PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Finally unable to ignore the threat, Sir Ian Riley had consulted with the head of the Met police, and they had jointly decided to evacuate the entire building.

  General Olsen had also spoken to his military counterparts in Britain, who had ordered the FLAADS troops to liaise with Michiko at Forest Hills; she immediately gained access to their systems, taking over the radar to track for the incoming frequencies.

  It wasn’t long before she picked them up, the first wave of lethal drones coming in from the northwest; and while she tracked the source of the signal, she also broadcast the frequency to the security force’s jamming units, which immediately stopped the signals getting through to the incoming aircraft.

  The first flight of drones started to fall out of the sky, well before they made it to Wembley; but there was the danger that the payloads would still be dispersed when they crashed, and emergency messages went out to houses in the area, warning people to stay indoors, to cover their heads with wet towels, to protect themselves in any way they could.

  Units from the military’s Defense CBRN Center were already en route to the area to deal with the potential fallout, to seal off any affected neighborhoods and administer antidotes to anyone who had been caught.

  Cole, checking his weapons as he waited for final confirmation of the address where the drone pilots were located, heard the information come through from Michiko as each wave of drones crashed down to the empty streets below, starved of the signals they needed to operate.

  But then the next wave continued onward, unaffected by the jammers.

  ‘They’ve changed frequencies,’ Michiko said in panic.

  ‘Can you find the new ones?’ Cole asked as he climbed into a car alongside Barrington and Russakoff, who had come by to pick him up.

  ‘Not in time,’ Michiko said, ‘the drones are just ten minutes out!’

  ‘Damn it!’ Cole said as Barrington pulled out into the street. ‘Get me that address, now!’

  They were just going to have to do it the old fashioned way.

  Parish watched in horror at the chaos that filled the stadium in front of him.

  The plan was to have evacuated the leaders first, then the rest of the audience; but when people saw security moving in, the leaders being pulled out, word spread quickly.

  And, although most of the gathered crowds were content to wait for the authorities to tell them what to do, a minority were most certainly not.

  They began to leave the stadium immediately and eventually, following their lead, everyone else did the same, all at the same time.

  The result was chaos and confusion, entries and exits all blocked by a fleeing mass of humanity; and then Parish got word that the situation outside was just as bad, crowds of tens of thousands aroused into blind panic by news of drones, poison gas, and terrorist attacks.

  He had no idea where it came from, but the result was that most of the world leaders were still penned inside the arena, unable to get out unless their security staff started shooting people.

  And then that happened too, and as Parish heard the gunshots, he knew that the real chaos had only just begun.

  17

  Ellen Abrams looked toward the exit ahead of her forlornly, knowing that to make it there, she would have to allow her Secret Service detail to shoot the civilian masses who had got there first.

  She could never give such an order though, and suddenly realized that it probably wouldn’t help her even if she did. The people were trying to break through, to no avail – there were simply too many of them trying to push through too small an exit, into a space outside which, with the huge unregulated crowds beyond, was too small to receive them.

  Her lead agent, Hank T. Johnson, looked at her expectantly, weapon drawn. Shots had already been fired at the other side of the arena by the security team of the South African president, but it had done them no good anyway – instead of the people parting the way, they instead fought back, trampling over the security detail like a herd of cattle.

  There was chaos and confusion everywhere, but she was being shielded by her men, who formed a protective circle around her like Roman legionaries with their choreographed battle formations; and she instinctively realized that, for the time being at least, that was the safest place she could be.

  Barrington piloted the car fast down the suburban roads, quiet now that police vans were out in force, broadcasting messages over their loudhailers for people to remain indoors, not to come out until they were told it was safe to do so.

  Michiko had finally got them the address, and a citywide order had been given out to move in on the five-bed red-brick terraced house and to take the pilots out.

  But Cole wanted desperately to get there first.

  The next wave was almost there at the stadium, and Cole knew that time had almost run out; the latest news from the stadium was that the evacuation had turned into a complete clusterfuck, and if any of the drones got through, most of the people there would die horrible, painful deaths.

  The stadium officials were trying desperately to get the roof closed, to help defend against the little drones. But Cole knew that the roof was only designed to close partially, to cover the seats – there would still be a huge gap, and if the drones made it inside, the nerve gas would spread throughout the area anyway.

  ‘Next wave is three minutes out,’ Michiko said, as Barrington pulled the car up onto the curb outside the narrow red-brick house, ramming the front fender into the front door and knocking it straight through.

  ‘Sharpshooters!’ Cole told Michiko, knowing she would relay the message; the drones were too small for missiles, but police marksmen might be able to shoot them out of the sky.

  He didn’t wait for a reply, was instead already out of the car, jumping onto the car’s hood and racing across it right behind Russakoff, Barrington right behind him as they stormed into the house, their weapons up and at the ready, determined to kill the Iranian aviators before their evil little drones could make it to the stadium.

