‘There is a lot I need to do now,’ she continued finally, ‘as I am sure you will appreciate, but I hope to learn more about you when we have the time. I trust you’ll stay here and help with the investigation? I’ll be tied up with sorting things out with Danko and Feng, but we could use your help with tracking these people.’
Cole cleared his throat and put his cup of coffee — his fourth since starting the briefing — down on the antique cherry wood table that sat between the two sofas in the middle of the oval room.
‘Ma’am,’ he began sincerely, ‘I’m afraid that is not going to be possible.’
He went on to tell her about his family, their travels across Europe to Austria, their psychotic pursuer, and his treacherous old friend Steinmeier.
Abrams expressed her shock and sympathy, considering the matter. ‘We don’t have any local forces unfortunately, nothing useful we can get there within forty-eight hours or so,’ she said with regret, sorry she could not help the man who had saved her life and given her the information she needed to put a stop to the escalating events of the past few days. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’
It was Cole’s turn to pause as he thought. Finally, he looked up at her. ‘Is the Aurora available for a little trip?’
38
The FBI Washington Field Office SWAT Team descended on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence just before midnight, on the direct order of the President.
Phone calls to the ODNI’s own security staff had confirmed that Charles Hansard was still on the premises — he had not signed out, nobody had seen him leave, and his car was still in its reserved spot in the secure underground parking lot.
The team had marched through the office complex, led to Hansard’s office by the head of the building’s security force.
They marched straight in, weapons aimed and handcuffs ready.
There was nobody there.
The SWAT team, along with the ODNI security team, searched the building for more than an hour. They searched the grounds. They reviewed the central CCTV recordings.
But there was no sign whatsoever of Vice Admiral Charles Hansard, Director of National Security for the United States of America, and now a wanted fugitive.
39
The B-780 Super Wing was the US government’s physical incarnation of the ‘project Aurora’ myth, a stealth plane with the capability to achieve hypersonic flight in excess of Mach 6. The existence of such an aircraft had been consistently denied by the US military, but when Cole requested its usage, Abrams didn’t even bother lying. It was clear Cole knew of its existence from classified documents, which revealed it to be an incredibly advanced long-range bomber which was completely undetectable by even the most finely-tuned radar currently in existence.
Abrams immediately arranged for one of the craft to be fuelled and flown directly from its secret base at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert to Andrews Air Force Base, where Cole would be taken by Marine helicopter.
The distance from Andrews to Kreith near Innsbruck in Austria was over four thousand miles. In a conventional aircraft, that might take up to eight hours; in a fast fighter jet, it would still take three, not including the necessary re-fuelling intervals. As he stood in the hanger, dressed in a dark blue flight suit, Cole looked at his watch. It was now midnight, and every second counted.
The Aurora would get him over the hamlet of Kreith in less than an hour.
40
‘Good luck,’ David Grayson said to Cole in the air-conditioned hanger. The Director of the Secret Service had accompanied Cole to Andrews as the President’s own representative, being one of the people she could still trust. Cole took Grayson’s offered hand, shaking it firmly.
‘The President has found you some backup after a fashion — she’s made arrangements for a Marine Force Recon team on exercise with Dutch special forces in Holland to fly over, but they’ll be at least three hours,’ Grayson told him.
Cole nodded his head. ‘Tell her thanks from me,’ he said. ‘But it’ll all be over by then, one way or another.’
41
The Aurora aircraft was unlike anything Cole had ever seen. Secrecy surrounding the plane meant that all Andrews aircrew had been replaced with specialists from Groom Lake, much to the chagrin of the base commander; Cole was honoured to be amongst only a handful of men and women in the world who had seen it.
It was not entirely unlike a schoolboy’s paper aeroplane — it was low, wide and very flat, in a very characteristic triangular shape with the wings turned up at each end. It was painted a dull gunmetal grey, but was captivating in its eerily alien quality.
A runner came over and escorted him to the side of the aircraft. The crew of two was already undergoing their pre-flight checks in the narrow, pointed cockpit at the front, and Cole was invited to climb a small ramp into the side entry door. A man waited for him there, helping him aboard, and then the ramp was removed and the door swung shut with a heavy clunk, the man securing it from the inside.
‘Welcome aboard sir,’ said the man, without offering a name.
‘Thanks,’ said Cole. ‘Have you got what I asked for?’
‘Sure have,’ the man replied. ‘You must be one crazy son of a bitch.’
42
Just over forty-five minutes later, the flight engineer helped Cole change into the large, bulky suit. He checked the gauges and the monitors, and made sure that the extra equipment boxes were securely fastened to the suit, placed so as not to affect the aerodynamics of the fall.
Although the Aurora was travelling at more than four thousand miles per hour, high above the cloud level near the edge of space, Cole curiously didn’t feel the sensation of speed. In the pressurized cabin, it was surprisingly serene and comfortable. Cole knew that this sensation wouldn’t last for long, however, and he would soon be anything but comfortable.
Both men turned as they saw the warning light flash on next to them, and the engineer picked up the heavy helmet and secured it in place onto the reinforced neck of Cole’s suit.
‘It’s time.’
43
The bomb doors were lowered and Cole found himself looking down through his tinted visor to the cloud layer miles below him. He checked the coordinates on his wrist computer, and knew the bomb mechanism would soon release him.
The suit he wore was somewhat akin to an astronaut’s, but he still felt a chill as the wind whipped past him at incredible speed, although the Aurora had now slowed its approach to a relatively modest Mach 1.
Cole could see both the sun and the moon across the horizon, so high he could see the incredible curve of the planet itself, and then he was released. The immediate drop knocked the wind out of him, his stomach seemingly left behind in the bomb bay, and then he was caught by the slip stream and found himself tumbling and twisting wildly through the thin air thirty miles above the world.
44
The freefall had lasted an incredible seven minutes, during which time Cole truly wondered whether he would live. Falling though the upper atmosphere in the limited air, his streamlined body had broken the sound barrier, although he had not heard anything through his helmet.
But he had seen the world around him as he first fell, the curve of the earth flattening out as he reached the cloud layer, and then he was shooting through those clouds and out the other side before he even had a chance to realize, through and travelling to the earth at over seven hundred miles per hour.