From the Back Cover
FROM USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR J. ROBERT KENNEDY
WHO DO YOU TRUST WHEN YOUR COUNTRY TURNS AGAINST ITSELF?
America is in crisis. Dozens of terrorist attacks have killed or injured thousands, and worse, every single attack appears to have been committed by an American citizen in the name of Islam.
A stolen experimental F-35 Lightning II is discovered by CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane in China, delivered by an American soldier reported dead years ago in exchange for a chilling promise.
Chinese Special Forces Officer Lee Fang overhears a conversation that sends her running for her life with information about a threat to America so great, it might be powerless to stop it.
And Chris Leroux is forced to watch as his girlfriend, Sherrie White, is tortured on camera, under orders to not interfere, her continued suffering providing intel too valuable to sacrifice.
From USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy comes a disturbing action thriller that will have readers on the edge of their seat as they try to unravel the truth along with Kane, Leroux and Delta Team-Bravo as they question their own beliefs, their own government, and their own country.
About J. Robert Kennedy
USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy has been ranked by Amazon as the #1 Bestselling Action Adventure novelist based upon combined sales. He is the author of over twenty international bestsellers including the smash hit James Acton Thrillers series of which the first installment, The Protocol, has been on the bestseller list in the US and UK since its release, including occupying the number one spot for three months.
He lives with his wife and daughter and writes full-time.
"If you want fast and furious, if you can cope with a high body count, most of all if you like to be hugely entertained, then you can't do much better than J Robert Kennedy."
Amazon Vine Voice Reviewer
Find out more at www.jrobertkennedy.com.
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Books by J. Robert Kennedy
The James Acton Thrillers
The Protocol
Brass Monkey
Broken Dove
The Templar's Relic
Flags of Sin
The Arab Fall
The Circle of Eight
The Venice Code
Pompeii's Ghosts
Amazon Burning
The Riddle
Blood Relics
The Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers
Rogue Operator
Containment Failure
Cold Warriors
Death to America
The Delta Force Unleashed Thrillers
Payback
Infidels
The Detective Shakespeare Mysteries
Depraved Difference
Tick Tock
The Redeemer
Zander Varga, Vampire Detective Series
The Turned
DEATH TO AMERICA
A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller
Book #4
by
J. Robert Kennedy
DEATH TO AMERICA
By J. Robert Kennedy
Copyright ©2014 J. Robert Kennedy
Smashwords Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Edition
1.1
Table of Contents
The Novel
Acknowledgements
Thank You from the Author
Newsletter
About the Author
Also by the Author
For fifteen year old Aziza Hamid who showed me what true terror looks like. I hope you never feel fear again like you did that day.
“Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
Benjamin Franklin, November 11, 1755
PREFACE
The technologies described in this book exist. They are used on a daily basis to protect the United States and its allies from aggressors, both foreign and domestic. When dealing with those foreign threats, we are able to use all of the tools in our arsenal, however when dealing with domestic threats, the Constitution often hinders those who would protect the citizens of what many consider the freest country in the world.
What you are about to read raises an important question:
What happens when the domestic threat is so grave, that it can only be addressed by ignoring the very rights guaranteed to every American, the very tenets that built the greatest nation on Earth?
In today’s day and age of constant vigilance, of constant fears over terrorism, what would happen if the fight, now centered in lands so far away many can’t find them on a map, were to tomorrow suddenly appear on the streets of Detroit, New York City, or Miami? Would the average person cling to their liberties, guaranteed to them for over two centuries by successive democratically elected governments, or would they demand their government violate those freedoms, under the belief that “if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve nothing to hide.”
If we were faced with an evil so terrifying, just how willing would we be to let our government violate our rights to save us?
1301 Second Avenue, Seattle, Washington
Today
Peter Jackson pulled at his longish hair, slowly letting the strands slip though his fingers, the massaging action on the scalp actually a good stress reliever he had discovered in his youth.
But Marybeth does it the best.
He smiled as he remembered the first time she had sat behind him at his favorite watering hole and whispered in his ear.
“Stressed much?”
“Hmmm,” he had nodded, his eyes half closed.
“Let me help.”
And she had stood in the middle of the bar giving him a scalp massage which included the pulling of his hair, something he had never experienced before, and it was wonderful.
No, it was amazing!
