“Yeah, he’s not going to be moving around the same as older footage, considering he had a six-inch blade jammed into his thigh,” John said, still trying to contain growing frustration.
“Well, the facial recognition said it’s the wrong guy, but facial recognition software is lame. I ran the mob program, and it’s returning a seventy-two percent probability that it’s him.”
“Considering his condition by the time RAID arrived,” John said, turning to lean his back against the glass, “it sounds like we’ve got the right guy.”
“It’s just that sub ninety percent probability means―”
Three shrieking thumps rattled the building in rapid succession. The interior walls and windows pulsed out, everything shattering. A concussive wave threw John out of the building. His breath was stolen from his lungs, and the fall lasted for minutes in his mind. An impact like a sledgehammer between his shoulder blades sent pain signals exploding out to his limbs. The back of his head slammed into the dented roof of the SUV underneath, and the impact of his landing blew out all of its windows.
John’s vision swam through a tunnel of darkness that swallowed the world around him.
CHAPTER
28
John squeezed his eyes shut to drive out the blinding glare. Through his ringing ears, the muffled sounds of car alarms and sirens slowly faded as his head dropped back, unconsciousness dragging him under again.
CHAPTER
29
John tried to lift his arms, but his extremities were sluggish, moving through a taffy-like haze. Blood thrummed and rushed through his ears with every heartbeat.
Someone put a hand on his chest, shaking his body. A warbling buzz in his head slowly reformed into coherent words.
“John!” Curtis shook him again, “John, you gotta get up.”
Curtis tossed his crutches to the side and helped him sit up. John groaned as he swung his feet over the fender of the SUV, sliding down to the asphalt. His boots crunched on broken glass, and he wobbled to keep his balance.
“What happened?” Curtis bent to pick up his crutches again.
“I don’t know,” John said, his voice hoarse. “I was on the phone with Parker when I heard something hit the building before it all exploded,” John said.
He wiped a hand across his face and eyes, brushing the blood and dust away. His vision slowly pulled itself back into clarity, and John looked at what was left of the RAID headquarters. The entire northwest corner had collapsed, exposing the floors, wires, and plumbing. A sharp pain nearly dropped him to his knees as he sucked in a deep breath. The pop reverberated through his body, as a rib settled back into place.
Sirens wailed as first responders pulled up to the scene, racing from their vehicles to attend to the wounded. John waved a medic away, moving off to the side. He struggled to tell them they needed to help the other survivors, not understanding their replies in French.
“John, you need to let them check you out.” Curtis handed him a bottle of water.
John swished a mouthful, spitting the bloody, dirty water out before draining the rest of the bottle. “Did anyone else make it out yet?”
The solemn look in Curtis’ eyes told him plenty.
John pushed ahead, but Curtis and two of the medical techs tried to hold him back.
“We need to help Gavreau and his team! Let me go!” John shrugged the hands off and ran toward the building as another large chunk of concrete fell free, smashing apart in front of him.
He staggered back a step, covered his mouth with his arm and ran through the cloud of smoke, inside the wreckage of the RAID HQ.
* * *
Helping the first responders, John and Curtis spent the next hour pulling people out of the building. News crews swarmed, as the crowd outside grew. John lifted a woman out of the rubble, setting her on a nearby gurney when someone called out from inside, emerging from the stairwell.
“I need some help here,” Gavreau said, speaking French as he carried a man his shoulders. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Silvestre pulled a chunk of concrete to the side and disappeared back into the stairwell before emerging with a woman leaning on him with an arm draped around his neck. Her face was bloodied, and her right leg looked mangled.
Another two hours passed. Then, police and medical responders no longer let John or the others back toward the building. A woman kept shouting at him in French as John tried to push past. She grew angry and shoved him hard in the chest, speaking sternly and waving for him to go back.
“She is saying it is not good for us to breath the air,” Gavreau said. “Too much smoke and dust. Please, John, let them take a look at you.”
John’s shoulders sagged as the words sank in. He looked up to see the large crews working quickly to pull survivors out of the building, helping those they could, and evacuating the ones in more serious condition.
With a nod, he relented and turned back, heading to the ambulances.
“At least a dozen were inside the section that collapsed,” Curtis said. “Several survived, but suffered serious injuries. Five more were evacuated, in critical condition.”
“How many dead?” John asked.
“They still do not know,” Silvestre answered. He tilted his chin as one of the paramedics finished stitching the cut over his eye.
“What about the rest of your team?” John asked Gavreau.
“Deschanel is dead.” His words were almost inaudible.
Silvestre looked over, a mix of fire and pain in his eyes.
Gavreau looked up at John. “Lussier was evacuated half an hour ago. He may lose his arm.” He swallowed.
“What happened?” Curtis asked.
“Kinetic-strike javelins,” John said. “The Serpents are still active.”
“I don’t understand,” Curtis said. “We captured bin Hashim. We’ve got his drone and the tungsten rods.”
