America jtf-2

by David E. Meadows

  America

  ( Joint Task Force - 2 )

  David E. Meadows

  Terrorist Abu Alhaul is bringing mass destruction to America's East Coast and the man he blames for the death of his family-U.S. Navy SEAL Commander Tucker Raleigh. As international intelligence forces mobilize, Tucker gears up for the brewing storm that is putting them all at its mercy.

  David E. Meadows

  America

  To my wife and best friend, Felicity

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is impossible to thank everyone who provided technical advice and support for this and other novels. My thanks for those who visited www.sixthfleet.com and provided comments. I do read each e-mail personally, and my goal is to respond to each of them.

  I have had so much encouragement that I know I’m going to miss some, so I both want to thank you and apologize up front if I inadvertently missed you. Many were kind enough to encourage, provide technical guidance, or many times just answer questions unique to their professional skills and qualifications: My mother, Wynella Meadows, Aunt Adele Burnham, Aunt Louise “Ease” Cole, Ms. Sharon Renike, Mr. Art Horn, LCOL David Nelson USMC, CDR Roger Herbert (who I served with in London), LCDR Nancy Mendonca, COL Bridgett Larew (Air Force nurse), CDR-ret Nancy Shank (a Navy nurse who insisted my book needed a Navy nurse in it), CDR Scott Fish (helicopter warrior), Mr. Ed Brumit, CPT Ray Zindell (HOOAH Armor), Douglas & Susan Rowe, Mike & Linda Boswell, Ms. Cheryl Sheppard, COL-ret Larry Huffman, Adam & Ann Marie Rowe, Ronnie & Charlene Hall, Tommy & Pat Ferrell, Mr. Bobby Burnham, Ms. Joan Cox, Ms. Helen Meadows, Ms. Shirley Borders, LTCOL Scott Herkert, Ms. Darlene Callahan, Ms. Betty Cort-Anderson, COL Marjorie Davis, Mr. Joe Rakosky, CAPT-ret Kathy DiMaggio, Rear Admiral Ken Deutsch, CAPT Todd Zecchin, the international member of the Combined Communications Electronics Board, my fellow J6’ers on the Joint Staff, and the great wealth of knowledge from members of the VQ alumni, ICAF alumni, and the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association. My thanks to all of you.

  My thanks to Mr. Tom Colgan for his editorial support and to his able right-hand person, Ms. Samantha Mandor.

  While I have named a few for their technical advice, rest assured that any and all technical errors or mistakes in this novel are strickly those of the author, who many times wander in his own world.

  David E. Meadows

  CHAPTER 1

  MAY

  Tucker Raleigh opened his eyes. He never should have jumped. A dry stick protruding from dank humus soil poked his cheek. Tucker rolled his head to the right, away from the stick, and waited several seconds for the daze to clear. On the other hand, maybe it was just the dark of night causing his vision to blur.

  What was he doing amid the overgrown bushes and grasses? Above him, the edge of a balcony deflected light from inside the house, casting a shadow over where he lay. The wet spring smell of an afternoon shower rose from the moist ground. Wispy bits of fog created a six-inch-high quilt across the backyard.

  “I’m telling ya I got him!” a voice shouted above him.

  “He must have jumped.”

  “He didn’t jump, Goddamn it! I shot him. He’s in here somewhere.”

  The voices jumbled, but Tucker grabbed bits and pieces of the conversation. After about the third sentence he realized one of the accents wasn’t American. The person was speaking English, but the accent wasn’t British, Australian, or American. The sound of moving crates and boxes being shoved about obscured the voices for a moment. A long grinding scrape of a piece of furniture being dragged across the wood floor told him they were still searching inside the house.

  Tucker moved his left hand cautiously to his head, feeling a wet stickiness — blood, seeping down from the top of his skull through his crew cut. He touched his cheek where the stick had been, but didn’t feel any cut or blood there. His shoulder hurt. Must have been the jump. It isn’t the jump that kills you, his jump instructor at Fort Benning had told him, it’s the sudden landing. Tucker blinked his eyes several times, willing his way to full consciousness, past the pain and the spinning in his head. He wiped the blood away a couple of times when it threatened to cloud his vision.

