Authors: JT Brannan
STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books (37 page)
H&K submachine gun raised against one shoulder, Cole pushed open the heavy wooden door with his other hand, moving swiftly into the well-lit room, both hands back on the gun as he scanned, left to right.
He stopped in the centre, in front of the long, rectangular window with its drop to the back garden.
Sarah. Ben. Amy.
They all sat together, huddled against each other as Dan Albright – different now with his shaven head, scarred face and white eye patch – and Stefan Steinmeier – to Cole unchanged physically, but unknown now to him psychologically – aimed their handguns at them, safety catches off, triggers already depressed half way.
Sarah looked in control at least, and although she looked like she’d been badly beaten, the fire hadn’t gone out of her eyes, the fight hadn’t yet left her, and Cole’s heart swelled for a moment. But then he saw Ben and Amy, terrified, frightened beyond their young ability to comprehend.
Even when they saw their daddy, the relief in their eyes was only fleeting, seemingly already resigned to a fate described to them by the two hateful men who towered above them, guns raised.
‘Mark Cole,’ Albright said, smile wide, ‘at last we meet.’
‘Let them go,’ Cole demanded, his voice even.
Albright laughed. ‘Those aren’t our orders, I’m afraid.’
‘I don’t give a shit about your orders. Let them go. Now.’
There was an air of menace in the room that could be felt on a physical level, a rising tension that begged for release.
Cole looked Stefan in the eye. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Steinmeier laughed. ‘Why? You ask me why?’ He laughed again, then looked serious. ‘Money, of course. Oh, I know it’s something you don’t have to worry about. You make a million dollars a job, eh, and yet you never offered to help me, offer me work, anything! You know what my police pension is? You wouldn’t wipe your ass with it! Do you know how much a good school costs? University? For three children? A lot more than what I have, my friend. And so maybe I wouldn’t have done it for a hundred thousand, probably not even for a million. But ten million dollars?’ Steinmeier smiled at Cole. ‘You would have to kill ten people for that. I’m only going to have to kill the four of you.’
Cole felt the rage within him build, but controlled it. They had not killed his family yet, and so must have had a reason for keeping them alive, and Cole knew there was room for negotiation. But what did they want?
‘You’re probably thinking of how to negotiate this,’ Albright said cheerfully. ‘The trouble is, there
is
no way. Mr Hansard wanted your family kept alive so that you could watch them die.’ Albright grinned. ‘Punishment for destroying his plans, he said.’
Cole didn’t know whether to believe this, but started to react anyway, submachine gun tracking to Albright’s head; and then the unthinkable happened – right in front of him, right before his eyes, before he could react, Steinmeier raised his handgun to little Ben’s head and pulled the trigger, even as Albright pulled the barrel of his own pistol in line with Sarah’s forehead, and then two shots rang out, and Mark Cole’s wife and son were killed, their lifeless bodies slumping to the floor, blood pooling from their shattered skulls.
Rooted to the spot, Cole watched as Amy shrieked and started running towards him. Steinmeier reached out to stop her, but Albright restrained him, allowing her to run on.
‘Daddy!’ she cried as she ran, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy – ’
She reached him finally, running to hug him, and then Cole saw a muzzle flash as Albright shot her from behind.
Amy’s body collapsed into his arms, and he turned around immediately, instinctively covering her body with his even as both men opened fire with their handguns, bullets peppering Cole’s back as he tucked his head in out of the way.
Cole felt the impact of the 9mm rounds hit him hard through the Kevlar vest, his whole body shuddering as they emptied their magazines into him.
Cole had tears in his eyes, mixed with the blood of his daughter, as he heard the guns click empty on the other side of the room.
And then he was on his feet and charging, an enraged figure of pure hate, unbridled bloodlust across his face. Both men were trying to reload, and he got to Stefan first, his right hand chopping down on the man’s right forearm, breaking the bone in two and causing the gun to drop to the floor.
As Steinmeier recoiled, grunting in pain, Cole steamrollered past him to Albright, just as the half-blind agent raised his reloaded gun to fire.
Cole grabbed the man’s gun hand and pushed it upwards, a round firing up into the ceiling as Albright pressed the trigger, and then Cole pulled down sharply, twisting the right wrist and forcing the pistol to go spinning out towards the far wall.
Cole’s knee rose viciously straight up into Albright’s groin, and the scarred agent squealed in pain. Cole moved in to deliver a nerve strike to the neck, but then Steinmeier’s huge, bear-like arms were around him, crushing his shoulders and constricting his chest.
