comic drawing and thought back to the false tooth. Jesus!

“Rebecca!” he shouted, no concerns if she were sleeping or not. “We need to get to my brother and the Secretary of Defense!” If Rebecca’s information was correct, they had three days to stop the bomb.

The Sheikh was enjoying the warmth of the Texan sun after the biting cold of Montana. The first rays of sun, even at that time of year, radiated a wonderful and welcome heat. Zak had been an extremely reluctant passenger as they travelled towards the scene of his atrocity some years earlier. But the Sheikh had assured him on many occasions that they would not be going beyond the security wall that now protected the Southern Texas border from the wasteland beyond.

As they drove towards the small town of Bishop, the wall came into view and Zak winced at his handiwork. The wall stretched off as far as the eye could see, blocking the devastation from view. The Sheikh pulled into a small diner and joined a throng of tourists who had rather bizarrely come to look at the wall. It seemed quite the tourist destination, badges mugs and t-shirts lined the walls, all emblazoned with a mushroom cloud visible above the wall that now protected every American from the land beyond.

The tourists provided perfect cover as they joined a large group on a guided tour of the new border. There was no border-crossing. The massive steel gates that briefly interrupted the wall were firmly closed and a radiation symbol clearly warned anyone from venturing beyond. To the left and right of the gates, two large areas had been cut into the wall and it was these that the Sheikh was most interested in. Two plaques were soon to be mounted and would be unveiled by the President himself. It was anticipated that most of the Cabinet and high ranking officials of government would be in attendance and it was for that very reason that the Sheikh required Zak’s assistance. On his own, he wouldn’t get within a mile of the location come Saturday. With Zak and his Defense Intelligence Agency ID, he’d be able to get up close and personal.

As the site became busier, Zak and the Sheikh walked back to the diner. They saw the first trucks arrive in preparation for Saturday’s event. They paused and watched as the trucks pulled off to the side and a small army of workers appeared and began unloading staging and folding chairs. If nothing else, it confirmed the event was definitely going ahead.

The Sheikh directed Zak back to their motel just twenty miles away in Corpus Christi. He excused himself and walked to the internet café and logged onto a non descript chatroom. He re-read the message a number of times. It wasn’t so much what it read, it was the hidden meaning. Things had obviously taken a significant change of direction and his task had just gotten a lot harder. Fortunately, it did not alter the location, it just increased the number of targets.

Ben listened as Rebecca relayed what they had discovered in the comic book. Initially, he had scoffed at the idea, it was utterly ridiculous. But the more he thought it, the more he couldn’t rule it out. He instructed his guys to widen the search. The ship did not necessarily have to be in port before midnight Yom Kippur. They could look at boats scheduled to arrive even a day later.

Ben had sat through his next meeting digesting everything Rebecca had told him over the last few days. None of it was good and more importantly, none of it was good for Israel. He excused himself from the meeting. There were less than 60 hours until midnight Yom Kippur and he had little time available. He looked at the clock, checking the time he already knew. He calculated the timings. It was quite simple. He didn’t have the time but more importantly, he didn’t have the time not to.

“David, what’s the quickest plane we’ve got to get me to America?” he asked the Defense Minister.

“I’ll call you straight back!”