The Trojan Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  Blake was already scrambling out of the van, assault rifle in hand. Unlike the Colonel and Packman, he was wearing black overalls and a mask that would protect his identity if anyone was snapping away with a cell phone camera. The Colonel had a feeling that the attacking team would have made sure to disable all local cameras before they struck, but it would only take one picture to put out a national alert. General Thomas was a national hero, after all. It struck him that they might end up being branded kidnappers or murderers – the police might assume that there was only one group of assassins – but it hardly mattered. Right now, they had to get the General to safety before the cops showed up.

  There was a shout behind them as two members of the enemy force emerged from the house. They were both wearing suits that made them out to be federal agents, but even the Colonel – who regarded federal agents with as much enthusiasm as he viewed Islamic terrorists – would have conceded that federal agents wouldn't have started by gunning down the General’s wife. America wasn't a police state yet, thank God, and it would never be if he had anything to say about it.

  Blake took aim and opened fire. The M16 barked twice; one of the enemy managed to throw himself to the ground and scramble to cover, but the other one was caught by repeated hits and almost flew over backwards before he hit the ground. Blake whooped as the General was hauled into the van and then turned to open fire on the remaining enemy agent. There was a roar of engines and two more cars appeared at the far end of the street, driving right towards their position. The Colonel cursed and bellowed at Packman to take the wheel. Reinforcements had finally arrived. The enemy’s reinforcements.

  ***

  Davenant had lost any sense of dignity when it came to self-preservation. He didn't bother to take time to appreciate the General’s garden – lovingly planned by the General’s wife, with the help of a set of landscape gardeners – as he crawled for safety behind the hedge. The bastard with the assault rifle would mow him down if he even showed a tiny part of his autonomy; dear God, how had the simple plan fallen apart so effectively? They’d killed the General’s wife for nothing. Worse, they’d exposed themselves to the police. There would be plenty of physical evidence in the house leading back to them – and it wouldn't be long after that when the FBI came knocking on his door.

  Cursing, he found a gap in the hedge and peered through it. The reinforcements he’d ordered to come and help sanitise the house after they’d killed the General had run right into the prick with the assault rifle. He’d shot out their engines and caused both cars to skid and collide in the middle of the street. It was sheer luck that no one was caught in the crossfire, but even so...it looked as if a team he’d put together for several operations was going to be hacked to pieces on their first joint mission. Remembering why he hated working in teams, he drew his reserve pistol and took careful aim. The enemy holding the assault rifle was probably wearing body armour – even crappy civilian shit would be able to stop a handgun round – but he wasn't wearing anything covering his face apart from a mask. And Davenant had been handgun champion in his unit before he'd been forced to resign or face a general court-martial. Pointing the pistol, he fired a single shot...

  ***

  “Blake!”

  The shot came out of nowhere. Blake Coleman stumbled against the van and then collapsed, blood pouring from a hole in his neck. The Colonel knew at once that it would be fatal, that there was no way they could save his life unless they could get him to an emergency treatment centre – and there was none within easy reach. Angrily, he fired several shots towards the place where the enemy lurked, but there was no way to know if he’d hit anyone.

  Blake’s body thrashed once, and then lay still. His face seemed almost intact, compared to the mess his neck had become, but there was no escaping the grim awareness that he was dead. The Colonel swallowed hard, remembering that Blake had been the first one to accept the danger of getting involved with the underground – he hadn't deserved to die. And yet there was nothing he could do. They’d been careful to remove everything that might lead back to the survivalists, but the moment the FBI ran Blake’s fingerprints or DNA against the army database they’d know who he’d been. And then...? What would they be able to find from there?

  “I’m sorry,” the Colonel said. The sound of sirens began to echo in the distance, coming closer. Someone had finally managed to call the police. “I’m so sorry.”

  Grabbing the grenades from the van, he threw them towards where the remaining enemy were hiding. Explosions shattered the General’s shrubbery as the Colonel climbed into the van and barked an order. Packman put the van in gear and they drove away, heading in the opposite direction to the sirens. They’d already planned where they would hide the van, pick up a second vehicle and head down to the farm, precautions that Blake had helped plan. The Colonel swallowed hard, feeling an odd urge to sit down and collapse himself. He’d seen death before – it was one of the risks of military life – but Blake had seemed larger than life. He hadn't deserved to die.

  “Get us to the garage as quick as you can,” he ordered. The van lurched as Packman pushed it right to the limits. How quickly would the police react? What would they be able to draw from security cameras, witnesses and forensic evidence? Would they set up roadblocks...? Or what? “We will not let his death be in vain.”

