“Like you said—it’s your party,” Bolan told the man, and walked away.
“COLONEL, IT’S HOME BASE, sir.”
They were soaring over the gorge, about a thousand feet up, Bolan taking in the shellacking being dumped on the convoy by the Apaches when Michaels informed him Brognola was on the sat link. Apparently Operation Thor wasn’t taking any prisoners.
Dirty war, damn right. And the god of thunder was about twenty-six minutes away from burying the truth.
Slowly, the Executioner turned away from the saturation Hellfire bombing and Chain gun lightning that dropped the hammer on the convoy. He almost couldn’t wait to tell the big Fed the news of the ages, pretty sure, though, Brognola wouldn’t be the least bit surprised about the nuclear burial.
Slipping on the headphones, Bolan heard Brognola say, “There’s been some rather suspicious developments on my end. By the way, your fast taxi will be an SR-71 Blackbird. Don’t ask me how our lady does it, but she rustled it up, out of retirement. It will be sitting on the ground at Incirlik. A KC-10 tanker is on standby in England for midair refueling over the Atlantic. At Mach 3 you should be back in record.”
Bolan did the logistics. Within hours, he’d be back on U.S. soil.
“One other thing, Striker, before I fill you in.”
“Tell me it’s good news for a change.”
“I don’t know how good it is, but the Man has given you everything you asked for. You do know what part of that means, don’t you?”
Bolan did, but said it anyway. “If what I think is about to happen does, in fact, happen, you’ll be in charge of the country.”
“I said it before, and I’ll say it again—I hope to God you’re wrong.”
And so did Bolan. It was only a nagging suspicion, growing darker, gnawing at him deeper with each corpse left in his wake, but if he was right…
God save America.
28
It was going to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Durham thought, closing on the two Secret Service agents standing post at the doors to the Oval Office.
Check that.
Beautiful night under the White House roof, a sterling reborn America coming with the dawn. It may be the dead of night, but by the time the sun rose over Washington a new America, meeting his terms and conditions, would be announced to the nation.
And the President would be his personal press secretary, dictating his terms to the masses.
Or else there would be hell to pay in Washington, a hundred thousand times 9/11 or more.
Gringelt and Robinson on his wings, with Griswald at his elbow, Durham watched as the Secret Service agents reached to open the door. The emergency meeting had been called hours ago when Durham announced he had discovered the source of the leaks. On hand would be the National Security Adviser and top aides, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the chief of staff.
How sweet it was.
“Don’t trouble yourselves, gentlemen,” Durham said.
On cue, Gringelt and Robinson shed the Beretta M-9s from shoulder rigging and shot the men in the face, point-blank. He heard Griswald make some gagging noise, as he bulled into the most powerful room on the planet, freeing his own Beretta.
Time to take the crown.
Durham smiled at the confusion and fear that greeted him, his weapon aimed at the President as he rose from behind his desk. “Sit down! Or I’ll put one through this asshole’s face,” he snarled, shoving the muzzle at the chief of staff. They were hurling outrage, a babble of voices, someone cursing him.
Until Durham slammed a right cross off the jaw of the chief of staff, dropped him square on the Presidential Seal.
That settled them, he saw, the pig squirming all over the floor, dribbling blood, hacking all over the most important symbol on Earth.
“God knows, that felt good,” Durham said, then kicked the chief of staff in the ribs. “I’ve been aching to do that since I first laid eyes on this ass-kissing toad.”
Quickly Gringelt and Robinson shed their coats and shirts, unfastened their vests. Tearing off the Velcro, they went to work, shaping then fixing softball-sized gobs of plastique. Doors, windows, the walls and finally the Man’s desk. All primed, Durham bellowed for everyone to shut their mouths, all questions would be answered in due course. He punched in the numbers on his cell phone, saw the red lights flash on the primers.
Outstanding.
All he needed to do was punch SEND. Another set of numbers tapped in and the second digital readout would flash GO. SEND twice, and Washington, D.C., would be a smoking radioactive crater. Oh, but hats off to the geek wizards of the National Security Agency who invented such high-tech toys.
Pure genius.
“Are you insane! What is the meaning of this?” the President shouted.
“This is treason, for which you will hang,” the chairman said, and Durham shoved him down into his seat, pulling back on the urge to shoot him between the eyes.
“Sir, listen to me and obey,” Durham told the President. “You are no longer in charge of the Free World. I will crush you before God and the human race, should you disobey me. I will skin you alive on national television if you do not kiss my ass. You are allowed two phone calls—sir. One will be to the Secret Service. Should anyone attempt some heroic charge into this room, there is enough C-4 here to blow us all clear to the Potomac. That in mind, should you force my hand,” he said and laughed, “all tours of the mansion will clearly be canceled tomorrow morning and every morning after.”
“You’re mad.”
