In the past few days, however, she had found herself coming to rely upon it. She was putting in some unearthly hours at the Forest Hills compound which – added to the stress of being arrested and temporarily imprisoned by the FBI – had left her exhausted and reliant upon caffeine to fuel her ongoing workload.
Since successfully sabotaging the careers of Mason, Jones and Graham, Michiko had been involved in the twin tasks of trying to locate her father, while breaking into the defense networks of the Iranian military, in order to gain remote control of Tehran’s formidable anti-aircraft systems.
She’d finally managed to get inside though and – with the assistance of her Farsi translators – was confident that she would be able to turn the system off when the Force One team needed her to. She was already linked into the network through a parallel shadow system, and had remotely embedded software in the Iranian system that would enable her to take control as and when she wanted.
She still hadn’t managed to locate her father though, at least not for sure. Written reports of prisoners entering the basements of MOIS Headquarters on Saniya Street in the north of Tehran were patchy at best, and she could find no reference to the man sent from the Iranian embassy in Belgrade.
She’d got the contact name for the agent inside MOIS though – Mohammed Younesi – and had started a preliminary investigation into the man.
Live information from the MOIS internal mainframe suggested that Younesi was engaged in the interrogation of a prisoner, but she couldn’t know for sure who it was.
It could be her father, sure; but it could also be an Iranian troublemaker, or a traitor caught spying for another country.
But, Michiko noted, Younesi was the chief of the Office of Europe, part of MOIS’s Second Directorate and the one charged with planning and carrying out foreign intelligence operations.
Was this Mohammed Younesi the man responsible for planning the attack on London? And if so, had Cole found out? And if he’d found out, had he asked to see the man? Was that why he’d been sent to Iran in the first place?
And if so, was that who Younesi was interrogating right now?
She sighed, and shook her head.
So much conjecture, so little evidence.
She could hazard a guess as to her father’s whereabouts, but that was all it was – just a guess.
While she was embedded in the MOIS systems, Michiko had tried to access Younesi’s private files via remote access. She had discovered a wealth of information, all of which was being picked through by her translators and the various interrogation programs under her control; but the ‘smoking gun’ seemed to be missing, no direct and clear evidence of what – if anything – Younesi had been planning.
If there was anything there at all, it was all on the hard drive, sensibly not connected to any networked system. To find out what he had on his private system, she would have to be there in his office, to break into his computer files the old fashioned way.
She sighed, knowing how impossible that was.
The phone on her desk rang then, startling her; but she picked it up after only two rings.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me,’ her father’s voice came over the line, quiet but clear.
‘Where are you?’ she asked, not quite believing that it was really him.
‘I’m in the office of Mohammed Younesi, MOIS headquarters in Tehran,’ Cole replied. So she’d been right. But what was he doing ringing Force One? Was he doing it under duress? And yet she believed that her father would never do such a thing, no matter what they did to him. So what was going on?
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Cole answered, ‘which is more than I can say for Mr. Younesi here. But I don’t have time, so listen carefully. I’m in his computer files, but I don’t have the time to go through it all here. Can I send everything over to you?’
‘Yes,’ Michiko answered, hardly able to credit her luck.
She’d wanted a miracle to happen, to get access to Younesi’s files, and a miracle is exactly what she got.
Her father.
Julie Barrington assessed the team who were assembled next to her in the private hangar, where the three specialist helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment were being kept out of the sight of prying eyes.
All in all, she was pretty happy; the operators from DEVGRU were sometimes arrogant but always effective, and she had worked with two of them on missions for Force One before and could vouch for them personally. Tim Collins had been by her side in China, when they’d rescued the imprisoned members of the Politburo from Beijing’s Forbidden City, and she’d served with Ricky Taylor in Europe not long after; Freddie Karson and Donald Nguyen would be just as good, she was sure.
The sixth member of the team, Kurt Russakoff, was another CIA Special Activities Division officer like Barrington and – also like Barrington – was a member of the organization’s elite Special Operations Group; and she was convinced – with some justification – that they might well be the best two people there.
But healthy competition didn’t get in the way of anyone’s professionalism; they all knew what had to be done, and the best way to go about doing it, and so as soon as introductions had been made, the operational planning got underway.
Barrington had been assigned as team leader for now, but that didn’t mean that she needed to ram it down the guys’ throats. Unlike most other military units, JSOC teams – and especially those selected for Force One – liked to come up with their plans together, as mutually respected peers. And with people of such a high level, it worked.
The latest news was that their target – the commander of Force One himself, Mark Cole, a man Barrington knew well – was somewhere in Tehran, potentially held within the headquarters of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security on Saniya Street in the north of the city.
It was conjecture, but what they decided to work upon in the absence of intelligence to the contrary.
It would be dark soon, and that would suit Force One just fine; they’d been promised inactivation of Iranian anti-air defenses, and in the dark their aircraft would be as good as invisible to eyes on the ground.