Cole immediately thrust his head backwards, and he heard the muffled yelp of Steinmeier as his nose was broken. Still in the bear hug, Cole saw Albright coming back for him and reared back, kicking both feet straight into the agent’s chest, sending him staggering back towards the window.
Cole stamped down on Steinmeier’s foot, then sent his elbow backwards sharply into the big man’s ribs, rewarded by a satisfying
crack
as some of them broke with the impact.
Cole then sidestepped out of the bear hug and pushed the injured man forwards across the room towards Albright.
In the blink of an eye, Cole had reached down to the floor and snatched up Albright’s fallen pistol, aiming it across the room towards Albright and pressing the trigger once, twice, three times.
Albright had recovered from the blows he had received, and saw Cole raise the gun. At the same time, he saw Steinmeier’s big body hurtling towards him. Intended by Cole as a distraction, Albright instead used it to his advantage, pulling Steinmeier across him even as Cole started firing.
Steinmeier’s body shook from the impact, all three bullets entering his gut, blood spurting reflexively from his mouth, and then Albright pushed the body back away from himself towards Cole.
As Cole jinked to the side to avoid the impact, gun moving around Steinmeier’s incoming body, Albright used the brief opportunity and turned to the window, smashing it as he jumped out from the third floor of the house to the garden below.
Cole got to the window as he saw Albright pick himself up from the thick snowdrift that lay against the side of the house.
The man looked up and smiled before running off towards the tree line, and before Cole could clear the barrel of the gun over the window frame, Albright had disappeared into the shadows of the garden.
No you fucking don’t
, Cole promised, and then he swung himself out of the window, falling three storeys to the snowdrift below. He was out in seconds, and he took off after the man as fast as he had ever run in his life.
As Cole entered the tree line, he could hear the first faint sound of sirens in the distance. He knew the area would soon be crawling with police, security and other emergency services; but he couldn’t let that distract him.
He saw the line of tracks in the snow ahead of him, ploughing straight through the trees. Cole had been hunting with Stefan before here, and turned to the right, taking the high ground.
Albright was out of breath, panting hard, pushing himself as hard as he could. He was going fast, he had a big head start, he had to be a long way in front, hadn’t he?
As he whipped through the trees, he knew he could not slow down; Cole was following, and was going to kill him.
He had been running all out for what seemed like hours, but what was in fact only minutes, and had still not heard any sign of Cole behind him. Could he afford to slow down, to take it easy?
No
. Not until he was well and truly safe.
He could see the trees widening out up ahead, the ground sloping down at an ever-steepening angle until it opened up onto a hillside, and he started to wonder what he should do. Should he just try and hide in the trees, hope Cole couldn’t find him? Or just keep running, even going out into the open, and just hope he could keep his advantage?
He never had time to think of an answer, as a movement caught his eye and he turned his head to see Mark Cole hurtling towards him.
Cole’s body made hard contact with Albright’s, and he could tell the wind had been knocked out of the man.
Cole had rolled off to the side, and was surprised when Albright caught him in the face with the heel of his boot, kicking up at Cole from the floor.
Cole staggered back, and Albright took the opportunity to get back to his feet, pulling out a Gerber combat knife as he did so.
Cole saw the draw, and angled his body away as Albright slashed horizontally towards him. He slashed through back the other way, and again Cole narrowly avoided it.
When he came back through from the other direction, Cole was ready for it, and managed to parry the knife arm, then grabbed the man and pulled him forwards onto a head-butt.
The force of the blow broke the plastic nose guard instantly, and Cole saw how the nose itself then sloughed off, leaving an ugly, gaping wound right in the middle of Albright’s face. In addition to the empty eye socket and the damaged, shaven head, the man looked grotesque.
Cole slipped then, losing his balance on the steep ground, and the two men toppled over. Albright lost his grip on the knife, and both men grabbed each other as they went down, their momentum carrying them down the slope.
They eventually broke through the tree line onto the steep hillside, their bodies now rolling and turning at an ever increasing speed as they tumbled downwards, bouncing from side to side off tree stumps and rocks whilst all the while keeping a death-grip hold on one another.
The two men tried to punch, bite, head-butt and gouge each other as they rolled at sickening speed down the snow-covered hill, but they were moving too fast to do any real damage to each other.
