PRIMAL Starter Box Set (PRIMAL Series)

by Jack Silkstone

  Mark held his wife tight. “I love you—”

  The 737 didn’t have a chance. Eight minutes after taking off from Ben Gurion International Airport, flight LY395 hit the ground and exploded.

  In the largest single terrorist attack in the history of Israel, 132 people were killed. The nation wept in shock, and Aden Bishop lost both the people he loved most.

  ***

  VALENCIA, SPAIN

  On the outskirts of Valencia, thunderous gray clouds loomed over the township of Montemayor. The storm had rolled in off the ocean and blocked out the late-afternoon sun. Torrential rain was lashing the countryside.

  A small crowd had gathered at a desolate hilltop cemetery, a single olive tree offering negligible protection from the wind as it howled between ancient gray headstones.

  The funeral of Mark and Estela Bishop continued despite the inclement weather. It was a modest but solemn ceremony. Five generations of Estela’s family had been buried here and the short service was steeped in tradition.

  The local Catholic priest’s cassock whipped back in the wind as rain dripped from his headdress, but he pushed on valiantly. The wind tore at the printed eulogies in the hands of the congregation. A few ripped away and gusted above the heads of mourners before colliding with the branches of the olive tree.

  Aden stood apart from his distant relatives and parents’ friends. He watched, silent, cold, and isolated. Inside, however, there was a raging maelstrom of anger, loss, and fear. The freezing rain did little to temper him.

  The icy wind brought whispered comments as mourners turned to leave the stark setting.

  “Is that Aden?”

  “Yes, the soldier… poor boy…”

  Mourners conveyed their condolences to Mark and Estela’s only son. He barely acknowledged them. Their faces were hazy childhood memories.

  “So emotionless…”

  “He was always such a quiet boy…”

  “I heard he was court-martialed for war crimes…”

  As Bishop stood silently by the muddied grave, he looked around, hoping to find a familiar face among the dwindling group. He realized he didn’t actually know any of these people and for a moment regretted not telling his close friends of the loss.

  He stood before his parents’ final resting place long after the funeral concluded. He watched on as laborers threw the last shovelfuls of mud on the grave, and the light gradually disappeared from the sky. Drenched by the unrelenting rain he stood steadfast, his only company the cold granite angels guarding the tombs of Valencia’s dead. Guilt racked his thoughts and rage numbed his mind.

  Shivering, Bishop finally tore his eyes from the headstone engraved with his parents’ names. His hair was soaked flat and streaming rivulets of water ran down into his raincoat. He needed to feel: the cold, the rain, the wind, anything. His body and his mind, all of it was numb. He turned stiffly, walking back through the downpour toward the wrought-iron gates.

  As he approached the entrance he noticed a large black car parked outside. Beside it stood a tall figure in a long dark overcoat holding an umbrella.

  A booming American voice cut through, “I’m sorry for your loss, LT.”

  He shielded his eyes from the rain, squinting to identify the man. The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t make out his features. “Who… who is it?”

  “Come on, buddy, it hasn’t been that long.” The man stepped forward, raising the big umbrella to cover them both, while his other hand grasped Bishop’s shoulder.

  “Sierra Leone, 2000, you saved a lot of lives, remember?”

  “Vance, holy shit!” Bishop whispered.

  “That’s right, buddy, the one and only.”

  “You came all the way out here?” He stared up at the imposing African American. “How did you find me?”

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on you for a while, LT.”

  For a split second Bishop’s grief was replaced with a spark of interest. “Me? Why would you be keeping tabs on me? And I’m not LT, I’m not a soldier anymore.”

  Vance raised his eyebrows.

  Then it clicked. “It was you, wasn’t it? The card, the bookstore, Susurro!”

  Vance laughed deeply, gripping Bishop’s shoulder with his huge hand. “You got it, buddy. You might not be a soldier anymore, but you’ll always be a warrior. Now how’s about we jump in this fine automobile of mine and get out of this goddamn rain.” Vance gestured toward the black sedan. “And I’ll tell you a little more about that book.”

