[Luke Stone 02.0] Oath of Office

by Jack Mars

  Timothy pulled up an X-ray image of a human foot. There was a tiny sliver in the webbing between the toes, and every few seconds, a red circle emanated from it.

  “This is kind of an artist’s rendering, but you get the point. The chip doesn’t set off metal detectors. The only way you can find it is by X-raying the child’s foot. And why would you do that?”

  He shook his head and answered his own question. “You wouldn’t. I think you can see how this technology is far superior to a chip that the kid wears as part of her clothes, or as a necklace. A product like that makes it too easy for a kidnapper to simply discard the chip.”

  “So you know where Michaela is right now?”

  Susan didn’t nod or move in any way. “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  Timothy brought up a new image on the second laptop. It was a stylized photograph of a blue glass and steel skyscraper, backlit by the last light of day. The photo suggested that a glimmering night was coming on.

  “This is another artist’s rendering. It’s of a forty-story luxury condominium building, Skyline Number Nine, which is located at 9 Lansing Street in downtown Los Angeles. The building doesn’t actually look like this. It’s only half-built. Some kind of dispute between the city and the developer has stalled the project, and it’s been sitting there as a construction zone for the past several months. The GPS unit’s location can be pinpointed anywhere on Earth, accurate to within two hundred feet. Currently the unit is awake and broadcasting from inside this construction site.”

  “Why don’t we send someone in there and get her back?” Luke said.

  “We can’t,” Kurt Kimball said from behind him. “The people holding her are a suicide squad. They will kill her at the slightest hint of unusual activity.”

  “Can the GPS unit show altitude?” Luke said.

  Timothy. “No. That’s hard. In another couple of generations, maybe. But now…”

  “So if SWAT shows up at street level, or a sniper takes out one of the terrorists from a helicopter…”

  “Yes,” Kimball said. “The remaining terrorists will kill her.”

  “And we don’t know where in the building she’s located?”

  “Right.”

  “Can you do it?” Susan said.

  Luke shrugged. He didn’t want to disappoint her. The terror she felt must be almost overwhelming. It looked like she was doing a good job of keeping it tamped down, but it was the kind of thing that could break through to the surface at any moment. Even so, this mission sounded like the tallest of tall orders.

  “Go in there, take them by complete surprise, kill every single terrorist almost before they can move, and then bring Michaela out safely?”

  She nodded, and now tears began to fall slowly down her face. “Yes.”

  A heavy sigh escaped from Luke. “I’ll need my team,” he said. “My pilots, my muscle, my tech guy.” He glanced back at Richard Monk. “Even Trudy Wellington.”

  *

  Luke didn’t find Ed Newsam. He didn’t have to find him.

  The spooks were following his team everywhere they went. Luke walked into a McDonald’s near Dupont Circle, and there was big Ed, sitting by the window, slowly and methodically demolishing a stack of pancakes, sausages, Egg McMuffins, and a large coffee. His face was lumpy and bruised. He had a new shiner under one eye. His crutches lay beside him.

  Luke slid into the booth and faced him.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Ed’s expression barely changed. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked, in a word, like shit.

  “You keeping tabs on me?”

  Luke shook his head. “Not me. Them.” He gestured at a black SUV parked outside the picture window. Ed grunted when he saw it.

  “How was Key West?” Luke said.

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “Rough night?”

  Ed shrugged. “I went out with a couple of the Navy SEALs from our little Cuban fiasco. Might have drank a little too much. They started badmouthing you, said you were weak. So I showed them what weak looks like.”

  Luke smiled. “Okay, I’ll bite. What does weak look like?”

  Ed stuffed a chunk of pancake into his mouth. “Them.”

  “I need you, buddy,” Luke said. “It’s that simple. We’ve got a bad one, and I need you. They took the President’s daughter.”

  Ed’s eyes opened very wide, but only for a second. He breathed deeply. He took a big slurp from his coffee cup. “We going to do it right this time? Hit hard, and no apologies?”

