PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (30 page)

8

Cole looked at the computer screen, showing access to dozens of folders, thousands of files. Which ones were useful? Which ones would tell him what he wanted to know about London?

But he didn’t have the time to search them all, especially as it was all in the Arabic script – and although fairly fluent in Farsi, his reading ability was rather less developed.

But if he could send it all to his daughter at Force One, it could be fed into the supercomputers, translated and sorted in no time at all.

And with the memorial event planned for the day after, Cole needed things doing quickly if they were to have any hope at all of foiling Iran’s second strike.

Younesi was only just coming round, stirring on the floor. Cole regretted the fact that he couldn’t question him – but he knew that if he removed the tie from his mouth, the man would call for help immediately. There were four armed men just beyond the door, and even if Cole threatened him with the Colt, he was pretty sure that Younesi would take his chances.

He also thought about asking Younesi to highlight the important files, which he could do without talking. But why would he? And Cole would have no idea if he was selecting the right files, or completely irrelevant ones; or even if he was tipping off headquarters security through the computer in some way.

No, Cole decided, it was best to just upload everything to Michiko back in Forest Hills and let her sort it out. She had the time, the intelligence, and the raw computing power to get what they needed out of it, if it was in there.

Cole highlighted each and every file, continuing to talk to his daughter as he did so. ‘So you know who Younesi is?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ his daughter said, ‘I’ve got his file right here.’

‘Good,’ he said, knowing that Morgan must have got back to London okay, given them the information from Milanović. ‘Morgan got the information to Catalina then?’

‘Morgan?’ Michiko asked, and Cole could hear the surprise in her voice. ‘No, I found his name while checking into what happened to you, saw that it was his name used by the embassy when they contacted MOIS in Tehran.’ There was a pause on the other end of the line, as if Michiko was looking for the words she needed. ‘I . . . I’m not sure that Elizabeth Morgan ever
came
back to London,’ she said eventually.

‘What?’ Cole said in surprise, hands stopped over the keyboard. ‘She never went back? Where the hell is she then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Michiko said. ‘I only know she’s not back in the UK because Bruce asked me to look into her, and I’ve been tracking her passport ever since. She’s not used it to leave Serbia, as far as I can tell, and she’s also the subject of many a conversation back at Thames House, they’re wondering where the hell she is too.’

Cole wondered what the hell had happened. Had the Serbian authorities decided to detain her? Had associates of Milanović come after her, looking for revenge? Had the Iranians taken her?

He shook his head, unable to think clearly. He was worried about her, and he could ill afford such weakness at this stage of the game; he had to keep on track with what he was doing, ignore everything else.

But he couldn’t help but hope desperately that she was okay.

‘Do me a favor,’ Cole said to his daughter. ‘If you ever get a spare minute, could you look into it? See where she might have gone?’

‘I can use our algorithms, check to see if she left any transport hub, cross reference file photos with CCTV images. She might have used a false passport to get out of there. But that’ll take time, and I can’t promise anything.’

‘That’s fine,’ Cole said, thinking about Michiko’s suggestion. It was possible, yes – but if she’d used a false passport, why had she still not returned to London? She was supposed to have reported back to Kelly and Riley, made contact with dos Santos to let his people in the US know what was going on. The fact that she hadn’t done any of it suggested that something must have gone terribly wrong. ‘Do whatever you can.’

He watched the files streaming their way across to the Force One systems below the Paradigm Group’s compound back in Forest Hills, satisfied that – Morgan or no Morgan – his unit was finally going to have the intelligence they needed.

The only question then would be whether they would have the time to do anything about it.

Then the computer screen went fuzzy for a second, came back on, then started flashing a warning in large, red Arabic script.

Cole translated quickly, horrified by what he read –

SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED – SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED – SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED

Shit!

‘The transfer’s stopped,’ Michiko said, ‘is everything okay?’

‘They’re on to me,’ Cole said, just moments before an alarm went off, an electronic beeping that echoed down the corridors outside. He saw the handle turn in the door then, heard banging as the armed guards outside tried to force their way in.

He looked across at Younesi, conscious now and smiling in sweet victory.

Cole picked up the man’s cell phone from the desk, from where he’d put it after emptying his pockets earlier. He connected it quickly to the computer, starting a physical download of data to the phone, watching as the files poured across to the small unit.

