Tier One (Tier One Series Book 1)

by Brian Andrews

  He opened his eyes and looked at Jarvis.

  “How many died in the TOC?” he asked.

  Jarvis let out a slow breath. “All of them.”

  His reply was a sword through Kemper’s heart. But this time, instead of grief, his chest burned with homicidal rage.

  “Who?’

  Jarvis leaned back and crossed his legs. “We don’t know yet, Jack,” he said. “We’re working on it.”

  With anger sometimes comes epiphany.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Kemper growled. “And what the hell are you doing here anyway, Captain Jarvis?”

  Smith stepped in and put a hand on his shoulder. For some reason, that really pissed him off, but he didn’t shake the hand off. Moving hurt too much, and he wanted to resist the little red button as long as humanly possible.

  “I couldn’t tell you before, Jack,” the spook said. “Now I can. Captain Jarvis is my CO. We’ve been working together for a little over three years now.”

  Kemper shifted his gaze from Smith to Jarvis. Of course—it all made sense now. The sly reference Jarvis had made to being in Tampa for meetings with SOCOM; his knowledge of Kemper’s CASEVAC; the thinly veiled job offer in the hospital. Kelso Jarvis as head spook? He couldn’t believe it.

  “You’re with the Activity now?” Kemper said, his tone more accusation than question.

  “No, not hardly,” Jarvis said, and almost looked amused, despite the somber atmosphere, before morphing back into the battle-hardened visage Kemper knew. “Don’t get me wrong, the Activity does great work. But with all the meddling civilians and admin pogues in the Pentagon, it has become increasingly difficult for even the best covert-intelligence groups to do their jobs. Shit, even our Tier One military assets are bantered around on the news, with politicians claiming credit for their successes and cursing their failures like they own the teams.”

  Kemper clenched his jaw. Although neither one of them said it, they were both thinking about Yemen. When Kemper joined Tier One fourteen years ago, only a handful of people even knew of the unit’s existence. That was the original charter for Tier One operations. Covert special warfare at the most elite level, coupled with unprecedented anonymity and autonomy. Their successes would be credited to others, and their failures would never see the light of day. Ironically, it had been the war on terror that had changed everything. The insulating buffer between the Tier One operators and the political paparazzi had eroded, jeopardizing their anonymity and autonomy. After the raid on Bin Laden’s compound, Kemper and his fellow operators went to work every day with the feeling they had targets painted on their backs. The carnage in Yemen and Djibouti was proof that they did.

  “I don’t give a shit about the bureaucrats and the media. Let the talking heads talk. They don’t own me,” Kemper mumbled.

  “But they think they do, and therein lies the problem.” Jarvis leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Which is why we are having this conversation.”

  Kemper nodded. Go on.

  “Three years ago, I was tasked with standing up a new unit—a unit that does not report to JSOC or SOCOM. We are completely outside of the Pentagon’s chain. The same goes for the CIA and DHS. You will not find us on any DoD org chart. There are no dotted lines connecting us to anyone or anything. We are black—black in a way that hasn’t been possible in decades. I can count on one hand the people outside this conversation that know of our existence.”

  “What the hell are you saying, Jarvis? That you, and you alone, somehow broke the shackles, and now you have unprecedented clandestine authority?”

  “Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.”

  “What do you call yourselves?”

  “JIRG—the Joint Intelligence Research Group.”

  “Did you come up with that?”

  Jarvis smirked. “Innocuous, banal, and forgettable—perfect for what we’re trying to do.”

  “And what is that exactly?”

  “Collect the type of actionable intelligence that the CIA did in its prime. So far, we’re succeeding. You would not believe how much JIRG work has translated into tasking for our old unit.”

  The reference to “our old unit” was not lost on Kemper, and it sparked fresh anger inside him. “Does that include the Yemen op?”

  Jarvis paled. “Yes.”

