Madness

  Madness

  (The Peacock Trilogy – Book 2)

  US Copyright © 2013

  Dedicated to my wife, Pam, my faithful supporter.

  Chapter 1

  Agent Peacock, aka Laverna Smythe, rode alongside Secret Service Agent Alan Loomis. The two scoured for signs of trouble in advance of President Monroe’s motorcade to JFK Airport. Her third year in Hercules crawled past with less action than her first assignment in the elite secret unit within Homeland Security. One word described the past few months—boring.

  Loomis, unaware she was a Herculean, called her Laverna when they were friendly, or The Redhead, when she drove him mad. The agents in Hercules called her Peacock, the deadliest human weapon the agency possessed. Fast, strong, and a martial arts expert, Peacock’s talent equaled six fully trained agents in a fight. Her partly cloudy mood described her feelings most days, since this assignment irritated her with inactivity.

  Hercules operated outside the channels of government, reporting only to the president. Their covert operations recently thwarted an assassination attempt against President Monroe, and Peacock now guarded the president to prevent another attempt from occurring.

  Peacock’s hand involuntarily moved behind her right ear. An implant that controlled her emotions entered her brain at this point. The device signaled to her controllers her emotional status every second of every day. Right now, an agent named Polaris controlled her, and she trusted him. She could perform to the optimal with his guidance. Peacock solved puzzles inside her Mensa level brain as she and Loomis rode along.

  “Roger that,” she heard Loomis say. “We’re on our way.”

  “Problem?” Peacock asked.

  “Another tip’s come in on suspicious activity along our master’s route.” Loomis sped up.

  She shot into alert mode. Leaving her puzzle, knowing she could recreate it at any time. Loomis pulled into a parking lot at the Courtyard near JFK Airport, and Peacock snapped into strategic mode. He pointed up at a seventh floor window. “Info received from Intel says two Arab men obtained a room up there three days ago. Another man joined them this morning. Each has been seen carrying small athletic bags into the hotel. According to a desk clerk, the bags smelled like C4 explosives.”

  “How could he know?”

  “I have no idea,” Loomis said. “How long before his majesty’s limo drives by?”

  “Fourteen hundred hours—ten minutes from now,” Peacock answered. “And his title is Mister President, not his majesty.”

  “Whatever. Let’s pay our friends a visit.”

  Loomis headed through the hotel’s side door with Peacock behind him.

  “Avoid the elevator,” Loomis said. “We’ll take the stairs.”

  Peacock’s government-spec navy-blue suit flexed well going upstairs. She could race up three floors without letting her heels touch the ground. She practiced climbing stairs in four-inch stilettoes. She matched Loomis in speed and stealth, and she still looked great onboard Air Force One.

  They reached Room 719 with five minutes to spare. Loomis didn’t wait. “Federal agents open up.”

  Silence.

  After a minute, Peacock used her government passkey and unlocked the door. The latch held on the inside. She shot the bolt off, and Loomis kicked the door in. She tumbled into the suite coming up with her gun pointing at the adjoining door. That door was wide open, allowing for a walkway between rooms. The adjacent suite appeared empty, but a commotion inside said otherwise.

  “Escape attempt in progress in 721,” she managed to get out, before two heavy set men appeared at the adjoining door. She leaped behind a kitchen bar and yelled, “Secret Service, put your weapons down and your hands in the air where I can see them.”

  The men disappeared back through the doorway. Neither set foot in her suite.

  They’re deciding to fly, fight, or surrender.

  Loomis fired his gun from out in the hall, and she instinctively leaped up and raced toward the adjoining room, closing the escape perimeter. The two men who had appeared briefly in the doorway must have run out of the line of Loomis’s fire. She heard the adjacent suite’s door slam.

  She positioned herself to charge into the next room, when the door to the bedroom on her side cracked open. A voice called out, “I’ll surrender peaceably.”

  “Stay where you are. You’re a dead man if you move.”

