Blackout (Sam Archer 3), page 8
Back in the Square, the protestors were still in place, undeterred, and their protests started to gather volume again. But one person who wasn’t relaxing was the CIA Operations Officer who had known Charlie Adams. He was feeling quite the opposite in fact.
Once the doors to the Embassy were reopened, he walked swiftly back to his office, moving as quickly as he could through the crowd of people. He needed to get on the system and pull a list. There were eleven names on it, and so far two of them had been confirmed dead in the past three hours, which was far too precise for his liking to be a coincidence. Walking fast, he pushed open the door to his office and moved around the desk to his computer, then thought better of it and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. He'd need someone familiar with all the government databases to do this, and couldn’t waste time fumbling around trying to do it himself. For the first time in many years, he was going to disobey orders.
He pushed the number and waited for the call to connect.
‘Operations Officer Ryan Jackson, London office. Access code 34321,’ he said.
‘One moment, please,’ the woman on the other end said.
As he waited, Jackson found himself looking at the television in his office. In the commotion and sudden evacuation, he had left it on and there was new footage on the screen with a new Breaking News headline. However, it wasn't reporting on the hoax anthrax threat at the Embassy.
Instead, it was showing the ruined exterior of a two-floored building with a helicopter on the roof. Some kind of police station.
He frowned and looked closer, waiting for the call on his ear to connect. It seemed a police squad across the city had been involved in some kind of gunfight. The news cameras were at the gates, cordoned off, but the shot had zoomed in and showed smashed windows, empty shell casings on the tarmac and three 4x4 Ford Explorers that had been torn apart by automatic gunfire. He read the headline.
Counter-terrorist police unit attacked by two gunmen.
The screen suddenly flicked to a man giving a short statement to the press by the gates. He was a dark-haired man, around Jackson’s age, in an expensive-looking dark suit and with a stern look on his face. His name came up on the screen below, just as it came up from the depths of Jackson's memory.
Director Tim Cobb.
Head of the Armed Response Unit.
The phone to Jackson’s ear connected. An operator asked how she could help him, but Jackson didn’t respond. He was staring at Cobb’s face on the screen, a man he hadn't seen in fifteen years. He looked at the man and the devastation of the police station behind him. The operator asked him again how she could help him, but Jackson ended the call, lowering his phone and staring at the television.
So he wasn't imagining it, or being paranoid.
It was really happening.
They were back.
And they were coming to kill them all.
At that moment, three thousand and thirty one miles and several time-zones across the Atlantic Ocean, a man in his late thirties stepped out of a large family home in a residential neighbourhood in upstate Connecticut. It was a dewy early morning, just coming up to 7 a.m. He shut the door behind him and headed down the path towards his car, stopping to push his son's toy tricycle out of the way with his foot.
His was a real success story. He'd left the military in 2004, after a turbulent career that had started in the Marine Corps. He’d then taken everyone off guard by launching his own business, supplying software equipment to companies in the area. People were waiting for it to fail. A southern boy, originally from Athens, Georgia, the man hadn’t been an academically gifted kid, getting average grades in school, and he wasn’t especially good with computers. He’d done some time in the military but had wanted a change he said. It was just a matter of time, they all figured, before he ended up working security someplace or trying to re-enlist.
But the opposite had happened. Although he wasn’t a genius by any means, the man had good instincts and was quick to identify opportunities in the marketplace. The quality of his product, hard work and the technical proficiency of his small team meant the company had grown at an impressive pace. It was now the premier supplier to offices and companies across the American East Coast. He was a self-made millionaire, had his own facility in Hartford and was on his way there that morning to finish up a big deal with a technological company based in Philadelphia. He had a wife, three kids and a house in one of the best neighbourhoods in the state, and he often had to pinch himself to fully appreciate his extraordinarily good fortune.
In the military, he'd been going nowhere. He had a poor discipline record and an even worse reputation. He’d been on his way to being kicked out of the Marines and realising he had nowhere to go, convinced them to let him enlist in the United States Army and give him another shot. Even then, it was a small miracle he’d survived without a serious incident in the years before he mustered out. He eventually came to the obvious conclusion that military life wasn’t for him. Leaving the Army had been the best decision he'd ever made.
He headed towards his Mercedes, dark blue, less than six months old, fresh off the production line and parked on the street. He got a kick out of the envious looks other guys gave him when he parked at the golf club or at the Mall down the street. He unlocked the car, pulling open the door, and stepped inside, shutting it behind him.
Fastening his seatbelt, he put the key in the ignition and twisted it.
Given the advances in technology over the last decade, much like those the man had built his business on, the device rigged up underneath the Mercedes that morning would have been considered old-fashioned by those proficient with the finer points of car-bombing. Times had changed, such as when the six-shooter revolver suddenly found itself usurped by the 9mm pistol. The two bricks of C4 plastic explosive stuck underneath the Mercedes had been wired up to the car’s ignition system in the middle of the night, a man lying there in the shadows under the car, spending almost half an hour wiring the charge. Most modern car-bombs were magnetic, triggered by the opening of a door or whenever pressure was applied to a pedal. Others used tilt fuses, one side full of liquid mercury, the other side the wires of an open circuit to the detonator. Whenever the car moved a certain degree, the mercury swished down into the wiring and closed the circuit, detonating the bomb. But the man who had wired up the Mercedes to the bomb had been out of the game for over a decade. He could be forgiven for being a little old-fashioned. But whatever the argument, one thing was for sure
His way still worked.
