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

by Jack Mars

  Headlights loomed ahead, a sea of them.

  “Jesus!”

  Luke plunged straight at the headlights, jaw set. He stomped on the gas again.

  They plowed through the traffic, oncoming cars scattering like leaves.

  A tractor trailer went by on his left. The entire car shuddered with the wind of it.

  “Luke!” Susan screamed. “Stop!”

  The Suburban accelerated into the traffic. Cars veered by. The headlights were nearly blinding. There was no time to look behind him. He gazed ahead, both hands gripping the wheel, his concentration supreme.

  It was a long straightaway, cars coming in droves. Luke plowed through like a boat cutting the waves. He began to get that confident feeling—that humming, buzzing feeling he associated with taking Dexies. He had to be careful. Overconfidence could kill.

  Cars zipped by like missiles.

  “Did anyone make that turn with us?” Luke said.

  Brenna looked back.

  “No. No one else is crazy enough.”

  “Good.”

  Luke veered all the way to the left and zoomed off the highway at the next entrance ramp.

  Chapter 52

  2:21 a.m.

  Office of the Chief Medical Examiner - Washington, DC

  Luke spotted Ed Newsam leaning up against the wall of the building, his M4 rifle cradled in his arms.

  The building was four stories tall, with a glass front. It was located just outside the half-mile radiation evacuation zone around the White House. The streets were entirely deserted. It looked like most people had decided that a half mile wasn’t nearly far enough.

  Luke let the car roll to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the building.

  “What now?” Susan said.

  “Now you get out. You stay with Ed, Chuck, and Walter inside that building. No matter what happens, or who comes, you stay with them. Stay as close as you can to Ed. Chuck and Walter are very good, but Ed is a killing machine. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Then let’s do this fast.”

  Luke popped out of the car. Smoke rose from the radiator. All of the doors were stove in with bullet holes. Three of the four tires were shredded. All in all, the car had held up exceptionally well. Luke needed to get one of these.

  “Took some heat, huh?” Ed said.

  Luke smiled. “You should have been there.”

  Behind him, they were climbing out.

  “Ed, you remember the President, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Ed pushed the door to the building open. He had very little leverage and had to use his body weight to do it. They entered the main foyer. Ashwal was there with a wheelchair. He was a dark man, balding, with glasses. Years had passed since Luke had seen him. Strapped upright in the wheelchair was a dead woman with a blonde bob haircut. She wore a white spring sweater and slacks. Her skin was gray and slack, but otherwise she might just be sleeping.

  “Ashwal,” Luke said.

  The man stared at him. “Luke.”

  Luke gestured at Susan with both hands. “Ashwal, this is Susan Hopkins, the President of the United States. She’s injured. I need you to diagnose her injuries and treat her with whatever you have on hand here. We can’t bring her to the hospital. People are trying to kill her.”

  Ashwal stared at Susan. Something slowly dawned behind his eyes.

  “I’m not a doctor anymore.”

  “You are tonight.”

  Ashwal nodded, his face severe. “Okay.”

  Susan was staring at the corpse.

  “Is that supposed to me?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  Luke shrugged. “I’m going to kill her.”

  Chapter 53

  2:30 a.m.

  Streets of Washington, DC

  They must be looking for this car. The easiest thing to do was help them find it.

  Luke was in the Suburban, alone now. He had Brenna’s M1 Garand rifle with him in the front seat. It was loaded with an eight-shot magazine of the high-powered .30-06 armor-busting incendiaries. Ten more mags were on the floor in front of the seat.

  In the back seat, the corpse sat where Susan had been. The seatbelt kept the body upright. Its head bobbed and moved with the movement of the car.

  Luke rolled slowly through the empty streets near the National Mall and the Capitol. He was right on the edge of the radiation containment zone. Somewhere around here, the DC cops should have the streets blocked off.

  There it was, flashing lights, down a side street to his right. He passed the intersection, then pulled over to the curb. There were no cars or people anywhere.

  Cops were good. They were a start. But what Luke needed were bad guys. The cops didn’t know anything about what was going on. This car would be meaningless to them. He sat for a minute, thinking about it. Could he have lost them so thoroughly back there on the highway that they had no idea where he was? He didn’t think so.

  He still had his cell phone with him. He knew it was stupid to keep it, but he was hoping against hope that he’d get a call or a text from Becca. He brought the phone out and stared at its eerie glow in the darkness.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. He speed-dialed her number.

  Her phone was off. It didn’t ring at all.

  “Hi, this is Becca. I can’t answer your…”

  He hung up. He sat quietly for a few moments, trying not to think about anything. Maybe they would find him, maybe they wouldn’t. If not, he was going to have to go out and find them. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He sank into the driver’s seat for a moment.

  Gradually, he became aware of a sound. It was the heavy rumble of a large helicopter. It didn’t alarm him. There could be a million reasons why a helicopter, even a military chopper, was in the sky over Washington, DC, right now. He sat up and looked out his windshield. It gave him a view down the wide boulevard in front of him.

  The chopper was approaching dead ahead. It was flying low and slow. After a few seconds, its shape resolved into something familiar to him.