  “I promise you this,” Luke said. “We are going to hit them as hard as anyone has ever been hit. We have no choice.”

  Ed nodded. “All right. In that case, I’m in.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  7:50 a.m.

  Somewhere in the Sky, United States

  The F-18 Super Hornet screamed across the sky.

  Luke slumped in the rear seat, usually reserved for the weapons system officer. He was fitted with a helmet, a flight suit, a g-suit, and on top of that a parachute harness and a survival vest. Inside the cone of the fighter jet, the sky was wide open all around him. He glanced at the instrumentation just in front of his knees. They were traveling just under 1,000 miles per hour.

  The pilot was a lieutenant, a guy named Reginald Maxwell. People called him Max. As in Mad Max, and Max Airspeed. His voice came over the intercom.

  “You feel all right back there? I usually get more from guests.”

  “More what?” Luke said.

  “I don’t know. Excitement… War whoops. Terror. Sometimes people puke, or pass out from the positive g load.”

  “I’m good,” Luke said. “A little tired. Haven’t slept in a couple of days. I might even take a nap. If I do, it doesn’t mean I passed out. Sound okay?”

  “Okay with me. These birds suck fuel like nothing you’ve seen, so we’re scheduled for a refueling in South Dakota. If you wake up and we’re on the ground, you’ll know why. I’m told we’re high priority, so we should drop down, gas up, and go.”

  Luke nodded. “Good.”

  “Care to tell me what we’re doing today?” Max said.

  Luke glanced behind them at the pyramid formation of fighter jets. He and Max were the lead. Behind them were five jets, each one carrying a member of the team in the rear seat: Ed Newsam, Swann, Trudy, and the chopper pilots Rachel and Jacob.

  “What we’re doing?”

  “Sure. It’s not often we carry a load of six civilians across the country at near top speed. With yesterday’s attack in mind, it makes me a little curious.”

  “Yeah… well. Curiosity killed the cat, Max. This one is classified. Suffice to say you’ve got two former Delta Force operators, one former Naval Intelligence systems analyst, and two former 160th Special Operations chopper pilots. There’s only one true civilian in the bunch. And she’s FBI.”

  “Ah.”

  Luke nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well, enjoy the flight,” Max said. “Estimated time of arrival at Point Mugu Naval Air Station is maybe ten minutes before eight a.m. local time, eleven a.m. East Coast time. From there, you have about a twenty-five-minute chopper ride into Los Angeles.”

  Luke closed his eyes and drifted.

  They were flying in fighter jets because no other planes would get them to Los Angeles in time. As it was, they were going to cut it very close, with less than an hour to set up and execute the operation. And then there was the next Ebola attack.

  Luke didn’t want to think about it. He almost couldn’t think about it. He was over-tired and his brain was badly taxed. They were going to hit a major city this time, a big city, one that couldn’t be quarantined. Charleston was easy, relatively speaking. But how do you shut down a city like Chicago or Philadelphia?

  Simple answer. You don’t.

  There were too many arteries in and out. There were too many people, and too many high-density living arrangements. There were too many transportation options.
There were too many methods of attack available, and too many ways the disease could spread.

  This time, they had to stop the attack before it happened.

  Before leaving the New White House, Luke had taken Kurt Kimball, Susan’s National Security Advisor, aside.

  “You guys are killing people,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Kimball said.

  “The invisible war,” Luke said. “Spy versus spy. The coup plotters. You’re out there taking down the remnants of Bill Ryan’s people.”

  Kimball looked away. “That’s not my department. I know very little about it. The one thing I do know is it has to be done.”

  Luke shook his head. “It has to stop. We need those people. When one of them dies, our access to that person’s networks dies with him. If we’re going to find the terrorists before they hit again, those networks are how we’re going to do it. So you need to make it your department, starting now.”

  He handed Kimball the business card. ACE Rug & Carpet Cleaning.

