Seven Day Hero

by J. T. Brannan

  He was lying in bed dreaming of his revenge when the call came. ‘Albright,’ he answered, immediately sitting up in bed upon hearing Hansard’s voice on the other end. ‘No sir, I’m fine. No, I’m not at the hospital anymore, I was discharged last night . . . Yes sir, I’m in good health.’

  Albright listened quietly to what Hansard told him, the excitement building as he was given his orders. He felt the adrenaline start to pour into his body like liquid energy, his heart rate increasing seemingly of its own accord. His chance for revenge was being offered to him on a plate! Oh, the things he was going to do to that woman!

  ‘Yes sir, I can do that. No problem.’ Albright listened again as Hansard gave him the address of a man who could supply him with the necessary armaments, and the location of the helicopter that would take him to liaise with the men from MI5.

  Hansard then asked after his emotional stability, if he could keep any feelings of personal antipathy out of the equation. ‘Sir, what happened was in the line of duty, nothing personal. I’ll be completely objective on this sir, absolutely. The job will be professional, you can count on it . . . Yes sir, thank you.’

  Albright clicked off the phone, smiling widely. Objective? Not fucking likely.

  58

  The information came straight through to the main operations centre of the European JIC in London’s Whitehall.

  It came from a coded message from an intelligence asset in the US military. The man was high up in the chain of command, and the information he sent was always regarded as a top priority.

  This particular message was treated with even more importance than usual due to the current international situation, and before long it had been decoded and distributed to the top echelon of JIC officers for analysis.

  The message was short and to the point:

  US DEFENCE STATUS READY TO BE IMMINENTLY UPDATED. ALL MILITARY COMMANDS TO UPGRADE TO DEFCON III, EXCEPT USSTRATCOM, WHICH WILL BE AT DEFCON II. LIKELY TO OCCUR LATE TODAY, 29 DECEMBER 2018.

  Whilst short, the message’s ramifications were clear to everyone. The DEFCON status was descriptive of America’s readiness for war. It was sent between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the various US military commands around the world.

  At DEFCON III, the military machine would be gearing up for deployment, vehicles fuelled and weapons loaded. Aircraft carriers would be re-routed to certain strategic positions, and the logistical supply chains for war would be put in place.

  DEFCON II, however, was just one stop short of war, and had only occurred before during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And what the officers found especially alarming was that the military command primed for the highest readiness was the US Strategic Command, which controlled America’s devastating nuclear missile arsenal.

  Subsequently, less than an hour after the coded message had arrived, the news was on the desk of each and every leader of the Euro Russian Alliance.

  Just another hour later, all thirty-one ERA heads of state were ensconced in their electronic communications centres, engaged in an emergency virtual conference call.

  ‘So what is going on?’ President Chalois demanded. ‘Are the Americans preparing for war?’

  ‘It would seem so,’ offered the German Chancellor.

  ‘How certain are we of this information?’ President Danko asked next.

  Adam Gregory fielded this one. ‘It is from a reliable, top level source whose information we can trust, and this source has been independently verified by each of your own intelligence sources through the European JIC. So we’re about as sure as it’s ever possible to be.’

  ‘And so what do we do now?’ asked the President of the Czech Republic.

  ‘We must do the same!’ Chalois responded. ‘Increase our alert status to maximum immediately!’

  ‘I agree,’ said President Kandinski. ‘We are allies of America, but it is just common sense to match their move. We need to be able to defend ourselves effectively if necessary.’

  There were general murmurs of agreement, before the Maltese President broke in. ‘What is going on here? Defend ourselves? What do we think is going to happen, America is going to attack us, is that it? Nonsense!’

  ‘It was America who started this whole thing, so why not?’ replied the Spanish Prime Minister. ‘They clearly feel threatened by ERA and what it might lead to, so they want to get in early before we become too strong. They know our military is not as strong as theirs yet, and our missile defences are still years behind. It makes perfect sense for them.’

  ‘And monsieur Gregory?’ Chalois asked pointedly. ‘How about you, the great American ally? What is your opinion on all of this?’

  All voices went quiet as the other thirty leaders gave the British Prime Minister their full attention.

  ‘I agree,’ he said simply.

  Inside the electronic communications chamber at Number 10 Downing Street, Gregory took a sip of water and counted slowly to ten before he continued. This was it. This was the big one.

  Behind him, Hansard sat and observed the proceedings, watching the thirty high definition screens in front of Gregory with acute interest. He saw Gregory set himself, squaring his shoulders with determination, and smiled inwardly. Gregory was definitely the right man for the job, and now Hansard would see him truly go to work.

  ‘The evidence we have so far tends to indicate that the attempted assassination on Monday was an American-led op. Now, the government is claiming it was the work of one man, the Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA, William Crozier.

