Hard Road: Deadly Horizon (Dark Plague Book 2)

by Bradley West

  “I planned to call the president’s national security consultant and have him speak to you.”

  “That is not permitted. Come with me and walk slowly, very slowly. We have all the time in the world.” Three minutes later, Gray-hair and a bearded agent with a ponytail faced Nolan with their backs against the door of a small interview room behind the public areas.

  At their insistence, Nolan had taken a seat at a tiny table. “You need to detain the three men who followed me. That could have been a hit squad for all we know.”

  Ponytail ignored Nolan’s protest and emptied his carry-on contents onto the tabletop. After minimal rummaging, four thousand dollars and change appeared. The rest of the meager contents merited scant attention, save for the toiletry bag that the agent set aside for further inspection. Next up was the laptop case. “Boot this computer.”

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Nolan said as he complied. “Please call the tower and hold the plane, and call General Neil Payne to confirm my—”

  “The security of Schiphol Airport and its passengers is my only concern. Until you convince me you are not a threat, you’ll speak to no one but Agent Lurvink and me. What are your plans in Kuala Lumpur?” asked Gray-hair.

  “To interview government officials about the circumstances surrounding the April 22 murder of Director of Central Intelligence Admiral William Perkins.”

  “Perkins wasn’t murdered. He died in a climbing accident in Borneo.”

  “Are you that gullible? He was shot four times and buried in a closed casket. Now can you please call the tower and tell them to hold the plane? Then call the acting Director of Central Intelligence Stuart Johnson and tell him you have Bob Nolan in detention, and he will miss his flight unless he intervenes.”

  “Bob Nolan? Wat een klerezooi,” said the hirsute Lurvink.

  “What a mess, indeed,” echoed Gray-hair.

  * * * * *

  Thursday, July 17: Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine, near Pervomais’k

  Following Anatoly Chumakov’s deportation from Singapore in mid-April, his prospects had risen from death row to respected FSB henchman bouncing around the Muslim republics and restive provinces. Now it was early July and he found himself in the company of unwashed drunken swine. How in God’s name had he come to be based in Russia-occupied Ukraine organizing the security for the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade out of Kursk? Apart from the men who managed the Buk 9K-37 TELAR mobile missile launch vehicle, Chumakov’s security detail was deplorable.

  The Tatar stopped this line of self-inquiry lest he forget how the good far outweighed the bad. He was back on a payroll and, miracle of miracles, his Moscow flat with its modest furnishings and immodest collection of couture clothing had been returned to him unscathed. He was doubly fortunate that Vladimir Putin and Federal Security Services head Andrei Portnikov thought well of him. FSB strongman Portnikov forwarded Putin’s orders to Chumakov when Russia’s leader had a job that was too sensitive to stay within formal channels. One downside of being the fixer of choice was Chumakov didn’t know where he’d be from week-to-week.

  Those were quibbles compared to his major gripe. In return for successfully scraping the MH370 airframe for surveillance devices, Portnikov had promised Chumakov “Bob Nolan on a platter.” That was a direct quote, uttered months ago. The Museum of Crimes Against Humanity had opened at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport with the first exhibit on display being that ill-fated Malaysia airline. Transit passengers could walk through the plane and read the placards in Russian, French or English describing in florid terms the CIA’s hijacking and murder of 238 souls. Meanwhile, Nolan was in Washington, D.C. where he cozied up to Obama and testified before closed-door committees. All this while Chumakov coped with an acrylic left eye, shrapnel in his brain and a missing half a kidney thanks to a Nolan-thrown hand grenade.

  The satphone buzzed in Chumakov’s breast pocket. It was Portnikov. Putting on his loyal lieutenant voice, Chumakov answered. “Director General, how may I serve you?”

  “Maybe God exists after all and he is a Tatar. Malaysia Airlines flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur takes off just after noon Amsterdam time with a cruising altitude of thirty-three thousand feet. I can instruct air traffic control to vector it to waypoint RND. It will be the only aircraft at that location and altitude, and as re-routed will pass within three kilometers of your current location. Bob Nolan will be on board. I have a green light should you wish to proceed, but you will owe President Putin another large debt of gratitude. Me, I like my tribute in dollars, vodka and big-titted whores.”

