by Cliff Happy
Graves concurred and then said thoughtfully, “It must have been one hell of a brawl.”
“Yeah,” Brodie agreed, thinking of Kristen who’d been thrust into the middle of it.
“Lieutenant Whitaker is on bed rest for the next few days,” Graves explained. “Her injuries are superficial and are mostly minor cuts from rock shrapnel, a couple of cracked ribs from where her body armor stopped a couple of AK bullets, and a badly twisted ankle.”
Brodie didn’t want to think of her at the moment. “Keep an eye on her,” he advised his friend. “She’s already been through hell on this patrol.”
Graves agreed and then turned quiet, slowly assessing Brodie.
“What?” Brodie asked, too tired to play games.
“You knew about her, didn’t you?” Graves asked.
“Hmmm?”
“When you called Beagler and requested her, you already knew our mission, and knew her unique skill set. Your requested her because you knew she could handle the LMRS drones and that she spoke Mandarin.”
Brodie offered a shrug. “Beagler had confided to me that she was special and would come in handy on this mission, yes,” he admitted. “Although neither of us ever imagined her going into North Korea or handling the drones by herself.”
Jason smiled thinly, shaking his head in wonderment. “Remind me never to play poker with you.”
Brodie leaned his head back and explained, “When I first received the mission, it read like a damn nightmare,” he admitted. “Then Beagler said he had an officer who was highly skilled with sonar, had graduated at the top of her Academy class, spoke Mandarin, and had spent some time in Corpus with the drones, it was an easy call.”
“Even if that officer was a woman…” Graves pointed out.
“At the time I wouldn’t have cared if she were from Mars. We were heading into deep trouble, and I reckoned we needed all the help we could get,” Brodie admitted. He seldom revealed his inner thoughts to others. Mostly because he trusted few people and also because he didn’t think it was anyone’s business what he was thinking. But Jason was the brother he’d never had, and he kept few secrets from the lanky African American.
They were quiet for a few minutes as each of them slowly came to grips with how close they’d come to jump starting World War III.
“Well, she sure earned her pay,” Jason finally admitted.
Brodie nodded in agreement, never having expected Kristen to be as essential to their mission’s success as she’d proven to be. “Just keep an eye on her for me,” he said without further explanation. “We’ll have a few days in Sasebo before we return to sea. Make sure she gets off the boat and blows off some steam, would ya?”
Graves nodded in the affirmative, “No sweat, bro. Anything else?”
Brodie made eye contact with his friend, wondering if he suspected anything about himself and Kristen. They’d known one another a very long time. “Keep the men working,” he said, changing the subject so as to avoid talking about her further. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I have the suspicion this whole blow up in North Korea is one big sham, and the real trouble is to come elsewhere.”
“Any intelligence reports to back that up?”
“Just my gut,” Brodie admitted. “But whatever happens, I wanna be ready to head back to sea as soon as we’ve completed repairs in Sasebo, so do what we can now. Anything we can’t repair ourselves, I want enumerated and radioed ahead of us to Sasebo so the workers there can come aboard as soon as we tie up pier side to expedite repairs.”
Graves stood. He was so tall, his head nearly touched the overhead. “Anything else?”
“Get some sleep, XO,” Brodie suggested, knowing full well Graves would get little rest until the Seawolf had been repaired. His friend left the tiny cabin and closed the door quietly behind him, leaving Brodie alone.
Brodie opened his eyes as he set his right hand on the table. The hand was trembling uncontrollably. The tension, the stress, all of the responsibility that was part and parcel of a captain’s existence was finally getting to him. Four years in command was a long time. He exhaled tiredly. He liked to think the worst was behind him, but as he stared at the far bulkhead, contemplating everything that had transpired, he feared the worst was yet to come.
The End
Books by Cliff Happy
The Friends From Damascus Series
Friends from Damascus
The Pelindaba Conspiracy
Hunter of Gunmen
The Merchant of Death
Absence of the Normal (Coming Summer 2013)
The Seawolf Series
Seawolf: Mask of Command
Seawolf: End Game (Coming Summer 2013)
Friends From Damascus
Book 1 in the Friends from Damascus series
Haunted by a past she can’t escape, CIA’s top assassin Talia Cavalieri is facing her most dangerous assignment to date. She must neutralize an international team of eight special ops commandos. Known simply as the friends from Damascus, the rogue unit continues to elude her on a world-wide chase. Talia uses every trick in her considerable arsenal before the final showdown. When things get personal, she must make a decision that promises to change her life forever.
Read an Excerpt
The Ural Mountains, Russia
The military convoy weaved its way up the narrow mountain pass. Sheer, rocky slopes dominated both sides of the road as the trucks labored up the steep grade. Major Andre Popov had made the trip a hundred times—always the same route, always the same number of vehicles, always the same number of security troops. He’d made the long, boring trip so many times he found himself slumbering in the cab of the lead truck.