He smiled back at Younesi, then got back on the phone to Michiko. ‘I’m copying the rest across to Younesi’s cell phone, I’ll try and send it to you later.’ Another thought occurred to him then. ‘Can you track the phone?’

‘If it’s turned on and connected to a network I can,’ Michiko said.

Cole checked the number and read it back to his daughter, as the alarm continued to sound and booted feet continued to pound away at the door. ‘Is that the one you have for him?’

‘Yep,’ Michiko confirmed. ‘I’ve got it now, building on Saniya Street.’

‘Good,’ Cole said, watching as the last of the files were copied across to the cell phone. ‘Do we have any resources nearby?’

‘Rescue team is ready to go from Ashgabat, they can be across the border and in Tehran within a couple of hours.’

Cole breathed out. A couple of hours? He might not have a couple of
minutes
. But he didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

‘Okay, keep tracking this cell, as soon as they’re ready, send them to it. Call me for confirmation of location, but if I can’t answer for some reason, just send them to the phone.’

‘I will,’ Michiko said, just as the cell phone beeped to say its memory was full.

Shit
.

But it would have to do, Cole supposed and – saying his farewells to Michiko – he grabbed the phone up off the desk and turned to Younesi, Colt raised to the man’s head.

The doors started to splinter behind him, and he knew he didn’t have long. But what should he do with Younesi?

He was a senior intelligence officer for a major foreign enemy power, and one who had planned and orchestrated a terrible and truly horrific terrorist attack on innocent civilians.

Children
.

But at the same time, Younesi cut a pathetic figure, alone and unarmed, gagged and bound to a chair.

And as a brother intelligence operative, didn’t he deserve a degree of mercy? He had doubtless only been doing what he had been told.

Didn’t he deserve the benefit of the doubt?

And who was Cole to decide, anyway?

But as he looked again at Younesi, he saw a man who had purposefully ordered the killing of children, and decided that was all that mattered.

Mohammed Younesi was guilty of an insidious and evil crime against humanity, and was right there in front of him.

Cole knew he might not ever get the chance to confront the man again.

As he heard automatic gunfire from the corridor, saw the door being blown apart by high-powered rounds, Cole made his decision and fired a single shot from the Colt .45, the slug burying itself through Younesi’s forehead and emerging out the other side, blowing out the man’s brains across the office window, painting it a bright, vivid red.

With a brain as evil and disturbed as that, Cole decided, it was better out than in.

He moved quickly, ignoring the dead body that sat limply in the office chair and aiming his Colt toward the door, firing off four quick shots that punched hard through the wood.

Cole heard a scream from outside, and then frightened shouting, and knew he must have hit someone.

And then he picked up his own chair and hurled it hard at the window, smashing the glass out as it sailed through and continued down to the parking lot below.

Moving past Younesi, Cole pocketed the Colt and climbed up into the window frame, first looking down to assess his position – a hundred feet up, perhaps eight stories.

He then looked up, saw another fifty feet to the top, another four levels, all glass, steel and concrete.

Breathing out to center himself, he decided not to look down again and reached up to take hold of the edge of the external window frame, levering himself up and onto the outside of MOIS headquarters.

9

Two minutes later, Cole had managed to climb two more levels, fingers red raw from gripping the tiny crevices between steel and glass, glass and concrete. His toes ached inside his shoes too, from where they’d been bunched tight in the ends, forced against the unforgiving wall.

But he was still hanging on – if just barely – and only had another twenty-five feet to go.

It was then that he heard shouts of urgent Farsi coming from below, and he looked down to see four men sticking their heads out of Younesi’s office window, looking down to the parking lot below, pointing at the fallen chair.

Cole knew it wouldn’t take them long to understand what must have happened and look upward though, and so even before they turned, Cole was already letting go with one hand, fingers of the other biting even deeper into the tiny handhold as he reached into his waistband and withdrew the Colt.

He had it aimed just as the men looked up at him, their eyes going wide as they struggled – bunched up together as they were – to bring their weapons into play.

He pulled the trigger immediately, the first shot blasting through one man’s shoulder, the second hitting another in the side of the chest.

The other two men dived back inside the office, pulling their injured colleagues back in with them and leaving Cole momentarily clear.

It was not a moment too soon either, as Cole’s fingertips were beginning to fail, the gap of mere millimeters barely sufficient to cram them into and support his bodyweight, feet unable to find enough purchase to really help.