  Maybe he wanted to surrender. Maybe he wanted to make her think so.

  “Hands behind your backs,” Loomis yelled from the other suite. “Arrest anyone on your side, Partner.”

  “All right,” she called to the man behind the bedroom door. “Toss out your weapon and come out where I can see you.”

  A revolver she recognized, an old .22 Smith & Wesson similar to the one she used for target practice, slid across the floor. An old man limped out of the bedroom and turned around with his hands in the air. Loomis followed two cuffed young Arabs into her suite.

  Hotel security entered the room as the local police pulled into the parking lot below. “Thank your Boss for giving us a heads up.”

  “I’m glad he called you. The federal government will pay for the door.” Peacock sniffed the air, “The smell’s cocaine, not C4.”

  She crept into the old man’s bedroom. “Alan,” she called to Loomis. “You have to see this. There has to be the equivalent of twenty-pounds of the stuff. At seven hundred an ounce on the street, well you do the math.”

  “No presidential threat here,” Loomis said, “only a drug deal.”

  “Let’s go.” Peacock pushed past Loomis and headed for the hallway. “We’ve got fifteen minutes to get to Monroe’s side as he boards Air Force One.”

  Peacock called back to the two New York policemen she passed on her way to the stairwell. “The cuffs aren’t free. Return them to the president’s security team, and someone unknown wants to buy that white powdery shit our prisoners have, just so you know.”

  As Loomis drove out of the hotel parking lot, Peacock focused on her next task. President Monroe was heading to London for a week of negotiations. In London, on her only day off, she’d reunite with her husband. The thought brought a customary discomfort. Polaris worked continuously to remove her feelings from the past, particularly for her husband.

  She learned to disassociate per her training and deal with the disorientation inside her head. Colors in the red-blue spectrum along the roadway became focal points and calmed her. Her mind centered only on the shades she enjoyed. A few seconds later, perfectly at ease, she dozed off.

  #

  Air Force One leveled off at 30,000 feet en route to London. Peacock remained buckled in her seat in the back of the president’s work area next to John Sherman, the head of the president’s security team. Three other agents secured themselves into the front seats turned to face the rear of the plane. President Charles Monroe took the chair bolted behind a desk in the cabin, `and his Chief of Staff edged in across from him.

  Peacock reached over and rubbed Sherman’s arm. “Sleep for a while. I’m rested and on my second cup of coffee.”

  Sherman nodded and closed his eyes. She required little sleep on duty. Off duty, she was hard to wake up. She leaned back and waved down the steward. “Another coffee for me and one for Agent Loomis in the front, he looks like he needs one.”

  “Thanks Laverna,” Alan Loomis replied. “You’re right. I haven’t been sleeping well of late.”

  If Loomis only knew, she thought. She and her husband kept their marriage low key. The birth of her son had been on a need to know basis. Few people recognized Laverna Smythe, as the mother of the heir to a fortune. Sherman knew. Monroe was aware, but no one else on her team had information about her personal life. During her previous assignment, lunch with the Chief of S
taff at the Emerald Hotel was commonplace. Now, with her red hair shorter and wearing a navy business suit, light blue-collared shirt, and solid navy tie, even the Chief of Staff didn’t recognize her as Laverna from the infamous Room 1515.

  From her first day under Sherman, her value showed. Peacock instantly recognized when things were out of place. Her training alerted her to shadows in windows, vehicles where vehicles shouldn’t be, and items not fitting their location. When the plane landed in London, she and Agent Loomis would exit the president’s aircraft first, looking for these not so obvious dangers hiding in plain sight.

  If Peacock could put a soul back inside the robot she had become, no telling what value she would be.

  Have I ever had a soul?

  Not since her family died. Only the thoughts of her baby son warmed her. She ached to cradle her child, a boy she’d never held.

  She remembered the recent past. Her retraining with her new boss, John Sherman, rang as clear as crystal. Nonetheless, when she tried to recapture anything before her retraining, her mind slipped into a murky abyss.