  ‘Unfortunately, this man is now dead – conveniently for the CIA, and you can draw your own conclusions there – but such an operation would be unlikely in the extreme without official sanction, and availability of government resources. If we accept that prognosis, then it is apparent that the US definitely sees us as a major threat, enough to try and disrupt our unification. Now that their plan didn’t work, and ERA was created anyway, what will they do?

  ‘There is simply no way that the US will accept our union, and if they cannot succeed by covert means, then they will become overt. And by that, I mean that they will resort to the use of force.

  ‘The US has a long history of aggression, from the genocide of their own native Americans to the ill-fated invasions of Iran and North Korea in the last few years. Their plans to spread the American way of life, pure capitalism masquerading as democracy, to every corner of the globe is modern-day colonialism by any other name. They’ve been the world’s only superpower since the end of the Cold War almost thirty years ago. Thirty years unopposed! And now we expect them to lie down and let us compete with them? It is not in their nature to go down without a fight.

  ‘Let us take their ballistic missile defence system as an example of their mentality. It is labelled a ‘defence’ system, but we all know the truth. The fact is that it is a tool of aggression, nothing more. A concentrated nuclear strike on the US would be impossible for them to defend effectively, no mater how good their system.

  ‘However, our sources tell us that the system is good enough to take out the limited number of missiles that might be launched from a nation whose nuclear arsenal had already been severely reduced by a carefully targeted first strike.

  ‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about a pre-emptive strike. It is said that if the US launches a nuclear attack, it will first of all target that country’s own nuclear forces. The American ‘defence’ shield has been designed specifically to defend the five to ten percent of warheads that might still be capable of counter-attack.

  ‘So it would appear to be that US nuclear policy is purely aggressive in nature, and the NMD system has been designed to facilitate this.’

  Gregory waited momentarily, before laying it out plainly. ‘To sum up, it is our understanding that they will launch a unilateral pre-emptive nuclear strike at the heart of Europe, in order to secure their position as the lone global superpower.’

  Gregory could see the looks of disbelief on the
faces of his colleagues from across the continent.

  ‘You might well ask how I can be so sure of this. Well,’ Gregory continued without giving anyone a chance to respond, ‘President Abrams told me just before this meeting.’

  There were gasps of shock and indignation from thirty different countries.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Chalois incredulously.

  ‘Yes, he told me. We are allies, you see, and as much as you may disagree with the UK’s position on this issue, we have kept the special relationship going. And so after hearing about our meeting today, and realizing we had found out about their upgraded alert status, he called me directly, asking me if the United Kingdom would agree to unite with the US against the rest of Europe.’

  ‘This is outrageous!’ Danko challenged. ‘What kind of game are you playing here, Adam?’

  Gregory took another sip of water before responding. ‘It is not a game, Vasilev, and you need to start understanding the American mentality. They have a system that can destroy us by first striking pre-emptively and then defending itself against any remaining weapons we may have. This system has been set up to be used, make no mistake about it. And it will be used if the US feels it is in her best interests to use it.

  ‘France and the Russian Federation have a large amount of high-yield intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. Your sites are the ones that have been targeted for the first wave of strikes. The only fly in the ointment is the UK’s submarine-based weapons. We can get close to the US coast and launch an attack that they cannot defend against. Abrams realizes this, hence his offer to make a deal with us. It simply makes sense to take us out of the equation.

  ‘If we side with the US, Britain will remain safe from attack. Our country will also be financially secure, and allied to an even stronger superpower. China’s superpower ambitions will be curtailed by America’s demonstration of force, and the US will become more powerful than ever. Europe, however, will be all but destroyed.

  ‘If, on the other hand, we side with the Euro Russian Alliance, then the situation might well be saved. Even, dare I say it – reversed?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the Serbian President asked.

  ‘Due to our own precautions, and having made full use of our close relationship to the US over the years, we have the means to negate their ballistic missile defence shield, should we choose to act against them.’

  ‘How?’ Chalois asked.

  Gregory took another sip of water before he answered. ‘First we talk terms.’

  59

  Hitchens had been watching the images from Reagan National for hours, with only short breaks for the bathroom, before he spotted something that caught his attention.

  He asked for the high-definition image to zoom in closer, and his suspicion became greater. This had to be the guy. He wasn’t wearing a hat here, and didn’t have the big jacket on, but Hitchens was convinced. The outline of the face, the shape of the nose, the eyes – it was definitely the same man.

  ‘That’s him,’ he finally said, with earnest conviction.

  Just minutes later, Moses and Arnold were sat right next to Crozier’s old bodyguard, staring at the image in front of them.

  The image had been cross-referenced with passport control and the relevant flight documents, and the man they were looking at had flown into Reagan National from Miami under the name of Ben Taylor, a resident of Hartford, Connecticut.

  Arnold sent immediate orders for an information dump on Taylor, and for the local FBI field team to go knocking on the man’s door, with instructions to report back their findings directly to the CIA Internal Affairs office.

