by James Hunt
Dylan wasn’t sure if he should tell Cooper or not; he wasn’t even sure what to make of it himself. “The night we made the exchange for my son with the device, he spoke to me before the ambush. He asked me why I thought he chose me for all of this. I didn’t know what it meant, and I don’t know why he keeps bringing it up.” He watched Cooper’s face process the information, slowly nodding. “Is there something you know that I don’t?”
Cooper shook her head. “I’ll let you know if I find anything out. In the meantime, you’ll be staying with a few members of the CIA and DEA. They’ll be putting you up in a safe house in case Perry calls again.”
Before Cooper turned away, Dylan grabbed her arm and spun her around. “What about the threats? The demands?”
“If Perry thinks he can storm a military base—” Cooper cut herself off, and Dylan noticed a rising bout of panic in her voice. “He doesn’t have to storm the base; he already has what he needs to take it.”
***
The air had a slight coolness to it, much nicer than the stifling Boston heat that Perry had been plagued with all summer. In the distant darkness, the only light came from a few specks that shimmered from the Minot AFB. And just when Perry’s patience was about to run thin, the pair of scouts that he’d sent came rushing back in through the bushes. Perry was the first to pounce on them. “What did you find?”
“Security is tight.” The two men panted, trying to catch their breath. “Constant patrols, and they’re working on sending up surveillance drones.”
With Sefkh dead and Kasaika still behind bars, the number-two position in charge of the Egyptians had been given to Ozier, a stout, middle-aged man with a bulbous nose and ears that looked as though he could take flight at any moment. But Perry knew what the man lacked in looks, he made up for in brains, and he’d appointed him the number two the moment Sefkh was dead.
“We won’t be able to hide our numbers from them once that happens,” Ozier said.
Perry nodded and went over to the guards holding the scientists hostage. Their eyes had turned into something less human now, but their higher faculties seemed to work well enough to still handle the complex systems of the Taipan. “Activate the Minot Air Force Base command system. We’re going to say hello.”
The computer screen lit up, and three-dimensional scans of the base and its missile systems came online. In coordination with the movements on the screen, the sounds of metal churning against metal echoed in the distance then were quickly followed by sirens blaring their alerts.
“I want nonnuclear strikes at the barracks, administration building, and the weapons depot,” Perry instructed. The scientists didn’t hesitate, entering the necessary detonation strikes, and a few keystrokes later, Perry watched the billow of smoke trailing behind some short-lived missile that blasted the base and sent up a ball of fire on the horizon that lit up the night.
Gunfire erupted sporadically before the next two missiles struck, but after that, even the sirens were silenced. “Shut down the rest of the power on the base,” Perry said then turned to Ozier. “Send in everyone. Rendezvous point Alpha.”
Ozier nodded then radioed the rest of the Egyptian militia Perry had ordered into the area and that were stationed around the base. He’d called in every single terrorist still stationed in the country to help with the attack. All the chips were on the table now.
Perry hung back with the scientists, waiting for them to pack up their gear and go mobile. Once a good amount of distance had been put between Perry and the front lines, he, along with the scientists, started the march toward the base.
The horizon was filled with plumes of smoke, and Perry made the long walk across the open plains surrounding the base casually, each thundering gunshot adding a pace to his steps. When he crossed over the mangled fence that was the base’s border, the carnage was in full view.
Smaller fires had broken out and spread across the base. He saw Ozier and his men engaging a unit of soldiers still trying to hold their own behind one of the only structures not leveled by the missiles. Perry came up behind Ozier and shook his shoulder, shouting above the noise of the gunfire. “We need to get to the rendezvous point. They’ll have planes here soon, and with the high-level security risk, they won’t second guess bombing their own people.” Perry grabbed one of the spare rifles and fired into the cluster of soldiers, adding to the lead flying back and forth. “Tell the men to move, now!”
Ozier shouted commands and waved the men forward. Up until now, most of the missions had been nothing more than dropping off packages at locations, with the occasional skirmish with local police or federal authorities. This was the Egyptians’ first true test.
The heat from the growing fires blasted the right side of Perry’s body as he moved with the unit past the wreckage that was the base. Gunfire echoed in all directions as other units converged on their location. A lanky Egyptian standing to Perry’s left took a bullet to the leg and collapsed to the pavement, his hands clawing at the wound gushing blood that looked black as night in the glow of the fires. The man screamed in agony, his shrills overpowering the gunfire around them. Perry aimed the rifle at his head and squeezed off three rounds that put the man out of his misery. While the Egyptians looked at him with mixed expressions of shock and anger, he simply shouted for them to keep moving. There wasn’t any time for the wounded.
With the rest of Perry’s men clearing out the base, all of them engirding the remaining soldiers to a single point, Perry saw the entrance to the bunker, which was where the soldiers were retreating, too. He grabbed Ozier, nearly taking his arm off. “We can’t let them barricade the bunker! We have to take it ourselves.”
Ozier nodded but was soon distracted by the distant humming in the air. The rest of them noticed it as well, and it wasn’t long before everyone was looking into the sky, but Perry recognized the bombs before they came into view.