  He looked over at the General. “I’m sorry about your wife, sir,” he said. Mary’s death was still a gaping wound, even though she’d been dead nearly twenty-eight years. The General had had ample reason to expect a long retirement, a chance to write his memoirs, and a quiet death in the arms of his wife. Instead...his life had been torn apart by the aliens. The thought made the Colonel grind his teeth. He’d never hated anyone as much as he did the Snakes, right at that moment.

  And words were so inadequate, somehow.

  The General looked up at him. His eyes were bitter. The Colonel had seen that expression before, written on the faces of soldiers who’d been pushed beyond their limits, where the only thing keeping them going was sheer determination. And soldiers in a war expected to be hit and to be able to hit back. The General had probably never anticipated that his wife would become a target, or that his peaceful suburban home would become a battleground.

  “Who were they?” The General demanded. “What did they want?”

  The Colonel hesitated. There was no way to know if the General had one of the alien bugs tracking him, monitoring his every word and motion. To hear Toby tell it, the devices could only be detected when they were active – and removing them was impossible without the right tools. Toby had said that NSA was working on a solution, something that could be deployed in the field, but the handful of technicians involved had refused to give any specific deadline. The Colonel found it hard to blame them. He wouldn't have wanted to make any promises either.

  But the General had a right to know. And besides, the aliens should know that the human race had found a way to put a finger in their eerie bright red eyes.

  “They wanted you dead,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  ***

  Davenant swore under his breath as he heard the sirens getting closer. Any thought of giving chase had to be abandoned. His few surviving men would have to get themselves out of the area, leaving behind too much physical evidence for anyone to ignore. God only knew what team had been covering the General’s ass, but it had done a very competent job and left him holding the bag.

  “Get out of here,” he snapped. The bodies would have to be abandoned. They’d be traced, of course; luckily, even if they invoked the Patriot Act, they’d have problems tracking Davenant and the few survivors down by the time they’d escaped and covered their asses. “Move it, now!”

  Jumping into the car, he started the engine and drove away from the scene. He’d barely turned the corner when two cop cars went screaming past, sirens blaring. Davenant tensed, preparing to shoot his way out, but the cops ignored him, thankfully heading towards the General’s hous
e. He’d have to give his superiors a call, sooner rather than later. They’d be angry if they heard about it on CNN.

  Parking the car beside a family car, Davenant broke in through the window and jump-started the car. It would be reported stolen soon, of course, but by then he would have swapped cars again, and again. By the time he got home, the trail would have been thoroughly obscured. Three cars down the line, he abandoned the last car in a service station and walked down towards a fast food joint, crammed with people. Once inside, he walked into the toilet, removed his suit and changed into a more casual look. Once he had tied his hair back, he looked completely different. A pair of glasses completed the ensemble.

  Carrying his old clothes in a rucksack, he walked down until he found an isolated table and opened his briefcase. The briefcase had been provided by his employers, who’d claimed that it could protect anything electronic from the effects of a thumper. Davenant had stuffed a completely clean – and largely untraceable – cell phone inside and, much to his relief, it worked as soon as he switched it on.

  There was no point in trying to hide what had happened. “We lost the client,” he said, and gave a brief account of the disaster. “What do you want us to do now?”

  “Return to your home and wait,” the voice said, finally. Davenant disliked not knowing who he was working for, but the money was good enough to overcome his scruples. “We will deal with the situation.”

  Davenant blinked in surprise. “But we had to leave bodies behind,” he objected. “The authorities will track us down.”

  “There will be no bodies,” the voice said. “We will see to that. Return to your home and wait.”

  ***

  “...Breaking news in Washington DC,” the newsreader said. The Colonel tapped the volume control, turning it up so they could hear the speaker better. “General Elliott Thomas, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been the victim of an attempted assassination by unknown personages. Thomas, who resigned from the Joint Chiefs over controversial government programs, was targeted by a number of terrorist gangs who intended revenge for missions carried out by men under his command. We can confirm that Mrs Thomas was murdered by the terrorists, while the General is critically injured and in an unknown location. Speaking at a hastily organised press conference...”

  “Turn it off,” the General snarled. “My wife is dead and they blame it all on terrorists?”

  “Quite understandable,” Packman said. “Islamic terrorists have one hell of a motive to hunt you down and behead you. It gives the people the sense that the story is already out, so they don't have to think about it much more. The vast majority of people are sheep...”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the General said. “I should go and tell them I’m alive...”

  “And then you will be targeted again,” the Colonel snapped. He hadn't expected the General to be so balky, but then he hadn't expected the General’s wife to be murdered either. The General could simply walk into a military base, yet if he showed himself too soon he would simply draw a targeting crosshair on his head. And the aliens would be watching and waiting from high overhead. “Your country needs you to wait until we can confirm that you’re clean...”

  He sighed. It had taken two hours to reach the safe house, a dingy little apartment of the kind normally rented to Chinese or East Asian illegal immigrants. The owner was the kind of person who would take a few hundred dollars in exchange for keeping his mouth shut and not insisting on any kind of documentation. It would suffice as long as the money kept coming.

