Stop at Nothing

1

It was to be the last meeting of the Alumni before the assassination of President Abrams the next day would throw the whole country into panic, chaos and confusion.

The meeting, as ever, was held in the utterly secure confines of Charles Hansard’s own government installation, the Office of the Director of National Security. And as ever, the men and women arrived without their drivers or their security details, driving their own rented cars in through the rear access road to the undergound parking lot.

Hansard had replaced the ODNI’s own security personnel on the gate with the lone figure of Nicholas Stern, who checked each and every individual on their way in. In this way, the meeting was as secret as it could possibly be.

There was an air of excitement, of anticipation, in the air that night, as the men and women of the powerful clique drank champagne and chatted animatedly about the future. Would it all work out? How quickly would things progress? How would they react under the watchful eyes of the press and public? What would they say?

But there was also a degree of nervousness, something that Hansard had been picking up on a little too much lately. It was always the same — people were always happy to talk a good fight, but when it came to crunch time, their will was often less than they boasted of. And Hansard had no desire to get embroiled in another episode like the one with Bill Crozier. He had balked at the last moment, threatening to go to Dorrell with everything. Maybe he would have, maybe he wouldn’t; but it was a chance Hansard had been unwilling to take.

But at the same time, he couldn’t very well just set about killing any member of the group who had their doubts. Doubts were natural, but they needed to be stamped out, and stamped out quickly, especially at such a critical juncture.

And so he had brought with him for this final meeting a very special guest; someone whom he hoped would rekindle the spirit of the Alumni and help them to see things through to the end.

2

Stephen Antonio Mancini waited quietly in the small room connected to the main conference room where the meeting was being held.

He was nervous about his appearance before the group. Even though he had been the President’s personal bodyguard for the past two years, the fact was that she did not intimidate him in the slightest; in fact, his entire concentration was devoted to concealing his utter hatred of her. The Alumni — and Vice Admiral Charles Hansard in particular — were in a different league altogether, however, and although he had worked for them for years, he had never before met them all together. Indeed, like many ‘beta’ members, Mancini didn’t even know for sure who they were.

The way the Alumni group worked was on three levels. The first was the Alumni themselves, the special group of people that had met and formed the core of the unit back at the turn of the century. Below that elite number were the beta members, those like Mancini himself who were aware of the group’s existence, ideals and goals — although not necessarily who the group actually consisted of.

But they shared the same ideals, and craved the same goals, and were willing to go to great lengths to achieve them. They would know one member of the core group at least — the person who had originally recruited them — and maybe even as many as two or three; but they would never know everyone that was involved. Such compartmentalisation was the cornerstone of the group’s security.

Below the beta members were the ‘gophers’ — those who served the higher members across the whole spectrum of the American administation, from local police to journalists, and from speech writers to special forces operatives, all doing the work of the Alumni without even knowing who it was they were working for.

Mancini was proud to be a beta member, one who actually knew what was going on, and was delighted that he would now get his chance to meet the elite members of the core group.

It was they, after all, who were giving him his chance of redemption.

3

Manipulation of people was a skill that Hansard had developed very early on indeed, long before his career in military intelligence had even started. It was something of an innate quality, and one which his privelaged upbringing and education had then honed to a razor’s edge.

With Mancini, the man had been recruited by Hansard many years ago, whilst still in the United States Army. Back then, Ellen Abrams had been a Senator who had campaigned for the right of American women to fight with men on the front line of battle. She had finally got enough agreement up on Capitol Hill that a special working group was put together to test the feasibility of such an arrangement.

Private Rebecca Maria Mancini, younger sister of Stephen, was part of that feasibility study, and after graduating near the top of her infantry class, was sent at Senator Ellen Abrams’ recommendation to the front lines of Iraq.

She lasted three weeks before she was killed, and Hansard had met with her brother soon after, stoking his hatred of Abrams — for Hansard had already foreseen that she would one day be President.

Hansard had then brought Steve Mancini on board to his programme, encouraging him to leave the Army and join the Secret Service, where Hansard’s connections helped him to quickly climb the ranks, with the aim of one day being on the Presidential detail.

But Hansard’s manipulations had not ended there — he had also ensured the painful break-up of Mancini’s marriage by setting up his wife to have an affair, which further increased his hatred of women.

And then as the years progressed and the time came closer, Hansard arranged for an after-works Secret Service party to leave Mancini drunk in the arms of a street hooker.

Mancini went privately to a clinic soon after, and then for a second opinion after that, but the verdict was unanimous — Stephen Antonio Mancini was HIV positive, with a bleak outlook ahead of him.

Not wanting to let the Service — or, indeed, his three estranged children — know about it, Mancini went straight to Hansard and asked for his help. Hansard agreed to help hide evidence of the disease from the doctors at Mancini’s annual Secret Service medical — an easy task, as there was no actual disease in the first place, Hansard having paid the orignal doctors to provide false reports — and to cover it up after his death, which Mancini now fully embraced.

For instead of crawling away to die quietly in a hole, Mancini would be going out all guns blazing.

4

Mancini once again thanked his lucky stars for Hansard’s help throught the years. Hansard had given him something to live for after the terrible death of his sister — revenge on that bitch Abrams, that fucking bitch who sent his little sister out to that shit hole to die.

But little Becky hadn’t just died, Mancini reminded himself — her legs had been blown off when her platoon had been ambushed up in the northern badlands, and then she had been dragged, still alive, by a four-wheel-drive through the streets of a grotty little town as an example to others, before being beheaded with a long-bladed knife. The footage, filmed by the terrorist group behind the atrocity, never made it on to US television — that bitch Abrams had managed to cover up the whole incident to protect herself, although she never pushed the whole ‘women on the front line’ crap any further afterwards — but Mancini had seen it on the internet, with his own eyes.

And then after his bitch of a wife had cheated on him, Hansard had been there for him, supporting him through it.

And now he was HIV positive, Hansard was going to cover the whole thing up, so that his kids would never know — and they would be set for life too, each of his three children set to receive ten million dollars upon his death.

For he would surely die on this mission, Mancini knew. He would put a bullet through the back of the head of that bitch Ellen Abrams, and he would then aim his weapon at others, and his Secret Service buddies would have no option but to gun him down.

But what a way to go!

5

Hansard stood at the head of the conference table and held up a hand for quiet.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced grandly, ‘the time is nearly upon us. I realize that most of us need to be elsewhere tonight to prepare for tomorrow’s events, but I have a special guest with us here, someone who should make us realize what sacrifice really means.

‘I know you all know of this man — his name, and his role in the proceedings — but I think it is important for us all to see him, here in the flesh, a member of our group who believes in our aims and ideals so thoroughly, so totally, that he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

‘Ladies and gentleman, I give you the man who will willingly die for these beliefs tomorrow; I give you Stephen Mancini, the man who will kill the President of the United States of America!’

The gathered members of the Alumni roared their appreciation as Mancini entered the room, and Hansard watched the scene with calculating eyes.

He saw the spirits in the room lift as they saw the patriot who would lay down his life for them, saw the Alumni draw strength from him just as Hansard had known they would, for there was simply nothing as powerful as a human sacrifice. They cheered, they applauded, they whistled, and Hansard knew they would remain strong, and would see it through to the end.

And then he studied Mancini, a man who had lost his sister, his wife, his children, and now his health, who was being given the chance for redemption, to prove himself as a true patriot, and Hansard watched the man’s private joy as Mancini saw the men and women gathered in the room and realised for the first time the true power of the Alumni. He watched the adulation from the elite group wash over Mancini, and the man seemed to grow physically larger from the attention, swelled with pride at his importance to the group’s plans, and Hansard knew Mancini would not let him down.

Hansard held his glass up high, and everyone did the same.

‘My friends,’ he announced, satisfied at last, ‘the next time we meet will be in a different world.’

6

Cole had still not opened his eyes fully, and the nearby guard was unaware that his prisoner was awake, as he continued to tap away at his laptop computer.

It appeared that Cole and the guard were the only people on board, save for the flight crew safely ensconced in the cockpit. The electromagnets were essentially unbreakable, which accounted for the guard’s lack of interest. He would have been told how dangerous Cole was, but being secured so tightly would give the guard the false confidence that it was a pure baby-sitting job.

It wasn’t going to be the most comfortable of tasks, but Cole relaxed his body and carried out the first phase of his plan.

7

Markus Schoenhoffer stopped typing, sniffing the air of the cargo area. The plane was damn cold — a problem with the cargo areas of military transport aircraft, and one that he was resigned to — and the low temperature tended to make scents carry.

The job was an easy one, Schoenhoffer reflected. The prisoner was extremely dangerous, but he was both sedated and securely locked into position. The police officer was going through night school to earn his masters in criminal psychology, and the three hour flight would give him some peace and quiet to get the next chapter of his dissertation done; it was due in by the start of the next term, and he had been struggling with finding the time to write it.

But what was that smell? He sniffed the air again, and then he was sure. Urine. The prisoner had pissed his pants! Of all the inconsiderate …

Schoenhoffer put the computer down on the cold metallic floor and got up out of his seat, stretching as he did so. He approached the seated man carefully, keeping his distance. The smell reminded him somewhat of camels at the zoo, and he wondered briefly if the toxicity was somehow related to the sedative the man had been given.

He sighed. The job was supposed to be easy, but he couldn’t very well sign the man over to his compatriots in Washington with piss all down his legs. In the current climate, there would doubtless be allegations of abuse or neglect, or some other such horse crap.

He was also worried about the effect of the liquid on the electromagnets securing the man’s legs. He didn’t know much about how the system worked, but was pretty sure urine and electricity didn’t mix. He was also sure that the system was very expensive, and didn’t want to be responsible if it broke.

Schoenhoffer knew there was only one thing for it, however unpleasant it might be; he would have to use a pair of his own trousers, pulled from his overnight bag, and change the man.

It should be fairly easy, Schoenhoffer figured. There were two switches that activated the magnetic clamps, one controlling the wrist clamps and the other the ankle clamps, and they could be operated independently of one another.

He would just disconnect the leg clamps, take off the man’s trousers, clean him up, and then put on the fresh pair — it really was like baby sitting, after all. He would then re-secure the clamps, and go back to his dissertation.

It would be unpleasant but nothing to worry about. After all, the man was still unconscious.

8

Cole heard the guard approach, and the sharp intake of breath as he saw the wet patch around Cole’s crotch.

Cole then heard him pulling something from his bag, muttering curses as he did so. Probably new trousers, Cole figured. He had known the guard would not want the embarrassment of signing over a prisoner covered in piss.

His only concern would have been if the guard had not noticed; he knew that scents carried in cold, confined atmospheres, but there was no guarantee it would be picked up. Cole would then have been forced to do something that definitely would be smelled by the guard, and he was extremely happy that it hadn’t come to that.

He sensed as the man came closer, and felt him reach over his head, hearing the click of a switch. The electromagnets. Cole hoped that one switch would control both ankles and wrists, but was not unduly surprised to find his arms still fastened in place. It would make things harder, but not impossible.

He felt the guard kneel down in front of him. Not yet. The man’s hands pulled the shackles apart wider, creating space to remove Cole’s legs. Not yet. The guard then pulled Cole’s lower legs free of the magnetic clamps. Now!

Cole’s legs shot up instantly, wrapping themselves tightly around the guard’s unprotected neck in a judo technique known as sangaku jime — the triangle choke.

Cole’s eyes were open now, and he watched the guard’s own eyes go wide as the oxygen to his brain was effectively cut off, Cole’s right leg cinched tight over his left, his hamstrings contracting as they cut off the blood supply at both sides of the man’s neck.

