by Karl Weber
“The mole they said was placed at Huckleberry’s side.” Anna went wide-eyed. “If that’s the case, then they’ll definitely have an avenue from which to attack the president.”
“Crap.” Jack smiled. “Well, it looks like you’re due to pay Patterson a visit.”
Anna gave off her sadistic smile. “Indeed I am.”
Back in the command center, Anna looked toward Price sitting at his workstation. “Price,” Anna yelled out to get his attention. “We need to find Alan Patterson.”
Price nodded while not even looking at her and began to type away until a satellite view of a mansion appeared on his screen. It was an L-shaped mansion. Looked very modern and sophisticated in design. It was the type of home somebody would have not only to live in luxury, but let outsiders know that somebody of importance lived within. The property sat right next to a body of water. “He lives in Seattle at his waterfront property on Lake Washington. He’s a rich prick, so the place seems fitting for a guy like him.”
Jack pitched in, “I wouldn’t treat getting to this guy as a formality, Anna. He has made a fortune selling security hardware for this country’s military. Heck, there’s hardware in this room with this guy’s company logo on it, that’s how good his hardware is.”
“He might be good, but we’re better. Or at least we have to be,” Anna replied. “Fuel the jet; I’m heading to Seattle.”
“I’ll inform the president about what we’ve learned. I was also told he’s planning to have a cabinet meeting at the White House to discuss matters with the election in a few days. I guess everyone is still freaked out over the attack.”
“Let’s just hope we can stop another one from happening altogether.”
Chapter 14
It was a quiet, dark night on Lake Washington. Nobody else was present on the lake at one in the morning other than the small, black fishing boat Anna found herself lying down in. She had both her feet kicked up to relax while Jackson piloted the boat down the lake toward Patterson’s home.
He was dressed in civilian clothing to avoid suspicion. He even had a fishing rod hanging out the back of the small boat to complete the look of somebody just out for some late-night fishing. Anna just laid on her back to stay out of the sight of any potential onlookers. She didn’t want to draw any kind of attention dressed in her tac suit.
Anna counted stars until Jackson spoke up. “We’re here, Anna.”
“Time for a swim,” Anna announced. She took the rebreather from her utility belt and stuck it in her mouth. After that she grabbed her balaclava and pulled it over her head, covering all her defining features except her green eyes. She stood up and grabbed a view of Patterson’s home.
It was large, as with every other mansion on the lake, about three stories and had tall windows that stretched across each floor. The whole mansion looked like it could’ve been a tourist destination. It even had its own pier where a very expensive yacht was docked. That wasn’t uncommon for the area, however, since almost every house in neighborhood was owned by members of the one percent.
“I should get a home here. I love being near the water,” Jackson said.
Anna chuckled at Jackson’s statement. “When? A hundred years from now? We’re not paying you that good a salary,” she replied as she sat down at the edge of the boat, her voice muffled by the rebreather.
“That’s why you and Jack need to give me a better pension.”
“Yeah, how about no,” Anna answered, flashing Jackson the double bird and falling backwards into the lake, making a small splash. The frigid water hit her in the face like a straight punch. It was just above freezing outside, which was pleasant for Seattle in early November. At least there was no actual ice Anna needed to worry about.
It took her not even five minutes of swimming to reach Patterson’s shoreline. She slowly raised her head above water level to have a view of what she was up against for security.
A large stone wall surrounded the perimeter, with the entire area fairly well-lit. A guard could be seen casually patrolling the stone wall on the west side of the property, roughly near Anna’s position on the southwest side. She spotted him and didn’t think much of it. He was dressed in casual clothing, a pistol on his hip, and was probably there to watch for any burglars that might try to scale the wall.
Anna winked with her right eye and activated the thermal vision on her Predator Lenses. She knew that night vision would just blind her with the number of light sources in the area. There were two heat signatures shaped like humans, one being the guard she’d already spotted with the other located opposite of him. The second man appeared to be having a smoke as he strolled down the property’s east side.
Anna crawled out of the lake and crouched inside a dark shadow below a maintenance shed connected to the pier. She brought up her SCU and activated the electromagnetic field sensor on it. After a quick sweep, the only things Anna noticed of consequence were some motion-detecting porch lights above the screen doors that led into the house and a few cameras on pivots mounted on the stone walls.
Making haste, Anna turned herself invisible and got moving down a stone sidewalk that ran right down the center of the lawn. When she approached the back entrance to the house, she stopped before getting close enough to trigger the porch lights, not wanting to draw attention to the guards.
She quickly inserted the magazine of micro-emp rounds into her MTSO9 and fired two shots in succession, one at each porch light. With that done she moved underneath the balcony that hung over the patio door. The lock on the door took Anna’s SCU hardly any effort to unlock. The thin glass door slid open. She stepped onto the stone tile flooring into a small, dimly lit open-kitchen area.
The room next to it looked like a spacious living area by the looks of the large L-shaped sofa and TV projection screen on the wall across from it. Advancing further into the darkened house, Anna needed to switch to night-vision. She looked down at the expensive marble flooring laid throughout the living room. As long as it isn’t noisy wood, I’m happy. Marble was a good flooring material, at least for a spy like Anna, as it generated little noise from footsteps.
