PATIENT-X by JASON RONIN (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📖

PATIENT-X
Andrew Scorah


Chapter One
BANG! BANG! BANG! Three shots, one target, three ballistic reports that eventually echoed around the world. Those three sounds created immediate disruption to the presidential motorcade, which left the White House not two minutes earlier. The crowds, that had gathered to watch the journey, fell into shocked silence. After what seemed an eternity to many, the forces of chaos took control. Some people screamed while others attempted to get away. The first two cars immediately increased speed to avoid any further danger, the situation made all the more difficult by people who were trying to leave the area. These cars carried Michael Harding, President of the United States of America, and the first lady, plus various attendants and Secret Service personnel. The other eight cars screeched to a halt. Secret Service agents piled out, weapons drawn. Some went into the crowds searching for the source of the assault, and others entered nearby buildings. They had all heard the call over their P.R. Com sets.
“POTUS 1 is down! POTUS 1 is down!”
The message no Secret Service agent ever wanted to hear.
Training kicked in, and the agents reacted accordingly. Now that the presidential car had moved safely out of the area, they concentrated on hunting down the assassin. Within seconds, agents and police secured Freedom Plaza between 14th and 13th Streets.

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High above all this, a lone figure watched the proceedings. He stood on the roof of the National Theatre, wobbling slightly as if drunk. His face appeared devoid of any emotion, his jaw slack with glazed eyes. He held a strange rifle that looked as if it belonged in a science fiction movie—all tubes and wires.
Awareness came to Jason Cutter not unlike a thunderbolt out of a cloudless sky. Dazed and dizzy, reality hit him with a terrible kaleidoscope of sights and sounds. The street below rushed to meet him, and the sky crashed down. He received a visual and aural assault on his senses that threw him back, away from the edge of the building. His arms pin wheeled, sending the gun flying from his grasp. The realization came to him that he had done something terrible. Jason stumbled back to the edge of the roof. He saw the cars on the street and men in black suits, some talking into their cuffs, rushing about with guns in hand, pushing people. Police lined the street, holding the crowds back.
What have I done?
Turning away from the sight below him, he moved across the roof, the whup-whup sound of a helicopter in the distance. The last conscious act he remembered, until now, was answering the door to a traveling salesman. He had no recollection of how he came to be on this rooftop. It certainly did not look like New York. As Jason approached the rooftop door, the helicopter flew overhead before turning and coming to a hover above him. Jason shielded his eyes from the dust and debris that the downdraft from the rotors kicked up.
“Stay where you are! Lie down!” a voice called from the helicopter.
The door to the roof slammed open, six armed agents came out. They formed a semi-circle in front of Jason. The voice from the helicopter again ordered him to lie down.
Jason hesitated, his whole world fading to black.

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Forty thousand feet above the North Atlantic Ocean, Vice President Dwight Lecompte sat on board a flight from the Middle East. He was with National Security Advisor Clinton Desmarais and General Ronald Byron, commander of the newly formed Special Projects Unit. John Garrrick, Special Agent in Charge of Security on the plane, imparted the news to him: an unknown assailant has assassinated the President. Lecompte looked ashen as he excused himself and headed to the secure office located behind the cockpit of what was now Air Force 1. He poured himself three fingers of Scotch before calling the White House on the secure satphone. He reached the Communications Room, and immediately transferred to Eric Salazar, Secret Service agent in charge at the White House.
“Tell me some fucker is having a wind up.” Lecompte’s voice sounded hoarse with shock.
“No, sir, at precisely 12:15 an unknown assailant assassinated the President in Freedom Plaza. He was cornered briefly on the roof of the National Theatre."
“You say cornered, does that mean he got away?” Lecompte took a swig of his whiskey.
“Affirmative, sir, he overcame six agents and destroyed a helo.” Salazar is guarded in his reply.
Banging his fist on the table, Lecompte restrained himself from screaming into the phone. “How in God’s name did he manage to do that? What were your agents doing, sleeping?” A Southern drawl tinged his speech, which invariably happened when he became stressed, betraying his Kentucky roots.
“No, sir, the man was a professional. Had to be, the way he took them all out.” He paused to clear his throat. “We will know more when we retrieve the heli-cam from the wreckage, sir.”

“Where is the president’s body now?” Lecompte asked.
“We managed to return to the White House. It’s in the Morgue here sir. Oh, and by the way, we retrieved the assassin’s weapon.”

