by Tim LaHaye
She trotted toward the pilot, who was walking her way. She had come from the other side of the globe to help in the daring rescue of the man she loved. But she was now getting a bad feeling about things.
Her Allfone rang. It was Victoria McHenry. “Hello, Rivka, dear. We’re on the main artery coming out of Karbala and heading toward New Babylon. But we’re sandbagged right now. About a mile and a half from our position is a massive military roadblock. The Alliance seems to have sealed off the Global Alliance complex. We’re a small team, and we simply can’t take on an entire company of Alliance special forces in a ground battle. Rivka, where are you now?”
“Just landed at Sather Air Base. I’m still trying to get a ride to where you are. I’m stuck here for now. It’s maddening.”
On the other end, Victoria sounded distracted, like someone was trying to get her attention. “Rivka,” she announced, “Pack needs to tell me something. I’ve got to cut out—” The call dropped.
By then, Rivka stood eye to eye with the Israeli pilot. He was checking the time on his wrist Allfone watch and throwing her a look she didn’t miss. He expected her to be ready to climb back into the F-140. And that was something she couldn’t do.
“I told security here we had to make a fueling stop,” the pilot explained. “They’re giving us twenty minutes. Then I’ve got to get airborne. And if you aren’t strapped into that second seat of the F-140 when I lift off, there’s going to be some serious trouble.”
FIFTY-TWO
SECRET SERVICE HOLDING ROOM W16 AT THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington, D.C.
Secret Service Agent Decker had to let Ben Bolling’s telephone call go to voice mail because he was about to address a dozen White House agents and pass out assignments. But hearing Bolling’s voice triggered some memories. Some good. Some bad.
Decker had known Bolling when Bolling was an FBI agent. They had once worked together on the presidential campaign trail guarding Hank Hewbright during the last election. Back then, Decker did the Secret Service perimeter work for Hewbright’s activities. Meanwhile Secret Service Agent Owens was the guy physically closest to Senator Hewbright. Which is why Agent Owens was now buried in a cemetery in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and why Decker was still alive.
During the assassination attempt against Hewbright, FBI Special Agent Bolling heroically broke into the middle of the attempted assassination scene in the political convention hotel room and put an end to it—unfortunately not until after Agent Owens had been killed. As Decker reviewed his e-clipboard, ready to address his cadre of agents, he wondered why Bolling was reaching out to him now. The two hadn’t spoken for years.
When the agents were all seated in the holding room of the basement of the White House, Decker started giving them the POTUS briefer for the day. POTUS—the president of the United States—would be in meetings all morning, starting with his national security briefing and ending with a discussion with his economic advisors regarding the Alliance trade-sanctions issue. Then he would be leaving, via the south lawn, under constant Secret Service protection and would be boarding Marine One, the presidential helicopter, which would ferry him to Andrews Air Force Base. There, with the same team of agents in tow, he would be flown on Air Force One to New London, Connecticut, to deliver the commencement address to the graduates of the Coast Guard. Following that, POTUS would return under night skies to Washington and the White House, where he would retire for the night.
After the briefing, Agent Decker returned Ben Bolling’s call. Bolling picked up after a few rings. At first, Bolling made small talk and painted an overly rosy picture of his life as a retiree. Finally, he got down to brass tacks. “I’ve got this friend . . . Well, a fellow FBI agent, actually. John Galligher. He used to do counterterrorism before he retired. A jokester and sort of a pain in the butt. But he definitely knows terrorism and threat assessment. So he contacted me recently and said he thought there was a threat against the president. A contact of his who used to work in clandestine services with the Company has traced this possible threat to an incident in Russia, and to a former KGB and FSB agent named Vlad Malatov.”
Decker was silent, thinking through what he was hearing. “Okay. We’ll run it through our system.”
“No, that won’t do you any good. This Malatov guy supposedly had a KGB-style extreme makeover. Face reconstruction. New fingerprints. Voice alteration. The works. He’s even on an AllTube fight video, but he’s wearing a mask. Anyway, he won’t be in your system.”
“Thanks,” Decker said with hesitation. “I guess.” He chewed on it for a second. “How about the staleness of this report? How current is it?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I know this doesn’t help you much, and I know you get a lot of vague threat data all the time—most of it pure malarkey—but I promised Galligher I’d pass it on to you.”
“So that’s it?”
“Yep.”
“Well, Ben, considering that you’re a grade-A hero in my book, I’ll take your warning into consideration.”
“Thanks.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“No,” Bolling said, “that’s it.”
“Any other names, places, leads?”
“No. I wish I had more.”
“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Decker said. “That doesn’t give me much to go on.” He paused and looked around to make sure he didn’t have company. Then he added, “Things are weird around here, Ben. I don’t know who I’m working for half the time. Hard to explain. Strange politics going on. Maybe we can arrange a time for you to stop by. Give me your take on things. Maybe I’m just getting tired of this line of work. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
Ben said he understood and that he would be glad to visit the White House anytime.
Decker clicked off. He looked around the room and then went out in the hall where he found new transfer Agent Booth still hanging around, waiting for another round of follow-the-senior-agent-around-on-daily-assignments.
