WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller (32 page)

6

Navarone woke up, eyes blinking rapidly.

He could feel the rain as it fell on
him, felt that he was lying in a puddle, covered in water, freezing cold.

He looked around and saw flame everywhere, licking at the trees of the forest.

The forest
.

He had made it to the forest before the bombs hit. He knew the camp would have been reduced to nothing, the soldiers along with it.

He rolled onto his side, looking for Xie, hands scrambling desperately in the puddle for purchase as he raised himself to a painful standing position, ears ringing and head pounding.

The flames from the camp illuminated the forest against the dark of the storm, and he saw bodies nearby
. Some of them were children who hadn’t made it, their tiny bodies pummeled by the bombs’ shockwaves; others were North Korean soldiers who must have been racing after Navarone and Xie and not quite made it.

But where was Xie
? It didn’t help that he was wearing a North Korean uniform.

Navarone’s memory of the blast, and of how he’d come to end up in the puddle, was incoherent; he had no real idea of what had happened between the time he’d sensed the approach of the bomb, and when he’d woken up.

He staggered from body to body, trying desperately to find Xie, careful to avoid looking for too long at the poor children who dotted the area, limbs askew and torsos broken.

He wasn’t concerned
anymore about being found by the North Koreans from Camp 14 – they were all dead, he was sure of it. But he knew that the blast would bring reinforcements to the area, and he wanted to be long gone by then.

He wondered how long he’d been out of it, how far away his men were, if they’d made it to the emergency RV and the Black Hawks which would take them back to China.

‘Jake!’

Navarone heard the shout coming from the trees behind him and his head shot round, his muddled brain taking far longer than normal to identify Tony Devine, his old swim buddy Duke Kleiner stood right beside him.
Kleiner was one of the men who had been setting explosives on the far side of the valley, and Navarone was relieved to see that he’d made it.

The men raced to him, embracing him, helping him to stand.
‘Holy fuck!’ Kleiner exclaimed. ‘We thought you’d be dead for sure! The size of that explosion, must have been a fucking nuke!’

Navarone shook his head, weary. ‘Bunker buster,’ he whispered, even his own voice hurting his ears. ‘The
children . . ?’ he asked.

Devine nodded. ‘We figured you must have gone back in there, you crazy son of a bitch,’ he said with half a smile. ‘Yeah, we got a whole load of kids now on the back end of the prisoners, they’ve hooked up with the others and they’re
hightailing it into the mountains. Let’s just hope the reinforcements don’t get ‘em, although I guess there’s nothing we can do about that now.’

Navarone nodded his head in thought,
then grabbed his friends by their combat vests, his eyes wild. ‘Xie!’ he said. ‘He was with me, we need to find him.’

Devine and Kleiner nodded and moved off immediately, searching through the rain-soaked forest for their Chinese colleague.

Not more than a minute had passed when Navarone heard Kleiner’s booming voice. ‘Over here!’ he shouted. ‘I got him!’

Navarone raced over, his face expectant. ‘Is he . . ?’

But he saw Kleiner’s grim expression and knew the answer, even before his friend shook his big head. ‘I’m sorry Jake,’ he said sadly. ‘He’s gone.’

Navarone knelt by the body – bloody from the gunshot wounds, the bones broken from the shock of the blast – and wiped away the tears that started to form.

‘We’ve got to move, Jake,’ Devine told him. ‘Choppers are en route, and we’ve got no fucking idea when the Koreans are going to get here.’

Navarone nodded in understanding,
then hefted the weight of the dead man back onto his shoulders.

‘Hey, let me get him,’ Kleiner said, ‘you need to rest, you look like shit.’

Navarone knew his friend was right, but shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I asked Xie to stay with me, and I’m gonna take him out of here. Understood?’

Navarone
watched as both men nodded – he knew that they really
did
understand – and then marched past them with Xie on his back, leading them into the forest and to safety.

7

Jeb Richards had decided in the end to go to the NSC crisis meeting; he couldn’t face running away.

He just had to hope that his role would never be discovered. He would give everyone the full low-down on Abd al-Aziz Quraishi if that was what they wanted, but he would stop short of admitting to any involvement in the current situation. That would simply be suicidal, and Richards had no wish to die.

