PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘I’m getting background checks carried out again on everyone who works there, anyone who’s so much as had a holiday to the Middle East is going to be pulled out of there, no questions asked. We can’t afford to take chances, simple as that. It might be sewn up tighter than a drum in there, but I want it even tighter.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘I’ve made my demands to the Met and to MI5 on this, I’ve told them that I want full body checks on every person moving in and out of that venue, or I will personally pull the president out of there.’

  ‘There’s going to be ninety thousand people here,’ Parish said, seeing the nightmare that would confront them, ‘including the families of the children who were killed.’

  ‘I know it seems excessive,’ O’Hare said, ‘but I mean it. Spread the word. Full body searches on everyone who enters Wembley Stadium. No exceptions.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Parish confirmed.

  ‘The Brits are providing extra personnel for this, don’t worry, they’ve got a whole load of Army Reserve soldiers they’re calling in to help with the searches.’

  ‘Good,’ Parish allowed. ‘They’ve already got their EOD teams here, they’re good.’

  ‘Okay,’ O’Hare said. ‘If I get any updates, I’ll fill you in. And if you find anything, let me know immediately.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Parish said one final time, before O’Hare ended the call.

  He looked around the huge stadium and sighed.

  Whatever happened, it was going to be one hell of a day.

  13

  Cole sat on board the C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft as it flew at twenty-eight thousand feet above the Black Sea north of Turkey, just about to enter European airspace.

  Michiko and the team back in Forest Hills had translated the documents and – although it it seemed that the Ministry of Intelligence and Security likely had a hand in the hijacking at Shahid Dastgheyb, there was nothing that could be used as hard proof; nor was there anything which connected that missing crate to the one Agostini had supposedly shipped over to Khan with the weapons.

  It was all circumstantial, and although common sense seemed to point toward what was happening, the British security services demanded somewhat more.

  Cole traveled with the rest of the Force One team who had rescued him from Tehran, and the twelve other personnel Murphy had managed to drum up had now been diverted from Ashgabat to London, to meet them there.

  If the Brits wouldn’t treat the information seriously, then he wanted as many people he could trust over there with him on the ground.as possible.

  Cole’s secure cell phone, provided for him back in Ashgabat, rang.

  ‘Mark,’ his daughter said when he picked up, ‘I think we’ve found something.’

  ‘Shoot,’ he said.

  ‘One of the files has detailed information on six members of the Havanirooz, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation – full security checks, like vetting for special missions, statements on their skills, training, loyalty to the regime, religious beliefs, family members, everything.’

  Cole’s blood ran cold. ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘I’ve checked, and they’re absent without leave,’ Michiko said, ‘believed defected to Islamic State about six months ago.’

  ‘When were the checks done, the ones in that file?’

  ‘A little under a year ago,’ Michiko said.

  It was clear to Cole what had happened – the six aviators had been chosen, selected and assessed for a special operation, then disavowed by the Iranian regime to cover its tracks. Defected to IS? From the reports, nothing seemed less likely.

  What was likely was that the six men were going to be used as part of a proxy terrorist attack that Iran would want to later blame on Islamic State or its offshoots – the same reason they’d used Javid Khan, and the same reason they’d blamed the missing chemical weapons on the terrorist organization.

  So that when their planned attacks took place, the Iranian government would be in the clear, while everything would be blamed on IS.

  Younesi had been a clever man indeed.

  But what role were the aviators going to play in all this?

  Nine Eleven instantly sprang to mind, but Cole couldn’t believe that such tactics would be used again, especially against a city like London. The Royal Air Force would shoot down any suspect airplanes heading toward the capital before they would have a chance to do any damage at all.

  But nevertheless, it was something they couldn’t ignore.

  ‘Get their pictures out to airports and airlines everywhere, get their features inputted onto all of our systems, try and get a match, try and find out where they are,’ he said.

  ‘Bruce has already given the order,’ Michiko said, ‘he thought they might try hijacking an airplane, fly it into Wembley Stadium, or one of the other memorial events.’

  ‘Good,’ Cole said, and yet something still nagged at him.

  But, trapped on the airplane until it reached London, he at least had a couple of more hours to figure out what it was.

  President Ellen Abrams arrived on Air Force One to a private military airfield outside London, the only people present either security personnel or very select members of the world press.

  Dawn had already broken, and – although she had tried to sleep on the flight – she was inordinately tired, unable to rid her mind of the images of the dead children she was there to commemorate.

  Vigils, protests and parades had been ongoing in Britain since Wednesday, the intelligence reports told her, with sporadic violence erupting in some of her towns and cities, mainly aimed at Muslims.

  The security situation was good on the whole though, and even Dennis O’Hare seemed satisfied with the physical security arrangements.

  There was some concern, she knew, over some missing chemical weapons, and some defected Iranian Army aviators, but nobody could be sure what it all meant, and certainly nobody could prove anything at present.

  She waved at the cameras, careful not to smile – she was here as a mourner after all, dressed from head to toe in a severe black trouser suit.

