The War Planners Series

by Andrew Watts

  Arriving on the twenty-eighth floor, he opened the grey fire door and walked into a palace. The room he was in was the waiting room next to the hotel’s helipad. It reminded him of a church or temple, with its ultra-high arched ceilings and vast size. Extravagant carpets, tropical plants, and exquisite stained glass windows decorated the room. There were richly upholstered thick-cushioned couches, and a granite wet bar near the door.

  A row of lit candles lined the bar. No one stood behind it. There were stacks of liquor and wine bottles. A white cloth curtain half-covered them.

  Chase opened the door next to the bar area and slowly stepped out onto the hot white surface of the hotel rooftop. The wind was strong this high up. Hot air whipped in his face. One hundred feet above his head, the two white arcs that formed the framework of the hotel met with another vertical white structure. Together they formed the shape of the sail. About one hundred feet in front of Chase, and elevated thirty feet, was the circular white helicopter landing pad. It stretched out over the ocean below.

  Chase couldn’t see what was on the helipad from his viewpoint. He needed to traverse the long open walkway, complete with red carpet, to get there. He began walking. No one in sight. It was quiet.

  He started to doubt his theory that Lena had taken David and Henry up here. Perhaps they had intended to depart the hotel another way?

  The sound of gunfire changed his mind.

  David and Henry sat next to each other on the edge of the helipad. Lena and the giant Arabic-looking guy were in the prone position near the entrance of the helipad. Pakvar, David had heard her call him. Pakvar was shooting a small rectangular machine gun wildly at something down below. David hoped it wasn’t Chase.

  Grimacing at the screams of close-proximity gunfire, David prayed that if it was his brother down there, he was taking cover. He was worried about Chase, but felt something else as well. A strange eagerness. His secret weapon has just arrived on the field. Chase was trained as a US Navy SEAL. He was the toughest bastard David had ever met. Lena and this big Arabic guy were armed, and he knew that they were dangerous. But David relished the thought that those two, no matter how good they might be, were now in for a world of hurt.

  Henry leaned over to David to try and speak. He looked shaken.

  David and Henry hadn’t seen Elliot and the others get killed in the hotel room. Lena had restrained and removed them by the time Pakvar had opened fire. But they had heard the gunshots. They were both upset.

  When Henry was distressed, he tended to joke.

  Henry said, “Hey, David. I gotta say, I’m really happy to get to see all these great places with you. I always wanted to go to Australia. Loved it. This hotel in Dubai. Amazing. But would it be possible for you to stop getting us kidnapped?” He winced involuntarily as another gunshot went off.

  David said, “It’ll be alright. Just hang tight. My brother is down there. He knows what he’s doing.”

  While their hands were bound, both of them could get up. But every few seconds, Lena kept looking back at them to make sure they were still there. David tried to think about why she had come back for them. Or more to the point, why she had spared their lives. On their way up the stairs, she had made clear that it wasn’t mandatory for her to do so. She announced that she would not hesitate to execute them if they tried to escape. David wasn’t so sure. She must need something from them still.

  The Asian guy sat next to them, unarmed and unrestrained.

  David said to him, “So what’s your deal?”

  He didn’t reply.

  Henry said, “Not a talker, huh?”

  David saw Lena come to a crouching position and fire several shots with her pistol. Echoes of stone bursting below. Soon after Lena fired, Pakvar ran down the stairs of the helicopter pad and out of sight.

  Here he comes. Come on, Chase.

  Chase had not been in many firefights like this. Normally, he was much better equipped and had a support team to work with. Here, he had only a handgun. There was a multinational team of spies and Special Forces advancing on his position, using precision covering fire to pin him down. One of whom he had slept with a few weeks earlier. That was a definite first.

  The stairway door opened behind him, and he saw Waleed walk out.

  “Waleed, get down!” he screamed, then he rolled around the wall edge that he had been using for cover and fired two shots toward the stairs.