“Agent Booth,” Decker said to him. “I just received a tip. Alerting me to a general risk, but nothing specific. Possibly directed at the president. I would like you to do something for me.”
“Certainly,” Booth replied with a grin, his teeth bright white against his Miami tan.
“Stay vigilant. Anything that looks out of the ordinary, please report it to me. I know you’re new on the White House detail, but give me your eyes and ears. Okay?”
Booth nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh, and something else,” Decker said. “Your wish is about to come true.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I heard about your being a fan of the president and wanting his autograph. Tomorrow you’ll get your chance to meet him. You can get his autograph then.”
The smile of Agent Booth broadened.
DESERT OUTSIDE NEW BABYLON, IRAQ
Ethan was constantly moving from one space to another within the labyrinth of crumbling stone walls that made up the interior of the ancient ruins. At first he’d been alone there and felt safe. But then the Global Alliance security forces started arriving. They were slowly beginning to flood the area less than a half mile from the ruins. As he peeked around the edge of the ancient walls, he could see the Alliance police with tracking dogs, sniffing the ground. He was glad that he had donned the clothes of the Alliance lab tech. Maybe that would throw them off. But he could also hear Global Alliance armed dronebots flying in the distance, though they hadn’t conducted a flyover on his position in the ruins. Not yet.
Most of the spaces between the high walls where Ethan was hiding were wide open to the sky, but a few had stone floors from the upper level that provided some cover. Ethan didn’t want to stay in any one spot for too long. So he kept going along the walls, memorizing the exact pathways from his ever-moving positions back through the labyrinth to the safety of those few areas that had the big stone slabs overhead. The Alliance drone-bots and helico
pters had heat-seeking sensors on board that could identify humans on the ground, but Ethan was betting that they wouldn’t be able to detect him through twelve inches of stonework over his head.
His brain was still reeling, though, and the vertigo was still there. At times it seemed almost impossibly difficult to remember his way back to the areas with coverage from above. He wondered whether that experiment in the lab had permanently fried his brain.
SATHER AIR BASE, IRAQ
The pilot of the F-140 climbed back up into the cockpit, but he hesitated and looked down at Rivka. She stood in her flight suit, her feet glued to the tarmac. “Are you coming, Rivka?” he shouted down. “This bird is about to take off.”
She hesitated. As long as Ethan might be somewhere in Iraq, there was no way she could leave. She felt as if she had jumped out of a plane without a parachute and she was free-falling. Unless something happened soon, she was going to hit the ground. But she still had no intel on where Pack’s team was and certainly no idea where Ethan might be now.
“It’s zero hour,” the pilot called down. “Let’s go.”
Rivka’s Allfone buzzed. She clicked it open. A message read: Eyes only. Classified.
She clicked the Options icon on the little screen of her Allfone.
Finger ID required.
She pressed her thumb and index finger on the screen and hit Send.
After the confirmation was received, her screen read: Eye scan required.
She placed her wide-open right eye to the screen of her Allfone and hit Send again.
Ten seconds elapsed. Then the word Confirmed appeared. Another ten seconds went by, and then she received the message.
Meet us 300 yards south of the air base. Come alone. Look up.
She clicked off. In the cockpit, the pilot was looking down at her. Rivka took a deep breath and then called up to him, “Can’t come with you. Thanks for everything. Godspeed.”
The pilot gave a weary look, nodded, and closed the canopy, and a few moments later he was taxiing down the runway. A few seconds after that the tail of the jet lit up like a flame thrower and the fighter plane blasted up into the sky.
On the ground, Rivka pulled out a little compass from her flight suit to figure out which way was south. When she found it, she started sprinting full speed in that direction, out into the empty desert.
FIFTY-THREE
DESERT OUTSIDE NEW BABYLON, IRAQ
Pack McHenry sat behind the wheel of a vehicle that was dressed up like an Iraqi bakery truck, complete with a logo with a picture of pita bread and falafel on the side. But beneath the clever veneer the truck was armor plated, with heavy-duty suspension and a super-high-performance engine. His old days with the CIA and the contacts that he’d made there in the field always proved useful in providing him with some classy equipment.
Victoria sat in the back of the truck, along with Andre Chifflet and Vincent Romano. They were surrounded by a small depot of high-powered grenade launchers, ground-to-air shoulder-mounted missile launchers, and an assortment of automatic weapons. The bread truck had been parked there only a few minutes when Pack spotted a Range Rover off in the distance coming their way. He’d hustled them all into the back of the truck, then got out and cranked open the hood as if it were having engine troubles.
Now the Ranger Rover pulled off the road and slowly crunched over the gravel and hard-packed sand until it was about twenty feet away. Pack noticed there was a Red Cross insignia on the side of the vehicle. The driver was either a plant from the Global Alliance or he was for real and had just passed successfully through the military roadblock a few miles down the highway.
