Kill Chain (6 page)

“Put your weapons
down, gentlemen. Now.”

The two security guards glanced
at each other, clearly not happy about the instructions, though they had little
choice. They pulled their weapons, raising them so that any cameras that might
be watching could see them, then placed them on the floor.

The front doors hissed
open, several of the passengers leaping to their feet with the urge to escape
their prison.

They wisely held their
places.

“Will the security
detail please step outside with Herr Holst.”

The German Chancellor’s
husband stood up partially, looking about, terror in his eyes. “Wh-why me?”

“Please comply, or we
will detonate the explosive devices attached to the bus.”

Holst shuffled out of his
seat, trembling, moving forward slowly, his hands gripping the headrests of
each seat as he passed, the women occupying them reaching out to touch him,
trying to give him comfort, and Nancy was certain, say goodbye, as she was sure
they realized what was happening.

There were only three men
on the bus.

And they were all about
to step off.

“They’re going to kill
them,” she whispered to her Italian seatmate, her humming finally stopped,
replaced by a rapidly bouncing knee.

“No, no, dear, they’ll be
okay. There’s nobody here to hurt them.”

The woman did have a
point. There
was
no one here. Nancy stared outside again, there still
nothing but the truck and the drones that had followed them after the crash.

Or are there more?

She honestly couldn’t
say. Dozens were in evidence, more than she had noticed when they were driving,
though, for all she knew, they could have all been flying above the bus, out of
her line of sight.

“Please, gentlemen, we
don’t have all day.”

The first guard stepped
down to the ground, the entire bus letting out a collective sigh as nothing
happened. Herr Holst followed as Nancy racked her brain for his first name.

You memorized this!
Come on!

She had to remember, she
had to know, she had to have his full name before what was about to happen
actually happened.

She had to know who to
pray for.

Hermann!

The second guard, the
final man, stepped to the ground.

Gunfire erupted, a steady
barrage that lasted only seconds, multiple weapons firing, leaving three
bloodied bodies to crumple to the ground.

There was stunned
silence.

Then someone screamed.

It was her.

A blur rushed toward the
entrance. She wiped the tears away and recognized the Chinese translator, a
young, plain looking woman, trying to escape.

Don’t do it!

And she didn’t. She
grabbed the two discarded handguns and began firing at the drones, one after
the other dropping to the ground. Hope began to swell in Nancy’s stomach as she
realized this woman was no translator, the calm, determined look on her face
the look of a soldier, not a civilian. Everyone pressed against the glass,
those on the other side leaping to hers to get a view of their savior’s handiwork.
At least half a dozen drones were on the ground now, more falling with each
volley.

She’s going to do it!

Suddenly the remaining
drones turned toward their hero as if realizing they were under attack, and a
barrage of gunfire replied, coming from where, she couldn’t tell.

And the Chinese woman
cried out, collapsing atop the body of Hermann Holst.

Unmoving.

The gunfire stopped,
leaving nothing but the whimpers of those still alive.

With no one left to save
them.

Operations
Center 1
CIA Headquarters,
Langley, Virginia

“Have a good
evening, boss?”

Leroux tossed a casual
wave at Randy Child, the euphoria of a forbidden quickie in the back of the car
a few minutes ago still flooding him with schoolboy giddiness. “Yup.”

Child gave him a look, a
grin spreading on his face as if he knew exactly what had happened. He raised a
fist. “Hey! Hey!”

Leroux left the fist unbumped.
“What have we got?”

Child became all
business. “Just getting the feeds now. The Koreans are being extremely
cooperative since they know they effed up.”

“
Do
we know that?”

Child shrugged. “Well, it
was their job to provide the security and an entire busload of dignitaries is
now missing, so yeah, I’d say they effed up.”

Leroux ignored the
intelligence assessment from his underling. “Do we have footage of the
accident?”

“Nope.”

“I thought you said they
were cooperating?”

“They are but there’s
nothing to see. The cameras were all dead at that intersection.”

Leroux’s eyebrows popped.
“You’re kidding me!”

“Nope.”

“There’s no way that’s a
coincidence.”

“Agreed,” said Leroux’s
boss, National Clandestine Service Chief Leif Morrison, as he entered the room.
He held up a memory stick. “But we’ve got this.” He handed it to Leroux as he
reached the center of the room.

“What’s this?”

“We had a U2
photographing the North Korean border area.”

Leroux smiled, handing it
to Child. “Anything worth seeing?”

Morrison shook his head.
“Don’t know yet. Every agency in the country just received the footage. The
President has ordered no jurisdictional bullshit on this one. All hands on
deck.”

“Good.” Leroux motioned
toward the memory stick Child was loading. “If they’re photographing North
Korea, what are they expecting us to find?”

“The recon guys like to
keep back from the border just in case the North Koreans decide to get camera
shy, so with Seoul so close to the border, DoD thinks there’s an outside chance
something’s on it.”

Leroux’s head bobbed. The
Lockheed U2’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System cameras were capable of
photographing a massive chunk of territory with enough detail to read a license
plate’s renewal sticker. If the timing was right, there just might be something
to find.

