Any Means Necessary: A Luke Stone Thriller (Book 1)

by Jack Mars

  Now Ezatullah wasn’t sure.

  When they arrived here, the gate was locked. No one told him that would happen. They had to cut the heavy chain with bolt cutters. Both he and Mohammar were so weak by then they could barely get the job done. They drove in here, parked the van between two wrecked cars, and waited. They were still waiting all these hours later.

  Well, technically, “they” weren’t waiting. Mohammar had died sometime this morning. Ezatullah lost track of time, but at one point after sunrise, he had turned to say something to Mohammar. Except that Mohammar wasn’t listening anymore. He was dead, sitting up straight in the driver’s seat. He was the last of them. Assuming Eldrick had died in the weeds, all of Ezatullah’s men, his entire cell, were dead.

  Ezatullah had texted the news of Mohammar’s death to their handlers, but of course there was no response. He sighed at the thought of it. He hoped Mohammar’s sacrifice had been pleasing to Allah. Mohammar was not yet twenty years old, and while he was very intelligent, in many ways he was much like a child.

  Ezatullah punched the dashboard in his frustration. The punch was weak. His name meant “Praise Be to God,” and he had intended for this operation to be his great testament, his public display of faith. Now it would never happen.

  The attack had gone on without them. He had seen news of the White House explosion on his telephone. This suggested that he and his group had been decoys all along. No one ever intended for them to carry out an attack. They had been led here to this dead end, and then abandoned. It was hard to think about. Ezatullah had considered himself a valuable operative. Instead, he had learned that he was a mere pawn to be used and discarded.

  And the attack, while spectacular, had mostly been a failure. A relative handful of unimportant people had died, and the President had escaped unscathed. They should have trusted Ezatullah. He would have done the job the way it was meant to be done. He shook his head at the stupidity of it.

  Suddenly, a text came through on his phone.

  We are proud. You have done well and all will become clear to you in time. Green car waiting for you on street. Come now, Mujahideen.

  Ezatullah stared at the message. It was almost impossible to believe, after these many hours. If this were true, then they hadn’t betrayed him. Now, after the operation was over, they had sent someone to rescue him and bring him home.

  But he hesitated. Did he dare trust it?

  It was possible, he realized. Of course his handlers wouldn’t tell him every facet of the attack. He couldn’t be allowed to see the big picture. It was a dangerous and difficult operation, one which must have many people involved. The others must be protected. If Ezatullah had been captured, even under CIA torture, all he could tell was what he knew. He had received money, he did not know from whom. He had received instructions, he did not know from where. He had an objective, but it had changed several times, and he didn’t know why.

  “Get up,” he said to himself. “Get up and walk to them.”

  He could escape from this. He just needed to open the door and stumble out to the street. He was sick, yes, but they could heal him. This was the United States. A secret back alley medical clinic, with a blacklisted doctor, would be an outpost of dazzling modernity compared to what was available in many other countries.

  Okay. Then it was settled. He would live to fight another day. His great statement would come at another time on a different battlefield.

  He unlocked his door and pushed it open. He was surprised that the door swung easily. Perhaps he had more strength than he thought. He gave young Mohammar one last glance.

  “Goodbye, my friend,” he said. “You were brave.”

  Somewhere in the near distance, sirens raged. They were coming closer. Perhaps there had been another attack, or perhaps it was just a normal day in a bad neighborhood. Ezatullah swung his body around and slid out of the van. His feet hit the dirt of the parking lot and he found that his legs were unsteady, but he could stand. He took a tentative step, then another. Praise Allah, he could still walk.

  He slammed the van door closed behind him and took a deep breath. The last thing he saw was the blue sky and bright sunlight of a warm June day.

  Chapter 28

  They called it the Little Bird. Sometimes they called it the Flying Egg.

  It was the MH-6 helicopter—fast and light, highly maneuverable, the kind of chopper that didn’t need room to land. It could come down on small rooftops, and on narrow roadways in crowded neighborhoods. The chopper was beloved by special operations forces, and Don had procured one when he launched the Special Response Team.

  It came in low over the streets, just above the tangle of electrical wires. Luke and Ed rode in on the wooden side-mounted bench seats, their legs dangling in the air. Next to the junkyard lot, the pilot found a two-story cinderblock building with a fire escape. He touched down and both men slid out onto the roof. Three seconds later, the chopper was back in the air.

  A minute after that, Luke and Ed walked across the dusty lot toward the van. The place was full of cops. Seven or eight DC police patrol cars were parked out on the street and sidewalk, lights flashing. Two fire engines were out there as well. A hazmat truck and a bomb squad truck had pulled inside the lot, and yellow police tape was suspended across the entrance.

  In a far corner of the lot, men in full hazmat suits were searching inside the van. All the doors were open. A body lay on the ground by the front passenger door, blood pooled nearby. Another body was in the driver’s seat.

  Fifty yards from the van, a cop stepped in front of them.

  “Far enough, guys.”

  Luke showed him the badge. “Agent Stone, FBI Special Response Team.” He said it even though he wasn’t quite sure who he worked for anymore. Anyway, he still had the badge. That was good enough.

