by Marcus Wynne
What Others Are Saying About With A Vengeance
(some Amazon.com reviews)
"I became a die hard fan of Marcus Wynne after his first three novels and anxiously awaited "With A Vengeance." The wait was well worth it. Marcus puts you into his novels like no other can. The reader will receive a rare glimpse into the minds of both good and evil...The fight scenes in this book are the most realistic and graphic that I have read...Marcus Wynne is a been there, done that warrior from the old school... I cannot recommend this book highly enough." SOT 364
"For readers of military/LE fiction this book will be a welcome addition to their libraries. Marcus Wynne's description of CQB/CQC is a chew your lips off adrenaline rush. The weapons, technique and mindset descriptions put Brad Thor and Vince Flynn to shame. Mr. Wynne's obvious familiarity with violence lends his writing a level of authenticity unmatched by others and will satisfy the adrenaline junkie in you. Warning, the fight scenes are not for the faint of heart." T2J
"I made the mistake of sitting down to read "just the first few pages" before going to bed, and ended up having to force myself to put it down only after the sun started creeping its way through my blinds, if I was going to get even a modicum of sleep. Unlike other authors of this genre Marcus has clearly 'been there, done that and got the t-shirt'.." Nicholas Hughes
"If you go no more than 50 pages into this book you will read what terrorism truly is, in terms that are clear, lucid and absolutely frightening. I simply can't imagine how people deal with the experiences Wynne describes in such vivid detail. Picture Flight 93. Now imagine having an aisle seat." Atlanta Survivor
"Marcus Wynne fans will be delighted that he's back, literally with a vengeance, delivering the type of authentic detail that makes his books favorites with those actually in the business of violence...Early in the tale there is an attack scene aboard an aircraft, which is simply the best description of close-quarter combat I've ever read. Marcus Wynne knows the world of the gun and the knife and takes his hero through a quest for training and knowledge in the realities of combat." Dennis Martin
"Readers who find themselves throwing books across the room in disgust at the inaccuracy of action sequences written by authors with no real world experience will find this book bone crunchingly real...his ability to distill mindset into understandable terms made this book a valuable addition to my own personal self defense library... I found an unusual highlight to be the intricately detailed descriptions of the supporting characters. Immediately, you know who these people are, and you connect with them on an incredibly personal level." Seth Bailey, author of AND THE RAIN CAME DOWN
"Marcus' real-world expertise shines in this book. The weapons, the tactics, even the emotional and mental state of a modern day warrior are portrayed in such a realistic manner that you feel like you are immersed in the action... this book can be dark and violent at times but not gratuitous...once in a while a rare gem comes along that serves to remind us of the dark times we live in." Blowback 1971
"Marcus's previous books were excellent. This is even better. It's a high paced thriller that actually provides genuine thrills. The author's obvious first hand knowledge shines through in a taught tale of espionage, covert operations, terrorism and startlingly realistic depictions of close quarter action that, at points, left me sitting, staring at my computer, waiting for the adrenaline to fade so I could keep reading. I don't think there is a finer author in this genre. You need to read this book." Chris S.
"Wynne's a warrior who's survived to tell a few stories. His stories are compellingly real, the tools, techniques, and situations described often painfully so. Not just from a physical standpoint - the emotional technologies employed, and the mental constructs one experiences in trauma or war and afterwards - are all here in full regalia in a viscerally true manner. Adrenaline junkies, be aware that this fix is addicting." Christine N.
With A Vengeance
By Marcus Wynne
“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun Tzu
Copyright 2010 Marcus Wynne
License Notes
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PROLOGUE
Al-Shuhada District, Fallujah, Iraq,
8 November 2004
Operation Phantom Fury
Team Raven, Task Force 626
They came in the night to kill a man.
Hunter followed Raven, the older man’s full grey beard and hair gleaming as the three men, dressed in dark dishdashas and baggy pants like any Iraqi, slipped in and out of the faint illumination between the shattered ruins of buildings, alongside walls that gaped like shattered teeth. Behind Hunter, Alec followed silently, spinning around every few steps to check their six, his AK-47 ready at his shoulder.
They paused, crouched behind a crumpled wall, and looked across a rubble filled alley at the building they sought.
Raven held up one hand, and tilted his head to the right, listening to the tiny earpiece fastened in his ear.
Over the crump of artillery and mortars, the distant rattle of automatic fire, and the distinctive clatter of tank treads, Hunter heard, through his earpiece, the voice of the controller that flew the Predator surveillance drone circling unseen and unheard above them, it’s night vision cameras feeding real-time footage back to the controller and the mission commanders huddled around the monitors in the command and control van parked on the outskirts of the besieged city.
“Two in the alley, ten meters to your three o’clock, with longs,” the controller whispered, professionally cool.
Two men with long guns. Sentries protecting the man inside the building, the man the three Americans had come to kill.
Raven turned and looked at Hunter. The grey haired killer pointed at himself, then Hunter, then drew his finger across his neck.