Perry sprinted as fast as his thin legs would take him while the bombs fell and detonated all around him. The explosions thundered and rattled the earth like nothing Perry had ever felt or heard before. The powerful blasts obliterated buildings, planes, tanks, and the ground itself. One of the explosions landed behind him, and the blast propelled Perry another five feet forward, where he skidded on the pavement, the flesh of his palms shredding against the harsh ground, along with his left cheek.
Perry pushed himself off the concrete, the fires from the bombs spreading, the heat around him so intense the metal from a fleet of Humvees started to melt. The cuts along his palms stung, and the heat and sweat that mixed into the gashes on his face burned even worse, but Perry had danced with fire before.
With the flames continuing to circle Perry, he looked up into the night sky, streaks of blood running down his face and onto his neck and shirt. “Is that it? Fire? You can’t kill me with fire. You can’t burn something that’s already dead!” He picked up his rifle and fired into the empty night sky. He screamed, pumping round after round into the air, until his throat was raw and chafed from the smoke.
A few soldiers stumbled into Perry’s circle of fire, and he unloaded the rest of the clip and dropped them to the ground. His eyes were bloodshot from heat and rage, and he looked for a way out and found the small gap where the soldiers had stumbled through. He squeezed his way through the flames, the heat licking his stomach and back.
Perry found Ozier with a group of their men, gathering together at the entrance to the bunker, each of them bloody with their own wounds, some of them barely able to walk or even stand. “Where are the engineers?”
“I don’t know,” Ozier answered. “The bombs took out a lot of our men. Radios are down.”
The entire base was going up in flames. The bombs from the U.S. planes had caused more devastation than the missiles that Perry had launched. Perry peered through the flames and spotted one of the scientists, face down on the pavement but his leg moving. “There!” Perry pointed, and Ozier and the rest of his men retrieved him.
Pe
rry watched the sky, waiting for the inevitable return of the bombers looking to make another pass, killing whatever survived. Ozier propped the scientist up against the wall of the bunker’s entrance, and Perry gripped him by the collar.
The scientist’s head lolled back and forth lazily, his eyelids flitting open and closed. Perry smacked the man’s cheek, snapping him out of the daze. “I need you to go through the encryption codes for the bunker.” Perry shoved him over to the control panel then aimed his rifle at the man. “Now!”
The scientist shook his head, slightly wobbling back and forth on his own two feet. Perry held the Taipan for him as he hooked it up to the network. The distant hum of the bombers sounded in the night air once more, and all of them searched the sky except Perry. He jammed the rifle’s tip into the scientist’s temple. “Open the fucking doors!”
The encryption code ran through the Taipan, and the doors opened, accompanied by the rumble of the ground as the bombs once again decimated the base. Perry and the others jumped inside and descended into the elevator before a wall of fire consumed them.
The elevator rattled all the way down, the lights flickering on and off in time with the explosions. The farther they sank into the earth, the less the explosions rocked them. Perry reached for his rifle, and the others mirrored his actions. “They’ll have a team of six down here.” He reloaded the rifle, stealing a magazine from one of the Egyptians. “Could be more since they had an idea of what was happening. And they’ll be armed with pistols, but they won’t have any automatic weapons or artillery with them. It’s protocol.”
Ozier and the rest of them faced the elevator’s doors while the dazed engineer cowered behind all of them. Perry hung back, tucked behind the small sliver of space to the left side of the elevator’s entrance, and waited. When they finally slowed and came to a stop, the doors didn’t open. Everyone shifted uncomfortably, anticipating the moment to come, and when the doors finally separated, the silence was torn apart with gunshots.
Two Egyptians immediately went down, but Perry managed to get a good look at the guards in the bunker before they did. Ozier was on the opposite side, returning fire in the lulls from the soldiers. “Three on the left and two on the right!” Perry shouted between bursts of gunfire.
Ozier nodded then barked orders at what was left of the men that had made it down. He plucked a grenade from his belt, and another Egyptian did the same. The two pulled the pins then chucked them into the corners where the soldiers were hidden. Perry and the rest of them hid behind the side panels in the elevator, and the screams from outside were cut short by the explosions.
Before Perry looked up, Ozier and the others were already in the hallway, guns up, looking for any survivors. Perry waved the smoke out of his face and trailed behind Ozier and the team. He stepped over the bloodied arms and legs, his eyes focused down the hall, where Ozier turned the corner.
Another round of gunshots echoed from where Ozier had disappeared but then quickly died out. “We’re clear!”
Perry lowered the tip of his rifle, bounding around the corner to the sight of Ozier and his men standing over the body of another dead guard inside the control room, where a couple monitors revealed the images of the devastation at the surface.
Smoke and fire had consumed most of the base, and what wasn’t pocked with burnt scorches was covered in blood and bodies. Perry tossed the rifle on the floor and snatched the Taipan from the scientist, his eyes hollow and his motions that of a zombie.
