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

by Jack Mars

  All of this flowed past, image after image after image. The American President had been murdered, and the whole world had gone mad. It was impossible to grasp the magnitude of what had happened.

  Luke reached down, untied his boots, and kicked them off. He sat back. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had been on the verge of retiring from the intelligence game. It had been almost unbelievably pleasant these past six months, teaching a couple of classes, playing some pickup basketball with the students, relaxing here with his family. Maybe his days as a soldier and a spy and a kamikaze really were over.

  He glanced around the house. They had a great life here. It was a beautiful home, modern, with floor to ceiling windows, like something out of an architectural magazine. It was like a glass box. In the winter, when it snowed, it was just like one of those old snow globes people used to have when he was a kid. He pictured Christmas time—just sitting in this stunning sunken living room, the tree in the corner, the fireplace lit, the snow coming down all around as if they were outside, but they were inside, warm and cozy.

  God, it was nice.

  He could never afford this place on his government salary. Becca could never afford it on a university researcher salary. The two of them together couldn’t afford this place. It was her family money that bought it.

  And that told him all he needed to know about the job. It didn’t matter if he worked two days a week or if he never worked again. They were set, probably for life.

  A dark thought occurred to him. If war broke out among the great powers, it would be almost impossible to stop it. Even so, maybe he could let these gigantic forces fight it out amongst themselves. He didn’t have to participate. Maybe, if given enough time away, he could put the whole thing out of his mind. The worst atrocities could be something that happened to other people, somewhere far away.

  He picked his phone up off the coffee table and called a number.

  The lines were open now. The cell towers weren’t overwhelmed anymore. People had given up.

  The phone rang. On the third ring, she picked it up.

  Her voice was thick with sleep. “H’lo?”

  “Babe?”

  “Hi, baby,” she said.

  “Hello. What are you doing?”

  “Oh, I was tired, so I decided to go to bed early. Gunner was running me all day long. So I hit the hay right after I hung up with you. How did everything go? Did you watch the President?”

  Luke took a deep breath. She went to sleep before the President’s speech. Which meant that she didn’t know. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Not now.

  “Nah. I was too tired. I decided to take a night off, and unplug from everything. No TV, no computer, nothing. I’m sure people will fill me in tomorrow.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” she said.

  Luke smiled. “Okay, sweetheart. Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  She was already falling asleep again. “I love you.”

  He sat on the sofa and smiled to himself for a moment. He took another sip of the whiskey. It made him happy to think of Becca and Gunner running around all day, and now sleeping in the deep quiet of the country house. Luke was going to enjoy retirement, he really was.

  Just not yet.

  He dialed another number.

  A clipped female voice answered. “Wellington.”

  “Trudy, it’s Luke.”

  “Luke, where are you? Everything’s gone haywire.”

  “I’m home. Where are you?”

  “I’m at headquarters, where the hell else would I be? Luke, half the Congress was at Mount Weather. The President and his aides and his chief of staff. The Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Education. They are all down there. The place is on fire and no one can put it out. There was a firestorm in the elevator shafts. The emergency stairwells were blown up. The firemen can not get down to the fire.”

  “Is there any contact at all?”

  She made a sound. It was almost a laugh. “The President’s chief of staff, David Halstram, managed to call out. He called 911, if you can believe that. There’s a 911 dispatcher tape. I heard it a little while ago. He sounded terrified, talking very fast. He said his legs were pinned and he was afraid the President was dead. He said you called him just before it happened, and told him to get the President out. He…” Trudy’s voice shook… “said he wished he had listened to you.”

  Luke didn’t say anything.

  “Did you call him?” Trudy said.

  “I did, yeah.”

  “How did you know? How did you know what was going to happen?”

  “Trudy, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Luke—”

  He cut her off. “Listen, I need you to do something for me. Is the Secretary of Defense alive? David Delliger?”

  “He’s alive. He’s at Site R.”

  “I need a direct line for him. Some way to contact him.”

  “Why him? Shouldn’t you talk to the President instead?”

  Luke shook his head. “There is no President.”

  “Not yet. But they’re swearing the new one in… ten minutes from now.”

  “Who is it, if not Delliger? Who’s even alive to become President?”

  “Luke, don’t you know? It’s Bill Ryan, the Speaker of the House.”

  Luke thought back to the various Representatives and Senators he saw gathering at Mount Weather earlier in the day. “Ryan? How did he survive?”

  Trudy’s voice sounded unsure. “They say it was dumb luck. He didn’t go to Mount Weather.”

  Ryan, Luke thought, flabbergasted. A hawk among hawks. That could only mean one thing: they were going to war.

  *

  10:02 p.m., Site R - Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania

  It was a nightmare from which he could not awake.

  His name was David Delliger, and he was the United States Secretary of Defense. He had been appointed to this role by his longtime friend and college roommate, Thomas Hayes, the former President of the United States.