It took only seconds for the man to slump relaxed, unconscious. Cole kept it tight for another few seconds, just to prolong the period of unconsciousness but several seconds short of death, and then released his grip, the guard falling in a heap on the floor.

Wasting no time, Cole shuffled forward on the seat of his chair, creating some space to move in, before rocking his legs back over his head, his body concertinaring in the middle, shoulders and back hunched against the chair backrest.

The switches were based on a panel at the back of the headrest, which was where Cole had felt the guard reach earlier, and he tried to jab towards the unseen buttons with his toes.

His first effort failed, and his second, but on his third attempt, his body cramped, his ribs aching, he managed it; there was an audible click, and he felt the tight metal around his wrists loosen as the shackles fell open.

He jumped from the chair, bending down to secure the guard. The leg strangle was effective, but the result was short-lived, and the man would soon be awake with almost no ill effects. He found the man’s bag, and used handkerchiefs, a shirt, and a leather belt to bind and gag him.

All he had to do now was take control of the cockpit.

9

Cole changed trousers quickly — the new pair was not a perfect fit by any stretch of the imagination, but they would do — and pulled the guard’s Glock 17 pistol from the holster on the man’s belt.

He set off through the fuselage, checking the gun as he went, racking the slide to put a round in the chamber. There could be up to five more people through the sliding metal door, Cole knew — the pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, navigator and a loadmaster. On such a routine flight though, Cole would have been surprised if there was a full complement.

He stopped to check out of the starboard porthole, and saw a vast expanse of water beneath. The Hercules routinely cruised at a much lower height than a jet aircraft, often under 20,000 feet, and it was therefore below the cloud line, giving Cole an unobstructed view.

They had obviously already cleared the European mainland, probably Britain too, and would now be somewhere over the Atlantic. But where? He had no idea how long the sedative had laid him out, and so had no idea how long they had been airborne. The flat, lifeless seascape below gave him no point of reference.

Cole turned away from the small circular window, just in time to see a uniformed crewman — the flight engineer? — coming through the sliding door into the cargo area, a tray of mugs in his hands.

Cole’s weapon was up and targeting the engineer before the man could work out what was going on. A quick glance of the trussed-up body of Schoenhoffer told him everything, and his eyes went wide, the tray dropping in seeming slow motion from his hands.

The tray crashed to the floor, and Cole had still not taken his shot. He couldn’t — the engineer was military, but not a hands-on combatant. Instead, Cole made a dive forwards, trying to get himself into the doorway before the engineer could close it.

The engineer recovered his senses and snatched backwards through the portal as quickly as he could, reacting as if scalded. Cole was almost there, so close, his arm extending to stop the door being closed, but the man was too quick, and Cole heard the disheartening metallic scrape as the sliding door was pulled shut, then the click of the heavy lock; then the inevitable shouts as he alerted his compatriots.

Cole’s mind raced. What would happen now? The crew would doubtless alert Andrews, who would certainly inform Hansard. And what then? Cole considered matters even as he went back to the porthole. Hansard would probably up the amount of agents that would be waiting for him at the air base, and he was pretty sure they would launch an armed siege of the plane. Other than that though, probably not a lot would alter. After all, he was going to be killed if the plane landed anyway.

He looked out of the window, and saw the very vague, very faint outline of the coast just visible in the distance. Probably no more than an hour until they were feet dry over the United States. Shit.

He went back to the forward end of the cargo hold and tested the door. It didn’t move an inch. Cole considered shooting it, but knew that it wouldn’t do any good — it was two-inch thick steel, and the ricochets would probably kill him.

He paced the plane, thinking. And slowly — ever so slowly, piece by piece, it came to him. It would be dangerous, certainly. Suicidal, possibly.

But he knew if he didn’t get to the flight deck, he would be dead anyway.

10

Sarah Cole eased herself down the stairs one by one. She was far from fully recovered, but the fact was that she was going stir crazy cooped up in that little bedroom.

Also, the events of the past few days meant that she wanted her children close to her, and they had been enjoying themselves so much with Stefan’s own three children that they had scarcely been up to her room to visit her.

So despite the pain, the dizziness and the nausea, she had popped a couple of super strength painkillers and made the arduous trip from her bed, out of the bedroom, agonizingly across the hall, and slowly — oh, so very slowly — down the stairs, holding onto the wooden banister for dear life.

She was also more than a little concerned about her husband, as there had still been no sign of him. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she resolved to get Stefan to try and find out some information — it simply wasn’t sufficient waiting around, hoping Mark would either show up at last, or contact them in some way. They needed to find him.

Sarah would take Stefan off to one side, away from his wife and the kids, and discuss it with him.

She turned the corner into the kitchen, but it was empty. She heard voices off to the right, and followed them through the kitchen, into the dining room, and then further into the house, each slow, deliberate footstep more painful than the last.

And then she was there, at Stefan’s own little den, a wood panelled study where he sat to write his memoirs over a bottle of night time schnapps.

He was sitting with Ben and Amy, who were sitting in rapt fascination as he showed them a large hardback book.

He looked up as her shadow passed over the entrance to the room. ‘Well, look who’s up!’ he said jovially. ‘Mark would kill me if he could see you! Have a seat, have a seat!’

Steinmeier got up and helped Sarah the last few steps into the room, sitting her down in a comfortable easy chair next to the sofa where Ben and Amy were sitting.

Her children all but ignored her, continuing to leaf through the big book, and although she had missed them and certainly wouldn’t have minded if they had run to her and covered her with kisses, she was really quite glad. It meant they weren’t concerned about her, or about the events of the past few days. They were now somewhere familiar, somewhere fun, and somewhere safe.

But Sarah was surprised not to see Sabine and the three other kids. ‘Thanks Stefan,’ she said, accepting his offer of a mug of coffee as she relaxed into the chair. ‘What are you guys doing?’

‘Oh,’ Steinmeier said, sitting down between Ben and Amy, ‘we’re just going through some of our old photo albums. Mark’s in a few of these, although Ben and Amy don’t seem to think it’s him!’

Sarah smiled. He had certainly looked different back when he had been Mark Kowalski, that was sure. But she wondered why Stefan had the album out, and why he was showing them such strange pictures.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ she asked next.

‘On an unfortunate trip,’ Steinmeier explained. ‘Sabine’s mother has taken rather ill, so they’ve all gone to visit her in Bern.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing serious I hope?’

‘Well,’ Stefan said uneasily, ‘at this stage they do not know. We will have to wait and see. And maybe pray, yes?’

‘I’m sorry, Stefan,’ Sarah offered, and Steinmeier nodded his head.

He felt guilty for lying to her. There was nothing wrong with his mother-in-law. He had simply sent his family away for their own safety.

Because just five hours earlier, he had finally made the call.

11

Dan Albright was no longer in the hospital. After disconnecting himself from the monitors and drip he was hooked up to the previous evening, he had signed himself out. The doctors had at first refused to let him go, but he had demanded it and they had no power to keep him.

It had been necessary for the doctors to remove his eye completely, and it was now protected by a white plastic eye guard. His savaged nose was also covered by a guard, and his shaven head was criss-crossed with scabs. With the addition of light stubble, he now looked nothing like he used to; nothing at all.

After leaving the hospital, he had subsequently booked into a nearby hotel, where he had started making his plans. He had left for the sole purpose of tracking down Sarah Cole and killing her. He decided he was going to kill her kids first, right in front of her, force her to watch every last second. And then he was going to slit her throat from ear to ear.

He was lying in bed dreaming of his revenge when the call came. ‘Albright,’ he answered, immediately sitting up in bed upon hearing Charles Hansard’s voice on the other end. ‘No sir, I’m fine. No, I’m not at the hospital anymore, I was discharged last night … Yes sir, I’m in good health.’

And then Albright listened quietly to what Hansard told him, and he felt the excitement build as he was given his orders.

12

If the aircraft was going to cross over the US coastline within the next hour, then at their cruising speed of 250 miles per hour, they would be at Andrews within the next ninety minutes or so. This was both a good thing and a bad thing, Cole reflected as he wrenched free the upper attachments of the wrist and ankle bracelets from the chair at the rear of the cargo hold.

It was good because the aircraft’s speed would necessarily slow as it made its final approach, whilst the altitude would also reduce steadily, and both facts would make his task more achievable. It was bad news also however, as it didn’t give him long to accomplish this task — climbing out of the plane, moving over the length of the aircraft’s fuselage, before smashing through one of the cockpit windows from the outside, and then climbing back in to subdue the flight crew and take control of the plane.

Such a task seemed impossible, but Cole knew it could be done — or at any rate, would have to be done.

The answer lay in the electromagnets that had been used to restrain him. Cole knew the special chair was not a regular part of the Hercules’ equipment, and although it was now plugged into the aircraft’s main electricity supply, it would have had to be wheeled on board whilst magnetised under its own power.

Cole found a set of tools strapped to the side of the fuselage interior, and then once he had located the heavy battery pack at the rear of the chair, he wasted no time in detaching the unit. He then pulled the wires free from the chair, before breaking off the top part of the cuffs.

He then stripped the control panel from the head of the chair, removing the switches and connecting them back up directly to the cuffs, before testing to make sure it was all still operational. He held one of the ankle cuffs against the chair and flicked the switch, and the electromagnet pulled the top manacle in tight. The bond was nearly unbreakable once the current was passing through the magnet, and despite pulling for all he was worth, Cole couldn’t move it one iota.

Satisfied, Cole emptied the German guard’s backpack and placed the battery pack inside, leaving the wires trailing out from between the closed zip. He then focussed on strapping one ankle bracelet and one wrist bracelet to the front of each leg, cinching them tight.

Although the fact that there had been two switches on the chair — one to control the wrist shackles and the other to control the ankle shackles — had made his earlier escape a little harder, it was now going to play to his advantage.

He was going to use the electromagnetic manacles as climbing clamps, which would hold him securely to the metal fuselage, even with a 250 mile per hour wind trying its hardest to rip him free. He had used such aides before in the SEALS, when climbing up the slippery hulls of ships — although those clamps had of course been professionally custom-made. His home-made version would have to do though, and the same principles still applied.

Because one switch activated the ankle clamps and the other the wrist clamps, he strapped one of each to his legs, and he would have the corresponding opposite clamp in each hand. When he pressed the switch, one side of his body would therefore be securely fastened to the side of the plane, leaving his other side free to move; and then once in position, he would magnetise the other side, before freeing the first side and moving again.

It would be a slow process, Cole reflected as he made his way to the rear parachute door. He would have gone out of the front crew access door, but unfortunately it was on the other side of the now locked interior door, just opposite the stairs leading to the flight deck. It meant that he would have to exit via the rear of the plane, and traverse almost the entire length of the vehicle.

Cole reached for the door lever, the guard’s Glock pistol wedged securely into his belt, and pulled down hard. The door slid back and sideward, and Cole was immediately buffeted by the streaming, biting cold wind.

He took a deep breath and moved forward, hoping that the battery would last long enough for the dangerous climb. If it didn’t, it was one hell of a long way down.

13

‘What?’ Hansard asked, startled by the report that he had just received from a member of the security detail he had posted to Andrews Air Force Base.

‘According to the flight engineer, Cole escaped from the chair and subdued the guard,’ Hansard heard repeated on the other end of the line. ‘The guy managed to close the door aft to the flight deck, so Cole couldn’t get through. They’re starting their descent now, but it looks like the rear starboard parachute door has been opened.’

Hansard considered the situation for a few moments. Cole never ceased to amaze him, he really didn’t. Those electromagnets were supposed to be unbreakable! And where was Cole now? ‘Did he jump?’ Hansard asked next.

‘We don’t know, sir. The crew say there weren’t any parachutes stored in the cargo hold, so if he did, he’s dead, simple as that.’