  Michiko received the feedback from the police operation, the staff of Force One sitting around her, on the edges of their seats as the drama unfolded.

  The drones were two minutes out now, just over a kilometer away, and already the police sharpshooters were reporting their successes.

  ‘One down,’ came the news, and then, ‘Another one.’

  But there were so many, eye witnesses reported more than they’d expected, a wave of sixty drones, all headed at twenty miles per hour toward the stadium, and everybody knew that – no matter how skilled the marksmen were – they were never going to be able to stop them all.

  And to make matters worse, the most recent news from the Secret Service was that President Abrams was still trapped inside.

  Cole and his two teammates had made impressive time up the stairs, considering the fact that four terrorist gunmen had been lying in wait for them.

  But the Force One operators, trained to perfection, had steamrollered right over them, taken them out with accurate 9mm submachine gun fire on the run.

  They checked rooms as they went, but knew they wanted the roof, the only location the birds could be launched from in such numbers, and the place that the aviators would be guaranteed to have the best reception.

  Cole didn’t have to check his watch to know that they had less than a minute left.

  But then they were there, kicking down the upper stairwell door and bursting out onto the tar-pitch rooftop.

  Two terrorist gunmen opened fire on them as they moved through, but they kept low and darted left and right, firing back in accurate bursts as they went, dropping both remaining guards and leaving the Iranian aviators unprotected.

  And still the drone pilots continued to do their jobs, and Cole saw how they could fly so many drones at once, having wired several controllers together to give multiple control from a single device.

  They ignored the Force One team, so close now to victory, their drones just seconds away from the stadium,
and a single action that would teach the Great Satan a lesson it would never forget.

  ‘They’re almost there!’ Michiko cried into Cole’s ear, and then the sound of his daughter’s voice was drowned out by the sound of automatic gunfire as they opened up their weapons into the drone pilots, bullets tearing them apart and sending them jerking this way and that across the rooftops, their controls skittering across the tar, useless.

  ‘Yes!’ Michiko called over Cole’s earpiece. ‘You’ve done it, they’re going down! But . . . But . . .’

  But another wave of drones kept right on coming, and Victor Parish, watching from inside the stadium’s control center, through a wide panoramic window, gasped in horror as they carried on right toward the building, until they went out of view.

  And Parish knew that meant one thing, and one thing only – they were now flying over the roof, and within only a few more seconds, they would be above the interior of the stadium itself.

  18

  Cole knew what had happened, though Barrington got the words out before he could.

  ‘Shit, there’s only five of them!’ she said, and Cole already knew it was true – two guards, and only five pilots.

  Where the hell was the other one?

  With the controls wired up as they were, that meant that ten drones were still heading toward the stadium, with five kilos of sarin gas between them.

  So where the hell was he?

  The three operators started to scour the rooftop, stepping over dead bodies and the small drones that hadn’t been flown yet, the next two waves of attack aircraft, covered in spattered blood and still full of their deadly payloads.

  But there was nobody left on the roof, and Cole was pretty sure that they’d checked each room on the way up. Unless they’d missed him? Or was he operating from a different rooftop altogether?

  And then, as the seconds ticked on down, Cole considered what he would have done in the pilot’s situation, if he’d had a mission to complete and had heard armed troops heading up the stairs toward him.

  Instantly, he ran for the rear of the house, reached the edge of the rooftop and looked down.

  And there, crouched low on the fire escape below, was the sixth Iranian aviator, controls in his hands, eyes locked onto the screen as he piloted the drones toward their target.

  President Abrams looked upward, the buzzing sound audible now even above the chaotic mewls of the crowds, and saw the drones clear the still-moving sliding roof.

  And then the sound of the crowds died down too, until the tens of thousands of people, over thirty world leaders among them, looked upward together in complete silence, unified by fear and final, horrifying understanding as they saw the ten small aircraft that would seal their fate forever.

  Cole fired a single shot downward, straight through the top of the aviator’s skull, the force of the round blowing the thin bones of his face outward across the fire escape, covering the drone controller that he had been holding onto so tightly.

  Cole peered down at it and, even through the blood that covered the screen, saw with a hollow, empty, gut-churning feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was too late.

  The onboard camera was showing a live feed of Wembley Stadium, thousands of people gathered below as the drones dropped through the sky, releasing their contents as they fell.

  President Abrams closed her eyes and offered a prayer for the people around her as she saw the remaining drones discharge their nerve agent across the sky above her, the gas slowly descending on them, the crowd silent no longer but racing to get out in one insane charge, trampling each other to death in the process.

  But, Abrams realized, it no longer mattered anyway.

  Because she knew what sarin gas could do.

  And she knew that they were already dead.

  EPILOGUE

  Clark Mason was sitting in the study of his home at Number One Observatory Circle, preparing for the last speech of his political career, when the news came.

