Not her problem.
Fact was, she was getting closer to her pay check, and that meant getting closer to her dream. That was three down now — Devlin, Lund and Taylor — and this was the sort of professional progress her employers expected, and why they had hired her to execute this contract. No one else could do it like this.
She cruised through the streets and drew closer to the military airfield where her plane waited to take her back to LA. Three down was good, but there was still a long way to go and plenty of ECHO teammates to take out before she got her money and her new life. At some red lights, she checked her box of bullets for the next target and raised her eyebrows in expectation when she read the name.
Logical really, when you thought about it.
Green lights, and on her way again. Soon it would be four down.
Another funeral.
Another wake.
Another day closer to her Mexican dream.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“Burn them,” he snarled. “Smoke them out and burn every one of the bastards.”
“You’re asking US soldiers to turn on their own, Mr President.”
“Camacho?” Faulkner said with a cynical laugh. “That son of a bitch is a traitor to this country. He turned his back on his nation when he went to ECHO. He gets no special protection from any American Special Ops. If anything he’s even worse, just like Kim Taylor. What happened to her?”
“Cougar took her out a few hours ago.”
“Good,” Faulkner said without emotion, running his fingers along the edge of his desk. “If there are any survivors from the fight in Iraq, I still want her to continue with the mission and hunt them all down one by one until they’re all gone, got it?”
“That’s the plan, sir. I’ll contact Pegasus immediately.”
The new president gave a nod of satisfaction before spinning around in his leather swivel chair and facing the rest of the top brass assembled in the Situation Room. These were the world’s most powerful men and women and they had all sworn to obey his orders.
And that put him in nearly as good a mood as when the Special Ops team had reported their success in securing the Citadel. Details were sketchy. The fighting was brutal, apparently, and the building was partially destroyed by some kind of self-destruction mechanism. The team reported that there was enough left to study, to pull apart, to analyze, but the real news was the death of the Oracle.
Gone to hell, probably.
Now he and he alone commanded the most devastating military force on the planet, at least until the missing treasures of the Citadel were discovered, and then he would control them as well as all the nukes. For a moment he almost felt giddy with the thought of such unbridled power resting in his hands. If the legends were true, and he found what the Oracle had told him awaited them in the Citadel, he would be the first person in history to control the entire planet.
Now the Oracle was dead, of course.
Muston put the phone down and walked over to the new Commander-in-Chief. “That was General Patterson, sir. President Brooke and the others arrived at Tartarus a few moments ago. They’re being transferred from the aircraft to the underground detention center as we speak.”
“Jack Brooke.”
Muston was confused. “I’m sorry, sir?”
“You said President Brooke.”
“It’s customary to refer to…”
“Not with him it’s not,” Faulkner snapped. “The man’s the worst traitor in American history. He’s to be stripped of the title President, got it?”
Muston looked around at the blank, inscrutable faces of the men and women commanders around the long table. None of them offered him any hope of a way out. “Yes sir, Mr President. I’ll look into it with the Attorney General right away.”
Faulkner looked away and started flicking through more images, this time of memos.
“What are they?” Muston asked.
“These are Presidential memoranda ordering the transfer of more weapons and technology to the ECHO team. All signed by Brooke.”
They shared a grim smile.
“Yes, sir. The signature is almost perfect.”
“Naturally. See to it that they get into the press.”
“Yes sir.”
Out of nowhere, Faulkner laughed a loud, booming laugh and reached around to slap Muston heavily on the back. “I know I can trust you, Josh.” He stared at the generals and admirals at the table. “He’s one helluva guy, right?”
A murmur of agreement rippled around the low-lit room.
“What sort of force they got down at Tartarus?”
An admiral spoke up. “Three thousand troops, sir, plus a small civilian staff of two hundred and around fifty medical. The island is airbrushed right the hell off all maps, including all satellite imagery so no one’s finding it — not on paper maps or Google Earth. It doesn’t exist.”
“An island that doesn’t exist, that isn’t on any maps and is guarded by three thousand US troops,” Faulkner said, steepling his fingers. “Sounds like Brooke’s not going anywhere until we’re ready for the trial.”
“Yes, sir, Mr President. Makes Gitmo Bay look like a Sunday School picnic.”
“You tell General Patterson that Brooke and his daughter, plus McGee are traitors awaiting trial for high treason and that he is to guard them with his life. If anyone busts them off of that island, Patterson and his entire top team are spending the rest of their lives there, and not as guards but as prisoners. You tell him that.”
“Yes sir.”
Faulkner started to relax for the first time since ordering the coup. Now, with Brooke well and truly out of the way, the head of the snake was decapitated and the threat of a counter-attack was all but dead. And Muston’s suggestion of Tartarus was inspired. An artificial island built in total secrecy and never registered on any maps, not even classified military ones, there was no way the goddam ECHO team was getting their asses there to save their hero either.
He breathed a sigh of relief and pushed back into his chair. He felt his shoulders slope a little as the tension bled out of his body. He had done it. Brooke was arrested and out of the country on a prison island that was so remote it could only dream of being in the middle of nowhere. The ECHO team had failed to secure the treasures of the Citadel and most important of all the Oracle was dead and his army of crazy monks scattered to the four corners of the earth like the ashes from a thousand burned temples.
Facing the military commanders, he lit up one of his fat cigars and took a deep puff, chewing the smoke in his mouth before blowing it up into the low lights over the desk.
“Ladies and gentleman, we have a world to take over.”
Muston looked smug. With the mysterious Oracle out of the way there was no one to stop them now. His mind drifted to the Special Ops reports… how the dying guardians had screamed the name Koru in their last breaths. Probably nothing, he thought, all things considered. Maybe worth looking into when they had control of things here in DC. Turning to his boss, he saw the grinning face of the cat that got the cream. “What’s the first order of the day, sir?”
“That’s easy. I want the President of Iraq on the phone right now. When the devastation clears around the Citadel, we’re going to need to secure the entire location and go in once again. Something tells me we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface as far as that place is concerned and it’s vital to our national security interests that it’s a secure US-Iraqi facility. No Russians, no Chinese, no Brits, no French, or anyone else. If there really is any missing technology from that civilization, or weapons, or knowledge, I want it and I don’t want anyone else to have it. Got it?”