The Annihilation Protocol

by Laurence, Michael

  Layne crept along the front of the wraparound porch and assumed position within striking distance of the side door, while the FBI SWAT agents crawling through the mist that had settled upon the pasture and clung to the oak trees prepared to penetrate the back door and take up containment positions around the house. Langbroek’s token security force had provided no resistance whatsoever and seemed resigned to the fact that it had backed the wrong horse.

  “Boathouse and dock secure,” a voice whispered through Mason’s earpiece.

  “I need him taken alive,” Mason whispered. He advanced beneath the overhanging branches to the edge of the porch. Raised his M4 to his shoulder. Prepared to switch on the laser sight. Forced all other thoughts out of his head and focused on the moment. The world around him slowed to a crawl. “Now.”

  He cleared the railing and raced across the deck. Another agent converged upon the main entrance at the exact same time. A swing of a handheld battering ram and the door burst inward with a booming crack and an explosion of splinters. He heard the same sound from elsewhere in the house as he switched on his sight and swept the interior with the crimson beam. Polished hardwood floors. Crown and wall-frame molding. Nautical theme with mounted brass sextants and looking glasses. A pair of bare feet descended the ornate staircase from the second level.

  “Don’t move!” the SWAT agent shouted. “Get down on the ground!”

  Mason caught a glimpse of an older woman in a nightgown, holding out her trembling hands as she lowered herself to the landing.

  “Husholderske,” she said, and then in heavily accented English: “Housekeeper.”

  The other agent moved to secure her while Mason veered to his right, through a living room with leather furniture and an antique wooden hearth, and into a hallway adorned with black-and-white photographs of angry seas and ice floes and rocky fjords. He needed to find Langbroek before anyone else to make sure nothing happened to him, although the irony of protecting the man ultimately responsible for the production of the Novichok and the death of his wife from potentially comprised agents within his own agency wasn’t lost on him.

  Layne emerged from his peripheral vision, her sight slicing past him in the darkness.

  “We caught someone trying to slip out the back,” a voice said.

  “Tell me it’s Langbroek,” Mason said.

  “Negative. He claims to be the caretaker.”

  “Damn it,” Layne said. “We’re too late.”

  Mason burst into the master bedroom with his partner at his heels and absorbed everything around him at a glance. A massive bureau and a nightstand, upon which rested overturned prescription bottles and a stack of single-use emesis bags. The bed was unmade, the sheets discolored by some kind of salve. The wastebasket overflowed with soiled gauze and bandages. Clothes littered the floor of the closet. It looked like Langbroek had torn practically everything from the hangers in his hurry to pack.

  “Someone must have tipped him off,” Layne said.

  Mason’s federal cell phone vibrated from the outer pouch of his isolation suit. He removed it and noticed that the number of the incoming call had been blocked. He realized, right then and there, that not only was Langbroek gone; he was never coming back.

  He pressed the speaker button and answered before the call could be routed to voice mail.

  “Slate Langbroek, I presume,” he said.

  “Special Agent James Mason.” The voice on the other end spoke in an accent that was an amalgam of Nordic and British and sounded pained, as though the mere act of speaking caused considerable discomfort. A motor thrummed in the background, metered by the thumping of waves against the hull of a seafaring vessel. “I regret that we are unable to have this conversation in person, but surely you understand the circumstances well enough to realize why we cannot.”

  There was no point in asking how he knew Mason’s name or how he’d gotten his number; Langbroek wasn’t about to give up his asset inside the Bureau, the agent who’d betrayed their operation.

  “I need an ID on every AIS transponder within satellite range,” Mason said into his comlink.

  “Do not waste what little time we have together,” Langbroek said. “You must realize the first thing we would do is disable our maritime automated identification system. And believe me when I say we are already well outside your reach.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  “There are many aspects of what happened that are a mystery to me. Perhaps you’ll be able to help solve at least a few of them.”

  “Why would I want to help you?”

  “Because you are every bit as curious as I am. There are simply too many questions for which there are no answers.”

  Layne stepped out of earshot while she attempted to coordinate a trace of the call. She gestured for Mason to keep Langbroek talking.

  “You’ve seen the stills from the live broadcast, haven’t you?” Mason said. “Five men in suits, standing behind a podium, flanked by security. Four of them staring in shock at the scene unfolding before them, while the fifth is already halfway over the back railing. Strange that he’d be able to recognize what’s about to happen when all he could possibly see from his vantage point were two outstretched arms from the other side of the statue. And the brim of a conical straw hat.”

  Langbroek said nothing.

  “You didn’t know who she really was, did you?” Mason said. “Maybe you knew her background, just not the nature of your company’s involvement at Edgewood, certainly not that she blamed your family for everything that happened to her there. You wouldn’t have hired her if you had, or at least you would have taken precautions. There’s no way you would have been in New York City after she killed two of your top executives if you’d thought for a single second that the Novichok was there. And you didn’t, because you knew for a fact that your stockpiles were somewhere else.”

