Any Means Necessary: A Luke Stone Thriller (Book 1) (18 page)

“He didn’t shoot himself?”

The cop shrugged. “All I know is what the ballistics people are saying. They took some measurements and they’re going to computer model it, but at first blush they think it was a shooter on one of the surrounding rooftops.”

Luke glanced around the neighborhood. It was an area of two- and three-story apartment buildings, machine shops, warehouses. There were liquor stores, check cashing, and WE BUY GOLD places on street level. He turned and stared at the man.

“You’re saying he was shot by a sniper? Who would put a sniper on one of these buildings besides the police?”

The cop raised his hands. “Look, I just work here. But I can tell you it wasn’t us. Our orders were to take these guys alive, if possible, and the guy on the ground was already dead when the first coppers got here.”

“What about the other one?”

“The driver? It looks like it might be radiation sickness, or maybe he took some pills. There aren’t any obvious gunshot or stab wounds. No blood. He’s just sitting there at the steering wheel, like he parked the van and died. They’ll have to do a toxicology work-up on him, but it’ll take a while. With all the radiation, it’s going to be another couple of hours before they even get the bodies out of here.”

“They have any tech on them?” Ed said. “Phones, tablets, laptops?”

The cop shook his head. “Not that anybody has found. Sounds funny though, right? Two guys out on a mission with no way to call the mother ship?”

“Did they fingerprint them?” Luke said.

The cop nodded. “That and DNA. It’s one of the first things they did when the hazmat guys got here.”

“Thanks.”

Luke and Ed walked back toward the building where the chopper landed. “I was afraid of that,” Luke said. “Outside of Ali Nassar, those guys were the last links to whoever attacked the White House. Clearly, it wasn’t them.”

“What are you thinking?” Ed said. “The whole radiation thing was a distraction?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was a backup plan that went bad. I don’t know.”

Luke pulled out his satellite phone. He and Trudy had switched to sat phones now. Bad weather could take them out, but they were unaffected by communications meltdowns like the one that had hit the East Coast.

He waited for the phone to shake hands with the satellite, then for the bounce down to her location. Beep… Beep… Beep… Satellite phones always made him a little leery. He knew it was silly. It was a holdover from the days when drones could use the satellite uplink signal to lock on ground targets. In those days, a man with a satellite phone was holding a big red bull’s-eye. But now, it hardly mattered. The newest drones could lock on to cell phones, laptops, GPS units, almost anything.

“Hello?” a voice said. It was Trudy. She sounded like she was speaking from the bottom of a tin can. “Luke?”

“Trudy. Look. We’re at the site of the van. There are two suspects here, both dead. A cop told me they’ve taken DNA and fingerprints from them. Connect with whoever can get you inside the loop on that. When those identifications come through, I want them.”

“Will do, Luke. But listen. Swann is getting almost real-time information from inside the Iranian mission. They’re bringing Ali Nassar to the airport today. They want him out of the country. All indications are that the jet waiting for him has clearance to take off at 3:30 p.m.”

Luke looked at his watch. It was 2:05.

“Jesus. Can we stop him?”

“I talked with Ron Begley about this,” she said. “He laughed. He said Homeland Security won’t touch it. As far as they’re concerned, the man is a diplomat and had nothing to do with the attacks. There’s no evidence it was Iran, and they don’t want to risk another international incident today.”

“Dammit!” Luke said. Nassar was the one remaining link to the attack and Ron Begley was going to let him walk away. “What the… what about the local cops?”

“No dice,” she said. “They’ve already said that if Homeland doesn’t want him, they don’t have jurisdiction. And they’re overstretched as it is. Practically the entire police force has been mobilized, guarding every train station and every public place. Ali Nassar is your obsession, Luke. No one else cares.”

“So be it,” Luke said. “I’ll stop him myself.”

“From there?” she said.

Luke shook his head, then realized she couldn’t see him. “No. We’re on our way back to New York. If we gun it, we should get there just in time. I want people outside the Iranian mission, reporting in as soon as Nassar leaves.”