  They also sent a priority request to Miami International for access to all of their footage from the time preceding the flight to Washington. They asked if Ben Taylor had made a connecting flight, but were not surprised to find he hadn’t. Whoever the man was, he would not have been careless enough to use the same name and passport twice on the same mission. But, they figured, it was worth a shot; they had to be lucky sometime.

  This was not to be one of those times. There had been no flights into Miami International, or indeed any other local airport, carrying a passenger by the name of Ben Taylor, for the entire month before the connecting flight to Washington.

  This meant that either ‘Taylor’ lived in Miami or somewhere nearby; or he had travelled to Miami from further afield by another method such as train, coach or car; or else he did fly into Miami, but under a different name.

  Moses and Arnold both prayed that it was the last of these three possibilities. They would never get anywhere with the first two, but if it was the third, then there was the outside chance that Hitchens could once again spot the man via the surveillance photographs.

  He was going to be given help this time however, as the computer experts now had an image of the man to work from.

  The image of Ben Taylor from the airport image, his passport photograph, and other images such as that on his driving licence that had since been found from an electronic records search, provided the technical team with more than enough points of reference. All they then had to do was enter the information into a facial recognition system that would automatically scan not just all of the individual surveillance images, but also all of the CCTV film that had been recorded throughout the airport.

  As the two investigators went to get fresh cups of coffee, Sam Hitchens and the computers went to work.

  The FBI’s report came back to Moses and Arnold within the hour. They had approached the house, knocked but received no answer, and so had made a physical entry; a warrant had been immediately granted upon request from a local judge due to the labelling of Taylor as a terrorist threat.

  They had found an empty shell, obviously never having been lived in, or at least unoccupied for some considerable time. It was rented, and the landlord never visited as the rent and bills were always paid on time, and the tenant never had any complaints.

  Orders were given to chase up how the payments for the place were made, but Moses and Arnold expected it to be a dead end; the whole place was obviously set up purely to aid in the creation of a false identity for whoever had killed Crozier.

  What it did do was to confirm to the two agents that they were dealing with an experienced professional, and one who had been operating for a considerable amount of time. They had no idea how many more false identities the man might have, and still no idea who he really was.

  60

  Cole was approaching Völs, a small market town just outside Innsbruck, when he saw traffic slowing towards a large sweep of highway. The cause of the jam was unseen around the bend.

  Cole’s immediate thought was that it was a road block. After Cole’s escape back in Germany, Hansard would have guessed at likely destinations. Austria was obvious, and one of the major cities would be most likely, as it was easier to hide yourself in the metropolitan urban sprawl. With Innsbruck being the closest, Hansard might well have targeted it as a prime location.

  Hansard would also know that Cole would be rushing to wherever he was going, due to fear about his family. He would guess that Cole would be less cautious than usual, and perhaps even keep to the main roads.

  It thus made perfect sense to set up a road block on the E60 into Innsbruck, especially at this point, where the mass of armed police would be hidden until it was too late.

  Cole started to run through his options. The young man and woman were still unconscious on the back seats, the car was stolen, and he had no identification. He also had no disguise, and looked exactly as he had the night previously, when he would have undoubtedly been photographed in the ambulance. Cole had no doubt that his current visage would have been distributed to every law enforcement agent in the country. And even worse still, he had no weapons.

  The E60 was a six lane highway; there was no way he could turn around. There was also nowhere for him to stop, and no exits before the bend.

  But maybe he was just getting paranoid; maybe there wasn’t
a road block at all.

  Even at his reduced speed, he was approaching the turn more quickly than he would have liked, running out of both time and distance.

  As he started rounding the bend, he made his mind up. If there was a road block set up, he would gauge its distance and decide what to do. If it was still far away, he would simply abandon the vehicle and run; it if was close, he would ram the barrier at the highest speed he could muster, and then just see what happened. He hoped the surprise element would give him enough time to get away, maybe to hop the barrier and car jack a vehicle in one of the oncoming lanes. If there was a road block, the cars on the other side would be slowing down too, just to get a look at what was going on.

  He started to control his breathing as the road started to straighten out, revealing what would be up ahead. He breathed in through his nose for a slow count of four, then held the breath for another four; exhaled through the mouth for four, then held for another four. He kept repeating this, getting his heart rate down and claming his nerves so that he was ready to take action.

  The road opened up ahead and he smiled, laughing at himself. Road works. Just two lanes of damned stupid road works. Paranoid son of a bitch!

  But he also knew that he was not being paranoid; the fact that there was no road block was just luck. Because they really were out to get him.

  Cole would never know how close to being right he had been. Before Sarah’s call, Hansard had indeed highlighted Innsbruck as a possible destination, and had ordered road blocks put in place at key points around the city.

  However, when the rendezvous point had been revealed, Hansard had cancelled the order. It would be hard to arrange for Cole’s death at a security check-point in front of hundreds of other motorists. And the last thing he wanted was for Cole to spot one of the check-points, get spooked, and abort the rendezvous altogether, as they would be back at square one again.