Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,61

to those about the President. Imagine the headlines.'

'I don't give a shit about the damn headlines.'

'You would if it was your son who did the shooting. You would if you had been one of the heads of the CIA. Support for American involvement in the war would have melted away and Carver’s career would have been toast.’

He paused.

‘We had to shut the whole thing down. If word got out, the consequences would have been irreversible.'

'They've already been damn near irreversible,' Cobb said, jabbing a finger angrily at the ruined glass of his office next door.

There was a pause.

Cobb shook his head in frustration and paced to the window. The four armed officers stood there in silence. This was a two man conversation.

'OK, so what happened to Carver senior?' Cobb asked, turning back to Jackson. 'Is he still in the CIA? Or is he on his way to the Presidency and sainthood?'

Across the room, Jackson shook his head.

'He's gone. He retired and had a heart attack when he was walking his dog, about three years ago. They buried him at Arlington.'

Cobb shook his head and cursed, looking at the board.

The atmosphere in the room was tense.

'We should have been prepared,' Cobb said. 'If you had told me, we could have put precautions in place.’ He tapped Carver’s, Floyd’s and Fletcher’s photos. ‘These three men murder an entire camp of women and children and we expect their husbands and fathers to just forget it ever happened? Jesus Christ, Ryan. What did you think would happen?'

'What would you have done?’ Jackson fired back. ‘Given each of the men bodyguards and armed protection for the past decade? C'mon, think man. We never could have known it was going to go down like this.'

Cobb turned from the board and stalked back to the window.

In the silence, Porter turned to Nikki.

'Did you manage to pull anything on the enemy?' he asked her quietly.

Nikki shook her head.

'Nothing apart from the dead guy on the slab at the morgue. But I forgot to mention, another body turned up just before lunchtime. Same kind of tattoos as the man who attacked us here. Forensics think it was the second gunman, judging by the marks on his hands from the trigger guard of the rifle.'

Cobb turned and all the men looked at her.

'How did he die?' Archer asked.

'Single gunshot wound to the head. Self-inflicted. Suicide. About ten bystanders watched him do it.'

'He killed himself?' Chalky said.

'Probably because he failed,' Cobb said.

Porter turned to Jackson.

'The Black Panthers. How many men in a Unit like that?’ he asked.

'Eight,' Jackson said.

'So two down. We're looking at six of them left,' Cobb said. 'Do we even know what these men look like?'

Jackson looked at Nikki, who shrugged.

'All we know is they are exceptionally well-trained, extremely tough and according to all official records, don't even exist. None of them have used their real names for over a decade and no one knows for sure where any of them are. Officials at US airports on the East Coast are on alert in case they try to flee the country, but they don’t even know who they're looking for. These men are like ghosts.'

'And they want both of us dead,' Cobb added, looking back at Jackson.

Silence followed. Cobb walked back over to the board and pointed at three photographs, Fraser, King, and McCarthy.

'OK. We need to warn the others. Where's Fraser? The last remaining Ranger.’

Jackson nodded. ‘I already called ahead from the car. Two agents are on their way to him now. He works in an office near the Beltway, in DC. We'll get him guarded with round-the-clock security.’

‘OK,’ Cobb said, tapping King and McCarthy’s photos, the two British army soldiers. ‘These two are our responsibility. We need to find them before they do. Nikki?’

‘King lives not far from here,' she said, reading from the file in the crook of her arm. 'Small apartment in Angel. He works nights as security at a shopping centre. McCarthy is the floor manager at a home supply depot. I tried both their home phones but neither man is picking up.'

'Where does McCarthy live?'

'He has a lease on a house in his name in Notting Hill.’

Cobb turned to First Team, who were standing there silently, listening, their MP5s in their hands, waiting for instruction. Hard as the clean-up team had tried earlier, the floor under their boots was still stained with dried coffee and blood, reminders from earlier in the day.

‘Get over to Angel. Get King, then go to Notting Hill