‘When we are away, I need to radio Arcadia and warn them about Enzi.’
Katherine turned on her headset ready, and got the shouting of the Duty Officer straight away, he appeared to have been shouting for some time, as he was going hoarse.
‘It appears our flight is a problem.’
Then the soldiers surrounded the aircraft, weapons trained upon the cockpit.
‘Intruders please disembark the aircraft now!’
‘I guess they found the man in the guardhouse then.’
‘Looks like it, wait till they find out what else we have done.’
The Duty Officer was still bellowing down Katherine’s ear, not listening for a reply; just that she shut down the engines.
‘Hang on boys.’
Katherine throttled up the engines and the downdraft from the propellers blew the soldiers away in a cloud of dust and debris. The aircraft was not meant to take off in such close proximity to the hangar, or personnel, but Katherine’s intention was to nullify the threat.
The aircraft lifted off, the soldiers unable to stand, never mind fire on the machine. She climbed away from the base rapidly, all the electronic countermeasures on board fully active. There was no missile firing, nor small arms fire that they expected, so Katherine took the aircraft down to one hundred feet and opened her up. They were travelling at two hundred and seventy miles an hour; with the rotor blades in forward flight they were spinning only fifty feet above the ocean.
‘We will be back home in just two hours.’
‘Yes, but will we beat Enzi there?’
‘And then we have to solve the other problem Dad.’
‘What problem is that Jacob?’
‘Oh nothing really, just a large satellite that is going to crash into Texas in the next few hours.’
THIRTY
Jarrett was still pacing in his office, all plans unravelling due to interference of his backers. They had no patience, and the factors that influenced such delicate situations were not always disclosed to him. It was impossible to plan for every scenario, when you only had half the intel, Iran had shown him that, and cost him a friendship. He needed to extricate himself from blame and connection; unfortunately he would have to sacrifice Uncotto to achieve this. His visitor and the people he represented had no qualms about disposing of Presidents, generals or anyone else who was non-compliant. Of course it was never traceable; there would be a car accident, an overdose, a sudden illness. People would be paid to ensure that any investigation was either impotent, or inconclusive. He knew that should he fail to resolve this situation, he would be certainly be paid a visit by one of their cleaners, his status and office would have no bearing on his treatment.
After thirty minutes of uninterrupted pacing and processing of multiple scenarios, a throw back to his days in special ops, he sat down. He called his contact instructing him on what action to take, as warned his contact was not compliant, raising multiple objections, Jarrett’s voice stress indicator on his desk showing the true intentions. With confirmation of his concerns Jarrett returned his email to Colonel Briggs, ‘Terminate all, make it appear local disturbance. Destroy any traceable involvement. Advise relocate your operation within next twenty four hours.’
Surprisingly Briggs responded immediately, ‘Received. Locals in place. Traceable involvement not an issue. Why relocate?’
Jarrett sent his last message and then deleted the online account, and removed all trace from his computer.
Briggs was concerned at the events unfolding; he was used to dealing with rapid changes in tactics and situations, but nothing on this scale. He had to initiate and conceal the safe evacuation of an entire base, without alerting the base commander, or the satellites overhead. He had been fortunate that nature had smiled upon him, shone upon him really, sunspot activity. The sun regularly sent wisps of plasma energy drifting across space, these strands of pure energy were millions of miles long containing highly charged particles. While we would not see the effects directly, possibly the northern lights would appear further south than usual but nothing else. The defence and communications industry were very aware, the sun spots potentially knocking out satellites completely. Today they were just blinded, shut down to avoid any damage as the waves of sun debris passed by the Earth. This caused most of the equator to be blind for a few vital hours, they would have to reply on airborne monitoring systems to check on the base. Briggs knew that an E3 AWACS aircraft was based at Manta Air force base in Ecuador, but would take some hours to get within range, even if it had no other priority commitments. This meant he could ramp up his evacuation, and when he checked his phone for email, his timing was impeccable.
Briggs read the message twice to ensure he had it correct before deleting it, ‘DOD instructed your location terror camp, MOAB authorised.’
MOAB was the nickname for the GBU 43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast, the mother of all bombs. A thirty foot long, nine point five metric ton device, it could destroy an area up to nine city blocks. Briggs knew that they would have a C130 transport fly high over the island, and drop it out of the back, a parachute and GPS guiding it to target. He had seen these used as part of the US attacks on Iraq in 2003, and did not wish to be on the island when it hit.
The message had an unfortunate side effect, Jarrett had been mailing both Mastasson and Briggs together, Mastasson was copied in on the message he sent, in his haste and panic he had not checked the addresses correctly. Before he realised his mistake, the message had been sent, he was unaware of Mastasson’s new situation.
THIRTY ONE
Briggs read his email deleting all records. He made some calls arranging transport, implying to all it was an exercise and it was not to be disclosed to anyone. He had to get all the transport here and away in a three hour window, after The General was off base. The Unit Zero 3 teams were advised that they were practising an evacuation exercise, and to get all their gear ready. The teams loyal to The General were sent to a bunker below, and told to await orders, they were to practise securing and defending the compound, and plan strategy. This would keep them occupied while he worked above ground.
He knew that the US would have checked satellite surveillance prior to a strike. They could look like a terror training camp, so the threat of the air strike was very real. The covered dock had two tunnels coming from the main complex to allow covert loading or cargo and men, this was his main asset. The priority was not arms, but data, the mass of intelligence and insurance information was paramount to his survival. All transmittable information was sent to their secure data storage facility in the Cayman Islands, an electronic vault with encrypted transmissions even the DOD could not crack. They sent burst transmissions, compressed packets of data to avoid detection, but today it was like a machine gun of encoded bribery. The only weapons he did not want to take were the chemical and biological, he set the safety devices in the lab to automatic, and left the scientists to their fate. He had been politely questioned by a few men about the evacuation proceedings, and answered them politely to avoid raising suspicion, but he was still concerned that word would get to The General. He went to his office to attend to the issue.
He found The General unconscious on the floor, checked for a pulse, unfortunately found one. Even though The General was a traitor to their cause, he could not kill him, not like this, no matter how strong the temptation. He realised someone had drugged him, The General was groggy, but becoming more conscious, ‘Sir, can you hear me, who did this?’