From the #1 bestselling War/Action Adventure/Men's Adventure/Techno-thriller author, Carolyn McCray comes the blockbuster, 3rd cycle of the Betrayed series!
***Warning*** These books are extremely controversial religious/historical thriller. Please do NOT purchase this book if you were at all disturbed by DaVinci's revelations. However, if you like your fiction to challenge historical events, read on…
Praise for The 3rd cycle of the Betrayed Series…
“In this 3rd cycle we finally get the whole team back together again. Brandt and Rebecca are back and we get to see if parenthood and special ops can go together. We get to see if Lopez or One Shot can get back to his adventurous self after losing Levont and Malvern. Can Stark can get over Bunny and give Tika a try. As always Starks mom does what she does best. Last but not least we get to find out if things are working out with Davidson and Bunny after professing their love at the end of the last book. Once more we get to take an adventure with the team as try to stop a new cult and save the world. This one gave me moments of sadness that made me teary eyed but as always it was a great book by Carolyn.”
Coidentz Fox
Amazon Reviewer
“Carolyn McCray does it again with the first book of the third cycle of the betrayed series!!. Brandt and Rebecca are back and the team is back running around the world solving another riddle religion has to offer!! If you liked all the other books this one continues the great fun series!! Action, Suspense, Love and Humor what else could you ask for in a good book.”
Matt Cieri
Amazon Reviewer
“I love the fact that Carolyn McCray incorporates family background into the storyline. Her books are never stale, the flow along like a fast moving river. They have all the emotions rolling through them too; love and laughter, fear and trepidation, as well as a religious element added in for good measure too…This fast paced novel has Brandt, Rebecca and the team moving all over the world including Cyprus, Vienna, Iran and Jordan just to name a few that won’t spoil the story….If you love intrigue, comedy, romance, terror and with a religious overtone then look no further than reading StormFront, you won’t be disappointed. I haven’t been and can’t wait for the next book in the series, they are phenomenal.”
Sharon Robinson Hudson
Amazon Reviewer
Main Menu
The Betrayed Series
These books are currently in the collection and will be downloaded immediately…
Collision
a Short Story Prequel to the series
Stormfront
The 1st full-length novel of the series
Rivalry*exclusive to the collection
a bridge Short Story
Heresy*exclusive to the collection
the stunning full-length sequel to StormFront
Clash*exclusive to the collection
A Bridge Short Story
These books will be added at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to the collection fall 2015… Be sure to have your “Auto-updates” turned on. See the afterword for instructions.
Foretold*exclusive to the collection
the astonishing full-length conclusion to series
Collateral*exclusive to the collection
the “wrap up” short story to the series
BONUS MATERIAL – available RIGHT NOW!
Recon
The prequel short story to The Home Grown Terror Threat series. Special guest appearance by Brandt!
Turkmenistan Takedown
The prequel short story to the Rapid Response International Thriller series
Rogue Spear
The prequel short story to Mass Destruction, the 1st book of the greatly anticipated new Nuclear Proliferation series with a guest appearance by Brandt!!!
Bullies
The prequel short story to the Apex Predator Thriller Series and the first book, Salechii
Start Reading The 3rd cycle of the Betrayed Series
About the Author
Afterword
Other Works by Carolyn McCray
Copyright
Collision – the prequel short story to the 3rd cycle of the Betrayed series, starring Brandt and Rebecca!
Chapter 1
Brandt suppressed a grunt. If he had grunted, he’d probably have died. Therefore he hung upside down with a rope around his waist and didn’t make a peep.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It never was. They hadn’t known how they were going to get into the targeted room until they got there. Which was why they didn’t have any kind of harness or super Tom Cruise-type get up.
Nope, here he was with a crude rope tied around his waist being held up by three of his men on the roof.
He knew he shouldn’t complain though. He was out in the field doing what he loved best. Well, maybe not best. That would be out in the wilds with his old Special Forces team, but for now, with a bum knee and three kids, this was the best that was going to come along for awhile, so he might as well enjoy it.
What Brandt didn’t enjoy so much was the throbbing headache as all his blood rushed to his noggin.
The plan had seemed so elegant. They were serving a “no knock” warrant, which meant that they didn’t have to announce themselves before they entered the premises. Actually, it meant they could go into the warehouse, do what they needed to do, then get the hell out before the terrorists were made aware of their presence.
Ah, Brandt could remember the days he didn’t need any sort of warrant. That he could beg, borrow, or steal whatever he needed in the field. But those days were gone. One ruptured anterior cruciate ligament and bye-bye to international intrigue.
So they made the breach from the roof. The rest of his Homeland Security team would support him from above, he’d drop down feet first until he got to the drop ceiling. He would flip headfirst. Remove the ceiling panel. Drop down into the room, take pics to confirm the cash delivery of over four million dollars, then get out and come back with a much larger strike team to take the terrorist cell down. Of course, he wouldn’t be doing it alone. Oh no. He’d probably have some kind of interagency task force made up of ATF, FBI and Homeland.