  Delliger was a surprising choice for the position, by any standard. He was a professor of history at the Naval Academy, and an attorney who had spent much of his career as a third-party mediator. In the years before he took this job, he had consulted with the Carter Center, monitoring elections in new democracies, countries with long histories of despotic rule. That job was the opposite of making war.

  And that’s why Hayes the liberal had chosen him. Thomas Hayes was dead now, and had been for an hour. There was currently no way to tell who else was alive and who was dead in the wreckage of what had been the Mount Weather facility. The Vice President was missing and assumed dead. Fires still raged on several floors deep underground. Hundreds of people were trapped inside, including many of the members of Congress, and at least some of their family members.

  Delliger stood in a concrete room, also deep underground, but more than sixty miles from the disaster. About thirty people were in that room with him. A blue curtain had been pulled across the concrete walls to mask the sheer ugliness of the room. On a small dais, two men and a woman stood. Photographers snapped pictures of them.

  One of the men on the dais was short and bald. He wore a long robe. He was Clarence Warren, Chief Justice of the United States. The woman’s name was Karen Ryan. She wore a bright blue suit with a red rose in her lapel. She was holding a Bible open in her hands. A tall, good-looking man in a dark blue suit and tie stood with his left hand on the Bible. His right hand was raised. Until this moment, the man had for years been the Representative from North Carolina, and the Speaker of the House.

  “I, William Theodore Ryan,” he said, “do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”

  “And will to the best of my ability,” Judge Warren prompted.

  “And will to the best of my ability,” Ryan said.

  “Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of th
e United States.”

  Ryan repeated the words, and with less ceremony than many local moose lodges employed to induct their new members, abruptly became President of the United States. Delliger was in something like shock. Yes, his good friend was dead. Thomas Hayes was a great man and his loss was a tragedy, both personally for Delliger, but even more profoundly for the people of America.

  But even worse, one of the President’s most formidable enemies in government had just taken over his job. The very man who had threatened the President with impeachment this morning was now President himself.

  It didn’t make sense. How had both the White House and Mount Weather been destroyed on the same day? Why had the President and Vice President been evacuated to the same facility? They should have been separated as soon as the Secret Service realized they were together.

  As Delliger watched, Ryan and his wife, Karen, shared a kiss. Then, for a brief moment, Ryan mugged for the cameras, and several people in the room laughed. Delliger glanced around to see who the people were. He recognized many of the people in attendance. They were the most rabid war hawks in government. Members of the Joint Chiefs. The Director of the CIA. Congressmen with close ties to defense contractors. Lobbyists from the defense industry, and from the oil industry.

  How did they all wind up here? No, a better question was how did he wind up among them? He was an alien to them, an outsider. He was the Secretary of Defense, but he had been appointed by a dove, a man who was doing everything in his power to avoid a war. A man who was dead.

  This was the military bunker. These people felt at home here. David Delliger, even with his military background, would feel more at home in the civilian bunker, which was a place…

  …that had just been destroyed.

  A strange feeling came upon Delliger. For a moment, the faces of the people in the crowd seemed distorted, like funhouse faces. Everyone was smiling. The biggest disaster in American history had happened an hour ago, and people here were smiling. Why shouldn’t they smile? They were in charge now.

  Delliger glanced around the room again. No one was paying any attention to him. Why would they? He was the Defense Secretary of a dead President. He was a joke to them, part of a regime that had swept away.

  On the dais, Ryan was serious again. He faced the gathering.

  “No one wants to become President the way that I have. But I’m not going to stand up here and pretend I didn’t want this job. I did want it, and I still do. I want it because I want to make America great again. Thomas Hayes was a great man in many ways, but he was also a weak man. He could not stand firm against our enemies, and as a result, he paid the ultimate price. Those policies, the policies of weakness, stop now.”

  A cheer went up from the crowd. Someone let loose a long wolf whistle. The clapping went on for an extended period. Ryan raised his hands to ask for quiet.

  “Tonight I will address the American people, and by extension, the people of the entire world. What I tell them will give hope to those who have been terrorized by the events of the past day, and of the past several months. I plan to tell them that we are going to war, and that we are going on the offensive, and that we will not stop until the perpetrators of this terrible atrocity are brought to their knees. And even then, we will not stop. We will not stop until their palaces and towers are consumed by fire, and their people run screaming in the streets. And even then, we will not stop.”

  The cheering was so loud now that Ryan had to stop speaking. There was no sense continuing. No one could hear him.

  He waited. Slowly the sound died down. Ryan stared directly at Delliger.

  “We will avenge our losses,” he said. “And we will avenge our loved ones. And we will not stop until the country of Iran can never project its power in the world again. We will not stop until they cannot feed themselves unless we feed them, and clothe themselves unless we clothe them. Eventually, there will be a time for mourning, and for remembering. But not yet. The time now is for vengeance!”

  As another cheer went up, and the phone in Delliger’s pocket vibrated. He took it out and glanced at it. He had a text message. This was his private phone. He rarely got texts. He opened it.