There was a split-second delay as the receiver half a foot beneath the man in the driver seat picked up the detonation signal from the ignition current.
Then the bomb under the car exploded.
The Mercedes erupted into a huge fireball, the vehicle lifted twenty feet into the air from the force of the plastic explosives underneath, the fireball burning the trees nearby, the shockwave smashing the windows of nearby houses, everything inside the car vaporised in an instant. Down the street, the man who planted the C4 watched through the rear-view mirror of his own car. He’d been there for over four hours, watching and waiting for the man to step outside his front door, get inside the car and turn on the ignition.
As the flaming car landed with a thud, the shell continuing to burn, front doors of houses along the street started to open, curtains in windows flickering as neighbours peered out to see what the unexpected noise was. The man watching in the rear view mirror nodded with satisfaction, watching the Mercedes cook.
A confirmed kill.
The next moment, he fired the engine to his own car. He took off the handbrake, putting his foot down, and the car moved off quickly around the corner and out of sight, headed straight for Bradley International Airport and his 7:55 am flight to London Heathrow.
TEN
Back at the ARU's headquarters it had just gone midday, and Deakins and Second Team were already downstairs guarding both exits, each man armed with his MP5 and the Glock in a thigh holster as backup. Hard as the clean-up team down there had tried, they hadn’t managed to get rid of all the bloodstains by the reception desk, and the men stationed near the door found themselves glancing at them, Clark’s blood still visible over the desk and wall, the air stinking of disinfectant and smelling like a hospital.
Upstairs, Cobb had just returned from delivering a statement to the press and was sitting inside his office talking with Archer, Chalky, Porter and Fox as the forensics team continued to work away in the briefing room and as the tech team recovered in the operations area. As the five men talked, the phone on Cobb’s desk rang, cutting across the conversation. He reached over and picked it up.
‘Cobb,’ he said. He listened to the response. ‘OK. I’m putting you on speakerphone. Four of my officers are in the room.’
He pushed a button, and then put the phone back on the cradle. Around the office, Porter, Fox, Archer and Chalky all listened closely.
‘Director, this is Dr Kim Collins,’ the other voice said, female. 'I'm here at the lab. We’re with the body of the dead gunman. I have some news for you.’
‘Go on.’
‘Age-wise, he's in late thirties or early forties. We tried running his prints through our system, Special Branch and MI6’s, but nothing came up. He’s not English and he doesn’t appear to be someone we've encountered before. We tried Interpol, but that was a dead end. However, he has a series of tattoos on his body, on his arms, elbows and torso. They are distinctive. I've seen this type before. Definitely Eastern European.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘If I had to guess, I'd say Albanian.’
Cobb nodded as the four other men in the office listened in silence.
‘OK. What else?’
‘The man also has scarring on his torso and upper arm from several old bullet wounds. Coupled with the scar tissue on his right hand, I would say he’s been in the military somewhere. The stitching on the bullet-wounds on his body is very rudimentary, the kind you’d see in the field, real needle-and-thread jobs, emergency repairs. Almost definitely obtained in combat.’ She paused. ‘I also have something else for you. It's really quite bizarre.'
Cobb frowned. 'Go on.'
'When we ran this man's fingerprints and DNA, we came up with an immediate match for something else.'
'Which was?'
'The letter that was sent to Charlie Adams. This man sealed the envelope. The DNA from the saliva and fingerprints on the paper are a 100 % match.'
Cobb frowned, incredulous. 'What?'
At that moment, a red-light came up on the phone from another call. Cobb reached over.
‘Forgive me for one moment,’ he said to Collins. He pushed the button. ‘Cobb.’
‘Sir, its Deakins.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m on the reception. There’s a man here who says he’s from the US Embassy. He’s asked to speak with you. Says it’s extremely urgent. He’s shown me ID. ’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Jackson. Ryan Jackson. He’s an Operations Officer with the CIA.’
Pause.
The four officers noticed Cobb’s body stiffen.
Another pause.
‘OK. Send him up,’ he ordered.
‘Yes, sir.’
Cobb didn’t bother pushing the button back to Dr Collins at the lab. He just lifted the phone and put it down again to hang up. A silence followed.
‘Everything OK, sir?’ Archer asked.
Cobb sat back in his seat, his eyes distant.
‘No. I don’t think it is. Outside. I need to talk to this man alone.’
The four officers complied without a word and pulled open the door, moving out into the ops room and out of the way.
