Clear by Fire: A Search and Destroy Thriller

by Joshua Hood

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  Clear by Fire is dedicated to the men and women of the armed forces, who put their lives on hold to fight for this great country during OIF and OEF. I wrote this book for you, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  Washington, DC

  National Security Advisor Winfield “Duke” Cage nodded at the two Secret Service agents flanking the entrance to the White House situation room and adjusted the unfamiliar tie that was threatening to choke him.

  The last time he’d stepped through this doorway, he’d quit as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, effectively throwing away a career that had spanned two decades.

  He’d sworn never to return. But that was under a different president, and while only eight months had passed, Cage was a different man, and the newly appointed national security advisor.

  The room was smaller than he remembered but utterly familiar. The burnished wood of the massive table gleamed in the rays of the overhead lighting and cast its reflection on the flat-screens mounted to the walls. The blue and taupe carpet lay pristine, perfectly balancing the neutral coloring of the walls and the black leather chairs arranged around the room’s perimeter.

  His eyes drifted over the faces of the most powerful figures in Washington, men who were responsible for guiding their new president, and Cage wondered if he had enough in him for one last battle.

  His aide, Jacob Simmons, made his way through the scrum of onlookers and as he handed Cage the daily intelligence brief said, “There is a problem. We need to talk.”

  At six foot four, Cage was built like an all-pro tight end and towered over his short and stocky aide. The two men had been a team since their days at West Point, and their relationship had been tested in the cauldron of battle on more than one occasion. Simmons was the only man on earth whom Cage trusted, and during his brief exile, he was the only man who had his back. He was also one of the most capable intelligence operatives he’d ever known.

  “Not now,” Cage replied, catching the secretary of defense slipping toward him out of the corner of his eye.

  “Duke, we have a serious problem,” he hissed.

  “Handle it . . .”

  “Cage,” Secretary of Defense Collins exclaimed, dragging his attention away from his aide.

  “Mr. Secretary,” he replied formally.

  “I was surprised when the president told me he appointed you,” he began condescendingly.

  “Not as surprised as I was,” Cage replied, taking the secretary’s outstretched hand and shaking it firmly.

  He knew that Collins had fought hard to keep him off the president’s cabinet, and while Collins didn’t have the balls to come out and say it, the secretary was already working on bouncing him off Capitol Hill. But this wasn’t the first time someone had been after his scalp, and Cage was already a step ahead.

  His ace in the hole was that he didn’t have to be confirmed before Congress and therefore could only be fired by the president. As long as he kept the man happy, he was good to go. Cage felt the SecDef squeeze his hand as he looked searchingly into the ex-general’s eyes. He was challenging him already and the day hadn’t even started.

  One lesson Cage had taken from his time in the Green Berets was that it was important to assert dominance among the pack as soon as possible, and he did this by slowly crushing his opponent’s clammy grip until he could feel the thin, birdlike bones of the man’s hand begin to compress against themselves. He pulled the man in close, as if to embrace him, and said, “Be careful, friend.”

  Just then the president walked into the room, surrounded by his top aides and chief of staff. Cage released his iron grip and stepped back as the leader of the free world looked at him and smiled broadly.

  President John Bradley was thin and fit, with a deep tan and more than a passing resemblance to Robert Redford. The American public had been infatuated with his youthful exuberance and trustworthy gaze and he’d been elected in a sweeping landslide. Moving among those assembled, the president began working the room. He drew men to his side like moths to a flame, and Secretary Collins, like everyone else, was unable to resist. With one final stare, Collins turned his back on Cage and made a beeline for the most powerful man in the world.

  “What the hell was that?” Simmons whispered, moving closer. “I thought we were laying low.”

  “Don’t worry about him. Stick to the plan and he won’t know what hit him.”

  “Look, we really need to talk. Something’s come up in Kona.”

  Cage saw the president moving his way and wordlessly stepped forward, signaling to his aide that they would have to finish the conversation later. Despite his outward calm, he wished nothing more than to have a moment to find out what the hell was going on. Unfortunately, now wasn’t the time.

  “Duke,” the president said, offering his hand and the famous smile that had gotten him elected.

  The president was one of the few people Cage allowed to call him Duke. While it was a small thing to most people, the nickname was something reserved for those who had bled beside him in combat, and he guarded it jealously. The fact that Cage had fought with Bradley’s father gave the president a free pass, but more than that, Cage knew it was bad form to correct the President of the United States.

  “Mr. President,” he replied, taking his hand and shaking it warmly.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you agreed to help me out.”

  “Well, Mr. President, I didn’t figure you’d take no for an answer.”

  President Bradley had naively promised the American people that he would end the war in the Middle East while restoring the country’s honor. But he needed Cage’s help to make good on the promise.

