Bracken is dead, a high and mighty senator of Congress, died in such a cowardly way at the hands of his collaborator.
Frank, who was standing beside him, did not blink, and kept looking at the gun pointed at him by Denning with a half-smile.
"I have always found it difficult to understand 'good people' like you, who are capable but have no foresight. Just one sentence 'serve the country' can make you sacrifice everything, even your life."
Denning put down the gun, turned around and looked at Cassel, who was pointed at the head by Cynthia with a gun, with a smug expression, "But I like dealing with people like you, because you are so easy to deal with, and you can always be fooled by others."
"Let my son go." Frank said coldly.
"A life for a life." Denning walked to Cassel, put a hand on his shoulder, and suddenly pretended to be surprised, "Oh, I almost forgot, you have no bargaining chips now, so how about using your life to exchange for his life?"
Frank threw away the pistol readily, "As you wish."
Denning laughed so hard that he fell back and forth, as if he was really sure of winning. He was too lazy to pretend, and directly gave orders to Cooper over Cynthia, "Cooper, handcuff him."
However, Cooper, with an unhappy look on his face, stood there without moving.
"Okay, here's the deal." Denning was not surprised. "Frank Moses killed Congressman Bracken, you killed him and his son, and then you were promoted to Cynthia's current position. She will be promoted soon too. How about it?"
Seeing Cooper standing there motionless, Cynthia also spoke up, "Cooper, I admit that I deceived you before, but no matter what choice you make, things are a foregone conclusion."
"Really? So you admit that you deceived me, then what about before? You might as well tell me how many dirty words you used me to say, or how many enemies you used the CIA to eliminate for Alexander Denning."
"Cooper!" Cynthia interrupted Cooper loudly, "Have you forgotten that I was the one who recruited you from the Navy SEALs into the CIA? Think about your family. Do you still want to be a good person now?"
"Fuck you, Cynthia." Cooper looked at Frank after cursing, "What are you waiting for?"
This sentence made Denning and Cynthia, including the people they brought with them, all alert, but before they could react, a sudden burst of gunfire rang out.
Cynthia's right hand, pointed at Cassel, was shattered at the elbow by a .50mm round from a Barrett M107A1, blood spraying all over the great writer's face. Cooper fired two more shots, sending her to hell.
Bullets seemed to fly from all directions, hitting the machine gunners in the back of the two pickup trucks and several bodyguards behind Denning almost simultaneously.
The sound of the gunshots and the return of silence to the factory took only two or three seconds. Old Denning barely registered what had happened before he realized with horror that he was completely alone.
Bodies lay scattered around him, and a bald man was stalking toward him.
"Stop! I..." He was about to say something when Frank slashed his throat, shattering it along with his Adam's apple.
Cassel stared at the scene, eyes wide with disbelief. Frank reached over, retrieved the key from Cynthia's body, unlocked the handcuffs, and then gave his son a firm hug.
A GMC Yukon, identical to the one Cooper had driven, slowly pulled into the factory. Michael Weston calmly adjusted his suit as he stepped out.
Cooper, recognizing him instantly, felt his pupils shrink, but a look of relief soon crossed his face.
Footsteps echoed down the rusty iron staircases on either side of the factory. Jack, with Anna in tow, and Victoria, flanked by Ivan, descended from the elevated platforms on either side. Marvin, carrying a well-worn AK-47, emerged from a pile of debris in the back.
The sound of hurried footsteps approached, and Beckett trotted into Cassel's arms, hugging him tightly.
The sight made Jack want to take a picture with his phone, so he could turn around and show Hannah and Jiejie a glimpse of their best friend's vulnerability.
Seeing Cooper's strange look, Jack tossed his Barrett rifle to him. The powerful sniper rifle sent the CIA agent back two steps.
"Thanks, buddy. I'll leave the cleanup here to you and Michael. I'm sure you can handle it easily," Jack chuckled.
"Of course," Michael Weston said, winking at Cooper. "I heard you wanted to fight Jack again?"