  “Then you’re fucking compromised, or you swallowed some asshole’s bait—hook, line, and sinker. Either way, your group is seriously fucked.” The bark in his voice burned his throat. He reached with a trembling hand for his cup of water.

  “We don’t think we’re compromised,” Jarvis said coolly. Then, glancing at Smith, he added, “The intel on Yemen was streaming in through too many channels from too many end users to be attributed to single-point failure.”

  Kemper screwed up his face and shook his head. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Smith stepped in. “We think that whoever did this was targeting your team, but that they didn’t have a specific route for the intelligence in mind. It was like they propagated the lie through every back channel—from senior AQ leadership, to field operatives, all the way down to the goddamn errand boys. Whoever was behind this hit gathered HVTs from across the entire region. This was not just some bullshit tribal meeting in Yemen; they recruited key guys from Syria, Gaza, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq and brought them to that compound. That’s the genius of the plan. It didn’t matter who sifted the data on our side; they knew it would work its way up the chain to SOCOM, and the op would ultimately be assigned to Tier One.”

  “What are you saying? That somebody put up a neon sign and simply bet that my unit would come?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Smith said. “But here’s the thing, Jack. We’re getting chatter that suggests even the highest-ranking leaders of these various shithead groups are as surprised by this hit as we are.”

  Teeth clenched, Kemper stared at Jarvis. Over the past few years, all the teams had encountered scenarios in the field that felt like ambushes, but no verifiable counteroffensive plot targeting the Tier One units had ever been uncovered. This reinforced the business-as-usual mentality—operational freedom with impunity. Maybe the teams were victims of their leadership’s arrogance and meta-think. The invincibility of invulnerability, and all that crap. If so, that strategic insensibility would apply to the man beside him, wouldn’t it?

  Jarvis held his gaze.

  Kemper wondered if his former CSO could read his thoughts. Of course he could. Jarvis was way too smart to be outmaneuvered by the likes of him. Kemper broke eye contact first. This strategic, political bullshit was exactly the sort of thing he had devoted his career to avoiding. He was an operator. He didn’t have the heart or the wits for the lying game. He picked up the PCA bullet and pressed the red button. Swallowing, he waited for the morphine to kick in before looking back at Jarvis. “You were saying?”

  Jarvis sat back in the chair. He folded his hands together in his lap, his index fingers forming a steeple. A singsong voice from Kemper’s childhood told him that he could “open the doors, and see all the people.” Kemper shook his head. Stupid, damn morphine.

  “Our group does more than just analysis or HUMINT aggregation. We have field assets; we conduct surveillance. We manage a variety of assets throughout the world that require me to recruit men like Shane for fieldwork. Sometimes, we plan events and take action to change the tide in favor of the good guys.”

  Kemper rolled his eyes at the politically correct description. He expected a former operator like Jarvis to tell it like it was: And sometimes we kill people. If Jarvis noticed his reaction, the man gave no sign of it.

  “What we don’t have,” Jarvis continued, “is a force of operators. We can take out the occasional target of opportunity, but that’s where our capabilities plateau. For the big stuff, we aggregate the intel, put together a plan, and then coordinate with JSOC for Tier One assets to execute operations spawned by our activities. That arrangement worked great, until n
ow.”

  Shane paced behind him, and Kemper began to suspect that “Smith” was more than just a foot soldier. He had real authority in the group. Maybe he was Jarvis’s XO.

  “Thing is, Jack,” Smith said, taking the lateral from his boss, “with the catastrophic loss of your unit, we’re left only with Delta. Problem is that Delta—and even the white-side SEALs—are in an indefinite time-out while the Pentagon tries to figure out how their go-to black-ops team got wiped off the face of the earth.”

  Jarvis snorted. “It doesn’t matter how much data they crunch at the Puzzle Palace, they’re never gonna figure out who did this.” He clasped a hand on Smith’s shoulder. “We are the only people with the skills and autonomy to uncover the truth.”

  Kemper shook his head. “In that case, use your assets to find the bastards responsible, and when things calm down, use Delta to take them out.”

