Liquid Gold

by James Phelan

  29

  VIRGINIA

  Hutchinson’s hands shook. He sat in the rear passenger section of the FBI helicopter, almost at Quantico. He had placed a frantic call to his FBI liaison at the air base in Spain; no news. Fox’s line was dead, but they were getting a GPS read on the last location. A special ops helicopter, on standby for security of this mission, was in Spanish airspace …

  He had been in McCorkell’s office when clearance to land had come in. That McCorkell—or his secretary—hadn’t passed that information on to Fox … In fact, Fox had said McCorkell had specifically not cleared them to land at the Air Force base … Fuck! He’d been sure the mole was CIA. For the intelligence analyst, little, if anything, could be taken for granted—a lesson he had just relearned.

  But Bill McCorkell?

  Hutchinson had been an investigator long enough to know that looking him up would not be easy. He had guys who could track McCorkell’s communications—as he’d done to get the threat list against Fox in the first place—but he’d need damning evidence. Problem was, his guys had got their hands on that first intel via a wide net, not by pinpoint targeting of a suspect.

  McCorkell had worked in the Bureau, the Justice Department, the UN, and top global security thinktanks prior to his role in the Executive Branch of three administrations—including as National Security Advisor to the last President. That kind of pedigree led to all kinds of difficulties—not the least of which was that the guy had security clearance second below God.

  But could he be the guy?

  As his own chopper started its descent through the foggy FBI base Hutchinson willed his phone to ring and watched the seconds tick by, waiting for news that Fox was okay.

  30

  OUTSKIRTS OF SEVILLE, SPAIN

  Dark smoke was thick in the air around the four men on the ground. Tiny bits of metal and glass and ash rained down as Fox forced his eyes open. He looked up and rolled to his left—out of the path of a wheel that bounced by his head as if in slow motion. He shook himself back to his senses and brushed grit from his eyes.

  Geiger was up on one knee in firing position, looking down the sights of his Kriss Mk9 .45 calibre submachine gun, scanning side to side to the rear of their position. Goldsmith was just a few beats behind him as he drew his pistol, unsteady on his feet, scanning the other direction for threats. Civilians ran from cars, a truck’s load caught fire—

  “Let’s move!” Fox yelled. He squinted against the sunlight as Gammaldi helped him to his feet and they hunted around for their backpacks. A secondary explosion sounded.

  “You all right?” Gammaldi yelled into his ear.

  “Yeah,” Fox yelled back, moving with Gammaldi. Gammaldi’s jacket had been blown off in the blast but his bulletproof vest was still strapped tightly over his blackened T-shirt. “Come on, into a vehicle!”

  As they moved, they stayed low, alert, scanning around. Most vehicles had stopped and some were still screeching to a stop; a truck had jack-knifed and lost half its load of water-cooler refills; a ten-car pile-up in the opposite direction shut down the oncoming traffic lanes. People were out of their cars and on the road, some hysterical, some numb; a few were on cell phones, calling authorities and news services. Fox and his men passed two guys filming the scene on their phones, shouting to each other, “Basque separatists!” Fox didn’t hesitate as he ran for their vehicle, a late-nineties SEAT hatchback done up like a rally car.

  “Someone’s watching us, Al,” Fox said, climbing into the back seat and shuffling across for Gammaldi. Geiger backed himself into the front passenger seat, slammed the door and pointed his weapon out the open window, continuing to scan the scene for threats as Goldsmith roared the car’s engine.

  “Rob, get us off this road!” shouted Fox.

  “Onto it!”

  Goldsmith manoeuvred around the immediate traffic jam, revving the gas pedal hard against the clutch. The front tyres spun. Once they reached a clear stretch of road the hatchback hit a loud eighty kilometres per hour in second gear.

  “Push it, Rob!”

  “It’s to the floor!” he said as he dumped into third—the car was skidding on its bald tyres, entering the curve of the A92. A massive series of high-rise apartment blocks loomed to their immediate right.