“Got it,” said Child, the
center of the large array of displays curving around the front of the room rapidly
beginning to flash through high-altitude photographs.

“Synch the timecodes with
when we know the accident happened.”

Child’s fingers flew.
“Got it.”

“Now synch up the GPS
coordinates for the crash site.”

More fingers and seconds
later they were staring at an aerial shot of the city. A grid appeared,
latitude and longitude displayed, the city streets quickly outlined as the
computer and its expert operator synched up the detailed maps with the
photograph. The entire overlay flashed green.

“Here we go,” murmured
Child, zooming in on a segment near the lower edge of the image. “This is it.
Timecode matches.”

Leroux stepped toward the
screen. “Okay, let’s follow the shots, see if anything shows up.”

“Wait a minute.” Morrison
pointed at a vehicle stopped on the side of the road. “That’s the fuel truck,
isn’t it?”

Leroux stepped closer.
“It’s
a
fuel truck. Hard to say if it’s
the
fuel truck.” He
snapped his fingers. “Split screen with the accident scene.”

Sonya Tong, a young
analyst with a desperate, inappropriate, and futile crush on her boss,
complied, the display switching to show the unmolested fuel truck and the
smoldering aftermath. “That
has
to be it.”

Leroux agreed. “Exact
same location. Back up the shots. I want to see how long this truck was there.”

Child complied, geo-locked
images appearing, the truck stationary until about five minutes before when it
disappeared from the image.

Morrison glanced at
Child. “Move forward, slowly, let’s see if we can spot a driver.”

The images flipped
forward, the truck suddenly appearing then pulling over to the side. Child
motioned at the screen. “Does he have his hazards on?”

Leroux watched, trying to
catch a change in the dozens of lights on the vehicle then pointed, nodding.
“Yes, yes he does.”

The driver’s door opened
and a man stepped out, something pressed to his ear. “Cellphone?” suggested
Morrison.

“Looks like it.”

The next image showed an
extended arm, the next no cellphone. “It didn’t work?” Several more frames
flashed by and the hood of the truck was opened, the driver leaning in.
“Breakdown?”

Leroux pursed his lips.
“It would appear so, but right there, right then, minutes before the bus was
coming through, at the same time the cameras were shut down?” He shook his
head. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Then what?”

Leroux looked at his
boss. “I don’t know.” He motioned toward the screen as the images flipped by,
about one second apart. “The only way two cars hit a fuel truck is if it’s
moving and hits them or gets in their way somehow. This truck has been sitting
there the entire time, which means the escort vehicles hit the parked truck,
just like the witnesses said.”

“The eyewitnesses said
they drove straight into it. I just assumed that was the usual witness BS.”

“It looks like the
witnesses might be right this time.” He held up a finger. “Here it is.”

The lead escort vehicle
entered the frame followed by the bus, its G20 logo emblazoned on the top.
Suddenly the lead vehicle raced ahead then swerved to the right, slamming into
the fuel truck, a massive freeze-frame explosion rising toward them, the
angled, aerial shots providing a unique perspective. Moments later the trailing
escort vehicle shot past the bus and disappeared into the ball of fire and
smoke, the bus continuing on, driving out of the frame.

“Follow that bus!”
ordered Morrison, Child complying before it drove out of the last image.
“Where’d it go?”

Child threw his hands
toward the screen in frustration. “That’s as far south as the images go. We were
lucky to get what we did.”

Morrison growled in
frustration. “So what do we know?”

“We know that the
eyewitnesses were right.”

“But it makes no sense!”
Morrison scratched his forehead. “Suicide?”

Leroux shook his head.
“Both vehicles? No way. And to what end?” He pointed at the screen, Child
having returned the focus to the crash site. “And a broken down fuel truck just
happened to be there?” Leroux drew a deep breath before making his
proclamation. “This was staged, and that security detail, and that truck driver,
had no idea what was going on.”

Morrison turned toward
him, his eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

Leroux stepped out on the
limb. “I’m saying that the fuel truck didn’t break down, it was shut down, and
not by the driver, otherwise he would have fled the scene rather than wait
around to be killed. I’m saying that when those escort vehicles crashed into
the truck, they weren’t being driven by anyone behind the wheel.”

Noksapyeong
Road
Seoul,
Republic of Korea

“What
have we got?”

Dawson stepped out of the
SUV, an embassy staffer having driven them, she knowing the streets far better
than any of his team. Niner and Jimmy stepped away from a conversation with
several of the locals, joining him as he surveyed the scene.

“A mess is what we’ve got,”
replied Niner. “Witnesses are saying they intentionally did that.”

Dawson grunted. “Yeah,
Langley’s saying the same thing. They’ve got some images showing the fuel truck
breaking down in that exact spot, then both vehicles slamming into it a few
minutes later.”

“That’s whack. Why the
hell would they do that? Suicide?”

Dawson shook his head.
“Langley doesn’t think so, and neither do I. One driver, sure, but two? Uh-uh.”

“So then what’s the
thinking of those oh so smarter than us?”