Hansard was silent for a long time. What was Cole up to? What was he doing? What did he hope to achieve?

But there was simply nothing Cole could do, Hansard decided at last. If he was still aboard, he would be killed upon landing; if he had jumped, he would be dead already. Trapped in the cargo hold, there was nothing he could do.

And even if he did land, and even if he did then manage to escape from the Air Force base, what then? Who would believe his story anyway? It would be too late to make any sort of difference now anyway.

Still, it never hurt to be sure. ‘Get the tactical team ready,’ Hansard ordered. ‘When the plane lands, send them in hard. Try and keep the crew safe, of course, but make sure that if Cole is there, he’s dead.’

14

The wind that tore at his body was even worse than Cole had feared. The electromagnets did their job, keeping him clamped tight to the aluminium fuselage, but the slipstream threatened to pull the skin from his body. Breathing was exceptionally difficult, and Cole had to get air into his lungs in tiny, shallow, staccato breaths. It was a trial of strength and determination just to flick the switches that powered each pair of magnets on and off; moving his limbs when freed was near impossible.

But move he did, first out of the parachute door, clamping himself to the side of the doorway; and then up and over the fuselage, to the top of the plane. It would have been more direct to travel straight down the side of the aircraft, but the air displacement from the huge propellers would have made progress simply unachievable.

And so Cole had gone steadily upwards, and now found himself on the top of the plane, the top of his head taking the brunt of the wind, down onto his shoulders, threatening — always threatening — to rip him off completely, sending him hurling towards the frozen earth fifteen thousand feet below.

The plane was descending now, slowing its air speed and reducing altitude, the inverted attitude of the aircraft giving Cole a vague view of the world beyond; there was land — frozen, snow-covered, and decidedly urban. They were close.

And so Cole marched steadily onwards towards the segmented windows of the cockpit — just fifteen metres away, but it could have been fifteen miles. Right hand switch — click — right hand and leg released — move both limbs in synchronisation, fighting against the tearing, icy wind — touch down again, magnets in contact once more with the airframe — right hand switch — click — right hand and leg re-secured against the fuselage, several all-important inches nearer the cockpit — a few shaking, ragged breaths — and then the whole slow, painful process again on the opposite side.

He was running out of time, and realization dawned on him of what the consequences would be if he failed — Hansard’s plan would work and the America that Cole knew and loved would be entirely destroyed.

He increased his pace, moving forwards faster, with renewed effort and determination. Hansard would not win.

15

Finally, after what seemed like hours upon hours of painful effort, Cole was there, at the cockpit, just inches away from the chosen window.

For improved visibility for the crew — important when flying low, a regular occupation for the venerable aircraft — the Hercules had a mass of glass, stretching all around the cockpit in smaller segments. Some of the sections were smaller than others, but the one Cole had selected — directly to the port side of the flight deck — was more than big enough for him to climb through.

From his position on top of the aircraft, Cole had clambered back down the side, not wanting to have to go through one of the frontal segments — he didn’t fancy flying with no windscreen, taking the full brunt of the Atlantic wind in the face all the way.

He clicked his right hand switch, and as his hand came free, he tried to keep his leg in close contact with the aircraft to help steady himself. His hand went down for his gun but, weighed down by the electromagnetic bracelet, was immediately whipped backwards, the force pulling his leg away too, until his whole body swung back towards the fuselage, pivoting around the fulcrum of his left arm and leg.

He cursed, forcing his body to come back round with all his strength, until he managed to pivot back, his right hand dropping to his belt, pulling the Glock semi-automatic free, struggling against the pull of the wind as he raised the barrel, placing it at an oblique angle firmly against the back end of the flight deck’s middle side window.

Gasping for breath, resisting the powerful pull of the wind, even as he saw the buildings of the air base below come into sharp focus, he pulled the trigger — one shot, two, three, four, five, six, until the window finally — finally! — began to star and crack.

It wouldn’t shatter, Cole knew, and so he pulled himself in closer, using the butt of the gun to smash the window — again once, twice, three times — until the whole thing collapsed inwards, and then Cole was there, both switches turned off, the magnets no longer securing him but hands placed in the window frame as he hauled himself in, gun up and raised at the terrified, bewildered flight crew.

16

The loadmaster wasn’t there, but that still left four crew members for Cole to deal with. The co-pilot was right in front of him as he pulled himself through the window, and Cole immediately smashed him in the face with the butt of his pistol, knocking him out cold.

Even as the co-pilot slumped unconscious in his seat, Cole leapt forwards through the enclosed flight deck, hammering a front thrust kick into the navigator’s chest before knocking the flight engineer down with a palm heel strike to the face.

Taking advantage of the two crew members’ disorientation, Cole followed up with marma strikes to the men’s necks, ensuring complete loss of consciousness.

From the moment Cole had entered the cockpit to the moment he had the Glock up and aimed at the pilot, the other three crew members strewn unconscious around the flight deck, less than five seconds had elapsed.

The pilot had started his mayday call to Andrews, but now fell silent, staring down the barrel of Cole’s gun.

‘Delta Six One, this is Control Tower Andrews, repeat your last, over,’ Cole heard from the radio, barely audible above the rush of wind through the flight deck.

‘Delta Six One, I say again, repeat your last, over.’

‘Change course to two-four-one degrees,’ Cole told the pilot. The man hesitated, and Cole pushed the gun nearer. ‘Do it,’ he demanded, and slowly, reluctantly, the pilot made the necessary adjustments.

‘Now tell them the plane’s rudders and ailerons have been damaged with the weather,’ Cole told him. ‘Tell them you can’t turn the plane. Tell them it’s locked on course.’

The pilot nodded. ‘Control Tower Andrews, this is Delta Six One,’ the pilot said, firm control over his voice. ‘We’ve had a technical malfunction, lost steerage, possible rudder fault. We cannot make the landing at Andrews, I repeat, we can no longer make the landing at Andrews. We are unable to alter direction, over.’

There was a pause. ‘Delta Six One, what is your present course, over?’

The pilot gave it, clearly and loudly.

‘Delta Six One, do you know the location of those coordinates, over?’

The man looked down at his navigational charts, paused as he checked the numbers, and then closed his eyes. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered in disbelief.

Course two-four-one degrees aimed the huge transport aeroplane straight at the White House.

17

Hansard felt sick to his stomach.

The report from Andrews suggested that the Hercules had developed a steering problem that meant it could no longer bank or turn without threatening to rip itself apart, a problem the technical team thought might have to do with the rear parachute door being kept open for so long in such terrible weather conditions.

It meant that the plane would no longer land at Andrews, but would continue on its current course, which would take it straight past Fort Dupont, the eastern branch of the Potomac River, and right over Capitol Hill. Andrews had contacted the White House already, much to Hansard’s disgust, and there was already a team out trying to clear Constitution Avenue in order to give the pilot an impromptu landing site.

A technical issue was plausible, of course, and yet Hansard’s gut instinct told him it was Cole. Somehow the man had made it onto the flight deck and had taken control of the plane.

There wasn’t long — the Hercules was even now flying over Chesapeake Bay, and would be at the White House in less than thirty minutes.

Unfortunately, the White House had already been informed, it was an allied aircraft, and the pilot was still alive and talking to the Andrews Control Tower — all of which meaning that Hansard had no official justification for shooting it down.

But he knew his own assault team had arrived at Andrews earlier that day in two Bell helicopters, unconnected to the official security services.

One pilot and two gunmen in each. It wasn’t ideal, especially in this weather, but it would just have to do.

18

Ellen Abrams sat at the small French dressing table in the dressing room of her master bedroom suite, located in the southwest corner of the White House main residence.

The window beyond looked over the deeply snow-covered Rose Garden towards the West Wing, but for now the President was looking in the oval mirror that sat atop the table, examining herself.

As always, she looked immaculate; but it never hurt to check. Her personal team of make-up artists would go to work on her before the press conference, of course, but she had to appear in control of her own appearance even in front of them.

It wasn’t her skin tone, her hair, or her own make-up that she was checking now though; it was her poker face. Did any sign of the fear, the worry, the anxiety of the present global situation show itself anywhere on her face? Did it show in her body language? Her posture?

Because she was frightened. There had been an American attack on a fellow global superpower that was now threatening to throw the world back into the dark ages of the Soviet-era Cold War, and it had happened on her watch.

It appeared to be the work of one man, William Crozier, the ex-Director of the National Clandestine Service, but Russia and China obviously didn’t believe that. And with good reason, as it turned out — the latest reports from the secondary CIA investigation hinted that Crozier might have been involved with outside agents who were as yet unknown.

And this was what truly troubled her — the fact that she didn’t know, she didn’t truly know what was going on. And yet she was scheduled to appear before the American people in less than two hours to reassure them that all was well, despite all the rumours circulating about in the media, and in the conspiracy sites on the internet.

And so she needed her poker face. She checked it, and checked it again, finding no flaw, no visible chink in the armour.

She rose from the table, adjusted her tailored navy-blue suit, and passed through the bedroom into the sitting room beyond.

Her personal bodyguard was waiting just inside the door, alert and attentive as always.

‘Hey Stevie,’ Abrams said as he straightened up to attention.

‘Ma’am,’ Mancini said, nodding in greeting. ‘How are you feeling?’ Mancini had been the head of Abrams’ personal Presidential security detail for the entire two years of her presidency, but time had merely made his hatred of her grow stronger; it pained him to be nice to her, but he was buoyed by the meeting the previous night, and knew he had to keep in character, at least for now.

On the surface, they had built up a good working relationship, and he knew her better than most. Despite her poker face, he could see she was ill at ease. Good, Mancini thought. Fucking bitch.

‘Does it show?’ Abrams asked.

‘Only to me, ma’am,’ he said, smiling now. ‘But I think you look perfect anyway.’

She blushed, despite herself. ‘Oh, you have a way with the ladies, don’t you Stevie?’

Mancini laughed. ‘Try telling that to my ex-wife,’ he said, and Abrams laughed too, the laughter relaxing her.

‘There you go,’ Mancini said, ‘laugh a little, it’ll do you good.’ He smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Now you’re ready.’

Abrams smiled back. ‘You’re right. Now I’m ready. Thank you, Agent Mancini.’ She turned for the door to the central hallway. ‘Let’s go.’

Mancini nodded his head. ‘Yes, Madam President.’

19

The pilot died instantly, just as the plane reached Washington’s inner coastline, as the 5.56mm bullets ripped through the cockpit, shattering the rest of the windows and showering the flight deck with the lightly armoured glass.

Cole had dived below the enormous bank of controls that took up most of the space at the front of the cockpit, only at the last moment hearing the tell-tale hum of the helicopter’s rotors over the din of the four prop engines and the roar of the wind.

The rotor noise had soon been drowned out by the metallic clang of bullets ripping their way down the side of the aircraft’s fuselage. Without a pilot, the aircraft suddenly dipped, and Cole pulled himself reluctantly across into the pilot’s seat, pulling the strafed, bullet-riddled body of the pilot out onto the floor. He kept his body low, hunched over the instrument panel as he took control of the aircraft.

Through the shattered windscreen, Cole could see nothing except the dark expanse of sky and a fearsome white cloud sailing towards him as the snow and frozen hailstones smashed into his unprotected face and eyes. He held up an arm to shield himself, and under its protection could just make out the glittering lights of Washington in the distance up ahead.

He heard the high-pitched whine of the rotors coming in from the side again, and pulled the big aircraft over into a sharp bank to the right, the supersonic rounds peppering the fuselage instead of the flight deck.

It was then he saw the second chopper, circling in from the other side.

20

For his part, Matthew Raines had never flown a helicopter in such appalling conditions. It was an effort just to keep the Bell from crashing, never mind in a perfect attack position.

