Mal watched as another man got out of the backseat, he was shorter than the Green Beret but that wasn’t an insult. Mal looked at the face and saw the features of his son, David Daniels. The light tan skin he inherited from his mother, the pointed nose he got from his father and the inability to grow a full beard that Mal was sure he got from his Mom’s side. It was patchy but still looked pretty good for what it was. Mal was more interested in how all three had high-level Dragonskin body armor on.
They must have gotten that from somewhere because Team Three didn’t have that when we left, I am guessing Fort Knox.
Mal waited as David passed into the garage, James said something to David. James was quite a bit taller than David but Mal didn’t think that would scare off David. He was trained from a young age by one of the Navy’s best hand-to-hand fighters. David struck James throat so fast that the Camera barely picked it up, dropping James to the ground before driving his knee across his face. David then straightened himself, pulling his M-4 around and then pointing at him as he struggled on the ground to re-orientate himself.
You’re lucky, Mal thought he could see David saying to James as he struggled on the ground.
David went inside the house as the big Green Beret followed.
“Anyone take a look at this video footage of Quinn and David meeting with the dead Rickett’s brother at his house?”
The look on Tim’s face as he drove told Malcolm everything he needed to know, no one had.
“One person on Domestic Intelligence,” Tim said, “Sometimes things slip by.”
Mal wasn’t mad that Wallis missed this, it was a pretty covert situation out here, she couldn’t have possibly watched every second of every camera in the area.
“You need to improve that number,” Mal said watching the tablet as some familiar motorbikes came into frame.
The first person in the garage was the kid who Mal let leave as he waved over the other three men. The four riders talked to James as he got back up off the ground, pointing him to inside the house.
Sure doesn’t look like they twisted his arm too much, Mal thought as he pressed a button on the tablet to go through the video faster.
Good thing I twisted his arm. The voice in him answered.
As the sun rose Mal realized that this was the last day that the Ricketts inside the house ever saw, Malcolm killed him four hours later. Mal needs to get to when they all left and snapshot the License plate as it drives in the other direction, then a face for Wallis to run Facial recognition against for Malcolm’s kid he let go.
I bet he thought that was really fuckin’ slick, Mal thought.
Until his elbow turned to powder from my knee.
Mal waited until he saw Quinn, David and the Green Beret leave the house and hop back into the car. Throwing the car into reverse and backing to the left, Mal paused the Video and got a screen shot of their license plate number for BANS. Luckily for him, there were no more states, not really. There were Regions and Tim was in charge of everyone from Iowa over to the other side of Ohio.
I had always wondered why BANS chose my rinky-dink small ass town to make their regional command but when Tim was here and he was one of the founding members of BANS. Also the only one with real combat experience, Mal thought, They wanted a killer but they wanted to handcuff his ass with these dumb rules on force but still invade absolutely everyone’s privacy.
“What’s the ROE for you here locally with anyone shooting at you from the other side?” Mal asked.
“You can’t fire back unless you feel your life is threatened, we don’t want to create an incident,” Tim said.
“There comes a point where you not shooting is going to cost more lives than it saves,” Mal said as Tim drove over the railroad tracks.
“And?” Tim asked.
“And you need to do your god damn job,” Mal said to him, “You remember all those talks I used to have with command? How much you agreed with me? Those rules and parameters they wanted to impose on us would be a huge improvement.”
“Why haven’t you blown the hole?” Tim asked
Great question, every second of this whole situation has been a serious test of my self-control, Mal thought.
“I want to give them the option to leave,” Mal said, “If we are ever going to have a country that doesn’t need a wall to stop people from killing each other, we should give each other that.”
“That’s a pretty idealistic point for a guy who used to kill people for a living,” Tim said.
“What was that book that Obama book? Audacity of Hope? I read it before all of this,” Mal said, “pretty powerful stuff. I was never a democrat or a republican but that man, I would have ran through a wall for.”
“Me neither but in this war, you don’t really have the option to be in the middle,” Tim said, “Especially on the other side of the wall.”
Tim pulled into a driveway of a subdivision called “Bird Land” with streets all named after Birds.
“You remember when you told me that this place was called Bird Land because Larry Bird grew up here, and I believed you?” Tim said.
“That’s because I am brilliant Tim,” Mal said, “and you are gullible.”
They both stepped out of the car. Mal looked down at his pistol and pulled it out, checking that the magazine was properly seated and full. He popped the magazine in the receiver assembly and heard the click of it seating.
“Just in case,” Mal said as he put his pistol into his leg holster.
Tim raised his eyebrows as if that was somehow an interesting comment.
“Only guy I have ever met that doesn’t carry his weapon with one in the chamber usually,” Tim said, “for as much as you talk about me being a bleeding heart type, you seem to lose a lot of blood yourself.”
“Being safe and prepared isn’t the same as letting some morons hit and run me all the time without ever returning fire.”
Mal walked up to the door and knocked. Shuffling began inside the house as Tim grabbed at his pistol until Mal’s hand covered his.
“Just chill,” Mal said, “Do you trust me?”
Tim sighed.
