“The President has no choice,” Kovalenko said. “I set him on this journey, and I will make sure that he finishes it.”
“Coburn will make the right choice,” Drake said. “He’s a good man.”
Kovalenko sneered, after which Drake hauled him up and threw him toward the plane’s door. There was a crash and a yelp. Drake shrugged. Hayden unlatched the door, letting the howl of cooling jet engines into the cabin. Drake peered outside. Rain lashed the ground and the shoulders of an entire entourage of people stood waiting for them.
Drake helped Kovalenko down the plane’s steps none too gently.
Five minutes later they were standing inside the hangar. It was brightly lit and huge, containing a small plane and two military choppers. Armed men lined the place, every single one a soldier carrying automatic weapons. Drake faced a group of suits, half shrugging off raincoats, the other half looking like drowned rats.
It was the Secret Service agents that drew his eye.
It meant that President Coburn was right here. Right where Luka Kovalenko wanted him. Drake positioned a hand near his weapon and watched the hangar carefully. There was a great deal of tension thickening the air—you could almost slice it with a knife—and he saw dozens of twitchy trigger fingers. Drake made sure his team were aware through the comms system.
“You recognize any of these guys?”
Hayden answered in the negative. Just a few seconds later a haggard-looking man wearing black trousers and a shirt approached them, stopping at a respectful distance.
“The President is waiting,” he said. “Follow me.”
Through the hangar, under a dark and stormy afternoon sky, the Strike Force team led the Blood King toward the small unmarked jet where President Coburn waited. Secret Service agents stood two deep around the entire plane, forming a gauntlet to the steps. Drake nodded at them and received only grave stares in reply. For a change, Kovalenko remained silent.
They climbed the steps into the jet. Inside, it had been heavily modified. Space had been sacrificed for security. They passed through a steel door into the main body of the aircraft. A conference table was bolted to the floor with chairs positioned at all sides.
President Coburn sat at the head.
Drake nodded and let Hayden take the lead. She was most experienced with Coburn and happy to liaise with him. Even though Kovalenko had been searched more than once already, Drake made sure he checked the Russian again, trusting only what he could hear and see in the moment. The Blood King had thrown several red herrings at them today and may well have other plans. He pushed Kovalenko into a chair and sat beside him. The rest of the team found their own seats. Coburn gestured at the Secret Service agents in the improvised room.
“Wait outside, please guys. We can handle this.”
“Sir . . .” one of them began.
“These people have saved my life on more occasions than I can count. If I can’t trust them, I can’t trust anyone. Don’t worry, Ted, I’ll be fine.”
Drake waited for what would come next. Kovalenko remained silent. Drake’s watch told him they had a little under three hours to stop the nuke.
Coburn met Kovalenko’s icy stare. “What do you want?”
The Blood King sat back. “For now, the fear in your eyes is enough.”
“You’ve threatened thousands of lives.”
“Yes, but all I want just one lofty official and eleven soldiers. Will you trade that with me?”
Hayden tried a new tack. “Where is the nuke, Kovalenko?”
“Ah, well that’s easy. It’s in a place where you will never find it without my help, being driven close to your Pentagon and Langley and around your city center. It’s mobile.”
Drake felt more tension grip the room. A mobile nuclear device was quite possibly the worst scenario he could imagine.
“Mobile?” the President answered. “And you say it has a facial-recognition deactivation device?”
“Oh, yes,” Kovalenko said. “The only way you can stop that bomb is to stick your face up against it, Mr. President.”
A voice filtered through the comms system in Drake’s ear right then, a voice that the entire team heard. “Techs have checked this out and, yes, it’s possible. It’s easy, actually. You just attach the facial rec device to the trigger as an extra failsafe.”
A deep silence crept through the room as the assembled team mulled it over. Drake spoke up first. “And you’re going to take us to this vehicle?”
Kovalenko nodded. “I will.”