He had gambled, and it had backfired – simple.

But now there was the very serious threat that millions of Americans might wind up dead. These crisis talks were designed to provide a framework for emergency response if it came to that, and he was sorry to see that containing the situation was going to be far more problematic than even the worst-case scenarios from the NSC’s war games files.

A quarantine area had already been set up inside the White House, the president’s bunker transformed into an emergency laboratory in case anything happened nearby. If the government was affected, then the country was even more likely to descend into chaos and panic, with the horrific results that would follow.

He knew that the nation’s best scientific minds were working on the information which had been transmitted from North Korea regarding the weapon, people working around the clock on some way of defeating it, or providing an antidote; but so far, there had been no breakthrough.

Discussions raged on around the table about the best methods of handling the upcoming pandemic, but silence crept across the room as the secure telephone in front of General Olsen rang.

He grabbed it immediately. ‘Yes?’ A pause, then he looked at President Abrams. ‘It’s Commander Treyborne ma’am,’ he said. ‘He needs to speak with you urgently.’

Abrams nodded her head and picked up her own handset, Olsen connecting her to Ike Treyborne. ‘Commander,’ she said in as calm a voice as she could manage, ‘what do you have for me?’

Richards watched with rising interest as Abrams’ eyes twitched slightly; he could tell that something had excited her. Good news?

A part of him hoped that Quraishi hadn’t been found and brought in alive; if that was the case, and the man started talking, then his own escape plan might have to be back on the cards.

‘Put him on,’ Abrams said, nodding at Olsen as she spoke, a message passed between the two of them that Richards could only guess at.

‘Mark,’ Abrams said with relief, ‘what’s going on?’

So, Richards, thought, it was Mark Cole. The Asset was still alive.

He was a resilient son of a bitch, Richards would give him that. Richards had warned Quraishi about the man back in Riyadh, but obviously it had been to no avail.

He watched as Abrams listened, fear writ plain across her face. She listened in silence for a long time before speaking again. ‘Stay on the line,’ she said to Cole, before turning to the men and women gathered around the table.

‘The suicide bombers have been injected and are already on their way here,’ she said stonily, and the message was received by gasps from around the huge table.

‘Do we know where?’ Catalina dos Santos asked.

Abrams nodded her head, fear replaced by what Richards could only describe as hope. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Our asset has details on every one of them – which flights they’re on, their identities, when they’re due to land and where.’

There were cheers from around the table, silenced as Abrams held up her hands. ‘But we’re not out of the woods yet,’ she said. ‘We know who they are and where they are, but we still need to stop them.’ She turned to General Olsen. ‘Get in touch with your people at those airports,’ she ordered
. ‘Liaise with the FBI and airport security services. Initiate containment plan Alpha.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Olsen responded with a smile as he reached for his telephone, and Richards started to breathe just a little bit more easily.

Now all he needed was the very quick death of his old friend Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, and he was home free.

He was already starting to feel better; and he was sure another opportunity would be right around the corner.

8

Cole stayed on the line as President Abrams and the NSC went to work on their plans to intercept the terrorists.

From what he could make out from the information on the computers and the paperwork strewn around the laboratory, they might have a chance; although the weapon developed by the North Koreans was truly horrific, the timing for this attack seemed to indicate that the spores wouldn’t be released until sometime after the terrorists had landed, which provided the US authorities with a window of opportunity. If they could take the men and women at the airports when they landed, then Quraishi’s incredible plan would fail entirely.

But Cole didn’t know if there was a way for the terrorists to release the spores manually, in the
same way that an explosive might have a timer, but could still be blown manually if necessary.

If confronted upon landing, would the terrorists initiate the biological reaction in a last ditch attempt to infect everyone in the airport?

He spoke again on the phone to Abrams.

‘Ma’am,’ he said cautiously, ‘it might be an idea to evacuate the airports in question, just in case this biological weapon has some sort of failsafe that we don’t know about.’

‘Understood,’ the president’s voice came back to him. ‘We’ll assess the situation, thanks for the input.’

Cole relaxed back into the chair, only now noticing the pain in his ear. He had already bandaged his arm, but as he ran his finger up the side
of his face and found the top of his ear missing completely, he grimaced.