  “Chopper, inbound, northwest!” Gammaldi yelled over the sound of the add-on GPS system in tinny Spanish—“usted se apresura, usted se apresura, compruebe la velocidad!”

  “They could be friend—”

  The back window shattered. Geiger turned his head sharply away and brought his hands up to cover his face.

  Goldsmith slumped over the wheel, his foot a dead weight on the accelerator, making the car hammer even harder down the motorway, bumping erratically between cars as it careened its way forward.

  “Sniper!” Fox yelled, frantically looking behind to try to identify the shooter’s location. The helicopter was too far out; the gunman had to be closer.

  Their vehicle bounced off a Range Rover, then drifted left and ground along the concrete barrier that separated them from the oncoming lanes, sparks from the protesting metal firing into the open side windows.

  Geiger was sitting still, in shock, painted with gore. He started shaking, useless for a few beats.

  “Eyal!” Fox yelled. “Take the wheel!”

  The ex-Marine snapped around and pulled the wheel back towards him to get the car off the barrier, the engine still redlining.

  Fox leaned forward and pulled Goldsmith towards the backrest. He reached to check Goldsmith’s neck for a pulse but soon pulled away his blood-soaked hand when he saw up close that Goldsmith’s head was parted like the Red Sea. He looked at Gammaldi, who had seen it, too—

  Thump!

  A dull thud announced another sniper bullet hitting the car, this time aimed at the engine block—

  Thump!

  Another shot punched a hole in the bonnet. Steam hissed out instantly as the radiator took the hit, green coolant spraying up onto the windshield.

  “Eyal—hold the wheel steady!” Fox ordered, then grabbed Gammaldi’s hand and put it onto Goldsmith’s lifeless shoulder. “Al, as soon as I’m out, pull him back here!”

  Before Gammaldi could question the plan, Fox was out his side window and immediately pulled himself in close to the car as a speed-limit sign flashed by his back. He climbed through the driver’s window feet first while Gammaldi man-handled the body of their comrade into the back seat, seeming not to struggle under the weight.

  Fox, now in the driver’s seat, gunned the accelerator and pressed the clutch in and out of third gear—

  Thump!

  Another shot hit the bonnet like a sledgehammer; the sound of grinding and scraping under the road was piercing as something was blasted free of the engine and hung below—

  Thump!

  “Shit!” Fox swerved the car as the round passed through the roof of the car and lodged in the headrest a couple of centimetres from the back of his head.

  “Dé vuelta a la derecha seiscientos metros—” Fox ripped the sat nav from the dash and threw it out his window.

  “Shooter’s somewhere in the apartments!” Geiger yelled. The three men stayed low as Fox kept his foot flat on the gas and swerved erratically, hitting fourth gear as he tore around the motorway’s bend.

  “Chopper’s coming in hot!” Gammaldi yelled. “It’s military!”

  The Black Hawk hovered above, keeping pace with the hatchback while pivoting around, its side doors open. In the small window behind the copilot a helmeted gunner sat behind a Dillon M134 Minigun. As Fox continued to floor the car, the gunner opened up with laser-like tracer rounds of super machine-gun fire.

  31

  FBI, QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

  As he walked the hall of the office of the HRT Hutchinson could hear the staccato of the nearby firing range and felt like he was in the daze of a dream.

  Bill McCorkell. What moti
vation could he possibly have? Hutchinson walked to the kitchen and poured himself a coffee, absently adding a couple of sugars. There was a leak in CIA, he knew that … he thought he knew that. What if the leak was higher up? McCorkell had access to everything they were working on—could it be that simple?

  But surely McCorkell would know that Hutchinson would figure it out—he was in the fucking room when McCorkell got that landing clearance! No, it couldn’t be him. Hutchinson walked back towards the office.

  “Hey, Andrew, come sing happy birthday,” a junior agent said.

  “What?”

  “There’s cake. It’s Michelle and Natasha’s birthday, a double celebration.”