  This was his house—his new house. Well, nearly new.

  Someone stuck his head over the balcony, scanning the darkness. The faint light from the living room cast the intruder’s shadow across the overgrown backyard. But, why? It wasn’t as if he knew anyone here. This was his first night in the house. Surely, they must have him confused with someone else. He shut his eyes for a moment, recalling the initial attempt to break in through the front door. The door had violently burst opened with the steel security chain abruptly stopping the door six inches later.

  “I tell ya, he went over the balcony.”

  “Well, get down there and find him, lad. Don’t let him get away. Son-of-a-bitch…. I’ve got to do everything, don’t I?”

  He detected venom in the voice. He had heard that accent before. Maybe Scottish?

  “Keep ya voice down. Ya want the neighbors up and about?” the one with the accent asked, the r’s rolling with a heavy brogue.

  Tucker rolled onto his side. Never stay in one place long. Keep moving—evade, make the enemy find you—keep them guessing. He had to shift his position — get away from here. Visions of the second Korean War flashed across his thoughts—two weeks hiding in the hills, fighting his way back to his own lines.

  “Here, I found a flashlight, Sean.” The voice was directly overhead on the balcony.

  The balcony wouldn’t hide him long, and if they came this far to kill him, they weren’t going to let the job go undone just because he had disappeared. Eventually they would have to come down to search the yard. Dots of light flashed across his vision as Tucker stood up. Pain racked his left shoulder. Blood clouded his left eye. He reached up and wiped it away with the back of his right hand, leaving soil and dead bits of vegetation sticking to the side of his face. Damn, at least the right half seems okay, he thought. Tucker fell back against one of the four stanchions reinforcing the balcony and shut his eyes briefly, taking deep, quiet breaths. He definitely had that number-six Excedrin headache.

  A beam of light shot out from above, sweeping the ground. It weaved outward from the balcony, back and forth across the overgrown backyard, toward the edge of a wood that separated the house from the Monocacy River. Urbana, Maryland, was supposed to be a quiet rural area. If this was how Frederick County welcomed its newcomers, he hated to think what his welcome party would have been like in Baltimore or Washington.

  “We’re going down there and find him.”

  “Not me. That’s bullshit! We promised to bring you here and help you. But, by God, he’s trained for this night shit. We ain’t no more than hunters, and if you weren’t…”

  “Em,” the one called Sean interrupted. “Casey, me lad, you’re going to get your arse down there. We all are. If he gets away, the bloody raghead ain’t going to be too happy is he? And, you won’t be getting your money.”

  Were they talking about him? And who in the hell is the raghead? Raghead — a derogatory term for Arabs. It wasn’t a term he used. He had been in combat against the Jihadists, and regardless of how demonized they were, they were still motivated fighters. Even if he had had a desire to use the term, the U.S. military forbade it. The few times when he had heard a member of his team use any such derogatory terms such as this, Tucker had straightened the user out immediately.

  “Yeah, so you say, Sean. But, money ain’t gonna be much good if we ain’t alive to spend it.”

  But they were right about one thing. This was his world. His head turned, taking in the playing field in front of him. He was trained for this—what was the word? Yeah — night shit. He had escaped and evaded hostile forces before —
Afghanistan, Indonesia, Yemen. He’d just never expected to have to do it in the United States. Why should this be any different? Why? Real simple. Because conducting an attack-and-evade mission needed a mind-set — you needed preparation. He had never done a mission that hadn’t been planned days in advance. But you can’t have it easy all the time, Tucker, he told himself. He braced his right hand against the wall of the house and pushed himself upright. If he remained undetected until he reached the woods at the back, the pendulum would swing even more in his direction. The white T-shirt tugged his shoulder where blood matted it to the cement wall. A sharp pain whipped through him, sending a cascade of new stars racing around his night vision. He bit his lip and pulled away, simultaneously reaching up and touching his left shoulder. Damn, he had taken a bullet! He touched his head lightly, then looked at his hand. No wonder he had that headache. The grazing wound on his head was caused by either a bullet or when he’d fallen—jumped—over the banister. This made three times he’d been shot during his Navy career. He twisted and bit his lip, and a couple of contortions later managed to pull the shirt up and over his head. White showed too easily in the dark. The dark tan earned in Indonesia made it easier to blend with the shadows of the moonless night. With his right hand, he pressed the shirt against his stomach, holding it there as he wadded it up. Then he tossed the shirt behind a nearby bush.