  Bishop’s body was riddled with pain; hours of immobility in the driving wind and freezing rain had taken their toll. He was so exhausted he could barely move and just stared at Vance blankly.

  The years had not been kind to the American. His face was weathered, the dark skin drooping slightly under his neck and eyes. The man bore a passing resemblance to the actor Laurence Fishburne in the movie The Matrix. Are you playing the same game? Bishop thought. Do you want me to take the blue pill?

  “Is this where you give me the pitch?” Bishop’s voice was so flat it was barely human. “Is this where you sell the CIA to me? Give me the whole ‘You can avenge your parents’ spiel, is that it?”

  “No—”

  “I just put my parents in the ground and you’re using it as an opportunity to try and recruit me into the fucking CIA.” Tears welled in Bishop’s eyes. “I just left one political puppet show, Vance, and I’m not joining another, ever.”

  Stepping out from under the umbrella, he continued his bleak walk down the hill.

  “BISHOP! BISHOP!” Vance yelled after him.

  He lifted the collar of his jacket against the torrential rain and continued. Behind him he could hear the American’s heavy footfalls.

  “BISHOP! This isn’t about your parents. This is about you!”

  Vance slapped a vast hand on Bishop’s shoulder and stepped around to face him. The big man abandoned the umbrella and ignored the rain as it dripped off his bald head and down his collar.

  “I’ve been watching you, Bishop. Since you left the Army, I wanted you to read that book. To understand before I asked you to join.” His tone softened. “Look, I’m sorry about your parents, but this is bigger than them. It’s bigger than you and me. It’s about bringing a little justice into the world.”

  Bishop turned away, staring silently into the darkness.

  “Listen, I don’t work for the CIA anymore.”

  The Australian’s eyes were glazed.

  “Bishop.”

  “I’m not interested in contracting.” The rain had finally penetrated every layer of Bishop’s clothing from his head to his toes. Thin streams of rain ran off his eyebrows and down his nose. He shivered.

  “I don’t work for any contractors, Bishop, or any government, for that matter. I work for an organization hell-bent on bringing justice to the world, and we dance to our own tune.” Vance reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. He extended it to Bishop. Rain dripped off the card. Bishop just stared, so Vance held the card up. It read:

  PRIORITY MOVEMENTS AIRLIFT

  “Never heard of them,” Bishop said.

  Vance smiled, held him steady, and stuffed the card into his pocket. “We don’t exactly advertise what we do. A lot of very powerful people wouldn’t be particularly happy with what we get up to. Now let’s get you out of the rain.”

  Vance motioned to the car and it crept up, stopping beside them. He hauled open one of the passenger doors and guided the exhausted Australian into the dry interior.

  Once they were both seated in the back, the car glided forward. Vance pulled out a hip flask and sloshed a few inches of scotch into a steel tumbler. Bishop looked down at the liquor. Vance pushed it into his hands and with a shrug he threw it down his throat. He handed the cup back and looked the older man in the face.

  “So what is it you actually do now, Vance?”

  “Like I said, we bring a little justice to the world.”

  Bishop wiped the rain from his
face. “Like The A-Team?”

  Vance laughed. “Yeah, bud, something like that.”

  The car gathered speed.

  ***

  Download PRIMAL Unleashed here.

  PRIMAL Compendium

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  This is not an action thriller. It’s a short collection of information and concepts I put together for another project (I cannot divulge the details at this stage). I’ve tailored it based on feedback from hardcore fans so I hope you find it interesting.

  In the sections for weapons, equipment, and transport, note that they are technologically advanced for 2014. However as this document ages, what was once cutting-edge or experimental will no doubt become mainstream or obsolete.

