Reload

by David McCaleb

  “But who, in our circle, do we know?”

  Slap, slop, slop. Footfalls sounded inside the pasture, beyond the mist. A dark shadow distilled into a human form emerging from the fog with thick, broad shoulders, helmet, and rifle at port arms. Like Mule Neck driving through the extinguisher’s screen. But Red had killed that man.

  He slipped his hand beneath his sweater and gripped the Sig hanging in its holster. Two more steps and a horse followed Mule Neck. The forms sharpened to a man in blue jeans and cowboy boots guiding a pony, wearing a riding helmet. No rifle, but in its place a thick lead line stretched straight back to the bridle.

  Red breathed a sigh and released his grip on his weapon.

  “You still there?” Carter asked.

  “Yeah. What was your question again?”

  “Other than Lori, who has ties to Mossad?”

  The man walked past Red and lifted his chin. “Mornin’,” he greeted with a slow Georgian drawl. His thick arms and lumbering gait reminded Red of Lori’s father, Senator Moses.

  “Moses! He’s got those connections.”

  “Kind of a big coincidence, wouldn’t you say, how Lori asks for her dad’s help to use his old-boy network with Mossad and the next day she gets shot.”

  Lori and her father’s relationship was strained. But surely the man wouldn’t try to kill his own daughter. “It’s a possibility. The man’s a conceited blowhard. But smart as hell. You’ve got my permission to look into him, if that’s what you’re calling for. But watch your step.” He stuck a finger into the air, as if Carter could see him. “Lori’s off my list. You need to drop her as well.”

  “I don’t make that decision, Red. An investigation goes where the evidence leads. I just follow the trail.”

  Red pressed end and slipped the phone into his pocket.

  Nick held up another handful of grass, giggling as the animal snatched it from him. “His lips are soft,” he said, patting a tiny hand against the horse’s muzzle.

  The screech of rusty bearings echoed as a board-and-batten barn door rolled open. It thudded against its stops. Lori stepped out with Penny behind, leading the black Friesian. Its mane hung down like a shiny cashmere blanket. The animal towered over his daughter, yet followed her as if a child. Stopping the animal next to the fence, Red scratched behind its ears. The creature’s shiny black eyes closed.

  Penny pulled on the line. “Don’t let her go to sleep, Daddy. She’s getting fat. We need to make her run it off.”

  The daughter of her mother, for certain.

  Jackson trotted toward the Explorer, dropping a clump of green grass blades onto the drive. “Ice cream!”

  Lori reached over the fence and grabbed his collar. She drew him into a kiss. Her lips were warm, soft, and tasted of cherry. “Get ready for tonight,” she whispered.

  The woman was going to kill him. He got more sleep on an op than in his own bed.

  She squeezed his arm and followed after Penny. “Enjoy your ice cream breakfast. Kids never forget a promise.”

  Red grinned as she walked across the pasture, graceful hips swaying. No, he thought. They never forget. And neither would he.

  Don’t miss the next exciting Red Ops thriller by David McCaleb

  RECON

  Coming soon from Lyrical Underground, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Turn the page to enjoy a preview excerpt....

  Recon

  Chapter 1– Betrayal

  Frederick Johnson squinted through the scope mounted atop a Remington 783. The crosshairs wavered over his target, a red-bearded man throttling a black Ford Explorer down a country dirt driveway wild as a cat escaping a bath. A quarter mile of lush soybean field stretched between them. A mist hovered a few feet above the leafy green carpet, the fog uncommon in June. The low angle of the early morning sun blazed it in golden brilliance.

  He shrugged off a cold shiver that crept up his neck.

  The vehicle sped toward the end of the long driveway. “Brake...brake,” Frederick whispered as the Explorer jerked to either side of the path, dodging potholes. A dust trail rose behind it and melded with the fog. The way this guy drove, the only chance he’d have of a clear shot would be when Red Man stopped at the end of the drive.

