The Black Knight (11 page)

Angela’s head smacked into the unforgiving wall as the blade in her hand slashed down the back of the doctor’s arm and he cried out in surprise and pain. Angela turned in the direction of the blow that had struck her and saw Lopez propped up on her elbows, her dark eyes flaring with rage and one leg outstretched where she had launched her attack.

Angela fought to get to her feet even as the door to the room was hurled open.

Doctor Reyen staggered backwards out of the way as a large man burst into the room, dark eyes glaring down at Angela.

*

Nicola Lopez hauled herself off the bed as she saw the blonde woman on the floor look up in terror as Aaron Mitchell’s boot swung into her slim wrist with a hefty blow. The blade in her hand spun through the air as Lopez heard the brittle bones in the woman’s arm snap like twigs.

The blonde woman screamed, the scream cut off abruptly as Mitchell’s boot slammed down onto her face and silenced her with a brutality that sent a pulse of fear writhing through Lopez’s guts.

Lopez slid off the bed in panic and almost fell as her legs betrayed her, weakened from lack of use. Mitchell loomed before her and she gathered her strength and swung her best effort at a punch to his jaw. Mitchell blocked the blow with ease and then caught her before she fell. Lopez sucked in air, her eyes aching and her limbs weak as she realized that the giant assassin held her life, quite literally, in his hands.

Mitchell turned and looked down at the injured doctor.

‘Get your wound tended to and call the police,’ he growled. ‘Ensure that woman is restrained and detained before she regains consciousness! Believe me, she will kill anybody who tries to stop her!’

The doctor nodded frantically as he scrambled to his feet, one hand clamped around the bloody wound to his arm as he pushed through the door and out into the corridor outside, screaming for a security team.

Aaron Mitchell turned to look at Lopez, his dark eyes smoldering with restrained violence.

‘Come with me if you want to live.’

***

XIII

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Lopez gasped, her voice a whisper, and despite the effort it required she still managed to add: ‘Asshole?’

Aaron Mitchell did not reply as he carried Lopez out of the hospital and across the parking lot outside until he reached a non-descript sedan he had hired with cash he had withdrawn from a safety deposit box in Missouri. The journey from Colorado had been a long one, but he had long maintained a network of such caches in case of emergency. He opened the passenger door and lowered Lopez into the vehicle, strapped her in before he took his place behind the wheel and drove out of the lot.

Lopez was, by any standards, out of the game. She knew that Mitchell had slipped something into her saline drip to bring her back to consciousness, because she had seen him toss the empty syringe into a trash can on their way out of the building. Likewise, she also knew that the woman whose face Mitchell had brutally stomped had been there to kill her.

‘I asked you a question,’ she murmured as the car veered onto the beltway, headed south.

Mitchell grabbed a chilled bottle of water and handed it to her.

‘Drink, as much as you can. We need to get you back up to strength.’

Lopez stared at the man who had opposed her and Ethan for so long, quite uncertain of what was going on. She took a small sip of the water from the bottle, and then immediately realized how parched she was and promptly guzzled the rest of the water down as Mitchell negotiated the traffic heading out of the district toward Maryland.

‘Why did you get me out of the hospital?’ she demanded, slightly more energetic now as the water hit her system.

Mitchell spoke in a serious tone that brooked no argument.

‘How much do you remember?’

Lopez blinked, her mind reeling as she tried to recall her last moments of consciousness.

She had been near the White House, running down two terrorists hiding in a goods vehicle to the south west of the building. They had been using an advanced form of technology, one that she and Ethan had been searching for, that allowed the user to control the mind of an implanted human being. She struggled to recall the man’s name: Hazeem? No, Abrahem – Abrahem Nassir.

‘I was running toward a vehicle,’ she said finally. ‘Shots were fired at two cops coming from the opposite direction. They went down and the vehicle started its engine. I got to the rear of it, pulled on the door and it flew open, knocked me off balance. There were two guys inside and they got the drop on me.’ Lopez hesitated as she realized that she had recalled the moment she had been shot. ‘Two rounds to the chest,’ she whispered.

Mitchell nodded, driving sedately amid the traffic in order to avoid standing out.