Hansard had made contact with him just minutes before, ordering him into the snow-filled skies above Washington.

Raines had first met Hansard when he was still in the Army, flying helicopters in Afghanistan. Hansard had taken him with him first to the DIA, and then into the SRG, and now Hansard had him permanently stationed in DC, from where he often still flew missions. He had never led an actual attack in American airspace however, and was justifiably nervous, although Hansard had assured him it had all been cleared with United States authorities.

The two men attached to straps in the passenger compartment, leaning out of each door with their weapons firing at the nearby cargo plane on full auto, Raines had worked with before. They too were SRG operatives, and Raines knew they were good, and despite the weather the men had already managed to destroy most of the front end of the plane.

They each used a 5.56mm Steyr AUG, which was a reliable modular design from Austria that came in a range of different variants. This one had the twenty-four inch heavy barrel, and was used as a light support weapon, where its performance could be devastating.

As Raines homed back in towards the plane, he saw the rounds from the other helicopter — piloted by a close friend and fellow SRG pilot — trace up the body of the Hercules, until the rear section started spewing a thin black cloud out across the driving mid-air snow.

21

Cole’s mind raced as he sat at the controls, trying his best to shake the attack. The trouble was that the big Herc just wasn’t built for manoeuvrability, whereas a helicopter was, and the two little birds were all over him.

He felt the aircraft pull to the right, and then his eyes were drawn to the fuel readout. There wasn’t much left to start with, but Cole watched with rising apprehension as the needle started to drop lower and lower.

Raines battled with the controls to keep the helicopter steady as he pulled up alongside the Hercules cockpit once more; he knew there was no chance the pilot would be able to bank away in time.

Meanwhile, his opposite number had boxed the Hercules in from behind.

As he turned his chopper broadside on to the big plane, he glanced towards the rear. There he saw Marcus Davies, the ex-Marine Force Recon operator, as he leaned out of the Bell’s side door, leaning heavily against the strap, trying to steady his rifle against the barrage of wind, ice and snow.

If there was anyone left alive in the cockpit, there wouldn’t be for much longer.

22

Cole grimaced as the first helicopter reappeared in front of him, and he strained to see through the snow as the aircraft banked across him, a man leaning out, rifle up and aimed.

The distance was close, and he knew that any second the entire flight deck would once more be hosed down with the hundreds of deadly high-velocity rounds that were draped around the man’s shoulders, feeding from a bandoleer straight into the big rifle.

Cole felt the rear of the craft judder as the second helicopter attacked from the rear.

It was now or never, Cole decided, reaching for the cockpit fire extinguisher.

Raines couldn’t help but laugh as his eyes focussed on the Hercules cockpit and he saw the lone man behind the controls, raising a small pistol up towards the helicopter. What the hell did he expect to accomplish with that?, Raines wondered incredulously.

He saw the muzzle flash, and then as he waited for Davies to respond with his own gunfire, he only had time to catch a glint of metal as what looked like a missile fired straight towards him from the Hercules cockpit.

Cole watched as the fire extinguisher shot across the narrow gap between the two aircraft, its highly pressurized gas contents powering it away from the cockpit at over a hundred miles per hour.

Instead of wasting his ammunition by firing directly at the helicopter, Cole had instead shot a single, small-diameter hole in the bottom of the fire extinguisher and had then watched as the gas escaped at extreme velocity from the hole, resulting in what amounted to a small aluminium missile shooting across the night sky.

To Cole’s amazement and unbridled joy, the extinguisher travelled in a more or less straight line, smashing straight through the Bell’s cockpit window and into the pilot’s face, smashing through his head until it buried itself in the partition wall behind, where it twirled around lethargically with the remains of its propellant gases.

At the same time as he fired the Glock, his other hand also hit the counter-measures control on the Herc’s instrument panel.

White-hot flares burning at more than a thousand degrees dispersed themselves all around the aircraft, firing out at every angle, a brilliant, symmetrical fireworks display in the cold night sky.

Cole observed as the first helicopter shook, the pilot dead, slumped over the controls, nothing controlling the Bell’s flight now, and it skittered, banked, yawed, and ultimately fell from the sky, erupting in a bright orange fireball on the ground below.

Meanwhile, the flares, designed to confuse heat-seeking missiles fired at the aircraft, were successfully doing another job entirely. The second helicopter had been in the direct path of the rear flare cluster, and two thousand high-powered flares had fallen directly onto the Bell’s main rotor, destroying it instantly.

Flares also passed through the cockpit and the rear compartment, and the men onboard all burned to death before the second helicopter, like the first, fell to earth and exploded in a raging inferno, flames shooting up to lick the underside of Cole’s own ravaged aircraft.

23

Cole checked through the broken glass at the lights below him, just visible through the bitter December weather. He thought for a moment of what he was doing, where he was headed. When President Ellen Abrams had last met him, she had been a Senator and he had been something of a hero. But now?

Sitting there in the cockpit of the hijacked plane, the mangled body of the RAF pilot at his side, he just didn’t know. If he hadn’t killed Crozier, would the CIA man have revealed everything about the plan? Would this entire thing have been avoided? It was possible, certainly. In this respect, Cole was in a sense partially responsible for the cold war that was to come.

He shook off the feeling. He had to get the information he had to Abrams, and hope that she would be able to use it; it was his only hope for redemption, and the only way to save the world from a possible future annihilation.

And so he had to concentrate. The weather was appalling, freezing cold and with driving snow that speared its way into the cockpit, obscuring his vision and dulling his reflexes.

He knew that below him would soon be Annapolis, and then he would be over DC proper, on his way to the impromptu runway that was being prepared on Constitution Avenue.

With poor visibility, damaged instruments and a potentially frozen runway on which to land, Cole was under no illusions about his chances.

24

The altimeter still seemed to be operational, as well as the unit-to-ground image, and Cole prayed that the readouts were accurate, as he was going to have to rely on them to get the Hercules down. If the chopper attack had damaged the integrity of that information, it could be disastrous — an error of five metres could make the difference between landing in relative safety, or smashing down into the concrete highway and breaking the plane into a million pieces.

The noise was fierce — the lack of cockpit windows meant that Cole was subjected to the full, insanely loud roar of the four huge propellers, as well as the horrific wind noise that whistled through the cabin. It was cold too, terribly cold, and he was inordinately glad of the warm sweater he had been given to wear back in the cells in Munich.

Cole had deployed the landing gear, and had been pleased to see that it still functioned — had it been damaged, it would have reduced his chances even more. As he over-flew eastern DC, he began to work the throttle and the altitudinometer, and the big aircraft began to slow and descend.

He still couldn’t see anything except for vague lights outside the cockpit, but his maps told him he was nearing Capitol Hill, at a height of just five hundred metres and closing.

He came down, lower and lower, speed reducing more and more. He knew the Hercules was designed to land on short runways, and with a light load could land in as little as two hundred and fifty metres. Constitution Avenue was much longer than this, but Cole was aware that the weather was incredibly bad, and he wasn’t even preparing to land on a proper runway, but rather a hopefully-cleared urban boulevard.

And then the sound changed, higher pitched for an instant, and Cole knew he had just cleared the top of the Capitol building itself, the brilliant white porticoed Georgian edifice standing proud atop of Capitol Hill, overlooking the rest of the Washington Mall beneath.

His height was just a hundred metres and closing, his speed just a hundred knots, and he was looking, searching from the open cockpit, looking for –

There! Lights directly below him, in two long straight lines, exactly where he had hoped the avenue would be, and Cole was pleased — happy not only that he had navigated to the correct position, but also that Abrams had organised high-power lights to be strung out along both sides of the street, providing some merciful visual assistance.

The road was coming up at him quickly now, and he pushed down on the yoke as he neared the iced concrete surface. Eighty, forty, twenty metres, everything happening too quickly, the ground rushing up towards him, lights blinding him now, and then his entire body shook with the impact as the aeroplane hit the street hard.

The big Hercules rolled from side to side, trying to find grip, some purchase on the slippery surface of the avenue, even before its weight had fully settled on the wheels. And then the yoke was fully down, and the plane’s weight collapsed onto the landing gear, and Cole struggled to keep the massive aircraft in a straight line as it plummeted along the boulevard, past the National Archives on the left and then the Natural History and American History Museums on the left, the huge needle of the Washington Monument illuminated further over, a sight that caught Cole’s eye as the aircraft swung towards it, and then left his vision as the Herc swung back to the right.

Cole heard the high-pitched whine as the tyres still struggled to secure their grip on the tarmac, and then a shriek as one of the wheels broke loose from the frame, the heavy bulk of the aircraft collapsing to the street on one side, scraping along the icy street at an odd, dangerously off-balanced angle.

But then Cole felt his progress slowing, the actual body of the aircraft digging into the concrete of the street, ripping up the tarmac and being braked against the churned-up surface.

Cole felt the plane drop a level again as another wheel collapsed, and then the Hercules started to spin on its axis, but slowly — ever so slowly now, as its forward momentum reduced — until eventually, mercifully, finally, the vehicle came to a complete stop.

Cole’s breathing, ragged and hollow, now also started to slow as he regained his composure, trying to get his bearings.

He shook his head clear, and tried to make out the surroundings directly outside the broken cockpit.

His eyes focussed badly, then cleared, and then re-focussed. He smiled as he recognized the view from the flight deck straight ahead. Through the driving snow and hail he could make out the incongruous decorative lights of the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse directly in front of him, and beyond that, the reassuring Georgian familiarity of the White House, the home of the President of the United States of America, Ellen Abrams.

He’d made it.

25

The Secret Service Emergency Response Team section leader directed the driver of the lumbering, tractor-like Snow Cat — vital in conditions that were the worst Washington had ever seen — towards the landing zone. The figure of the man who had piloted the aircraft had pulled himself out of the cockpit window frame and dropped to the ground behind a snowy ridge. The heavy metal unit clanked and ground its way slowly forwards.

‘Weapons hot,’ he ordered his men, and they all racked back the cocking levers of their cold weather-modified assault rifles.

As the Snow Cat rumbled over the hill, the eight armed men swarmed out of the vehicle, weapons raised.

Cole’s hands were already raised in surrender in preparation for them. He knew the White House’s security force would be on high-alert and geared up for action, and would therefore be in a state of mind where they would react with force to any slight movement.

Essentially, they would have no idea who he was or what his intentions were; they would just have orders to arrest him on sight.

Although it was a relief not to have the elements channelled directly into him at high speed as they had been in the plane, at least there had been heating in the cockpit. It was freezing cold at ground level, and Cole was again glad of the thick woollen sweater that helped shield him from the subzero elements.

The cold air assaulted Cole’s unprotected head and face though, and he could feel his brain instantly start to go numb. He had been on training exercises in the Arctic Circle that hadn’t been as cold as this.

‘Strip,’ the team leader now ordered. Cole knew they wanted to check for explosives, but was reluctant — the cold could potentially kill him within a few minutes. When he saw the guns press forwards towards him ever so slightly in response to his delay though, he complied; first taking off his gloves, then his boots and then his thick jump suit.

Cole’s breath caught in his throat as he stood there in his underclothes, his body already starting to react. Then the leader nodded, and four men rushed forwards and grabbed hold of him, dragging him through the snow back towards the big all-terrain vehicle.

Once inside the heated compartment, the men cuffed his hands and then covered him in a thermal blanket. He was already shivering uncontrollably, unable to breathe properly.

Inside his near-frozen brain, he started to get a mental grip on himself, forcing himself to relax, to breathe, to allow the warmth to re-enter his body. Soon he was calm again, his breathing regular.

His eyes focused in time to see his clothing being loaded into the back of the Snow Cat, and moments later the vehicle was moving again, the roar of its big diesel engine competing loudly with the crash of its rotating tracks.