  “Nolan? Are you certain?”

  “Yes. His alias passport came up on our system two hours ago, and our men at Schiphol saw him board the plane before they left the terminal. He’s yours for the taking, but you need to decide.”

  “I want him dead today.”

  “I’ll notify the military. Stand by. In two hours, there will be a fireworks display even a one-eyed man can appreciate.”

  “Thank you, sir!” Chumakov turned off the satphone. Nolan!

  * * * * *

  Chumakov looked at his watch: it was 13:21 and sections of aircraft were tumbling from the sky, trailing smoke with this happy scene spread over many kilometers. A proximity fuse in the nose of an a 9N-314M surface-to-air missile packed with eight-hundred bowtie-shaped iron fragments had detonated next to the cockpit. Somewhere up there was Bob Nolan, or parts of him. Chumakov hoped he was alive all the way to ground, screaming in terror. This was a day to savor, a day to remember. Chumakov’s body trembled with a feeling akin to orgasm.

  * * * * *

  Washington, D.C. and Schiphol Airport

  Acting Director of Central Intelligence Stu Johnson waited while minions patched him through. “Bob, you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I was angry about being held in solitary until they told me that two hundred and ninety-eight people died on that flight. That it’s another Malaysia Airline’s plane has me perplexed. Can you have me released so I can catch a later flight to Kuala Lumpur?”

  “I spoke with the president a short while ago and debriefed him on intelligence just in from Kuala Lumpur. There’s a credible report that former PM Rahim has ordered your death. There are also wire service reports out of Russia claiming that Bob Nolan was on board MH17.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “The safest place for you is in U.S. protective custody. On POTUS’s authority, I’ve dispatched a private jet to pick you up at Volkel Air Base outside Amsterdam. Our Dutch friends will ensure that you make that plane. On your flight to Andrews, think hard about how you wish to proceed. The president said his offer is still open to lead the Abyss investigation, and to remind you that your country needs you more than ever. I don’t know what that specifically refers to, but having our enemies think you’re inoperative provides an advantage. Please consider all your options before answering.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. Thank you for the assistance.” Nolan stared at the mute phone. Dead again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Tormented

  TWO YEARS LATER

  Monday, August 15, 2016: Pyongyang, North Korea

  Yu Kaili, intelligence liaison from the People’s Republic of China to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, sat in stunned silence. Last month, after two years of negotiations, flattery, stealth and seduction, North Korea had handed over a nuclear electromagnetic pulse device, an NEMP. Ostensibly, China’s nuclear weapons scientists would review and suggest design modifications to enhance its yield. In fact, on President Liu’s orders the bomb had gone to a terrorist group that pledged to detonate it over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Chaos would result as E1, E2 and E3 energy surges destroyed power transmission and distribution networks. Liu had seen more than enough of America’s democracy in his seventy-five years. The world’s largest countries would be better off governed by military men committed to peace and security rooted in acceptance of geographic spheres of influence.r />
  Her mission in North Korea complete, she was to depart with her little boy on the next available flight, disguising her absence as a short holiday so as to not arouse suspicions, then drop the child in China and acquire commercial cover ahead of the United States visit. The president wanted Kaili as his emissary to the conspirators running the government-in-waiting and determine whether China could do business with Mr. Love and his organization.

  * * * * *

  Tuesday, August 16, 2016: outside Camp Irwin, California

  MH370 SLEUTH DIES IN MH17 EXPLOSION

  The two-year-old press clipping hung from the bulletin board over his desk. How true, how true. Bob Nolan, the most decorated CIA officer in Agency history, was alive in this tin can and dead everywhere else. Deceased in name and memorialized with a white grave marker in Arlington National Cemetery. Dead to his family who thought he’d boarded Malaysia Airlines flight 17. And he would have died, at least in spirit, if he hadn’t come to believe in a higher cause: Operation Abyss.