If they got the call to go in now, they would launch the op with just the six of them, with one Black Hawk; if the others arrived before they got the go ahead, they would instead split into two teams of nine, in two separate helicopters. In either case, the Little Bird would lead the way into Tehran, acting as a scout to make sure the coast was clear for the bigger aircraft that followed.
Wherever the rescue was to take place, the word was that they needed to be in and out as fast as humanly possible; the Iranian authorities weren’t to know what had happened.
Of course, that would be in an ideal world; the trouble, Barrington knew, was that the world was rarely so ideal. Shit happened, and had to be expected.
As such, she and the other members of the team would be going in heavily armed. In addition to the formidable armaments of the Black Hawk, the four SEALs would form an assault group to carry out the rescue and take on anyone who was there, while Barrington and Russakoff would provide perimeter security.
More people would be better, but six would do if that was all they had.
As the Night Stalkers checked their aircraft over in minute detail, Barrington and the Force One team did the same with their personal weapons and equipment as they continued to discuss the operation.
They were ready, as far as they could be.
Now all they needed was a location.
8
Cole looked at the computer screen, showing access to dozens of folders, thousands of files. Which ones were useful? Which ones would tell him what he wanted to know about London?
But he didn’t have the time to search them all, especially as it was all in the Arabic script – and although fairly fluent in Farsi, his reading ability was rather less developed.
But if he could send it all to his daughter at Force O
ne, it could be fed into the supercomputers, translated and sorted in no time at all.
And with the memorial event planned for the day after, Cole needed things doing quickly if they were to have any hope at all of foiling Iran’s second strike.
Younesi was only just coming round, stirring on the floor. Cole regretted the fact that he couldn’t question him – but he knew that if he removed the tie from his mouth, the man would call for help immediately. There were four armed men just beyond the door, and even if Cole threatened him with the Colt, he was pretty sure that Younesi would take his chances.
He also thought about asking Younesi to highlight the important files, which he could do without talking. But why would he? And Cole would have no idea if he was selecting the right files, or completely irrelevant ones; or even if he was tipping off headquarters security through the computer in some way.
No, Cole decided, it was best to just upload everything to Michiko back in Forest Hills and let her sort it out. She had the time, the intelligence, and the raw computing power to get what they needed out of it, if it was in there.
Cole highlighted each and every file, continuing to talk to his daughter as he did so. ‘So you know who Younesi is?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ his daughter said, ‘I’ve got his file right here.’
‘Good,’ he said, knowing that Morgan must have got back to London okay, given them the information from Milanović. ‘Morgan got the information to Catalina then?’
‘Morgan?’ Michiko asked, and Cole could hear the surprise in her voice. ‘No, I found his name while checking into what happened to you, saw that it was his name used by the embassy when they contacted MOIS in Tehran.’ There was a pause on the other end of the line, as if Michiko was looking for the words she needed. ‘I . . . I’m not sure that Elizabeth Morgan ever came back to London,’ she said eventually.
‘What?’ Cole said in surprise, hands stopped over the keyboard. ‘She never went back? Where the hell is she then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Michiko said. ‘I only know she’s not back in the UK because Bruce asked me to look into her, and I’ve been tracking her passport ever since. She’s not used it to leave Serbia, as far as I can tell, and she’s also the subject of many a conversation back at Thames House, they’re wondering where the hell she is too.’
Cole wondered what the hell had happened. Had the Serbian authorities decided to detain her? Had associates of Milanović come after her, looking for revenge? Had the Iranians taken her?
He shook his head, unable to think clearly. He was worried about her, and he could ill afford such weakness at this stage of the game; he had to keep on track with what he was doing, ignore everything else.
But he couldn’t help but hope desperately that she was okay.
‘Do me a favor,’ Cole said to his daughter. ‘If you ever get a spare minute, could you look into it? See where she might have gone?’
‘I can use our algorithms, check to see if she left any transport hub, cross reference file photos with CCTV images. She might have used a false passport to get out of there. But that’ll take time, and I can’t promise anything.’
‘That’s fine,’ Cole said, thinking about Michiko’s suggestion. It was possible, yes – but if she’d used a false passport, why had she still not returned to London? She was supposed to have reported back to Kelly and Riley, made contact with dos Santos to let his people in the US know what was going on. The fact that she hadn’t done any of it suggested that something must have gone terribly wrong. ‘Do whatever you can.’
He watched the files streaming their way across to the Force One systems below the Paradigm Group’s compound back in Forest Hills, satisfied that – Morgan or no Morgan – his unit was finally going to have the intelligence they needed.
The only question then would be whether they would have the time to do anything about it.
Then the computer screen went fuzzy for a second, came back on, then started flashing a warning in large, red Arabic script.
Cole translated quickly, horrified by what he read –
SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED – SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED – SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED
Shit!
‘The transfer’s stopped,’ Michiko said, ‘is everything okay?’