“Well, there are a couple more things you should know,” Trudy said. “They’re planning to go to the airport in an armed convoy of SUVs.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Luke said. “Make sure our people have Nassar’s image. If more than one convoy leaves, I want to know that, and I want best guesses as to which convoy he’s in. If they need to think up a ruse to stop the trucks and see who’s inside, do it. A fake checkpoint will work, it doesn’t matter to me. Tell Swann to put some of his toy drones in the air, and get ready to follow multiple convoys. See how close he can get with his cameras.”

“Luke, there’s also this. Nassar has a five-year-old daughter. The mother is Lebanese and lives here in New York. Both of them are leaving the country with him. They will probably be in his car.”

Luke didn’t say anything. He had a pit in his stomach at the thought of that girl in the car. Why did there always have to be something? Why couldn’t anything ever be clean?

Next to him, Ed was calling the chopper back in. A moment later, Luke could already see it, a black insect in the distance, coming in fast, growing bigger by the second. He and Ed started walking toward the fire escape they had climbed down.

“Don’t go in with guns blazing,” Trudy said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

“I never go in with guns blazing.”

“No?”

Luke smiled. “No. I leave that kind of thing to Ed.” 

2:35 p.m.

Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center - Bluemont, Virginia

The meeting was chaos. It had dragged out for well over an hour now.

Thomas Hayes was trying to preside over an unruly mob of frightened people. It wasn’t working. These were smart, clever, inventive people for the most part, normally the best and brightest. But fear had shut down their creativity, and it was choking off their initiative. They couldn’t even figure out where everybody was. Hayes could barely believe how disorganized the evacuations were.

An aide was making a report. “Sir, at approximately 12:30 p.m., the Airborne Communications Command aircraft, codename Nightwatch, took off from Joint Base Andrews and flew west. It is currently over eastern Missouri, cruising at forty thousand feet.”

Hayes looked across the conference table at a line of blank faces.

“Who authorized that?”

No one said a word. Nightwatch was only supposed to take off in the event of a nuclear war. The missile codes were on that thing.

Hayes glanced around the room. A Secret Service agent was standing near the door with a leather satchel in his hand. The bag was strapped to the man’s wrist with a steel cord. Hayes knew that inside the bag was an aluminum ZERO Halliburton case. He grunted in something like mirth. ZERO Halliburton, long the manufacturer of the President’s nuclear football, was now the wholly owned subsidiary of a Japanese luggage company. Traditions were a funny thing.

Hayes looked at the aide. “Son, are we at war that we know of?”

“No sir.”

“Well, who’s on board the goddamned plane?”

“Sir, Senator Edward Graves of Kansas is on board the plane, along with a handful of Pentagon officials.”

Thomas Hayes felt his shoulders slump. Ed Graves was Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, and among the dumbest members of either Congressional body. The man had all the brainpower of a tree stump. He never met a war, or even a border skirmish, that he didn’t like. And considering that the Nightwatch plane was designed as a place where the President could order retaliatory nuclear strikes, that made Ed Graves dangerous. Hell, he probably thought being in the plane made him President.

Hayes spoke to the room at large. “Can someone do me a favor and get him down?  Please? St. Louis, Kansas City, whatever’s closest. Tell him I said so.”

Hayes rubbed his forehead. He was tired, and he had a headache.

David Halstram was in the corner of the room. He moved in when he saw the state Hayes was in.

“Okay, everybody. Let’s do this. Let’s break this up for half an hour, use the restrooms, get some coffee, relax, whatever you like.” He looked at his watch. “That would mean coming back at ten to three. You know what? Let’s make it forty minutes and come back at exactly three o’clock. These are serious problems, I understand that, but they’re not going anywhere. They’ll all still be waiting for us forty minutes from now.”

“Thank you, David,” Hayes said. “That’s a good idea.”

Susan Hopkins raised an open palm. It looked like a STOP sign. “Thomas, can I say something?”

“Susan, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Thomas, I think this is important, and I’m not sure it can wait until three o’clock.”

Hayes was out of patience. He might have snapped at anyone who spoke right now. But it was the Vice President, and the sheer absurdity of their relationship made it worse than it otherwise might have been. The words were out of his mouth before he could catch them.