  My name is Luke Stone. I know why the President died. Meet me.

  Chapter 39

  10:47 p.m.

  Davis Memorial Hospital - Bethesda, Maryland

  The three men entered his room like shadows.

  They were quiet, almost silent. They had turned the lights off out in the hallway. So when they opened Ed Newsam’s door a crack, and slid into his dark room, almost nothing about the light changed.

  It didn’t much matter. Ed Newsam didn’t believe in sleep. Not at a time like this. He had been prescribed a powerful morphine-based painkiller for his bullet wounds and his cracked hip. The painkiller would make him sleep. Ed believed in pain. This pain was all too real not to believe in it. And he didn’t refuse the painkiller. He palmed it. And when the nurse left the room, he slipped it under his mattress.

  He could have refused it instead, but he wanted them to put it on his medical chart. He supposed that somewhere in the back of his mind he had expected a visit just like this one. Men such as these, they would take a look at Ed’s chart before they came in here.

  Ed was knocked out. Ed was on painkillers. Ed was getting some well-earned rest.

  He breathed deeply, like a man long gone in never-never land. His eyes were open only a sliver. Lots of people slept that way. His hands were under the sheet. In his right hand he held a Beretta M9. A full magazine was loaded. A round was in the chamber. It was ready to rock.

  The men approached the bed. They wore dark pullover shirts, dark pants, and black hoods that covered everything but their eyes.

  It was safe to say they weren’t doctors.

  Two men were on his right side, one on his left. One of the men pulled out a syringe. In the half-light, Ed watched him hold it up and remove the cap. A tiny pop of fluid squirted out. He looked at the other two men and nodded.

  The two men moved fast. But Ed was faster. They darted to the bedside and tried to pin his arms. He slid his gun out the instant before the man on the right moved. He swung the gun up into his face. The muzzle was an inch from the man’s forehead.

  BAM!

  The noise was deafening in the close confines of the room. Stars were imprinted on Ed’s eyes from the muzzle flash.

  The man’s head cracked apart. Blood and bone and brains sprayed backwards across the room. The man fell forward across the rails of the hospital bed. Ed pushed him back with the gun, and the corpse fell to the floor.

  He swung the gun upward. He pointed the gun into the middle of the syringe man’s chest. The man held both hands up, his eyes wide behind the mask. The syringe was still in his right hand.

  BAM!

  The gun’s muzzle was a foot from the man’s chest. The shot blew his heart and half his lungs out through his back. The man dropped to the floor like a trap door had opened beneath him.

  The third man had backed to the other side of the room. He was so surprised, he hadn’t even tried to run for the door. If he had gone right away, he might have made it. Now, he was in a corner, ten feet from Ed. Ed pointed the gun straight into his body mass. The man glanced at the window. Eight stories up, Ed remembered, with no fire escape. Good luck.

  “Nice gun, right?” Ed said. “I call it Alice. You want to ask it something?”

  The guy raised his hands. “Hey. I think you’re making a big mistake.”

  “No, you made the mistake, motherfucker. You want to kill me? Don’t come in here and try to pretend it’s a drug overdose. If you want to kill me, you better come in here and kill me dead, right away.” He shook his head and lowered his voice. “Otherwise, you see what happens to you.”

  Somewhere in the hospital, alarms were going off. Security would be here in another minute.

  “Who are you?” Ed said.

  The man smiled beneath his mask. “You know I’ll
never tell you that.”

  Ed was a crack shot. It was another of his skills that he kept sharp. At ten feet, he could hit anything he wanted. He changed his aim and shot the man in the right leg, just above the knee.

  BANG.

  Ed knew what the shot did. It shredded the large bone there. Blew it to pieces.

  The doctors had told Ed the right tip of his own pelvis was cracked, probably from a bullet that had ricocheted and lost most of its energy before it hit him. The treatment was bed rest, painkillers, and physical therapy. He would have to use a walker for a little while, then crutches. In eight weeks or so, he might still have some soreness, but he should be almost good as new. In six months, it would be like it never happened.

  In contrast, the man now shrieking on the floor would never walk normally again. And that was if Ed let him live.

  Ed dropped the railing from the side of the bed. There was a hospital walker near the chair, with wheels in the back and half a tennis ball on each of the front knobs. Ed pulled it close, and worked his way to a standing position by the side of the bed. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

  Jesus. If this was what old age would be like, he wanted no part of it.

  He looked at the man sprawled on the floor in the corner. Ed used the walker to gimp his away around the two corpses, careful not to slip in all the blood. The polished floor was awash in it. He headed toward the injured man.

  “We don’t have much time,” he told the man. “Let’s see if I can get that name out of you in a minute or less.”

  Chapter 40

  11:05 p.m.

  Fairfax County, Virginia - Suburbs of Washington, DC

  Luke was drifting.

  The phone was ringing.

  He snapped awake, lying flat on the sofa. He’d had another drink while waiting for David Delliger to call him. Then he’d fallen asleep. This must be Delliger now.