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 (4 page)
It took over an hour until the scene at the Riksdagshuset was finally under some sort of control, although by this time Abrams had been spirited away with Rutherford to a secure location by their Secret Service detail. Danko and Vorstetin were being similarly protected, and the Treaty signing had been regrettably aborted.
But changes to the fragile balance of global security had been made, and it would not be long before the afternoon’s events would cause the entire world to spin frighteningly out of control.
Mark Cole closed his eyes and concentrated on controlling his heart rate. The shark was close now.
There had been a group of four of them swimming near the coral wall; there always were at this time of day. They were Caribbean reef sharks, and the species had been known to attack humans only rarely, with no attack proving fatal. They were large though, eight feet in length with powerful bodies.
But these sharks all but ignored Cole, as he treaded water thirty feet below the surface of the warm, crystal clear Caribbean Sea. He had no mask, no oxygen tank – in fact, no equipment at all, using merely the volume of his lungs and his own mental strength to stay submerged. He had learnt to free dive whilst in the SEALs, the elite naval special forces group of the US military, and still practised regularly. There was nothing better for developing concentration and willpower.
Part of his daily training involved swimming amongst the sharks, whilst trying to control his heart rate. Sometimes they approached him, bumping and nudging him. He put his mind elsewhere, in order to help retain his presence of mind while under stress.
But the shark that now approached him was not a reef shark. Those four were still swimming nearby, attacking the bright, multi-coloured coral. This shark had come from the other side, directly towards him. It was bigger – at least twelve feet in length – and heavier, more powerful. It was also considerably more dangerous. It was a tiger shark, a species known for its voracious appetite. There was nothing that it would not eat.
And yet as the huge fish swam towards him, Cole knew that he would be safe if he remained still and calm. That was the conflict – his inner voice, the deep, instinctive, untrained side of his psyche, told him to flee, to get out of there at once, as quickly as he could, while his hormones tried to raise his heart rate, to prepare it for action. Normally he could use breathing techniques to control his heart rate and his emotions; under the water, this was not an option.
His eyes still closed, he had to concentrate even harder to regulate himself, until his heart rate dropped low, and he relaxed.
He opened his eyes, seeing the gigantic head right in front of him, the lifeless eyes staring right at him. His heart rate didn’t increase at all. The two predators just stared at each other.
Cole could feel his breath finally running out, but he knew that he couldn’t swim up yet – the tiger shark would react to the sudden movement. He knew that if he didn’t get oxygen soon, panic would start to creep up on him, until he would be unable to stop opening his mouth to breath; the seawater would then rush in, drowning him.
His mind focused harder, and he held the gaze of the shark in front of him, its massive jaws open, teeth inches from his face. He could feel himself starting to black out, but still he held its gaze until finally, mercifully, the fish just turned around and swam away, retreating back out into the depths.
Cole had been submerged for over five minutes now, but still didn’t panic; he simply watched the fish swim away and then slowly let himself drift to the surface.
Breaking out of the waves into the brilliant sunshine, he looked across the azure waters to the nearby beach, and his house that sat upon it. Breathing deeply, he started back for home.
Cole walked out of the warm water and onto the private beach of his Colonial-style manor house, situated in a small cove of Cayman Brac. The island was situated just short of ninety miles north-east of the much larger Grand Cayman, and was a lot quieter than the main island, which suited Cole perfectly.
As he walked through the fine white sand, he heard laughs and shouting off to the right hand side. His head turning, he saw his wife Sarah and his two young children standing and staring into the line of palm trees that bordered the house.
Sarah was looking beautiful as always, her long brown hair – much lighter now, after years in the Caribbean sun, than when they had first met - cascading down her tanned back, the firm muscles of her long legs visible underneath her denim shorts.
She was teaching Ben and Amy how to shoot a bow and arrow, Cole saw, and couldn’t help but smile. A scuba diving instructor by profession, she was as physical as he was – indeed, this was one of the first things that had attracted him to her, and they both now ran a small diving school on the island.
He looked into the tree-line and saw a circular target hidden amongst the palm trees that swayed gently in the breeze. Cole held back as she gave the bow to Ben, helping him to get into position. She knelt at his side, angling his arms to get a better aim.
Ben was six years old now and Amy was four, and Cole’s heart filled with warmth as he looked at them with their mother, Ben allowing her to position himself correctly whilst Amy looked on in fascination.
Eventually Sarah backed away, and Cole saw Ben take a deep breath – hold it – and then release the arrow.
