Land of the Gods

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Brooke tried to strike out but his arms were handcuffed behind his back and his legs were cuffed together. “You goddam son of bitch, threatening my daughter! When I get of here I’ll skin you alive, you bastard!”

Muston laughed as the plane levelled off.

Alex fought back the tears and tried to stop the panic attack from taking over. She was starting to sweat and felt dizzy. She hated hearing her father get so angry. She hated seeing these traitors mocking and humiliating him like this, and now they were threatening his only child. “Just leave him alone, you asshole!”

“Better keep it zipped, Alex, or I’ll have one of my men stick some duct tape over that big yap of yours. You want a nice peaceful flight to your new home, right?”

“And where might that be?” Brooke asked, calming again now.

Muston sucked his teeth and sighed. “Strictly need to know.”

“A CIA black site then.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look.”

“Faulkner was a long-time CIA man,” Brooke said, his mind whirring. “It’s the obvious choice. The question is where.”

“You have no idea.”

“We’re flying southwest,” Brooke said quietly, almost to himself. “A number of sites across various states spring to mind.”

Muston chuckled. He was clearly enjoying himself. The deed was done, the king was killed and he had somehow survived to become Faulkner’s Chief of Staff. He could relax a little. “You’re presuming we’re keeping you in the US.”

Alex’s panic grew stronger. Not in the US? Where the hell were they taking them — Mexico? Nicaragua? She felt her blood run cold. Colombia? She knew all about Colombia. “My father has the right to be tried in the US!”

“Any trial is a long way off, Alex. President Faulkner has a full domestic and foreign policy agenda to roll out, not least of which is increasing the war on terror, including against foreign forces like ECHO.”

They heard another chuckle.

“You can’t do this!”

“We already did it,” came the dry reply. “And believe me when I say there’s no way you’re escaping from where you’re going, no way at all. You will stay there for interrogation until the President is satisfied you’re not harboring any secrets threatening the vital interests of the United States and then you will be brought to trial to answer for your crimes. Some of the more hawkish are pushing for the death penalty, but between you and me I think it’s just a few centuries in prison for both of you.”

Brooke laughed. “You really think you’re going to pull this off, huh?”

“Like I said, we already did. There’s no one out there coming to save you, Jack. No one at all. That little thing you used to command — the US Armed Forces — guess what? They all work for President Faulkner now. None of your little Special Forces buddies are ever going to know where you are, never mind bust you out. And as for ECHO, you can forget about them too. They’re already on the FBI Most Wanted and similar lists in every country around the world that wants to do business with the US.” He laughed. “And that means everyone now, even North Korea.”

Alex fought the panic attack off and calmed herself. This was no time to fall apart. A few hours ago she was researching possible locations of the elixir for the ECHO team in a bid to try and get her legs working again, and now her father had been deposed and the two of them were being flown to an unidentified extraordinary rendition site somewhere in Latin America or maybe even further away from home.

And the bastard Josh Muston had been right. With Faulkner as the new sworn-in Commander-in-Chief the entire US military was now under his command. No one was going to look for them. No one was coming to save them.

Their only hope was Hawke and the rest of the ECHO team, and not only would they now have to work without any support or resources from the US Government, they were actively being hunted down as an international terrorist group.

She sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. At least that way she could forget about the bag over head.

“Don’t worry, Alex,” her father said gently. “We’ll get through this.”

She sighed. “You really think so?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Listen to your father,” McGee said quietly.

“You have a plan, Agent McGee?”

“No plan, sir, but I have a phone. I smuggled it in. You don’t want to know how.”

Brooke actually laughed. “Good work. Don’t let them know we have it.”

“No sir, Mr President.”

“See, darling?” Brooke’s voice was calm and measured. “We’re going to make it.”

“Jesus, Dad! Look at us!”

“You can’t think like that, Alex, or these bastards have already won. They already beat you when you start thinking like that.” His voice got serious. He wasn’t talking to her as her father anymore, but as a soldier, an army officer, a president. “Whatever they do to us, however much they cheat, however much they harm, however they much hurt, however much they use corruption and nepotism to crush us and get us out of the way… you know what you do with that?”

“What?”

“You curl it all up into a ball and put it inside your fist. You know what you do next?”

“I think so.”

“Right, you smash that goddam fist into their faces and you keep smashing until they’re dead.”

Jack Camacho nodded a curt thank you at Captain Michael Banks as they trotted up the airstair and stepped inside the 747’s top deck. The flight was simple: Washington DC to Luxembourg City and there a change onto another cargo flight piloted by one of Banks’s closest friends. No passports. No questions. This would take them all the way to Dubai where they could meet with the rest of their team. It was the only hope they had now.

He climbed into his seat and buckled up, still in shock. He’d never been on a cargo 747 before and was surprised by how cramped and basic the jumpseat area was. A dozen not particularly comfortable seats and no frills anywhere. The rest of the enormous aircraft was packed full of goods being exported to Europe.

But he had no complaints, just a deep and irrepressible horror about what he had witnessed in Georgetown outside Kamala Banks’s apartment. The power of the high velocity round and the terrible violence of his old friend’s death.

The rage swelled in his heart. He had known Kim for more years than he could remember. They had shared so many good and bad times together it would be almost impossible to believe she was dead if he had not seen it with his own eyes. How Joe Hawke and the rest of the ECHO team would react he could only guess, but he knew one thing — whoever had taken her life was a dead man walking.

The plane’s mighty engines roared and seconds later they were in the air and leaving Washington airspace. It banked sharply to the right, and he saw Kamala was looking over at him. “I’m so sorry, Jack.”

“Me too,” he said through gritted teeth. “But not as sorry as the son of a bitch who killed her.”

Jessica Clarke’s drive back to the airport was uneventful. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing on the radio about the President. It all sounded too crazy to be true, and she vaguely wondered if it had anything to do with her latest mission. Maybe, maybe not. Garcetti and the rest of those pen-pushing slobs never told her anything.

Talking of the devil, when Garcetti had sent her a text changing her mission from Iraq to Washington, she had breathed a massive sigh of relief. To her, it made no difference who was the next target — they were all equal as far as she was concerned. The big difference was time away from Matty. A flight to DC meant she could be there and back to LA in less than a day, but Iraq meant leaving her son on his own, and badgering Mrs Kowalczyk to keep an eye on him.

She drove away from the mayhem. Already she could hear the sirens and the police and ambulances scrambled to the site of her hit. A tragedy for the evening news — and tonight, the brutal slaying of a woman in Georgetown… she doubted it. Judging from what was going on inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue today it was unlikely the murder of Kim Taylor would make any news at all. They’d probably cover it up as a mugging gone wrong.

Not her problem.

Fact was, she was getting closer to her pay check, and that meant getting closer to her dream. That was three down now — Devlin, Lund and Taylor — and this was the sort of professional progress her employers expected, and why they had hired her to execute this contract. No one else could do it like this.

She cruised through the streets and drew closer to the military airfield where her plane waited to take her back to LA. Three down was good, but there was still a long way to go and plenty of ECHO teammates to take out before she got her money and her new life. At some red lights, she checked her box of bullets for the next target and raised her eyebrows in expectation when she read the name.

Logical really, when you thought about it.

Green lights, and on her way again. Soon it would be four down.

Another funeral.

Another wake.

Another day closer to her Mexican dream.