“And you’re going to be executed,” Durham told the Chairman. “If one more foolish word comes out of you.” He pointed his weapon at the President. “Call two is a freebie. Call whomever you want. Your wife, your priest, your mistress. Oh, and one other thing, people. There is a ten-kiloton nuke somewhere in this city.” He smiled as the chairman groaned, the chief of staff scraped himself off the floor and the President cursed. “I have a list of demands and they do not include healthcare or welfare reform or gay marriage. All the little people are now under my boot heel, or, in my case, my wing tips. They will begin, each American household, by paying tribute to their new pharoah, cleaning out one-third of bank accounts, IRAs, stocks and bonds, and so forth. Cash will be accepted, as it will be mailed directly to this office in the coming day. We shall see, sir, how much your adoring voting public cares about your life. That, however, is only one item. Should anyone not meet my demands, I will incinerate Washington, D.C.,” he told the President. “Please, the calls. And kindly do not wet your pants, or worse. I’m looking forward to sitting in that seat.”
“You son of a bitch, I’ll see you—”
“Sir! One last time, the calls, or I will start shooting.”
Durham smiled at their outrage, as the President picked up his phone. Moments later, he heard the chief executive tell whoever was on the other end, “It’s happening. And they have a nuclear device.”
Durham didn’t like the sound of that, but decided to let it go, as the President grunted, bobbing his head. Why waste time worrying when he owned the White House? The United States of America was a few hours away from becoming his personal kingdom.
THE SIXTY-PLUS-HOUR DELAY in delivering the suitcase to their room at the Embassy Suites had troubled Michael Rubin at first. He understood the need for caution, though, the two Russian military attachés had to cover their assets.
But it was happening, he knew, his pager vibrating minutes ago on his hip, telling him Durham had seized the Oval Office. A quick return page, and they were good to go.
Victory—military rule under martial law as dictated to the American masses by the Special Countermeasure Task Force—was as close as the morning’s press conference. He could only imagine the show Durham had planned.
As the two buzz-cut Russians in black leather trench coats fiddled with the keyboards on their laptops, confirming their money had been electronically wired to wherever they kept the numbered account, Rubin
pondered the immediate future. Just shy of the kilo tonnage that had wiped out Hiroshima, there was plenty of knockout punch. Enough, he knew, to vaporize the city, and beyond to Arlington and Falls Church, Virginia, to Bethesda, Maryland. Human beings, he envisioned, vanishing in the firestorm, leaving behind nothing more than shadows on the sidewalks. There would be hideous radioactive fallout, depending on the prevailing winds, burn and cancer victims crying out for death to relieve their misery. Every house and seat of power in the city nothing but an irradiated memory. There would be complete and total anarchy, as panicked herds jammed the interstates in a desperate attempt to flee for the safety of the countryside.
Naturally, it was only a last resort. The threat alone, or so they all hoped, enough to hand them the keys to the kingdom. Just in case, Rubin didn’t intend to hang around and wait and see if Durham pulled the trigger.
He was gently closing the suitcase, the Russians muttering something in their native tongue, when a loud bang blew the door down. Rubin was leaping to his feet, the Russians clawing inside their coats for pistols when the black-clad invader surged through the smoke. The big door crasher was chopping down the Russians with a mini-Uzi, then swinging his way as the bodies crashed off the table, bringing the laptops with them to the floor in smoke and sparking ruins.
“I wouldn’t,” the stranger warned him.
Rubin slowly pulled his hand away from his holstered Beretta and raised his arms. He was vaguely aware of the helmeted armed shadows on the hallway landing, but the blue eyes of the big invader had command of his full and terrified attention.
“I want a deal,” he stammered.
“Your life is only as good as a truthful tongue from this moment on,” the big invader told him. “That’s your deal. First, shut that thing down. Nod, if you intend to cooperate.”
Rubin stared at the smoking muzzle aimed at his chest. He nodded.
IT WAS CALLED the Doomsday Tunnel in the parlance of certain circles within the intelligence community. The Farm knew of its existence, and Bolan had suspected Durham and his team might, too.
Only Rubin—assuming he had been telling the truth about the setup, the seizure and enemy numbers under the White House roof and beyond—claimed not even the President knew of the second shaft leading up to the Oval Office at the southwest corner. Apparently, it was recently engineered in the event of just such a nightmare scenario of a palace coup, or a terrorist. A straight shot, from the Pentagon, under the Potomac River, to the South Lawn. Bolan had the access code to Shaft Two committed to memory, certain it would be changed when he was done.
If he succeeded in pulling off the seemingly impossible.
A commando storm into the Oval Office.
Only Bolan was going in solo, the weight of the free world on his shoulders. If he failed…
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Rubin, the ex-NSA counterterrorist storm tracker, had provided a gold mine of intel that was netting cannibals as the Executioner streaked on through the diesel-generator-powered gloom to destiny under the Oval Office roof.
How could this have happened? How much or how little did the President or those trusted with the nation’s security around him really know?