  I recommend reading this on a tablet or computer as there are photos, diagrams, and illustrations. There are also hyperlinks for various weapons, equipment, and organizations. They link to the ‘PRIMAL intel database’ a website where I’ve provided more detail and assessment on these items of interest. All that’s needed for access is to ‘Join PRIMAL’ with your email when the pop-up request appears. The email list is used solely to inform fans of upcoming stories.

  I also recommend reading the PRIMAL stories first as the Compendium may contain spoilers.

  JS

  All that it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ___________________

  THE ORIGINS OF PRIMAL

  COVER STORY AND BASING

  ORGANIZATION AND CHARACTERS

  TARGET DEVELOPMENT

  TARGET NEUTRALIZATION

  LOGISTICS AND PROCUREMENT

  TRAINING

  WEAPONS

  TRANSPORT

  EQUIPMENT

  FUTURE

  THE ORIGINS OF PRIMAL

  Afghanistan to Barracks Life

  As an Intelligence Officer my job is to find answers to questions. For example: What is the enemy doing? Where is he hiding? What’s the most dangerous scenario? What are the enemy’s vulnerabilities? How do we destroy them? Where can I get a decent coffee in this shit hole?

  It was during a deployment to Afghanistan I posed a question to myself. How would I attack a Coalition Force patrol if I had access to cutting-edge weapons and training? While my buddies watched the sixth season of Entourage, I penned my first action scene visualizing this hypothetical. The scene imagined the destruction of a Coalition Force patrol by well-equipped Chechen Mercenaries and was my first foray into writing fiction. Those of you who have read PRIMAL Unleashed will recognize it as one of the key introduction scenes.

  After that deployment I was posted out of special operations and work became a revolving merry go round of risk management, OH&S, equity&diversity, dress and bearing, and producing briefs for senior officers with their heads in their arses. Between answering emails, sitting through soul destroying courses, and finding solace in the gym, I started to imagine a new creative concept. An independent special operations unit that fought for justice free from the constraints of bureaucracy or politics. One thing was clear; it couldn’t belong to any government. Governments are the antichrist of special ops. They’re bloated, inflexible, motivated by self-interest and generally run by simple-minded dimwits who crave power, influence, and a blowjob from an intern.

  Limitations and Failures of Government Operations

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my service and there are plenty of examples of military units and intelligence organizations doing great things. But then there are instances where outcomes could be significantly improved. Situations where politics, corruption, or money gets in the way and screws things right up.

  Allow me to outline three epic failures on the topic of ‘counter-proliferation’. Stopping ‘weapons of mass effect’ from getting into the hands of terrorists and criminals has long been a key mission for top-tier special ops units and strategic intelligence agencies. You don’t have to be Tom Clancy to understand the fear and damage a terrorist organization could do with a latest-generation man-portable air defense system (MANPADS), a compact nuclear weapon, or a canister of sarin gas.

  First, the failure of intelligence agencies to stop the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network. A.Q. Khan and his minions enabled Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons and subsequently aided Libya, North Korea, and Iran in developing their programs. Although this failure has not yet resulted in an act of terrorism involving a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), it certainly gave Pakistan political leverage despite it being one of the most significant sponsors of Islamic terrorism. A.Q. Khan’s activities were known to western intelligence agencies but the political will did not exist to effectively target his network. Limp-dicked bureaucrats once again thwarted the military imperative to strike.

  Second, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, arguably one of the most significant blunders of that decade. Using the justification of trying to capture Saddam’s ‘WMDs’, the war not only wasted resources and manpower and caused immense suffering of innocents, it was also a geopolitical disaster for the United States. The war effectively handed over influence in Iraq to Iran, and set the conditions for the resurgence of Sunni Islamic extremism in the form of ISIS.