‘They’re on to me,’ Cole said, just moments before an alarm went off, an electronic beeping that echoed down the corridors outside. He saw the handle turn in the door then, heard banging as the armed guards outside tried to force their way in.
He looked across at Younesi, conscious now and smiling in sweet victory.
Cole picked up the man’s cell phone from the desk, from where he’d put it after emptying his pockets earlier. He connected it quickly to the computer, starting a physical download of data to the phone, watching as the files poured across to the small unit.
He smiled back at Younesi, then got back on the phone to Michiko. ‘I’m copying the rest across to Younesi’s cell phone, I’ll try and send it to you later.’ Another thought occurred to him then. ‘Can you track the phone?’
‘If it’s turned on and connected to a network I can,’ Michiko said.
Cole checked the number and read it back to his daughter, as the alarm continued to sound and booted feet continued to pound away at the door. ‘Is that the one you have for him?’
‘Yep,’ Michiko confirmed. ‘I’ve got it now, building on Saniya Street.’
‘Good,’ Cole said, watching as the last of the files were copied across to the cell phone. ‘Do we have any resources nearby?’
‘Rescue team is ready to go from Ashgabat, they can be across the border and in Tehran within a couple of hours.’
Cole breathed out. A couple of hours? He might not have a couple of minutes. But he didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
‘Okay, keep tracking this cell, as soon as they’re ready, send them to it. Call me for confirmation of location, but if I can’t answer for some reason, just send them to the phone.’
‘I will,’ Michiko said, just as the cell phone beeped to say its memory was full.
Shit.
But it would have to do, Cole supposed and – saying his farewells to Michiko – he grabbed the phone up off the desk and turned to Younesi, Colt raised to the man’s head.
The doors started to splinter behind him, and he knew he didn’t have long. But what should he do with Younesi?
He was a senior intelligence officer for a major foreign enemy power, and one who had planned and orchestrated a terrible and truly horrific terrorist attack on innocent civilians.
Children.
But at the same time, Younesi cut a pathetic figure, alone and unarmed, gagged and bound to a chair.
And as a brother intelligence operative, didn’t he deserve a degree of mercy? He had doubtless only been doing what he had been told.
Didn’t he deserve the benefit of the doubt?
And who was Cole to decide, anyway?
But as he looked again at Younesi, he saw a man who had purposefully ordered the killing of children, and decided that was all that mattered.
Mohammed Younesi was guilty of an insidious and evil crime against humanity, and was right there in front of him.
Cole knew he might not ever get the chance to confront the man again.
As he heard automatic gunfire from the corridor, saw the door being blown apart by high-powered rounds, Cole made his decision and fired a single shot from the Colt .45, the slug burying itself through Younesi’s forehead and emerging out the other side, blowing out the man’s brains across the office window, painting it a bright, vivid red.
With a brain as evil and disturbed as that, Cole decided, it was better out than in.
He moved quickly, ignoring the dead body that sat limply in the office chair and aiming his Colt toward the door, firing off four quick shots that punched hard through the wood.
Cole heard a scream from outside, and then frightened shouting, and knew he must have hit someone.
And then
he picked up his own chair and hurled it hard at the window, smashing the glass out as it sailed through and continued down to the parking lot below.
Moving past Younesi, Cole pocketed the Colt and climbed up into the window frame, first looking down to assess his position – a hundred feet up, perhaps eight stories.
He then looked up, saw another fifty feet to the top, another four levels, all glass, steel and concrete.
Breathing out to center himself, he decided not to look down again and reached up to take hold of the edge of the external window frame, levering himself up and onto the outside of MOIS headquarters.
9
Two minutes later, Cole had managed to climb two more levels, fingers red raw from gripping the tiny crevices between steel and glass, glass and concrete. His toes ached inside his shoes too, from where they’d been bunched tight in the ends, forced against the unforgiving wall.
But he was still hanging on – if just barely – and only had another twenty-five feet to go.
It was then that he heard shouts of urgent Farsi coming from below, and he looked down to see four men sticking their heads out of Younesi’s office window, looking down to the parking lot below, pointing at the fallen chair.
Cole knew it wouldn’t take them long to understand what must have happened and look upward though, and so even before they turned, Cole was already letting go with one hand, fingers of the other biting even deeper into the tiny handhold as he reached into his waistband and withdrew the Colt.
He had it aimed just as the men looked up at him, their eyes going wide as they struggled – bunched up together as they were – to bring their weapons into play.
He pulled the trigger immediately, the first shot blasting through one man’s shoulder, the second hitting another in the side of the chest.
The other two men dived back inside the office, pulling their injured colleagues back in with them and leaving Cole momentarily clear.
It was not a moment too soon either, as Cole’s fingertips were beginning to fail, the gap of mere millimeters barely sufficient to cram them into and support his bodyweight, feet unable to find enough purchase to really help.
PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 28