‘Sir,’ he heard the team leader announce into his radio, ‘it’s Team A. We’re on our way back.’

26

Cole noticed the impressive neo-classical façade of the White House lit up before them, from the warmth of the Snow Cat as it laboured through the snow and finally came to a stop on the South Lawn, a Marine security detail lined up to meet them and escort them inside.

After receiving a change of clothes — basic Marine combat fatigues — he was bundled out of the Snow Cat and marched across the Rose Garden to the first floor entrance to the West Wing underneath the West Colonnade.

He was grabbed and then manhandled along the corridor, around the corner to the left and then pushed and pulled down the stairs to the basement. At the bottom, the door to the left of the stairs was already opening, and Cole was pushed unceremoniously inside, where more men from the ERT grabbed him, pulling him onto a hardback chair in the corner of the room.

From his rapid journey through the West Wing, Cole knew he must be in the basement’s Secret Service room, directly below the Cabinet Room and Oval Office above.

He looked around the room, and saw banks of computers, weapons racks, equipment stores, as well as the ubiquitous kettle and microwave. But apart from the ERT guys who now held him, the room was empty of personnel.

Cole watched as the men listened to their ear mikes, and then as one of the men came forward, undid Cole’s handcuffs, pulled his arms tightly back around the chair, and then re-secured them.

Cole wasn’t panicking yet — David Grayson, the Director of the Secret Service, wasn’t on the list of JMIC alumni, and so Cole had to assume that the agents were just doing their job, securing the unknown threat until they received further orders.

The door opened then, and a woman walked in, her features stern, hard and decidedly unfriendly. Two suited agents followed her.

‘Go back to your posts,’ she ordered the ERT men, ‘Barnes and Davis will guard the prisoner.’

The assault team left the room without a word, and Cole realized he had been wrong to be unconcerned.

Because even though David Grayson wasn’t a member of the Alumni, the Secret Service was under the direct control of the Department of Homeland Security.

And the Secretary of State for that particular department was Elizabeth Harden, graduate of the Joint Military Intelligence College, year 2000.

27

‘Vice Admiral Hansard sends his congratulations to you on your unbelievable success so far,’ Harden began, her face still emotionless, almost machine-like. ‘But, like all good things, it too must come to an end.’

She smiled then, for the first time. ‘Like your family,’ she said cruelly, watching as Cole twitched involuntarily in response. ‘Yes,’ she said happily, ‘it turns out you really can’t trust anyone, can you? Stefan Steinmeier contacted us last night, telling us all about his visitors.’

Cole tried to disguise the fear, the rage, the uncertainty, the anger, but failed; Harden saw it all. ‘Don’t judge him too harshly,’ she continued. ‘A ten million dollar reward is too much to pass up for anyone. Offered by Hansard to old allies of yours all over Europe. Agent Albright is on his way there now to take care of your family personally.’

She gestured behind her, and Barnes and Davis drew their Sig Sauer pistols. ‘You escaped, tried to kill me, and were put down by these two fine Secret Service agents,’ Harden explained. ‘An assassin sent by Russia and China, just to add a little more fuel to the fire.

‘And it really doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know,’ she continued. ‘Abrams is upstairs right now, in the stairwell behind the podium with Mancini, getting ready to address the world in’ — she checked her watch — ‘just under three minutes.’

Cole smiled up at her. ‘Well, that should just give me enough time.’

28

Whilst Harden had been talking, Cole had been slipping his wrists free from the cuffs. When they had been re-secured, Cole had slipped his wrists down fractionally so they had gone round a thicker portion of his lower forearm, tensing the muscles to make them even bigger. The result was that when he relaxed the muscles and the cuffs slid down to his wrists, there was just enough space within the cuffs to squeeze his hands through.

He had paused halfway through at the mention of his family. Was it true? Could it possibly be true? She knew Steinmeier’s name, anyway, and that was more than enough to concern him.

But he couldn’t do anybody any good stuck to the chair awaiting execution — not his family, not the President, and not the citizens of the United States who stood to have their lives irrevocably altered.

And so Cole wasted no more time in freeing himself, hurling himself off the chair towards Harden, grabbing her and turning her towards the shooter on the left even as he slammed the callused edge of his hand across the bridge of the other man’s nose; blood flicked out from the corner of the agent’s eyes and he fell dead to the floor.

The second agent hesitated for vital moments as his target was obscured by Harden’s writhing body, and Cole took the opportunity to thrust the web of his hand, between his index finger and thumb, straight into the agent’s throat, the impact crushing the windpipe and killing him instantly.

Harden, who had now dropped to her knees, looked up at Cole with pleading eyes. ‘Please,’ she offered, real emotion now evident in her voice, ‘I can make you rich. I can — ’

Cole cut her off with two quick nerve strikes, rendering her unconscious. He wanted desperately to kill her, but the fact was that she was living proof of Hansard’s plans, and a ‘strategic interview’ with the woman would corroborate what Cole would tell the President — if he got there in time to save her.

29

Standing on the stairs from the old swimming pool to the Press Briefing Room above, President Ellen Abrams took several long, slow and deep breaths.

‘Okay, Stevie,’ she said to her bodyguard, loyally by her side. ‘It’s showtime.’

Together, they ascended the steps to the first floor. Abrams would emerge from behind the curtain to take her place behind the podium whilst Mancini would subtly move to one side, unseen.

He smiled at the President and nodded his head. ‘Yes, ma’am. Showtime.’

30

Cole had quickly stripped the Secret Service agent closest to his own size and weight, and had exchanged clothes.

He now wore the man’s dark blue suit and tie, Sig Sauer handgun on a tactical holster on his belt, radio earpiece in and operational.

‘Eagle Eye moving to podium,’ Cole heard over the radio, and he knew it must be Mancini reporting on the President’s movements.

He opened the door of the Secret Service room and strolled out confidently, just as an agent would who had every right to be where he was, going where he was going.

He turned immediately right at the stairs and ascended them quickly. He had less than a minute.

31

Ellen Abrams emerged to the podium to the blinding flash of lights from the gathered cameras, and it took her eyes a few seconds to focus.

The small room was full to capacity, each chair in the theatre-style bank occupied, as well as all standing room behind and to the sides. Even after its refurbishment, the Press Briefing Room was something of a fire hazard. The main door to the room was blocked by reporters, all eyes intently on her, waiting for her statement so that they could report it to the world.

She glanced to her left and saw Mancini waiting there in the shadows behind her.

Reassured by his presence, she began.

32

Cole’s trip through the house was almost as rapid as when he had been manhandled inside earlier in the evening, and it had been plain sailing until he was outside the press room.

At the top of the stairs he had turned right, and then just before the entrance to the West Colonnade, he turned left into the outer press offices.

The people there had made way for him, and he had listened intently to the radio as Mancini announced Abrams was at the podium.

And then Cole had been at the door to the Press Room, shoulder to shoulder with reporters and press agents who hadn’t made it inside.

Two Secret Service agents blocked the door. As he approached, he saw their faces change from welcome of a fellow agent, to concern, to suspicion. ‘Who the hell are you?’ asked the one on the left, six feet four and two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle.

Both men’s hands were already going to their guns, but Cole was faster, catching a point behind the big man’s ear, moving to his right even as the first man dropped unconscious to the floor, trapping the second agent’s gun arm and punching him in the side of the neck, disrupting the blood flow and knocking him out cold.

Cole saw agents further down at the far end of the corridor reacting, but paid them no attention as he burst through the door into the Press Briefing Room.

33

As President Abrams made her introductory statement to the press, and to the millions of Americans watching at home, Mancini was no longer listening to the words.

He merely scanned the room to make sure that all cameras were on, focussed, and concentrated on the stage.

It was beautiful, it was all so beautiful; he could see Abrams’ head just in front of him, the years of pent-up frustration and rage just seconds away from being being opened up in a maelstrom of violence. That pretty little head would soon be exploding into a million little pieces, televised across the globe. Beautiful.

He took a deep breath.

And then in one fluid, practised motion, he drew his pistol.

34

Eyes turned on Cole as he shouldered his way through the door, the heavy mahogany smashing into the reporters pushed up against it.

Cole looked at the podium, Ellen Abrams resplendent in front of the Stars and Stripes hanging in front of the thick blue curtains, and then to her left.

A man in the shadows, hand going to his belt, a flash of metal as his handgun raised up towards Abrams.

There were too many people in the way, blocking Cole’s line of sight.

Ignoring the screams and the chaos resulting from his entry, he moved before the rest of the Presidential security detail ensconced within the Press Room had time to react, pulling one reporter down to the floor and using him as a steeping stone, placing one foot on his prone form and pushing off, jumping clear over the first line of reporters even as his own gun came clear from his unbuttoned jacket, his arm pointing straight as his body sailed through the air, finger squeezing the trigger.

A single shot echoed out, and the whole room watched as the 10mm round whipped past the President, entering the right eyeball of the man in the shadows behind her, exiting via the rear of the skull along with three pounds of bone and brain matter, blown across the painted blue wall.

Mancini was dead before Cole came crashing earthwards, landing on top of three reporters in the second row of theatre seats, who screamed, jumped up and pulled past him, joining the mass exodus for the main door.

Cole himself dropped the gun, spreading himself defencelessly over the back of one of the chairs in surrender.

The other agents in the room had reacted now, and whilst four of them bundled the President back down the stairs to the pool, still others helped the reporters exit the room, whilst four more surrounded Cole in and amongst the blue theatre chairs, guns drawn and trigger fingers itchy.

But he had done it.

The President was alive.

35

Hansard had watched the bank of television monitors in his office at the ODNI with anticipation bordering on excitement, a rare feeling indeed. Each monitor was tuned to a different news channel, all broadcasting live from inside the White House, and he had watched the events unfold from every angle — first the opening introduction of Abrams’ speech, then the chaos at the door even as Mancini was raising his gun, and then as Cole had leapt over the press corps and shot Hansard’s man straight through the eyeball.

Although many of the networks’ camera crews had fled the room, there were still live feeds coming through from three of the news channels — either because the cameras were being operated by remote, or by people with nerves of steel — and Hansard had kept watching, open mouthed, as President Abrams — still alive! — had been bundled away, members of the press had fled, and the Secret Service had arrested an unresisting Cole and led him away.

Hansard breathed deeply, trying to break it all down in his mind. He knocked the cap off the bottle of cognac and poured a triple measure into the glass on the mahogany desk, then drank it down in one and poured himself another.

Cole had done it; he had survived long enough to cause a problem.

But all he had done was to save the President — and her assassination was just going to be the icing on the cake, really. Even with Abrams still at the helm, she might be convinced to increase defence expenditure in light of the development of a combined Russian-Chinese opponent. The contracts might still be signed, and Hansard’s new Cold War might still be able to go ahead. Not in the exact way it had been planned, but it was still salvageable — if Cole never had the chance to give his information to the President.

Hansard considered the matter — Cole was an escaped prisoner who had broken through the White House protective detail and fired his gun towards the President. Surely it would appear that Cole was trying to kill her, and Mancini had been killed drawing his own gun as he tried to protect her? Cole’s efforts would be regarded as being an attempted Presidential assassination, and it was therefore unlikely that Cole would gain access to her, at least in the short term.

He picked up his phone and dialled Elizabeth Harden. She must not have found where they had taken Cole, not managed to use Barnes and Davis as per his earlier instructions. But she would have to find him now, silence him one way or another, no matter what it took.

As the phone rang and rang, Hansard watched the replays of the event on the television screens. The camera angles were now being examined back in the studios, and cross-cuts were being made between Mancini and Cole, until it was clear that it was the President’s own bodyguard who had tried to kill her, and it was Cole that had saved her.