But then his mind switched tacks, and the ear was forgotten once again.

It had been a stroke of good fortune that al-Hazmi had been directing the operation from this safe house – there were details of everything he needed on the computers and files around him, including copies of the terrorists’ passports. Real ones too, it seemed – they had presumably never been in trouble before, and Cole wondered what had possessed them to become involved in something so extreme.

There had also b
een the scientists’ notes – who was injected when, where, and with what. A lot of it was indecipherable to Cole, but he was able to match up the list of injections to the names on the passports.

But there was something about those notes that troubled him, something he couldn’t put his finger on, and he began scouring through them once more, mind working furiously
.

And then it hit him, and he was amazed that he had missed it previously.

According to all the information he could find, there were twenty suicide bombers en route to America; and yet the medical personnel had noted twenty-one injections.

Why hadn’t he seen it before
?

It meant that there might still be one suicide bomber out there, unidentified and free to do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted.

And with a virus this dangerous, even one biological suicide bomber was enough to kill thousands, perhaps even more.

There was no name next to the notations of the injection, no way of finding out
who it was.

Had Quraishi himself wished to become a martyr? Had The Lion been injected, was he now the twenty-first bomber?

‘There’s another one,’ Cole said urgently over the open line to the White House.

‘What do you mean?’ Abrams replied instantly.

‘We have details of twenty terrorists on their way to America, but it looks like there were twenty-one injections made.’

Abrams breathed out slowly. ‘Damn. Maybe one went wron
g, the person’s already dead?’ Cole imagined her shaking her head at the thought. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘that’s just wishful thinking. Okay Mark, thank you. We’ll discuss the matter. If anything turns up, let us know immediately.’

‘I will,’ Cole said, his mind already racing at a thousand miles an hour.

Who the hell could it be?

9

Abd al-Aziz Quraishi sipped at his hot tea as he watched the various television monitors which filled the small room.

He had finally managed to escape from Saudi Arabia, and was now ensconced in a place he deemed to be far safer; he knew nobody would ever find him.

The televisions were all tuned to different news channels, so he could watch the unfolding drama in real time.

He could feel the excitement deep in the pit of his stomach; he was so close to achieving his dream, it seemed incredible.

But here he was, a free man, waiting for the final extermination of the Great Satan, her expulsion – along with the House of Saud – from the holy land, and the ascent of the Arabian people to govern themselves in a new, perfect Islamic caliphate which would soon spread from the Arabian peninsula throughout the rest of the Middle East, and then – well, who truly knew where it would end?

He’d been watching the news for several hours already, but there had been nothing of interest so far. This wasn’t surprising, as the first of his martyrs was yet to even land, but it still grated on him nevertheless; normally an incredibly patient man, he now felt a deep desire for time to be sped up, to carry him to the moment when the world would be changed forever.

It was the footage on CNN from outside Dulles International which first alerted him; amateur film of what looked to be an emergency evacuation of the airport.

The CNN anchor confirmed it, and then it was picked up by the other networks too; and then more footage came th
rough, more reports, from more and more airports. The same thing was happening everywhere; or, Quraishi perceived very quickly, everywhere that he had sent one of his beloved martyrs.

What was going on?

But as the hours passed, and the TV news reports got their own camera crews to the airports, Quraishi saw with his own eyes as they were emptied of civilians; FBI, HAZMAT and military personnel taking their places. And if Quraishi wasn’t mistaken, it looked like some of the military personnel were carrying flamethrowers.

The authorities were remaining silent on the subject, but everyone in the world would know what was going on; everyon
e except the bombers themselves, cut off as they were from the outside world. Even if they’d had their cell phones switched on, Quraishi was sure that US intelligence would be jamming the signals anyway.

How had it happened? What had gone wrong?

Knowing he shouldn’t, knowing that by now they would be tracking the airwaves for any sign of his voice, aware that by making the call he could be leading the authorities to his door, he could contain himself no longer.

His plan was falling apart at the seams, and he grabbed his telephone and put the call through to Mecca.

Cole was pleased that the counter-offensive was go
ing exactly as planned.

The airports had all been evacuated with no prior press knowledge, and specialist teams had been moved in to greet the flights as they landed.