"No, I've changed my mind," Cooper glared at him fiercely. "I want to switch opponents to you."
A gunshot startled everyone. They turned to look at Marvin, the shooter, and saw him shoot Denning in the head with his AK-47.
Frank frowned speechlessly. "Does this make you feel better?"
"I hate it when the bad guys in movies always come back to life in the sequel," Marvin said with a look of grievance.
Jack gave him a thumbs-up, acknowledging that the crazy old man had done a great job this time.
The
sudden death of a senator is always a serious matter, unless he died of a heart attack, in which case it would become a feast for the sharing of power.
At least according to the unanimous report from the Democratic Party media, Senator Bracken had indeed passed away peacefully in his sleep last night.
Jack, scanning the newspaper from side to side, felt a certain familiarity in the tone of the report.
Typically, a federal senator at the top of the political ladder holds absolute dominance in any power-for-money transactions, but Bracken didn't seem to be one of them.
The details of the Guatemalan massacres of twenty or thirty years ago are now obscured by the deaths of all those involved, but it's clear that Bracken has since become a puppet manipulated by Denning.
This situation typically reverses as a politician gains power, but Bracken and Denning seem to be an exception.
This is evident from Bracken's covert deployment of assassins outside Denning's residence. He wasn't trying to get rid of her, but it was clear that his options were limited.
In fact, judging by their demonstrated intelligence, Jack felt they were a good match, a perfect match, a perfect match.
Fortunately, Bracken is currently only an unnominated vice presidential candidate. While even the president can sometimes be a puppet in diapers, there's a difference between puppets and puppets.
Denning is ultimately just one of the country's numerous arms dealers, even less so than the white gloves who profit for the upper echelons.
If someone like him were to somehow "luckily" and use a puppet to become a player at the table, it would be deeply humiliating for the bigwigs.
Therefore, for the Democratic Party, Bracken's death is like helping them defuse a ticking time bomb in advance, far better than creating an unmanageable mess after the election.
For the CIA, successfully eliminating an internal traitor (Cynthia) is also a cause for celebration. The key is that she died at the hands of CIA's own people, rather than being taken over by other departments, such as the FBI.
After returning to Los Angeles with his team, Jack was given a symbolic two-week suspension by his female superior as a warning for acting without authorization.
Although Michael Weston's backer personally intervened and thoroughly investigated the National Clandestine Service (NCS), a subdivision of the Directorate of Operations (DO), the CIA's internal power dynamics remained entwined.
Some expressed dissatisfaction with the FBI's involvement in such a scandal, but despite these minor murmurs, Jack was protected by Dana Moger.
Fortunately, these rumors quickly dissipated with the arrival of Independence Day. On July 4th, an octogenarian named Donald personally presented Jack with the distinguished Presidential Medal of Freedom. He
also touched the First Daughter's hand and exchanged a kiss on the cheek, granting Jack a temporary boost of indestructibility. Medals and honors may be merely symbolic, but sometimes it's precisely this symbolism that matters.
After attending the rather dull White House dinner, Jack drove to the Mayfair Hotel in Washington, D.C., where he met Zoe and Maureen waiting in the ground-floor bar.
They'd prepared a bottle of Perrier-Jouët Belle Hour champagne for the celebration. While it didn't quite match the jazz music, the two high-ranking ladies clearly didn't mind.
Champagne is a sparkling wine, typically reserved for celebratory occasions, and not the kind of wine to be savored or collected.
However, the Perrier-Jouët Belle Hour bottle was beautifully crafted, with white anemones and golden rose vines, evoking the same graceful elegance and sophistication as the two women sitting across from Jack.
Just as Maureen, biting her lip and smiling, mentioned that she had a bottle of the highly collectible 2007 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon in the upstairs suite and asked Jack if he'd be interested in trying it later, the ambiguous atmosphere was suddenly interrupted by the roar of a motorcycle engine.
For a moment, even Jack thought he'd misheard. After all, they were in the bar of a high-end hotel, where even the poorest soundproofing couldn't possibly produce such a level of noise.