It was almost erotic in its delivery, her large breasts looming over him every time he looked up at her, she smiling down at him. But alas, it wasn’t to be. She definitely wasn’t his type, some new age Goth type, he a straitlaced hi-tech wonk struggling to climb the corporate ladder. Not to mention the fact her boyfriend Mike was huge. And a friend.
I wonder whatever happened to her?
He pulled his hair some more as the phone demanded his attention. He hit the speaker, his office door closed, his latest rung climbed garnering him a life outside the cubicle.
Life is good!
“Go for Pete!”
“Is this Mr. Peter Jackson?”
His heart leapt in his chest then stopped, the voice almost mechanical, robotic. Like something from the movies, yet something he had never heard in real life.
And it had to be one of his frie
nds playing a gag on him.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Peter Jackson of forty-two Seventy-Eighth Lane?”
He decided to play along as a smile spread across his face. “Yes.”
“You have a wife named Connie and a daughter Elizabeth?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes.” The smile was gone, the creepiness factor amping up. “Who is this? Is this Dave?”
His buddy Dave Brooklyn was a practical joker, one of the funniest bastards he’d ever met, especially once he had half a dozen brewskies in his system. But bringing his wife and kid into this was starting to cross a line he didn’t think even Dave would dare.
“Mr. Jackson, your identity has been confirmed. You have been drafted by the Caliphate Restoration Army of Mohammad. You are now under our command. If you want no harm to come to your wife Connie or your daughter Elizabeth, you will follow our instructions exactly.”
Jackson’s chest tightened as he stood, staring at the phone. “Okay, listen, whoever this is, this is no longer funny. I’m hanging up now.”
He reached for the button when the monotone voice replied. “If you terminate the call, we will execute your wife and child.” Suddenly the voice changed and he paled, dropping into his seat as he grabbed the phone from its cradle.
“Daddy? Is that you?”
“Yes, sweetheart, are you okay?” Tears filled his eyes as he realized this was no longer a joke, no longer a prank that had crossed the boundaries of good taste.
His daughter’s voice disappeared, replaced by the mechanical monster that had kidnapped his family. “You are about to receive a package. You will sign for it without indicating to the delivery man that anything is wrong.”
“When?”
“Now.” There was a knock at his office door and he jumped in his seat, nearly shitting his pants. “No tricks, Mr. Jackson, we know everything you are doing. Put the phone back on speaker.”
“No tricks,” he repeated, activating the speaker phone and returning the handset to its cradle. He wiped his eyes dry and took a deep breath. “Come in!”
The door opened and a FedEx driver stepped inside. “Good morning, sir, I’ve got a package here for you.” He lifted it off the dolly and placed it on the corner of Jackson’s desk. Jackson took the handheld computer from the driver and signed, all the while his eyes flitting between the large package and the man, trying to get a sense of whether or not he was in on it.
But he’s our regular guy!
Jackson had no idea what his name was.
Johnson. It’s on his name tag, you idiot.
He knew he had seen Johnson on dozens of occasions, if not hundreds. An office like this had FedEx coming almost every day, and he was their regular deliveryman.
“Careful, it’s marked fragile,” said Johnson with a smile as he closed the door behind him.
Jackson stood by the box. Nothing too large, perhaps the size of a case of bottled beer. “I’ve got the package.” His voice was subdued, broken. Everything up until the arrival of the package had made the entire experience almost surreal with the possibility it could still be a joke, one that his wife had enlisted their daughter’s help in playing.
But knowing exactly to the moment when a FedEx package would arrive?
That made it real.
Unless they’re in the office?
“Open the box, very carefully.”
Jackson retrieved a letter opener from his top-right desk drawer and cut the tape sealing the box, all the while looking out his office’s large, glass walled windows to see if he could spot someone watching him.
Nothing.
And when he folded open the lids, he realized immediately that this was no joke.
And he was in desperate trouble.
“Take off your suit jacket and put on the vest. Carefully. Whatever you do, do not press the red button on the detonator.”
Jackson was shaking now, his entire body barely clinging to reality as his world threatened to collapse around him. He pushed the box away from him, stepping back as his arms stretched out, looking for something to support himself with. He felt the smooth, cool finish of his office door and pushed back against it, wedging his shoulder blades into the corner as his eyes fixated on the open box perched on the corner of his desk.
A suicide vest!
He had seen them in the movies, on TV shows, and of course on the news.
But never in person.
And never had he thought he’d ever have the opportunity.
Not in America.
Not in his home town.
This is insane!
“Remove your jacket, Mr. Jackson.”
