The 13: Fall (51 page)

T
aylor was forty thousand feet in the air on a C-32 transport with two hundred American soldiers when the news came in from Washington. The Royal Navy had unexpectedly come to the rescue of the United States, via the help of one Bozwell Hamilton and retired Admiral Eli Craig. Immediately the men had begun to whoop and holler, raising fists in the air and shouting cheers. Taylor had immediately bowed her head and thanked God.

As they approached Andrews, she looked out the small window to see two fighter jets off to the right of the plane. They were being escorted in, one of the marines told her. She didn’t know if that made her feel safer or more like a target.

Once they landed, Taylor was taken to a car, where she was told she would be transported to the bunker where Director Jennings and the command center were. Jennings had ordered that she be brought there the moment she landed. When she got in the car, she was once again surprised. Sitting beside her and in front of her were two three-star generals. They introduced themselves and shook her hand. One of them even gave her a friendly jab in the shoulder and said, “Good work, Agent Taylor!” obviously aware of the details of her last twenty-four hours. She said thanks, but she really didn’t feel like she’d done anything special. Marianne had gotten herself killed, and Alexandra Sokolov had died from her injuries in the crash. She guessed she still had a hand in bringing the two women to justice, if you could call it that. Even though they were dead, she still felt sorry for them, wondering if somehow in the last seconds of their lives they had reconciled with God. But she doubted it. And that’s what really broke her heart.

More news came in over the radio as the car approached the bunker. The Chinese were being pushed back. The US forces and their British counterparts had turned the tables. The Chinese were on the run.

The guard at the base checked them in as the car pulled forward and into the narrow tunnel in the mountainside. Inside, they were led out of the vehicle and into the elevator, which took them nearly twenty stories down. Once outside the elevator, a second set of checkpoints were there. They went through the process again and finally were escorted into the secure facility. She waited for the Secret Service agent to swipe his card and for the little LED light to turn green. It did, and he opened the door without a word.

The room was eerily quiet. Jennings was standing with his back to her holding a sat-phone. The other men turned to look at her as she walked in but otherwise paid her no mind.

“What’s going on?” she asked, worried.

Jennings turned to see her and held up a finger.

“Keene’s team is trying to disable a Chinese nuke. It’s set to go off in four minutes,” Sykes said. The look on his face told the rest of the story.

“Where is it?” Taylor asked.

“Upstate New York. Keene and his men went there to stop them from flying it into DC.”

Her heart immediately sank. Jon was in upstate New York with a nuclear bomb? “What’s the problem?” Taylor asked. “Aren’t they trained for this kind of thing?”

“Keene is,” Sykes said, “but he’s not there.”

Now she was worried and confused. “What do you mean? I thought you just said—”

“I don’t know what’s going on up there right now,” Sykes cut her off. “I have no idea where Keene is. All I know is that his team is there, trying to stop the thing from going off and taking out half of upstate New York, Ottawa, and Montreal.”

Megan was listening, but she was already pulling her laptop out of her bag. “Someone give me the number of that sat-phone!” she said. Jennings and everyone else turned to look at her.
“Now!”

Jennings quickly rattled off the number of the phone to her. Within seconds she was tapped into the feed of the call. “Who am I speaking with?”

“This is Lieutenant Kirkpatrick, ma’am.”

“That phone got a camera on it, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Turn it on. Now.”

Megan watched her laptop screen as Kirkpatrick fidgeted with the phone.

“We’re down to two minutes and forty seconds here,” Kirkpatrick said.

The image came up on her screen. “Okay, what are you looking at? Show me. And put me on speaker.”

Kirkpatrick did and tilted the phone down toward the bomb. Quickly, she took a screen shot of what Kirkpatrick and the men were looking at. “Okay, first thing you’ve got to do is remove the neutron trigger.”

“Ma’am, this is Captain Ramirez. I’m a bomb technician. I can disarm the device. The problem is I can’t read the symbols to make sure they haven’t wired something weird.”

Taylor had already assumed this. It was the reason she had taken the screen shot. “I’m already running it through a software program,” she said. She clicked a couple buttons and said, “There. I’ve just sent it back to your phone, Captain. It should be on your screen.”

“Got it!” Ramirez said.

Everyone sat motionless and silent for the next minute. According to Kirkpatrick, they had less than two minutes to get the nuke disarmed. Everyone watched the clock on the wall as the second hand ticked down. One minute and thirty-two seconds later Ramirez came back on the line.

“All good! Package is secure.”

Everyone in the command center clapped and cheered. Jennings walked over to Taylor and gave her a big kiss on the forehead.

“Taylor, you are possibly the second best asset I’ve ever had.”

She smiled. “Yeah, who’s the first?”

Jennings’s smile faded as he let out a sigh. “Jon Keene.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t had time to ask.” He turned from her and picked up the phone again. “Lieutenant, you still there?”

“Yes, sir.”

Taylor pointed back to her laptop. “I’ve got him here. You don’t have to use that thing,” she said pointing at the sat-phone.

Jennings hit the button and put it on the table. “Where’s Jon Keene?”

“Don’t know, sir. Once we secured the airstrip, he took off. Said he saw someone he needed to chase after.”

“Who?”