She slowly proceeded further into Patterson’s home. Anna knew beforehand from what research Price did on homes in the neighborhood that finding Patterson might be tricky due to the number of rooms she’d have to check. All while not being spotted by Patterson or anyone else.
A quick sweep of the bottom floor revealed nothing of interest, so Anna moved toward the staircase to do a sweep of the next floor. Her MLS device had shut off at this point, rendering her visible. She didn’t pay much mind to it; the mansion was dark enough that she could just sneak through relying on the darkness. She proceeded up the staircase with gun up and loaded with sedation rounds just in case.
At the top of the staircase was a lone light on the ceiling that provided the only real light for the connected hallway. Anna tapped the display on the wall and turned off the light to keep the area dark.
She creeped down the hallway that contained three dark, hardwood doors, two on one side, and one on the other. Wanting to check who or what could be behind them, Anna got on one knee and pulled out a small device in the shape of a cube that she rarely got to use.
It was called an Optical Drill Camera. It would attach to flat surfaces via suction cups and utilized a small drill bit with a microscopic-sized camera placed inside the drill bit. After a few seconds of quiet drilling, it was free of resistance, and a video feed appeared on Anna’s SCU.
The first door, a bathroom. The second door looked to be a game room with both a pool and poker table. The third door was a bedroom, but not the master, far too small. Inside the bed someone slept.
Anna quickly unlocked the door’s security panel using her SCU. The door slid open, and she stepped inside.
On one wall was a work calendar that listed an assortment of tasks needed to be done around the mansion that gave Anna a hunch to whose room this was. A maid. Anna approached the bed where the w
oman was sleeping on her side. With one hand holding her MTSO9, Anna took her free hand and quickly covered the women’s mouth, which jolted her awake on her back.
The women tried screaming through Anna’s hand as she looked up at the red-eyed person wearing a balaclava and holding her at gunpoint.
“Shhh,” Anna whispered. She continued in a calm yet slightly sadistic voice. “I’m not here for you, I’m here for your boss who I’m sure underpays you. Tell me where he is, and you won’t even remember this encounter ever happened.” Anna lifted the palm of her hand only enough to allow the woman to speak.
“He’s upstairs on the third floor. Probably in his office. He told me he would be working late tonight and didn’t want to be disturbed.” The woman was almost crying, she was so afraid.
“Thank you,” Anna replied, firing a sedation round into the women’s chest. Anna was being honest to the maid. The poison inside the sedation round would make her forget this entire interaction ever happened.
Anna made her way out of the room and continued down the dark hallway. It quickly opened up to an intersection where to the right was a tall, clear-glass window with moon light that showered through, providing a great view of Lake Washington. To the left another staircase headed upward that Anna utilized.
A light coming from the third floor could been seen from the staircase. As Anna approached the top of the stairs, she could see the light was coming from a large glass door to the side of the hallway. It was bright enough that she needed to deactivate her night-vision to avoid straining her eyes. Above the doorway was a camera.
She quickly changed the magazine in her MTSO9 to the one for VL rounds and fired off a shot at the camera. With that done Anna approached the door. She reactivated thermal vision and could see a figure sitting down with his back to the door. That must be him, Anna thought. She knew what to do next.
Alan Patterson was sitting down at his desk in the oval-shaped office, staring vividly at multiple holographic screens mere inches from his face, all filled with graphs and data. Patterson sighed before falling back in his big, leather office chair.
He looked out the large window behind the screens, overlooking Lake Washington. He raised an eyebrow when he noticed a pair of red eyes appear in the reflection of the holographic screens.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he tensed when he heard a soft female voice. “Did you know that working late can be bad for your health.” At the bottom of his eye, Patterson noticed a knife was being held to his throat. “Hands on the table,” Anna ordered.
“Do you know who I am?” Patterson asked, sounding more annoyed than scared. He did at least comply with her order and grabbed the edge of the table.
“I know that you and your friends plan to the kill the President of the United States,” Anna stated threateningly.
Patterson raised an eyebrow. “Who sent you?”
“I take orders from nobody.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. If you came here to save the president, then I’m afraid you’re too late.”
Chapter 15
Anna grabbed the back of Patterson’s head as a statement of control to go along with holding a knife to his throat. “If I’m too late then you’re the one out of time. Who is your ace in the hole? How is he or she going to kill the president?”
Patterson remained silent. Anna took the blade off Patterson’s chin and in one smooth motion, swiped it across Patterson’s right leg, drawing blood. Patterson tried to scream from pain, but Anna covered his mouth with her other hand. Blood leaked out and darkened the khaki pants Patterson was wearing.
Anna continued, “You’re going to be thin on blood if you waste any more of my time. The next swipe goes across your throat. Last chance, who’s your ace in the hole?” Anna was too pissed off and impatient at this point to care about proper interrogation procedure. She removed her hand from Patterson’s mouth, as he had stopped screaming and was now just hyper-ventilating.
“Ed … Edwards,” Patterson muttered.