  Her presidential limousine, nicknamed ‘the Beast’ and shipped across earlier on board a gigantic C-5 Galaxy, was ready and waiting for her, and she moved immediately to the vehicle, heavy armored door held open for her by one of her Secret Service security detail.

  Her first destination was to be Downing Street, where she’d meet Adam Gregory and the other world leaders at a private breakfast before everyone made their way to Westminster Palace for the start of the memorial procession.

  It was going to be a busy day, Abrams knew.

  She just hoped that it would remain a peaceful one.

  14

  By the time Cole had landed and met up with the other Force One commandos, Vinson’s London contacts had weapons and equipment ready and waiting for them.

  There were also file photographs and background dossiers on the missing Iranian aviators, which Cole distributed to each member of his team.

  There wasn’t a great deal they could do at the moment, they were just going to cover the memorial procession as it went, their expert eyes keeping a look out for anything in the least but suspicious.

  If any of the aviators were located, they were to be confronted immediately.

  Aviators, Cole thought again as he checked his Glock pistol. What was he missing?

  He shook his head, and thought about Morgan. She’d still not been seen, and nobody anywhere had heard from her. He knew it didn’t look good, and his initial suspicions about her being targeted by friends of Milanović were starting to seem increasingly more likely as time went on.

  But – as much as her cared for her – he couldn’t let himself be distracted by her absence now.

  There was simply too much at stake.

  He checked his watch, saw that it was nearly ten o’clock GMT.

  The procession was about to start, and they still weren’t on location.
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br />   He was rounding everyone up to get in the vehicles when it hit him.

  Army Aviation wasn’t airplanes – it was helicopters. Helicopters and . . .

  Cole called through to Forest Hills immediately.

  ‘Michiko,’ he said desperately, ‘the aviators are drone pilots. They’re going to drop the chemical weapons on London with drones.’

  ‘Drones?’ Victor Parish said just an hour later, when the news finally got to him via Vinson, dos Santos, and Dennis O’Hare. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes,’ O’Hare answered, ‘we think so. How’s it set up there?’

  ‘We’ve got air defense right outside,’ Parish answered, ‘the new FLAADS Land set-up.’

  The Future Local Area Air Defense System had replaced the UK’s aging Rapier SAM missile defenses only recently, but Parish had seen the system in operation and had been suitably impressed. The MBDA Common Anti-air Modular Missile had an operational range of twenty-five kilometers, and could get up to speeds of Mach 3 and beyond.

  ‘You think it’ll be enough?’ O’Hare asked.

  ‘Sir, if there are drones out there, this thing will shoot them out of the sky long before they get anywhere near here.’

  ‘Okay son,’ O’Hare said, ‘just keep an eye out, okay?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Parish said, looking at the scene around him.

  With the first arrivals waiting to enter the stadium and thousands more in the performance areas and parking lots outside, he already had his hands as full as he could cope with.

  He would leave the drones to FLAADS, he decided, and concentrate on the job in hand.

  As Cole’s troops spread themselves along the parade route to offer a third layer of protection to the world leaders, who led a procession of thousands down the Mall toward Buckingham Palace, Cole busied himself with trying to figure out where a drone attack could come from.

  Drones large enough to carry a chemical weapons payload sufficient to cause mass death would be easily picked up by London’s city radar system, and destroyed by FLAADS – and at high enough temperatures to render their compounds harmless.

  But still Cole felt he was missing something, and he was angered by the casualness of MI5’s approach to the problem. Vinson had reported that, with hard evidence still not provided, Sir Ian Riley – no doubt on the advice of the head of JTAC, Bryce Kelly – was treating the drone threat as the least of his problems. With anti-Muslim protests on every street corner, alongside anti-fascist counter-protests, the police and intelligence services were more concerned over civil violence than they were with an uncorroborated terrorist threat.

  Cole wouldn’t be happy unless he’d covered every angle though, thought of every eventuality.

  Force One was plugged into the city’s defensive systems, and radar had so far picked up nothing of any interest whatsoever.

  But with the arrival of world leaders to Wembley Stadium to happen within the next couple of hours, the missing aviators were still a thorn in Cole’s side.

  He shook his head, terribly tired, unable to remember the last time he’d slept, and thought that he’d be very happy when this day was finally over.

  15

  By the afternoon, Cole was at Wembley Stadium alongside Victor Parish, with the full authorization of President Abrams.

  The morning parades had passed off without a problem, with numbers marching past Hyde Corner estimated to be somewhere in the region of one million citizens, many clutching teddy bears, the symbol of the lost children. It had been a sight to behold and – even though his mind was on other things – Cole had been moved close to tears by the sight of it.

  The only black mark against the day so far had been a violent confrontation between a hard-core fascist group, and a section of young Muslims who had been in Covent Garden to protest about the terrorists. A nearby Jewish group had joined in the melée on the side of the Muslims, and – although quickly broken up by the police – it had made the news around the world, cited as an example of religious and social unity in the face of terrorist violence.

  But there was no sign of the suspected drones, or of the missing chemical weapons.