You and me, we’ll take these two.
We’ll use the knives.
The steady stream of adrenaline that had been coursing through Hunter’s veins since they’d inserted, running quickly from the blacked out OH-6 that had set down for the briefest moment to let them out three blocks away, rose in a huge surge in his belly. His knees weakened, his heartbeat raced, his hands went cold, and his already empty bladder turned in an attempt to empty itself even more.
Dispassionate, almost cold, Raven watched the signs of Hunter’s adrenaline dump cross his face.
Hunter felt Alec behind him, the weight of the younger man’s attention and his barely contained disdain.
Hunter took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly, let his mind do what was necessary to be done to calibrate his state, not calm himself down, no, you need the adrenaline for killing, a little bit makes you sharper…he just needed to even it out.
Just like the Raven had taught him.
And it worked, just like everything the man had taught him did.
Hunter nodded when he was ready.
They had a suppressed pistol for sentry removal, but that wasn’t why he was here. He was here to learn, and he knew, when he agreed to come, that there would be a test here. This was the test the Raven had planned for him long ago, when they first started down the warrior’s path together: Raven the brilliant teacher, Hunter the apt pupil, back where it started, beside the river, so long ago.
Raven saw the change come over Hunter, and nodded, and that acknowledgement meant more in that instant to Hunter than all the words ever ut
tered. The older man looked out slowly, around the wall, down the alley. He readjusted his night vision goggles, and then carefully slung his AK-47 to one side. He eased his long knife out. Hunter recognized that knife. It was a custom made Retribution, lovingly crafted by the knife making genius Jerry Hossom as his gift to the warrior brotherhood in the aftermath of 9/11.
Alec prodded Hunter in the back. Hunter turned and saw the handle of another Retribution held out to him. Alec nodded at him.
Go on. Take it.
Hunter hefted the knife, felt its perfect balance poised on the forefinger of his right hand, the amazing lightness of it…when you thought, it moved; when it moved, it cut. That was the brilliance of the knife and its maker. He turned, knife in his hand, and Raven was waiting for him.
They went into the alley.
There’s a method to stalking and killing a man with a knife, a method developed by hard men over many years. The Raven wrote part of that book, and he’d taught Hunter, but there’s a world of difference between the classroom and the street…keep your mind blank, don’t look directly at your target -- it’s not a man, it’s meat to be cut -- keep your mouth open wide, so your breath is silent…all those techniques are necessary so that nothing you do trips the sixth sense of the human you’re inching up on, setting your foot down carefully, toe first, then easing it down flat, feeling for anything under foot that might make the slightest noise, but most of all cloaking your intention, because there’s a deep part of the brain, the ancient reptile brain, that feels hostile intention…
The two sentries chatted together, bored, shifting from foot to foot, while a battle raged not a mile from where they stood, and from time to time they paused, when there was a particularly loud, bright flash from an explosion in the distance.
In the luminous green of the night vision goggles, they looked otherworldly, not really human, and to Hunter they were no longer human, that’s part of the process…turn off the part of you that recoils at hurting humans and bring out the part that moves to eliminate the target…and as he closed on the sentry Hunter calibrated his body position, his shifting stance, and all of that went into the visualization that ran simultaneously with his approach, the little movie in his mind of how it needed to play out, he was both in the moment and visualizing exactly what he needed to do…keep your focus off them, because that’s what the human animal responds to, focused attention means intention and intention means danger.. and now, tonight, it means death.
Raven and Hunter hit the sentries simultaneously, moving like two machines with one mind, one will. To Hunter, it was as though Raven was driving them both; Hunter heard his mentor’s voice in his head, telling him what to do: explode forward, his left hand and forearm wrapping high around the sentry’s head (keep the underside of your arm facing OUT, Hunter, protect your brachial artery from your own knife), yanking back the head to expose the neck while you stomp the sentry’s right knee down and at the instant he buckles you slam your own foot down in a drop step that drives the long knife into the right side of the neck, straight in, twist it and cut out the front (not like the movies, Hunter, where you hold his mouth and saw across, you’ll cut your hand or your face or both if you do it that way, this way your off hand is clear of your blade line, and you cut to the front so you won’t be blinded by arterial spray) and what Hunter would never, ever forget was the sound, the crunch of the razor edged knife slicing through the cartilage of the trachea and then the wet hiss of arterial spray as all the vessels, great and small, in the neck opened…
And just as Raven had told him, the man shivered, his hands dropped as he slipped into unconsciousness as the shock and loss of blood took him, and Hunter counted off the remaining seconds of his life with the slowing beat of the spray from the massive wound.
Hunter dragged his target deeper into the alley, laid him down, then stood back and looked at the man he’d just killed.
Raven looked at him, grave and expressionless. A fine spray of blood dotted the older man’s face and beard. It seemed strangely black in the luminous green of the night vision. Raven stooped over Hunter’s kill and dipped his first two fingers in the fresh blood. Then he traced a line on Hunter’s forehead, and down each cheek.
