PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (25 page)

PART THREE

1

‘Impressive,’ Clark Mason said, for once in his life actually meaning it.

He was in Fort Bragg, a huge US military base in North Carolina that was home to America’s airborne and special operations forces, at the invitation of Colonel Manfred Jones. They had just watched a training exercise where Delta Force operatives had raided an apartment complex – part of a synthetic ‘town’ on the Bragg site, which could be set up, blown apart and then reconfigured, time after time – and sustained casualties, who had then been rescued in the face of embedded enemy forces by a team from the Air Force Special Tactics Squadron.

It had been textbook stuff – the initial attack by Delta had been picture perfect, the ‘injuries’ forced in order for the secondary phase of the exercise to take place; and then the STS boys had gone in, fast-roping from Black Hawk choppers, taking out the enemy forces while stabilizing the casualties, and evacuating on the helicopters, which landed in the hot zone for just long enough to get everyone on board, before soaring off into the descending dusk.

‘They are that,’ Jones said with just a hint of pride. ‘I can see why Miley thought this was the best job in the world.’

‘You didn’t fancy joining them then?’ Mason asked with a smile.

Jones grinned back. ‘That was more Miley’s game,’ he said, ‘and I think you know that. I’m a bit too old – and yes,
boring
– for that sort of thing.’

Mason laughed. General Miley Cooper had been anything but boring – the last Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command had broken his legs and pelvis doing a nighttime parachute jump with Delta Force, not too far from here at Pope Field. He had believed in leading from the front, but Jones had other ideas about command and control – after all, he figured, look at what had happened to Cooper.

Jones had been his deputy, more of a political appointee than a man totally cut-out for the job; and yet here he was now, Commander of JSOC in his own right, and Mason recognized the fact that Jones
was
proud of his position here, despite not really being respected by his troops, who saw him as a paper-pusher and not a balls-to-the-wall operator like Cooper.

‘You’ll get used to all this if you’re not careful,’ Mason said as Jones led him around the apartment complex, pointing out the precision shooting of the Delta operators, double-tap headshots to all the ‘enemy’ mannequins, the ‘friendlies’ left unscathed even when they were mere inches apart.

Jones stopped and turned to the vice president. ‘I didn’t come to you because I don’t appreciate what these men – and, in some cases, women – do. On the contrary, I have the utmost respect for these people. JSOC have the cream of our forces, the Tier One operators – and they
are
the best in the world, trust me on that, you simply wouldn’t believe some of the things these guys can do.’

‘You sound like you’re changing your mind,’ Mason chided as they walked on through the carnage. ‘You’re not becoming one of them, are you?’

Jones shook his head. ‘I’m more of a political animal,’ he said, ‘but just as ruthless and committed in my own way. But I think you’ve got me all wrong – I have nothing against these guys here, in fact I have nothing but respect and admiration for them. I respect them because they do what they do – sometimes against impossible odds – because they are serving the will of their country, as decided by Congress. It is when these fine soldiers, sailors and airmen are taken out of the system to be used to satisfy the egotistical cravings of elite politicians, unanswerable to the public, that I start to get upset. In a very real sense, covert units such as the one we suspect is shielded by the Paradigm Group betray everything these men are fighting for, the rule of law, the righteousness of our democratic way of life.’ Jones stopped again, right next to an armed terrorist mannequin with two clean shots through its forehead. ‘Do you understand?’

Mason eyed the mannequin, then Jones. He didn’t really understand the military, had never had an interest in serving and – on a certain level – distrusted anyone who had the desire or the skill-set to place two bullets through a person’s head. But he could grasp the necessity of the military’s existence, for it was the one thing that assured America’s ongoing superpower status. To talk softly and carry a big stick was good advice; it was just that – as a career diplomat and politician – Mason tried to steer away from the stick end of the business.

‘I understand,’ Mason said. ‘Yes, I do understand. But the important thing is that – no matter your reasons – you’re with me.’

‘I am,’ Jones assured him, ‘to the very end.’

‘That’s good,’ Mason said, looking out of the windows as a clean-up team started to arrive on-site.

Jones followed Mason’s line of sight. ‘They’ll have this place up and running again for more training tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘Walls are modular, they’ll be wheeled about, it’ll be a whole different set-up in here.’

Mason was about to suggest they call it a day and grab a drink, when his cellphone started to vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out, saw who it was, and raised an eyebrow at Jones. ‘It’s Noah,’ he said, before answering the call. ‘Noah,’ he said in greeting, ‘how are you getting on? Any news from that little Jap girl yet?’

Jones watched the blood drain from Mason’s face as Graham replied on the other end of the line, saw the vice president’s teeth clenching, the veins on his neck bulging.

‘I will,’ Mason said, ‘I’ll check it right fucking now.’

He hung up and immediately started typing into his smartphone keypad, stopped and waited to look at the screen.

It can’t be
, he told himself,
surely it can’t be?

But as he accessed the CNN news feed, Jones looking at the phone over his shoulder, he saw that it
was
true.

He recognized the video all too readily – it was the home movie of Mason himself having sex with one of his mistresses. Only this particular mistress had convinced him to do a bit of role-play – her as a black slave girl, Mason as a marauding Ku Klux Klansman. It had been a put-up job by Bruce Vinson of the Paradigm Group, and the girl had secretly filmed their disturbing tryst and passed it onto the man, who had then blackmailed Mason into silence with it.

He had promised that it would never be seen, as long as Mason didn’t go public with his accusations against the president running her own covert hit squad. And he hadn’t made those accusations public, had he? He hadn’t told anyone, he’d been as good as his word, surely?

Unless Vinson
knew
he was under investigation, and this was his way of warning Mason off?