After a few moments, Agent Jackson appeared, led along the level by Deakins. The other officers looked at him curiously. They saw a well-dressed man who was probably in his mid to late thirties. He had brown hair and brown eyes and was dressed in a smart suit, light blue shirt with a dark blue tie. He looked fit and healthy, but at that moment also extremely worried. He ignored everyone standing there, turning the corner and followed Deakins straight into Cobb's office, hesitating a brief moment as he came face-to-face with the damaged glass on the door.
Inside the glass-walled room after the two men had entered, Cobb nodded at Deakins, who turned and shut the door behind him.
Jackson stood there in the ruined office in front of Cobb. The two men looked at each other.
'Hello, Ryan,' Cobb said.
‘Hello, Tim,’ Jackson said, ‘It’s been a long time.’
Over three and a half thousand miles to the west, it was early in the morning in the town of McLean, Virginia. The sun had just begun its slow climb at the base of the horizon, shielded by clouds, the air muggy and damp. Officially an unincorporated community on the map, Mclean was a town with over 48,000 residents, many of them diplomats, members of Congress, or high-ranking government officials. The reason for this concentration of population was that the CIA’s headquarters were actually at Mclean, Virginia, not Langley as so many people thought. Other major companies such as Capital One and Hilton Hotels were also based out of the area, adding to both its prestige and wealth, the affluence of the area evident in the high-end shopping malls, golf courses and spa retreats scattered all over the community. Residentially, the census in 2010 revealed there were just over 17,000 separate households in Mclean, and despite being a predominately government town as people put it, at that time in the morning most of the residents were still asleep. The buses for the high schools in the area weren't due to roll around until just after 8 am, so it was still that blissful last hour in bed just before everyone had to get up and get going for the day.
But one young man was already up and had been for almost two hours, riding his bike through a series of suburbs and maple tree-lined streets. He worked the paper-round five days a week, the easiest money he'd ever make, thirty five bucks per shift. He was fourteen and hyperactive so he was usually up by this time in the day anyway, and much to the delight of his parents he figured he might as well make some money if he was already up and about.
He worked ten streets on his route, usually about twenty houses each side, so that added up to a lot of newspapers. Four hundred and four, to be exact. He'd worked out that he could carry eighty rolled up papers in the bag on his side, so he normally had to make a few stops back at the store to reload so he could finish his shift. When he'd started out, he had carefully tucked each paper in each letterbox or walked up to drop it on the porch, but lately he had started throwing them at the porches instead and had got pretty good. A friend of his who worked another route nearby for the same newspaper vendor had gone on vacation, so the kid on the bike had doubled up, offering to do his friend's route for an extra thirty five dollars. Seventy bucks earned by the time he ate breakfast and got on the school-bus.
He had just turned down 41st Street, a stretch not on his normal route but one he was covering for his friend, and was a third of his way along, slinging the papers left and right, each one landing on each porch, some of them not even hitting the front doors. As he moved down the street, he slung a paper to his left. It twirled through the air and landed. He glanced over to see he'd hit the mark as he pedalled past.
Suddenly, he pulled on the brakes, skidding to a halt, planting his feet either side of the bike.
The houses on the street all looked quiet, everyone inside still asleep or already out the door, but something had caught his eye. Being a wealthy area and with residents constantly out of town or on vacation, his boss at the paper gave him a new list every shift of houses to miss on his route, people who had cancelled their paper whilst they were away. However, this front porch had a stack of newspapers on it. No one seemed to have noticed. It looked like there were over twenty there, hidden by the porch walls, heaped up by the front door.
The kid stepped off his bike, leaving it to one side, and walked down the path towards the house. It looked like most of the others on the street, a box-shaped, two floored brick house with a side garage to the left. The grass on the lawn was long, like it hadn’t been cut in a while, and most of the curtains were drawn.
Walking up the path, the kid arrived at the porch and looked down at the stack uncertainly, pausing just in case whoever lived inside pulled open the curtains and started shouting at him.
But there was no movement from inside.
The curtains were still.
He knelt down and started rummaging through the pile. Eventually, he came up with a newspaper dated from March.
It was delivered three weeks ago to the day, Thursday.
What the hell?
He was used to the odd heap, maybe six or seven papers for someone who had forgotten to cancel for the week, but he'd never seen a pile this high. Glancing back down the path, he saw the mailbox was jammed full of mail too, spilling out of the metal box.
Placing the paper back down on the pile carefully, the kid turned and walked back down the path. He'd report what he’d seen when he finished his route.
However, something about this place was making him uneasy.
Back in London, the second gunman who had attacked the ARU’s headquarters had made it to the edge of the River Thames. He was on the South Bank, not a hundred yards from where the politician had killed himself earlier that morning, the smell of salt from the water hanging in the air. Pedestrians were walking past him from both directions as he stopped and looked out at the water. He could hear the distant calling of gulls and the sound of the small waves splashing as they hit the stone walls of the riverbank.
He stood there for a few moments then climbed over the railings, causing several passing pedestrians to slow, watching and wondering what the hell he was doing. The man shuffled back and positioned himself so he had his heels over the edge of the brick, his back to the water.
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