Eventually, however, the ground started to even out and their momentum slowed. Cole was the first to react, turning their bodies so that Albright was underneath as they glided to a stop by a clump of rocks sticking up through the deep snow.
Albright struggled underneath, but Cole dropped his head down heavily onto the man’s face again, dazing him even more. Moving quickly, Cole pinned Albright down with his legs, and reached across to the rock pile, picking up a big, heavy, metallic lump.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Cole yelled as he brought the rock down onto the face of his family’s killer. ‘Fuck … ing … son … of … a … bitch!’ he yelled, punctuating each word with another massive strike of the rock. He kept repeating the phrase again and again, not stopping even when the man’s head split open like an over-ripe melon, not even when his remaining eye bulged out of his head and the bloody grey mass of his brain started to leak out of the back of his smashed skull.
Cole kept on smashing the rock down even after there was no head left at all, and he was just beating it uselessly down into the bloody, greasy snow.
Eventually, exhaustion caused him to stop, and he slumped forward, chest heaving.
And then he remembered his family, and all that had happened, and he reared backwards and screamed across the mountains.
Ten minutes later, Cole was back upstairs in the house.
Sarah, Ben and Amy had all been executed with head shots from close range, but he had to be sure. He couldn’t simply leave the scene, escape without first checking.
But within seconds, it was clear there was nothing to check. They were dead, 9mm rounds having entered and exited their heads and blowing their brains all over the walls and floor.
Cole wept uncontrollably as he gathered the bodies together, cradling them in his arms, holding them together, a family again, reunited at last.
Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his body convulsed with the pain of his emotions; and still he held the bodies, held them close, as if his own warmth, his love, would somehow bring them back to life.
And then he heard the pained words from behind him, and he turned his head.
Stefan Steinmeier sat propped in the corner of the room, still alive, hands uselessly trying to push the grey, looped sausage of his ragged intestines back into his body as he choked on his own blood.
‘I … I’m sorry,’ he said, spitting blood from between gritted teeth with each word.
Cole looked at his old friend with pure, unbridled hatred, unable to speak, to respond.
Sorry?
The gut shots were nothing. Stefan was going to be a lot more than sorry, Cole decided, that was fucking guaranteed.
But as Cole finally released his family and began to stand, he saw Steinmeier smile, and Cole suddenly realized that the fatally injured man wasn’t talking about what he
had
done, but about something he was
about
to do.
‘Hansard … won’t send the money to my family … unless you’re all dead.’
And then Cole’s eyes went to Steinmeier’s lap, and he finally saw the remote electronic button, hidden within the mass of bloody viscera leaking from the man’s gut.
And then Steinmeier depressed the button, the house erupted in a huge orange fireball, and Cole’s entire world was consumed by flame.
1 May 2019
Parliament House of Singapore
Applause rang out in the main chamber of Singapore’s Parliament House, a modernist building with a prism-shaped roof situated across the Singapore River from Raffle’s Place.
President Ellen Abrams breathed a sigh of satisfaction as she held the gold fountain pen and finally signed the Mutual Defence Treaty, which had now been re-modified to include a tripartite agreement involving the People’s Republic of China.
After her agent’s attempted assassination attempt and Mark Cole’s timely intervention and information, Abrams had managed to open up Danko and Feng enough to listen to her story.
To their credit, they had listened, and the three leaders had met soon after to discuss in depth what had happened, to establish the sequence of events, how things got out of hand so quickly, and what could be done in the future to ensure such a situation would not arise again.
Russia and China sent over investigative teams of their own, and Abrams’ version of events was finally accepted by all sides – it had been an internal coup, arranged by Vice Admiral Charles Hansard.
It was decided by all three countries to cover up what had actually happened – better that the world never knew anything about it. When the various members of Hansard’s group were located – some just asleep in bed, confident they would never be caught, others trying desperately to leave the country – they were offered plea bargains. They were forced to resign their positions, in return for secret confessions of their roles, and such information was critical in convincing Danko and Feng about what had really happened.
Because the entire incident was being covered up, the reason for those people leaving their positions was given as merely part of a general reshuffle of the US administration on Abrams’ part, due on the one hand to the assassination attempt on her life – which had been blamed on Mancini as a crazed, lone assassin – and on the other to the changing global power structure.
As the members of Hansard’s alumni left their powerful positions, it was seen around the world as nothing more than the usual political manoueveruing. Those business men and women in the group were also forced to resign from their respective companies, and a variety of false reasons were given for these resignations, none of which aroused the least bit of suspicion from the world’s press.