  Tucker opened and closed his left hand, making a tight fist each time. When he rotated his shoulder, the pain nearly caused him to pass out. Something was scraping against his shoulder blade. That something, he knew, was the bullet. He tried one more rotation, taking it slower this time, and felt it grate against the bone. The idea flicked through his thoughts that he would need a statement to get past metal detectors. Blood was thick on his hand, and he was still bleeding. How much blood does a person have in him? Tucker purposely slowed his breathing, his eyelids dropping until nearly closed. SEAL training taught more than killing. It taught how to grab pain, shove it into a closet within the mind, and lock the door. Ride over it. Survive — that was the key to winning. Once you’ve gone through Hell Week in Coronado, most combat looks amateurish. He locked the pain away, knowing even as he did it that the son-of-a-bitch would keep fighting to escape. The throbbing pounded, reminding him it was still there.

  He shut his eyes briefly, as his memory of events before regaining consciousness under the balcony returned. He had been inside the house. When the door had crashed in, he had just set a fresh beer on the mantle above the fireplace. He needed to have someone come in and clean the chimney. Like most career military officers, the routine for the evening had already been mapped. He had unpacked the television, had promised himself he was going to soak a few suds — maybe even the whole six-pack — then lay on the couch with his leg over the back of it and watch a late movie before calling it a night. Someone said they had soft porn on the cable channels after midnight. There’s nothing like watching naked women and drinking beer to give a warrior a good night’s sleep.

  He had turned as the door flew inward, mesmerized for a fraction of a second as the security chain stopped it from opening fully. The half face of a man had glared through the partially open door at him. He remembered thick red hair. The head disappeared and a hand holding a gun appeared, firing immediately. Tucker didn’t recall being shot. The gun had jerked with small puffs of smoke coming from the barrel. No sound—silencer. What happened next was a vague memory. He recalled bouncing off the bricks of the fireplace before scrambling through the French windows and over the balcony. A civilian with no training would have taken refuge behind the furniture. A good fight needed space. The sound of wood splintering reached him as he disappeared over the railing. Then darkness had descended.

  Okay, preliminary data review over. Tucker glanced up at the base of the balcony. Three sets of footsteps moved cautiously toward the stairs leading down and into the backyard. To his left, a string of scraggy bushes, planted by some long-ago occupant, gave him cover as he eased from the temporary shelter beneath the balcony. Almost squatting, Tucker inched along the bushes, gaining distance foot by foot from the balcony.

  Light filtered from the opened glass doors on the balcony. He could barely make out silhouettes of the attackers. They were arguing, the heavy accent garbling any comprehension. The longer they argued and debated, the more space he put between them. He glanced in the direction of the Monocacy River. If he reached the thin line of trees and woods hiding the view of the river from the house, then the night would truly be his. He was good. And he knew it. You didn’t go on the number of missions he had been on without one or two things happening; either you became better at your profession or they brought you home in a body bag. Tucker picked up the pace, using the moment to his advantage, his eyes adjusting to the moonless night. Light wisps of fog whirled around his ankles. Afternoon rain had soaked the sun-dried vegetation beneath his sneakers, softening the noise as he increased the distance from the house.

  He had been lucky the security chain stopped them for a few seconds. Otherwise, he never would have made it onto and off the balcony. The mess of moving into his new home provided some distraction to the attackers. Stacks of moving boxes had, unknowingly, hidden his jump, causing the gunmen to search cautiously through the sparsely lit room, afraid he was hiding among the clutter. He must have been unconscious only a few seconds.