  “Call this number. Talk to Rick and tell him who you are. Tell him you have access, and you want a truce. But the only way the truce will work is if you actually put a stop to the killings.”

  “And what should I expect Rick will tell me in exchange?”

  “In exchange for his life?”

  “Yes.”

  Luke shrugged. “Hopefully, he’ll tell you where the next attack takes place, where the terrorists are hiding, and how we can beat them.”

  Now, aboard the fighter jet, Luke was nearly asleep. He had put his trust in Kurt Kimball fifteen minutes after meeting him. He had done so mostly because Kimball seemed better than Richard Monk. He had no idea what Kimball would do with the information Luke had given him.

  Luke couldn’t think about it anymore. He was exhausted. He couldn’t be everywhere at once. He had to leave that part to other people. He had told Kimball the deal, and asked him to do the right thing.

  All he could do now, as his head slowly fell forward, was hope for the best.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  6:15 p.m. (11:15 a.m. Eastern Time in the United States)

  The Skies Above the Persian Gulf, near Dammam, Saudi Arabia

  Two American F-18 Super Hornets flew combat air patrol along the Saudi coast.

  Commander Henry “Hank” Anderson glanced at his radar. There was a lot of tension out here today. It was so thick you could slice a hunk off and chew on it. His patrol had diverted a couple of mock attacks from Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s in the early afternoon. Now, up ahead, three fighters had just taken off from King Abdulaziz Air Base. He radioed air control.

  “Bare Ace, Bare Ace, this is 101, do you read?”

  “Copy, 101.”

  “We’ve got three bogeys leaving Abdulaziz. Number one appears to be on intercept heading.”

  “Distance?” the air controller said.

  “I’m at twenty thousand feet,” Hank said. “Bogey at eight miles and closing. He’s turning left, giving us a little bit of a left aspect. I’m in single target track.”

  “101, hold your heading.”

  “Roger that,” Hank said.

  They played these games all the time. It was usually American planes and Iranians, once in a while Americans and Russians. In the past twenty-four hours it had been the Saudis. Hank didn’t watch the news much, but he knew about the bioweapon attack on American soil. Everybody knew. He also knew that an American intelligence agent had tortured and maybe shot a member of the Saudi royal family. And things were tense up here today. That much was true.

  Hank didn’t have much use for the Saudis. That was also true.

  The Saudi fighter jet had turned and was heading directly toward him again.

  “Bare Ace, this is 101. The bogey’s got me on his nose now, six miles out.” He waited a moment and watched that approaching plane. They were both going very fast, headed on a near collision course. “I’m at altitude, twenty thousand feet, three miles out now. Uh… two miles.”

  “Hold your heading, 101.”

  “One mile, Bare Ace. Here we go.”

  Hank had a visual on the Saudi plane. It was an F-15 Strike Eagle, coming at lightning speed. Suddenly, the plane fired.

  “Bare Ace, I’m fired upon!”

  Hank’s heart skipped a beat in his chest. His hands moved automatically with no input from his conscious mind. His plane banked hard left and gained altitude. He over-steered and put himself nearly upside down. He rolled, still banking hard.

  A missile flew by within a hundred meters. It zipped past and exploded in the air less than a mile away. The shockwave hit him and his plane shuddered.

  “101… 101?”

  “Copy,” he said.

  “Status?”

  “Still here.”

  “101, you are cleared to engage. You are clear to defend yourself.”

  “Roger, Bare Ace.”

  Hank knew his rules of engagement meant he could fire back when fired upon. It wasn’t on his to-do list when he woke up today, but it was always a possibility. He banked the plane around to his left and back. He fell in behind the F-15, which was running south. The other two F-15s were nowhere in sight.

  Hank controlled his breathing and maintained his posture. That was close, but he was operational, and he was on the bogey’s tail.

  “I can take him anytime,” he said.

  “Take him,” Bare Ace said.

  “I can shoot him down?”