  Hutchinson shook his head and continued to the office. He stopped at the door and looked back up the hall at the departing figure. A double celebration. Could McCorkell’s action have been a double blind? Apart from Kavanaugh and Riley, McCorkell was the only person outside Hutchinson’s team who knew that Babich was the target of this operation. Maybe McCorkell just put that information out there—maybe there was no clearance to land at the air base—to make it obvious that it wasn’t from him. Jesus …

  Hutchinson didn’t have to collate information for a grand jury—and anyway he doubted he could actually find anything on McCorkell that would prove wrongdoing—but he could get a National Security Letter organised quickly; the administrative subpoena required no probable cause or judicial oversight, and would get him access to everything he wanted.

  He dialled a number on his BlackBerry.

  “I need you to get full info on Bill McCorkell at the White House,” Hutchinson said.

  “He’s in the EEOB these days, yeah?”

  “Yep,” Hutchinson replied. “I need all his communications, and those of his secretary, checked and triple-checked; transcripts of all calls, emails, faxes in and out of every device and mode he’s got. Give the NSLs to the Deputy Director to sign off.”

  “Got it. You want surveillance on him?”

  “No, just the comms for now, thanks.”

  He hung up. Still no call from Fox.

  Suddenly the gunfire grew louder as the outer door opened. Two FBI HRT members approached him.

  32

  SPAIN

  Brass shell casings rattled off the roof of the hatchback, the machine-gun fire sounding like a tear in the sky above them. It was over almost as soon as it began—a few seconds of firing, hundreds of rounds.

  In one of the apartment towers to their right, the entire wall surrounding a window on the tenth floor was a shot-out hole, the Minigun taking to the reinforced concrete like a can opener. Ragged debris crumbled down to earth. The sniper, if he had been up there, was long gone.

  Fox hit the brakes and the SEAT came to a loud stop at the top of the off-ramp that headed towards the A360 highway, which led directly to Morón Air Base, still some thirty-eight clicks off. He got out of the car, the little hatchback smoking and rattling under the bonnet despite the engine being cut, and looked back down the road—no vehicles were coming through from where their Lexus had exploded. He waved to the chopper, which came in and hovered ground-close some thirty metres ahead of them. UNITED STATES ARMY was stencilled on the tail section; the gunner waved them in.

  The others piled out of the car and headed for the chopper, Geiger carrying Goldsmith over his shoulder. Fox and Gammaldi helped him pass the body up to the chopper’s Crew Chief and then the three of them climbed aboard. The Black Hawk pulled up off the highway and dipped its nose slightly as it rushed towards home.

  Fox watched Geiger: the GSR security man sat in the fold-down seat opposite, looking down at Rob Goldsmith, his colleague, his friend. Geiger suddenly leaned out the open side of the chopper and vomited.

  “You got a bag for our guy?” Fox asked the US Army Crew Chief who’d manned the Minigun. The senior NCO nodded and pulled a body bag from a webbing pocket that lined a wall of the Black Hawk. As he and Fox bagged Goldsmith, Fox noticed the soldier’s patch bore 160th SOAR, airlift specialists to US Special Operations Command forces. They hauled the body against the closed starboard side door of the cargo cabin and strapped it to the deck.

  Fox turned and saw Gammaldi standing by Geiger, holding the man steady as they watched the Spanish countryside flash by below. The aircrew let them be, and they rode in silence during the five-minute flight. Fox knew that Goldsmith would not be the last man to fall.

  33

  EEOB, WASHINGTON DC

  “Yeah, right,” McCorkell said to himself. He scrolled down through the Intellipedia site on his PC screen. Russia simply searching ships for arms cargo? Who would seriously fall for that? No mistake, they were enforcing a blockade. He knew they still had around 10 000 troops across Georgia’s frontiers—6000 on land in South Ossetia and 4000 by the sea at Abkhazia—and he wasn’t at all happy about their warships being deployed off Georgia’s Black Sea coast, at arms length from the US ships there.

