PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (32 page)

Under any other circumstances, it would have been quite a sight; but with half the Iranian army chasing him, Cole had other things on his mind.

His internal clock told him that the choppers should be on target right about now, and his mind raced as he tried to figure out how to meet them.

He saw soldiers appear at the other side of the giant hall, eyes scouring the crowds for him. Momentarily unseen, Cole aimed from the alleyway and shot the first two soldiers he saw, an action which sent the crowds into a blind panic, making them run for the exits.

Cole used the confusion to sprint forward, eyes on a long carpet, rolled and leaning against one of the lower stalls.

Shouldering his rifle, Cole launched himself onto the carpet and scampered up it, hands and feet close together and moving fast like a monkey climbing a tree.

He reached the top a few seconds later, where the tip met the wall just a foot or so under the ornately carved stone balcony of the mezzanine level above; and as the soldiers realized where he was and opened fire, his hands reached upward and gripped the railings, pulling him up and over to the upper level, the Guards’ 7.62mm rounds bouncing off the ornate carvings just inches from his head, the stone protecting him.

He swung the G3 from his shoulder and popped up back above the balcony, letting off bursts of full-auto to the soldiers below, keeping them pinned down as he withdrew the cell phone, calling Barrington as people fled, terrified, from the upper levels, adding to the confusion and panic below as they emerged from the stairwells into the main hall.

‘Where are you?’ Barrington shouted into her radio.

‘Have you got my position?’ Cole asked, barely audible above the gunfire coming from inside.

‘Yes,’ she said as the Black Hawk started to circle the bazaar, all too aware of the seemingly huge amount of military vehicles that were parked up outside, dispersing armed soldiers this way and that.

‘Good,’ Cole’s voice came back. ‘This is what I need you to do.’

The ceiling above the carpet hall was as intricately carved as the mezzanine balustrades, three arched domes with colored glass at the top which – during daylight hours – must have made the hall awash with light and color.

Cole kept his eye on the central dome, even as he reloaded from the magazines in his webbing and continued to lay down fire on the soldiers below, using his elevation to his advantage.

He was managing to keep the soldiers away from the stairs that led up to him, but he knew that there must be other routes, upper corridors that would lead there, and that other soldiers would even now be finding them, using them.

He didn’t have long before the entire mezzanine would be swarming with blood-crazed Revolutionary Guards, and then his chances of survival would be narrowed down to nearly zero.

But then – just as his worst nightmares were realized, and he sensed movement at either end of the mezzanine balcony, saw soldiers coming out of the narrow doorways – the skylight of the central ceiling dome crashed open, colored glass falling to the hall below.

And then Cole saw the rope drop through the opening and he stood quickly, letting off bursts from the G3 in all directions before jumping up onto the balustrade and then hurling himself off, into the air above the great hall.

Dropping the rifle, his hands reached out for the rope.

As he fell, he thought for several terrible moments that he was going to miss it, that he was going to end up splattered across the stone slabs of the carpet hall below; but then his hands caught hold of the nylon cable and he gripped tight, body swinging wildly in the air.

‘Go, go, go!’ he shouted into the dark skylight above him, and – as the Iranian soldiers recovered from their surprise and started firing again – the rope pulled him upward, and then he was passing through the dome, up into the night sky beyond.

With Mark Cole being winched aboard the Black Hawk, Barrington and her men aimed covering fire toward the groups of soldiers below who – though they surely couldn’t see anything – were shooting skyward toward the vague sound of silenced engines and rotors.

The Little Bird also went into action then, launching its Hydra rocket projectiles toward the military vehicles parked outside the bazaar.

A truck exploded in a ball of flame, then a car, then an armored personnel carrier, and the streets of Tehran were alight with raging fire as the two choppers pulled up high and made their way out of Tehran, heading for the border, and the safety of Ashgabat.

12

Michiko sat at her desk within the Force One control center, which was laid out in a similar style to the White House Situation Room, and monitored the feedback from Tehran.

She was surrounded on all sides by technicians, analysts and operators from Force One, Vinson right by her side; but due to her own technical capabilities, as well as her relationship to Cole, she was the primary contact with the helicopter group.

The reports they were intercepting from Tehran – even after translation by the unit’s experts – were a confused babble, nobody in the city really having any idea what was going on. There were conflicting stories circulating over the police and military systems, some about an escaped spy from MOIS headquarters, others of an armed terrorist on the loose, and it was clear that there was no real idea what had happened. Mention of the American choppers was sporadic, and nearly non-existent.

There was anger higher up the chain of command though, with answers being demanded by everyone from the Ayatollah on down.

But right now, Michiko had questions of her own.

‘Is he with you?’ she asked Barrington over her radio system. ‘Did you get him?’

Everyone in the room listened intently for the answer, eager to find out what had happened over in Iran.