  “It was a banner day for Nautilus Energy,” Langbroek said. His voice was strangely distant, hollow. “I wouldn’t have missed the grand unveiling of the Green Smart Grid system for anything in the world. Do you have any idea what it means to my company, let alone the future of the planet?”

  “Speaking of futures, how much do you personally stand to make if the price of oil suddenly spikes?”

  “Fossil fuels are killing the Earth. It’s up to people like me to save us from ourselves.”

  “You’re a regular humanitarian.”

  “Mock me all you want, but the world will see it that way once I am able to clear my name.”

  “Why don’t you come in and we’ll see how that goes?”

  “My location must remain a secret,” Langbroek said. “At least for now.”

  “We’ll find you, wherever you go,” Mason said. “Assuming the other twelve don’t find you first.”

  “Are you trying to threaten me?”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “One does not reach my station in life without being able to differentiate between the two.”

  Mason’s phone vibrated, alerting him to the arrival of the email he’d been waiting for. He knew what the attached photographs would show, but he had yet to see them with his own eyes. Not only would they prove Langbroek’s involvement; they were the whole reason this operation had been green-lighted in the first place. He brought up the images and scrolled through them with a smile on his face.

  “You think you’ll ever be able to return to the Thirteen’s good graces?” he said. “Surely they don’t take kindly to one of their number stepping out of the shadows. They’ll need to make an example of you, if only to keep the others in line.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about, I assure you,” Langbroek said. “And I fear you are wasting valuable time looking at me while the party truly responsible is still out there.”

  “So you’re innocent?”

  “I am guilty of many things, Special Agent, but what happened in Times Square is not one of them.”

  “Are you telling me
you had nothing to do with the mass production of thousands of gallons of chemical weapons?”

  “You are not listening to me.”

  “Perhaps you’d be surprised to learn that mere hours ago, a SEAL team raided a Nautilus tanker bound for the Port of Baku in Azerbaijan. Do you know what they found?”

  Langbroek fell deathly silent.

  “A drone with a remote aerial-dispersion unit bearing Russian military markings, armed with a hundred gallons of the same Novichok that was released in New York City. We traced the ship’s origin to the Port of Newark, where we discovered two bulk shipping containers filled with empty liquid holding tanks, plus several of the exact same modified drones that we’re in the process of removing from Nautilus vessels bound for dozens of ports all around the world, primarily throughout the Mediterranean, Arabian, and Caspian seas, where the release of the gas would not only kill hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, and the Middle East; it would also cripple the entire oil business, making someone heavily invested in energy futures and alternative energies, not to mention the patent holder of the only known prophylactic treatment, the richest and most powerful man in the entire world.”

  “They know who you are,” Langbroek said. “They will come for you, too. Your wife was a warning. No one will be able to protect you this time. They will annihilate everyone and everything you hold dear.”

  “You’d better hope they find you first or I’ll make you wish to God they had.”

  “Give my regards to your father.”

  “Don’t you dare threaten—” Mason started to say.

  But Langbroek was already gone.

  DENVER, COLORADO

  January 4

  “What are you waiting for, an invitation?” Special Agent in Charge Gabriel Christensen said. “Get in here and shut the door.”

  Mason entered the conference room, where he found Chris seated at the head of the table. The blinds on the windows were drawn and there was a black box bristling with antennas in the middle of the table. He was just about to ask why they needed an electromagnetic frequency jammer when the door at the back of the room opened and a man he recognized from his debriefing in New York entered. Derek Archer hovered for several seconds before assuming the seat across from Chris. He gestured for Mason to take the chair between them, at the head of the table.

  “I understand you two have already met,” Chris said, “so let’s not waste time with formalities.”

  Mason nodded warily to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who had treated his debriefing in the Scarecrow case like a holy inquest. To say he was surprised to see him again was an understatement.

  Archer checked the device positioned between them to make sure it was on and pulled out his cell phone to confirm it had neither a signal nor a functional GPS beacon before proceeding.

  “I’m not going to beat around the bush,” he said. “It’s my understanding that both of our organizations have been infiltrated by hostile actors.”

  “Some more than others,” Chris said.

  Archer glared at him.

  “Be that as it may, it happened on my watch, which makes it my responsibility. Through acts of subversion and outright treason, my second in command compromised a federal task force, derailed a manhunt, and was responsible for allowing chemical weapons to be released on American soil. He also facilitated their shipment to foreign ports, specifically in the Middle East and along the Russian border, where its dispersal would have caused an international incident that could very well have precipitated World War Three. I need not only to figure out how it happened but also the extent to which my department’s been compromised. And I think you know a hell of a lot more than you let on during your debriefing.”

  Mason glanced at his SAC from the corner of his eye.

  “Don’t look at me,” Chris said. “I know you’re full of shit, but like I told him, I question your forthrightness, not your loyalty.”