  “I’m just thrilled to have you on the team,” he said, staring Cage deep in the eyes. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  Cage nodded as the president’s chief of staff leaned in and said, “Mr. President, we are on a tight schedule.”

  President Bradley winked and, releasing Cage’s hand, turned and walked back to his place at the head of the table.

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  Marrakech, Morocco

  Mason Kane checked his watch and tried not to scratch the sutures sewn into the bottom of his arm. The neat row of black lines looked like a hairless centipede crawling its way toward his elbow, but worse than that, it itched like hell.

  He was a wanted man, disavowed by his own country, the only American to earn a kill-on-sight order.

  Mason knew the Mideast better than any Westerner, but he was running out of places to hide. The day before, a man he hadn’t seen in years had tried to assassinate him in Kona, and Mason had come to Marrakech looking for answers.

  The clock was ticking, and with every intelligence agency in the Mideast looking for him, irritated sutures were not a priority.

  The Berbers had named the city Mur Akush, or “land of God,” and from a distance the name made sense, but deep inside the medina, where Mason was waiting, there were no obvious signs that God had ever been there.

  Zeus, one of few allies he had left, had warned him to let the situation “breathe” before coming to Marrakech, but Mason was tired of running and knew the game had changed.

  There was only one way Decklin could have known where to find him. Some
one had talked, and the amount of money it must have cost to scuttle the op in Kona told him that whoever it was had deep pockets.

  Hate or greed was usually the only motive needed to kill a man, and it hadn’t taken Mason long to figure out who was trying to smoke him. It had to be connected to Colonel Barnes, but he couldn’t get his head around why the colonel was suddenly so serious about putting a bullet in his head.

  He’d first met the colonel in 2006, after it became obvious that America was losing the war in Iraq. The president was looking for a win, and it was up to the Department of Defense to bring it to him. Their answer was the Anvil Program, an old concept ripped out of the CIA’s playbook.

  During Vietnam, it was called the Phoenix Program, and it had used Green Berets and the CIA’s Special Operations Group, or SOG, to conduct asymmetrical warfare against an insurgency outside the military’s legal boundaries of war. In the Middle East, all the CIA needed was the right man on the ground, and that’s where Barnes came into the picture.

  Barnes was a freshly minted colonel at the time of his appointment, and his marching orders were simple: Train a team to fight like the enemy, and then set them loose on the insurgency. Forget the rules of engagement, forget the media, just start stacking bodies—and that was exactly what they did.

  Barnes was given the authority to handpick any soldier from any unit to accomplish his goals, and finding the right men was paramount. He pulled the file of every Delta operator, navy SEAL, and Green Beret he could get his hands on, and when he came across Mason Kane, he knew he’d found an operator born for this type of mission.

  Mason had taken pride in being a soldier. He’d come from nothing, a half-breed who’d grown up on the streets, surrounded by pimps and dope boys. But the army didn’t care that his mother was a drunk or that his father had abandoned him and had later blown his brains out with a cheap Walmart shotgun. The only thing the army cared about was whether he was good at his job, and Mason had been one of the best. There was a box somewhere filled with awards, and they all had citations that read, “For selfless service and bravery under fire,” but Mason didn’t care about that.

  When the colonel found him, Mason was using his particular skill set to conduct deep-cover operations in Iraq. His ability to blend in with the civilian population and his mastery of Arabic made him a critical piece of the Joint Special Operations Command’s eyes on the ground. He was everything the colonel needed and more.

  Like the rest of the soldiers on the team, Mason had his demons, and it was only later that he realized the colonel sought out broken men.

  Mason scanned the street. He knew he couldn’t stay out in the open for long; too many foreign agents used Morocco as a base of operations. North Africa wasn’t as stable as it had been fifteen years ago, and after the Arab Spring, many intelligence agencies were still focused on the region.

  Slipping into one of Marrakech’s many nameless narrow alleys, he pulled his Glock 23 from its holster and quickly screwed on a suppressor. It was bulky and made the pistol heavier, but it was better than the alternative. After jamming the Glock into his jacket pocket he headed to the three-story apartment building he’d been watching. It reminded him of East Los Angeles, where he’d grown up and learned to blend in. Being the only non-Latino boy in the barrio had taught him the value of keeping a low profile and that, combined with the dark complexion he’d gotten from his mother, helped him blend in among the natives of North Africa.

  His feet scuffed over the worn cobblestones as a woman appeared at the edge of a balcony. She shook a threadbare rug over the metal railing and Mason shot her an annoyed glance as he stepped out of the way of the dirt shower. The woman ignored him and began to beat the tightly woven fabric on the metal railing with titanic blows that caused the rusted metal to shudder.

  With a final disdainful snap of her wrist, the woman turned and disappeared into her apartment, allowing the American to continue to his destination.

