Tom smiled warmly at Jessica. He looked to be in his late thirties with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Like the other two nurses, he was wearing burgundy scrubs.
“She’s doing better. Vitals are stable. I just hung that unit of blood for her,” he said as he scribbled notes in the patient’s chart.
“We also have Mrs. Mary Lee, seventy-seven, congestive heart failure and Mr. Gary Hall, seventy-four, who’s just out of surgery with a hip replacement,” Millsaps said. “Why don’t you take Mr. Hall this evening?”
“What happened to the John Doe?” Kratzer asked.
“That was the one we transferred up to third floor about an hour ago,” the older nurse replied, handing Kratzer the chart of Gary Hall.
Kratzer hesitated for a moment and then said, “Do you mind if I take the girl? I would feel more comfortable with the younger patient.”
“Oh, honey,” the woman said, taking off her glasses. “I’ve probably been nursing longer than you’ve been alive. Trust me, dear, they’re all the same. Don’t think that just because they’re younger, they’re easier patients to deal with.”
“It’s ok, Anne. If it makes her more comfortable, I don’t mind switching,” Tom interjected with another warm smile.
Kratzer smiled graciously as he handed her the younger woman’s chart. “Thank you, Tom.”
“Buy me a Coke later,” he replied with wink as he grabbed the older man’s chart and set off for his room.
“Like I said earlier, don’t get any ideas,” Millsaps warned. “It’s probably about time to check on the blood transfusion on your patient. Have at it.”
Kratzer quickly flipped through the chart as she gathered herself. The Jane Doe had spent nearly six hours in surgery earlier in the day having bullet and bone fragments removed. One of her kidneys had been hit and had to be removed, and she had nerve damage in her spine. Her vitals were fairly weak, but stable. She was in a medically-induced coma for the time being.
The two men standing outside the room eyed her as she approached the door. They appeared to be federal agents, but she couldn’t pinpoint which branch of government. She guessed FBI, based on their suits and demeanor.
She smiled as she walked by them and opened the door. Another agent, this one female, sat in the chair at the edge of the bed. Kratzer walked in as the woman stood. Kratzer eyed the woman’s badge clipped to her belt and handgun. The FBI shield and standard issue Glock 22 confirmed her previous guess.
“What happened to Tom?” the female agent asked.
“My name is Jessica,” Kratzer responded with a disarming smile. “I’m going to be taking care of Mrs. Doe. Tom is with another patient. How is she?”
“She’s still out,” the dark haired agent replied, sitting back down. “But she’s doing better than she was when she got here.”
“Do you know what happened to her?” Kratzer asked as she walked over to the IV and blood transfusion unit. The girl’s curly brown hair was still dirty and stuck together with blood. Her face was swollen and bruises covered her body.
“I can’t discuss that,” the woman said sternly.
“Sorry,” Kratzer replied. “Just curious.” That was all the information she needed. She was in the right room with the right patient. She pulled out a small bottle and packaged syringe from her pocket and unwrapped it.
“What’s that? I thought she couldn’t have anything while she’s getting blood?”
“This is to prevent blood clots,” Kratzer responded dismissively as she filled the syringe. “Big concern when getting blood.”
Satisfied, the agent returned to her Sudoku puzzle as Kratzer stuck the needle in the IV line and injected her patient. When she was finished, she discarded the syringe and needle in the red SHARPS container on the wall and walked out.
“I’m not feeling very well,” Kratzer said as she reached Millsaps at the nurses station. “Where’s the nearest bathroom?”
“Just outside the double doors on the left. You ok, sweetie?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Stomach bug has been going around and it may have just hit me,” Kratzer replied, clutching her stomach.
“Well don’t wait around here! Go!” Millsaps responded, shooing her away.
Kratzer nodded as she scurried out of the ICU and through the double doors.
“Those damned contract nurses,” Millsaps said, shaking her head as she picked up the chart and headed for her patient’s room.
Kratzer bypassed the bathroom and continued out toward the main corridor. As she reached the lobby, she entered the women’s room and locked the door behind her. She found the backpack she had stuffed in the upper vent a few hours prior. She pulled out her jeans and jacket and pulled the blue Florida Marlins baseball cap low over her face as she balled up her scrubs and stuffed them into the backpack.
As she reached the door of the bathroom, she heard, “CODE BLUE, I-C-U, CODE BLUE, I-C-U,” over the hospital public address system indicating a patient was coding and required a crash cart in the Intensive Care Unit.
She smiled as she unlocked the door and walked out. The Potassium Chloride she had injected into the girl’s IV line was working, and within minutes, Chloe Moss would be dead.