Yes, welcome to the bureaucratic nightmare that was now his life. Every move of his was sliced and diced by not only his department heads, but the heads of every other alphabet soup agency.
He lived under a microscope. Like one of Rebecca’s ancient bones.
But here he was out in the field. Not a supervisor in sight, because you know, this could get dangerous or something.
Back seat drivers. The worst.
An ache in his hip brought him back to the situation at hand.
Terrorist directly below him. Right.
He knew enough Arabic to know that the two guards beneath him weren’t praising Allah. They were discussing how they could put some of those stacks of hundred dollar bills into their own pockets.
That was the problem with turning your most devoted into suicide bombers. You were left with the… well, the less than devout.
For all the extremists talk about how American-style capitalism was the evil that was destroying the world, they were becoming just as bad. Terror cells were basically forming syndicates now. To reduce overhead and streamline bomb making.
Finding a capable man still having enough fingers to build a bomb was the limiting factor for most terrorists.
This little warehouse was a bomb making assembly line. And once you industrial
ized like this, it was hard to go back.
Viva the revolution.
And once you set up shop, then embezzling and shrinkage happens. Welcome to Walmart’s world, folks.
Finally the two men decided that later that night they would try and take some bricks of cash from the center so the missing money couldn’t be seen from the outside.
Solid plan, fellas.
Too bad Brandt was going to ruin it for them.
The men left the room and closed the door behind them.
Finally.
Brandt waited a few more breaths, making sure that the men didn’t want to come back and touch “their” money again.
Once he felt like the coast was clear, Brandt lifted the ceiling tile off and tugged on the rope indicating his companions should lower him down.
Gun out, Brandt slowly entered the room, head first. Once he got low enough, he swung himself upright. His knee didn’t even register any pain. He’d been out of his brace for months, but really hadn’t put the joint to the test yet in the open field.
Because if the joint blew again, there went any chance of returning to the Army.
The money was on a pallet, wrapped in clear plastic. Benjamin Franklin stared out at him.
Brandt clicked a dozen pics. He took down as many serial numbers as he could. Now that they had the proof they needed that the flagged serial numbers were in the terrorists’ possession, they could plan a full-on raid.
He went to tug on the rope to get his men to pull him up when gunfire erupted in the other room.
Brandt froze. He should leave. They had completed their mission to a tee. Time to get out while the getting was good.
But there was gunfire inside the larger room. Had ATF gone off half-cocked? Or was it an internal struggle with the terrorists?
Either way he needed to find out.
He untied his rope and climbed on top of the money to put the slack rope inside the ceiling and replaced the tile he had displaced to enter.
They were supposed to be radio silent, but that was back before the shots.
“Team, bug out,” he stated into his mic.
“Hell no,” Bull stated. His real name was Bullaford, but for obvious reasons everyone called him Bull. He was the only one on Brandt team to have Special Forces training, but unlike Brandt, who had a more than honorable discharge due to his knee, Bull had been cut due to his inability to take orders. Any orders. The guy was the definition of a loose cannon. He thought outward bravado equaled courage. Big mistake.
His superiors had put Bull on Brandt’s team hoping that he could corral the younger man.
“Direct order, Bull. Get back to the rally point.”
“On it, sir,” Lellum stated.
Lellum, Brandt could trust to do the right thing.
Funny, but wasn’t Brandt doing exactly what he accused Bull of doing? Going off book, disobeying orders?
Yes, but this was different. If Bull had a good reason to do the things he did, then Brandt could accept it. Unfortunately Bull lived up to his namesake. And pretty much trashed any china shop he went into.
Brandt turned his attention away from his team and focused on the pattern of gunfire in the other room.
The burst of rapid gunfire had ended. That kind of un-aimed, rapid, out of control firing came due to surprise, like an ambush sprung by someone you knew and trusted.
Now the pattern had quieted down to the occasional shot. More than likely everyone had taken up defensive positions and was only firing if someone else was on the move.
Brandt tried to remember the position of each shot. He’d rather not enter the main room and get gunned down. He was pretty certain that he knew where the main players were and after taking a peek through the window, there was cover right outside the door to the left.
God, how he wished he had Davidson with him. He’d feel certain of victory if the sniper were here.
But he wasn’t, so Brandt was just going to have to make it work.
He turned the door’s lever handle. It slid easily, not making a sound. Brandt inched the door open. Enough to get his rifle out the opening. Still nothing. A few potshots but they were from the other side of the building.
Scanning the immediate area, it didn’t look like anyone was shacked up behind the crates that Brandt was eyeing for cover.
There was no more time for stealth. He either had to do this or not.
Jerking the door open, he guessed he was doing this.