  It was instinct, really. In the split second that he had looked down the long walkway which lead to the helicopter platform, he had seen a target, characterized him as an enemy, and aimed for center mass. At this distance, aiming there made sense. Any variation in his breathing, aim, grip, or the wind would throw off his shot. But Chase was a pretty damn good shot. Pakvar took two rounds in the chest and crumpled down the stairs. His small semiautomatic weapon clanged down the steps after him.

  Chase smiled. Not because he had taken a life, but because he could practically hear Lena cursing.

  “Chase?” Waleed was hunkered down behind the other corner wall that served as the entrance to the long walkway.

  “Stay down. Lena’s up there. Can you call for help?”

  “Yes. Hold on.”

  Chase crouched down behind the small barrier that formed the corner to the long helipad walkway. One hundred feet away, Pakvar’s corpse lay sprawled on the ground. And up the stairway, a hidden Lena watched his every move.

  The steady noise of a helicopter rotor blade beating through the air could be heard in the distance. It changed pitch ever so slightly. It was getting closer. Shit.

  Chase had been waiting for that. It would force his hand. Now he had to act soon. If he had to charge down that long open walkway toward the helipad, Lena would have a clear shot at him. But if he didn’t do that, she would take his brother away again. Since Chase had been on the rooftop, he hadn’t yet gotten a clear view of Lena. She had a very small cross-section and was smart enough to keep down. Not good for him.

  He wanted to see if she would still honor her promise to let him live if he stood up right now, but that was a big risk. They had grown apart in the past few minutes, he decided.

  He yelled, “Lena!”

  No answer.

  “Lena, I need to speak to you.” He didn’t know what the hell he was going to say, but he was desperate.

  A burst of white in the plaster wall next to him. Apparently she wasn’t interested in rebuilding their relationship either.

  Chase glanced over his shoulder, trying to stay low. He could see the helicopter now. About a mile away. It looked like a Huey. Funky blue camouflage paint. Probably Iranian. Could Waleed and he take that thing out with small-arms fire? Probably not. They would need a lot more than a few 9mm rounds. He would need something explosive.

  He bolted up and ran back into the hotel.

  Lena watched Pakvar fall down dead on the stairs. That was most frustrating. She hadn’t been particularly fond of him, and could care less that he was dead.

  An hour ago, she had been looking at Pakvar in the back of an Iranian helicopter as they flew to the hotel. He had glared at her the entire trip. Lena took that to mean that Pakvar knew it had been her that had stridden into the Dubai Mall and shot one of his men in the head. She hadn’t had a choice. Pakvar had overstepped his bounds in trying to ambush Chase and Waleed. His assignment had been to keep an eye on them during their meeting with Gorji. She was pretty sure that he hadn’t listened to her because she was a woman. That was a common problem for her in this part of the world. But she couldn’t have allowed Pakvar’s shortsighted attack on Chase to disrupt her plan to send “Satoshi” to the Americans. It may have been a long shot, but it had been their only remaining opportunity to upload their program that would manipulate the value of bitcoin.

  As usual, nothing had gone according to plan. The bitcoin-backed currency might still be adopted, but it would not be manipulated by China, as Jinshan had intended. The damage from the ARES cyberattacks was reported to be at fif
ty percent of what had been expected. David and Henry, experts on ARES and US communications networks respectively, were needed at the Red Cell. Whether they wanted to participate or not, Lena and her minions would extract any remaining relevant information that could boost the effectiveness of the cyberattacks.

  But first, Lena would need to get them away from this damned hotel. Pakvar’s death tilted the tactical advantage away from her. She still held the high ground, but there were now two weapons versus her own.

  She looked back at David, Henry, and the man everyone had been calling Satoshi, and gave them a mocking smile. She waved for “Satoshi” to join her. She couldn’t remember his real name. He was one of Jinshan’s expert hackers. Someone who had worked closely with the real Satoshi until they had needed to dispose of him several years ago. This man had failed them. The Americans had discovered his true intentions and had been trying to use him to gain more information on Jinshan. Still, he could possibly fire a weapon. But she only had one. If she had known that Pakvar wasn’t going to bring an extra weapon for Jinshan’s man, she would have brought one herself. But she wasn’t about to give up her only gun.

