Clear by Fire: A Search and Destroy Thriller

by Joshua Hood

  “Sir, according to General Nantz, they are tracking Mason Kane, and I assume they think he’s somehow connected to this.”

  “Shit, is this going to come back on us?”

  “Sir, I’m trying to find out everything I can without going through official channels. I’ve already talked to General Swift and he swears that Decklin was not told to leave any stay-behind force when he left.”

  “You tell Swift that if he doesn’t handle this in the next forty-eight hours, then he’s a dead man.”

  “Yes, sir,” his aide replied.

  Duke hung up the phone and walked over to the window, his mind racing to connect the dots. Things were getting out of control, and if his men didn’t get a grip, he was going to start putting bodies in the ground.

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  Algiers, Algeria

  Mason stood on the outskirts of the bazaar, taking in the smells of the dirty bodies filling the enclosed area. Smoke from charcoal braziers drifted in the gentle breeze and mixed with the smell of meats being grilled. The market was packed with wide-eyed tourists enthusiastically bartering for anything they could take home and display over their suburban mantels. Locals scowled at fat Europeans and fatter Americans whose pale skin and expensive cameras annoyed the shopkeepers. The city had been founded on trade and the modern generation held true to their forefathers’ innate ability to separate a foreigner from his money.

  But he wasn’t here for trinkets. He needed to find Ahmed, his contact, the one man besides Zeus whom he could actually trust.

  Ahmed had schooled him in the art of tradecraft and taught him that it was the subtle cultural differences that could blow your cover and label you as a foreigner in North Africa. He snapped to when he spotted a sleek Mercedes stop by one of the tea merchants. Ahmed had arrived.

  Mason moved into the crowd, dodging the packs of sweaty Westerners who were blissfully unaware of the world that turned around them. Ahead of him, Ahmed was swearing loudly at the merchant’s overpriced tea.

  “That price is ridiculous for these dried leaves. They aren’t fit for my bathwater, much less to drink.” Ahmed waved his hand dismissively in the air, while the wizened Algerian stood with crossed arms and a look of total disinterest.

  “You Libyans wouldn’t know good tea if it was given to you on a golden platter. Why are you wasting my time?”

  “I’m wasting your time? In Libya you would be flogged in the street for this. You take advantage of honest Muslims, in the face of Allah, with no shame at all.” Ahmed raised his arms in disgust and moved away from the tea merchant, who continued shouting insults until he was out of earshot.

  “Perhaps I can buy you some tea, my old friend.” Mason spoke in Arabic from Ahmed’s side.

  “Ah, Mason, I wondered how long you were going to make me wander around this dreadful place until you finally showed up.” The two men embraced warmly in the midst of their chaotic surroundings.

  Ahmed held Mason at arm’s length, a paternal frown slipping over his countenance as he looked at the freshly sutured wound on the American’s forehead.

  “Still getting into trouble, I see. One would hope that you’ve gotten better at sewing yourself up by now.”

  “Could have been a lot worse if you hadn’t given me the heads-up,” Mason replied honestly. “How did you know?”

  “A little bird told me,” he laughed.

  The two men began walking through the crowded stalls. Ahmed pulled a light blue handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it with a flourish. Casually, he raised it to his face and dabbed the perspiration beading up on his forehead. Mason realized that the simple gesture was actually a signal to the men watching after their boss.

  “I see that you have not lost your edge.” He’d been unable to locate Ahmed’s security detail, even though he’d arrived an hour early for the meeting. The man was a legend in the intelligence world for a reason, and while he was no longer actively employed by the Libyan intelligence service, Ahmed was still a very powerful man.

  “You can never be too careful these days. I know of a place we can go—away from all these tourists.” Ahmed spat the final word out like it burned his mouth. Like many in the region, he had no love for Westerners.

  Grabbing Mason’s arm, he led him toward the illegally parked Mercedes. The driver opened the door as they approached, and the two men settled into the luxurious leather interior. The air conditioner felt good, compared to the midday heat, and Mason allowed himself a sigh of satisfaction. Ahmed gave the driver a street name, and the German car pulled away from the curb.

  Ahmed had been one of the contacts he used when deployed to Libya under Barnes, and the man was a fountain of information. The country was falling into chaos, just another domino in the chain of events they would later call the Arab Spring. The people were tired of Gaddhafi, who happened to be Ahmed’s boss, but the clever Libyan realized the writing was on the wall and quickly changed sides.

  While conventional generals were focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, there were officers inside the Special Operations community who had a separate and very secret mandate. Iraq had offered a unique foothold into the region, and while most people thought the war was about oil, the real prize was Iran. It became obvious that a frontal assault wouldn’t work on the country that had vexed America since the Reagan administration, but if they could isolate it from all of its allies, it might just implode.

  Libya was first on the list, and Gaddhafi, a man who had benefited as much from Iran as he had from his huge reserves of oil, had to be eliminated. Mason’s job was to stir the pot, and Ahmed, realizing what was about to happen, gave him the spoon. The spy told them where to find the dictator, and helped Mason fix his position and maneuver the mob that would eventually kill him.