Perry hooked it up to the mainframe and turned the power back on to the base, taking control of all its automated functions and, most importantly, its nuclear missiles. Even if the military decided to perform a nuclear strike on the base, deep beneath the earth in this bunker, they would still survive. The U.S. military couldn’t get to them. “Check the radio frequencies,” Perry said. “See if any of our men survived the bombs. We’ll need to get them below if that’s the case. The government will be setting up a perimeter on the facility, watching us, and using anyone that survived as an opportunity to catch them and try and make them talk.”
Ozier echoed Perry’s orders in Arabic, and the men started their search. Perry opened the computer hooked up to the Taipan and looked at the arranged display of nuclear weapons at his disposal.
Chapter 5
The file room was stacked from floor to ceiling with cabinets, folders, documents, anything and everything that Homeland had collected about its employees. Cooper had spread out what she could on the conference room table that had been brought in for her investigation. When she heard the news of the base being taken, she started sifting through the files twice as fast, but with the sheer amount of data, it was an overwhelming task.
Cooper chose to start with the educational background that had led Perry into the work with the government. He had his doctorate in psychology from Stanford University and had specialized in social psychology, which, given his talent for manipulation, made perfect sense. He’d graduated at the top of his class, and his achievement had been flagged by Homeland’s recruitment department.
From there, Perry started out as a profiler and analyst, working with field agents in developing premeditated patterns of criminals and terrorists to determine what their next move would be so the U.S. government could take them out. After he’d been on the job only six months, Perry’s teams were responsible for the capture of three senior-level Taliban leaders and the (alleged) prevention of a terrorist attack on the United States embassy in London.
Perry’s rise through the Homeland ranks was like clockwork. He had a promotion almost every year until he arrived at the deputy director position, where he’d been for the past three years. His access and contacts covered multiple agencies, including the CIA and FBI. And in all the years Perry had been an employee of the U.S. government, there hadn’t been one filed complaint or reprimand—nothing. The man glided through the department with his ability to get the job done effectively and efficiently. With Homeland being the party that had recruited him, he already held the built-in belief that he was simply performing his patriotic duty.
There wasn’t any doubt in Cooper’s mind that the grades and academia that started after high school were aimed at the direct goal of arriving in the position he now held. Perry was smart enough and devious enough to have been planning this for a long time. But when had it started? There had to be a tipping point somewhere.
The family/childhood section of Perry’s file was the smallest. From what she read, both parents were dead, but the father had been hauled off to jail when Perry was still in grade school. She searched for the police file, but the folder was empty.
Outside work, Perry didn’t seem to have anyone he regularly socialized with. Aside from a few sporadic women that he had seen, scattered over the last decade, his personal life didn’t really exist. But the fact that his career was the main focus wouldn’t have triggered a red flag to anyone in the agency. Hell, she hadn’t been able to stay in a relationship for longer than a night for the past six years.
After the arrest of Perry’s father, his mother had filed for divorce and then died alone a few years ago. Perry’s father had died in jail after a gang-related stabbing and was found bloodied and disemboweled in his cell. There hadn’t been any witnesses in the event, and the cameras had been turned off.
Cooper rubbed her eyes as she looked over Perry’s financial statements. For the past two years, he’d been slowly draining his assets, liquefying all his accounts. She scrolled down bank statements, scanning the transactions, but all of the transactions were random with no pattern except for one. She noticed one withdrawal repeated on the same date of the month, with the exact same amount for each transaction.
The description for the payment was nothing more than automatic withdrawal. She wrote down the bank’s number and had just decided to contact it when Moringer called. “Hello?”
“Perry made it into the bunker.”
Cooper dropped the pen and leaned back in her chair
, a sigh escaping her. “Has he reached back out to Dylan yet?”
“No, but the first deadline is coming up fast. Where are we with the investigation?”
“Perry’s family tree seems a little barren. Both parents were only children, no siblings, cousins or other blood relatives, and what family he has listed is dead. Perry’s father was arrested when he was a kid, but the police report isn’t anywhere to be found. I’ve got his prison records but nothing on the conviction that put him there. I’ve put in a request to the local PD who made the arrest to send me the files on their end.”
“Well, keep digging. If something is missing, it’s most likely because Perry made sure it was gone, and if he was involved, you know it’s going to be hard to track down. I’ll call you when we hear from Perry again. Let me know if you find anything else.”
“Yes, sir.” Cooper hung up the phone and looked back over the financial section and dialed the bank’s number, and after a few long holds and the verifying of her badge number, she managed to get a hold of the bank’s president.
“Agent Cooper, how can I help you?” the president asked.
“We’re doing an internal audit for a Homeland Security agent, and we were taking a look at their bank transactions. Specifically, the amount of thirty-five hundred dollars that occurs on the twenty-first of every month. I tried speaking to the local branch managers, but they told me they didn’t have access to see beyond what I could.”
“This is in regard to Richard Perry’s account?”
“That’s correct.”
“My apologies, Agent Cooper, but I’m afraid Mr. Perry had certain security arrangements made with our bank. While I do have access to the information you’re looking for, I’m afraid that unless you have a warrant, I won’t be able to divulge that to you.”
“This is a matter of national security.”
“Then it should be easy for you to obtain the warrant.”