  She said, “That helicopter will be here in another minute. When it arrives, I’ll need you to get them on board. I’ll provide covering fire. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Lena.”

  Lena heard Chase call her name from his position on the other side of the walkway. She smiled to herself. She was going to miss him. She hoped that taking his brother away again wouldn’t irreparably harm their relationship. She decided to let him know that she was still interested. She took aim at a spot near the wall he was hiding behind and fired.

  The helicopter was making its final approach into the wind. It wouldn’t be much longer now. Soon she would be on Abu Musa, and then on one of Jinshan’s personal jets. In twelve hours, they would all be back on the Red Cell island. She would personally extract the required information about ARES and the communications networks needed to increase the effectiveness of the initial cyberattack. Then she could be done with these two Americans. They had caused her much grief.

  Lena looked back at David and Henry, obediently sitting on their haunches, looking pissed off. When she turned back towards the walkway, she saw Chase running back into the hotel. Where the hell was he going?

  She thought about running down the steps and grabbing Pakvar’s weapon, but she wasn’t sure how good a shot that UAE intelligence man was. She decided that she didn’t want to risk it. The helicopter was almost here anyway.

  Chase hoped that he wouldn’t burn the hell out of his brother and Henry. Once inside the building, he placed his gun down on top of the bar and hopped over. His hand quickly crept over the bottles until he found ones suitable for his needs. He looked for high-proof alcohol, and bottles with long necks. He lined four of them on the bar and opened them. Then he ripped the white curtain that had been half-covering the liquor selection into long pieces and stuffed eighteen-inch strips of the torn cloth into each of the four bottles. Each strip of cloth became soaked in the alcohol.

  He used his strong arms to hurdle the bar again, careful not to knock over any of the makeshift bombs. Then he grabbed the first bottle and walked over to one of the lit candles near the entrance. The cloth flashed in blue flame, then settled into a steady yellow burn.

  Chase leaned into the door with his shoulder, took a jumping step back outside and threw, all in one motion. It was like a Hail Mary pass, except that the bottle wasn’t traveling in a spiral, but flipping end over end, arcing towards the elevated helicopter landing platform.

  Chase shouted at Waleed, “Take a few shots at her on my next throw.”

  Waleed was sitting on the ground, holding his pistol with both hands, looking like a scared deer illuminated by the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler. He stammered in response, “Alright.”

  Chase heard the crack of gunfire in the distance, and the wall next to him burst into a sprinkle of white dust. Chase threw himself back inside and lit another Molotov cocktail.

  He opened the door and saw that his first one had landed just in front of the stairs, which had erupted in flames. That should impair Lena’s aim. He targeted his throw a touch farther this time. Again, he didn’t wait to see where it landed. He just went back in and lit the next bottle. After throwing all four of them, Chase was rewarded with a series of alcohol-fueled fires on and near the landing pad.

  Smoke from the first bottle’s flame had reduced the visibility down the walkway. Chase could no longer see the stairs. The helicopter grew closer. Time to move. He tapped Waleed as he sprinted by him. “Come on.”

  Chase ran with his Sig Sauer in his right hand. He covered the distance to the stairs in about ten seconds. The noise of the rotors grew loud enough that he could no longer hear the sound of his dress shoes echoing on the ground.

  Even with the flames, the helo was still trying to land. Chase had hoped that the fire would cause it to wave off. The helicopter was close enough that he could make out the two pilots. Tinted visors covered their faces. A long-barreled automatic weapon hung out the side of the Huey. The door gunner didn’t yet have enough angle that Chase was in his field of fire. But he would soon.

  Chase slowed to a jog as he came closer to the platform stairs, where Lena had last lain. Fifteen feet from the landing pad, he saw her.

  She was on fire.