The group needed to be punished on some level though – and although many in the US, Russian and Chinese governments felt that some ‘accident’ should befall them, it was decided that this would perhaps not be wise in the long run.
Instead, the members’ assets and business interests were seized secretly, out of the eyes of the press, with near to two billion dollars of personal wealth being rescinded to the US government, which dispersed a large sum as compensation to the families of those killed in the attacks in Sweden, and put the rest towards administration costs for the tri-nation pact that was now being signed.
Abrams smiled as she sat back down in her straight-backed leather chair, watching as President Danko approached the gilded lectern to add his own signature to the treaty document. It pleased her immensely that the Alumni’s personal money, instead of helping fund, and then being heavily increased by, a new Cold War, was instead helping to bankroll a Mutual Defence Treaty between the three concerned nations.
As Danko moved to the side and President Feng took to the lectern, Abrams’ thoughts drifted back to the Alumni, and to Vice Admiral Charles Hansard. It was frustrating in the extreme that the man had not yet been found, despite the best efforts of the US, Russia and China. Their police and intelligence services had spent the last few months scouring the known world for the fugitive, but to no avail. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air.
Abrams also thought it was regretful that Mark Cole – or ‘the Asset’ as he had been known to her all these years – seemed to have perished in Austria whilst trying to rescue his family. She had actually cried when the report had come through. It wasn’t just that he had saved her life; he had postponed reaching his own family to do so, and Abrams couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for their deaths.
The Force Recon team had got there too late. They had been armed and ready to go in hard, but on arrival they had discovered the whole place swarming with police and other emergency services, the house totally razed to the ground.
They had therefore left their weapons behind and walked in unarmed, showing their military credentials to the men at the police barrier. They had been allowed in and wandered about the site, noting the parachute canopy lying on the garden lawn, the six dead men in the tree line, the six spread around outside the house, empty cartridge cases littering the grounds.
Upon coming to the house, it was clear that evidence wouldn’t be quickly forthcoming; the onsite crime scene investigators told them that there were traces of a variety of different body parts throughout the burnt and collapsed structure, but due to the temperatures involved, it was doubtful whether they would ever be completely sure about who had been inside.
Further investigation back in the United States had shown Cole to be a diving instructor living in the Cayman Islands, but Abrams knew who he really was. The Asset was the United States’ own spearhead warrior, a top-secret resource that had been used as a precision weapon by the nation for many years.
It was a shame, she thought as she stood once more; he had been a good man.
But all three leaders were on the podium now, shaking hands and exchanging kisses on the cheek as the world’s press filmed and took pictures; for it was the most important treaty signing they had witnessed in their lifetimes, and one that would help ensure a more stable world in a more promising future.
Hilton Cancun, Mexico
Jerry Adams spat at the images on the television screen, disgust written plain across his face.
‘Sons of bitches!’ he shouted, slamming his fist on the wine table next to him, toppling his champagne flute.
The others in the room hardly noticed his outburst, as they all felt exactly the same way; it was
their
money that was funding this travesty! And now they had been left almost penniless, in a country –
their
country – that had climbed into bed with two age-old enemies!
All of the ten remaining members of the Alumni were gathered together in the Villa Beach Suite of the Hilton Cancun. They had been arriving throughout the morning, and some had already been drinking heavily as they watched the continuous press coverage of the Mutual Defence Treaty signing.
Their lives since New Year had been hell – they had lost their major assets, their business holdings, even money straight from their bank accounts. Forced out of their jobs, some had been forced to sell their houses, others their cars.
As nothing was known of their involvement in the recent goings-on, they were still making money on the after-dinner speech circuit, and some had written autobiographies; but the bottom line was that two hundred thousand a year was far, far removed from the billions they used to have, and the tens of billions more they had hoped to get in the very near future.
They had not met, seen or even spoken to each other since that last meeting before Mancini’s failed assassination attempt, but had all agreed to fly to Cancun in order to meet with Charles Hansard.
Nobody in the group knew where Hansard had gone, or how he had escaped detection; all they knew was that he had recently contacted them on their secure communications network, sending an encrypted message for them to travel directly to the Hilton in the famous Mexico beach resort of Cancun.
He had not said what the meeting would be about, but hearing from him after so long had piqued the group’s interest, and they had all come as summoned.
As the hours dragged on, and the TV coverage continued, and the drink finally ran dry, there was just one problem – Vice Admiral Charles Hansard was still nowhere to be seen.