Blood Vengeance

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Drake heaved a sigh of relief as word finally came down the chain of command.

“Mission is a go. Repeat, mission is a go.”

The VP had taken his time, but had eventually signed off on a plan devised by every one of the Joint Chiefs and their advisors. No single man wanted to be lumbered with formulating the strategy that could potentially save or sacrifice the President of the United States, but something had to be done. It had finally come down to the military men and their lifelong experience.

Dahl clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, matey. Time to chuck Kovalenko back through the gates of Hell.”

The men rose. They were a large group, involving many agents from the FBI Counter Terrorism Division, Hostage Rescue, and Special Weapons and Tactics. The hotel consisted of twelve floors, over three hundred rooms and around forty suites. Cutting edge technology had been used to penetrate the hotel’s walls, technology that Drake had encountered once before. The secret base over in the Florida Keys had used their advanced camera to determine the President’s location. Once redirected it had examined every room, floor by floor, finding civilians hiding in fear behind locked doors, tourists closeted together and watching CNN’s live feed, a turn-down maid engaged in a little discreet robbery, a manager surfing the Net for the best odds to gamble as to whether President Coburn lived or died, then the rogue Secret Service agent Marnich, and finally Kovalenko and his band of mercenaries. The Presidential Suite was on the top floor, but Kovalenko had set up his twisted sideshow one floor below. It was noted that Kovalenko stayed well away from the windows and used no unnecessary lighting, so they assumed he knew nothing about the American’s see-through-walls technology. But the harsh truth remained — they would only get one crack at this.

Marnich’s family had been contacted. It had been verified that they weren’t under duress and that the US agent was officially a traitor. Everyone in the room knew the Government had been compromised, the stoplight scenario upheld that hypothesis, but no one knew to what level. The Department of Defense was sweeping DC itself to ensure no other surprises remained in the form of radiological or biological signatures. The NSA reported no particular increase in anti-US chatter around the globe. The airspace above DC had been partially restricted and military flyovers were underway. The country’s threat level had been raised. In addition to the top-secret camera feed, an infra-red SaTScan had been ordered of the hotel in case the advanced camera passed outside its range of influence.

Drake craned his neck to view the live feed being bounced by satellite from the hidden facility in Key Largo. Kovalenko sat alone at a little round table, a shot glass and mini vodka bottles arranged before him as if they were on parade. Half a dozen of his men roamed the suite, each man dressed in a similar suit to the President, passing from the bedroom to the main room and through to a second bedroom. Two captives could also be seen, trussed up in the back bedroom, also wearing dark suits. The bar area was manned by a wiry African, who appeared to be Kovalenko’s second-in-command.

President Coburn rested with his feet up on a leather couch, looking remarkably calm and relaxed. His eyes were fixed upon a wall-mounted TV, watching minute-by-minute reports of the night’s events.

Now, Drake slipped around the sheer outer walls and then the courtyard of the Hotel Dillion, concealing his movements from and ignoring the raucous choppers hovering above. The news cameras had been allowed to stay, at a safe distance, to help fuel any overconfidence Kovalenko might be starting to feel. They knew the Blood King was pretty well isolated up there, but they also knew he would have some kind of a plan. Shot through with craziness or not, the situation wasn’t going to get any better.

Drake followed Dahl and half a dozen members of SWAT through a side door into a restaurant and dimly lit bar area that let out close to a rear stairwell. Each one of the hotel’s three stairwells were being negotiated at the same time by mixed forces, kept in constant contact by a central comms command. The central comms would orchestrate the clandestine assault whilst constantly analyzing every single scrap of information pinging around out there.

Drake paused as the team leader’s fist punched the air. He didn’t like the thought of being nothing more than a play piece, shuffled about a strategic board, dependent on the whim of others who might give the order to abort or strike at any given moment — he thought those days had shrunk to a distant speck in his rearview — but the mission objective surpassed all his sensitivities. That and the chance to avenge Gates and finally put Kovalenko into the ground in return for everything that had been committed in his name.

“All perimeters clear. Proceed with caution.” The command came down the line. The team leader stepped out, hugging the wall all the way to the stairwell door. His men followed. Communications were constant, passing between command and all three teams. FBI experts of all shapes and sizes were being utilized on the outside, from Hostage Rescue specialists, who analyzed Kovalenko and his men and President Coburn’s every move, to respected pros from America’s most elite tactical divisions. This truly was a fluid mission in all senses of the word, and under extreme scrutiny. Drake hit the stairwell as the sixth man in line and stayed against the wall, looking up as far as he could, but only able to see as high as the third floor. One flight of stairs up and they were halfway between the first and second floors. The team leader signaled another pause. Drake listened to a flurry of information. All three teams had infiltrated to the same level and, so far, met no resistance. This was expected. Every floor of the hotel had been scrutinized; the dilemma was that the rest of the mission had to be executed expeditiously.

Whilst Kovalenko’s men had enjoyed months of preparation toward this exact moment.

Drake followed as the team scaled another set of stairs and then two more, bringing them up to the third floor. Dahl turned and tapped him on the helmet, pointing to the window nearby. Drake glanced out to see flashing blue lights parked haphazardly for entire blocks and washing the streets and stone walls all the way to the White House.

Crazy mayhem.

It hit Drake then that there were times in the UK’s and America’s histories, nights like this when everyone was glued to the television or the radio or the Internet, and these were the moments that went down in history, never to be forgotten. These were the moments when you always remembered where you were and what you were doing. Moments that changed the world, and your life, forever.

Drake turned away from the window and steeled his resolve. Not only were the police, the FBI and the Army out there, so were his closest friends, all part of the only family he had left. This nightmare would only end for everyone by cutting the head off the snake.

With no contrary orders, the team progressed further up the staircase. The SWAT team advanced on whisper-soft feet, the whole black-clad group looking like a team of Ninjas. Drake had heard the term ninja used by the FBI, referring to a ready-to-go SWAT team member, but it only reminded him of the real thing. Although kept to a minimum, the sound of their passing still echoed. The fifth and then sixth floor came, then another squawk of static signaled a halt.

“Sit rep. Check.”

All three team leaders radioed the all-clear. Command furnished them with a blast of information — nothing had changed ‘upstairs’, but they sounded confident that no news was good news.

Drake watched as the team leader raised his hand, then paused as a new sound reached their ears. It was a sound every single man on the stairs knew by heart and by experience.

An explosion ripped through the hotel.