He watched the video again, saw that it purposefully cut off before he had taken the white hood off; saw also that the background had been digitally modified to disguise the location, his bedroom at Number One Observatory Circle. The girl’s face, too, had been rendered all but unrecognizable by deliberate blurring.

But the message was clear – the real video could be revealed at any time, if there was cause to do so.

The commentary indicated that the Klansman was someone in a position of power within the US government, but held no further information; and Mason knew that the press – and a scandal-loving public – would have a field day with guessing and speculating on who it could be.

Experts might even try to get past the digital fakery, try and reconnect the dots, get the genuine images back. And if they did, would they recognize his bedroom? Would they recognize Sarah Lansing, the young woman from the video? If they tracked
her
down, they would soon be onto him.

Damn it!

‘That doesn’t look good,’ Jones said as he watched the video a third time.

‘You’re fucking telling me!’ Mason shouted, snatching the phone away and dialing a number. ‘Noah!’ he blurted when the call was answered. ‘We’ve run out of fucking time! We need to act before they do anything else, now bring that little bitch in for questioning, and I mean
right now
!’

Sonofabitch!

But Mason wasn’t going down without a fight, that was for damn sure.

He’d make sure Graham got the information out of that Japanese whore; and if he couldn’t, then Mason would go on down to FBI headquarters and crack the bitch himself.

Vinson was going down for this, and Aoki Michiko was the key.

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ Vinson said bluntly.

Michiko was facing him at the other side of his wide glass desk, seemingly unperturbed by Vinson’s dressing down. He’d been repeating himself for the past five minutes at least, and Michiko was getting bored of it.

‘I understand that,’ she said evenly, ‘but I had to do something, right? And guess what, he’ll get the message now, won’t he? No more pussy-footing around, he’ll back off.’

‘Or,’ Vinson said, ‘he’ll come for us harder now, all guns blazing. After all, what will he have to lose? If the video’s out, our leverage over him has gone – we’ve made our claims, and he’ll make his. And guess what, a bit of dominant KKK-slave-girl rape fantasy role-play will be forgotten in seconds once he makes those accusations about Force One public. A covert government hit team, answerable only to the president, unauthorized and off-the-books, her own private little army. We’re talking impeachment for her, prison for the rest of us.’

Michiko considered his remarks, knew that it was a possibility; knew, also, that there were other things she could do to ensure it didn’t happen like that.

‘Look, I’m sorry, alright? I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t like leaving the ball in someone else’s court, I like to be the one in control. We had that video and didn’t use it, and they were coming after us anyway.’

‘Nevertheless, I – ’

Michiko held up her hands, stopping Vinson in his tracks. ‘There’s more,’ she said urgently. ‘I didn’t just do it for me. I have a feeling we’re going to need some JSOC assets soon, and I know we won’t want to request them with this Mason-Jones-Graham trio looking to make trouble for us.’

‘What do you mean?’ Vinson asked.

‘I mean, do you know where my father is right now?’

‘Serbia. Belgrade.’

‘He was. But where is he now?’ Again, Michiko held up a hand to stop him from responding. ‘You won’t know, because I’m the only one who was looking, and I only just found out before I sent that video out.’

‘So where is he?’

‘According to police reports, an unknown Caucasian man was arrested earlier today, at an old Nazi concentration camp near the Crowne Plaza Hotel.’

‘Where Mark was meeting the arms broker,’ Vinson said.

‘Exactly,’ Michiko said. ‘The police found three black Mercedes sedans parked outside, and eleven dead bodies down in the basement. One of them was Frank Mitchell, the guy from Pro-Tec you’d arranged to act as bodyguard to my father. He’d been tortured to death.’

Vinson’s eyes went wide, and then he recoiled, appalled by the news. ‘Heaven help us,’ he breathed. ‘Poor man.’

‘Another of the men was Radomir Milanović, the arms dealer Mark was supposed to have met in the hotel.’

‘You think they were on to him? Kidnapped him at the hotel, took him to the camp to question him?’

Michiko nodded. ‘Another body was found in the presidential suite of the Crowne Plaza, a single bullet wound to the head. Larry Thompson.’

Vinson closed his eyes and rested back into his chair. After a few moments he opened them and looked back over at Michiko. ‘What else?’

‘It was an MI5 agent who called the police in.’

‘Elizabeth Morgan?’

‘Yeah, Mark had been working with her since London, it looks like they got separated at the hotel – the report she’s filed is that she was conducting solo surveillance after an anonymous tip-off, didn’t go through the normal channels because of the suspension, and saw Milanović and his men dragging a body out of the hotel. Worried that they would kill the man, so called the authorities.

‘According to the Serbian police files, she was allowed to question him at the station, to find out who he was, but claimed she was unable to find out.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘On a plane back to England, presumably to report everything back to Bryce Kelly and Sir Ian Riley.’

‘And Mark?’ Vinson asked. ‘Is he still at the police station?’

‘No,’ Michiko said, ‘and this is where is gets bad.’

‘Go on,’ Vinson urged.

‘Reports indicate that the unidentified man asked to speak to a representative of the Iranian embassy.’

‘The
Iranian
embassy?’ Vinson stuttered in disbelief. ‘But why?’

‘I haven’t been able to find out yet,’ Michiko said. ‘But a short while after, there was a transfer from Belgrade central police headquarters of one prisoner – unidentified – to the Iranian embassy on Ljutice Bogdana.’

‘Mark is at the Iranian embassy?’ Vinson asked, leaning forward at his desk.

Michiko shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not anymore. A transport request was put in, via MOIS – Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security – and a flight left Belgrade for Tehran just over an hour ago. I think Mark was on it.’