Anna shook her head, thinking she might’ve misheard. “Edwards. You mean Michael Edwards, Huckleberry’s VP?” Anna asked in disbelief.
“Yes. Even before Huckleberry was in office, Edwards kept an eye on him.”
Vice President Michael Edwards made his way through the maze of corridors in the White House until finally making it to the conference room reserved for cabinet meetings. He entered the room garnering a gaze from all of the president’s cabinet members already sitting down, including President Huckleberry.
“Glad to see you made it, Mike,” Huckleberry said as Edwards took his seat next to the president.
Edwards didn’t even face Huckleberry when he grimly replied, “I haven’t let you down yet.”
Huckleberry took notice to the black briefcase Edwards had brought with him. He normally had a brown one. “New briefcase, Mike?”
Edwards quickly and uncomfortably turned his gaze toward the president. “Ah … yeah. The spine was getting worn out on the old one.”
Huckleberry nodded. “Gotcha. Now let’s get on with the meeting, shall we?”
“How is Edwards going to kill Huckleberry? Why would he be willing to kill Huckleberry? There’s no way he could do it and get away clean.”
Patterson gave off a grin. “You’re right. There isn’t a way he could kill the president and get away with it. Which is why we never told Edwards what he was really carrying into the president’s meeting with him.”
“What is he carrying?”
“A bomb.”
Edwards looked down at the briefcase that he’d placed underneath the conference table. He placed both thumbs on the two small biometric scanners, but instead of the briefcase’s lock unlatching, it detonated. The entire room was consumed in a giant explosion that made the entire White House shake.
Security personnel rushed to the conference room as the fire alarm blared. The sprinkler system had also gone off, showering everyone in the sector where the explosion occurred. The door to the conference room had been blown off. In the room there was nothing but ash.
The bodies of the president and his staff were mutilated and burnt to the point where they were almost unidentifiable. The men and women staring into the room had the look of absolute horror on their faces over devastation so complete that it could only be a nightmare. Only it wasn’t.
Anna tapped on her earpiece to inform Vigilance of the threat. “Jack, the vice president is the mole, he’s going to …”
“It doesn’t matter now, Anna,” Jack said, cutting her off. Anna had never heard him sound so defeated.
“What do you mean?”
“I just got word that a bomb exploded inside the White House and wiped out the president along with his cabinet. There was nothing you could do.” Jack was in the Vigilance command center. He stepped away from the holographic screen displaying Patterson’s mansion to walk toward the nearest wall where he punched it as hard as humanly possible. The wall was made of concrete, but Jack was too pissed to care about the pain. He punched it again and again, and again. He looked down to see that his knuckles were bleeding.
Anna stood in place motionlessly for a second, feeling like a lead anchor was holding her to the floor. She wasn’t used to feeling defeated. And it sucked.
“Bad news?” Patterson smugly asked.
Anna looked down at the man who was one of the key architects in the death of the leader of her nation. She was about to take her combat knife and slice his throat open and let him bleed out like an animal at the slaughterhouse, but she reluctantly knew she couldn’t.
There were many more responsible for this tragedy, and Anna knew she could not afford to lose what could be her only lead to the top of the pyramid that Patterson belonged to. She never felt so reluctant in her entire life, but she knew from experience it was the right thing to do. She looked down at Patterson, who still held a slight smirk. He was way too comfortable for a man with a knife to his throat.
“You
actually think you’re going to get out of this?” Anna asked.
Patterson chuckled. “I’m always prepared, even for situations like this.” Anna looked at the set of holographic screens Patterson had displayed in front of them. One of them showed various camera feeds from around the property. Some of feeds displayed the feed for the backyard where Anna had been previously. The feeds from the front driveway Anna found much more interesting because they showed two black SUVs pulling into the circular driveway with heavily armed hostiles dispersing from the vehicles, ready to storm the mansion.
“How?” Anna muttered.
“You can’t get out of here. Not without me,” Patterson pronounced as kept the pressure on his right leg to slow the blood loss. Anna pushed him out of his chair. He hit the marble floor with a slight thud. She checked underneath the desk and saw there was a red button. A silent alarm.
“Anna, we’re spotting a mass movement of infantry entering the mansion,” Jack stated.
“Yeah, I know. Patterson triggered a silent alarm.”
“Zooming in with the drone, I count maybe a dozen hostiles. All armed with X-AS18 rifles and wearing Rhino armor with Phantom helmets.” Rhino armor was an advanced type of full-body Kevlar armor so thick that no conventional bullet could fully penetrate it. Their Phantom helmets granted the wearer both thermal and night-vision, also being the only real weak spot that Anna could exploit.
“I’ll deal with them in one way or another. Have Jackson bring the boat close to shore. I won’t be coming alone.”
Anna looked back at Patterson on the floor. “You’re right, I can’t leave here without you. You’re coming with me.”
“Wait, you can’t be serious,” Patterson said in disbelief.
Anna didn’t face Patterson as she tapped on her SCU and copied all the digital contents of Patterson’s computer onto it. After finishing that she opened a small pocket on her belt and pulled out one of the Blast Marbles that Waldo had given her. Anna got down on one knee.