PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (29 page)

‘Like Noah, I suggest that you hand in your resignation,’ Abrams said. ‘You can cite whatever reason you want – health, family, personal issues, whatever. But it needs to be done. You’ve had your chances, and you’ve blown them. It’s over.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ he said sadly, a schoolboy taken to task by the headmistress.

‘You can leave it until next week though,’ she said. ‘I don’t want attention drawn away from the weekend’s events, and you’re still on to speak at the memorial parade here in Washington.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. At least he’d have the chance to make a final speech on the world stage; he’d have to make it a good one.

‘Thank you for your service,’ Abrams said, standing from her chair and offering Mason her hand.

Mason stood sheepishly, took the hand and shook it. ‘You play a good game, Ellen,’ he said, unhappy with the outcome of their battle but finally resigned to it. ‘All the best.’

‘All the best, Clark,’ Abrams replied.

And then he smiled sadly, turned on his heel, and was gone.

6

Mark Cole no longer sat within the confines of the subterranean interview room.

Instead, he sat ensconced behind Mohammed Younesi’s desk in the man’s own private office, accessing the spymaster’s computer.

This was what Cole had been aiming for, but even he had been surprised; he would have been happy simply to have been brought up out of the basement level, but there had been no guarantee even of that.

Back downstairs, Cole had asked for access to a computer connected to the internet. Younesi had just laughed, claimed that there were no such connections down there; and so Cole had asked to be brought upstairs, to show the man what he wanted to share.

Younesi, though suspicious, had finally agreed; and – professionally paranoid like so many others in his line of work – had decided that he wanted to look at whatever information Cole had to share all by himself, with no prying eyes, hence the invitation to his own private office.

The Iranian wasn’t taking any chances though – Cole was still handcuffed, and Younesi aimed a Colt M1911 .45 ACP pistol at him as he worked, while outside the office he had another four armed guards stationed with submachine guns loaded and made ready; at Younesi’s command, they could be in the room and firing within a couple of seconds.

Cole knew that he’d been given an opportunity too good to pass up, and his mind raced as he considered what he was going to do with it. He had a chance to access Younesi’s files, but how was he going to do it without being discovered, without Younesi realizing what he was up to?

‘So show me,’ Younesi said expectantly, and Cole understood why the man had brought him here. It was fear, plain and simple – fear of his plan failing, fear of his plan being found out by British intelligence, by the United States. Fear that the second attack wouldn’t succeed, that the first attack would be blamed on Iran. And what would happen then? All-out war would be a possibility of course, and Younesi surely had no stomach for such a thing – for it would inevitably lead to Iran’s total defeat and subjugation.

It had been a high-stakes game that Younesi had involved himself in, and a win – a successful operation – was only worthwhile if the hand of the Iranian government remained undiscovered.

So the chance – however slight – that Cole had something that suggested Younesi’s secret could be exposed, was enough to make that man throw caution to the wind in order to protect himself and the operation.

Cole assessed the situation quickly. There were four armed men outside the room, and Younesi had a gun to his head. The man was stood behind him, so that he could look over Cole’s shoulder to see what he was doing, could ensure that he was not accessing restricted files. Cole himself was handcuffed, although he was not secured to the chair in any way.

Cole had a story worked out to sell to Younesi, how MI5 had worked out what he was up to and had agents waiting for Iranian personnel in London. His plan was to check Younesi’s files as he pretended to access those of MI5 and the FBI. But with Younesi looking over his shoulder, that made his initial plan untenable, while at the same time offering a different – and perhaps, on reflection, even better – alternative.

Cole fired up the computer system, showed Younesi what he was doing as he forced his way into the mainframe of the Security Service’s home network.

Back when he had been a ‘contract laborer’, an independent agent under Hansard, his old boss had insisted that all of his personnel were capable of planning their own missions, including getting hold of their own intelligence. As a result, they had all received specialized training in computer hacking, both from experts at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and from civilian – often criminally convicted – cyber-hackers.

This meant that, while several leagues removed from the skill-set of his daughter, Cole was more than capable of accessing most of the things he wanted to; and the MI5 mainframe, while relatively well-guarded, was hardly an impossible target.

Cole heard a helicopter outside and moved reflexively, the aircraft sounding dangerously close to the building. He looked outside, saw the black chopper veer upward.