She had only completed fifty percent of her objectives, but for Svetlana Mitchell, that’s all that mattered. Her handler had been crystal clear – kill the girl. The secondary objective would only be a target of opportunity. It was unfortunate that they had moved him, but that was part of the game. She was sure her handler would understand, and she could always get him later if necessary.
She cleared the lobby, keeping her head low to avoid security cameras as she exited the large hospital. It was another beautiful South Florida day. She decided to spend the rest of her afternoon on the water after she collected her payout.
Chapter One
10 Miles Northeast of Al Hasakah, Syria
Present Day
2100L
Avoid. Negotiate. Kill. They were the three basic tenets of Krav Maga that his Sensei had instilled in him since day one of his training.
First, he was to avoid confrontation. Some even called it the “Nike Defense.” Running away was generally the preferred option. Living to fight another day was the highest priority, regardless of what his ego said. He had already spent the last two days practicing the art of avoidance by evading and hiding. It hadn’t worked. The commandos of the al-Nusra Front captured him after he made initial contact with Iraqi Security Forces. He had exhausted that option.
His next priority was to negotiate. Sometimes a person could talk his way out of a situation. Maybe the attacker hadn’t fully resolved his will to fight. Maybe the attacker wanted something that wasn’t worth risking life and limb over. Or maybe a person could buy enough time for help to show up. As Cal “Spectre” Martin stared down the barrel of his own confiscated Beretta 92FS 9MM at point blank range, he realized that option was also no longer on the table. The man before him, in his torn and worn out camouflaged jacket and military pants, didn’t appear to be willing to negotiate as he shouted for Spectre to read the paper the man had given him. All Spectre could do now was kill.
His ribs were sore and his face was swollen. They had not been gentle in transporting him from his holed up location in the desert of Iraq to their small village, although from what he had noticed, it wasn’t much of a village. The locals had likely been driven out as the Syrian Opposition fighters had taken it over as a base of operations. It was mostly just a few small huts, war torn buildings and small trucks with bed-mounted machine guns.
“Read! Read!” the man holding the gun to his temple shouted from behind his black wiry beard. Spectre could feel the man’s spit and hot breath hit him as he pushed the cold gun barrel into Spectre’s temple.
Spectre picked up the piece of paper and looked into the tripod-mounted camera in front of him. He was kneeling in his desert khaki flight suit. His survival vest and radio had long since been stripped from him. The zippers of his fl
ight suit pockets were starting to dig into his knees, adding to the pain.
“I can’t read this chicken scratch,” Spectre said, holding up the hand written piece of paper. He watched as the man sidestepped in front of him to see the paper. The hammer on his Beretta 92FS M9 wasn’t cocked and the safety was still on. Amateur.
“What? What you say?” the man asked in broken English as he sidestepped again and repositioned the gun to Spectre’s forehead. He was now standing between Spectre and the camera. “You read! No excuse! Or you die!”
Spectre brought the paper up to his face as if to get a better look. It was time to kill. As his hands reached his eye level, he dropped the paper and instantly grabbed the man’s right wrist with his right hand and the barrel of the gun with his left. Falling to his side while securing the weapon, he flicked off the safety, squeezed through the double action of the fourteen-pound trigger, and fired at his shocked captor. The bullet struck the man in the throat and sent him stumbling back into the camera as he gasped through his last breaths.
Spectre reset his aim for the door. The small hut had only one door, and he remembered an armed guard standing watch as his captor, presumably a leader, had taken him in to make the propaganda video. Seconds later, the door flung open as a screaming attacker rushed in. Spectre sent two rounds to the man’s chest and followed up with a round to the head as the lone man fell forward.
Scrambling to his feet, Spectre rushed to the guard’s lifeless body. He grabbed the AK-47 from his hands and found two extra magazines and a fragmentation grenade in his pocket. Shooting his way out of the village had a low probability of success, but Spectre resolved to go down fighting. He wouldn’t make the mistake of being captured again.
Spectre put the extra magazines in his flight suit along with the Beretta and readied the AK-47. He had no idea how many men were alerted by the sounds of his gunshots, but he assumed the worst. He took a deep breath and stepped out into the crisp night air. Taking cover behind a burned out car in front of him, he watched as a group of men advanced toward his position.
He tried to get a feel for his surroundings as he waited for a clear shot. He was still unclear of exactly where he was in the village and what the best route of escape was. They had kept a burlap sack over his head as they had walked him from his initial holding location to the small building where he had been held. The sack had been just worn out enough that he could barely make out guards as they shuffled him into the building. He knew he was roughly one hundred paces from his original location, but that was it.