  He sipped his water and studied the image of the USS San Antonio, on station in the Black Sea for Georgian operations. She provided a defence bubble against enemy aircraft and incoming missiles. He’d watched her sail out of Little Creek, Virginia, on her maiden voyage, with 400 personnel and ferrying 800 battle troops into that area, part of what was soon to be an EU-led peacekeeping operation. A Russian sub was shadowing the San Antonio but as it now stood, the only threat to the US warship would be from small watercraft laden with explosives and piloted by Russian-friendly Ossetian militias. That was the kind of asymmetric warfare his military were still learning to deal with.

  Russian tactics in the 2008 war in the region … Yeah, that was something that they could deal with. Russian jets bombed a military airfield close to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, taking out not only the factory producing Sukhoi Su25 fighter jets for the Georgian Air Force, but the US-run command post as well. Now, Patriot missile batteries encircled Georgia’s capital. Two British C130s flying in supplies for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees mission were also damaged, and two UNHCR people were wounded on the ground, pushing back the humanitarian effort and investigation into genocide—both actions it was conducting cross-borders. Now, UNHCR were being guarded by US and EU infantry and armour. Actions and consequences, and as seasoned as he was, McCorkell was still as capable of being surprised as anyone.

  “Bring back the fucking cold war…”

  He was overseeing President Obama’s national security team’s options for a proportional response should Russia move into Georgian territory again. McCorkell wondered, not for the first time, what kind of action this POTUS would choose. While his team was working overtime to draw up first-strike targets, he could not imagine any of them being acted upon. The world was growing smaller every day—America’s friends and enemies watched the intricacies of their ‘proportional’ responses live on television and planned their future actions accordingly. A disproportionate response was never seriously considered, but it was something that was always in the back of McCorkell’s mind as a nice alternative to show an aggressor that his country, and her allies and their citizens, were not to be messed with. You blow up our ship? No, we won’t hit your munitions camp in response; we’ll take out every target on the board.

  He clicked out of the site, glancing at the LCD television.

  A CNN headline reported on the Ukraine’s President, threatening to block the return of Russian warships to their Black Sea base at Sevastopol, saying he did not want to be ‘drawn into a military conflict.’

  “Mr McCorkell, NSC’s Kashmir-group meeting is next door in fifteen,” a military aide said from the open doorway.

  “Thanks,” he replied, making his final notes.

  The phone on the desk rang. “Yeah?”

  “Pakistan’s moving a tank division north,” the Deputy NSA for Asia said. “Do we tell India?”

  “They’ll already know it,” McCorkell said. “Any new movement by them?”

 
; “You know they moved some Agni-III intermediate-range ballistic missiles?” he said.

  “Nukes; yeah, I caught that one. What’ve we got in the area?”

  “Not enough. See you next door in a sec.”

  “Yep,” McCorkell said and hung up.

  Two nuclear states at it again … McCorkell knew it would take the smallest mistake to escalate the situation and throw the region into nuclear—

  More news flashed on the television screen: amateur footage of an attack in Spain, Lachlan Fox’s face. McCorkell grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. It looked like an urban war zone in Baghdad, not Seville: footage of burning vehicles, the façade of an apartment block in ruins …

  34

  SPAIN

  In the high-rise apartment, Sirko opened an eye and saw darkness, then patches of hazy light. His ears rang as if he’d been in a bell tower when mass was called. He couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t move.

  A memory flashed, from his childhood years he had spent at the Hypatian Monastery, a beautiful looking place on the bank of the Kostroma River—each day in winter he was allowed to ring the afternoon bells, a series of different-sized bells with ropes hanging down just within his reach. One day he fell to the cobbled ground and couldn’t move: both legs were broken and his neck was fractured. He was confined to bed for months, where he’d lived a nightmare, over and over. Ten years later he returned there and, in a first for him outside a war zone, he’d killed a man. Not so much in cold blood as in blinding hot retribution, for him and for so many young boys, past and present.

  He blinked his eyes rapidly to flush out the soot. He tried to yawn to change the pressure in his ears but the ringing wouldn’t let up. His flexed his fingers in his gloves and felt a surge of adrenalin—he could get up, he must get up. Sirko forced himself up off the floor of the hallway and coughed out a thick stream of dusty mucus—