“Risky,” Kinimaka said. “He should stay here in captivity.”
“Either way.” Kovalenko shrugged. “My plan is unstoppable.”
“You shouldn’t go, sir,” Hayden said. “There has to be another way.”
“Oh, I assure you there isn’t,” Kovalenko said.
“Unfortunately, I think he’s right.” Coburn sat back and sighed. “But tell me—how on earth did you map my face well enough to use it as a deactivation feature? I’m assuming you’ve it detailed well enough so that a photograph won’t do the job?”
“Did you forget that I kidnapped you, Mr. President? I got all the mapping I needed.”
There truly was no option. Hayden accepted with a nod. Coburn asked Kinimaka to open the door and show his security team leaders back in. And that was when the arguments really began.
Drake listened as Coburn fought back and forth with his team. Coburn insisted that he go with Strike Force One as sole protection. The Secret Service thought otherwise.
“Strike Force was your idea,” Kovalenko told the President. “Your . . . baby. It wouldn’t exist without you. I guess this is where you find out if your choice was a good one.”
In the end, the Secret Service agreed to letting the Strike Force team protect the President with the condition that three of their best men join up. They would also be tracked by air.
With just over two hours to go before detonation, Coburn finally turned to Kovalenko. “You have your wish.”
“Not yet. But soon.”
Drake shifted in the chair, reaching for his gun. Several jolts of pain shot from bruises and aching muscles to his brain. His back smarted. He rose and spent a few moments stretching.
“You’re ruining my next vacation,” he told Kovalenko. “It’s gonna take weeks to shrug off these aches and pains.”
Coburn ordered Kovalenko removed from earshot for a moment and then spoke briefly with the Strike Force team.
“There has to be a way to find out where he’s stored the rest of those nukes, especially the three he’s using for leverage. He can’t have done this alone.”
Drake agreed. Maybe one of the old Russians could help. One of Grigori’s equals perhaps or somebody Grigori trusted. For now though, there was only one thing on the Yorkshireman’s mind.
“Let’s move out, sir.”
Further down the aisle of the plane, Kovalenko grinned at them. “How does it feel to be manipulated? To know you’re not the most powerful influence on your life? To—”
That was when Shawnasee snapped, stepping in and driving a fist into the Blood King’s gut, folding him in half. President Coburn couldn’t hide the grim smile that crossed his face.
“You were saying about a powerful influence?”
Kovalenko spat blood. They dragged him off the jet and across the hangar floor, which was now populated mostly by soldiers and agents. It was a somber few minutes, with melancholy faces all turned toward Coburn. Drake wondered what the man’s wife and family would think of this mission.
But of course, they wouldn’t know yet.
“Don’t worry, sir,” he said. “We’ll get you back to your family.”
Coburn nodded at him. “I know you will, Drake.”
They piled into four SUVs. Drake found himself beside Dahl.
“Shit,” he said. “No hitting this nuke with a sledge hammer. Okay, mate?”
“I could use your skull. They are one and the same.”
�
��If you have to, throw yourself over it. We’ll get clear.”
“You think I could stop a nuclear explosion?” Dahl looked momentarily gratified.
“Well, you never know until you try.”
The vehicles set off at a rapid pace, screeching out of the hangar and taking a sharp right toward the far end of the airfield. Hayden estimated they were twenty minutes away from the mobile device, or at least its general area.
At least this time we’re not facing a tight countdown or vicious opposition.
But what would they be facing? Drake had the horrible feeling that the Blood King wasn’t done here today yet. Not done by a long way.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
With sirens blaring, four blacked-out SUVs tore through the approaching night in close convoy.
Torsten Dahl sat one space away from the President, in the back seat of the lead car. He watched the road, the buildings that shot past, the people walking in the rain. They had no idea of the nightmare looming over them, the potential destructive mushroom cloud. With time to kill, he wondered how Johanna and the girls were faring in Stockholm. The interval between their last mission and this one had been so short he hadn’t found time to call them. The lapse would only make Johanna’s argument stronger and his bond with the girls weaker. Dahl’s biggest ambition was to hold his children in his arms once more.