“First blood, Hunter,” Raven whispered. “Welcome to the club.”
PART I: CROSS THE SEA UNDER CAMOUFLAGE
“The perception of perfect preparation leads to relaxed vigilance. The sight of common occurrences leads to slackened suspicion. Thus secret machinations are better concealed in the open than in the dark, and extreme public exposure often contains extreme secrecy.” The Thirty-Six Stratagems
Chapter One
On the day she was to die, while seated in the boarding area of Gate 10 of Concourse A in Chicago’s Midway Airport, Christy Confetti actually spoke to the man who would later cut her throat. It was like Christy to be friendly; she was newly single since Ron had dumped her, a little vulnerable still, but looking, which was why her pal Kara had convinced her it was a good time to get out of Chicago and come out to Seattle. Christy had never been there before, though she kept the picture postcards Kara sent her taped up on the icebox in her little, neatly kept apartment. She liked the sun on the water and the boats and the thought of seeing dolphins racing alongside the ferries was a pleasant one. So it was a good day to travel, and it never hurt to be friendly, did it? She thought the man sitting next to her was a nice looking guy, dark and handsome. Christy liked that exotic look. Middle Eastern or Spanish maybe, lean and in shape, a gold chain hung around his muscled neck, open collared shirt under an expensive suit. Very nice eyes, dark brown, piercing, but with a softness under them that made her wonder if he’d been hurt in his life. He looked like that. Wounded. She knew how that felt.
She took out her compact and checked her make-up, touched up her lip-gloss. She was pleased with what she saw: an expensive hair cut, a nice facial. Her clothes were just right for travel: tailored slacks that showed off her aerobicized rear end, a nice silk blouse with a high neck, a little modest, like her. Christy put away her compact, turned to the man, tilted her head to one side and said, “So! Are you going to Seattle on business?”
He seemed lost in thought, and her question jarred him. He considered her for a long moment before he answered. “Business and pleasure.”
She liked the way he smiled when he said pleasure.
“Really?” she said. “What do you do?”
“I’m a musician,” he said. He nodded at the mandolin case in the seat beside him. “In a band. We’re playing at a mosque in Seattle.”
“Really? Is it like an Arab band?”
The man looked away, a faint smile on his lips. “We are Syrian.”
“Oh.” Christy smiled to cover her confusion. “Isn’t that like Arab?”
“Yes.” His voice was cool. “It’s like Arab.”
His body language was eloquent when he turned away from her, and while Christy didn’t consider herself a book-smart person, she was well educated in the school of people reading. The hurt was plain on her face, but she smiled. Better to be polite than to stoop to someone else’s level, that was her motto, so she buried herself in a romance novel she’d tucked into her carry-on, and ignored her seat mate, and the rest of his band.
But many of her fellow passengers in the crowded boarding area were keenly aware of the seventeen Middle Eastern men waiting to board. Some shot suspicious looks at the men; others studiously ignored them; some counted them off, over and over; some whispered among themselves. The Syrian band members stood in isolated knots, occasionally speaking to one another, and from time to time turned and surveyed the densely packed gate area as though looking for someone.
June Huizar looked exactly like what she was: a stylish Hispanic professional in a black tailored Armani pant suit, a look well suited to one of Chicago’s finest trial attorneys. Her peers, and those unfortunate enough to confront her in the courtroom, often remarked on her street fighter’s savvy. They didn’t know
how true to the mark that was, because June, in many things, kept her own counsel and her past to herself, and, once upon a time, she’d counted among her friends in the Central Los Angeles neighborhood she’d survived members of a number of infamous street gangs. She was tough and smart and street wise, and that street sense was driving her crazy right now.
June didn’t get to where she was at by sitting still.
She went to the ticket counter and said in her most professional voice, “I wish to speak to the station manager.”
The ticket agent, a tired, prissy looking white man with a thinning fringe of blond perm, said, “Can I help you with something?”
“Yes,” June said. “I would like you to get the station manager here. And also a TSA representative.”
“What is this about?”
June smiled tightly. “I would like to speak to them about this group of Arabs. On this flight.”
“What group would that be, ma’am?” the ticket agent said, a hint of sufferance in his voice.
“The group you can see as plain as day. The station manager, please.”
“Is there a problem?”
June’s temper rose. “Hellloooo? Anybody home? 9/11? Groups of Arab men hijacking planes? Ring a bell?”
“Ma’am, they’ve been through screening. It’s discriminatory to single out passengers because of race…it’s against the law.” He curled his lip. “You might be sensitive to that.”
“That might be a racist comment,” June said. “The station manager. Now.”
The ticket agent hung his head in defeat, and picked up a phone.
1
Amy Prescott, 32 year old mother and newly minted divorcee, hurried down the concourse to Gate A-10 just as fast as a mother could go when towing a 3 1/2 year old boy. She came to a sudden halt when they came abreast with a hot pretzel stand.