A deep chill ran through the Vice Presidents body. Something has gone wrong, he thought, no evidence was to remain at the scene especially the gun..
He thought briefly before saying," The gun must be secured until I get there, no one is to touch it not even forensics, you understand?”
“Yes sir, but it’s…” Lecompte cut him off before he could finish his sentence.
“I mean nobody, Salazar…, or it’s your ass.”
He cut the connection before Salazar could say anything else.
Dwight Lecompte is a troubled man. Those running the asset had assured him there would be no mistakes, the job would be professional, and the asset would evaporate, like water on a stovetop. Eight agents killed and the gun left behind. A total cluster fuck, Dwight thought angrily.

Michael Harding had been a favourite on the world’s political stage. The man who brought peace to the Middle East, lowered inflation rates, and reduced crime within his borders. This went against all the Brotherhood had been planning for centuries. Their mandate is to create chaos in the world a bit at a time like raindrops down a windowpane, and when those drops become a flood, they move in and bring order. They were on the brink of this at the end of the Second World War, but their plans thwarted, as they did not have the strength or the ability to affect and capitulate on the manoeuvrings behind the scenes. They learned lessons from this, and they moved on. The Brotherhood inveigled themselves into every country’s government. Wars could not be fought without their say so, and a nation’s leaders secretly chosen by them.
Dwight had been a member of the Brotherhood of the Black Flame ever since he was a freshman in college as his father before him and his father and so on. They had helped him realize the position he held today. A place where he could steer the president in the direction that was right, Harding was the first President not directly under the Brotherhoods control, how this had happened he was not privy too.
The president had been looking into all black budget operations, and had set up a committee to do the job, looking for where to make cuts and had been questioning some of the findings. He had questioned why money had been flooding into an abandoned air base in Montauk and why he could not get access to the site in Nevada. This made the Brotherhood nervous; the president was heading out on a fact-finding mission that morning when the hit took place, meaning Dwight was now acting President of the United States.
Taking out his Blackberry he quickly sent off a coded text message to Luther Mandrake his contact within the Brotherhood before leaving the office to inform the rest of the plane the sad news.
At the time, Dwight was on the phone to Eric Salazar, bombs exploded at various air and military bases around the country, fifty-two at the final count. A team of terrorists attacked the Pentagon, killing four security staff, before they are shot. A suicide bomber at a shopping precinct in Chicago killed eighteen people and another in Los Angeles killed thirty people. The final death toll was one thousand and twenty five military personnel and civilians. Actions like this also took place in many countries around the world, it seemed as though all the worlds terrorists had come out to play at the same time. All these different actions took place exactly thirty minutes after the death of the President.

The muted drone of a TV could be heard somewhere in the room where Jason Cutter was slowly waking up, a shard of light beamed into the room through the gap between the faded orange curtains, cutting across the bed. He turned onto his side causing the bed to creak. A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes, and his body ached as if he had a severe case of the flu. Think I’ll call in sick, he thought.
Groaning he sat up and reached for his pack of smokes from the bedside table.
“Whew! That was one hell of a dream,” he said to himself as he recalled the images of standing on a rooftop and the helicopter, people pointing guns at him. He lit one and took a deep pull, letting the nicotine flood his body.
The realization of his surroundings came to him at that moment; he took in the threadbare carpet, discount furniture and the TV on a scratched chest of drawers that had seen better days. The sense of confusion he felt was because for one, this was not his apartment and for two as he thought back, the last memory he had was answering the door to a travelling salesman. After that, his memory was all shadows. The dream was the clearest memory after the salesman, and before he awoke. He hung his head and sighed, ever since he was young, Jason had suffered blackouts and he realized this was probably what had happened, but this was the first time he had come out of it in quite unfamiliar surroundings. He extinguished his smoke in the ashtray on the bedside table.

Shaking the last remnants of sleep from his head, he crossed to the window and opened the curtains. Outside was unfamiliar too, a nondescript Motel car park, trees lining the edge preventing him from seeing farther.

His attention, drawn back to the TV, which is tuned to a news channel. He walked over and turned up the volume then sat on the end of the bed.

The pretty newsreader was talking about a suicide bombing at a shopping Centre somewhere, at the end of the story she handed back to her colleague.

“Here’s an