“Where is bin Hashim?” John asked. “Doctor Takada?”
“Dead,” Silvestre said, spitting. “Both of them were in the northwest corner. I watched them pull out what was left of that terrorist filth.”
“That rules out an attempted prison break,” John said.
“Do you think they were trying to silence him. I mean the doctor already spilled his guts,” Curtis said, looking at the ruins. “Figuratively and literally.”
“I have to make a call,” Gavreau said.
The RAID commander pulled a phone from his pocket and scrolled through his contacts as he walked away. Silvestre nodded to John and Curtis before going his own way.
“I should call Parker,” John said, patting his pockets.
Curtis handed his phone over. “Yours didn’t survive the fall,” he said. “You were still holding it when you totaled the rental parked outside.”
John pulled up the recent calls and selected Parker’s number.
“Curtis, what’s happening?” Parker asked. “The news is saying there was an explosion in France.”
“It’s John. I had to borrow this phone because mine was damaged in the attack.”
“Attack? Are you alright?”
“Parker, we need to figure out what happened,” John said. “I think the Four Serpents were able to piece the doctor’s research together and hit us with the javelins.”
Parker’s fingers clicked across his keyboard in the background. “That’s a likely scenario, but it just feels too fast to organize that type of plan.”
“We need to know what we are up against. Is there anything you can do to figure out what might have happened?” John asked.
“I’m on it. I can dig around and see what kind of chatter is taking place in the darker corners of―”
“Parker, I have to call you back,” John said, cutting Parker off.
* * *
John ended the call and looked around. He now noticed the unnerving scene around him. The people stopped talking. Everyone around him fixed their eyes to the nearest screens. Most were looking down at their
phones, but John walked over to one of the news vans where the crew gathered around the monitors set up in the back.
As he got close, he saw a man seated at a table with a flag behind him. He recognized the Four Serpents emblem right away, but as he reached the van and heard the voice, his blood ran ice cold. Azhaar bin Hashim sat on the screen with a self-satisfied grin, addressing the world.
*“―but a small taste of our rage. You thought you had beheaded the serpent, but it is not that easy. We will not end our quest to teach the western world a lesson in pain and suffering.
“You send your oppressors, your barbarians to our gates to tear us from our homes, where we try to live our lives in peace. Those who would dare stick their hands into the serpent’s lair shall suffer the venom of its strikes,” bin Hashim said.
“Is this live?” John asked.
“I don’t know,” a woman holding the camera said. “It's a live broadcast, but I don’t know if it’s an actual live feed.”
John grabbed her upper arm. “How can we find out? Is there a way to trace this back to the broadcast location?”
She just met his eyes with a near blank expression shaking her head before turning back to the monitor.
“The French government dared, and they have felt the fangs sink in deep. That was but a single bite.” His face turning down, bin Hashim leaned into the camera. “With the help of the Americans, you have dared to invade us. You are responsible for killing and kidnapping our families and friends.”
John stepped away, redialing Parker’s number.
“Hey, John.” Parker was distracted, the broadcast playing in the background.
“Kid, you have to find out where that transmission is coming from,” John said.
Parker was quiet for a moment, his fingers clicking away at his keyboard.
“This broadcast is streaming live. I don’t understand, is he a fake or―“
“It’s him,” John said. “We captured a double.”
Parker sighed. “What do we do now?”
“Get me a location. I’m going to drag that snake from his hole and cut him to pieces.”
CHAPTER
30
John and Curtis stepped out of the car, joining Gavreau and Silvestre as they walked into the Police Nationale offices. A pair of detectives joined them, shaking hands and offering condolences in French to the two RAID members. After a brief exchange, one of the men led them to a small conference room.
“He says they can offer us any aid in the hunt for the Four Serpents,” Gavreau said. “Let us discuss our plan in here for now.”
They gathered around the table as Silvestre set up a borrowed laptop, connecting it to the wall-mounted display. John dialed Parker’s number on the teleconference system to pull him into the meeting.
“Hey John. Everyone.”
“What have you got so far?” John asked.
“It would be much easier to show you,” Parker said. “Is there a computer there that I can link up with?”
Silvestre looked over at Gavreau. “Lussier is the tech geek. I’m not sure how to―"
“Nevermind, I got it,” Parker said. “I need you to accept the request, though. No need to break in when one can get permission.”
The information from Silvestre’s borrowed computer popped up on the screen.
“I thought you said it would be easier to show us,” Curtis said. “We’re looking at a list of numbers. Is that really what you wanted to show us?”
Parker typed away as more information popped up. “Yes and no. This is the bad news portion of the presentation. These are all broadcast stations where the signal came from. It’s widespread. Global.”
“Does that mean the Four Serpents are all over the world?” John asked.
“No, it doesn’t appear so. These are all some type of remote relay stunt. They’ve got someone almost as good as I am. Almost,” Parker said.
“Is there a point to all of this?” Gavreau asked.