  “Five hundred meters,” his spotter murmured. “This guy drives like a maniac.” Wendy was crouched beside him in the abandoned hunting hide, shrouding her eyes behind rangefinder binoculars. Shiny, jet-black black hair hung in a ponytail. Her bare arms were skinny as hell. Not the anorexic, lingerie-model brand of skinny. More like the steel cable, personal trainer, women-can-do-anything-a-man-can-do-but-better kind. Yet she’d proven to be a quick study. And didn’t ask questions. Just watched and learned. “Three hundred fifty,” she said.

  Frederick kept the crosshairs over Red Man, then reached long fingers and twisted the elevation knob two clicks. The Remington was chambered in .243, a hyperfast, flat-firing round. He’d chosen ammo with heavier 115 grain bullets since the projectile would pass through windshield glass. The weightier shot would decrease deflection.

  A wisp of haze, a specter’s arm, reached from the foggy floor and floated across the scope’s field of view. Red Man twisted the wheel and the vehicle veered almost completely off the drive. Frederick chased him with the X. The Explorer wasn’t slowing. “Brake, damn it!” At the end of the drive the SUV slid and accelerated onto the main road with a chirp of rubber. The speeding engine sang over the field and a flock of crows exploded into the air from beneath the fog blanket.

  “Shit!” he huffed, raising his head from the rifle as the vehicle raced away.

  “Why didn’t you take the shot?”

  He lifted the bolt handle and yanked it back. The ejected round flew toward Wendy’s head, and she snatched it from the air like a cobra striking prey. “No clear chance. I’m good, but no sniper. Even the best would have a hard time hitting a moving target like that. Plus, his wife wasn’t with him.”

  She dropped the rangefinder so that it hung from her neck, resting between undersized breasts. “Worth the risk, though.”

  How much should he tell her? Working in a team, the rule of thumb was disclose as little as possible. And this was only her second job with him. Still, inform her too little and it could bite him in the ass later if she made a stupid move. “Red Man, and even his wife, isn’t a target you take a risk on. They’ve been contracted before. Didn’t turn out so well for those guys.”

  Wendy crossed her arms and shoved the overturned five-gallon bucket she sat on against the plywood wall.

  OK. Should have told her. He gripped the rifle barrel and lowered the stock to the floor. “Yeah, we’re getting a huge payout for this one. But I got no idea from who. Never do. Never want to. But big payout means big risk. Every kill needs to be a sure thing. Double so on this guy. We wound him, and all the sudden we’re the ones with a target on our backs. I don’t know the whole story, but we ain’t the first team that’s tried to take him. And we only get paid if both are dead.” He pressed the magazine latch and it dropped into his gloved hand. “And watching him these last few days... The bulge under the shoulder of whatever he wears. The way he drives five different routes to work. The way he cuts his eyes. Hell, just the way he carries himself. This guy’s a predator. He ain’t prey.”

  Wendy crossed her legs. Her tan calves were knotted rope. “Typical alpha male. I’ve taken his type before.”

  “Maybe. But if you want to stay alive, never take potshots.”

  “What’re our options, then?”

  Heat radiated from the wall behind her. Six o’clock in the morning and the rising sun was already warming the cramped space. The humid fragrance of decomposing timber filled the hut. They needed to get out of the field before anyone spied them. Deer season was long past, but no one raised an eyebrow at a man with a bolt action in rural Virginia,
no matter what time of year it was. Likely just a farmer with a kill permit protecting his crop. And when they’d spy Wendy next to him, all suspicions would vanish. Only a guy teaching his girlfriend how to shoot. That’s why he’d chosen her. Couples were invisible.

  “We can’t get to them at home. Too risky.” They’d driven by Red Man’s long driveway several times. Vehicle sensors flanked it, which just meant more security up the way. A $250 frequency identifier showed surveillance system emissions from the house at 433MHz all the way up to 5GHz, plus some lower-frequency stuff on military bands. “And we can’t get him at work. It’s Langley. Plus, he drives as if he knows someone’s after him. She’s almost as bad.”

  Wendy squeezed her elbows and rolled her neck. “So? Options?”