  The cop nodded. “I figured you were somebody. Most people don’t show up by landing helicopters on rooftops. Past this point is considered a radiation contamination area. You want to go further, you need to put on a hazmat suit.”

  Luke didn’t want to spend twenty minutes putting on a hazmat suit. He gestured at the men with the van. “You know anything about what happened here?”

  The cop smiled. “I might have heard a couple things.”

  “How did they die?”

  The cop pointed. “The one on the ground was shot in the head. Large-caliber weapon, hit from a distance. The bullet took a big chunk of his brains and skull when it exited. The guy was lucky—he probably never knew what hit him.”

  “Someone shot him?” Ed said.

  “If you got a little closer, you wouldn’t ask me that question. There’s brain salad all over the ground. It looks like somebody dropped a plate of guacamole.”

  “He didn’t shoot himself?”

  The cop shrugged. “All I know is what the ballistics people are saying. They took some measurements and they’re going to computer model it, but at first blush they think it was a shooter on one of the surrounding rooftops.”

  Luke glanced around the neighborhood. It was an area of two- and three-story apartment buildings, machine shops, warehouses. There were liquor stores, check cashing, and WE BUY GOLD places on street level. He turned and stared at the man.

  “You’re saying he was shot by a sniper? Who would put a sniper on one of these buildings besides the police?”

  The cop raised his hands. “Look, I just work here. But I can tell you it wasn’t us. Our orders were to take these guys alive, if possible, and the guy on the ground was already dead when the first coppers got here.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “The driver? It looks like it might be radiation sickness, or maybe he took some pills. There aren’t any obvious gunshot or stab wounds. No blood. He’s just sitting there at the steering wheel, like he parked the van and died. They’ll have to do a toxicology work-up on him, but it’ll take a while. With all the radiation, it’s going to be another couple of hours before they even get the bodie
s out of here.”

  “They have any tech on them?” Ed said. “Phones, tablets, laptops?”

  The cop shook his head. “Not that anybody has found. Sounds funny though, right? Two guys out on a mission with no way to call the mother ship?”

  “Did they fingerprint them?” Luke said.

  The cop nodded. “That and DNA. It’s one of the first things they did when the hazmat guys got here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Luke and Ed walked back toward the building where the chopper landed. “I was afraid of that,” Luke said. “Outside of Ali Nassar, those guys were the last links to whoever attacked the White House. Clearly, it wasn’t them.”

  “What are you thinking?” Ed said. “The whole radiation thing was a distraction?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it was a backup plan that went bad. I don’t know.”

  Luke pulled out his satellite phone. He and Trudy had switched to sat phones now. Bad weather could take them out, but they were unaffected by communications meltdowns like the one that had hit the East Coast.

  He waited for the phone to shake hands with the satellite, then for the bounce down to her location. Beep… Beep… Beep… Satellite phones always made him a little leery. He knew it was silly. It was a holdover from the days when drones could use the satellite uplink signal to lock on ground targets. In those days, a man with a satellite phone was holding a big red bull’s-eye. But now, it hardly mattered. The newest drones could lock on to cell phones, laptops, GPS units, almost anything.

  “Hello?” a voice said. It was Trudy. She sounded like she was speaking from the bottom of a tin can. “Luke?”

  “Trudy. Look. We’re at the site of the van. There are two suspects here, both dead. A cop told me they’ve taken DNA and fingerprints from them. Connect with whoever can get you inside the loop on that. When those identifications come through, I want them.”

  “Will do, Luke. But listen. Swann is getting almost real-time information from inside the Iranian mission. They’re bringing Ali Nassar to the airport today. They want him out of the country. All indications are that the jet waiting for him has clearance to take off at 3:30 p.m.”

  Luke looked at his watch. It was 2:05.

  “Jesus. Can we stop him?”

  “I talked with Ron Begley about this,” she said. “He laughed. He said Homeland Security won’t touch it. As far as they’re concerned, the man is a diplomat and had nothing to do with the attacks. There’s no evidence it was Iran, and they don’t want to risk another international incident today.”

  “Dammit!” Luke said. Nassar was the one remaining link to the attack and Ron Begley was going to let him walk away. “What the… what about the local cops?”

  “No dice,” she said. “They’ve already said that if Homeland doesn’t want him, they don’t have jurisdiction. And they’re overstretched as it is. Practically the entire police force has been mobilized, guarding every train station and every public place. Ali Nassar is your obsession, Luke. No one else cares.”

  “So be it,” Luke said. “I’ll stop him myself.”

  “From there?” she said.

  Luke shook his head, then realized she couldn’t see him. “No. We’re on our way back to New York. If we gun it, we should get there just in time. I want people outside the Iranian mission, reporting in as soon as Nassar leaves.”

  “Well, there are a couple more things you should know,” Trudy said. “They’re planning to go to the airport in an armed convoy of SUVs.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Luke said. “Make sure our people have Nassar’s image. If more than one convoy leaves, I want to know that, and I want best guesses as to which convoy he’s in. If they need to think up a ruse to stop the trucks and see who’s inside, do it. A fake checkpoint will work, it doesn’t matter to me. Tell Swann to put some of his toy drones in the air, and get ready to follow multiple convoys. See how close he can get with his cameras.”