He dove for cover but didn’t seem to need it. All eyes seemed to be focused on the center of the room. You know, the place where there was enough bomb making equipment to blow up San Francisco?
Brandt crept along the crate, trying to get a better vantage point. Not even a twinge from his knee. Good joint.
As he reached the other edge of the crate, he realized two things. He was vastly outnumbered. And this was a Taliban operation. He recognized the propaganda plastered on the walls from Afghanistan.
That intel alone was worth the risk. The Taliban had pretty much stayed in their cocoon over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they were fairly well protected by local governments. It was surprising to find them holed up here in an East Bay warehouse.
And usually the Taliban were a tightly knit group. They seldom argued over sports, let alone had a firefight amongst themselves. And if this were an ATF raid, the firing wouldn’t have stopped.
So what exactly was going on here?
Brandt put his eye up to his scope and surveyed the room.
He thought he could make out two shooters on the southeast side of the room. No one was near the bomb-making station. Thank goodness. One stray bullet into that ammonium nitrate barrel and they would be blown sky high.
Then he caught a glimpse of a turban from the other side of the room.
That was a Shia turban.
Okay, now it was starting to make a little sense.
About the only people that the Taliban, a Sunni organization, hated more than the Americans were the Shiites. It would be as if the Catholics went to war with the Protestants. Oh, wait, they already had been for hundreds of years in Northern Ireland.
But what was a Shiite group doing attacking a Sunni bomb factory? Did they want to take the bombs for themselves or to stop an attack?
Brandt took as many pictures with his scope as he could. They should be uploading directly to the San Francisco Homeland office.
The analysts were going to go bonkers over this stuff.
But he needed to get a better angle. Unfortunately, to get a better angle, he was going to have to cross some pretty wide-open space. But what else was he doing here but securing the homeland?
Say what you will, but this just became a military-style mission.
He didn’t shoot or lay down cover fire, that would draw more attention to himself. Instead he had his rifle ready, but sprinted across the warehouse. His knee doing him a solid.
He dove head first behind a rack of chemicals. They had seriously set up shop here. This was like the Costco of bomb making supplies.
Scrambling back into position, Brand swept the room again with his scope. Not a lot of change out there.
He did find one very dead bomb maker, marked by his thick rubber gloves and apron.
Chemicals were spilled all over the floor.
So it looked like the unidentified Shite group took down the bomb maker first.
But why?
Sure the two groups hated one another and were the major problem in Iraq.
Could the Iranians be involved? They were the predominate Shias in the world. They sponsored Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Were they playing out some kind of holy land battle right here in San Francisco?
This was not going to end pretty.
How had the CIA not seen this coming?
Seriously.
Nothing like walking into a firefight you didn’t understand.
There was movement to his left. One of the Sunnis, the original terrorists
they were after, scuttled from one stack of crates to another. Brandt got some good face pics.
Hopefully, they could get a name and try to sort out this mess. In a chess-like move, a Shiite repositioned himself to balance out the Sunni move.
Now Brandt was up against two enemies. Each of which hated his American guts as much as they hated each other’s.
A Shiite ran across an open area. Gunfire rattled from the corner of the building. The Shiite was struck in the leg. He ducked under cover before Brandt could see if it was a serious wound or not.
Right now it looked like it was him against ten terrorists. Five Shiite, which now might be four and a half men, and five Sunni.
He’d better level those odds or he wasn’t going to be around for long.
Which meant he had to go up. Neither the Sunni nor the Shiite seemed to have a sniper in play.
Brandt wasn’t a trained sniper, however, he could shoot down.
Missing Davidson more than ever, Brandt climbed up the stack of crates, keeping his profile to a minimum in case anyone wanted to shoot at him.
Funny how a recon-only mission went sideways into a combat mission. Or had he forced it into one? Did he miss combat so much that he had let it cloud his judgment?
Right now straddling a girder, it didn’t really matter much.
He swept the area and found three potential targets. Unfortunately, they were spread across the warehouse. Once he shot, Brandt wasn’t sure how many he could take out before his location was broadcast and he would have to dodge bullets himself.
Or…
He’d seen Davidson do it before. Position himself nearly atop one of the enemy then take some low angle shots toward the counter force. The bullets weren’t meant to kill but to rile up a gunfight between the enemies. Let the two forces pick each other off then Brandt could sweep in and either neutralize or capture the last man standing.
That sounded like the best plan. Because right now Lopez wasn’t going to burst in with a tractor or something.
Here Brandt had to take care of himself.
Not just for himself, but for Rebecca, their darling little girl Kasa and the twin boys. A smile crossed his lips.
This was why he was with Homeland Security. So he could see his family every night. It was a privilege that Brandt tried to appreciate but the siren call of Special Forces rang in his ear each night, even as he held his beloved in his arms.
The 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed Series Collection: Extremely Controversial Historical Thrillers (Betrayed Series Boxed set) Page 1