  He stood and ducked his head to keep from smacking bare pine branches stretched across the close box as a ceiling. His tall frame towering over the tiny woman. He pulled a worn Baltimore Ravens ball cap over thin brown hair. Lifting an olive drab cloth covering a narrow opening, he stepped down atop a wooden ladder rung and stopped. “We wait till he’s out of his routine. Away from here.”

  “How long’s that going to take?”

  How much to tell her? Two can keep a secret only if one of them is dead. Nah. She knew enough at this point. He managed a smile. “I’ve got a way to speed the process.”

  * * * *

  “So, you shot your wife?” the therapist asked, as if still confused who had actually been killed.

  Tony “Red” Harmon leaned back in a low, hard black vinyl chair. He’d explained it to the woman three times already. It wasn’t that difficult to understand. How many degrees did she have? He scratched his tight, curly copper beard. “I didn’t shoot my wife. I only thought it was her.” Which was the truth. And he’d done it trying to save the woman’s life. “So, that’s not the problem. Let’s get past your maybe-he’s-an-ax-murderer theory and get on with the session.” There. Easy to understand.

  The psychiatrist, Dr. Christian Sato, settled atop a high-backed wooden stool behind a vintage green enameled steel desk. The shrink needed the tall chair just to see over it. Red was short by most men’s standards, but this woman of Japanese descent made him feel like a basketball player. Old government was the motif of her office. Red would go nuts if he had to work at a desk. Tan metal file cabinets covered one wall. The kind that would tear off fingers if slammed in the door, or crush small animals if tipped over. The corners of manila envelopes stuck out from the front of several in an effort to escape. Ancient, nicotine-stained vertical blinds hung in a window like prison bars.

  As a military operator assigned to the Det, a fusion cell of three-letter government agencies and the Department of Defense, Red was required to undergo periodic psychological evaluations. The Det was short for Detachment 5, of Joint Special Operations Command. At most of these sessions he handled it a bit like an interrogation. Quick replies, not offering any additional information. But Sato was one of the good shrinks, meaning she never asked how long he wet his bed or whether his mother breast-fed him. He’d been endeared by her sick, sarcastic humor and direct, no-frills approach.

  As commander of the Det, he’d requested she limit her inquiries to the task of ensuring his group of professional killers didn’t have too many loose screws. A good operator was never entirely sane, and Sato seemed to recognize that. But today’s session was on Red’s dime and at his request. He’d woken up last week with a distinct understanding that, despite his best efforts, something was broken in his head that he couldn’t fix. Sato being the only shrink he knew, he’d made the call.

  His wife, Lori, sat up in an identical seat next to him. “It took a while, but we’ve gotten past that issue. A big mix-up. He thought he’d seen me die, and he’d contributed. But it’s behind us. Tony’s a good man. A great father.”

  At least Lori acknowledged he was trying. A half foot taller than Red, she somehow made sitting in a child-sized chair appear natural. She reached behind her head and pulled long, dirty-blond hair to one side. He leaned closer and the scent of Extatic captured his attention. Her eyes were bright but rimmed in pink. Taking time away from work for this session, her office attire was a black skirt that hiked up to midthigh when she sat. She crossed long, slender legs that just last night had been wrapped around him for over an hour. On her calf, a round dot the size of a nickel marked where a 5.7 millimeter bullet from an assassin’s P90 had passed through. An awesome wife, mother, and an absolute rock.

  She lifted a finger. “But he’s never present, mentally. At least not with me. He’s great with the kids. I’m jealous of them. Other than sex, there’s zero connection anymore. I’m an island.”

  All truth, though not for lack of effort. He’d date her, take her to dinner, even spend all Saturday with her at antique stores staring at furniture in various states of disrepair. Yes dear, that chair is a great-looking piece of crap. It’s a lot like the ten other pieces of partially dismantled crap we’ve got in the garage from our last visit. Let’s bring this one home so we can shatter its dreams as well. But those musings were unfair. They’d actually refinished one piece of furniture. He’d taken it completely apart and sanded everything down. She’d stained it and brushed on a polyurethane topcoat.

  “It’s not the chair,” she’d told him. “It’s taking something broken and making it better.”

  Why couldn’t he do the same with this problem?

