Free Assassin (The Billionaire Series) by Murray McDonald

not
caused by anything which originated from outside our planet. That is, no meteor
struck the site.”
    “You can say this categorically?” asked Smith.
    “Without a shadow of a doubt. We have scanned the entire area,
taken samples from the centre of the explosion, examined satellite scans and
imagery and absolutely nothing indicates the existence of extra terrestrial
material near the area, which means there was no meteorite.”
    “Did you find anything that you believe may have caused it?”
asked the Guinean President.
    “That, Sir, is a question I cannot answer. My expertise is
meteorites, not explosives. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the explosives
experts, there is nothing further NASA can offer.”
    “Thank you again for your prompt response and assistance.”
    “Not at all Mr President, the   President of the USA is very keen to
assist in any way he can. We were contacted before we’d even heard about Mr
Kennedy’s sighting.”
    “Thank you again Professor and please pass on my sincere
gratitude to your team.”
    “Thank you Mr President and goodbye.”
    As the professor made his way back to the disaster site and
his team, Smith excused himself and called Beaumont.
    “Hello,” answered Beaumont instantly.
    “Hi. NASA have just given us an update. They’ve found no
evidence of any meteorite at the site.”
    “Hmm, looks like our Mr Kennedy may face some interesting
questions,” sniggered Beaumont more to himself than to Smith.
    “Anything else?” he asked on a more serious note.
    “Not yet. But things are moving quickly, we’re probably a
couple of hours ahead of schedule. My guys have confirmed that samples of
explosive residue have already been recovered and it’ll be a matter of hours
for the test results to be confirmed. After that, things should move very
quickly.”
    “Excellent. Keep me up to date.”
    Beaumont ended the call and checked the time, it was only 3.00
a.m. Things were moving very quickly. In fact, perhaps a little too quickly. If
anybody looked too closely at response times, they might realise that things
were just a little too neat. The exercise involving both the US Army Engineers
and the Equatorial Guinean Army had been arranged with a little less notice
than would be expected. In fact, it was unprecedented how quickly it had been
arranged, to the extent that the unit had been airlifted rather than shipped.
This had caused chaos with transport planes of food and ammunition scheduled
for front line troops and had resulted in critical shortages. Questions had
been asked but fortunately Beaumont had been able to quash them before they
were escalated to the Joint Chiefs Office. The Joint Chiefs Office was
Beaumont’s only weak spot. It was headed up by a General Powers, whose formal
title was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the boss of all the
US armed services, squeaky clean and completely incorruptible and unfortunately
for Beaumont, the most respected man to have held the position.
    He simply had to go. And very, very soon. He had been
timetabled to be taken care of the following month but Beaumont now decided
that he could not afford to wait, the schedule would have to change.
    Beaumont fired up his laptop and accessed the emergency
contact list for the government’s key personnel. The list was continually
updated and recorded the exact whereabouts of the Government’s top 200 staff.
Selecting the ‘Armed Forces’ tag, a list of names appeared, headed by General
Powers. Beaumont double clicked on the General’s name and   waited for his diary to appear.
    As he waited, he wondered how they would do it. General Powers
was not going to be the easiest target, a battle hardened war hero with an
incredibly loyal team of bodyguards. Beaumont was going to have to use his very
best men. As the page came up, Beaumont smiled. This was a very good day,
General Powers was at a conference in South Africa and Beaumont had his very
best men not far