‘That’s the last thing you remember?’

‘Before that woman in my room and you turning up,’ she confirmed.

‘Then you’ve got some catching up to do,’ Mitchell replied. ‘You were in an induced coma for four weeks, and unconscious for as long again. You were shot two months ago.’

Lopez stared into the distance for a moment and then yanked down the sun visor and looked into the small vanity mirror upon it. Her pallid skin, sunken eyes with dark rings and messy hair peered back at her.

‘Jesus,’ she gasped.

‘You’re alive,’ Mitchell countered. ‘You’ll recover fast, provided the people who hired that assassin to take you down don’t get to you first.’

‘And who hired them?’ Lopez demanded.

‘Majestic Twelve,’ Mitchell replied. ‘They’re moving to shut down any opposition they encounter, and both you and your friend Ethan Warner are at the top of their list.’

Lopez struggled to make sense of what Mitchell was saying.

‘The why haven’t you put a bullet in my brain?’

Mitchell gripped the wheel tighter, as though it was a struggle to get his words out.

‘There have been some developments of late,’ he rumbled, ‘that have caused me to question the role of Majestic Twelve.’

Lopez watched the big man for a long moment before a smile spread across her features.

‘You turned coat on them?’ she mocked. ‘Wow, they must really have tugged your chain, Mitchell. Pension benefits from a criminal organization not what you were hoping for?’

Mitchell had in the past detected Lopez’s sarcastic nature and was surprised to hear it return so soon, the fiery Latino swiftly reverting back to her natural self.

‘Majestic Twelve has grown immensely in power over the past few decades,’ he replied. ‘Ventures that would have been unthinkable to them in the 60’s are now commonplace, and it appears that they consider themselves the effective rulers of western civilization. MJ-12 considers the President of the United States to be merely a cypher, an official elected to appease the public, to make the population of our country believe that they actually have a say and influence on how the country is run. In truth the president has little real power and Majestic Twelve has enough of both the Senate and Congress in its pocket to ensure that any policy unpalatable to them is easily over-ruled.’ Mitchell sighed. ‘That’s not what I signed up for.’

Lopez leaned toward him and jabbed a finger into his big, round shoulder.

‘But you
did
sign up, didn’t you?’ she accused.

‘I was deceived,’ Mitchell growled back at her. ‘We were signing up to serve our government. Most of us were Vietnam veterans, vagrants with nowhere to go and despised by our own people, the people we thought we had fought to protect from the advance of Communism. Instead, we were spat on and rejected.’

‘Not our country’s finest hour,’ Lopez admitted as she leaned back in her seat.

‘We were the perfect patsies, vulnerable to the promises of a cabal like Majestic Twelve, wealthy and powerful and able to indirectly control assets of the intelligence community. We were trained under the radar by former CIA operatives and deployed to serve the interests of big business instead of our country. Within weeks of accepting their offer I went from living in a cardboard box in Anacostia to earning five figures a year and having my own home again.’

Lopez shook her head.

‘So it didn’t ever cross your mind as odd that you never set foot in the CIA or FBI buildings?’

‘Deniable assets,’ Mitchell replied, ‘paramilitary units attached to clandestine services. After Vietnam, they claimed that the government needed an arm of the military and intelligence community that could be used in complete secrecy without upsetting Congress, which was as keen as anybody to discredit both further overseas military action and appease the public mood. Majestic Twelve capitalized on that.’

Lopez watched the traffic passing them by as Mitchell drove, and realized that she needed to capitalize on this moment while she could.

‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Tell me what their end-game is, what they actually want.’

‘Uncertain,’ Mitchell said. ‘Majestic Twelve was formed in 1947 as a result of the supposed crashed flying saucer incident in Roswell, New Mexico, but also in response to a series of events in the aftermath of the Second World War that occurred in Antarctica.’

‘Antarctica?’ Lopez echoed. ‘What the hell happened up there?’