Damn.

The phone was answered then, a rough male voice on the other end of the line. ‘Who is this?’ the voice demanded.

‘This is Vice Admiral Charles Hansard, Director of National Intelligence. Who the hell is this? I’m trying to get through to Dr Harden, where is she?’

‘I’m sorry sir, Agent Johnson, Secret Service. We’ve found her unconscious. Two of our agents are down too.’

Hansard thought quickly. Two of their colleagues, maybe even two of their friends. ‘Agent Johnson, listen to me very carefully. The man who did this is extremely dangerous. We cannot afford for this to go to trial. I hereby authorize you to find him and ensure the matter is dealt with in a robust fashion. You get me?’

‘Yes sir,’ the man answered straight away, and Hansard was gratified to hear the positive response. The promise of revenge might be enough without having to offer a cash incentive. ‘That sounds like —’ Agent Johnson paused, and Hansard thought he could hear a disembodied electronic voice in the background, presumably the man’s radio. Ten seconds passed, then twenty as Johnson listened to his radio, before coming back to the phone.

‘Mr Hansard,’ he said in a more measured, controlled voice. ‘What is your current location?’

Hansard’s blood went cold, and he slammed the telephone handset back in its cradle.

They were already on to him. And if they were on to him, they would also be on to the rest of them.

He grabbed up his secure cell phone and keyed in a single line message — RED TWO FOUR — and then sent it to a special call group.

It was the emergency code for full mission abort, the order to drop everything and escape immediately; the whole plan was burned, and the Alumni might be burned along with it if they didn’t make a hasty exit.

Hansard put the phone in his pocket, downed the cognac in one smooth action, grabbed his coat, and followed his own advice.

He was going to get the hell out of there just as fast as he possibly could.

Damn that bastard. Damn him to hell!

36

‘I guess I owe you a huge debt of gratitude, Mr Cole,’ Abrams said as she sat across from her saviour in the relaxed peace and quiet of the Oval Office.

‘Don’t think anything of it, ma’am,’ he said, anxious to get on with the briefing so he could try and get to his family. ‘Just hear me out.’

As he had been taken away from the Press Briefing Room, Cole had started listing names, reciting the Alumni list, asking for them to be arrested, or at least for their locations to be confirmed. Even as Cole was being handcuffed and secured, he was pleased to see one of the agents take his garbled warnings seriously enough to start radioing through instructions — could the location of the following list of people please be confirmed? It was nice to see professionalism was still alive and well in some quarters; the agent might not have any idea why such a thing was important, but it might possibly be relevant in the future investigation into the attempted assassination of a United States President, and was thus worth following up.

Cole had been manhandled through the White House again, this time ending up secured in the Press Secretary’s office, just a short distance from the Press Briefing Room.

The attitude of the agents towards him was one of hostility and barely controlled violence. It was just a matter of minutes though, and a radio message received through their earpieces relaxed their demeanours completely; although still suspicious, they had obviously been told he wasn’t the bad guy.

Cole had asked again and again to see the President, but to no avail. But then a thought had occurred to him.

‘Tell her the Asset wants to see her,’ he had told the nearest agent, and then — much to his surprise and relief — his request was granted just five short minutes later.

And now he sat before her in the Oval Office, china cup of specially brewed coffee in his hands. He knew her own mind must have been going at a thousand miles an hour, her emotional state off the charts — her own bodyguard, a man she had entrusted her life to for the past two years, had just tried to kill her — but Cole could detect almost no hint of distress in her manner. She was cool and calm, just as she appeared on TV, although she looked at him with a barely concealed curiosity.

‘So what is it you need to tell me?’ she said at last.

37

An hour later, Cole’s briefing was complete. In addition to a verbal explanation of the events, Cole had also shown her on a computer his entire collection of evidence from the downloaded files.

Ten minutes into the briefing, Abrams had called in the Director of the Secret Service and demanded the immediate arrest of all the names on the list. She also asked for Elizabeth Harden to be taken straight into an interview room as soon as she regained consciousness.

Half an hour later, the meeting was again interrupted as Grayson came back in, saying that none of the people named on the list had been found. It was almost as if they had been warned, and fled at the last minute. He was instructed to order a nationwide alert for them, and left again to make the necessary arrangements.

As Cole drew to an end of his briefing, Abrams regarded him with her intelligent eyes. ‘You’re really quite a man, Mr Cole,’ she said in admiration. ‘And something of a legend. The Asset …’ She trailed off, deep in thought, and Cole wondered if his services had been used by Abrams herself at some stage in the past. It was more than likely, he decided.

‘There is a lot I need to do now,’ she continued finally, ‘as I am sure you will appreciate, but I hope to learn more about you when we have the time. I trust you’ll stay here and help with the investigation? I’ll be tied up with sorting things out with Danko and Feng, but we could use your help with tracking these people.’

Cole cleared his throat and put his cup of coffee — his fourth since starting the briefing — down on the antique cherry wood table that sat between the two sofas in the middle of the oval room.

‘Ma’am,’ he began sincerely, ‘I’m afraid that is not going to be possible.’

He went on to tell her about his family, their travels across Europe to Austria, their psychotic pursuer, and his treacherous old friend Steinmeier.

Abrams expressed her shock and sympathy, considering the matter. ‘We don’t have any local forces unfortunately, nothing useful we can get there within forty-eight hours or so,’ she said with regret, sorry she could not help the man who had saved her life and given her the information she needed to put a stop to the escalating events of the past few days. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

It was Cole’s turn to pause as he thought. Finally, he looked up at her. ‘Is the Aurora available for a little trip?’

38

The FBI Washington Field Office SWAT Team descended on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence just before midnight, on the direct order of the President.

Phone calls to the ODNI’s own security staff had confirmed that Charles Hansard was still on the premises — he had not signed out, nobody had seen him leave, and his car was still in its reserved spot in the secure underground parking lot.

The team had marched through the office complex, led to Hansard’s office by the head of the building’s security force.

They marched straight in, weapons aimed and handcuffs ready.

There was nobody there.

The SWAT team, along with the ODNI security team, searched the building for more than an hour. They searched the grounds. They reviewed the central CCTV recordings.

But there was no sign whatsoever of Vice Admiral Charles Hansard, Director of National Security for the United States of America, and now a wanted fugitive.

39

The B-780 Super Wing was the US government’s physical incarnation of the ‘project Aurora’ myth, a stealth plane with the capability to achieve hypersonic flight in excess of Mach 6. The existence of such an aircraft had been consistently denied by the US military, but when Cole requested its usage, Abrams didn’t even bother lying. It was clear Cole knew of its existence from classified documents, which revealed it to be an incredibly advanced long-range bomber which was completely undetectable by even the most finely-tuned radar currently in existence.

Abrams immediately arranged for one of the craft to be fuelled and flown directly from its secret base at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert to Andrews Air Force Base, where Cole would be taken by Marine helicopter.

The distance from Andrews to Kreith near Innsbruck in Austria was over four thousand miles. In a conventional aircraft, that might take up to eight hours; in a fast fighter jet, it would still take three, not including the necessary re-fuelling intervals. As he stood in the hanger, dressed in a dark blue flight suit, Cole looked at his watch. It was now midnight, and every second counted.

The Aurora would get him over the hamlet of Kreith in less than an hour.

40

‘Good luck,’ David Grayson said to Cole in the air-conditioned hanger. The Director of the Secret Service had accompanied Cole to Andrews as the President’s own representative, being one of the people she could still trust. Cole took Grayson’s offered hand, shaking it firmly.

‘The President has found you some backup after a fashion — she’s made arrangements for a Marine Force Recon team on exercise with Dutch special forces in Holland to fly over, but they’ll be at least three hours,’ Grayson told him.

Cole nodded his head. ‘Tell her thanks from me,’ he said. ‘But it’ll all be over by then, one way or another.’

41

The Aurora aircraft was unlike anything Cole had ever seen. Secrecy surrounding the plane meant that all Andrews aircrew had been replaced with specialists from Groom Lake, much to the chagrin of the base commander; Cole was honoured to be amongst only a handful of men and women in the world who had seen it.

It was not entirely unlike a schoolboy’s paper aeroplane — it was low, wide and very flat, in a very characteristic triangular shape with the wings turned up at each end. It was painted a dull gunmetal grey, but was captivating in its eerily alien quality.

A runner came over and escorted him to the side of the aircraft. The crew of two was already undergoing their pre-flight checks in the narrow, pointed cockpit at the front, and Cole was invited to climb a small ramp into the side entry door. A man waited for him there, helping him aboard, and then the ramp was removed and the door swung shut with a heavy clunk, the man securing it from the inside.

‘Welcome aboard sir,’ said the man, without offering a name.

‘Thanks,’ said Cole. ‘Have you got what I asked for?’

‘Sure have,’ the man replied. ‘You must be one crazy son of a bitch.’

42

Just over forty-five minutes later, the flight engineer helped Cole change into the large, bulky suit. He checked the gauges and the monitors, and made sure that the extra equipment boxes were securely fastened to the suit, placed so as not to affect the aerodynamics of the fall.

Although the Aurora was travelling at more than four thousand miles per hour, high above the cloud level near the edge of space, Cole curiously didn’t feel the sensation of speed. In the pressurized cabin, it was surprisingly serene and comfortable. Cole knew that this sensation wouldn’t last for long, however, and he would soon be anything but comfortable.

Both men turned as they saw the warning light flash on next to them, and the engineer picked up the heavy helmet and secured it in place onto the reinforced neck of Cole’s suit.

‘It’s time.’

43

The bomb doors were lowered and Cole found himself looking down through his tinted visor to the cloud layer miles below him. He checked the coordinates on his wrist computer, and knew the bomb mechanism would soon release him.

The suit he wore was somewhat akin to an astronaut’s, but he still felt a chill as the wind whipped past him at incredible speed, although the Aurora had now slowed its approach to a relatively modest Mach 1.

Cole could see both the sun and the moon across the horizon, so high he could see the incredible curve of the planet itself, and then he was released. The immediate drop knocked the wind out of him, his stomach seemingly left behind in the bomb bay, and then he was caught by the slip stream and found himself tumbling and twisting wildly through the thin air thirty miles above the world.

44

The freefall had lasted an incredible seven minutes, during which time Cole truly wondered whether he would live. Falling though the upper atmosphere in the limited air, his streamlined body had broken the sound barrier, although he had not heard anything through his helmet.

But he had seen the world around him as he first fell, the curve of the earth flattening out as he reached the cloud layer, and then he was shooting through those clouds and out the other side before he even had a chance to realize, through and travelling to the earth at over seven hundred miles per hour.

He had performed countless parachute jumps in the past, both in training and on operations; high altitude jumps, low altitude jumps, he had done them all. But he had never done anything like this, freefalling from the edge of space out of the bomb doors of a secret stealth aircraft. A normal high-altitude jump was done from 35,000 feet; Cole was jumping from 120,000 feet, which was why he needed the helmet and the special suit — without them, the pressure and lack of oxygen at such a height would kill him within seconds. Such a high altitude jump had certainly not been done before in quite the same way, and it was unlikely to ever be done again.

He had managed to control the tumbling effect soon after he had been released, forcing his body into the right shape to attack the atmosphere, flying straight down, head first like a human arrow.

It was pitch black, and he just had to rely on his instruments. Moving his hands from their position at his sides at this speed would have radically compromised his stability however, and he was glad to have a secondary set of instruments on his chest, angled upwards so that he could see them.

He still couldn’t see the ground, but saw that his coordinates were good. His altimeter read one hundred thousand feet, and he started to angle his body, flattening it until he was spread out, his speed decreasing slightly in relation to the increase in surface area he now presented. He stabilized in that position, and then checked the altimeter again. Twenty thousand feet.