  A low murmur reached his ears. He eased up between the bushes, between two branches, blending with the hedgerow. He didn’t see them, but he heard the sound of shoes hurrying down the steps as the men left the house and entered the backyard. This Sean character must have won the argument. Tucker was glad he had put off cutting the grass and successfully fought the military urge to tidy up the unkempt condition of the yard. It was hard. The yard cried for his sense of order to do something with it. He hated disorder, but most in his line of work did. He slowly dropped lower, behind the bush, and crept left. Several steps later, Tucker stopped, crouching behind a rosebush. Thick thorns weaved in an undisciplined spread through the hedge growing alongside it.

  His eyes narrowed. His peripheral vision was improving, giving him better acuity in the shadowy world of the night. The throbbing of the pain echoed in the background. He quickly drew away from it, knowing that if he allowed, the pain would sweep over him.

  Initial fear gave way to professional training. His muscles tensed, contracting. Fear had also given way to anger. Who in the hell were they to burst into his house? He bit his lower lip. They have no idea who in the hell they’re messing with. The mental image of a full auditorium cheering him on passed quickly through his thoughts. Tucker studied the terrain, searching for a better tactical position.

  Movement caught his attention. The silhouettes of the attackers passed across the faint light spilling over the balcony, highlighting their line-abreast movement toward the tree line in back. When he’d first seen the house two months before, he had found pleasure in the haphazard way the dispossessed owners had planted various scrubs, flowers, and bushes. It offered him a chance to arrange the garden the way he wanted. Vacant for over a year, it had been repossessed by the VA four months ago. He’d purchased the house, knowing there would be work not normally associated with buying a new one. He’d just never assumed it would include getting shot.

  The closest assailant was about forty feet away and slowly drawing nearer. The way the man’s head kept going quickly back and forth gave Tucker the impression that this one was a little nervous — a little scared — and soon he would be a little dead. It was time to turn the tables.

  “I tink you need to be careful,” the man farther away said, the heavy brogue riding softly on the warm night air.

  Irish. That was an Irish accent. What in the hell was an Irishman doing in the middle of agricultural Maryland at two in the morning? Shooting him. That’s what in the hell he was doing. What a stupid question!

  The assailant nearest Tucker turned his head and waved in acknowledgment, revealing a pistol in h
is hand. Tucker also saw in the faint light the fat outline of an extension on the barrel of the gun. Silencer. These were no “Bubba and Earl” small-time crooks. If they had been, they would have just rushed in, held him at gunpoint, and robbed him. For some unexplained reason, this bunch wanted him dead. Why? He had no idea. Maybe some irate husband, but he had always made it a point never to mess with married women — at least to the best of his knowledge. The military had tight sex rules, as he called them: never mess with married women; never mess with those you work with; and never mess with enlisted ones. Other than that, the rest were fair game as long as you were single and of legal age.

  He would figure out later why they wished him dead — if any survived. The metamorphosis from being hunted to being the hunter took less than five minutes from the time Tucker regained consciousness. He had done the transformation before in a lot less time, but that had been in situations where he was expecting to roll with the blows of combat. Crouching, he sidestepped quickly, paralleling the row, narrowing the distance between him and the closest assailant, careful to make as little noise as possible. The pain slammed against the locked door in his brain, reminding him it was still there. Tucker took in the man’s profile. Tall — only a little shorter than him. A paunch hung over the belt line. Probably not a professional, Tucker decided. Maybe this Sean was the only professional and the other two were locals recruited for the night. They wouldn’t be expecting him — unarmed — to turn the tables. His eyes never left the silhouettes of the men, even as he focused on the one approaching his lair.

  The pain in his shoulder rose briefly, fighting to escape its confinement. He pushed it down, but the brief interlude was excruciating. Prior wounds had taught him that he needed to stop the bleeding soon. All the mental commands in the world would not help if you bled to death. He could do little about it now. All he could do was hope that it stopped on its own, or that he finished them before the loss of blood finished him. The woods would give him a couple hundred feet of wild in which to maneuver, hide, or attack. Watching how the three operated, he realized two were little match for him outside the house. He gritted his teeth, his eyes narrowed, and he took brief pleasure in the feeling of vengeance that surfaced. Confidence was something he never lacked, and vengeance was something that had to be taken.