“No idea, sir. He didn’t say. He just put me in charge and took out of there.”

Sykes whispered something in his ear. Jennings stepped back and looked at him with disdain. “He’s my best man, Bob. And he’s the reason why everything we’ve done tonight has been successful. No way!”

Taylor stood up and spun Jennings around to face her. “What? What’s going on?”

“It’s going to be all right. Jon can take care of himself.”

“What are you talking about?” Her pulse began to quicken again.

Jennings gently grabbed her by the arm and led her aside. “Listen, Jon is
the
best operative this agency has ever seen. I don’t know who he’s chasing, but if he left those men to go do it, then I have to believe the target was worth it. But we have to get that nuke back here under our supervision. We can’t just let it sit there.”

Just as he was finishing, she heard Sykes speaking into the laptop’s microphone. “Okay, gentlemen. You are to proceed back here immediately. Under no circumstances does that device leave your immediate sight. Do you understand?”

“What about General Keene?” Kirkpatrick answered.

“Keene is on assignment. Your orders are to report back here with that device. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Megan heard the click, signaling that the connection had been severed. “What does he mean? On assignment?”

“Military’s first code of conduct,” Jennings answered. “Never leave a man behind.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sykes just told them, in so many words, that there was more to the assignment than they were aware of. That Jon is still operating. Otherwise, they would’ve gone looking for him.”

“Is there?” she asked, agitated. “Is there more?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Jennings said apologetically.

“Then where is he? Why did Jon leave his men and go chasing after someone?”

“I have no idea.”

   CHAPTER 79   

K
eene had been following the three SUVs now for almost an hour. The cover of night had kept him from being seen. The F-150 was solid black, and with a cloudy night providing no light from the moon or stars, the truck was the perfect vehicle to tail his prey. He had heard about the new night-vision Oakleys that the military boys had been using for the last six months but had never seen or used them until tonight.
Pretty impressive
, he thought. He’d been driving for an hour now with no headlights in the pitch dark, and he could see as well as if it were broad daylight.

He had no idea what road they were on or where it was leading, but he knew it was out in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t seen another car since they left the airfield. He was sure, though, wherever it was they were going, it was going to be someplace secluded. The man he was following would take extra care not to be found.

He’d crossed the man’s path once before. At the time, the man was just a Ministry of State Security agent—China’s security and intelligence agency—though it was possible he had been connected to the PLA at the same time. China often used high-ranking military officials in their intelligence agency. The agents were pulling double duty, so to speak. Regardless, the man was military now.

Finally the three SUVs began to slow down. Keene knew only that they had been driving west then north. And though they hadn’t crossed any kind of border station, that meant they were now in Canada. Keene let off the gas and watched up ahead as they turned down another road. He couldn’t see much because the road was blocked by a hillside. He crept slowly to the turnoff. The three SUVs were just ahead, but there were brake lights. They were coming to a stop. Keene pulled the truck over to the side of the road and got out. He checked his watch. The sun would be up shortly. Whatever it was he was going to do, he needed to do it fast.

He checked his ammo and took off walking down the dirt road. After a hundred yards or so, he came around a small bend in the road and saw a house—a cabin, perhaps—nestled up against the hillside in a clearing beyond the tree line. It was probably used for hunting or just a weekend escape, he thought. It was the kind of place you’d bring your family to get away. From everything. Including civilization.

He noted four armed guards outside the house. Two on the porch and two standing fifty feet in front of the house, facing the road he was currently walking down. The tree line was about to give way to the clearing. He decided to hole up there for a few minutes and watch.

After five minutes, another two men came around from the back of the house, both armed. That brought the count to six. And there was no way to tell how many were inside. But a thin, pinkish-orange line began to crease the horizon. He was going to have to move quicker than this if he was going to get in there. He quietly moved down the tree line to the far end of the house. From there, he had a profile view of the property. After assessing the situation for a moment, he decided it would be better to take out the guards in the back first. The others would come around back eventually, looking for them.

He waited until the two guards from the rear went back around to the front.
Must be a regular patrol schedule
, he thought. This was the third time they’d done it since he had been watching. As soon as they were gone, he shot out from the trees and made his way to the back of the house. He checked his weapon and made sure the sound suppressor was in place. The first guard came around the side of the house. Keene let him get three steps past the edge of the house before he fired. He turned around just in time to see the other one come. Both men were dropped before they knew what hit them. He grabbed the two men’s bodies and dragged them over to the center of the property.

Given the timing of the rotation, the two guards he’d just taken out should’ve gone back around front by now. That meant that the two from the front were probably going to be coming around the back any second now looking for them. He was right. He’d no sooner finished the thought when the first guy came around. Keene took him just as he made the corner. The other one came within moments of the first one.

With all four house guards down, Keene made his way slowly back around to the front. The two men stationed away from the house were still there, unaware their counterparts had run into trouble. Funnily enough, their job was to make sure that people like him never got to the house.
Oh well
, he thought.
That’s what you get for hiring two-bit hacks.
He raised his MP5 and sent off four quick shots, two each to the guards fifty feet away, with their backs to him. The men dropped right where they stood. He stood still, holding his position for a good two minutes, just to make sure no one else was going to come running out of the house for him.