  “Your statements were riddled with half-truths and convenient lapses in judgment, but they were always consistent,” Archer said. “You told us just enough to satisfy our inquiries, and not one iota more. Maybe the others couldn’t see through you, but don’t think you had me fooled for a second. You knew Marchment had been co-opted and didn’t tell anyone, and you stopped the terror plot on the subway without calling for backup. Now those are either the actions of a self-righteous glory hound or someone who genuinely doesn’t know whom he can trust. I called your SAC here the moment I left that debriefing and he and I agreed it was the latter.”

  “You have to trust someone,” Chris said, “and now’s as good a time to start as any.”

  Mason watched the light flash on the electromagnetic frequency jammer and said nothing.

  “I’m in charge of one of the most powerful agencies in the world,” Archer said. “I answer directly to the president of the United States and have a sworn duty to protect the people of this great nation. A quarter of a million agents—good men and women who’ve devoted their lives to this country—count on me to maintain the integrity of that organization, and I failed them. I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Then ask yourself a question,” Mason said. “What would have happened had the Novichok been released on the subway?”

  “Millions of people would have died,” Chris said.

  “A tragedy of unequaled proportions, to be sure, but look past that. The bodies of innocent people fill the streets. Pictures of the carnage play nonstop on TV. No one feels safe, even at home. What happens next?”

  “The president declares a state of national emergency,” Archer said. He furrowed his brow and looked down at his hands. “The National Guard is deployed. The entire country panics. Martial law goes into effect. There’s rioting in the streets.”

  “And twenty thousand troops with specialized training in urban conflict and civil unrest are deployed under the command of USNORTHCOM, establishing a military presence in the streets of the United States of America.”

  Chris cocked his head and stared him down.

  “What aren’t you telling us?”

  “There are some bad people out there, Chris.”

  “And we need your help to stop them,” Archer said.

  “What do you propose?”

  “I’m offering you a job.”

  “I already have one.”

  “What I’m offering is off the books. A special operations unit with a discretionary budget and minimal oversight. You would answer solely to me, and all I ask for in return is the truth.”

  Mason studied the secretary’s face for any hint of deception. Checked his phone to make sure the EMF jammer was working. He couldn’t even make his voice recorder work.

  “I told you that would be the deal breaker,” Chris said.

  “And I’d have control over personnel?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And autonomy.”

  “Within reason.”

  “No one outside this room could ever know. If even a single person found out, the entire operation would be compromised. You need to understand what kind of power we’re up against.”

  “Fair enough,” Archer said. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  Mason looked from one to the other. He wanted desperately to trust both of them, but the consequences of being wrong would be catastrophic.

  “Let me think about it.”

  DOWNTOWN DENVER

  “You told him what?” Ramses said. “I’ll bet no one’s ever told him that before. Did he have a coronary right there?”

  “What should I have said?”

  “How about ‘Yes’?” Gunnar said. “Imagine what we could do with unrestricted access to Homeland’s network.”

  He unconsciously swiveled in circles on the chair in the center of the room that Mason had commandeered in Ramses’ penthouse, his laptop open on his thighs, while he worked on several projects at once, chief among them scouring the globe for Slate Langbroe
k, who might have eluded them so far, but wouldn’t be able to hide forever. Eventually, he’d have to come up for air, and when he did, they’d be waiting.

  In the meantime, Gunnar had to continue rebuilding his business as a corporate raider, which was back on track thanks to some inside knowledge about the vulnerabilities of one of the world’s largest oil companies. Royal Nautilus Petroleum’s competition was already pecking at its still-living carcass, but with federal investigators scrutinizing every facet of its business, its chief executive in the wind, and the cloak of national security concealing its involvement in what could very well have been the greatest disaster in the history of mankind, its governing board was more than happy to let them have it.

  Unfortunately, its assets—including those of subsidiaries like Aegis—had been frozen before the sale of Aebischer Pharma’s biomedical and chemical properties went through, preventing Mason’s father from formally distancing himself from the pharmaceutical conspiracy among his in-laws, the Hoyl, and the Thirteen. The only consolation was that the senator now controlled the rights to Pyridocholinesterase, the prophylactic treatment for exposure to nerve agents, which he’d already begun shipping to the military to protect the troops disarming the drones on Nautilus’s shipping fleet. It was almost too bad no one would ever know the service he’d provided for the men and women in uniform.

  “We’re doing just fine on our own,” Ramses said. He grabbed a bottle from the six-pack on the small table, popped the cap on his belt buckle, and caught it in his free hand. “Besides, I don’t trust him.”

  “You do not trust anyone,” Alejandra said. She’d probably meant for it to sound more flippant than it came out, but it was likely part of the reason she’d decided to return to Mexico and her special forces unit. The main factor being how useless she’d felt babysitting the computers while they’d been off tracking the Scarecrow. She needed to get back to fighting the battles on her own terms, which was undoubtedly the only part of her decision that Ramses understood. “And yet in this case, I agree with you. Promise me you will be careful with these men.”