‘It’s a long story, which you’ll hear about soon enough,’ Mitchell promised. ‘Point is, MJ-12 was an official and militarily supported group until somewhere in the 1970’s, when it was shut down by the government of the time. That’s why the trail of data that investigators follow always dries up and why MJ-12 is generally considered a myth – they officially were removed from all government documentation and all assets and references destroyed. The reason for the excise was that MJ-12 was considered surplus to requirements with the rise of the Black Budget and the expansion of highly secretive military facilities like
Area 51
at Groom Lake in Nevada, Edwards Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain and others. In essence, military contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing took over the development of highly classified projects and rendered MJ-12 obsolete.’

‘So they re-formed outside of the government,’ Lopez figured.

‘Exactly,’ Mitchell confirmed. ‘The most powerful men among those ejected from the government’s circle of trust continued the Majestic Twelve mandate but this time remained highly secretive in their own right. The idea was that employees of the group would serve, not actually knowing that they were serving Majestic Twelve. They recruited operatives, training staff and military hardware using contacts within the military-industrial complex, and needed their own paramilitary force to perform military actions when the United States government were unwilling to put troops on the ground in foreign countries, should the need be required to sustain profits in their business ventures outside of the US.’

Lopez leaned back in her seat as she digested what Mitchell had told her.

‘They become ever more powerful, growing in influence and stature as they commit to profitable ventures around the globe, unhindered by the law, and eventually begin to rival the US government in power.’

Mitchell nodded as he eased off the freeway.

‘Majestic Twelve now has the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in their pocket, the Speaker of the House, numerous other officials both here and overseas as well as at least four Presidents and Prime Ministers from around the world. They cannot directly influence the president as, remarkably, he managed to win the presidency without their financial backing. But they can and do guide US policy by pressuring Congress with political lobbying, financing the campaigns of politicians in return for policies favorable to their business ventures. When overseas they deploy their paramilitary forces to achieve by force what money cannot, which is why you’re here.’

‘Me?’

Mitchell nodded.

‘I have been outcast by the group for failing to assassinate the President of the United States, or at least ensuring that he died at the hands of Abrahem Nassir.’

Lopez gasped and smiled again.

‘I almost forgot – Ethan must have come through!’

‘He did,’ Mitchell acknowledged, ‘as he annoyingly often does. But his success, and in part my failure, have forced MJ-12’s hand and now they’re on the warpath. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s efforts to root them out have grown from a mild annoyance to a serious threat and they’re acting upon that. I was incarcerated in Florence ADX without trial, and was forced to enact an emergency escape plan I’ve had in place for two decades. It was a one time thing, so I can’t run it again. I’ve played my hand and by now MJ-12 will know it.’

Lopez blinked.

‘You escaped from a security max prison?’

‘Preparation is everything, Miss Lopez,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Now, Majestic Twelve has deployed a paramilitary force to Antarctica, hot on the heels of Ethan Warner and a smaller team sent by the Defense Intelligence Agency to the same location. We need to support them as soon as possible.’

‘Ethan’s in Antarctica?’

‘Yes,’ Mitchell confirmed, ‘because whatever it is that MJ-12 wants is up there. I intend that they will not get hold of it.’

Lopez stared at him for a moment. ‘What’s my part in all of this?’

For the first time, Mitchell smiled.

‘I’ll need you with me to help prevent me from getting shot when I walk into the Defense Intelligence Agency.’

Lopez shook her head.

‘I’ll be damned,’ she whispered, ‘you’re really switching sides?’

Mitchell looked at her, his dark eyes smoldering with restrained anger.

‘Majestic Twelve lied to me when they recruited me and have betrayed me for a single decision of which they didn’t approve,’ he growled. ‘That makes me very angry.’

Lopez’s guts contracted slightly as she reflected on what a man like Aaron Mitchell might consider as being very angry. She said nothing more as Mitchell drove slowly toward the DIA Headquarters at Anacostia-Bolling.

***

XIV

Antarctica

General Andrei Veer stood in the cavernous rear of a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and surveyed the men seated before him. There were one hundred of them in total, each crammed onto the narrow seats lining the fuselage of the gigantic aircraft, and between them were rows of tightly packed ATVs – All Terrain Vehicles, each with four am-tracks and rear-mounted machine guns, and each capable of transporting two armed men across the ice at high speed.