Pack strode up to the driver, an Englishman in a sweat-soaked white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The two of them sized each other up and engaged in some cautious conversation as Pack studied the Brit, who kept looking over at the pictures of pita bread on the side of the truck. Pack wondered if this guy was trying to piece the scene together, what with the fact that the bread truck was being driven by an American in the middle of the desert, just outside New Babylon, with a military roadblock not far away. It was clear the man had something on his mind; he kept meandering in his conversation, talking about an alert that had been sounded back at the New Babylon administrative sector and about the roadblock behind him, but he avoided specifics. Then he asked Pack what he was doing on the side of the road. He didn’t ask an obvious question like, “Engine problems?”
Either the man was a professional actor along the lines of the Royal Shakespearean Theatre, or he was what he appeared to be—a nervous civilian sitting on some information. Pack knew when he needed to call in his wife to apply her talents. He asked the Brit if he could have a seat in his vehicle because Pack had someone who wanted to talk to him.
Pack went to the rear of the truck and knocked three times on the back of the truck, then twice slowly, then twice quickly. He then swung open the truck door—to be greeted with the barrel of Victoria’s Glock semi-automatic with the pretty pink-colored grip. “Hello, dear,” Victoria said cheerfully.
He explained what he needed. She quickly disappeared into the Red Cross vehicle.
Thirteen minutes later she came sashaying out of the Range Rover and back over to the bread truck. She sat down next to Pack in the front seat and told him everything the Brit had said—about the circumstances of his meeting Ethan March, about Ethan’s apparent injuries, and how he had dropped him off at the ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. And that Ethan told the Englishman to be on the lookout for a rescue mission that he hoped was coming for him.
“Is he lying?” Pack asked.
Victoria gave it only a moment’s thought. “Well, there was consistent musculature of the face during my questions. No inappropriate micro-expressive bursts. And no hint of deception in the dilation of the pupils. So, remembering that you are putting me under the gun here in terms of time, I would have to say no, he is not being evasive or deceptive.”
Pack ginned. “You’re the best.”
Victoria smiled back. “Isn’t that why you married me?”
“No,” Pack said with a smirk. “It was a purely physical attraction.”
With a grin of her own she slapped his shoulder.
Pack jumped out of the truck and trotted over to the Englishman, who had an anxious look on his face. The British man started first. “You know, I felt a little guilty leaving him back there. Is there anything I can do now?”
“Yes,” Pack said. “You can drive toward Karbala and keep going. You don’t want to be here when things start getting hairy.”
SATHER AIR BASE, IRAQ
Rivka was about two hundred yards away from the air base, still at a full run across the desert, when she glanced back and saw the cloud of dust way back by the airfield. She slowed down just slightly so she could pull out her military spyglass and check it out. It looked like a jeep with two men in it, heading her way at a fast clip. It had to be Global Alliance air base security. Rivka had been an accomplished long-distance runner when she lived back in Israel. But all of that seemed like a long time ago. She was surprised that she was already getting slightly winded, so she slowed her pace a bit so she could fall into her stride and control her breathing.
There was a slight drop-off ahead to a lower plateau. Perhaps there would be somewhere for her to hide. She searched the skies but saw nothing. Who had sent the cryptic text to her Allfone? Was she following a wild-goose chase that would lead her nowhere—except into a Global Alliance jail cell? She was unarmed and had no survival provisions and was trying to outrun a vehicle in the Iraq desert.
This is not going to end well.
She reached the four-foot drop-off and jumped down, then picked up her pace again. Glancing to her left, she noticed a smooth transition area about a hundred feet away that could provide an easy ramp for the jeep to use in pursuing her down to the lower plateau. She abandoned the idea of pacing herself and pushed hard, sprinting full out with her legs wheeling like an eng
ine. It was do-or-die time.
The jeep was getting close enough where she could hear its engine roaring up behind her. As she sprinted across the open desert with nowhere to hide, she heard gunfire and saw a puff of dust to her right and some to her left as the bullets from the Alliance airport security started zinging past her and hitting the ground.
The text message on her Allfone from the classified source had read Look up. She knew that she must be very close to three hundred yards by now. She tried to dismiss the echo in her head that kept saying this was crazy. She was now running pell-mell through the scrubby little bushes across the hard-packed sand. This had to be the spot, whatever it was, and so she looked up. But she saw nothing.
A desperate sinking feeling lodged in the pit of her stomach as she heard the vehicle of the Alliance security guards closing in. But she kept looking up . . . and finally she saw something. There was a black dot way up in the sky, and as she watched it she could see that it was hurtling down fast, like a huge anvil, making almost no sound as it descended.
Then the object in the sky fired on the Alliance jeep. Bullets ripped through the front tires and shredded the hood. The two Alliance airport security guards scrambled out of their vehicle and ran off in the opposite direction.
The object in the sky was still dropping fast and getting closer. Now she could make out what it was. She would have called it a helicopter except that it was clearly an advanced experimental model. It was black and strangely angular from the front tip to the rear tail that housed a fan-like propeller. The angular configuration was clearly designed to confuse radar detection. There was a large circular blade on the underside and larger chopper blades on the top and in between a large cockpit where she could see two men. Behind the cockpit that had two spare seats, there appeared to be a small booster rocket. The whole thing looked like a jazzed-up version of the older Comanche recon and attack helicopter developed by DARPA—the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—for use by the CIA.