FBI hostage rescue teams had rapidly separated the terrorists from the rest of the passengers, and then the military flamethrower personnel had gone into action.

It wasn’t pretty but Cole knew it was the safest way, the only way they could be sure. They just didn’t know when the spores would erupt, how much time they had; all they knew was that extreme heat killed the virus.

And so time after time, each terrorist had been isolated from their fellow travelers and immolated – fried to a crisp right there on the runway tarmac, the virus eradicated along with their bodies.

Cole was just glad that there had been no press coverage of
that
– despite the risk that millions might die, nobody wanted to see men and women being burned to death.

Cole had been informed that the dead bodies wer
e then immediately secured and put into quarantine for further examination.

The suicide bombers spanned both sexes, all ages, and many ethnicities – from eighteen year old Abdullah Hussein of Medina, to fifty-eight year old Maria Guttenberg of Berlin – and Cole again wondered what terrible turn of fate had led them to the point where they had wished to throw their lives away and attempt to commit such an atrocious act of genocide.

But still Cole didn’t know what had happened to that twenty-first injection, and it pained him even as the good news about the rest of the terrorists was reported.

It was then that he
heard the cell phone ringing from the trouser leg of Amir al-Hazmi, and left the desk to fish it out of the dead man’s pocket.

He answered the call but didn’t speak.

And for several long, drawn out seconds, the person on the other end of the line didn’t speak either.

But then, as if the frustration was too much to bear, Cole heard the familiar lilting tones of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi break over the line. ‘Amir?’ the man said in desperation. ‘Amir, is that you?’

‘I’m afraid the Hammer can’t come to the phone right now,’ Cole said. ‘He’s dead.’

No.
It couldn’t be.

The voice on the other end of the line was the man he had met in Riyadh, the covert agent Jeb Richards
had warned him about.

Mark Cole.

The Asset.

But how had he found the safe house?

In the next instant, Quraishi realized that this was how the US authorities had destroyed his plan – Cole had discovered the safe house and fed them the information held there. And the safe house had
everything.
Identification, flight plans, medical information. Everything.

Quraishi’s heart sank. Had Cole really managed to kill al-Hazmi? It seemed impossible; but he had seen the man in action, and Quraishi was forced to admit that perhaps
impossible
was the wrong word.

But then he remembered the one piece of information that was
not
recorded back at the safe house; the identity of the twenty-first recipient of the injected virus.

It had been a last-minute change of plan, but Quraishi had seen the opportunity and seized it.

He was now very glad that he had done so; it gave him one last chance, one last hope in his crusade.

He prayed to Allah that the last suicide bomber would remain undiscovered; the damage he could create would be the worst of all.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Quraishi said with as much bravado as he could muster. ‘This is not the end, my friend, it is not the end at all. I have more options than you think.’

‘If you’re talking about the last suicide bomber,’ the voice fired back at him, ‘then we’re one step ahead of you on that, I’m afraid.’

Could the man be telling the truth? Did they know who it was?

But Quraishi reasoned that it was just bluster – if he really knew, he would have said who it was.

Quraishi laughed mockingly. ‘Do not give me that,’ he said. ‘The truth is that you have no idea, no idea whatsoever, who that person is.’ He laughed again, confidence rising in him once again. ‘And you won’t know right up until the moment that the spores erupt and he sends your accursed nation back into the dark ages.’

Quraishi suddenly remembered about the intelligence services which might be tracking him, and hung up immediately, pleased to have got the last word in.

He looked around the apartment one final time.

No matter what happened to his last hope, the man he believed could take the fight right to the enemy’s doorstep, Quraishi himself knew he had already outstayed his welcome here.

It was time to move.

Cole heard the dial tone and replaced the handset.

The trouble was, Quraishi was right – he had no idea who the last bomber was.

But Quraishi had said
he
, so at least Cole knew that it was a man. Unless Quraishi had purposefully been trying to mislead him?

He sighed. Quraishi seemed so confident. Why? What made this last person so special?
What were they going to do? Where were they going to attack?

When Cole realized which target would have the most impact on America, he suddenly understood who the bomber could be.

And the unbelievable part of it was that he might not even realize it himself.