“Complacency kills,” Popov had once told his men, and it certainly did in his case. As his driver shouted in sudden alarm, Popov managed to open his eyes long enough to see the streaking RPG round just before it struck his truck. Popov and half of his fifteen men in the vehicle were killed instantly.
More rocket propelled grenades rained down on the trucks loaded with Russian security troops as withering fire raked across the vehicles, finishing the job. The soldiers who managed to escape the fiery trucks were cut down in a well-prepared crossfire by the Chechen rebels hidden among the rocks on both sides of the road.
The three vehicles in the middle of the seven truck convoy were hardly touched. But with the road in front and behind now completely blocked with burning troop transports, the large tractor-trailers had nowhere to go and stopped. The drivers were civilians who simply drove the trucks, and realizing what was happening, they saw no point in resisting, hoping to be spared the fate of Popov and his security troops.
The leader of the rebel force opened one of the sealed containers in the rear of the lead tractor-trailer to verify its contents. He saw the single stainless steel pressurized canister surrounded in a cocoon of foam. The warnings on the canister made clear what it contained. The thirty nerve gas canisters the convoy had been carrying were just the latest in a series of shipments to a destruction facility high in the mountains and far away from a population center. The guerillas handling the cases wore gas masks in hopes of protecting themselves in the event of an accident. But the leader of the rebels knew better and wore no mask. If someone was careless, and one of the canisters ruptured, no gas mask would protect them from the topical nerve agent. Less than five micro liters on the skin would be enough to kill and there was no antidote.
“Well?” The Chechen leader heard a familiar voice.
He looked down from the bed of the truck and saw the American mercenary who’d helped plan the operation. The American—whom the Chechen guerrillas knew as “Andric”—had a chunk of his left ear lobe missing, and his nose looked like someone had smashed it with a meat cleaver some years earlier. He’d also noted that when it got cold, the scar-faced American limped slightly. The rebel leader knew “Andric” was little more than a well-paid mercenary, but he’d been instrumental in every step of the pla
nning for the operation as well as the training of the guerrilla force.
“They are all here,” the Chechen leader admitted, a bit surprised.
“Good.” Andric was dressed like the guerillas, but instead of an assault rifle he carried just a pistol on his side and a double-edged commando knife in his boot. Of course, the Chechen leader thought, the American needed no weapon. He’d seen him kill a Russian intelligence agent who’d almost uncovered their operation when it was still in the planning stage. The American had killed the agent with his bare hands, striking with such cold efficiency the Chechen leader would hardly have believed it possible.
“Tell your men to finish off the drivers, and get those wrecks out of the way.” The American glanced at a stop watch around his neck. “I want to be rolling in fifteen minutes.”
“The drivers aren’t soldiers,” the Chechen leader pointed out. “They are civilians.”
Andric nodded in understanding. But the Chechen saw the man’s lifeless eyes turn to the helpless men in the ditch. As if to make his point, the American walked over to the ditch where the three drivers were down on their knees in the snow with their hands on their heads. Without a hint of pity or compassion, he drew the automatic pistol at his side, racked the slide, and shot all three in the head as they pleaded for their lives.
The Chechen leader watched in shock from the back of the truck. He hated the Russian Army for all the devastation they had brought to his people, but even he had not yet brought himself to be so ruthless. He was about to speak but the scarred face turned toward him, the eyes angry.
“Now, either get your men off their dead asses, or I’ll find someone who will!”
Eleven minutes later, the last truck filled with deadly nerve gas was turned around and headed back down the mountain.
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The Pelindaba Conspiracy
Book 2 in the Friends from Damascus series
Former Mossad operative Gideon Meltzer: Founding member of Friends from Damascus. To eliminate extremists bent on destruction, this no-nonsense terrorist hunter and his crack black-ops team will go anywhere and risk anything. The daring theft of highly enriched uranium by religious fanatics forces Gideon’s team to partner with an unlikely ally: a beautiful, blind, Persian computer genius named Alaleh Koyunlu. On the run from both the intelligence agencies who think she orchestrated the theft and the terrorists who set her up to take the fall, she leads the team on a world-wide hunt for the missing material. With the clock ticking and millions of lives on the line, they’ll stop at nothing to bring down their prey.
Read an Excerpt
Pelindaba Nuclear Research Facility, South Africa
He had feared rain.
The forecast for the evening called for showers, but the front moving through hadn’t produced any, and Farid Raad could see a few stars poking through the cloud-filled sky. The last two nights his team had been forced to cancel their plans because of weather. His men had trained to a razor’s edge. They were ready. Hiding in a small Pretoria warehouse for nearly a week, then delaying the operation for forty-eight hours had affected their mental preparation. They’d had too much time on their hands contemplating exactly what their mission meant: both its importance and the fate that awaited them once inside the facility.
The team was handpicked from thousands of believers. All sixteen members had extensive experience fighting the American-led infidels that overran Afghanistan. They’d trained in Malaysia, deep in the jungle at an aging and long-abandoned airfield from World War II.