Then the roar of the engine grew louder, and before most people in the bar could react, a light motorcycle roared through the band.
Suddenly, almost every instrument, including the drums, stopped playing. The band watched in amazement as the motorcycle sped off into the hallway on the other side.
Only the saxophonist remained calm, rolling his eyes and continuing to play. The next moment, he suddenly lost his breath.
"Make way! Make way!" Another figure darted through the band like lightning, but this time, the sheer size of their "vehicle" knocked over the drum kit.
Amidst the distorted, cracked saxophone note, the drum kit clattered to the ground, leaving only the sound of horse hooves.
Jack instinctively rubbed his eyes and pinched his thigh, still in disbelief at what he had just witnessed.
A Terminator on a massive horse, chasing a motorcycle through the hotel?
Damn it! Could it be that those sci-fi movies from my past have finally found their way into this world? Is Skynet finally going to destroy the world?
Jack gathered his thoughts and recalled the fleeting glimpse he'd just had: the motorcyclist being chased by the guy with the face of Arnold, a balding, dark-haired, Middle Eastern-looking man.
It wasn't "Connor," he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Fortunately, it was just "True Lies."
Then Jack felt a little confused. Although the movie was so old that he could barely remember the plot, he still remembered the nuclear bomb at the end.
So, they've finally gotten tired of bomb attacks and biological weapons and are moving on to the ultimate killer, right?
"Jack?" Zoe instinctively stood up from the sofa. Although she was now a senator, her years of police service still made her realize that something was wrong. She reached for the self-defense pistol in her purse.
"Just stay with Maureen. I'll go check out the situation."
Despite hearing his words, the two beauties still followed Jack in their high heels.
The hotel was now surrounded by several unmarked GMC Yukons, and a group of plainclothes men, armed with pistols, surrounded the shopping street below the hotel.
"Federal agents, get down! Get down! Don't move!"
Amidst the warnings, Jack quickly flashed his badge and loudly identified himself. "FBI!"
A chubby, middle-aged white man with a sausage mouth, running breathlessly, waved at Jack upon his arrival. "We're one of us. My partner and I are arresting a terrorist."
Only when he reached Jack's side did he lower his voice and whisper, "We're from the CIA."
It seemed as if his fate with the CIA had been sealed. Jack suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and shielded Zoe and Maureen, who were following closely behind him.
A musical fountain adorned the hotel's shopping street, and tourists checking in were snapping photos of it with their phones. Before they could react, the roar of a motorcycle engine approached again.
It seemed as if the motorcyclists who had fled into the hotel had been forced back out by the horseman, Arnold. Amidst screams, a fire door leading to the emergency exit was violently slammed open.
"Bang!" Amidst the clamor, Jack fired a warning shot. The sound drowned out the chorus of screams, and the alert people dropped to the ground.
The motorcycle, panicking, circled the fountain, knocking over a pile of luggage carts before the rider spotted a group of agents rushing toward him, shouting and screaming.
A balding Middle Eastern man, still at the wheel, sprinted into the nearby elevator. Just as the doors slowly opened, he slammed the accelerator and charged in.
A beautiful black woman in a dress, about to exit the elevator, was also grabbed by the hair and dragged back inside.
This kind of sightseeing elevator has a transparent glass exterior. The bald man pressed the black beauty against the outward-facing glass to block the guns pointed at him.
Jack hesitated whether to show his pistol shooting skills again, but he didn't know how thick the elevator's exterior glass was and whether it would cause the bullets to deflect.
At this moment, the sound of water splashed, and a tall horse from the mounted police came roaring, leaping into the fountain and splashing water on Jack's face.
"Wow, so handsome." Maureen, who was hiding behind him, exclaimed.
Jack wiped his face in dissatisfaction, and was very dissatisfied with his mentor's behavior of praising other men in front of him.
But he had to admit that this scene was indeed very handsome, especially when "Arnold" on the horse had his shirt torn in half, revealing his tendon muscles.
(End of this chapter)