“I do,” he said begrudgingly.
“Back my play then,” Mal said as the door opened.
An extraordinarily large man framed the door with a bald head and tattoos all over his body. His arms were so big that Mal took a second to stare at them.
Jesus fuckin’ christ, how many calories does it take for this dude to take a step? Wait, I know this fuckin’ guy from somewhere, I just can’t place it.
“What do you want?” James Rickett asked.
“Senior Chief Malcolm Daniels, this is Commander Tim Carpenter, I am sure you know him,” Mal said, “we are here to talk about your brother and his business. I know you have no love lost with the Reds.”
“I honestly did not do much with the family business there twinkle toes,” James said from the ground, “I am a mechanic.”
Twinkle toes? This mother fucker.
“I am sorry, “ Mal said referencing his brother.
“Because you are the person who killed my brother,” James said, “He was a bad person but he was still my brother. Only thing I had left.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling,” Mal said, “You had a run in with my son, David Daniels A.K.A. Ares. What did you say to him?”
Tim put a hand on Mal’s shoulder trying to create some space between the two.
It’s adorable that Tim is trying to keep us apart but the reality is, we are too close to draw on this guy and he’s too big for us to stop with our arms.
“I said that he was a disgrace to the uniform he was wearing, you got a problem with that?”
“Nope,” Mal said, “I agree.”
Mal realized where he had seen his face before, James was a mechanic that had worked on Mal’s Motorbike.
“You run the old Theodosis place now, am I right?” Mal asked.
“I do,” James said, “but I did let my brother use th
e computer here, you can look on it if you would like.”
“Thank you,” Mal said, “by the way, I really am sorry about your brother, he didn’t give me much of a choice.”
James, who was obviously still grieving, nodded. James was nothing like what either of them thought he would be like.
“Come on in, Fellas,” James said.
Mal looked at Tim who seemed as surprised as he was.
“Tim, you need to add three people into Domestic Intelligence, I am not going to say that it’s Wallis’s fault here but seriously, that guy is far from a seasoned criminal,” Mal said.
“Good point,” Tim said, “I am going to make some calls, you got this?”
“I do.”
Mal entered the house where James handed him a glass Coke bottle.
“You know, you are very different than how I expected you to be,” James said, “I paid off someone to get a copy of the tape. I had to see how it happened, the look in your eyes, it wasn’t that different from my brothers.”
“Yeah, I can be scary when I want to be,” Mal retorted.
“You obviously aren’t BANS, but you fight like a trained operative with experience. Force RECON or SEAL?”
“SEAL, wow that’s very impressive James,” Mal said.
“I was a Ranger back in the day,” James said, “I didn’t get but one deployment before this shit started though.”
We were all something else before this war started between the Blues and the Reds, what’s sad is that this war hurts those who didn’t want a war the most.
“Malcolm Daniels? Do you go by Mal per chance?”
“I do? Why?” Mal asked.
“Your son came here with that older guy to meet my brother, had a courier deliver to him a folder of odds and ends he wanted about three days ago. Your name came up in conversation,” James walked over to the computer and pulled up security camera footage from inside the house, Joshua Ricketts gave David and the big Green beret, a set of laminated cards with photos. Ricketts also informed David of the assassins he had sent to kill or capture his father. A quick slap dropped across the face of Joshua to the ground and whispered something into his ear, grabbing the giant man as he raised him to his feet, pushing him out of the door.
“This was the day I killed your brother…so I was right.” Mal said.
“What?” James asked.
“Your brother, he knew I was a target. My son admonished him for sending amateurs, told him to get it done or else.” Mal said. “Did you know that kid?”
“That kid he had here before? Trey Ganderson. He was kind of an associate of Joshua’s network and he’s not really a kid…He’s Twenty years old.”
Well, this is useful.
“Here’s the folder, Mal,” James said handing him the Manila envelope covered in numbers and drawings.
Mal thumbed through folder and found most of it to be useless, except for a few things.
“What did your brother know about classified areas around the country?” Mal asked.
“Our dad was a contractor before all of this, worked on those high-tech bunkers that they put all the bad shit in,” Jame said
Mal smirked at him as he questioned him about a subject he still wouldn’t tell anyone about fully.
“Don’t worry about it: now what did your brother know about Biometric security pads?” Mal asked.
“Dad installed them at bases all around the world,” James said, “I remember he put in a few here in the state even but mostly from my understanding they were used for different types of classified areas.”
Crates of C4, four Humvees and four APC’s. Must have grabbed it all from the Evansville National Guard Garrison. Pretty ballsy to do that considering Tim’s guys could have already raided that place, if everything inside of it wasn’t almost thirty years old and out of date.
“Well, that’s not good,” Mal said, “That means I am right. This is all a diversion for a bigger attack.”
“Dad and Josh worked at that site up at Crane Naval Station.”
“Well, great,” Mal said, “You mind if I keep these?”
Mal raised the folder.
“No problems,” James said, “That’s a sweet ride out there, the good version of those Humvees. You ever need any work done on it, give me a holler.”
“Thanks James, I appreciate the hospitality and sorry, I wish there was another way to resolve that situation.”