  Mason ducked as he walked under the low archway of the apartment building. Keeping a firm grip on the butt of his pistol, he carefully ascended the exterior stairs. The apartments were old and brown, just like everything else in the city. Chunks of flaky concrete had fallen out of the walls and masonry dust littered the cracked brickwork of the stairs.

  Once he reached the third floor, he pushed open the thin metal door that led into the hall and made his way to a nondescript wooden door. Thick gray paint peeled beneath the flickering light, which struggled to draw power from the overworked grid.

  Mason used a bump key to force the lock and stepped quickly through the door. The apartment was small and cramped and smelled like saffron and cooking oil. A small couch sat in the main room next to a neat pile of sleeping mats, while an overhead fan turned lazily above his head.

  No one was home, and the American shut the door behind him and walked over to the sliding glass door. He slid it open and stepped out onto the balcony, looking down over the tightly packed neighborhood to see if anyone was watching before shaking the metal railing to see if it would hold. The bolts securing it to the wall were rusted but seemed to be in decent shape, so after a final check he climbed up and jumped over to the next apartment.

  He pulled the pistol from his pocket and peered through the glass into the apartment. A cursory check around the edges of the door frame didn’t turn up any wires, and once he was sure it wasn’t booby-trapped, Mason slipped out a knife. He was about to pry it open when he realized the sliding glass wasn’t locked.

  The pungent smell of kif drifted out into the air, alerting him to the presence of his target.

  So much for tradecraft, he thought to himself as he stepped through the window.

  Mason brought the pistol up and quickly cleared the main room. Moving to the bedroom, the smell of hashish grew stronger, and he followed the smell to its origin before stepping into the small room.

  “What’s up?” he asked in Arabic.

  The Algerian sitting on the bed looked up from the large hookah, his eyes wide with surprise. He reached across to the table for his pistol and Mason raised his Glock and said, “Don’t do it.”

  The man ignored his warning, and just as his fingers were about to touch the weapon, Mason shot him in the hand. The suppressor didn’t make the pistol silent, but it did muffle the report to a dull thwack.

  The bullet hit Karim’s hand below the knuckles and sprayed the wall with blood. He instinctively snatched his hand back to his torso and began to scream in pain.

  “I told you,” the American said with a shrug as he snatched the pistol off the table. It was a Russian Makarov and had been freshly oiled.

  “Mason, I— I . . . ,” he stammered in Arabic.

  “I’ll never understand you people. You clean your gun, then get high and forget to lock your back door. I guess you figured I wasn’t coming back.”

  The man just stared at him blankly.

  “Karim, I thought we had a deal. I mean, that’s why Ahmed paid you, right? To make introductions and watch my back?”

  Mason adopted a casual air as he scanned the room for any more weapons that the spy might have lying around. He thought he knew why Decklin wanted him dead, but he couldn’t figure out why the Algerian had betrayed him.

  “For the last six months, I’ve been running around every shit hole in Africa, dodging the Americans, the French, and your jihadist friends. Hell, everyone wants to kill me, and all you had to do was take the money and keep your mouth shut.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing, believe me,” the man begged.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but then I ran into an old friend in Kona. How the hell did Decklin know I was there?”

  “Mason, there has been a misunderstanding, let me explain—”

  The American cut him off by holding the pistol in the air and slowly pointing it at the man’s knee.

  “C’mon, Karim, a mistake? You’re going to sit here and tell me that Barnes’s triggerman just happened to stumble i
nto Kona and try to put a bullet in my head? You know how this works; we’re both pros, so do me the courtesy of not lying to my face. I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me the truth, and then I’m going to put a bullet in your kneecap.”

  The man nodded as blood ran down his mangled right hand and onto his soiled gray shirt. Mason knew he was weighing his options.

  As a child, Mason had been soft, and he’d paid for it. Growing up in a tough neighborhood meant that he had to get either stronger or smarter. He had taken more than his share of beatings, but that person was gone now, purified and hardened by the cauldron of war. There was nothing soft in him now, and if not for the constant struggle to keep his humanity, he could easily have been just like Decklin.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the Algerian said finally.

  Mason steadied the pistol and squeezed the trigger, firing a round into the Arab’s kneecap. Karim was already screaming before the expended brass tinked off the concrete floor.

  “Karim, you’re smarter than this. Don’t make me be an asshole.”

  “Mason, I swear to you—”

  The American lined the Glock’s sights up with his other knee and slowly moved his finger to the trigger.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. The man with the CIA.”

  “Vernon?” Mason asked.

  He had never trusted the man, but he’d never expected him to sell him out—especially not to Barnes.

  “Yes, there was never a job. This was all about delivering you to Decklin.”

  Mason stepped away from the bed, struggling with what he knew he should do next. Karim deserved to die, but the American was trying to get free of all the death.

  He grabbed a towel off the floor near the door, and tossing it to Karim, he said, “I don’t ever want to see you again. If I do, you’re dead.”

  • • •