  Thirty minutes later, they were sitting inside a small café waiting for their tea to arrive. The café was a holdover from a more elegant time. The marble tile, dark wood, and burnished brass furnishings gave it the appearance of a European salon.

  Mason offered Ahmed a cigarette while casually checking the exits for the quickest escape route. He knew Ahmed’s men were discreetly pulling security in the area, but he never relied on others to protect him.

  “I cannot believe that you still smoke those foul things,” Ahmed said, his face crinkling in disgust at the offered cigarette. “You Americans might not be the most cultured people, but you have excellent tobacco. Put that away and have one of mine.” Mason returned the offending pack to his pocket, slipped one of the American cigarettes from Ahmed’s battered silver case, and lit it with his Zippo.

  Mason took a deep drag, trying to remember the last time he’d had a Camel.

  Smoking might have been a bad habit, but it was all he had left, and he planned on enjoying it for as long as possible.

  “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve had one of these.”

  “They are much better than those nasty French Gauloises you carry around with you, but I’m very certain you did not come all this way to talk about tobacco.”

  “I have to go to Libya.”

  Ahmed nodded, motioning with his cigarette for Mason to continue. “For the file, I assume? Do you think that is wise?”

  Mason felt the first spark of self-doubt as he studied his mentor. Ahmed was a slight man and barely five foot seven; one could even call him diminutive. His aquiline nose, dark brown eyes, and salt-and-pepper beard gave him a cultured, almost urbane air, but it was all a clever façade. Beneath the day-to-day trappings was the iron will and fastidious mind of a vicious predator who had lulled more than one man to an untimely death.

  “The American I was working for, the one with the CIA, he made a call to someone and I have no idea who it is. Somehow this is all connected to Barnes, and the Anvil Program, but I can’t get my head around it. Someone has to be pulling Barnes’s strings, and whoever it is must be all the way at the top. The only intel I have is at the safe house.”

  After
breaking with Barnes, Mason had needed some insurance to protect him from the military. He’d used a program to hack into the colonel’s personal computer and downloaded most of the hard drive before the breach was detected. If he was killed, Ahmed was supposed to send it all to the American press. But while he was still alive he needed to get to the laptop, which had been stashed at one of Ahmed’s safe houses. He desperately hoped it would give him some answers.

  Ahmed let out a paternal sigh and watched the smoke curling up from the end of his cigarette. After he’d gathered his thoughts, he fixed his steely gaze on his American pupil.

  “You have been working for your American masters for too long, my friend. I warned you about the CIA. I told you that man wasn’t going to give you a free pass back to America, did I not?”

  “I’m just trying to get the hell out of here.”

  “How have you lived so long being this naive? If it wasn’t so sad, I would laugh.” Ahmed threw his hands in the air and shrugged his shoulders in a manner that showed his bewilderment with the whole affair.

  Ahmed had been a Gaddhafi loyalist, and a colonel in Libya’s intelligence service. The man had run more black operations than any other agent. His claim to fame had been an operation in Switzerland, where he’d used a banker’s family as leverage to gain access to funds the United Nations had frozen. He had developed quite an impressive network of contacts—until the Americans came. Regime change cost him everything, and when he became a fugitive, the United States placed him on the terror list. Like Mason, he could never return home, but unlike his American friend, Ahmed only fought for those who paid him the most money.

  “It’s not something I would expect you to understand.”

  “What I understand and what I know are two separate things. I know that your own men tried to kill you. I know your country doesn’t care about the Arabs and that your president doesn’t care how many must die to protect its interests.”

  Ahmed fell silent, the painful memories getting the best of him. When he spoke again the Libyan’s voice was low and hard.

  “You and Zeus are what’s left, and they will take you too if given the chance.”

  Ahmed had been around the block more times than he could remember, but the day Zeus brought Mason to his house, the Libyan had found himself at a total loss. He hadn’t believed the American’s story at first, but while the wounded American slept, he had checked with his sources and was shocked to find that Mason had been telling the truth.

  He couldn’t believe that so many men had ignored the colonel’s visible descent into madness. The Libyan had asked Mason over and over how the American soldiers could have stood by and watched Barnes shoot a six-year-old girl in the head and then massacre the rest of her family.

  Mason watched the emotion slipping over his friend’s face. Ahmed was by no means soft but there was a deep reservoir of sadness inside him, fed by horrors most men would never know.

  The waiter appeared with their tea and the two friends lifted their cups in silence. Mason took a moment to enjoy the complex aroma of the brown liquid before taking a sip. The key to good chai was the delicate mix of tea, sugar, and milk. Much like life, success lay in the balance.

  Good tea encourages the mind to wander, but unfortunately all of Mason’s good memories were gone. The thought of returning to Libya evoked a powerful stirring inside his soul as painful memories poured out.

  Unwelcome images and sounds rushed past their barriers, like flames seeking oxygen. He could feel himself falling backward into his own mind, and his heart began racing in his chest.