Time had dulled the wound of losing Johanna. Dahl had opened his mind to other women, to other possibilities but work got in the way as it always did. He couldn’t get rid of the notion that he ought to stay single for a while.
At least until the Blood King and the Devil were out of the way.
Prematurely darkened roads flashed by, lit by stark streetlights and blinking signs. The SUVs powered toward the Pentagon, following Kovalenko’s directions. Dahl soon saw the high gray walls ahead, the view from the ground nowhere near as spectacular as the view from overhead. At ground level, the Pentagon could have been any old stadium.
“Where to?” the driver of the SUV asked without taking his eyes off the road.
Kovalenko shrugged. “I’d drive up and down here for a while. The van makes a full rotation every thirty minutes. It’ll be along, I guess.”
Dahl wanted to wring the Blood King’s scrawny chicken neck, wring it until it snapped off. The man was a stain that needed obliterating and Dahl would be glad to oblige at any given moment. Today had been grueling, both mentally and physically. Killing men that wanted to kill you wasn’t exactly mentally taxing but trying to save civilian lives at the same time . . . that was a chore.
His thoughts turned to the team. Luther and Mai didn’t appear to be as close as they had been. Dahl thought he’d seen something different in Luther’s eyes, in his guarded words; a desire to move on. And if Luther went, Molokai would follow. But that was life. Everything changed . . . for better or worse.
Hayden and Kinimaka seemed happy, though both had been shocked to discover how expensive Floridian property was in relation to how much they earned for putting their lives on the line every single day of the week. Dahl wondered what they would do next. The truth was—every single member of the team could earn a lot more by going private.
But that wasn’t why they did this. They didn’t stop terrorist attacks and arms bazaars and pirate hijackings to get rich. It was a calling and more than that. It was the one thing that made living their lives feel better.
Dahl watched Kovalenko. Drake had voiced the opinion that he believed the Russian was hiding something, that there was more to the plan than forcing the President to kneel beside a nuke. Dahl couldn’t think what it might be.
Kovalenko was watching every van that passed them by. Ten minutes later he spoke up. “The blue Mercedes. Tell the other car to flash three times quickly, pause, and then twice more.”
They had positioned the second SUV further back down the road so that when Kovalenko identified the van it could be quickly signaled.
Dahl relayed the information. Their driver turned their vehicle around and followed the blue Mercedes van. It pulled up ahead in front of the second SUV.
On the quiet road, with a concrete flyover above them, the rumbling roar of traffic in their ears and barely any light to see, the two SUVs sandwiched the van. Over a dozen armed men and women emerged. Dahl was one of them, dragging Kovalenko out into the rain and pushing him toward the van. For now, they left Coburn inside his SUV.
Dahl marched Kovalenko so that he could be seen from the Mercedes’s window. A man, seated in the passenger seat, held up both hands. Agents stepped forward and opened the door, training their guns on the passenger. At the other side, Dahl saw Drake and Alicia doing the same to the driver. In a few moments the men were kneeling on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
Dahl shoved Kovalenko to the back of the van. Drake appeared with a bunch of Mercedes keys in his hand and used one to unlock the back. Alicia, Mai and Luther covered Drake as he flung the doors open wide.
Dahl wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see but it wasn’t a low wooden platform like a pallet, bolted to the van’s floor, with a large wooden casket strapped to the top. Kovalenko had clearly known what to expect.
“I included the coffin for your President,” he said.
Dahl ignored him. Drake and Mai jumped up into the back of the van, followed by Cam and Shaw. Dahl waited, holding on to Kovalenko.
Drake and Mai levered off the top of the coffin and let it fall to the floor. A second later his voice filled the comms.