Too many questions were hanging, but the political fallout was not his concern.
Bolan was going all the way, no matter what, to save America.
Right then, a special Justice Department task force was rounding up what amounted to two squads of traitors around the metropolitan area, more to come, he was sure, when Brognola and his interrogators were finished. No Black Hawk from a private airfield in rural Virginia would whisk Durham and his VIP hostages to an undisclosed location to a private jet, then fly on, out of the country after the traitor announced his terms of national surrender to his will and whim at a dawn press conference.
Bolan sat, alone in the minitrain, as it rolled at what he assumed was several hundred feet beneath the city. Secretly, with the vice president far removed from the White House, the Speaker of the House was running the country. But Hal Brognola was given carte blanche.
The order had come straight from the President, who was now a hostage at gunpoint behind his own Resolute Desk.
Less than a minute later, the minitrain stopped beside a Marine toting an M-16, standing post by Shaft Two. Mini-Uzi in hand, the Executioner hopped out and hit the keypad on the wall. A pneumatic hiss, and Bolan was in the elevator car. Two hundred feet up, according to Pentagon brass. He tapped in another set of numbers to get him moving.
As he rose, the Executioner plucked a tear gas cannister from his webbing.
In a few moments, as he slipped the protective mask over his face, the Executioner would determine whether the free world remained free.
“IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY, sir, go ahead and invite your favorite newsman for the morning announcement that the baton has been passed to me. Phony punk that he is, I’ve got a few choice words for him. That fat guy, and that blond yuppie punk, too. I wouldn’t mind slapping his chubby cheeks, liberal piece of lying turd that he is. I bet he stops running his diarrhea mouth once I get hold of him,” Durham said with a smile.
Why were they looking at him as if he was insane? Were these elected officials really that out of touch with reality? Didn’t they see the future of the country was at stake? Couldn’t they understand military rule was the only answer? Demographics, immigration, more affirmative action, homosexual marriage and stem cell research aside, America was dying, the wrath of God sure to come unless one good man stood up and said enough. Only a man—an angel of the Almighty—who could reach out and nearly touch divine wisdom and understanding could straighten out the immoral course before the barbarians stormed the gate. Only he could…
The explosion nearly bowled him down. There was a frozen second where the room boiled with the erupting cloud, but he knew the biting stink for tear gas for what it was, as he teetered, eyes watering, lungs filling up with vapor as the shroud swelled the Oval Office.
What the hell? The shaft of the Doomsday Tunnel was near under his feet, mined to go off if it was breached. How…?
Through the watery mist, gagging, Durham thought he spotted a tall dark figure in the southwest corner, believed he heard the stammer of a machine gun. He was reeling, gasping for air, grunts behind outblasting the choking when he realized—
Damn it!
He hit his knees, sweeping the Presidential Seal for his cell phone as the stammer of weapons fire tore through the thunder of the heartbeat in his ears.
There!
He snapped it up, on his feet, then spotted—
The shadow that was the President parted the mist, the Man vaulting over his desk, arms outstretched, eyes bugged with anger.
He was throwing his finger forward, zeroed on SEND despite the burning water in his eyes, when the full weight of the chief executive hammered him down, into the seal. The cell phone flying from his hand, he took a fist to the jaw. Somehow, powered by terror his thunder was being stolen, he drilled a foot into the President’s gut, launched him into the desk.
He was sweeping the floor with hands fueled by panic, retching, near blind, when he scooped up the cell phone again.
Two stabs on SEND, and he didn’t care as he felt the bullets bore through his spine.
Message sent.
Epilogue
No debrief, no handshake, no job well done. Not that the Executioner expected or much less wanted a pat on the back.
Mack Bolan walked out onto the South Lawn. He couldn’t help but wonder where it all went from that night on. Who could say? The world was becoming a darker, stranger, scarier place…
Stow it. There would always be one more good fight left in him. The glue that held it all together was a few good folks willing to stand up and be accounted for when it came to facing down the most basic of all eternal questions, and mysteries.
Good versus evil.
No sooner was the last shot fired from his mini-Uzi then Griswald was in cuffs,
and the Man was whisked away in the Doomsday Tunnel.
Job done, he reckoned.
For now.
Bolan stood his ground as the Black Hawk settled on the South Lawn. Good to be alive?
Damn right.
Hope for a better tomorrow?
Always.
Offer up a silent prayer of thanks and gratitude to the Universe?
Why not? What else was left, when the smoke cleared, the dust settled and the world went marching on to the beat of its own drum?
He knew, could feel he was wearing a thousand-yard-stare as he forged into the rotor wash, and saw Brognola step into the doorway.
Bolan looked at the big Fed and he felt the thousand-yard-stare fade into the ghost of another memory of another battle now that he was with a friend.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7412-2
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Dan Schmidt for his contribution to this work.
TRIANGLE OF TERROR
Copyright © 2006 by Worldwide Library.
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