  “And then we can find a way to hit back,” he concluded. One plan was already going through his head, but it would require the help of a very old friend – and one hell of a lot of luck. “We can show them that humans won’t roll over so easily.”

  “They’ll be laughing,” the General predicted, gloomily. “Or didn't you realise that the country just rolled over for them?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Washington DC/Virginia

  USA, Day 27

  “So you’re saying that you recovered no bodies?”

  “I’m saying that the ongoing investigation prevents us from sharing any information with the press,” the officer said. He was a young Chinese man who bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a young Bruce Lee. Jayne might have been tempted to flirt with him if she hadn’t been convinced that he was trying to lead her up the garden path. “There is a very real danger that the terrorists who launched this cowardly attack will be able to escape using information released into the public domain.”

  So if no one gets caught it’s our fault, Jayne thought, coldly. The once-peaceful Washington suburb had been shattered by a scene out of a gangster movie – and the Washington PD had, somehow, failed to respond within anything like an acceptable time. Apparently, Jayne had heard through a blogger who currently served in the police force, there had been a series of errors with the computerized system for directing patrol cars and SWAT teams to the scene of the incident. The locals weren’t happy at all about how the police force – paid for with their taxes – had failed to protect them. She could see several overweight men – lawyers or lobbyists – making that point to the nearest police officers. Behind them, lines of police tape kept them from returning to their homes.

  Jayne shivered as she took in the scene. Someone had been tossing explosives around, according to her source, and a number of cars and gardens had been wrecked by the detonations. There were bullet holes everywhere, suggesting that someone had been indiscriminate with their fire. It was sheer luck that no one had been hurt, apart from General Thomas and his wife. There had been no official announcement of his death, but Jayne couldn’t see how anyone could draw any other conclusion. He’d definitely been the target of the terrorist attack.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’d hate to help terrorists escape a police force that failed to react in time to the reports.”

  The officer’s face darkened, but he refused to rise to the bait. Jayne smiled to herself, although she had to admit that something was badly wrong. Shaking her head, she turned and left the officer to brief the next curious reporter, while she walked up to one of the men who were trying to pick a fight with the policemen. He was balding, almost certainly in his fifties, bristling with righteous indignation. His children, after all, had been in the house when the shit hit the fan and all hell broke loose. It was a point he was making to the policeman with more force than was actually necessary.

  “And when,” he demanded, “can we return to our homes? We cannot stay out here until you boys have finished your investigations – I have to get back to work and the wife has to cook. I tell you…”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Jayne said. She held up her BAN card. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about what happened here…”

  “World War Three breaks out on our street and the police don’t send anyone to do anything about it,” the man said. “I’m telling you that I will not stand for it! My neighbours and I will launch a joint suit against the Washington PD for failing to protect us from drug-dealing terrorists who turn our street into their private battleground!”

  “I’m sure you will receive very favourable mentions in the press, sir,” Jayne said. The lawyer didn’t recognise the sarcasm, or he chose to ignore it. “What actually happened, from wherever you were?”

  The lawyer took a more careful look at her, allowed his eyes to drift over the tops of her breasts, and then decided to be more cooperative. “I was in the study, working on the brief for the case I have to present at court next week,” he said, in a slightly calmer voice. “The next thing I know; the computer’s failed and my notes are lost. The lights have gone out, so I thought it was a power cut, but the batteries refused to work too. I get to my feet and shout for Sofia – that’s my wife, you know – to see if she’s lost power too. The boys are screaming because their latest video game projector has failed, so I yell at them to shut up…and at that moment we hear gunshots.”

  He looked dow
n for a moment. “I yell at everyone to get away from the windows and get my cell phone out,” he continued. “The phone’s dead. I check the landline and its dead too; they’re all dead. I go climbing for the gun I keep stashed away, fearing that one of my enemies has come to extract revenge for putting him in jail, and yell at the family to get under cover. And then the shooting grows louder and there are explosions…

  “I stumble outside, gun in hand, and see the terrorists beating a hasty retreat in a van. And then the police finally arrive, too late to catch anyone. What were they doing? Giving the latest politically-correct course to deprived teenagers while we, the taxpayers, were under siege in our own homes?”

  Jayne shrugged. “I’m sure that the courts will look favourably upon your demand for compensation,” she said, dryly. “Thank you for your time.”

  She wanted to take a look at the crime scene itself, but the police weren't letting anyone through the barrier. General Thomas had been the target and that alone made it a federal crime. The FBI’s forensic teams were already crawling over the wreckage, pulling the spent bullets out of the building and trying to match them up with recorded weapons. It didn’t sound as if the assassins had been very professional, but what did that matter? She had a nasty suspicion about who had carried out the hit.