He looked around as he crouched behind the car. He could see clear night air behind him and more huts to his left and in front of him. Fight or flight. Spectre had a decision to make. It was time to revert back to avoidance until that option was once again exhausted. He would never be able to hold his position with the combined one hundred rounds of 7.62 x 39 and 9MM for his AK-47 and Beretta 92FS.
Holding his rifle low and ready, he took off in a sprint toward the rear of the long building. As he reached the corner, rounds began peppering the walls as the men saw him. He took cover and assessed his new position. It was completely dark. Desert. He could tell by the dark abyss behind him that he had been held near the edge of the village.
Spectre held up his rifle as he peered around the corner. As one of the men reached the burned out car in front of the building, Spectre fired off two rounds that sent the man running for cover. Spectre sprinted to the opposite corner of the building. The other two men were attempting to flank his position from the opposite side. He pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it in their direction. The grenade landed between the two men, sending shrapnel and debris everywhere as it exploded.
He sprinted back to the opposite corner and took aim at the man behind the burned out car. As the man peered around the rear bumper, Spectre fired a round, hitting the man in the forehead and instantly dropping him face first into the dirt.
Spectre could hear vehicles in the distance as more men approached. He took off into the darkness, his boots kicking up sand as he sprinted through the soft desert. He could hear the yells of the rebel fighters behind him as the vehicles got closer. At this rate, he would be overrun before he reached civilization.
Clearing the first sand dune, he turned around and dropped to a prone position while taking aim toward the village. He could see two vehicles with mounted machine guns and spotlights quickly approaching the edge of the village. They were firing wildly in his direction, but in the darkness, their un-aimed shots were in vain.
Spectre cleared his weapon and checked his magazine. They would surely run him down if he kept running. It was time to make his last stand and go down swinging. At least he had made it this far.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I’d like to thank you, the reader, for taking the time to join me in the story of Cal “Spectre” Martin. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
To my Dad, thank you for always being there for me and supporting me. I would not be where I am today without your constant encouragement and support. You’ve helped me become the man, officer, pilot, and now writer that I am today. I can only hope to one day be half as good of a father as you’ve been for me.
One thing about self-publishing is that you’re pretty much on your own for the hardest part of writing – editing. For that, I am truly thankful for the help of Doug Narby. Thank you for putting up with my (often infrequent) chapters and rewrites. Your suggestions, edits, and feedback were invaluable in writing this book. I am truly grateful.
Along the same lines, I would like to thank my close friends who stood by me and listened while I went through idea after idea. Thanks for sticking it out with me.
Charlie “TBear” Guarino, your story was inspirational in writing Spectre’s story. I hope one day I’ll be reading your autobiography. It’s a great story. You’ve been an outstanding friend, mentor, and colleague. Thank you for opening the door for me to fly fighters in the military.
At the risk of leaving anyone out, I’d like to thank those that took the time to read and make suggestions for the various drafts of this book – Jack “Farley” Stewart (and a special thanks for the back cover text), Tonya Morrow, and Jim Holmes.
Finally, to all my friends and family who have supported me along the way, thank you. Without you, I would not be the man I am today. I am truly fortunate to have you all in my life.
I hope you’ll all join me as the Spectre series continues and evolves. Thanks for reading.
.
C.W. Lemoine is the author of SPECTRE RISING, AVOID. NEGOTIATE. KILL., ARCHANGEL FALLEN, EXECUTIVE REACTION, and BRICK BY BRICK. He graduated from the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in 2005 and Air Force Officer Training School in 2006. He is a military pilot that has flown the F-16 and F/A-18. He is also a certified Survival Krav Maga Instructor and sheriff’s deputy.
www.cwlemoine.com
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Also by C.W. Lemoine
Alex Shepherd
Absolute Vengeance
I Am The Sheepdog
Spectre Series
Spectre Rising
Avoid. Negotiate. Kill.
Archangel Fallen
Executive Reaction
Brick By Brick
Stand Against Evil
The Helios Conspiracy
Spectre: Origins
The Spectre Series Box Set (Books 1-4)
Watch for more at C.W. Lemoine’s site.
About the Author
C.W. Le
moine is the author of SPECTRE RISING, AVOID. NEGOTIATE. KILL., ARCHANGEL FALLEN, and EXECUTIVE REACTION. He graduated from the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in 2005 and Air Force Officer Training School in 2006. He is a military pilot that has flown the F-16 and F/A-18. He is also a certified Survival Krav Maga Instructor and sheriff’s deputy. http://www.cwlemoine.com Facebook http://www.facebook.com/cwlemoine/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CWLemoine/
Read more at C.W. Lemoine’s site.
Spectre Rising Page 29