Younesi smiled at his reaction. ‘Helipad on the roof,’ he laughed. ‘Despite your country’s flagrant anti-Iranian propaganda, we are not peasants, you know.’

Cole ignored Younesi’s comments and turned back to the computer, searching quickly through files, reports, attachments, and eventually brought up copies of both the MI5 investigation, and notes on the parallel investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police.

‘Ah,’ he said, opening up the file on Javid Khan, purposefully keeping the font-size restricted. ‘Here we are.’

Younesi, already having come steadily closer to see what Cole was doing, and how he was doing it, now bent his head in close to try and read the words on the screen, having instantly recognized the file photo of Javid Khan.

‘What is it?’ Younesi asked, leaning forward. ‘What does it say?’

Cole could feel the cold steel of the Colt’s barrel near his shoulder, Younesi’s mind and attention no longer on the weapon but instead on the screen on his desk.

And in the next instant, Cole took advantage of Younesi’s distraction, turned and grabbed the pistol straight out of the man’s hand, stripping it out of Younesi’s grasp with one slick movement, his own hands still cuffed together.

An instant later, before the intelligence officer could yell to the men outside, Cole dropped the gun and thrust his hands straight out toward Younesi, striking him in the throat with the tips of his extended thumbs.

Younesi gasped for breath, staggered back clutching at his damaged larynx, eyes bulging; and then Cole was up out of the chair, kicking the man in the groin and doubling him over before sending a knee crashing up underneath his jaw and knocking him out cold.

As Younesi fell backward, Cole rushed to catch hold of him, not wanting his body to make a sound as it landed that would alert the guards outside.

Checking the door to see that the guards had indeed not been alerted, Cole then searched Younesi for a key for the handcuffs. Coming up empty, Cole took a pen from the man’s desk and, manipulating his fingers around, managed to open them with his makeshift lock-pick.

He then sat Younesi up in a spare office chair, cuffing his hands behind the chair back. He also removed the man’s tie and used it as a gag.

Cole slid a doorstop underneath the office door, just in case the guards got suspicious for some reason and tried to get in; it wouldn’t keep them out forever, but it was better than nothing, and a lot more silent than pushing across a bookcase to act as a barricade.

Flexing his wrists to try and get some blood flowing back into his hands, he then returned to the desk and sat back down behind Younesi’s computer.

He didn’t know how much time he had, but he was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be long.

‘So who’ve we got available?’ General Olsen asked Scott Murphy, the new commander of JSOC.

Murphy was in the Oval Office along with Olsen, Director of National Security Catalina dos Santos, Force One chief-of-staff Bruce Vinson, and Ellen Abrams. As a result of recent events, it had been decided to read Murphy in on Force One, make him a part of the team; indeed, his accepting the position as JSOC commander was predicated upon his understanding of the covert nature of Force One, and his role in supplying most of the personnel and materiel that the organization required, albeit off the books.

Murphy was keen to go ahead with the proposals; like General Cooper before him, he had suspected that such a unit existed anyway, and was pleased to now have a functioning role in making things happen.

‘From the lists of Force One-approved personnel you’ve given me, I’ve managed to get six of them there already – four of them were assigned to a training unit in Afghanistan, and two were helping out the police in Islamabad. I can have another twelve people there within six hours.’

‘Is that enough?’ Vinson asked. ‘Given what they’ll be up against?’

‘It’s not a combat operation,’ Olsen said. ‘It’s a rescue, and if it goes according to plan, they’ll never know we were even there.’

‘But is it enough?’ Vinson persisted.

Murphy shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But worst case scenario is that we’ll have six Tier One operators, and they’re worth at least a platoon of ordinary men.’

‘Transport?’ Olsen asked next.

‘I ordered two Black Hawks and a Little Bird over from a SOAR training base outside Kabul, should have arrived in Ashgabat within the last hour or so. Depending on how many guys we can get, we might not need the second Black Hawk, but we’ll see.’

‘Ashgabat?’ Abrams asked. ‘I wasn’t aware that we had military facilities in Turkmenistan.’

Olsen turned to the president. ‘It was established a few years back, a small air base to assist in refueling ops and processing supplies en route to Afghanistan,’ he explained. ‘We have a terminal for our use at Ashgabat International Airport, which is described as a ‘subsidiary support base’ rather than a military base, due to Turkmenistan’s perceived neutrality.’