“This isn’t a bake-off, Susan. And we’re not organizing a fashion show. What’s so important that it can’t possibly wait?”

She didn’t speak. Her face flushed a deep crimson. Without another word, she stood and walked out of the room.

3:15 p.m.

In the Sky - The Borough of Queens, New York

The helicopter had come in over Staten Island, across the Verrazano-Narrows, and into Brooklyn. Now they were moving east along the ocean beaches, flying low and fast. Soon they would hook left and move north along the Van Wyck Expressway.

Luke and Ed were hunched in the small cargo hold. Back in New Jersey, they had both dropped another Dexedrine. The effects were starting to kick in.

It had been a long and brutal day. Luke had been awake far too long. He had been choked, shot at, tackled, stepped on, punched, kicked, and oh yes, almost blown to bits. He had been suspended from his job and accused of murder. But as the Dexie hit him, he began to feel a surge of guarded optimism. Hell, they had saved the President of the United States today. That had to count for something.

The helicopter was tiny. He could reach out and touch both the pilots. He poked his head between them. It was Jacob and Rachel, the same pilots from this morning.

“You kids ready to fly this thing?” he shouted.

Behind him, Ed was sitting near the open cargo door, loading thirty-round box magazines for an M4 assault rifle. He had a little stack of them going.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?” Rachel said.

Luke liked Rachel. She had dark auburn hair. She was brawny like the old Rosie the Riveter posters. Of course, she was. She was a mixed martial arts fighter, after all. Big arms, big legs, she must be hell inside a steel cage.

“Ed could do what you’re doing,” Luke said. “But I’m going to need him on that M4. I mean, are you ready to fly this thing like they taught you in the United States Army? We might have to go in a little hard here.”

“We’re ready, Luke,” Jacob said. Jacob was nearly the opposite of Rachel. He was thin and reedy. He looked nothing like your typical elite soldier. Special ops could be as hung up on looks as anybody else. Probably no one would have accepted him, not Delta, not SOAR, not the Rangers, or the SEALS. The only thing he had going for him, besides his profound sense of calm, was that he was probably one of the ten best helicopter pilots alive on Earth.

Rachel nodded. “You know we’re ready.”

“Good. There’s a convoy of SUVs on its way to Kennedy Airport. It’s not going to get there. That’s because we’re going to stop it.”

“What kind of support do we have?” Jacob said.

“Swann is operating some small drones that are spotting for us. He’ll probably have a couple of our cars as well. Other than that, you’ve got me, and you’ve got that big man with that big gun back there.”

“What are you going to do?”

Luke smiled. “I’m the head cheerleader. Keep the intercom wide open and listen for my screams.”

“Hey, Luke,” Rachel shouted. “When I was leaving SOAR, my C.O. asked me what I was going to do with the rest of my life. You know what I said? I told him I was gonna go work for the SRT. You know why? Because Luke Stone was there. All these years of flying choppers, and I never got the chance to die in one. I’m hoping Luke can fix that for me.”

“You’re my kind of girl,” Luke said.

“By the way,” Jacob said. “This is an area full of civilians.”

Luke nodded. “And that’s why we’re going to get this done without firing a shot.”

A moment later, Luke’s satellite phone started beeping. He answered, and held the phone tight to his ear.

“Swann? What’s the story?”

“We’re watching them. They left the mission about fifteen minutes ago.”

“And?”

“They must not know we were listening,” Swann said. “That’s as near as I can figure. They went out with one convoy. It’s two Range Rovers sandwiching a big black Lincoln Navigator. Nine out of ten Nassar’s going to be in the Lincoln. They went straight across to the Midtown Tunnel and stopped at the checkpoint there. The cops checked identification and waved them through. I picked them up with the drones on the other side. I’m watching them now. They just got on the Van Wyck, headed south to the airport. We’ve got two of our SUVs following about a mile behind them.”

“Nobody else came out of the mission?” Luke shouted into the phone.

“We’ve still got two agents there,” Swann said. “Nobody else has come out so far. I really think this is it. They don’t know we heard them and they don’t know we’re coming. They didn’t try to misdirect at all.”