He opened the chute, and immediately felt the shock of the huge braking effect generated by the billowing canopy, pulling him seemingly back up into the sky.

He could have pulled the chute lower — common practice to get in under the radar — but he knew Steinmeier didn’t have such a system, and whoever was at the house would simply be making best use of the Mark One Eyeball, and human eyesight would be unlikely to pick up the black camouflaged parachute against the pitch dark, cloudy night sky. The controlled descent from 20,000 feet, however, would give him the time necessary to deploy his other equipment.

45

As the parachute sank slowly towards the earth, Cole started to be able to make out the house below and slightly off to the southwest.

Steinmeier’s house was situated on a minor road off the L227 through Kreith, a large, three-storey Alpine chalet-style detached house at the end of a long driveway. The approach road had a fair few houses, and then the land was wooded before opening out to fields around the house. Visibility around the property was good, which was probably one of the reasons it had been chosen.

Cole knew the layout of the house, and of the grounds, and knew where lookouts and sentries would be posted, if Hansard had had time to arrange such things.

He was never going to be able to see anyone ten thousand feet below and hidden in the tree line, so he locked in his course, let go of the parachute’s steering handles, and pulled off the helmet from the suit’s neckpiece.

The cold hit him even through his woollen balaclava, but the helmet’s removal was necessary if he was to use the equipment he had brought with him; equipment that would even the odds and give him a chance to make it to the house and rescue his family.

46

By the time he was at eight thousand feet, Cole had the Zeiss M-760 thermal-imaging night-vision goggles secured around his head, the butt of the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Super Magnum sniper rifle nestled securely into his shoulder.

The rifle was engineered for cold weather conditions, and was one of the most accurate rifles available — reports said that back in 2009 a British sniper had killed two Taliban machine gunners in Afghanistan from 2,475m away, which equated to more than a mile and a half.

The conditions for that kill had been perfect, however, which was definitely at odds with what Cole now faced. Not only would he be firing from an unstable platform high in the air above the house, but the weather was bad, visibility nonexistent, and he would be using a modified sight.

To make his shots count, he was going to have to account for current altitude, his drop in altitude that would occur between the pull of the trigger and the bullet leaving the barrel as he continued his parachute descent, the effect of the wind for both the normal current, and the unnatural altitude-induced ground effect. They would be the hardest shots he would ever have to make.

47

As he descended closer, goggles sweeping the area constantly, he began to pick up the eerie, red and yellow images of people stationed around the house, contrasted against the luminous green of the background night vision.

There were six of them stationed in the grounds directly surrounding the house, with six more spread out through the tree line, below and to the front of him as he drifted in from the north east.

The rifle’s magazine held six rounds only, and he knew he would not have time to reload — by the time he had fired six shots and reloaded, he would already have landed. Therefore, each shot would have to count.

It made more sense to use his altitude and the element of surprise to go for the men in the tree line with the six rounds. They would be snipers, using trees for cover as they monitored the grounds. If Cole took out the men around the house instead of the snipers, he would be shot as soon as he landed. He therefore decided to leave the grounds guards for later, and dedicate his initial resources into getting rid of the snipers.

From his current altitude he could just make out their positions, seemingly prone on the ground with sniper rifles of their own, completely unaware of Cole coming in towards them from above.

The faint, coloured images were small, ridiculously so, but Cole made mental notes of each of their positions, and clicked up the goggles from his face.

He then pulled his rifle in and up, his right eye fitting into the rubberized cup of the modified Zeiss sniper scope, which was essentially a barrel-mounted version of the goggles, including close magnification of the thermal night vision image.

As Cole descended through the thin, cold night air, he selected his first target, on the far left.

He controlled his breathing, his right eye concentrating fully on the fuzzy thermal image of the sentry. He checked windings, adjusted the sight according to all the other factors he had considered, checked his aim again, breathed out slowly, held the breath, and caressed the trigger.

48

Six thousand feet below and five hundred feet ahead, Shane Trejo lay on the soft loam of the pine forest floor and waited, checking the house through his own night vision scope.

Dan Albright and some of his men were already in the house, some guarding directly outside, whilst Trejo and five others covered fields of fire from the safety of the tree line.

He had already been there nearly six hours, and was coming up for relief, changing positions with someone inside the house, which meant he would be able to get some food and a hot drink.

He moved his left hand around and checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was 11.42pm, just eighteen minutes until his break. He turned to look back down through the sight, but never made it, as a 300-grain .338 Lapua Magnum bullet entered the top of his spine from the top right, blowing half of his left rib cage out across the soft loamy ground as it exited his body in an explosion of blood and cartilage.

49

One down, Cole registered, even as he turned the fearsome weapon towards the memorized location of the second sentry.

Again, he made the adjustment, controlled the breath, caressed the trigger. The red and yellow figure in his sight visibly slumped down, and although Cole couldn’t be sure where the bullet had entered, he knew it had struck home — and if it had struck home, the man would be dead, it was as simple as that.

Four thousand feet. Third target … Target down.

Three thousand feet. Fourth target … Target down.

Two thousand feet. Fifth target … Target down.

One thousand feet. Sixth target.

Cole was close now, dangerously close, and even though the weapon was suppressed, even the racking of the bolt was enough to give position away, travelling uninterrupted across the cool night sky.

When the final bullet racked home into the chamber, he saw the figure twitch on the floor. He had heard something, and was searching for the source of the sound.

Left, right, the sentry looked but could not identify the location.

Cole adjusted the sight, took aim, controlled the breath, the last figure large in his sight now, clear; and then the man looked up, and Cole caressed the trigger once more and watched in the eerie glow of the night vision device as the powerful Magnum bullet entered through the sentry’s mouth, down through his throat, and out of his back, and Cole could see the hot wet mass of the man’s organs spread over the forest floor.

Target down.

50

Cole had no time to rest on his laurels, letting the sniper rifle swing down on its sling as he grabbed the steering straps of the chute and pulled sharply to the left, drifting back over the tree tops.

There had been no reaction from the six figures around the grounds yet, and so Cole was confident he had not been discovered.

He was all too aware though that if the snipers didn’t check in, or if others were being sent to relieve them, their deaths would soon be discovered. And so even though Cole might ordinarily have favoured a more subtle approach, in this particular instance he quickly decided that bold aggression would have to be the order of the day.

Retrieving his silenced H&K submachine gun from the covered pouch by his side, he pulled it across the front of his body even as his hands went up to the parachute release straps.

He was just three hundred feet above the deep snow of Steinemeier’s large, open lawn.

51

Jeff Duncombe crunched through the deep, crystalline snow that seemed to cover every damn square inch of this forsaken wilderness.

He knew it was only just outside Innsbruck, but it might as well have been the frozen Arctic, and he exhaled slowly into the cold air, seeing his breath come out as steam in front of him.

He watched it drift slowly up into the black sky above him, and then he saw it — large, rectangular, coming down from the sky like a giant bat.

What the fuck?

Cole dropped from his harness at just twenty feet from the ground, night-vision goggles back on, sniper rifle now discarded, pulling up his H&K and shooting the first guard through the throat even before he landed, feet burying deep into the snow.

He turned on the spot, firing a rapid double tap into the forehead of another sentry off to his left, then turned again and caught the third man in the face with two more controlled rounds, the fuzzy red image flying back into the strange green, alien landscape described by the goggles.

Cole raced forward as the fourth man, fifty yards over to the left, started to react, and shot him with a short burst of full auto directly into his centre mass, dropping him instantly.

Cole continued moving forward as the parachute continued to fall the last few feet, four men already dead before it had even touched the ground.

Unsuppressed automatic gunfire broke out from the two far corners of the building, and Cole turned and saw the two remaining outside guards firing towards him from behind cover.

Cole saw a large wooden shelter off to one side, and dove over to it, hiding behind the thick walls as dozens of 9mm rounds drummed into the surface.

He then heard shouts from inside the house, and knew he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He jumped up at the gap between the low wall and the shelter’s roof, submachine gun raised, and then there was a loud clang and a sudden burst of intense light.

Ducking back down behind the wall, the anti-glare function of the goggles just managed to catch it in time to save his eyes, but the goggles were now useless as the entire outdoor security lighting system came on, obviously operated by someone inside the building.

He discarded the goggles, blinked once, twice, and then burst up again, this time opening fire towards the left, catching the guard as he peered out from the corner, one of Cole’s bullets tearing through the man’s cheek.

He checked right in time to see the last man duck back behind the wall of the corner of the house, and then the front of his field shelter erupted in a hail of gunfire, directed from above and to the front.

Cole risked a quick glance and saw four men shooting down on him from open windows on the second floor.

Shit.

He was about sixty yards to the house by his reckoning, a distance a good sprinter could cover in just six seconds. With his weapons and equipment, however, it would take him more than twice that long, which would be much longer than the shooters would need to kill him.

He sank down and controlled his breathing, and then removed three thermal grenades from his tactical belt rig.

He exhaled quickly and violently and pulled all four pins in rapid succession, rising up and throwing them, one to the right corner, the other three towards the first floor windows, hoping his family weren’t in the same room as the shooters.

Not wasting any time at all, he scooted out of the shelter and broke into a full sprint towards the house, even as he heard the muffled whumpf as the thermal grenades exploded and felt the warmth of the incendiary flames flick at his exposed face.

He heard the shattering of windows above him, and saw with satisfaction the burning body of the sixth exterior guard staggering away from the corner of the building, trying to roll himself across the snow to put out the flames.

And then he was at the rear French doors, and with a heavy kick, the doors were smashed open, and Cole was inside.

Both Dan Albright and Stefan now knew he was there, but it didn’t matter.

He had made it to the house, and both men would soon be dead.

52

Cole swept rapidly through the living area, until movement to his right made him turn, the submachine gun an extension of him that tracked around with him, the trigger depressing almost of its own accord, releasing two subsonic rounds that flew across the room into another agent’s jaw, smashing through the inside of the head and out of the back of the skull on the other side.

The second man, following his partner through, was momentarily blinded by the spray of thick blood, bone and brain matter, and Cole used the distraction to fire another double tap straight between his blood-stained eyes.

Sweeping the weapon in tight arcs, Cole moved through the first floor areas, clearing each room in turn.

At the door, enter from the closed side fast and hard, sweep left to right, weapon tracking smoothly, ready to engage, just as he had learnt in his initially SEAL training over two decades before. Clear! sounded the mental confirmation in his head as each room was passed through, until he was at the foot of the stairs.

It was always better to fight from the top down rather than the other way around, but there was no time for useless wishes — the situation was how it was, and that was the end of it; he would just have to make do.

Up above, he could see flames licking around the hall entry on the staircase return, and knew it would be from the thermal grenades he had thrown.

Hoping the flames would cover him, he took a moment to reload his weapon, and then charged.

53

At he reached the top of the stairs, he saw three bodies strewn over the floor, charred and burnt. A sound beyond the flames to his left made him reflexively turn, identify, and fire, and the fourth man he had seen at the window dropped dead to the floor.

He was close to his family now, he could feel it. But he also knew he had to keep calm, controlled, in charge of his emotions; he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

And so he also swept each room on this floor, manoeuvring carefully through the flames, his flight suit mercifully inherently flame retardant. He had a feeling there would be no more guards — six in the tree line, six in the grounds, meant that six would probably be in the house. But Cole hadn’t survived so long by taking chances, and so went through each of the second floor rooms, clearing them in turn.

There was nobody else left on this floor, and as the flames from the grenades began to spread, eating away at curtains, wallpaper and plasterboard, Cole turned to the staircase and started up to the third floor.