  “You’re still not getting it,” Jarvis said, exasperated. “The game has changed. Forever. From this point forward, the tasking of Tier One operators will not be the streamlined process it once was. Now, there will be bureaucratic oversight, administrative red tape, second-guessing, double-checking, multiparty signatory approvals, and every other roadblock the pencil-necks can think to pile on. Do you see where I’m heading with this? Tier One used to be a point-and-shoot asset, but now, by the time you unlock the trigger guard, the opportunity will be lost—the target will have disappeared into the ether.”

  Kemper nodded. He got the point. He just didn’t want to imagine that world. “If what you’re saying is true, how do you propose to solve the problem?”

  “By integrating Tier One operations capability into our task force. We will be the Alpha and the Omega, the shadow and the flame, and no one will see us coming.”

  “You want the JIRG to own Tier One? And I thought I was the one who got blown up,” Kemper laughed. “That’ll never happen.”

  “We’re not talking about a large assault force, nothing on the scale of a SEAL team,” Smith interjected. “We want a small, highly skilled group that can operate outside normal channels and stay impervious to whatever leaks exist in Washington and the Pentagon. We need assets who can change hats at the drop of one—be that operator, intelligence analyst, or asset manager—depending on the need. We need a field team that can function as assaulters as well as covert operators, execute tasking on a moment’s notice, and make decisions in real time without bureaucratic oversight.”

  Kemper felt the heat ratchet up several notches on his neck and head, and he knew it was not because of his burns. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to lead that team,” Jarvis said with an intensity and certainty that Kemper found unnerving.

  “Why would I do that? I’m no spy. I’m a frogman—a straight-up warfighter. Give me the target and I’ll blast it, but the rest of the shit your people do is not me. Sorry, Skipper, you have the wrong guy.”

  Jarvis narrowed his eyes. “I served with you on the teams for seven years, Jack. I watched you operate in situations that would shred lesser men into mental hamburger meat. Some people call it instinct. Others call it a sixth sense. I call it situational awareness. I call it tactical fucking superiority. How many of your judgment calls saved lives in the field? How many of your orders turned failed missions into successes?”

  Kemper looked down at the PCA button. “I don’t know.”

  “I do. Too many to count. You’re smart, Kemper. No matter how much you try to act like some SEAL jock made to hang out in biker bars, it doesn’t change the truth. You’re a tactician. You’re a field marshal. You’re a one-man, ass-kicking retribution machine.”

  Kemper had heard enough. He was done. He needed the morphine as much for his spinning head and mauled heart as he did for his broken body. For God’s sake, how could Jarvis not recognize he’d sacrificed enough for his country? There was nothing left to give. He picked up the PCA cord and rested his thumb on the red button. “Even if that were true, why should I join your band of merry men? You said it yourself. Everyone I care about is either dead, or thinks I’m dead. What can your unit possibly offer me?”

  “Justice. That’s what I can give you. From this day forward, my number one priority is to find every person with a hand in murdering our brothers in Yemen and Djibouti and then erasing those sons-of-bitches from the face of the earth. I can think of no one on this planet better qualified to execute that mission than you.”

  Kemper dropped the PCA button back onto the sheets beside him as the endorphins from Jarvis’s words numbed his pain better than morphine ever could. “And when it’s over, when every last one of them is dead, then what?”

  “We can cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “What about Kate and my son? What am I supposed to tell them?”

  Jarvis looked down at his feet. “Whoever planned this wanted the Tier One SEALs gone. If you walk away from this as Jack Kemper, sole survivor, you’ll spend the rest of your life with a target on your back, always wondering when some asshole with a suicide vest is going to find you and finish the job. If you and Kate were still together, we could give you and your family a relocation package and new identities. But you’re divorced, Jack. And besides, is that really the life you want to force on Kate and Jacob? Always moving, always looking over your shoulder, always worrying? I’m sorry, Jack, but your old life is over, whether you want it to be or not.”

