Flashpoint

FlashpointAn Alex Mason ThrillerDavid ArcherBlake Banner Copyright © 2023 Right HouseAll rights reservedThe characters and events portrayed in this ebook are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.No part of this ebook may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Contents Title PageCopyrightJoin Our NewslettersPrologueOneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenElevenTwelveThirteenFourteenFifteenSixteenSeventeenEighteenNineteenTwentyTwenty-OneTwenty-TwoTwenty-ThreeTwenty-FourEpilogueLast Chance!What'd You Think?Excerpt of Next BookPrologueOneTwoAlso By David ArcherAlso by Blake Banner Join Our NewslettersWe are avid writers and love to publish books as often as we can! If you'd like to be notified of any new releases be sure to join our newsletters below!JOIN DAVID ARCHER'S NEWSLETTERJOIN BLAKE BANNER'S NEWSLETTER(No Spam. Ever.) PrologueThe heat was heavy under a molten sun. It didn’t sparkle on the Atlantic Ocean. It lay like an incandescent sheet of steel, blinding to look at and obscuring the waves beneath its glare, in the Gulf of Cadiz. A group of men stood clustered around an apparently haphazard collection of machines. Some were mounted on trucks, Land Rovers and Jeeps. Others were set on the ground and had cables, like tendrils, stretching out across the wild scrubland of the Coto Doñana nature reserve. Along the cables were sensors that probed deep into the ground beneath the nature reserve, deep into the very bowels of the Earth.The technology was cutting edge, more advanced than anything in Europe or the States. It was the result of millions of dollars of investment in research and development in particle physics resonance; and it had been developed specifically for this one job: to find crude oil deposits deep underground in Andalusia, in the south of Spain.And it had been developed, in absolute secrecy, by Russian laboratories subcontracted to the Russian Department of Advanced Research, which was in turn a sub-department of the Office for Innovative Design and Development, a branch of the top-secret Russian Research Institute at Tver.It was one of several projects stretching across the autonomous region of Andalusia, from the deserts of Almeria and Granada in the east, through the sedimentary rock formations of the mountains of Malaga and eastern Cadiz, right across to the flats of the Atlantic coast of Cadiz and Huelva.Dr. Jose Carlos Montilla was the head of the project. He had the data in from Almeria and Granada, he had just received the data from the mountains of Malaga, and now he was reading the data coming back from the sensors across the coast of Cadiz and Huelva. As he read it he sent it to print and ran across the flats back toward his field office. His belly was on fire and his head was reeling.He burst through the cabin door. His assistant was at the computer and looked around as he came in. He snapped, “Out! Go! Go!”She scuttled out and he slammed the door, sat and picked up the telephone that gave him a secure line to the office of Benjamin Musa in Seville, at his office in the Palace of San Telmo, the seat of the Junta de Andalucia, the Andalusian autonomous executive. Benjamin Musa was a powerful man. He was the head of the Andalusian Socialist Party and the leader of the opposition. He had risen to his position of power through a subtle use of bribery, and where that had failed, blackmail. He owned Montilla both because he had proof of the latter’s use of drugs—which he himself had provided for him—and because he now provided him with a thousand euros a month as a supplement to his salary; a thousand euros on which Montilla had become completely dependent.Musa snatched up the telephone.“Yes!”“Benjamin, I have all the data in. You will not believe this. Are you alone?”“Yes. Tell me.”“There are deep oil reserves running from beneath the Mediterranean coast of Almeria right across Andalusia and out into the Gulf of Cadiz. As far as I can tell it reaches out into the Alboran Sea. It is vast. I have never seen anything like it.”Benjamin Musa laughed. “Oh, that is good, Jose Carlos, that is very good. I need your report on my desk by this evening. Absolutely nobody must get this information but me. Get on it now, not a word to anyone.”Jose Carlos hesitated. “Benjamin, I have done what you wanted. You will now release me?”“Yes, Jose Carlos, of course I will. A promise is a promise. But let’s not waste time. Put that report together and get it to me before six PM. And you will be a free man.”Benjamin Musa put down the phone and sat a moment gazing at the bright sunshine beyond his triple-glazed window. He watched the giant pine tree by the river on the Paseo de las Delicias, swaying in total silence. He looked at the London plane trees on the Paseo de Roma. He smiled. Achieving this corner office had been a triumph. What he was going to do now would dwarf anything he had achieved in the past.He opened a drawer and extracted the secure, dedicated phone he had there, and dialed a number in Moscow. And two thousand five hundred miles away, to the north and east, Colonel Alexandrina Vitsin picked up her receiver and took her time putting it to her ear, as she exhaled smoke through her nose.“Yes, Musa.”“The results are in. The report will be on my desk by six this evening, eight PM your time.”“Good. What steps will you take?”“I will make a statement outside the Parliament here in Seville—”“No.”She could almost hear him frown. “No?”“Madrid. Palacio de la Cortes, on the steps of your parliament. Alert the press that you plan to make a statement. CNN, BBC, Reuters, everybody. Next week.”He nodded. “Yes, yes OK. I’ll let you know when it’s arranged.”She didn’t answer. She hung up.Benjamin Musa sat looking at the phone for a moment, chewing his lip. He had never met the colonel, but