  Like the numbness of his thumb past a three-inch scar courtesy of an Ethiopian hunting knife, he no longer sensed a deep connection with her. His closest friends anymore were other operators.

  A vacuum hummed outside the office door. Window glass rattled as the janitor smacked the machine against the wall. Sato placed her pen atop the desk and leaned forward on her elbows. “How long have we known each other, Red?”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have called this woman. This was going nowhere. “About a year, I suppose.”

  “And in that time, you’ve progressed from being an operator to commander of your organization.”

  Red grunted at her labeling the Det an organization. A fusion cell was moderately controlled chaos at best, a football field where three-letter offices and the military huddled together and cooperated for each one’s gain, sharing intelligence, expertise, and most importantly, assets.

  “How many operations have you executed during that time?”

  A whack from the hallway, followed by tinkling of broken glass. “Fifteen major ones probably. Then there’s training.”

  Sato scribbled something on a yellow-sheeted pad. At a hundred fifty dollars an hour, she probably had to have something to show for it. “And how long does it take,” she continued, “from planning to execution to debrief?”

  Lori leaned forward. “Two weeks at best. When he’s planning an op, I never see the man. Then he’s off to a place where the locals are trying to kill him. He comes home and we get the scraps. By then, he’s an empty hulk.”

  Sato waved. “Red needs to answer the questions.” Her eyes studied him now. Mascara was caked into her crow’s-feet like black veins. She hopped down from the stool and waddled around the edge of the desk. He didn’t have to look up to her, even though he was sitting. She stood with her nose almost touching his. Her family must have had a much-smaller concept of personal space. Her voice was grave. Breath of garlic. “You don’t need me to diagnose your problem. Don’t be an idiot. You thought you witnessed the death of your wife, just to discover it wasn’t her. On top of that, you make your living in the profession of arms. You’re the walking wounded. All your men sing your praises. But you’re not invincible. Your symptoms are classic post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD.”

  He leaned away from her breath. “But I don’t drink too much.”

  Sato’s cheeks rose and she cackled a laugh. “Not everyone with PTSD is an alcoholic.”

  Fine. Whatever. “So how do I fix it?”<
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  A black cat jumped upon the windowsill outside. The angle of the sun cast its shadow as large as a mountain lion upon the carpet. Sato stepped behind the desk again. She stood on the stool’s footrest and leaned onto the desk, arms braced as if doing a push-up. “You’re not a machine. There isn’t a quick fix. No magic solution. It’s different for everyone. But for you the first step is time off. A vacation. And I don’t mean Disneyland. You need time to be bored. To watch the sun go down. Time for your head to process what’s transpired, instead of being constantly distracted.”

  Red raised a hand. “Now’s not a good time. We’ve got—”

  “For me, either,” Lori jumped in. “We’ve lost ground at work. Maybe in a few months we could do it.”

  The shadow of the cat’s tail swished like a whip crack across Sato’s desk; then it leapt from the frame, as if to an adjoining office’s balcony. The psych’s eyes were slits. “Major, here’s the sitrep. You’ve started to exhibit signs of PTSD. The path to recovery can be long, but if you don’t start on it now, it just gets longer. Most operators, unless they take action, are in divorce court in six months. Within a year I have to declare many unfit for duty.”

  Wow. Maybe he didn’t like her direct approach after all.

  She flexed a pencil between thumbs. It snapped. “Funny, don’t you think, how soldiers can be so dogmatically decisive when bullets are flying, but can’t bring themselves to make basic life changes like the one before you now?” She pointed the splintered instrument at him as if it were a pistol. “Get away together. Don’t take your work phone. Don’t check e-mail. Don’t even tell anyone where you’re going.” She patted her chest. “Doctor’s orders.”

  Just then, rap music blared from Lori’s black Coach purse. Ho ya baby! You drive me crazy! “What the—” she snapped, then yanked the bag off the floor, pulled out a phone, and lifted it to her ear. She plugged the other with a finger. “We’ll be right there. Thank you,” she said, then tapped the red button on the screen. Her mouth hung open. “Penny just slapped Jenny at school.”