Cole monitored the flight of the arrow as it sailed through the air, its path true. It missed the bulls-eye by a mere inch, and his wife and children squealed with delight, Sarah doing a little victory dance for them.
Cole started to clap, and their heads twisted round immediately. ‘Daddy!’ cried Amy, rushing towards him across the beach. Ben ran over too, and they both hugged him, Amy’s arms around his legs, Ben’s around his waist.
‘Did you see me, Dad?’ Ben asked excitedly as Sarah joined them, kissing Mark on the lips. ‘Did you see me?’
‘I sure did!’ Cole told him. ‘What a shot! Fantastic!’
‘Do you want to have a go?’ Ben asked. He loved watching his father shooting; he never seemed to miss.
‘Sure!’ Cole said. ‘But I don’t think I’ll be able to beat that.’
Ben laughed, and then Sarah turned to him. ‘I’m glad you’re back; the turkey’s not going to baste itself. Can you stay with them while I bob inside?’
Cole smiled. He knew his wife could kill a turkey as easily as baste it. Her father was a wealthy financier based out of New York, but much of Sarah’s formative life had been spent on her father’s sporting estate up in the Catskills, where she had often shot what she ate – but she was equally proud of her ability in the kitchen, and allowed nobody else to cook there. They could easily have afforded a live-in chef, but Sarah simply wouldn’t hear of it.
‘You try and stop me!’ Cole replied, racing off towards the bow and arrows lying on the sand, Ben and Amy giggling as they tried to catch him.
‘But don’t stay out too long!’ Sarah called after him. ‘You don’t want them to get sunburnt!’
Sarah sighed as he merely gave her a thumbs up and blew her a little kiss, knowing she would probably have to go back out before long to drag them inside.
Eventually, Cole and his children
did
come back inside, and Cole decided to carry on his training routine with some callisthenics as he put the television on to catch up with the news – today
was
the day of the treaty signing, after all. His profession meant that he had to be constantly up-to-date with world affairs – his life sometimes depended on it.
As he stretched deep into a wrestler’s bridge, he thought the image on the television set was rather strange; it
was
upside down though, he conceded, as he rolled onto his forehead, feet flat on the floor and back arched like a bow.
In all his years of active military service and preparation, he had found the bridge to be the best single overall exercise for his body, helping to strengthen and protect his neck and his back, which he appreciated all the more now that he was approaching the age of forty. The exercise was made even more strenuous by the weight of his two young children, who giggled excitedly as they attempted to balance on his flexed abdomen.
As the tip of his nose touched the floor, he let his eyes close as he relaxed into the position fully.
A sudden piercing shriek from the television made him open his eyes just instants later, but the screen was now eerily blank and silent.
‘Ben, where’s the remote?’ he asked his six year old son.
‘We don’t have the remote, Daddy,’ said Cole’s daughter defensively, instinctively defending her older brother.
‘Okay, okay, get off,’ their father cajoled, levering himself upright as they jumped off onto a large Persian rug. The rug had been a personal gift from General Abbadid of Pakistan, given to him only months before his capture and imprisonment in that same country. He kept it as an ironic reminder of the fickle nature of fate, and the priceless memento now stretched over a large portion of the gleaming wooden floor in the huge, open-plan living area of Cole’s home.
Cole spied the remote control on a nearby leather sofa, and reached to get it. As Cole turned to change the channel, the picture suddenly came back on of its own accord. But instead of a live feed from Stockholm, there was a shot of Bill Taylor, one of the regular CNN newsreaders, back in the studio in New York. A look of shock was written plainly across his face; despite his experience, something had badly shaken him.
‘I’m sorry for the interruption to our live broadcast,’ he began hesitantly. ‘We’ve … lost communication with our field crew. It seems there’s been an explosion of some kind and –’
‘Dad, what’s going on?’ Ben asked, seeing the strange look of concern, curiosity and, perhaps, a hint of excitement in his father’s eyes.
‘Ben, I’m going to have to listen a bit more first, but we can talk about it later. Why don’t you and Amy go and help Mommy in the kitchen?’
Reluctantly, Ben took Amy by the hand. ‘Okay, Daddy,’ he said, before turning to his sister. ‘Come on, Amy.’ Smiling back, she skipped away with him to the kitchen, leaving their father transfixed to the television screen.
A bead of sweat trickled down Lao Shin-Yang’s temple.
What now?
he asked himself in despair. He’d watched the whole thing on television in his room at the Stura Masta, the small but centrally-located hotel from where he had monitored the whole operation.