  There had been a secondary attack on London, targeting Wembley Stadium on the day of the memorial ceremony.

  It had been a drone attack, two hundred aircraft fitted with canisters designed to release sarin nerve gas over the gathered crowds.

  Fast-moving intelligence had enabled most of the attack force to be taken out before they’d reached the stadium, but ten drones had come through unscathed, and dropped enough nerve gas on the people there to kill everyone.

  Every last one of them.

  It was being estimated that upward of seventy thousand people, unable to get out of the stadium, were dead as a result of the gas, including thirty-seven of the fifty leaders in attendance.

  Including, he was informed by the Secret Service detail that had barged into his home, Ellen Abrams, the President of the United States of America.

  The president.

  Dead.

  The most obvious ramification of this passed Mason by, such was his shock at the news. It took one of the Secret Service bodyguards to make it clear for him.

  ‘Do you want to go to the White House now, Mr. President?’ the young man said to him . . .to him . . .

  And it was only then that he finally made the connection, that he – as Vice President, even if only until Monday – would now have to step automatically into Ellen’s shoes.

  Yes, he breathed out steadily as he came to terms with what had happened. Yes.

  He tried to hold back the smile as he processed the information.

  At last.

  At last!

  At last, he was the man he had always wanted to be.

  Clark Mason.

  46th President of the United States of America.

  Cole sat in the basement offices of Force One, hidden under the Paradigm Group headquarters in Forest Hills, and drank deeply from the bottle of Scotch that Vinson offered him, still unable to fully deal with what had happened.

  He had been so close . . .

  So damn close!

  But he had failed, they had all failed, and now the president was dead, along with seventy thousand other poor souls.

  It was too much to take in, it really was.

  But his own work had been vindicated at least; with everything he had found out, it was clear that the Iranian regime was behind the whole thing.

  Iranian diplomats were trying to blame it on Islamic State and its partners, of course – just as Younesi must have planned – but they weren’t fooling anyone. The documents Cole had recovered from Younesi’s computer were incriminating enough, but there was also the eyewitness testimony of Hassan Hossein; a survivor of the rooftop shooting, he was one of the Iranian aviators responsible for the atrocity.

  He had described his recruitment and training by Mohammed Younesi, and confirmed that it was a state-run operation.

  What happened now, Cole knew, would be in the hands of the new president, Clark Mason.

  ‘You think Mason’s gonna try and shut us down?’ Cole asked.

  Vinson shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not sure. It’s a possibility, I guess. But don’t forget the leverage we have over him.’

  ‘The president is a very powerful person,’ Cole said darkly.

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Vinson replied. ‘And I’m all too aware that this one is no friend of ours. But we’ve got more problems than Mason on our plate, my friend.’

  Cole shook his head, unable to believe that Clark Mason, that son of a bitch, was now his country’s president.

  No good would come of it, Cole was sure.

  But Vinson was right, there was more to worry about than Clark Mason.

  The entire international situation was unprecedented; nearly every European nation had lost their heads of state, along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Many Middle Eastern and Gulf nations had also had terrible losses, along with several throughout Africa, Asia and South America.

  It was a tragedy the likes of which the world had never seen before, and Cole knew that the result would be chaos like that
at the stadium, but on a global scale.

  The thought of it filled him with terror, and he drank down some more of the Scotch.

  Michiko knocked on the door, and Vinson called her in.

  Father and daughter embraced, tears in the girl’s eyes which were soon matched by Cole’s.

  They cried for a number of reasons – Michiko because her father was safe, Cole because his daughter had done such a good job, and both because of the lives that had been lost.

  Eventually, Cole pulled away, held her face in his hands and smiled. ‘Thanks, Michiko,’ he said. ‘You know, we almost did it.’

  She smiled, and then the realization hit them again that they had only almost done it, but not quite managed it, and tens of thousands of people were dead as a result, and they embraced once more, and started to sob softly, their heads buried in the other’s shoulder.

  Vinson let them stay like that for some time, before returning to business. ‘Michiko,’ he said gently, ‘do you want to tell Mark what else you found out?’

  Michiko nodded her head and, pulling away from her father and wiping her eyes, she also returned to business.

  ‘I found out what happened to Elizabeth Morgan,’ she said, and Cole’s interest instantly perked up. With everything that had happened, he had almost forgotten about her. Almost, but not quite. And now, at the mention of her name, he realized how much he cared for her. How worried he was about her, and how much he wanted to see her again.

  And yet the looks on the faces of Vinson and Michiko indicated that what she had to say was far from good news.

  ‘Go on,’ Cole urged.

  Michiko cleared her throat before continuing. ‘Her body washed up in the Thames,’ she said, and as Cole reacted, she held up a hand. ‘Two months ago,’ she said for clarification, ‘her body’s been in a drawer at the morgue ever since, unidentified until last night. Died of strangulation by all accounts, classic garrote, rope with knots in.’