  “Affirmative, 101. Shoot him. Shoot him down.”

  Hank locked on with a Sidewinder missile. “Fox Two,” he said, using the brevity code for the Sidewinder. “Fox Two, Bare Ace.”

  “Roger.”

  Hank launched the missile. “Fox Two away.”

  The missile shrieked across the sky between Hank and the F-15, closing the distance in a few seconds. The F-15 didn’t even seem to take evasive action. Hank pulled up hard as the missile hit home. He saw a flash of white light, and the F-15 spinning out of control.

  “101, did you kill him?”

  Hank glanced back and below. The Saudi plane spiraled down toward the waters of the Persian Gulf. As he watched, the pilot ejected.

  “Affirmative. Fox Two kill.”

  Hank looked for the pilot’s parachute to open. It didn’t happen. The man’s body in his dark flight suit dwindled and disappeared as it fell toward the water.

  “His chute is not deploying. He is falling free.”

  “Roger, 101,” Bare Ace said. “Confirmed F-15 kill. Nice shot.”

  As Hank turned back to rejoin his patrol, he could feel his heart rate and his breathing start to normalize. He wasn’t much for politics. He felt it was best left to the politicians, who he wasn’t much for, either. The whole thing seemed like it could turn on a dime, and frequently did. All the same, he didn’t want to be the guy firing shots that started World War Three.

  “You know? Could have sworn these guys were our buddies when I woke up yesterday.”

  “Roger that,” Bare Ace said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  8:25 a.m. (11:25 am Eastern Time)

  Los Angeles, California

  “Okay, Swann,” Luke said. “We’re running out of time. Give me what you’ve got.”

  They had set up a makeshift command center in an empty office suite on the thirtieth floor of an office building a mile from the construction site where Michaela was being held. Pierre Michaud owned the building. Pierre was under sedation, but Susan got them access to the offices.

  The windows faced toward the construction site. In the distance, Luke could see a large construction crane towering above the half-finished building. In the background behind the city were the parched peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains.

  Trudy stood at a telescope, watching the roof. She had counted about a dozen men up there, as well as a few on the stairwell to the crane’s operator cabin, and at least one on the working arm itself.

  Swan
n had five laptops set up across a long white table.

  “Okay,” he said. “I want to show you something. They can’t know we’re here, right? I’ve got command of a Solar Eagle surveillance drone. This is the latest thing. It’s solar powered and super lightweight, so it can stay up there for years on end. It operates in the stratosphere, high above your typical air traffic. It’s a toy belonging to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. For obvious reasons, they’re letting us have whatever we want today. The one I’ve got is at about eighty thousand feet and slowly circling that building. At that height, they can’t see it, but it can sure see them.”

  “What does it show?” Luke said.

  “This.” Swann pulled up an image on one of his screens. It was of the narrow metal walkway on the working arm of the construction crane. There was what looked like a package lying across it.

  “Okay, what is it?”

  Swann used his fingers to zoom in on the image. “It’s the girl.”

  He zoomed in, and in, and in.

  The package resolved itself into a little girl, on her back, wrapped in some kind of straightjacket and belted to the deck with leather straps. She wore an airplane nightshade over her eyes. It was about the only act of mercy the kidnappers had indulged in. Michaela was close to five hundred feet above the ground. At least she couldn’t see it.

  Ed and Trudy had gathered around.

  “What is she wearing?”

  “It looks like a suicide vest,” Ed said.

  “Sure,” Swann said. “That’s what is. If I zoom in some more, you can see the vest pockets are filled with metal cylinders. Six pockets that we can see, six cylinders. Trudy?”

  “Yeah,” Trudy said. “The vest itself is probably filled with nails, shards of scrap metal, and other forms of shrapnel. And cylinders like that are usually similar to pipe bombs, packed tight with either TNT, C4, or in the worst-care scenario, something very dangerous like acetone peroxide. We’ll have to hope it isn’t that.”