And what a disaster it had turned out to be. First the missiles had missed their target – and Shin-Yang had no idea whatsoever how
that
could have happened – then Kang and his team were all killed, live on TV. And now he’d learned that not only had the yacht been obliterated, killing six more of his men, but that the drivers at the two emergency rendezvous points had also been spotted by police, and were also now dead after a short but fatal fire-fight.
He was the only one left. His entire team was gone. Was there a leak? Surely not. Security was watertight. But what else could it be? Could it be that the European intelligence services were that good? He thought not.
Am I even safe in this hotel?
he asked himself fearfully for the first time.
Frantic, he had used the secure radio to contact his Control; he would know what to do. His Control, surprisingly, had not been shocked, and Shin-Yang found this somewhat impressive, yet at the same time disconcerting.
He had been told to wait in the hotel room, and had been assured that there were no leaks; he would be safe until someone came to get him.
That had been twenty minutes ago, which was twenty minutes too long in Shin-Yang’s opinion. Should he radio his Control again? No. The man had been quite firm on that; with the massive security crackdown that had commenced after the attack, even a secure radio link could not be trusted entirely.
Should he try to escape on his own? In his nervous state, this was highly tempting, but he knew it would be fruitless – any person who appeared to be of even slight Oriental appearance would be rounded up and interrogated, and the Human Rights Act be damned.
Nobody at the hotel had seen him; the room was registered to a Jake Dolman of Canada, and he’d picked up the key from a safety deposit box at the train station the day before. No, his Control was right. He was better off where he was, riding out the storm until –
A knock on the door pierced his reverie, as short and sharp as the crack of a bullet. His heart rate increased in an instant, adrenaline flooding his body. He’d served as a Captain in the People’s Republic Army, which was why he’d been chosen to act as the coordinator for this particular mission; all the other members of the team had been enlisted men. But that had been different. He’d trained for open warfare, not the clandestine, nerve-wracking uncertainty of small-unit covert operations. He and his team
had
undergone a good deal of specific preparation and training for this mission, but this was the first time he had been truly tested in the field. His team had so far failed; how would he measure up? he wondered anxiously.
Moving to the door, his sweaty hand gripped around his pistol, cocked and ready to fire, he bent forwards to look through the eye-piece in the door’s centre. Looking through with one eye, Shin-Yang stifled a gasp of surprise.
The man on the other side of the door was his Control, in person, here in Stockholm. He had obviously wanted to monitor the operation more closely than Shin-Yang had been led to believe.
Doesn’t he trust me?
he thought uneasily.
Does he blame me for the failure?
‘Who is it?’ asked Shin-Yang reluctantly, starting the code.
‘Fred Sizemore,’ answered the man on the other side of the door. Shin-Yang had tried to place the man’s accent before, but couldn’t. Still, all Westerners sounded the same to him.
‘Our meeting’s not ’til three,’ he continued.
‘Sorry, I thought it was one. Can I come in anyway?’
‘Of course.’ The code complete, Shin-Yang unbolted the door. He decocked his pistol, but didn’t holster it.
As the man calling himself Fred Sizemore entered the room, closing the door behind him, Shin-Yang started to instinctively defend himself and distance himself from the mission, a skill honed whilst serving in the highly politicized atmosphere of the PRA. The best method of defence was attack, and Shin-Yang reasoned that if his Control was going to try and lay the blame for the mission’s failure on him, then he was going to go down fighting.
‘Sir, there
must
be a leak somewhere, I can’t explain it, perhaps one of our own men – ’
Shin-Yang’s Control cut him off with a raise of the hand. ‘Don’t worry, Lao,’ he said in perfect Mandarin. ‘Don’t worry. These things happen. Missions don’t always go to plan. Now we need to get out of here, but we need to take this gear with us.’ He gestured at the electronic communications equipment sprawled over the room’s small living area.
Shin-Yang nodded vigorously, happy that he wasn’t being blamed as he’d feared, and newly confident in their chances of escape. He even started to dare think that, despite the mission’s failure, his Control might yet keep the promises he had made about the future of Shin-Yang and his family.
Finally relaxing, he turned round to start getting his kit together, the pistol going back into his belt. As ‘Sizemore’ was presented with Shin-Yang’s back, he withdrew a Chinese-made Tokarev semi-automatic pistol from his own belt, a large and sinister Hakker silencer already in place.
Shin-Yang was still thinking about his family when his brains were blown out across the hotel room’s cheap beige carpet.