“Me too,” James said.
Mal walked out of the house with the folder and raised to show Tim that their trip was fruitful.
“Nice guy,” Mal said.
“I just put three more people under Wallis,” Tim said, “what came of that?”
“They are going to Crane eventually, Tim,” Mal said, “The list of people, three of them have access to Crane’s air-gapped storage bunker.”
Mal rubbed his hands in front of his face, remembering his past against the weirder weapons of war the world had made.
“I think they are going there for the stockpile,” Mal said.
“Such as?”
“There’s a lot of them in case you didn’t know, you remember those drone things we fought in Sydney?”
Tim took a deep breath out as he remembered the drone swarm the UAF sent to landfall in the Australian harbor.
Sydney, Australia
Twelve Years Earlier
“So, wait a second: what is this weapon you are talking about?” Mal asked as Tim leaned against the cargo container that counted as a command and control center.
There had been rumors of the Chinese labs cooking up crazy weapons but this drone situation was something that was foreign to him.
“It’s like a thousand tiny little drones and they fly around and kill anything they come in contact with,” Said the Australian Marine Sergeant, “There’s a UAF team at their beachhead that I am confident is in control of it.”
Looking at the monitor, Mal watched as the swarm swung down the street from the assault team and picked all of the men clean. Nothing was left.
“Great…” Mal said, “is this motion activated or is it on a set route with IFF?”
Obviously this thought had never crossed the mind of the Australians.
“Does it attack the UAF?” Mal asked
“No,” said the Australian Marine.
“Then we have a simple solution,” Mal said, “Tim create a set of UAF Friend and foe signals. We will slip in and shut this stupid thing off.”
The invasion of Australia was something that was doomed to fail, it was just too hard to invade a country that well armed and that well defended at it’s only port that was able to be invaded was in it’s seat of power, Sydney. The UAF didn’t expect to succeed though, they were sending a message to the Australian people that their lives will never be the same and that it would be best to come to heel.
“I got it,” Tim said as the two man team slipped out of the camp and into the night.
Two Hours later
Inside the UAF beachhead, there was a lot of security at the front of the camp, deterring a ground attack. Also with the Dolphin defenses in the port, it was unlikely any Australians would swim in but: Tim and Mal weren’t Australian. They were trained in how to defeat and avoid the dolphins trained to defend their harbors and beaches from divers.
“There’s not that many of them but it looks like four spooks guarding it,” Tim said as the two flipped down their eye pieces.
The term Spooks in this case is towards non-military armed forces, a couple of people with guns but know uniforms.
For the M-4 Assault rifle, taking down two guys at the same time was a challenge, fortunately for Mal: he wasn’t carrying an M-4 assault rifle. The new experimental XM-24 slid off of his shoulder as the two men locked smart bullets into their rifle wells.
“Set,” Tim said.
“I have to move,” Mal said, “Once we take them: get in there and blow this whole thing open. I will keep any…unsettling problems away.”
&nbs
p; “You got it,” Tim said as Mal crouched and walked around the beach head as the numbers on his target solution shot up slowly.
Mal stepped up onto the wall as he saw the message on his eyepiece.
“100 percent,” It read.
Mal clicked on his channel to Tim.
Three.
Two.
One.
Breath.
The two fired four suppressed smart bullets that slashed through the building as the splash of blood hit the white tent.
“Jackpot.” Tim whispered as he raced into the tent.
Mal looked around the perimeter as he turned around and a flying knee from a UAF special operator missed him by inches, but shot the strap around his rifle off of his neck skittering away. The man in front of him was one he had seen before: Sheng Zhao was his name. They called him Hawk in Chinese but, he had one directive: Kill The Wolf.
“I figured you would be here,” Mal said.
Zhao was American educated Chinese man, going to Harvard before returning to his homeland and joining as an officer.
“I have studied you for years, Malcolm Daniels. I find it very unlikely you could figure that one out due to your lack of a decent education.”
Mal went to school at Indiana State University.
“Look man, I usually don’t talk this much when someone tries to kill me.” Mal said as he puffed on the cigarette between his lips.
Zhao hopped forward with a knife strike, that Mal sidestepped and dodged as The Hawk’s, as the UAF had codenamed him, overzealous attacks missed him on all sides.
“For a person with a decent education, you can’t fight for shit,” Mal said as he fired his first counter strike, a punch across the younger man’s face that Mal saw his knees buckle, “Didn’t teach you that at Harvard, did they?”
Zhao’s knife attacks continued as Tim said, “Mission completed” in his ear.
“Free lesson is over, Hawk,” Mal said as he stepped to the side of the last knife attack plunged past him, Mal grabbed his wrist and removed the knife from his hand.
Raising the knife, he sliced off his Zhao’s ear and drove his knee into Zhao’s face. Stepping back and rushing forward, he then punted Zhao across his face as Tim came up. Mal pulled his pistol and for a second he was about to shoot him as he noticed the man was unconscious, thinking about how he could let the man go. He imagined how his own family would feel before placing his pistol back in it’s holster.
Monsters Page 6