  It couldn’t be what he thought it was, not here in the middle of the city.

  But it was…

  …an Apache helicopter gunship.

  “Oh no.”

  Luke slammed the car into gear and stomped on the gas. He spun the wheel hard to the left and did a giant, screaming U-turn in the middle of the street.

  The chopper fired its mini-gun.

  Thirty-millimeter rounds strafed the top of the SUV, ripping up the car’s armor.

  Luke flinched, but kept driving. He spun another hard left, making the turn down the side street. The chopper passed behind him.

  Up ahead, four street cops stood in front of a low concrete barrier. They were watching the sky, their attention suddenly grabbed by the chopper. Two police cruisers were parked on either side, lights silently flashing. Luke took a deep breath.

  Real cops! He couldn’t imagine a group of people he’d rather surrender to right now. A hundred yards out, he stomped on the gas. The Suburban picked up speed. He accelerated toward the cops.

  The four of them scattered.

  Three seconds later, he plowed through the concrete barrier, cracking it in half, driving the two crumbling pieces ahead of him. He skidded to a stop, reversed a few feet, then peeled out around them.

  Behind him, the cops had jumped in their cruisers. Seconds later, the familiar siren wail began.

  Luke took a left on Independence Avenue. He scanned the sky for the chopper. He could hear it, but couldn’t see it. The Suburban was smoking from the rounds it had just taken. He had badly underestimated them. An Apache! They were going to kill this car and they didn’t care who knew about it.

  He pushed the Suburban up as fast as it would go. It had lost some power, and topped out just under 80. He sped along Independence, on the south side of the Mall. The tidal basin was to his left. Street lights shimmered on the wat
er.

  Behind him, the cops were coming hard.

  The Apache swooped in from his right. It was four stories up. The mini-gun fired again. The bullets hit. It sounded like a jackhammer. The right side rear window shattered, spraying the corpse with glass.

  Luke swerved the car crazily, his foot still pressing the gas to the floor. The roadway zipped past him. Far ahead and to his left, he could see the Lincoln Memorial, lit up in the night.

  The chopper came back around. It gave up on the mini-gun. It started launching its Hydra rockets instead. A line of rockets whooshed out from the right side of the chopper. Three, four, five.

  Ahead of him, the roadway blew up in shades of red and yellow. BOOM… BOOM… BOOOM.

  He spun hard to the left. The SUV broke through a chain-link barrier and bounced over the grass. Luke was thrown around in his seat. His hands gripped the wheel. He barely let up off the gas.

  More rockets came. One lit up a line of cherry blossom trees. The small hills blew up all around him.

  The car took a direct hit, in the back.

  Luke felt the back of the car go up in the air. He pushed open his door and jumped.

  He hit the grass and rolled away to the left. The car’s rear wheels bounced back down and the car kept going, downhill toward the water.

  Luke saw the spark as another Hydra rocket took off. It zipped through the air, penetrated the SUV’s armor, and hit home. Flames shot out an instant before the entire car blew.

  BOOOOOM.

  Luke hit the deck and covered his head as heavy armor flew. A moment later, he looked back. The car was still rolling, red and orange flames reaching like arms into the night sky. Inside the car, a woman in her late forties burned, unclaimed, a person with no name. Luke could see her silhouette.

  The car, utterly on fire, rolled slowly to the edge of the water. The lip of the tidal basin was a drop-off. The car went off the side and in. It hung there for a few seconds, half in the water, half out, before it fell all the way in. It burned, even as it sank.

  The chopper veered off and away. Seconds later, it was a dark and distant shadow against the night sky.

  Luke lay on the grass, breathing heavily. A Capitol District police car skidded to a halt behind him, its siren howling. Two cops got out, one white, one black. They approached him with flashlights and guns drawn.

  “On your face. Arms out.”

  Luke did as the man said. Rough hands searched him. They pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists tight.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” a cop began.

  Chapter 54

  3:23 a.m.

  Municipal Detention Center - Washington, DC

  Everything was white.

  The walls and the floors were white. The overhead lights were bright and white. The sliding electronic metal gates that slid open and clanged shut behind him were painted white.

  They processed Luke and put him in a holding cell with half a dozen other men. The room was large. It was white, with dirty handprints all over the walls. The floor was white, going toward dingy gray from the bottoms of a thousand pairs of sneakers. There was a urinal and a toilet built into one wall. The floor sloped very gradually toward the middle, where there was a small, round open drain.

  A dirty white bench ringed the walls of the cell, reaching almost halfway around. Luke paced the cell for several minutes while the other men watched him. He was the only white man in the room. That didn’t bother him. He barely noticed the other men. It was just being trapped in here. It was not being in motion. He couldn’t stand it.

  Somewhere out there, Becca and Gunner were in the hands of bad people. Luke might be kidding himself, but he sensed that they were still alive. If so, he needed to get out of here and find them. He would never stop, never, until he found them again. And God help the men who had them.

  No. That was wrong. No one could help them.

  If they laid so much as a finger…

  Now that he was stuck in here, he could feel the rage begin to boil inside him. The Vice President, the car chase, all of it—it had taken his mind off things. But now there was nothing to distract him.