“It’s affirmative, Mr. President. Silver canister, just like all the others, only this one has something like a personal tablet attached to the side. That’ll be the facial-rec device.”
“Seventy minutes to detonation, sir,” Mai added helpfully.
“I’m coming,” Coburn said. “I think even my shot battlefield bones can cover twenty yards in seventy minutes.”
Dahl waited. A few moments later, Coburn appeared. Dahl pulled Kovalenko back to make way for the President. But as Coburn climbed up into the back of the van Kovalenko spoke.
“You have about one hour,” the Blood King said. “But now you have a problem. My men have planted forty standard explosive devices in various high footfall areas around your city. Public areas. Meeting places. Entertainment places. So here’s your dilemma, Coburn—if you defuse the nuke, the bombs explode. If you don’t, the nuke goes off. What will you do, I wonder?”
Coburn was staring at Kovalenko with his mouth open, unable to comprehend the true depravity of the man. “I can’t comprehend your evil,” he said.
Drake reached out for Kovalenko. “Give him to me. I’m gonna strap him, balls first, to that coffin.”
“Actually, you will let me go now,” the Blood King said.
“And why’s that?”
“Because there are fourteen more nukes out there, or did you forget?”
It was brinkmanship at its highest level. The spoils of this steely-eyed war were astronomical. Coburn stared from the nuke to Kovalenko and then toward the center of DC.
“Are there really forty bombs out there?”
“Give or take.”
“The nuclear explosion would do more damage.”
“Obviously. But it is a low-yield nuke and your Pentagon might take most of the blast. Perhaps you even have a shelter within. I’m not up to speed with the fallout figures, to be honest. Either way though, the casualties will be enormous.”
“Could we drive the nuke into a shelter?” Hayden asked. “Is that feasible?”
“I have no idea,” Drake said. “But make a call.”
“Actually, let me stop you there,” Kovalenko said. “Because the President has a third choice.”
Dahl felt a surge of trepidation, of bone-clenching tension. He guessed this had to be the motherlode of final choices. It turned out that he was right.
“Inside the coffin, next to the device, you will find a laptop. Open it. You will see a video feed that shows a small room. In the roo
m you will see a man with his finger on the trigger, or rather a red button. If he presses that button all the bombs will explode.”
Coburn shook his head. “I don’t view that as an option.”
“True, but next to the red button is a green button, Mr. President. If my man presses that button all the bombs will deactivate.”
“And what will you require from me to make that happen?”
Dahl cringed even before the Blood King answered. He knew it had to be something major but couldn’t have guessed the horror to which the Blood King aspired to.
“What do you want?” Drake asked urgently.
“Your life, Mr. President. If you let me kill you, my man will defuse all the bombs that are set in Washington DC. All of them. No more loss of life.”
“You’re fucking crazy!” Hayden cried, leaping at Kovalenko. “Absolutely fu—”
“If I were you, I’d stop her. And I’d stop messing me around. You have five minutes to decide, Coburn. Right now. Right here. Five minutes.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Drake pointed at Kovalenko and told the Secret Service agents to drag him out of the way. Once he was out of earshot, the whole team and Coburn huddled around, speaking in low tones.
“Is he bluffing?” Dahl asked.
“The nuke’s as real as all the others,” Hayden said. “At least on the surface. We can’t be certain, but I think we have to assume it’s the real deal.”
“The video feed is real.” Kinimaka spoke up, having dragged the laptop out and switched it on. “There’re several monitors in front of this guy with his finger on the trigger, all showing live TV programs and news channels that are happening right now. Again, we can’t be certain of the bombs Kovalenko says he had planted, but there’s no doubt he has the resources to pull it off.”
“So how do we beat him?” Kenzie asked.
“Subterfuge,” Luther said. “We pretend he’s killed the President.”
“How?” Hayden asked. “Kovalenko wants to pull the trigger. I’m pretty sure he knows the difference between a real head and a watermelon.”
The Blood King Takedown Page 20