The MI6 boys couldn’t look away as he and Abby were slid off the tailgate and onto their feet together by the last of the momentum like a movie scene.
Because behind the MI6ers, the two Chinooks had plummeted back to Earth as only a Night Stalker could do. They’d been doing such antics long enough that none of the Brits thought anything of the overhead noise and didn’t even look up. Pity, the maneuver was an amazing thing to witness. Fifty feet and twenty tons of helo had stood on its nose and fallen out of the sky, only to swing flat and slam into a hover at ten meters up.
There they kicked out FAST ropes. Within seconds, it was raining more D-boys. His team slid down the ropes so close together that their feet were practically touching the next man’s hands below him.
They landed silently and raced up behind the Brits .
At a nod from Derek, they all took the final step and pressed a blue sidearm up against the base of each man’s skull. Eyes that had been squinted at Abby and Derek all shot wide.
Only one decided to fight back. He spun to slap-grab the weapon against his skull, not realizing it wasn’t lethal, but taking a huge risk if it was. One of the boys on an electric motorcycle goosed silently forward. Seeing what he was up to, his teammate released the sidearm, dumping the magazine as he did so, and dodged out of the way. The bike’s front wheel scooped up the attacker between his legs. When the biker jammed on the brakes, the fool landed face down on the pavement, not even hanging onto the empty weapon. The driver eased the bike up beside him and casually planted a boot on his neck.
Misty fired a single round. The big Browning barked hard and the round screamed between his and Abby’s shoulders before punching a hole in the pavement between the leader’s feet. Once she aimed it at the leader’s face, she didn’t need to ask if there were any other heroes.
No one wiggled so much as a finger while they were stripped of their weapons, zip-tied wrist and ankle, and left to squirm on their faces.
“I see what the Tower meant when they said we had something to learn from you folks.” Group Captain Cutcher and Colonel Beale had come up close behind them.
“Just having a little fun, ma’am.” Derek had a dozen prisoners, very angry prisoners. But he had no idea what to do with them. “Uh, got any LSD handy?”
Cutcher didn’t look amused.
66
Sir James Alfred Lloyd III didn’t in the least appreciate being called onto the Prime Minister’s Ardabil Persian carpet at 10 Downing Street. That it was merely a copy only made it worse. And to top that off, she’d done it in front of a passel of Americans: most in uniform, but a scant handful of civilians as well. They all stood well back. As the Foreign Secretary, he deserved respect, not this preemptive summons before he’d even finished breakfast.
“An item has come to my attention, James.” PM Leith’s accent didn’t include the least bit of breeding. Yorkshire. Since when had anyone useful been born of Yorkshire? The next PM would probably be Scottish or, even worse, Welsh with a ridiculously unpronounceable name, at least by civilized people.
“Oh, and what pray tell is that, Prime Minister?” She didn’t even have the wherewithal to scowl at the dropping of her surname in his address.
She tapped a button on her keyboard and the large screen to the side of her desk lit up. A dozen men in camouflage were hog-tied on the tarmac. A female group captain was standing over them. RAF Brize Norton. He’d already been informed that the teams he’d sent in had gone silent. At least now he knew why.
“I have no idea what this is. An exercise?”
“Apparently one in futility.” The PM sighed. She tapped the screen again.
And there, impossibly, was bank documentation of the payoff of the numerous debts of the family estate—by the House of Saud. They had saved him from being evicted due to his mother’s gambling debts and his own failed investment strategies. Tens of millions pounds sterling had simply appeared in his accounts. And they’d asked for so little in return: favorable intervention on BP contracts, a relaxing of criteria for military export sales, and the like. All of which would probably have been granted through normal channels anyway. He had simply made it easier—in most cases.
There were a few however, that it would be better if no one ever…
The PM tapped the button once more, and there on the screen was what he’d been promised would never come to light.
She pressed a button on her phone, but said nothing.
The doors behind him swung open, though he couldn’t look away as the PM rose to her feet. She was too tall and brittle to be womanly.
“James Alfred Lloyd III, you are to be tried for high treason. Pending trial, you are removed from your role as Foreign Secretary. You will be held in His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh without possibility of release. All of your accounts and assets, both domestic and foreign, are hereby frozen. Officers,” she looked past his shoulders, “please read him The Caution and get him out of my office.”
He stood numbly as they bound his wrists behind him and informed him of his right to silence. All he could see was his wife’s and her mum’s faces when they were ejected from their ancestral home. The estate had come down their matriarchal line since a grant from King Henry IV. He was the interloper, the one who’d “married up” in the world.
Somewhere he found the words to admit he understood his rights—none.
When they turned him about, the Americans were still there. Four military…officers. He knew the stance on even the plain-clothed one from the time he’d served. And, if he imagined her younger…
“Evandra?” Unlike the PM, she was still lovely. Her long blonde hair gone silver. The men’s suit didn’t mask that she remained slender. Her eyes were still the same bright blue of the spring sky that lit her lovely face.
“Rather than kidnapping and drugging me to find out what I knew, you should have had your men kill me outright, James.”
He nodded. “As always, you are correct. I should have.” Then he glanced at the two officers. They hadn’t missed that for a second. One whispered the date and time, they must have a recorder running. Another nail in his already sealed coffin couldn’t matter. He knew that no secrets survived long around Evandra.