  Then, of course, there was Susan Hopkins. He had left her with Ed, and Brenna and Berg. They were capable men, especially Ed. But if Luke was still alive, he should really be there with them.

  He felt like screaming.

  He walked over to the bench and sat down. Within a minute, a guy had peeled himself off the bench along the far wall and ambled over to Luke. He was a big young guy, well-muscled, with a Chicago Bulls jersey on. He had a crazy tangled mass of Afro atop his head. He smiled, and one of his front teeth was gold.

  He crouched down in front of Luke.

  “Hey, bro, you okay?”

  A quiet round of titters and chuckles went around among the men in the cell.

  Luke looked at him. “The President died tonight. Bro.”

  The guy nodded. “Heard about that. I guess that don’t really bother me. Never voted for the man.”

  Luke shrugged. “Can I help you?”

  The guy gestured with his chin. “I noticed your boots. They’re nice.”

  Now Luke nodded. He looked down at his own feet and the leather boots he was wearing. “You’re right. They are nice. My wife gave them to me last Christmas.”

  “What kind are they?”

  “They’re Ferragamo. I think she paid about six hundred bucks for them. My wife likes to buy me nice things. She knows I’d never buy them for myself.”

  “Give them to me,” the young guy said.

  Luke shook his head. “I can’t do that. They have sentimental value. Anyway, I don’t think they would fit you.”

  “I want them.”

  Luke looked around the cell. Every set of eyes was on him. He could imagine how for someone, this might be a tense and frightening situation.

  “I think you better go sit down,” he said. “I’m not in a very good mood right now.”

  The kid’s eyes flashed anger. “Give me those shoes.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “You want them? Take them.”

  The kid nodded and smiled. He glanced around the cell. Now there was outright laughter. The big tough thug was going to steal the white man’s shoes. He leaned in and reached for Luke’s feet.

  Luke paused a beat, then kicked the kid in the mouth. It was a lightning strike. The kid’s head snapped back. Teeth went flying, maybe three of them in all. One was the gold tooth in the front. The kid fell backwards. He ended up on his knees, bent over, his hands to his mouth.

  Luke sighed. He stood up, stepped up behind the kid, and punched him hard in the back of the neck, right where the spinal column attached to the bottom of the skull. The kid collapsed to the grimy floor. His eyes rolled back. In a few seconds, he was unconscious. A few seconds later, he started making an odd snoring sound.

  Luke looked around the cell. He had been in a bad mood before. The young shoe robber had only made it worse. Luke would beat every man in here half to death, if that’s what they wanted from him.

  “The next man who fucks with me loses all his teeth,” he said, loud enough that everyone could hear him.

  They all stared back, mouths agape, then all finally looked away. Their eyes, so filled with bloodlust but moments before, were now filled with something else: fear.

  Chapter 55

  5:45 a.m.

  United States Naval Observatory - Washington, DC

  His name was William Theodore Ryan.

  He was the great-great-grandson of plantation gentry. His people, for generations, were proud Confederates and rebels. And here he was, the President of the United States of America.

  He was as tired as he could ever remember. He had barely slept last night. Before first light, he had insisted they fly back to Washington from Site R. There was no sense staying underground, was there? The threat was over. And it would show the American people how courageous he was. He wasn’t going to hide in a hole in the g
round while more than three hundred million people had to go on with their lives above ground, vulnerable to foreign attack.

  He smiled at the thought of it.

  He sat in sitting area of the upstairs office of the Vice President’s official residence. Outside the windows, weak light was entering the sky. The house itself was beautiful, a huge white Queen Anne with gables and a turret on the lovely, rolling grounds of the Naval Observatory. It dated to the mid-1800s and generations of Vice Presidents had called it home. Now it would serve as the White House until the original could be rebuilt.

  On the sofa across from him sat Senator Edward Graves of Kansas. Later today, at the age of seventy-two, Ed was going to become the oldest Vice President in modern U.S. history. Ed Graves was a military expert, and had been chairman of the Congressional Armed Forces Committee since the world was young. Ed had been one of his mentors for almost twenty years now.

  Between them a black speaker phone sat on the table. It squawked, as an undersecretary from the Joint Chiefs gave them a quick update on events in the Middle East. Things were tense, but seemed to be going well.

  “Sir,” the voice said, “on your orders, two American F-118 fighter jets entered Iranian airspace at approximately 1:45 p.m. local time, just about half an hour ago.”

  “Status?” Bill Ryan said.

  “Within two minutes, they were intercepted and engaged by three Iranian jets, we believe them to be outdated Russian Mig fighters. The F-118s destroyed the Iranian jets after a brief dogfight. Radar picked up the presence of at least a dozen more Iranian fighters converging on the area, so the F-118s retreated to Turkish airspace. The Iranians turned back at the border.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “What else?”

  “Two listening stations, one in Japan and one in Alaska, have reported that as many as half a dozen Russian missile silos in eastern Siberia have switched to a state of full combat readiness in the past twenty minutes. The silos have as primary targets major metropolitan areas along the West Coast, including Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. They have acquired and locked on to their targets.”