  Eat, sleep, exercise, shoot and Abyss defined a hermetic existence in the high desert off the highway from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Not that it mattered where Nolan physically existed, as he seldom ventured from his parcel of sand and rock. Once a week, someone from the Q-Group delivered provisions and picked up his shopping list. As a defunct person, he received no mail or emails in his real name. Nolan had memorized everything on Arch Stanton’s false I.D.s in his wallet but had never had to produce one for a bank teller, traffic cop or airline employee. Uncle Sam paid all of Mr. Stanton’s bills and kept his name off the grid.

  Nolan was a lord of the dark web, master of the crevices where treason hid its stench among the perverts, the dealers and the shadow people. Here and there he found a crumb: a morsel of code, or a repeated alias or phrase in an obscure place. Something that set him off in a frenzy for the next twenty-four or forty-eight hours to find the connecting thread ahead of time decay and security sweepers. Nolan didn’t even know how many people worked for Operation Abyss, but it numbered in the dozens. No one knew anything about him other than his project handle, Reese. The closer the Abyss team came to unraveling the labyrinthine structure of Higher Love, the faster everything blew apart and recombined in a new tangle of obfuscation, and the Sisyphean labors started anew.

  Only General Payne, Abyss’s patron and POTUS’s confidant via the nebulous title of “Special Presidential Envoy”, had the full organization chart. Everyone else knew only their proximate contacts so they couldn’t betray the entire group. Nolan had cautioned Payne to keep this information on paper only, for nothing in a computer was secure. He smiled at the irony of being one of the world’s top cryptanalysts, yet his doublewide trailer held more safes than it did computers. Electronic storage media, air-gapped or otherwise, couldn’t be trusted.

  Nolan was close to identifying Higher Love’s leader. Only through interrogation of the top man would Payne’s team learn the names of the multiple layers of traitors dedicated to the overthrow of America’s republic and the establishment of an imperial regime. To that end, Abyss’s staff had assiduously ignored the smaller fry to focus on the man referred to in his own organization as Mr. Love.

  The MH370 hijacking planning, execution and coverup had sent the president’s mind down a dark path that walked the line between messianic quest and obsession. There was persuasive circumstantial evidence of a deep state, an organization of government insiders past and present dedicated to the usurpation of United States foreign policy. From the Oval Office, POTUS could do little on his own, particularly as he could trust so few. Retired Special Forces Major General Neil Payne was one of a handful. Payne in turn had his own reasons to rely exclusively on the FBI’s Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence—“Q-Group” for short, and “the American Stasi” to civil libertarians. Q-Group was the body charged with policing the NSA’s analysts and programmers. It maintained a loose cordon around Arch Stanton on Payne’s orders. All the FBI minders knew about their subject was that he had enough computers to control a manned mission to Mars, enough safes to back up Fort Knox, ran five miles a day and shot a carton of two hundred hollow points every weekend.

  The ex-senator from Illinois and his consigliere from Macon, Georgia, took comfort from the satisfaction that most military and intelligence types expressed whenever Nolan’s death came up. Nolan’s skillset included the creation and deciphering of codes, high-level programing, electronic surveillance and hacking. He was creative, and since the moving to Camp Irwin’s environs two years prior, obsessive.

  Then in May everything went to hell. Abyss had progressed to the point that Mr. Love’s opaque form began to take shape: a mature ex-politician personally known to few, revered by most and feared by all. So confident was the president of Abyss’s inevitable success that he added a second objective to the team’s brief over Payne’s objections. As of May 21, Reese and his people were also to review the evidence of Russia’s tampering with the upcoming 2016 presidential election. Nolan hadn’t been happy to learn about the additional goal, but Payne explained this wasn’t an Athenian democracy and he needed to fall in line.

  Nolan knew far too well the dangers of mission creep, but he accepted the additional work with a shrug. After all, just how crazy would Putin have to be to yank the tail of the world’s largest cyber power? Russia’s hacking into the private email server of the Democrats’ nominee when she had been secretary of state was fair game but stealing the contents of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and dumping them onto WikiLeaks was beyond the pale. But what POTUS didn’t appreciate, and Nolan feared, were the unintended consequences of comingling targets. Abyss’s hunt could inadvertently push the quarries—the Russians and Higher Love—into overlapping orbits with unpredictable results.

  * * * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  Anatoly Chumakov, head of the Farewell Group’s D.C. office, understood why JFK had changed shirts twice daily during the summer. The capital’s humidity bonded grit and pollen to the skin, and the high heat turned it into a slurry. He finished tucking in his last fresh shirt, a two hundred-count Egyptian cotton Turnbull & Asser that felt like silk as long as he stayed indoors. He finished trimming an errant cuticle as the receptionist signaled that his three o’clock had arrived.

  “Peter, Peter, welcome!” Chumakov effused. Peter Mandrake was one of Republican presidential candidate Douglas Ginger’s new men, ostensibly in charge of campaign strategy.

  “Do you have any more material for us?”

  “Our friends at WikiLeaks are highly confident there will be additional disclosures,” Chumakov said, luxuriating in his role as a registered lobbyist representing the Russian Federation. He cracked his knuckles and snuck another look at the new Vacheron Constantin watch adorning his wrist, a present from Portnikov.

  “That’s great,” Mandrake said, “though with twenty thousand DNC emails already out there, Crandall’s mighty fucked as it stands.”

  “I smile every time I log on the Washington Post’s website and read the Politics section. The unofficial slogan of Pravda used to be, ‘If you tell us what to write, we’ll publish it.’ I’m pushing the Post to adopt it as their masthead, but in the meantime my expense account looks like your country’s national debt.”

  “Precisely! Those liberal hacks spend their time claiming Ginger is a fool, but they’re too stupid to understand what’s happening until it’s too late.”

  Chumakov grimaced and gestured toward the ceiling in an appeal for discretion. “I have good news on other fronts. I can confirm your client paid your firm’s most recent invoice.”

  “When did this happen?” Mandrake asked.

  “Earlier today. Here, this is your copy.” Chumakov handed over a scan acknowledging receipt of three million dollars from Ukraine’s Party of Plenty to the go-between’s political image consulting firm, Davis Mandrake. The signature was that of the officer manager in the Kiev office.

  “Thanks
. Let me see how long it takes Boyko to notify me. He’s been slack on that count of late. I think he’s banking the interest on the float.”

  Chumakov winced at the sound of the Ukrainian surname. The receptionist rang and said he had an urgent call, prompting the Tatar to extend his hand in farewell. “Busy as Stalin launching a pogrom. You keep me posted on developments, and let’s get together with Junior or Gerard this coming week.”

  “Absolutely, Anatoly. I’ll be certain to rope in—”

  “I’m sure it will be an impressive list. Now you’ll have to excuse me.” Chumakov prodded the smaller man out of his office before he could utter anything else that the FBI would find of interest.

  After the elevator doors cut off Mandrake’s drivel, Chumakov sighed as he strode back into the reception area. He spoke in Russian to the athletic woman behind the front desk. “Valeyriya, who’s on the phone?”

  “He couldn’t wait and hung up.” She gestured him over and revealed a name on a yellow sticky.

  “I’m going downstairs for a cigarette. Please take a message should anyone ring.”

  And just when everything was on track. Something must be very wrong as Tim Weill didn’t rattle easily. In the lobby, Chumakov pulled out his cellphone and sent two secure text messages, then walked out the door onto M Street into another filthy D.C. steam room. So much for the razor-sharp creases in his shirt. He took ten minutes to reach the Four Seasons Hotel and waited less than fifteen seconds for his pickup. Then it was a short surveillance detection route circling northwest D.C. until he was certain they were clean. The off-duty embassy driver, an ex-Special Forces man he used from time to time, dropped him in a parking lot behind a liquor store fronting Wisconsin Avenue in swish Georgetown.

  Chumakov entered Peterson’s Liquor from the parking lot, found the right key on his copious ring and opened a metal door to reveal an ill-lit set of stairs blocked by another metal door. Behind that heavy barrier, the lighting improved and the temperature dropped ten degrees.