“Uh, sorry, yes. The Four Serpents have some connections if they can accomplish this kind of broadcast.”
“If they were able to pull this off in mere hours, we’ve got our hands full,” Curtis said.
“The good news is, this very likely took weeks to pull off,” Parker said. “My guess is that this was how they had intended to let the world know of their first strike when they put Takada’s research into play.”
“And that is what happened,” Silvestre said. “We were hit with those kinetic weapons.”
Parker continued. “Again, it's a good news, bad news situation. They hit your headquarters with the javelins, but they weren’t able to use Takada’s research to pull it off.”
“Well, their accuracy was astounding for not having the research,” John said. “I hope the good news is helpful.”
“Bin Hashim didn’t have the long-strike capability that Takada’s research would have given him. The drone violated French airspace to strike,” Parker said. “They scrambled a couple of Rafale fighter jets to take it down, but we’ve got enough data to trace it back to a general point of origin.”
“Well that’s a start,” John said. “How do we pinpoint their position?”
“That’s where our friend Doctor Takada comes in. I reimaged his drives here and dug through the transmissions,” Parker said.
Gavreau shot John a questioning glance.
“I know. I’m sorry. We will answer for all of this when it’s done,” John said.
“I don’t care if he hacked the president’s email, as long as he can point us to bin Hashim,” Silvestre said.
“Anyway, I’ve got three sets of data, the broadcast hacks, the drone’s flight path, and the IP addresses from Takada’s upload. Everything triangulates right here.” Parker pulled up a map of a mountainous region, with a red circle drawn over it. “Give or take a hundred yards.”
“Do you know where that is?” John asked.
Gavreau rested his elbows on the table, fists under his chin. “That is about one hundred and twenty miles southeast of here.”
“We could have our team geared up and on the ground in an hour,” Silvestre said. “Just get us on a chopper, sir.”
John recognized the look in the RAID commander’s eyes. He understood the urge to throw caution to the wind and leap into the fire, fueled by rage and a need for revenge. But there was a delicate balance between planning and speed that they would have to walk, to get the buy off they would need to acquire the support.
“How sure are you of the location, Parker?” John asked.
“I mean, you can never be one hundred percent, but if the Azhaar bin Hashim isn’t holed up in those mountains, then they’ve got far more sophisticated resources,” he said. “And if that’s the case, that means they’ve got backing from a superpower nation.”
“That’s highly unlikely,” John said. “Gavreau, you’ll need to pull some resources from another RAID unit, and the Police Nationale if we’re going to stop the serpents.”
“We?” Gavreau asked.
John met his steely gaze. “You’re going to need all hands on deck. Curtis and I have the same level of experience and intel as you do. We can’t risk going in with less than optimal fighting strength.”
Gavreau brought a hand to his mouth thinking about John’s words. “Perhaps you are correct. It will take some convincing, but I will pull some strings.”
Curtis raised his hand. “Uh, I feel like maybe I should point out that I’m going to be pretty damn suboptimal in the field with a hole in my leg.”
“You can provide support from the air,” Silvestre said. “In the choppers.”
* * *
“You will be joining us in the helicopters,” Gavreau said to Curtis and John. “The other team will be mostly police and military support. This is all an off the books operation, with French and German military support on deck if things go badly for us.”
“What’s the plan, then?” Curtis asked.
John worked the bolt of
the FN P90, ensuring the chamber was clear. “We’re going to fast rope in, drop any opposition in our way, and defang the snake.”
“And how will we know that this is the one and only Azhaar bin Hashim?” Silvestre asked.
John tapped his helmet, next to the camera. “Our man, Parker, will have access to the live feed during the operation. He’ll have his computers overclocked and running full speed to process the data. His software will let us know if we see him.”
“Does anyone know the layout of the base?” Curtis asked.
“We have minimal information,” Gavreau said. “Once we are on the ground, you and the other door gunners will have to provide our close air support, targeting any significant threats, and suppressing the enemy.
“As much as we want bin Hashim, we need to remember that the real objective is to shut down the kinetic weapon system.”
“Roger that,” John said, tightening his gloves. “Parker will be monitoring any outgoing network transmissions during the op. We target the drone, and all of the computers they are using to control it. If anything gets out, he’ll be able to zero in, and provide the location.”
“Let’s hope we’re able to contain it,” Curtis said. “We can’t risk this information reaching someone else’s hands.”
“The blueprints for their drone have been distributed across all allied nations,” Gavreau said. “We will at least be able to spot anything like it that any existing splinter groups can launch.”
“For now, we should focus on our primary target. The head of the serpent,” John said.
CHAPTER
31
The engines of the AS532 Cougar spooled up, the rotors slowly building the momentum they would need to lift the craft. John secured the P90 PDW to his body and chambered a round. He checked the HK USP 45, flipping the selector to safe before securing it into the drop leg holster.
Head of the Serpent Page 13