  Perhaps Cole had been wrong after all; perhaps there was no secondary attack?

  Cole hoped that it was the case, that he’d been mistaken, that his fears about the aviators, about the drones, about the weapons, were all entirely misplaced.

  But even now, as he watched the combined leadership of the global community take their seats at the front of the stadium, the coffins of the dead laid out across the vast stadium field ahead of them, Cole was convinced that this thing still hadn’t ended, hadn’t yet reached its conclusion.

  ‘Radar?’ Cole asked Parish, who checked in with the FLAADS troopers outside the arena.

  He got his reply, and turned back to Cole. ‘All clear,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  Cole watched on for several moments, as the massive stadium, full to bursting with ninety thousand mourners, grew silent.

  The ceremony was starting in earnest.

  Cole’s cellphone rang then, and he stood up and retreated somewhere quieter to take it, not wishing to disturb anyone.

  ‘Mark,’ he heard his daughter say, and he instantly picked up on the urgency and insistence in her voice.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked expectantly.

  ‘I’ve got something. Something bad.’

  ‘What?’ Cole asked impatiently. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Latest intelligence estimates suggest that the weapon that went missing from Shahid Dastgheyb was sarin.’

  Cole shuddered at the news. Sarin, or GB gas, was a nerve agent which attacked the body’s nervous system and caused death within one to ten minutes through asphyxiation from lung muscle paralysis, a particularly nasty way to go. There were some antidotes, but they had to be administered immediately if they were to be effective. The gas was so efficient that, even when ingested in non-lethal amounts, permanent neurological damage was often the result.

  ‘Also,’ Michiko continued, ‘I found more accounts controlled by Khan, and started looking for connections between him and the pilots, but eventually found something else.’ Cole was about to interject again, to get her to hurry up and get to the point, but she carried on anyway. ‘Orders and payments, made by subsidiary companies set up by one of Khan’s offshore groups.’

  ‘To who?’ Cole demanded.

  ‘HobbyTech,’ Michiko said, ‘a company which supplies leisure drones, small ones, you know the type, the ones you can use to overfly your kids’ baseball games, to film them, or to take more impressive holiday selfies. Toys really, just a few steps removed from remote-controlled planes and helicopters.’

  ‘How many?’ Cole asked immediately.

  ‘Well, Khan used about two dozen different companies to purchase them, over a period of several months, and – ’

  ‘How many?’ Cole insisted.

  ‘Err . . .’ Michiko paused, as if checking her files. ‘It looks like two hundred.’

  ‘Two hundred?’ Cole exploded. ‘Shit! Payload?’

  ‘Approximately five hundred grams.’

  He calculated quickly, knowing that each of the drones could certainly handle the weight of a camera, could probably take at least five hundred grams; multiply that by two hundred, and you had a potential payload of one hundred kilograms.

  Shit. A chemical weapons payload of a hundred kilos would be more – much more – than enough to kill every single person in the entire stadium, several times over.

  What was more, such little aircraft would be all but undetectable to the FLAADS system outside, which was set up to deal with incoming threats that could be dealt with from several miles out. Small, multiple targets appearing so close to the venue would be hard – if not impossible – to defend against.

  ‘Range?’ Cole asked next.

  ‘This model can fly for about twenty minutes on a single charge which – with a top speed of twenty miles per hour – means that they would hav
e to take off from within a radius of about seven miles from your location.’

  Shit, Cole thought again – a seven miles radius covered thousands of buildings, millions of potential take-off sites for such small aircraft.

  ‘We got a match on two of the aviators too, entering the country at Gatwick under assumed names about three weeks ago. We can probably assume the others are here too, we just haven’t managed to get a facial recognition match yet.’

  Cole’s head started to spin as the ramifications hit him. He’d thought the aviators were here to control planes, or large drones, skills for which specialists were needed. Leisure drones could be operated by pretty much anyone, on the other hand; but given the near impossibility of recruiting two hundred murderous jihadists, experts were also needed to control the numerous smaller aircraft.

  Each man would have to control several drones at once, but – although he was sure that they were highly skilled – it was unlikely that they would be able to fly more than three or four at a time, which meant that the attack would probably come in waves of twenty to thirty drones at a time. Such smaller groupings would also not be as likely to show up on radar systems; two hundred drones coming in at once would show up like a full-on airplane.

  Cole shook his head. The entire thing would offer no chance for defense, no way to target so many aircraft at once.

  ‘Do you know the frequencies they operate on?’ Cole asked. ‘Can you track where the signals are coming from?’

  ‘I’ve got the frequencies from the company that made them,’ Michiko said, ‘but I need radar access to track the source.’

  Cole breathed out slowly, calming himself as the plan formed in his mind.

  ‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘this is what we’re going to do.’

  16

  Half an hour later, the evacuation of Wembley Stadium was in full swing. It had taken a call to Bruce Vinson, who had spoken to Catalina dos Santos and Dennis O’Hare – and while dos Santos shared their latest intelligence with her British counterparts, O’Hare was getting in touch with the presidential protection team, ordering them to get the hell out of there.