  On that desperate day, he could hear the static from the radio as he tried to make contact with his team. He smelled the red dirt and the copper scent of blood in his mouth. Rounds cracked low over his head. Some were so close he could hear them cutting through the air, while others ricocheted off the pile of bricks in puffs of dust and broken concrete. The rebels began flanking his position.

  Oh shit, not now.

  Mason was fighting for his life one second and the next he was back at the table, his heart rate jacked through the roof.

  He caught Ahmed watching him from across the table and felt ashamed of the weakness that must have been written across his face. Mason struggled to decipher the Libyan’s expression and then it hit him: it was compassion.

  “Ahmed, when the uprising started in Libya, do you remember how quick we turned on Gaddhafi?”

  “I assume by ‘we’ you mean your government?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I remember telling him not to trust your president, but he assured me that he had certain . . . How did he say it? Oh yes, ‘assurances.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It is funny you put it that way, because that is what I asked him. You must realize that the man was utterly deranged, out of touch with reality. I told him that my job was to protect him and the country, but he was so certain that—”

  “Certain about what?” Mason asked. He suddenly felt like he was on the verge of a great discovery, and all he had to do was coax it out of the notoriously closed-lipped spy.

  “He was certain that the Americans needed him. One of your generals was flown in, a week before the riots began. He had a closed-door meeting with the president, but I’d had Gaddhafi’s offices bugged long ago, so I was privy to the entire conversation.”

  “What did they talk about?” Mason willed himself to calm down; he had always had his suspicions about the operation and knew deep down that someone besides Barnes had been calling the shots.

  “He assured the president that your government would do everything in its power to support his government.”

  “So he lied,” the American said.

  “Of course he lied. A week later, your drones were hitting our communication installations and knocking out the power grids. We were unable to use our aircraft and then your Anvil Team appeared.”

  “Our mission was to cut the head off the snake and get out without anyone ever knowing we were there. We were to make it look like the rebels killed him. Those were our orders. I knew they didn’t come from Barnes, because the whole operation was way too elegant. The colonel is a hammer, and whoever was in charge knew exactly how much force to use and exactly who to talk to.”

  “The war was never just about Libya, or Gaddhafi,” Ahmed said patiently. “The man who met with the president wanted to disrupt the whole region.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  The café hummed with the frivolous conversations of the other patrons, recounting the day-to-day minutiae of their lives. The world’s ability to ignore what was right in their faces was amazing. The Mideast was in turmoil but right now, in that café, no one cared. There was a storm building on the horizon and he felt like he was the only one who could see it.

  Ahmed appraised Mason as he patiently finished his cigarette, and finally said, “I will get you into Libya; as for the man you seek, you need to look much higher if you wish to find him.”

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  Jalalabad, Afghanistan

  The Gulfstream G650 thundered toward Afghanistan at 620 miles per hour, and as the engines hummed through the night air, Renee Hart turned her attention back to the computer in front of her.

  She wanted to find Decklin so badly that she was willing to overlook the fact that Deputy Director Thompson was using her to save his own ass. It was his fault that there was some psycho running around with a suitcase full of nerve gas, but what troubled her most was how General Swift fit into the scheme of things.

  Thompson had promised to get her the access she needed and advised that Swift would be told to leave her alone, but something wasn’t right. She wasn’t used to keeping things from her boss, and the fact that she was being asked to do so raised certain red flags. Somehow, her boss was right in the middle of Barnes and the Anvil Program, and Renee was still trying to figure out how far the program reached.

  The thumb drive repeated
some of what the deputy director had already told her but went into more detail on Anvil’s original mandate of working off the grid to find, fix, and finish terror cells wherever they presented themselves. The major problem was the fact that everything about the program was totally illegal, but no one seemed to care as long as they were getting results.

  In the beginning, the newly minted unit was designed by the CIA, but someone jockeyed hard to pull it under the DoD. Once Barnes took command, he began cutting all communications with his bosses at the Pentagon and opened a secret channel with the CIA to get ahold of their drone program.

  The CIA didn’t have the red tape that the DoD had, and with the right clearance from the upper echelon, Barnes could prosecute any target he wanted.

  The colonel fascinated Renee, and she pored through the pages looking for any information she could get her hands on.

  He came from a blue-collar family in Montana. Growing up poor, he had spent more time working on his father’s ranch than studying, and his grades were a reflection of his priorities. However, his SAT scores were off the chart.

  He attended Montana State on a full scholarship and had graduated from the College of Engineering with honors, but then, inexplicably, he enlisted in the army.

  Somewhere along the way, someone realized that Corporal Barnes had a great deal of potential and submitted him for Officer Candidate School, and after twenty-four months in the army, he was minted an infantry lieutenant. He decided to join the Green Berets as soon as he made captain, and was given command of an A-Team just as the war in Afghanistan was kicking off. In another stroke of luck, he was one of the first Americans on the ground.

  Captain Barnes was attached to the CIA’s Jawbreaker team, and his exploits on the ground were legendary.

  He had managed to stay in theater, in one capacity or another, from 2001 until the present. He never went home and never took a break. He was working almost entirely for the CIA, running missions in Iraq, when he came to General Swift’s attention.