  “Luke, there’s also this. Nassar has a five-year-old daughter. The mother is Lebanese and lives here in New York. Both of them are leaving the country with him. They will probably be in his car.”

  Luke didn’t say anything. He had a pit in his stomach at the thought of that girl in the car. Why did there always have to be something? Why couldn’t anything ever be clean?

  Next to him, Ed was calling the chopper back in. A moment later, Luke could already see it, a black insect in the distance, coming in fast, growing bigger by the second. He and Ed started walking toward the fire escape they had climbed down.

  “Don’t go in with guns blazing,” Trudy said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “I never go in with guns blazing.”

  “No?”

  Luke smiled. “No. I leave that kind of thing to Ed.”

  Chapter 29

  2:35 p.m.

  Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center - Bluemont, Virginia

  The meeting was chaos. It had dragged out for well over an hour now.

  Thomas Hayes was trying to preside over an unruly mob of frightened people. It wasn’t working. These were smart, clever, inventive people for the most part, normally the best and brightest. But fear had shut down their creativity, and it was choking off their initiative. They couldn’t even figure out where everybody was. Hayes could barely believe how disorganized the evacuations were.

  An aide was making a report. “Sir, at approximately 12:30 p.m., the Airborne Communications Command aircraft, codename Nightwatch, took off from Joint Base Andrews and flew west. It is currently over eastern Missouri, cruising at forty thousand feet.”

  Hayes looked across the conference table at a line of blank faces.

  “Who authorized that?”

  No one said a word. Nightwatch was only supposed to take off in the event of a nuclear war. The missile codes were on that thing.

  Hayes glanced around the room. A Secret Service agent was standing near the door with a leather satchel in his hand. The bag was strapped to the man’s wrist with a steel cord. Hayes knew that inside the bag was an aluminum ZERO Halliburton case. He grunted in something like mirth. ZERO Halliburton, long the manufacturer of the President’s nuclear football, was now the wholly owned subsidiary of a Japanese luggage company. Traditions were a funny thing.

  Hayes looked at the aide. “Son, are we at war that we know of?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, who’s on board the goddamned plane?”

  “Sir, Senator Edward Graves of Kansas is on board the plane, along with a handful of Pentagon officials.”

  Thomas Hayes felt his shoulders slump. Ed Graves was Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, and among the dumbest members of either Congressional body. The man had all the brainpower of a tree stump. He never met a war, or even a border skirmish, that he didn’t like. And considering that the Nightwatch plane was designed as a place where the President could order retaliatory nuclear strikes, that made Ed Graves dangerous. Hell, he probably thought being in the plane made him President.

  Hayes spoke to the room at large. “Can someone do me a favor and get him down? Please? St. Louis, Kansas City, whatever’s closest. Tell him I said so.”

  Hayes rubbed his forehead. He was tired, and he had a headache.

  David Halstram was in the corner of the room. He moved in when he saw the state Hayes was in.

  “Okay, everybody. Let’s do this. Let’s break this up for half an hour, use the restrooms, get some coffee, relax, whatever you like.” He looked at his watch. “That would mean coming back at ten to three. You know what? Let’s make it forty minutes and come back at exactly three o’clock. These are serious problems, I understand that, but they’re not going anywhere. They’ll all still be waiting for us forty minutes from now.”

  “Thank you, David,” Hayes said. “That’s a good idea.”

  Susan Hopkins raised an open palm. It looked like a STOP sign. “Thomas, can I say something?”

  “Susan, I wish you wouldn’t.”
r />   “Thomas, I think this is important, and I’m not sure it can wait until three o’clock.”

  Hayes was out of patience. He might have snapped at anyone who spoke right now. But it was the Vice President, and the sheer absurdity of their relationship made it worse than it otherwise might have been. The words were out of his mouth before he could catch them.

  “This isn’t a bake-off, Susan. And we’re not organizing a fashion show. What’s so important that it can’t possibly wait?”

  She didn’t speak. Her face flushed a deep crimson. Without another word, she stood and walked out of the room.

  Chapter 30

  3:15 p.m.

  In the Sky - The Borough of Queens, New York

  The helicopter had come in over Staten Island, across the Verrazano-Narrows, and into Brooklyn. Now they were moving east along the ocean beaches, flying low and fast. Soon they would hook left and move north along the Van Wyck Expressway.

  Luke and Ed were hunched in the small cargo hold. Back in New Jersey, they had both dropped another Dexedrine. The effects were starting to kick in.

  It had been a long and brutal day. Luke had been awake far too long. He had been choked, shot at, tackled, stepped on, punched, kicked, and oh yes, almost blown to bits. He had been suspended from his job and accused of murder. But as the Dexie hit him, he began to feel a surge of guarded optimism. Hell, they had saved the President of the United States today. That had to count for something.

  The helicopter was tiny. He could reach out and touch both the pilots. He poked his head between them. It was Jacob and Rachel, the same pilots from this morning.

  “You kids ready to fly this thing?” he shouted.