54

There were just two rooms on the third floor, Cole remembered from his previous visits here — a small bathroom off to the right, and a large open-plan games room at the end of a short hallway on the left.

He checked the bathroom first — clear.

Then he turned his attention to the games room, stalking down the corridor carefully, very carefully, slow and controlled with each step onto the wooden floorboards.

He and Stefan had enjoyed good times in that same room, playing pool, listening to music, drinking beer and schnapps and talking and laughing into the small hours of the morning.

But no longer. Not anymore. This was now the room in which his old friend would die.

55

H&K submachine gun raised against one shoulder, Cole pushed open the heavy wooden door with his other hand, moving swiftly into the well-lit room, both hands back on the gun as he scanned, left to right.

He stopped in the centre, in front of the long, rectangular window with its drop to the back garden.

Sarah. Ben. Amy.

They all sat together, huddled against each other as Dan Albright — different now with his shaven head, scarred face and white eye patch — and Stefan Steinmeier — to Cole unchanged physically, but unknown now to him psychologically — aimed their handguns at them, safety catches off, triggers already depressed half way.

Sarah looked in control at least, and although she looked like she’d been badly beaten, the fire hadn’t gone out of her eyes, the fight hadn’t yet left her, and Cole’s heart swelled for a moment. But then he saw Ben and Amy, terrified, frightened beyond their young ability to comprehend.

Even when they saw their daddy, the relief in their eyes was only fleeting, seemingly already resigned to a fate described to them by the two hateful men who towered above them, guns raised.

‘Mark Cole,’ Albright said, smile wide, ‘at last we meet.’

‘Let them go,’ Cole demanded, his voice even.

Albright laughed. ‘Those aren’t our orders, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t give a shit about your orders. Let them go. Now.’

There was an air of menace in the room that could be felt on a physical level, a rising tension that begged for release.

Cole looked Stefan in the eye. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Steinmeier laughed. ‘Why? You ask me why?’ He laughed again, then looked serious. ‘Money, of course. Oh, I know it’s something you don’t have to worry about. You make a million dollars a job, eh, and yet you never offered to help me, offer me work, anything! You know what my police pension is? You wouldn’t wipe your ass with it! Do you know how much a good school costs? University? For three children? A lot more than what I have, my friend. And so maybe I wouldn’t have done it for a hundred thousand, probably not even for a million. But ten million dollars?’ Steinmeier smiled at Cole. ‘You would have to kill ten people for that. I’m only going to have to kill the four of you.’

Cole felt the rage within him build, but controlled it. They had not killed his family yet, and so must have had a reason for keeping them alive, and Cole knew there was room for negotiation. But what did they want?

‘You’re probably thinking of how to negotiate this,’ Albright said cheerfully. ‘The trouble is, there is no way. Mr Hansard wanted your family kept alive so that you could watch them die.’ Albright grinned. ‘Punishment for destroying his plans, he said.’

Cole didn’t know whether to believe this, but started to react anyway, submachine gun tracking to Albright’s head; and then the unthinkable happened — right in front of him, right before his eyes, before he could react, Steinmeier raised his handgun to little Ben’s head and pulled the trigger, even as Albright pulled the barrel of his own pistol in line with Sarah’s forehead, and then two shots rang out, and Mark Cole’s wife and son were killed, their lifeless bodies slumping to the floor, blood pooling from their shattered skulls.

Rooted to the spot, Cole watched as Amy shrieked and started running towards him. Steinmeier reached out to stop her, but Albright restrained him, allowing her to run on.

‘Daddy!’ she cried as she ran, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy — ’

She reached him finally, running to hug him, and then Cole saw a muzzle flash as Albright shot her from behind.

Amy’s body collapsed into his arms, and he turned around immediately, instinctively covering her body with his even as both men opened fire with their handguns, bullets peppering Cole’s back as he tucked his head in out of the way.

Cole felt the impact of the 9mm rounds hit him hard through the Kevlar vest, his whole body shuddering as they emptied their magazines into him.

Cole had tears in his eyes, mixed with the blood of his daughter, as he heard the guns click empty on the other side of the room.

And then he was on his feet and charging, an enraged figure of pure hate, unbridled bloodlust across his face. Both men were trying to reload, and he got to Stefan first, his right hand chopping down on the man’s right forearm, breaking the bone in two and causing the gun to drop to the floor.

As Steinmeier recoiled, grunting in pain, Cole steamrollered past him to Albright, just as the half-blind agent raised his reloaded gun to fire.

Cole grabbed the man’s gun hand and pushed it upwards, a round firing up into the ceiling as Albright pressed the trigger, and then Cole pulled down sharply, twisting the right wrist and forcing the pistol to go spinning out towards the far wall.

Cole’s knee rose viciously straight up into Albright’s groin, and the scarred agent squealed in pain. Cole moved in to deliver a nerve strike to the neck, but then Steinmeier’s huge, bear-like arms were around him, crushing his shoulders and constricting his chest.

Cole immediately thrust his head backwards, and he heard the muffled yelp of Steinmeier as his nose was broken. Still in the bear hug, Cole saw Albright coming back for him and reared back, kicking both feet straight into the agent’s chest, sending him staggering back towards the window.

Cole stamped down on Steinmeier’s foot, then sent his elbow backwards sharply into the big man’s ribs, rewarded by a satisfying crack as some of them broke with the impact.

Cole then sidestepped out of the bear hug and pushed the injured man forwards across the room towards Albright.

In the blink of an eye, Cole had reached down to the floor and snatched up Albright’s fallen pistol, aiming it across the room towards Albright and pressing the trigger once, twice, three times.

Albright had recovered from the blows he had received, and saw Cole raise the gun. At the same time, he saw Steinmeier’s big body hurtling towards him. Intended by Cole as a distraction, Albright instead used it to his advantage, pulling Steinmeier across him even as Cole started firing.

Steinmeier’s body shook from the impact, all three bullets entering his gut, blood spurting reflexively from his mouth, and then Albright pushed the body back away from himself towards Cole.

As Cole jinked to the side to avoid the impact, gun moving around Steinmeier’s incoming body, Albright used the brief opportunity and turned to the window, smashing it as he jumped out from the third floor of the house to the garden below.

56

Cole got to the window as he saw Albright pick himself up from the thick snowdrift that lay against the side of the house.

The man looked up and smiled before running off towards the tree line, and before Cole could clear the barrel of the gun over the window frame, Albright had disappeared into the shadows of the garden.

No you fucking don’t, Cole promised, and then he swung himself out of the window, falling three storeys to the snowdrift below. He was out in seconds, and he took off after the man as fast as he had ever run in his life.

As Cole entered the tree line, he could hear the first faint sound of sirens in the distance. He knew the area would soon be crawling with police, security and other emergency services; but he couldn’t let that distract him.

He saw the line of tracks in the snow ahead of him, ploughing straight through the trees. Cole had been hunting with Stefan before here, and turned to the right, taking the high ground.

57

Albright was out of breath, panting hard, pushing himself as hard as he could. He was going fast, he had a big head start, he had to be a long way in front, hadn’t he?

As he whipped through the trees, he knew he could not slow down; Cole was following, and was going to kill him.

He had been running all out for what seemed like hours, but what was in fact only minutes, and had still not heard any sign of Cole behind him. Could he afford to slow down, to take it easy? No. Not until he was well and truly safe.

He could see the trees widening out up ahead, the ground sloping down at an ever-steepening angle until it opened up onto a hillside, and he started to wonder what he should do. Should he just try and hide in the trees, hope Cole couldn’t find him? Or just keep running, even going out into the open, and just hope he could keep his advantage?

He never had time to think of an answer, as a movement caught his eye and he turned his head to see Mark Cole hurtling towards him.

58

Cole’s body made hard contact with Albright’s, and he could tell the wind had been knocked out of the man.

Cole had rolled off to the side, and was surprised when Albright caught him in the face with the heel of his boot, kicking up at Cole from the floor.

Cole staggered back, and Albright took the opportunity to get back to his feet, pulling out a Gerber combat knife as he did so.

Cole saw the draw, and angled his body away as Albright slashed horizontally towards him. He slashed through back the other way, and again Cole narrowly avoided it.

When he came back through from the other direction, Cole was ready for it, and managed to parry the knife arm, then grabbed the man and pulled him forwards onto a head-butt.

The force of the blow broke the plastic nose guard instantly, and Cole saw how the nose itself then sloughed off, leaving an ugly, gaping wound right in the middle of Albright’s face. In addition to the empty eye socket and the damaged, shaven head, the man looked grotesque.

Cole slipped then, losing his balance on the steep ground, and the two men toppled over. Albright lost his grip on the knife, and both men grabbed each other as they went down, their momentum carrying them down the slope.

They eventually broke through the tree line onto the steep hillside, their bodies now rolling and turning at an ever increasing speed as they tumbled downwards, bouncing from side to side off tree stumps and rocks whilst all the while keeping a death-grip hold on one another.

The two men tried to punch, bite, head-butt and gouge each other as they rolled at sickening speed down the snow-covered hill, but they were moving too fast to do any real damage to each other.

Eventually, however, the ground started to even out and their momentum slowed. Cole was the first to react, turning their bodies so that Albright was underneath as they glided to a stop by a clump of rocks sticking up through the deep snow.

Albright struggled underneath, but Cole dropped his head down heavily onto the man’s face again, dazing him even more. Moving quickly, Cole pinned Albright down with his legs, and reached across to the rock pile, picking up a big, heavy, metallic lump.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Cole yelled as he brought the rock down onto the face of his family’s killer. ‘Fuck … ing … son … of … a … bitch!’ he yelled, punctuating each word with another massive strike of the rock. He kept repeating the phrase again and again, not stopping even when the man’s head split open like an over-ripe melon, not even when his remaining eye bulged out of his head and the bloody grey mass of his brain started to leak out of the back of his smashed skull.

Cole kept on smashing the rock down even after there was no head left at all, and he was just beating it uselessly down into the bloody, greasy snow.

Eventually, exhaustion caused him to stop, and he slumped forward, chest heaving.

And then he remembered his family, and all that had happened, and he reared backwards and screamed across the mountains.

59

Ten minutes later, Cole was back upstairs in the house.

Sarah, Ben and Amy had all been executed with head shots from close range, but he had to be sure. He couldn’t simply leave the scene, escape without first checking.

But within seconds, it was clear there was nothing to check. They were dead, 9mm rounds having entered and exited their heads and blowing their brains all over the walls and floor.

Cole wept uncontrollably as he gathered the bodies together, cradling them in his arms, holding them together, a family again, reunited at last.

Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his body convulsed with the pain of his emotions; and still he held the bodies, held them close, as if his own warmth, his love, would somehow bring them back to life.

And then he heard the pained words from behind him, and he turned his head.

Stefan Steinmeier sat propped in the corner of the room, still alive, hands uselessly trying to push the grey, looped sausage of his ragged intestines back into his body as he choked on his own blood.

‘I … I’m sorry,’ he said, spitting blood from between gritted teeth with each word.

Cole looked at his old friend with pure, unbridled hatred, unable to speak, to respond. Sorry? The gut shots were nothing. Stefan was going to be a lot more than sorry, Cole decided, that was fucking guaranteed.

But as Cole finally released his family and began to stand, he saw Steinmeier smile, and Cole suddenly realized that the fatally injured man wasn’t talking about what he had done, but about something he was about to do.

‘Hansard … won’t send the money to my family … unless you’re all dead.’

And then Cole’s eyes went to Steinmeier’s lap, and he finally saw the remote electronic button, hidden within the mass of bloody viscera leaking from the man’s gut.

And then Steinmeier depressed the button, the house erupted in a huge orange fireball, and Cole’s entire world was consumed by flame.