‘But we can use it as a FOB?’ Abrams asked.

‘For a small op like this, it shouldn’t be a problem,’ Olsen confirmed.

‘Doesn’t Iran have some of the best anti-air defenses around?’ she asked next.

‘They do, but we’re working a way around that,’ Olsen said, looking over to Vinson.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘Michiko is in their systems right now, they’ll be completely down when our boys get the green light to go.’

‘But, even if we’re successful, couldn’t Iranian radar systems retroactively figure out where the choppers entered Iranian airspace, where they crossed the border? How would the Iranian government react to Turkmenistan assisting us?’

Scott Murphy shook his head. ‘The newest Black Hawk designs are super stealthy,’ he said, ‘they won’t even show up on Iranian radar systems in the first place, even if their computer systems
were
up and running. Without their networks, the Iranians will have no idea where those birds came from, or where they went to.’

‘And even if they had an idea,’ Vinson added, ‘they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to prove anything.’

‘Okay,’ Abrams said next, ‘but we still haven’t heard from Mark, have we? We don’t know where he is?’

‘Not at the moment, ma’am,’ Vinson said. ‘Michiko has traced him as far as Tehran, but no further. Although we suspect that he’s probably being held at the headquarters of MOIS.’

‘We can’t really launch a rescue operation on that basis,’ Abrams said.

‘Indeed we can’t,’ Vinson said. ‘But if and when Michiko finds him, we want to have our men on standby, in position and ready to go.’

‘Understood,’ said Abrams, ‘consider the operation authorized.’ She turned to Murphy and smiled. ‘Thanks for your input Admiral, it’s good to have you on board.’

‘Good to be here, ma’am,’ Murphy replied. ‘Thank you.’

Abrams stood. ‘Right then, I’ve got a plane to catch. Thank you all for your time.’

Air Force One was ready and waiting to whisk her away to London.

Everyone else in the room thought she was crazy for still going – especially now that they suspected that Iran might have had a hand in the attack on that elementary school – but she was quick to point out that there was still no hard evidence.

But as they all trailed out of the Oval Office, they hoped they were wrong, and that this wouldn’t be the very last time they saw her.

7

Michiko had never been a fan of coffee. The gangsters that populated the offices of the Omoto-gumi back in Tokyo had drunk it by the gallon, in contrast to the normal Japanese taste in green tea – just one more way that they set themselves apart from their fellow citizens – and she had never wanted to follow their example.

In the past few days, however, she had found herself coming to rely upon it. She was putting in some unearthly hours at the Forest Hills compound which – added to the stress of being arrested and temporarily imprisoned by the FBI – had left her exhausted and reliant upon caffeine to fuel her ongoing workload.

Since successfully sabotaging the careers of Mason, Jones and Graham, Michiko had been involved in the twin tasks of trying to locate her father, while breaking into the defense networks of the Iranian military, in order to gain remote control of Tehran’s formidable anti-aircraft systems.

She’d finally managed to get inside though and – with the assistance of her Farsi translators – was confident that she would be able to turn the system off when the Force One team needed her to. She was already linked into the network through a parallel shadow system, and had remotely embedded software in the Iranian system that would enable her to take control as and when she wanted.

She still hadn’t managed to locate her father though, at least not for sure. Written reports of prisoners entering the basements of MOIS Headquarters on Saniya Street in the north of Tehran were patchy at best, and she could find no reference to the man sent from the Iranian embassy in Belgrade.

She’d got the contact name for the agent inside MOIS though – Mohammed Younesi – and had started a preliminary investigation into the man.

Live information from the MOIS internal mainframe suggested that Younesi was engaged in the interrogation of a prisoner, but she couldn’t know for sure who it was.

It could be her father, sure; but it could also be an Iranian troublemaker, or a traitor caught spying for another country.

But, Michiko noted, Younesi was the chief of the Office of Europe, part of MOIS’s Second Directorate and the one charged with planning and carrying out foreign intelligence operations.

Was this Mohammed Younesi the man responsible for planning the attack on London? And if so, had Cole found out? And if he’d found out, had he asked to see the man? Was that why he’d been sent to Iran in the first place?