  Attempting to connect with her feelings about her husband caused her emotional world to crack. She was in love with him at one time, before the new implant changed her. Now she wondered if that love would rekindle when she saw him again.

  #

  “Move that luggage cart!” Peacock jogged forward and to the right of the red carpet onto which the president would step.

  “Who made you Prime Minister, Doris?” a voice from British security at Heathrow snipped in her headset.

  “Cut the malarkey and move the cart.”

  “Do what she says.” Loomis whispered loud enough for both Peacock and British security to hear. “She can kick my arse and yours. She’s right. The cart’s a security risk.”

  Peacock nodded a thank you toward Loomis and then searched the crowd for other potential threats. Except for the minor scuffle at the Courtyard, she hadn’t had a real fight since her retraining.

  President Monroe stepped out onto the platform at the exit door of Air Force One. An artist with imagination could have painted a middle-aged Sitting Bull in a business suit and mirrored the image. Deep-set brown eyes, black hair, and squared jaw, reflected the stately quality of the Indian part of his bloodline.

  Mrs. Monroe, a blue-eyed blonde, mid-forties, swung in alongside the president. Her countenance and posture shouted ‘Don’t thread on me.’ The two came down the stairs to receive greetings from the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain and several British dignitaries.

  The moment the president’s foot hit the ground, Peacock pulled parallel to him scanning every person in line for signs of trouble.

  “Open your purse.”

  A woman of slight statue but indignant countenance huffed but complied. The purse contained nothing of concern.

  “Thank you, you may greet the president.”

  As Peacock moved on, she heard the woman say, “Where do they find these nutters?”

  A nutter? Maybe she was. She tossed aside the comment and stuck to her job.

  Once Monroe’s limousine pulled away, Loomis and Peacock jumped into the vehicle behind him and headed toward The Dorchester in the Mayfair District. Peacock bumped Loomis’s arm.

  “Thanks for the good word, Partner.”

  “I simply told the truth.”

  “And I agree with him.” Polaris’s voice chimed inside her head. “You need to know your husband changed his schedule. He moved the date from Friday to next Wednesday.”

  That’s over eight days away.

  “He’s probably not horny yet. Play nice.”

  Peacock bit her lip. Then images of the erotic liaisons she experienced in Room 1515 and with her husband aroused her. Of course, she’d play nice.

  Chapter 2

  Peacock stood statuesque, her back pressed against the right side of the doorframe in the Cabinet Room of Number 10, Downing. Loomis, more stone-like, mimicked her pose at the left side of the door. British security stood guard mid-wall and far side of the room by the windows. Tough, her assessment of them said. The British bred their agents to be gruff and obstinate.

  The room smelled damp. She supposed those who lived and worked here didn’t notice, but breathing the air irritated her throat and lungs. The yellow-gold walls and beautiful art gave the room a sparkling look, which seemed a contradiction to the odor. She reminded herself the implant enhanced sights, sounds, and smells. She enjoyed nature far more now that she could clearly use her senses in hyper-mode.

  Peacock absorbed and recorded every movement and voice in the room. The task was to protect while being invisible—dull at best. Compared with her last assignment in Room 1515, this seemed like a vacation.

  Boredom led to searching the files in her mind in these idle moments. Plainly, Hercules’ control room signals had shut several major thought-pathways. However, if her entire capability to make independent choices were shutdown, she would be a vegetable. And she certainly wasn’t. Maybe she could build alternate routes and worm her mind around the blockades.

  A polite knock on the door grabbed her attention, and Agent Loomis opened it.

  “Sir, I bring an urgent message for Prime Minister Lodge.”

  There stood a wiry, thin man with a neatly trimmed and curled Imperial mustache.

  “And you are?”

  “Sir Jarvis Franks, MI6.”

  British security escorted Franks directly to Lodge’s side. Peacock watched as Franks whispered something to Lodge.