  Third, the military intervention in Libya in 2011 created a weapons proliferation nightmare. Although Gaddafi ruled with an iron fist, he forced a semblance of order in a country dominated by power hungry douche-bags. What remains after Gaddafi is a chaotic wasteland of criminal militias and a hotbed of Islamic extremism. The optimism of the ‘Arab Spring’ turned into an ‘Islamic Winter’. Extremist militias ran rampant, tooled up with looted military-grade weapons. Key terrorist leaders were freed from Gaddafi’s prisons. Emboldened, Islamic fighters killed the US Ambassador and spilled over into neighboring countries. It sparked the crisis in Mali and fuelled the conflict in Syria. For the first time in history extremists aligned with Al-Qaeda’s ideals were able to acquire state of the art MANPADS and use them to shoot down Syrian aircraft. Unlike the missile used to shoot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over war-torn Ukraine, the FN-6 and SA-24 missiles that have proliferated into the hands of terrorists are compact and man-portable. The risk of a civilian airliner being shot down in a peaceful country just became a realistic possibility.

  These three situations are just some examples of where military or intelligence organizations have been misused as a result of political decisions or miscalculations. These sorts of scenarios helped inspire the counter-WMD story behind my first novel, PRIMAL Unleashed, and the creation of my unit of global vigilantes, PRIMAL.

  Sussurro, the Spanish Inquisition, and Air-freight Logistics

  I originally envisaged PRIMAL as a secret society with a lineage reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition. Called Sussurro, it was to be an underground team of vigilantes that originally hit back at the medieval inquisitors. Evil men that were dragging people away to deal out unjust torture and punishment, all in the name of religion. The tagline Justicia Ex Umbra, or Justice from the Shadows, seemed appropriate. Sussurro and the tagline made it into the books but they didn’t define what became PRIMAL.

  Fleshing out my concept, I settled on an acronym standing for Priority Movements Airlift. In the next section, PRIMAL’S COVER STORY AND BASES, I’ll delve into this name and how it fits within Lascar Logistics, a global air-freight company.

  Telling the Story of PRIMAL’s Origins

  The first novel, PRIMAL Unleashed, covers much of PRIMAL’s origins and key characters. However the complete origin story is told over four books. I wrote PRIMAL Origin as a short novella to introduce new readers to the series. It includes PRIMAL’s founding characters and their first mission. Later, I wrote two prequels, PRIMAL Mirza, and PRIMAL Inception, giving some insight into key characters and the development of their bent for justice. Figure 1, below, gives a timeline for these stories, the order they should be read in, and key events in the world of PRIMAL.

  Fig. 1 – Timeline of PRIMAL books and key events

&
nbsp; Synopsis of PRIMAL’s Origins

  PRIMAL was born in the United Arab Emirates. Tariq Ahmed, the son of a billionaire sheik, had a vision for a secret altruistic organization capable of righting the world’s wrongs when governments were not willing or able. Educated in America, Tariq did not subscribe to extremist ideologies and was at odds with his father’s support of Wahabi terrorist groups. A confluence of events resulted in Tariq, who was a counter-terrorism police officer, becoming opposed to his father.

  Tariq resolved the situation by manipulating two CIA paramilitary officers into assassinating his father and destroying the terrorist cell he sponsored. In exchange Tariq used his inherited wealth to finance an impartial, altruistic, special ops organization, and gave the opportunity to the CIA officers to develop and lead it.

  What followed was a period of almost ten years during which PRIMAL recruited operatives, established bases, developed intelligence capabilities and networks, and finally, commenced operations. By 2011, following the missions described in PRIMAL Unleashed, our vigilante unit achieved Full Operational Capability (FOC) and subsequently plunged headfirst into the series of missions detailed in the following PRIMAL stories.

  PRIMAL’S COVER STORY AND BASES

  Fig. 2 – Priority Movements Airlift poster featuring PRIMAL’s Il-67 ‘Pain Train’

  Cover Story

  Branding a covert organization like PRIMAL is tricky. Take US ‘tier-1’ special operations units as an example. Chances are you don’t know their current designations, and if you do you’ve probably been ‘read-on’ and signed a non-disclosure agreement. The high-speed units don’t wear patches identifying themselves and they take measures to ensure their vehicles and aircraft are difficult to identify.