  A bitter pill . . .

  Kemper took it, swallowed it, and said, “Okay, I’m in. What do I have to do?”

  When Jarvis smiled, his eyes were lit with a fire Kemper had not seen since their time down range together. “First things first,” his new boss said. “Let’s get you buried in Arlington, like you deserve.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Virginia Beach Convention Center

  Virginia Beach, Virginia

  April 14, 1400 EDT

  Jarvis ran his thumb across the brass insignia pinned to his dress blues—an eagle, wings spread and head bowed, clutching a pistol in one foot and Neptune’s trident in the other, superimposed around an anchor. The SEAL trident. “The Budweiser.” A badge of honor. A badge of readiness, of freedom, and of the sea. A badge sought by many, but earned by few.

  How long had it been since he’d worn this uniform?

  Too long and not long enough.

  He took a deep breath, refocused, and put on his SEAL persona. The transition was easier than he expected, given the morbid circumstances. Captain Kelso Jarvis. Retired. Former Tier One operator, badass down range, and tactician in the TOC. A legend in his own right throughout all of Naval Special Warfare. Why? Because he’d killed more evil motherfuckers with the fewest friendly casualties of any unit commander in Tier One SEAL history. Now, he was back. Reunited with his men in this most horrific of venues. A mass memorial for those he had lived, fought, and drunk with over the years. Maybe they had never really known him, but he sure as hell had known them. For a man like him, they had been as much a family as he could ever hope to have. He’d admired them, and a part of him had even envied them. The simplicity of their lives, the single-minded clarity of purpose. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when insomnia and obligation held sleep at bay, he imagined being unencumbered by the burdens of his mind. If he did not see the patterns he saw, if he did not understand the world the way he did, then maybe, just maybe, his casket would be awaiting entombment, and someone else would be giving the eulogy today.

  “Retired Navy SEAL Captain Kelso Jarvis is a legend in the Special Warfare community and has been a friend, a colleague, and a mentor to many of those we honor here today . . .”

  Jarvis straightened his tie and tried to filter out the words of the JSOC Commander introducing him. He found the words distracting. Not just distracting—irritating. He hated when people introduced him anywhere, preferring to meet people cold and manage the transfer of professional and personal information himself. All information should be dispensed on a need-to-know basis. All
information. He swallowed his annoyance and told himself that the JSOC Commander was not sharing anything that couldn’t be found in his military bio. Yet it was everything missing from his bio that made this engagement so painfully ironic. Of all the men the Navy brass could have asked to memorialize these SEALs, they had asked the very man whose secret task force was culpable for their deaths.

  But if not him, who else was alive to speak for them?

  “It is with great pride and a heavy heart that I turn the podium over to Captain Jarvis.”

  Jarvis took the steps onto the stage slowly, somberly. He paused for a moment at the podium and made a show of straightening the index cards in his hands. Speechwriting was a superfluous activity for him; the index cards were blank. The words would come to him, no matter the circumstance, no matter the venue. His first draft was his final draft.

  He cleared his throat and looked for a long moment out at the crowd. Hundreds and hundreds of people filled the convention-center ballroom, but less than a quarter of the crowd was in uniform. He knew that, in addition to the families, colleagues, military personnel, and politicians who were present, many local celebrities and political types had solicited invitations. Virginia Beach did so love their SEALs, even if they didn’t truly know or understand them. Of course, no one could acknowledge that the supposedly secret unit to which these men belonged had been based out of a classified compound in Tampa, and not in Virginia at all. In the official Navy press release, the departed would be forever memorialized as simply “East Coast–based SEALs.”

  Ironic, he thought. In life, they would have appreciated that. Maybe even liked it.

  “What can you say about these men?” he began. “What do you say about men who choose duty over safety, country over normalcy, honor over family, and commitment to a cause over the sanctity of their own lives? What do you say when America’s heroes fall?”