‘We got him,’ Barrington confirmed, ‘we’re out of Tehran and heading back to Ashgabat. You still got those air defenses down?’

‘Yes,’ Michiko replied, filled with an enormous sense of relief. ‘Yes, they’re still down, you should be okay all the way out of Iranian airspace.’

‘That’s great,’ Barrington said. ‘You want to speak to him?’

‘Yes please,’ Michiko answered, and before she could greet him, express her joy at his safety, her father’s voice came on the line, professional and urgent.

‘Michiko,’ he said, ‘I’m going to try and transfer the rest of those files over to you now. Have you found anything from the first batch?’

‘No,’ Michiko said, ‘not yet, anyway. We’ve got all our translators working on it, as well as the supercomputers, if there’s anything there, we’ll find it. Send across the rest, we’ll get started on it right away.’

‘Okay,’ said Cole. ‘I’m sending it across now.’

Cole opened up the files and started to send them across, even as the Black Hawk lurched this way and that through total darkness, the Little Bird leading the way up ahead, visible only to the pilots with their night vision goggles.

He hoped that Michiko and the team would find something; he knew that Younesi had something planned, just not what it was, not exactly. And with the time past midnight back in London, it was
already
the day of the memorial events over there.

He scanned the list of files as they downloaded to the Force One systems back in DC, and his eyes stopped as he recognized a name. He read it again, checking his translation of the Arabic script, pretty sure he had it right.

Shahid Dastgheyb
.

The name sent a chill through his spine, as some of the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.

It was the name of the mountain base which produced chemical weapons for the Iranian regime, the facility which had been the subject of a terrorist theft just a few months before.

The theft of a single crate of unknown chemical weapons, intercepted while en route to the transport hub at Ahmad Ibn Mousa.

A single crate, like the one that had been passed to Milanović by the Iranians, the one he had asked the Corsicans to smuggle across to England along with the weapons for Javid Khan’s boys.

He got back on the line to Michiko immediately.

‘Start on the file labeled ‘Shahid Dastgheyb’,’ Cole told her, ‘it’s a chemical weapons plant in Iran, Bruce knows all about it. A crate went missing there a few months ago, blamed on an IS offshoot. Might be the same crate that the Agostini family smuggled into London for Khan.’

Cole heard his daughter gasp on the other end of the line. ‘You think . . ?’

‘Yes,’ Cole confirmed, ‘I think there are chemical weapons in London, and Wembley Stadium is the target.’

Secret Service agent Victor Parish checked over the physical security arrangements at Wembley Stadium one last time.

As the leader of the service’s advance team, he had been in London for a couple of days already and – despite himself – had to admit that he was pretty happy with how the Brits had set this thing up.

It was nighttime now, in the early hours of Sunday morning, the day of the big event itself. The skies above were dark, yet the stadium was bathed in light as workmen continued about their business, getting things ready, always under the watchful eyes of the British police and security services. Members of the British Army had also been drafted in to provide extra armed security for the event, and Parish was happy that this thing would be as secure as it could be.

The president was due to arrive in London in just a few hours, and it was absolutely vital that every security precaution was in place before she set foot in the stadium.

Parish felt his cell phone vibrate and he answered it, surprised to see the caller ID displaying the number of the director’s office.

‘Parish?’ he heard the gruff tones of Secret Service director Dennis O’Hare ask.

‘Yes sir?’ he replied, immediately nervous despite his decades of experience.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ the director announced without preamble.’

Parish stood up a little straighter. ‘What sort of a problem?’ he asked.

‘Recently developed intelligence suggests that a secondary attack in London is highly likely,’ the director told him, ‘and Wembley Stadium is the most probable target. We have reason to believe that the attack might be chemical in nature. I’ve spoken to my opposite numbers in the UK and they’ve agreed to look into it but – pigheaded bastards that they are – they’re refusing to cancel the event unless there’s more evidence. And what’s more, the president agrees with them, she’s still going to go through with it. So what I need you to do is check the place over again, with a fine toothed comb, check everything and every
where
that such a weapon could be hidden, from packages underneath the seats, to the cleaner’s pushcart, to the ice cream vans pulling up outside. Understood?
Everything
and
everywhere.
’

‘Yes sir,’ Parish answered, already calculating the time he had left before the doors opened to the public, hoping he had enough.

‘I’m getting background checks carried out again on everyone who works there, anyone who’s so much as had a holiday to the Middle East is going to be pulled out of there, no questions asked. We can’t afford to take chances, simple as that. It might be sewn up tighter than a drum in there, but I want it even tighter.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I’ve made my demands to the Met and to MI5 on this, I’ve told them that I want full body checks on every person moving in and out of that venue, or I will personally pull the president out of there.’

‘There’s going to be ninety thousand people here,’ Parish said, seeing the nightmare that would confront them, ‘including the families of the children who were killed.’