Cole swung back toward the headquarters wall, shoving the Colt into his waistband before catching hold of the tiny gap with his second hand, providing blessed relief for the first.

But, knowing that the word would be out now, and that armed guards would surely be rushing toward the roof to intercept him, he didn’t wait around but instead started to climb again immediately, edging slowly toward the top.

Eventually Cole was there, just under the parapet of the roof, waiting to climb up.

But he had to do it the right way, couldn’t just pop up; what if there were people up there waiting for him already?

He considered the Colt, counted his rounds – one for Younesi, four toward the door, two more for the guards in the window. Six down, which – given the size of the round, and the pistol’s near-ancient design – meant that he didn’t have a hell of a lot left. Three if it had the eight-round magazine and had started with an extra round up the pipe, but only one if it was the standard seven-round mag and hadn’t started out with the extra round in the chamber..

But even a single round would, he decided, have to be enough.

And so – summoning the reserves of his energy after the sapping climb up the face of the building – Cole gripped tight onto the parapet and rolled himself up onto the roof, Colt up and aimed.

But there was nobody there at all, just an empty, flat rooftop.

Empty, that is, except for the single black helicopter that sat, shiny and new like a Christmas present, waiting for him on the helipad.

Cole raced toward the chopper and saw that it was a HESA Shahed 278, a light utility model developed in Iran.

He had never flown one before, but he knew that it was based upon the Bell 206, a model he
was
familiar with, and assumed it would operate pretty much the same way.

He made it to the aircraft just as the door to the stairwell burst open and two men with submachine guns opened fire toward him, causing him to drop to the floor.

As he crashed down, the two men raced out further onto the roof, as two more men pushed up into the stairwell doorway, covering their partners as they moved.

Cole frowned.

It wasn’t good – fire and maneuver, especially if there were more following behind, would enable the guards to exit the stairwell and spread themselves around until they totally dominated the rooftop.

With no time to spare, Cole aimed the Colt at a series of power lines just above the stairwell door and pulled the trigger.

He watched as one of the heavy electrical cables came loose with a spray of sparks and swung in a fast arc right into the doorway, striking the first man in the chest and passing its current into him, sending him into convulsions that knocked his partner back inside the stairwell. The broken end of the cable stayed on the rooftop, sparking wildly, the rest of its length helpfully blocking the doorway.

From the cover of the chopper, Cole fired a second time, knowing that he had at least one more round left as the first shot hadn’t left the slide back in the empty position.

The bullet tore through the neck of one of the guards who had made it out onto the rooftop, and Cole was about to press the trigger again when he heard the dead-man’s click and saw the pistol was locked, open and empty.

But he was already on the move as the second guard turned toward him, and threw the gun at the man’s face.

The guard, his submachine gun tracking toward his target, flinched reflexively at the heavy metal object flying toward him and let the barrel of his weapon come up with his hands, the shots going high above Cole’s head as he ran.

And then Cole was there, grabbing the rifle and keeping it high above the man’s head while kicking him hard in the groin.

The man’s grip weakened and Cole snatched the gun away, propelling the guard away from him with a thrusting front kick that sent him stumbling back over the edge of the parapet and then – screaming wildly – all the way down to the parking lot below.

Cole turned back toward the stairwell, where the guards seemed to be recovering from their initial confusion, and let rip with a hail of bullets from the submachine gun that pinned them back.

Cole used the opportunity and rushed forward to the Shahed, pulling open the door and climbing inside, firing one more blast toward the stairwell to keep them back before he closed the door behind him.

He went through the checks quickly, not having any time to spare, getting the rotors powered up and spinning as he ran through the instruments.

He took one more look toward the stairwell, saw that the guards were making another attempt to emerge, and then ignored them, concentrating on controlling the throttle to get the power up while pulling on the collective until the helicopter made its first tentative movement off the rooftop.

Cole soon gained a few feet of height and – unable to ignore the rounds being fired toward the lightweight aircraft from the stairwell – he pitched to the right, swinging the Shahed’s tail toward the doorway, forcing the men back inside to escape the violently spinning tail rotor.

And then finally, the guards pinned down, he lifted the chopper fully skyward and launched himself away from the rooftop, away from MOIS headquarters and into the skies above Tehran.