His eyes tore away from the box, settling on the phone for only a moment, then returning to the impossible, the unbelievable.
“I won’t ask again, Mr. Jackson.”
How can they know what I’m doing?
He pulled his left arm out of its sleeve, shrugging the jacket off his shoulders, his entire body shaking freely now. Hanging the jacket on the back of the door, he approached the box and looked inside. Suddenly his blinds all closed, sending him to the corner again. He looked at the panel on the corner of his desk, one of the coolest features of his new office. It allowed him to open and close the blinds, dim the lights, control his Bluetooth connected iPhone, it playable through the speakers in the ceiling.
And now it was being used against him.
Which meant they had full access to the corporate network somehow.
Who are these people?
“Now gently remove the vest from the box. Be careful not to touch the red trigger.”
Jackson approached the box, arms outstretched as if he were a zombie and the box contained brains. He gripped the sides, his head held high so he wouldn’t have to look inside, then, taking a deep breath, he looked. And again felt his chest tighten like a vise.
Reaching inside, he carefully picked up the vest, it literally that. No sleeves, open at the front. It looked like something hunters might wear as an extra layer to keep their torso warm but their arms free to shoot. Sewn into the front and back were long red tubes, taped in place, the thread securing them, and at the top of the tubes were wires all leading to a cluster and a rectangle hidden by more black tape, stitched in place. From the rectangle a single wire, rolled in tape disguising whether or not it was actually a single wire, stretched for about two feet, ending in a tube with a red button at the end.
That must be the detonator.
“Put it on, now.”
He nodded, to whom he did not know, but he was certain he was on some sort of camera. With the blinds closed, it had to be something in his office.
Unless they have some sort of thermal camera!
As he eyed the room around him, looking for anything out of the ordinary, he gingerly pushed his right arm through the hole in the vest, then carefully pulled it up to his shoulder. He slowly reached for the detonator, and held it securely, making certain his thumb was nowhere near the button. Sliding his other arm into the vest, he breathed a sigh of relief, grabbing the edge of the desk for support. His knuckles white, he lowered his head and took several deep breaths.
He needed to figure a way out of this, but he was at a loss. His mind was barely processing anything now, fear gripping him completely as if he were slowly being wrapped in a roll of cellophane from chest to feet, with each layer fewer and fewer options remained for escape.
“Now remove the ski mask from the box and put it over your head.”
This is really happening!
He opened his eyes and looked back in the box. A black ski mask sat face up, staring back at him, the hollow eyes seemingly peering into his very soul.
Are you really going to let them kill you? To kill others?
At this point he didn’t care about himself, he only cared about his wife and daughter. He knew where this was heading. They were going to send him out into public and force him to detonate the vest. Which could kill dozens of people. Innocent peopl
e. People who had wives and daughters of their own.
You can’t do this!
“Now, Mr. Jackson.”
He reached in and grabbed the mask, gently letting the trigger dangle at his side as he quickly pulled the oppressive wool knitting over his face. He adjusted it so he could see and breathe through the holes provided.
But it still felt claustrophobic.
He could feel his hair, matted in place, already beginning to sweat, the beads of salty discharge trickling down his neck, then his spine. He wondered if it might short circuit the vest if he were to get too sweaty. His heart skipped a beat, wondering if that meant it just wouldn’t work, or if it could go off on its own.
“Very good, Mr. Jackson. We are almost done. Now take the sign from the box, and place it around your neck.”
Another look and his eyes filled with tears as he realized what exactly he was being drafted into. What had they called themselves? His mind raced, trying to remember the words spoken only moments before, the entire conversation a mere fog of memory. Caliphate Restoration Army of Mohammad. They were Islamists. That much was now clear as he retrieved the cardboard sign at the bottom, a string tied off on the top two corners through holes that looked like they had been punched through with a knife and a twist.
The text on it, three simple words, sent chills up and down his spine.
DEATH TO AMERICA.
It was a slogan he had heard a thousand times, a popular refrain from the brainwashed masses of the Muslim world as they burned American flags and effigies of whatever American president happened to be in power at the time, at whatever perceived affront their religious leaders had told them America had committed yet again. Before 9/11 he had paid it little mind, the Iran hostage crisis before his time, the news and world politics a boring thing his dad paid attention to. But after 9/11 he had been enraged like everyone else, cheering the troops on as they exacted our country’s revenge on those who would attack us so brazenly.
Death to America (A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller, Book #4) Page 1