‘I know it seems excessive,’ O’Hare said, ‘but I mean it. Spread the word. Full body searches on
everyone
who enters Wembley Stadium. No exceptions.’

‘Yes sir,’ Parish confirmed.

‘The Brits are providing extra personnel for this, don’t worry, they’ve got a whole load of Army Reserve soldiers they’re calling in to help with the searches.’

‘Good,’ Parish allowed. ‘They’ve already got their EOD teams here, they’re good.’

‘Okay,’ O’Hare said. ‘If I get any updates, I’ll fill you in. And if you find anything, let me know immediately.’

‘Yes sir,’ Parish said one final time, before O’Hare ended the call.

He looked around the huge stadium and sighed.

Whatever happened, it was going to be one hell of a day.

13

Cole sat on board the C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft as it flew at twenty-eight thousand feet above the Black Sea north of Turkey, just about to enter European airspace.

Michiko and the team back in Forest Hills had translated the documents and – although it it seemed that the Ministry of Intelligence and Security likely had a hand in the hijacking at Shahid Dastgheyb, there was nothing that could be used as hard proof; nor was there anything which connected that missing crate to the one Agostini had supposedly shipped over to Khan with the weapons.

It was all circumstantial, and although common sense seemed to point toward what was happening, the British security services demanded somewhat more.

Cole traveled with the rest of the Force One team who had rescued him from Tehran, and the twelve other personnel Murphy had managed to drum up had now been diverted from Ashgabat to London, to meet them there.

If the Brits wouldn’t treat the information seriously, then he wanted as many people he could trust over there with him on the ground.as possible.

Cole’s secure cell phone, provided for him back in Ashgabat, rang.

‘Mark,’ his daughter said when he picked up, ‘I think we’ve found something.’

‘Shoot,’ he said.

‘One of the files has detailed information on six members of the Havanirooz, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation – full security checks, like vetting for special missions, statements on their skills, training, loyalty to the regime, religious beliefs, family members, everything.’

Cole’s blood ran cold. ‘And where are they now?’

‘I’ve checked, and they’re absent without leave,’ Michiko said, ‘believed defected to Islamic State about six months ago.’

‘When were the checks done, the ones in that file?’

‘A little under a year ago,’ Michiko said.

It was clear to Cole what had happened – the six aviators had been chosen, selected and assessed for a special operation, then disavowed by the Iranian regime to cover its tracks. Defected to IS? From the reports, nothing seemed less likely.

What was likely was that the six men were going to be used as part of a proxy terrorist attack that Iran would want to later blame on Islamic State or its offshoots – the same reason they’d used Javid Khan, and the same reason they’d blamed the missing chemical weapons on the terrorist organization.

So that when their planned attacks took place, the Iranian government would be in the clear, while everything would be blamed on IS.

Younesi had been a clever man indeed.

But what role were the aviators going to play in all this?

Nine Eleven instantly sprang to mind, but Cole couldn’t believe that such tactics would be used again, especially against a city like London. The Royal Air Force would shoot down any suspect airplanes heading toward the capital before they would have a chance to do any damage at all.

But nevertheless, it was something they couldn’t ignore.

‘Get their pictures out to airports and airlines everywhere, get their features inputted onto all of our systems, try and get a match, try and find out where they are,’ he said.

‘Bruce has already given the order,’ Michiko said, ‘he thought they might try hijacking an airplane, fly it into Wembley Stadium, or one of the other memorial events.’

‘Good,’ Cole said, and yet something still nagged at him.

But, trapped on the airplane until it reached London, he at least had a couple of more hours to figure out what it was.

President Ellen Abrams arrived on Air Force One to a private military airfield outside London, the only people present either security personnel or very select members of the world press.

Dawn had already broken, and – although she had tried to sleep on the flight – she was inordinately tired, unable to rid her mind of the images of the dead children she was there to commemorate.

Vigils, protests and parades had been ongoing in Britain since Wednesday, the intelligence reports told her, with sporadic violence erupting in some of her towns and cities, mainly aimed at Muslims.

The security situation was good on the whole though, and even Dennis O’Hare seemed satisfied with the physical security arrangements.

There was some concern, she knew, over some missing chemical weapons, and some defected Iranian Army aviators, but nobody could be sure what it all meant, and certainly nobody could prove anything at present.

She waved at the cameras, careful not to smile – she was here as a mourner after all, dressed from head to toe in a severe black trouser suit.

Her presidential limousine, nicknamed ‘the Beast’ and shipped across earlier on board a gigantic C-5 Galaxy, was ready and waiting for her, and she moved immediately to the vehicle, heavy armored door held open for her by one of her Secret Service security detail.

Her first destination was to be Downing Street, where she’d meet Adam Gregory and the other world leaders at a private breakfast before everyone made their way to Westminster Palace for the start of the memorial procession.

It was going to be a busy day, Abrams knew.

She just hoped that it would remain a peaceful one.