  “Are you sure?” Lodge answered as Monroe’s Chief of Staff grabbed his cellphone and turned to the president. Both men chimed the same words. “Iran has fired upon Russian troops gathering in Turkmenistan.”

  Somewhere in Peacock’s mind, she recalled a discussion between her husband and his staff about a Russian threat toward Iran. She couldn’t visualize the situation or the surroundings clearly.

  Peacock noted President Monroe’s face showed his surprise. While Lodge seemed engaged with the situation, his reaction revealed concern, but not surprise. Significant? She’d store this away for future recall.

  Loomis shrugged, “Looks like a war has started. I thought the Iranians and the Russians were buddies.”

  “Not since the radical Muslim groups in Chechnya and the southeastern republics took over.” Her academic studies and her training in Hercules covered this subject. “The Turkmen feel closer to Iran than to Russia in ideology.”

  John Sherman spoke into Peacock’s headset. “Monroe’s cutting short this meeting. We’re heading home.”

  #

  As the president’s motorcade headed for Heathrow, Peacock and Loomis rode behind Monroe’s limousine. John Sherman occupied the president’s limousine with Mrs. Monroe and Chief of Staff. A flight back to Washington wasn’t in the plans for two more days. Sherman had to patch security together.

  Peacock gazed out her window with increased curiosity. She’d traveled in London with her husband. The area they were heading into wasn’t the safest, a site of riots only months earlier much like the Americans were experiencing in Chicago and Los Angeles. Advanced security hadn’t scoured these buildings.

  “We normally stay on M4 toward Heathrow,” Peacock whispered to Sherman through her headset. “That way takes less time. Why have we taken A4?”

  “I’ll check.”

  She heard Sherman talking to British security. Then the lead limousine veered right. The president’s limousine spun sideways, and the driver of Peacock’s limousine pulled a revolver out from under his seat. He never had a chance to use it as Peacock shot him through the back of his neck. Their limousine smashed head-on into the back, right side of the president’s vehicle.

  Peacock and Loomis rolled out of opposite doors as machine gun fire strafed their limo. She observed Sherman and two others running with the president. She fired in the direction of the machine gun sound and rolled behind a clump of barberries. Wild gunfire bursts strafed the ground, shredding apart the bushes.r />
  By then, Peacock succeeded in hunching down next to a nearby building. She spotted the window the shots were coming from and entered that building on the ground floor.

  “I’m after the gunman,” she whispered. “Is the president all right?”

  “Shaken,” Sherman, said. “We’ve been transferred to an alternate vehicle. The driver of the first limousine is still out there. British security is escorting us on. Bring one back alive if you can.”

  “Understood.”

  Peacock wasn’t used to bringing people back alive. She reached the top floor and stopped to listen. She could see the door behind which she suspected the shooters were located. She heard no sound. No one had left the building. They would have had to go past her. There didn’t appear to be a way up to the roof.

  Either, they were inside that room or had escaped out the window. She doubted the latter. A click snapped her into high alert. She stepped back, crouched, and aimed at the door. Then she realized the click came from the entry door—a nice touch from her implant. Every one of her enhanced senses leaped into action when her adrenalin soared.

  Whoever entered had stealth feet, but his shadow on the stairway gave him away. Still in his chauffeurs’ outfit by the image of a hat on the wall, his gun was drawn, and he moved blithely.

  Why hasn’t anyone in the other apartments come out to see what’s going on?

  The floor she was on had four rooms and one hallway. The light switches didn’t work. There was a service elevator. When she pressed the button, nothing happened. In fact, other than the emergency lights and light from the windows, no electricity was on—an abandoned apartment complex?

  She turned with her back to the wall next to the stairwell, listening to her target breathing. He had to be no more than a few feet from the top of the stairs. The words Magnus, her trainer, used rang in her head. “Target identified. Attack and destroy.”

  Peacock swung into the stairwell, grabbed the handrail, and launched her feet against her enemy. He fell backward down onto the second floor landing, firing into the ceiling as he fell.