  David and Henry had jumped into one of the nets that surrounded the large circular helicopter pad. Having seen the first two Molotov cocktails explode on the stairs and in the center of the platform, David had been waiting for the next one. If they hadn’t moved, it would have landed right on top of them, so David had acted fast.

  He nudged Henry toward the net, hoping that it would hold their combined weight. Thank God it had. Now they were stuck, hands still bound, looking through the safety net at the rocks and ocean twenty-eight floors below. David looked up at Lena and the Asian guy just in time to see the last of the flaming bottles land a bull’s-eye. It hit right next to Lena and exploded, covering her black dress with burning alcohol.

  David watched, incredulous, as the Asian man started rolling her around on the deck, trying to extinguish the flames. The high-velocity winds of the rotorcraft were hitting them now. David looked up and saw the blue-camouflaged Huey yaw to the left. The door gunner began firing tracer rounds toward the entrance area, where Chase had thrown the bottles. Then the tracers stopped, and David saw the door gunner fall from the helicopter onto the flaming landing pad below. Chase must have gotten him, David realized. He must be close.

  The violent winds of the rotor wash helped extinguish the flames on the pad. The Huey set down hard on its skids. The Asian guy dragged Lena’s limp body onto the aircraft and was going back for the door gunner when Chase came walking up the stairway of the helipad.

  Chase ran up the stairs. He tried to remember how many rounds he had left, but in the melee, he’d lost count. He thought of firing at the pilots but didn’t want to risk the spinning helicopter crash killing everyone, including his brother and Henry.

  He looked through the sights of his weapon, aimed at the rear passenger compartment of the helicopter. Satoshi had just rolled a limp Lena into the aircraft. The pilots were turning their heads back and forth, looking like they wanted to lift back off.

  Down range, Chase had a choice. He could take out Satoshi, Lena, or both. He fired once and dropped Satoshi. Lena sat up. Her arm was black and red from burns, but her face was untouched.

  She looked right at him as he kept his gun aimed at her. Chase clenched his jaw, knowing what he should do, but not wanting to do it. He should kill her, he thought. She had betrayed and attacked their country. She’d kidnapped his brother, and lied to him. His arm muscles flexed.

  He fired. And missed.

  David saw Chase fire once and Satoshi fell to the ground, limp. At the same time, the Huey surged up into the air and Chase hunkered down as the rotor wash tried to force him down the steps. />
  Chase climbed up the stairs and fired again.

  Then the helicopter’s nose dipped down and to the left and it accelerated away, out to sea.

  “David!”

  “Over here,” he called back to his brother.

  “Are you guys alright?”

  Henry’s face was pressed up against the net, looking down at the water hundreds of feet below. Due to the awkward position he had fallen into, he was completely unable to move. He answered, “Oh, yeah, we’re great. Hey, they weren’t kidding about the great view you get at this hotel. Would it be possible for you to help us up?”

  Chase clutched his brother’s arm and pulled him up and back onto the helipad, then he did the same with Henry. He looked up at Waleed as he approached.

  Waleed said, “Well done, my friend.”

  Chase looked over David. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks, Chase.”

  Waleed said, “What happened to Lisa Parker?”

  “He means Lena.”

  David said, “I saw her get put on the helo. She wasn’t in good shape. Burns all over her body. If she lives, she’s not going to be happy.”

  Emirati police officers and emergency personnel began coming up through the entrance.

  Chase turned to Waleed and said, “Hey, Waleed, do you think you could arrange another jet for us?”

  “Of course. Where to?”

  He looked at David. “Home.”

  19

  Langley, Virginia

  Chase sat with his brother in a corner office at the CIA Headquarters. A balding man in his upper fifties entered and closed the door behind him. He sat behind the cherry desk and looked at the Manning brothers. A gold nameplate on the desk said Assistant Director, Clandestine Operations.

  “Gentlemen, thank you for meeting with me. I realize that you’ve had quite a few debriefings over the past few weeks, and that likely won’t end soon.”