And if so, was that who Younesi was interrogating right now?

She sighed, and shook her head.

So much conjecture, so little evidence.

She could hazard a guess as to her father’s whereabouts, but that was all it was – just a guess.

While she was embedded in the MOIS systems, Michiko had tried to access Younesi’s private files via remote access. She had discovered a wealth of information, all of which was being picked through by her translators and the various interrogation programs under her control; but the ‘smoking gun’ seemed to be missing, no direct and clear evidence of what – if anything – Younesi had been planning.

If there was anything there at all, it was all on the hard drive, sensibly not connected to any networked system. To find out what he had on his private system, she would have to be there in his office, to break into his computer files the old fashioned way.

She sighed, knowing how impossible that was.

The phone on her desk rang then, startling her; but she picked it up after only two rings.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me,’ her father’s voice came over the line, quiet but clear.

‘Where are you?’ she asked, not quite believing that it was really him.

‘I’m in the office of Mohammed Younesi, MOIS headquarters in Tehran,’ Cole replied. So she’d been right. But what was he doing ringing Force One? Was he doing it under duress? And yet she believed that her father would never do such a thing, no matter what they did to him. So what was going on?

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Cole answered, ‘which is more than I can say for Mr. Younesi here. But I don’t have time, so listen carefully. I’m in his computer files, but I don’t have the time to go through it all here. Can I send everything over to you?’

‘Yes,’ Michiko answered, hardly able to credit her luck.

She’d wanted a miracle to happen, to get access to Younesi’s files, and a miracle is exactly what she got.

Her father.

Julie Barrington assessed the team who were assembled next to her in the private hangar, where the three specialist helicopters from the 160
th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment were being kept out of the sight of prying eyes.

All in all, she was pretty happy; the operators from DEVGRU were sometimes arrogant but always effective, and she had worked with two of them on missions for Force One before and could vouch for them personally. Tim Collins had been by her side in China, when they’d rescued the imprisoned members of the Politburo from Beijing’s Forbidden City, and she’d served with Ricky Taylor in Europe not long after; Freddie Karson and Donald Nguyen would be just as good, she was sure.

The sixth member of the team, Kurt Russakoff, was another CIA Special Activities Division officer like Barrington and – also like Barrington – was a member of the organization’s elite Special Operations Group; and she was convinced – with some justification – that they might well be the best two people there.

But healthy competition didn’t get in the way of anyone’s professionalism; they all knew what had to be done, and the best way to go about doing it, and so as soon as introductions had been made, the operational planning got underway.

Barrington had been assigned as team leader for now, but that didn’t mean that she needed to ram it down the guys’ throats. Unlike most other military units, JSOC teams – and especially those selected for Force One – liked to come up with their plans together, as mutually respected peers. And with people of such a high level, it worked.

The latest news was that their target – the commander of Force One himself, Mark Cole, a man Barrington knew well – was somewhere in Tehran, potentially held within the headquarters of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security on Saniya Street in the north of the city.

It was conjecture, but what they decided to work upon in the absence of intelligence to the contrary.

It would be dark soon, and that would suit Force One just fine; they’d been promised inactivation of Iranian anti-air defenses, and in the dark their aircraft would be as good as invisible to eyes on the ground.

If they got the call to go in now, they would launch the op with just the six of them, with one Black Hawk; if the others arrived before they got the go ahead, they would instead split into two teams of nine, in two separate helicopters. In either case, the Little Bird would lead the way into Tehran, acting as a scout to make sure the coast was clear for the bigger aircraft that followed.

Wherever the rescue was to take place, the word was that they needed to be in and out as fast as humanly possible; the Iranian authorities weren’t to know what had happened.

Of course, that would be in an ideal world; the trouble, Barrington knew, was that the world was rarely so ideal. Shit happened, and had to be expected.

As such, she and the other members of the team would be going in heavily armed. In addition to the formidable armaments of the Black Hawk, the four SEALs would form an assault group to carry out the rescue and take on anyone who was there, while Barrington and Russakoff would provide perimeter security.

More people would be better, but six would do if that was all they had.

As the Night Stalkers checked their aircraft over in minute detail, Barrington and the Force One team did the same with their personal weapons and equipment as they continued to discuss the operation.

They were ready, as far as they could be.

Now all they needed was a location.