All of the men were skilled with small arms before being considered for the great honor of joining Farid’s team. Even so, they’d spent nearly a month on nothing but weapons training. They’d fired tens of thousands of rounds at targets placed along the edge of the jungle airstrip, literally cutting trees down with a hailstorm of machinegun, assault rifle, and pistol bullets, as well as rocket propelled grenades. Even the New Zealand mercenary who’d trained them admitted Farid and his men were “ready for anything.”
A three-dimensional model of the target had been prepared in an army surplus tent. Then, after hours of fine-tuning the plan, rehearsals had been conducted on a full-scale mockup constructed on the airstrip using metal stakes and white engineering tape. All the work was done at night, and although it was believed the American spy satellites wouldn’t notice the slender engineering tape on the field, Farid had taken the precaution of removing the tape after every practice to avoid discovery of their activities. They’d trained each night for over a month, meticulously going through every possible detail. Breaching teams had been designated, rocket teams, snipers, demolitions… they’d worked tirelessly until every man could fulfill his duty blindfolded.
Infiltration into South Africa from Zimbabwe had been potentially hazardous, but the Zimbabwean contact took them across the border without any trouble. It wasn’t until they reached Pretoria that Farid’s men learned of their target. Even now, as they saw their objective brilliantly lit before them, Farid was still the only member of the elite force who knew the full extent of their mission.
He checked the luminous dial on his watch.
It was time.
Farid turned to his comrades lying hidden around him in the tall grass. He pointed toward the breaching team. These men had received additional training and were equipped with everything they would need to safely infiltrate the compound.
The two men crossed the road at a sprint and went to work on the first of three fences. The first line of defense was relatively easy to penetrate. It took less than a minute to cut a four-foot-high hole in the galvanized wire mesh. Carabineers and lengths of rope were then used to pull the fence apart and the rest of the team sprinted through. The breaching team closed the opening behind them, trying to leave as little evidence of their passing as possible.
Farid and the rest of the assault team took up defensive positions short of the next fence. It was a fifteen feet high, similar to the previous one, except for the sinister humming coming from it. His breaching team, with their protective equipment on, went to work. Embedded in the fence just above ground were electric wires carrying ten thousand volts of electricity. The breaching team used an insulated bundle of high capacity copper cables to reroute the power from a section of the fence and then cut a four foot square opening.
There was a third and final fence for the team to pass through. It wasn’t electric, but there were motion detectors built in to detect anyone trying to climb over. But they weren’t sensitive enough to pick up the breaching team as they cut an opening, allowing the team to pass through unnoticed.
Farid kept an eye on his watch. By plan, they had ten minutes to breach the three fences. During training, their best time to breach all three was seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds. This night, they made it through in under nine minutes.
A full minute ahead of schedule.
Farid turned to his men, searching their faces. No fear. No doubt. They all knew what fate lay ahead of them, but he saw no hesitation in their eyes.
He’d chosen well.
Farid led them through the final opening and directly into a water-filled drainage ditch. Nearly a foot of rain had fallen within the last few days. An acceptable discomfort, he allowed, since the moving water made motion detectors useless here. One hundred meters later they were beyond the motion detection grid. The team went down to one knee, with just the CCTV cameras to deal with now.
Mahmud, his electronics specialist, moved closer.
“I’m ready, brother,” the youngest member of the team whispered.
Farid held up a fist to silence everyone. A roving patrol of two security guards, unaware of the infiltrators close at hand, discussed a recent rugby game as they passed. Farid waited until the two men had disappeared behind the facility’s fire station.
“Now,” he whispered.
Mahmud broke from cover and raced toward the back of a solid blockhouse. A grey junction box was mounte
d on the rear of the building. Farid watched nervously, knowing that this was potentially the riskiest part of their infiltration. The box contained the CCTV cables for every camera on this side of the facility. The box was locked and alarmed with a magnetic trigger.
Farid watched as Mahmud opened the box in less than forty seconds and began splicing into the various CCTV cables. There were thirty of them, and he needed to find five specific ones. But Mahmud was as well trained as the rest, and he took just under four minutes to complete his task. Once finished, the CCTV cameras between Farid’s team and their objective had been corrupted. The security center a mile away would see only the constant image of quiet streets and empty fields when Farid and his men moved forward.
The cameras now disabled, Farid turned to his men.
They had come so far. During the planning phase of the operation, there’d been doubt by many that his team would get to this point. Their intelligence about the facility had been detailed, but there were always the unknown variables such as new security upgrades, roving patrols, or human error. The biggest danger, though, was a possible infiltrator within the cellular structure who’d sold out Farid and his brothers. This had been Farid’s greatest concern during the planning, training, and infiltration into South Africa. It had seemed the height of arrogance to think they would get this far, and he was prepared to carry out his mission even from the drainage ditch.
But now, with his team within one hundred meters of their objective, it was too late for anyone to stop them.
Farid smiled at his men and spoke softly, “Now’s the time, brothers. Paradise awaits!”
Buy The Pelindaba Conspiracy from Amazon