Clean Kill

by Jack Coughlin

  Kyle pointed to his own chest and the crew chief struggled over, stepping around the other guys’ boots. “I’m Swanson,” he yelled when the crew chief approached. “What’s up?”

  “Wait one,” the sergeant called out, handing over a flight helmet containing a radio.

  Kyle pulled the little microphone arm into a speaking position and adjusted the cushioned ear pieces into place. The crew chief flipped a switch, turned a knob, and gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Gunny Swanson?” the pilot’s voice was clear, despite the racket, and almost casual in tone. For the SOAR crew, this quick mission was a total milk run and they were all relaxed. No one had shot at them.

  “That’s me,” said Kyle.

  “We won’t be taking you to the FOB. After your team was on the map again, the brass changed our flight plan. We’re to deliver you straight to Bagram.”

  Swanson exhaled in disappointment. Military regulations were looser at a forward operating base, while the huge Bagram facility meant rules and regulations, even though they would be sticking close to the special operations compound. “Any idea why?”

  “Nope. Just that a lot of people have been asking about you guys during the past couple of days and were getting pretty antsy. Lots of shit happened while you were out of pocket, partner. When your radio didn’t respond, a VIP flew and really started kicking ass.”

  “Batteries got wet. Radio didn’t work.”

  The unseen pilot laughed. “Yeah. That does seem happen on these recon missions. What about your emergency radio?”

  “Radios don’t work well up in those mountains.”

  The pilot laughed again. “Well, you can explain all about it in person to the head cheese in just a little while.”

  “Who’s the VIP?” He had visions of some Pentagon staff puke running around with papers that had Kyle’s name on them.

  “One of your own Trident people. Major Sybelle Summers, her own pretty little rotten self,” the SOAR pilot said. “I’d like to tell you more about what’s happening, but she ordered me to keep my mouth shut and I’d rather remarry my second ex-wife again than disobey Major Summers. So we are just dropping you off and getting gone.”

  “Roger. Don’t blame you a bit. Out.” Kyle peeled off the flight helmet and tossed it back to the crew chief. Sybelle? She’s supposed to be at the White House. What the hell?

  T HERE WAS A PALPABLE sense of tension when the bird entered the air space around Bagram. Not a shot had been fired, but pre-battle nerves stretched taut as the Marines picked up on the strange and familiar feeling that something was going on. The Dark Horse helicopter leaned into a circling pattern. Special ops helicopters were never put on hold during a landing; they always go straight in, touch down in their private habitat, and hurry out of sight. Now the MH-47 was in a stack, for the skies were thick with allied aircraft. Fighters, bombers, tankers, passenger planes, and other helicopters howled about, both inbound and outbound. During the time that the Trident guys had been out of contact, the world apparently had changed beneath their boots.

  Finally, the huge helicopter’s number was called and the SOAR pilot took them in, flared and touched the tarmac. The ramp lowered and the Trident Marines stepped off, grimacing in the bright desert sun. The runway was crowded, the sky busy. In the distance they could see troops marching.

  Joe Tipp shaded his eyes for a better look. “Jeez. It’s the day after 9/11 all over again.”

  Travis Stone, who had slept on the flight, yawned, stretched. “Look at all that shit. Makes a man feel kind of small.”

  “That’s because you are small.” Tipp gave him a friendly shove.

  Sybelle Summers threw open the door of a nearby Humvee and got out, adjusting her narrow sunglasses. She wore a plain dark blue baseball cap, tan BDUs and desert boots, and looked like just another soldier or Marine except there were no name strips on her tunic or her butt. She walked to the team and nobody saluted. Task Force Trident was an odd organization. Rank was only acknowledged in public places. Otherwise, it was the equality and respect of first names.

  “Hey, guys,” she said. No smile. “Glad you’re all back okay.”

  “Jest a regular ole recon,” said Joe Tipp. “Nothin’ special.”

  “You can cut the crap, Joe. General Middleton briefed me, and I’m back in the loop as Trident ops officer again. Anyway, your raid is so-well, yesterday-that it has become about the lowest item on the totem pole.” As the helo powered back up and the rotor downdraft created cycles of sand and wind, she led them all over to the Humvee to wait until the bird lifted away.

  In the idle interval, Sybelle eyed them all. Tired but still ready to rock. Each man had been handpicked, but she would immediately get rid of anyone she did not think was up to a job. Trident was not for sissies.

  In the early days of the war on terror, certain powerful people in Washington recognized an opportunity when the various federal security agencies were being shuffled to better deal with the new challenge facing the United States. After a series of private meetings with President Tracy at Camp David, a small organization was created to aggressively carry the fight to the enemy through unorthodox methods, and it was named Task Force Trident. It was a hybrid; not strictly military, although its offices were in the Pentagon; nor was it civilian, although it could draw whatever resources were needed, from analysts to hardware, from any branch of the government. It did not have a budget.

  On official organizational flow charts, Trident was given a little box somewhere under the broad black umbrella of MARSOC, lost in the secret labyrinth of special operations, down among such common things as beans and bullets. On a final Sunday of discussion at Camp David, President Tracy authorized the unit with a presidential finding. Because the potential was great that such a team might be misused for political gain, he implemented strict caveats: Only he would give the orders. By necessity, Steve Hanson, his chief of staff, knew about Trident, as did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. No one else. The secretary of state was not in the loop, so that office would have deniability if some Trident mission went sideways. Congressional leaders were not included because their staff members leaked like wet noodles.

  The idea for the bold new organization had come to President Tracy as he studied the exploits of a relentless warrior named Kyle Swanson, who had overcome incredible odds to brazenly rescue a kidnapped Marine general in Syria. Valuable and very expendable, Swanson would be the point man, a lightly controlled renegade running operations that were far off the books, and hunting terrorists in distant pastures.

  Major General Bradley Middleton, the officer whom Swanson had pulled out of Syria, was put in command of Task Force Trident and answered directly to the president of the United States. If Swanson needed something, he just hollered up the stovepipe, and he would get it.

  Middleton intentionally kept the task force as small as possible to avoid attention. He brought in the tough, beautiful, and uniquely talented Sybelle Summers as operations officer. A Recon legend, Master Gunnery Sergeant O.O. Dawkins was drafted to handle general administration. And reaching beyond the Corps, Middleton snared Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman of the Navy, a technical genius. Freedman was called the Wizard at the Naval Academy, a nickname that his Marine co-workers quickly changed to “Lizard.” The team would plus-up as needed with specialists picked for exact missions.

  Everyone in Trident knew their real job was to support Kyle Swanson and help him inflict maximum pain and damage on the enemies of the United States. Almost from the moment it was activated, Kyle and Trident had stayed busy with targets who thought they were untouchable, and even taking down the demented terrorist named Juba, who detonated high-casualty biochemical bombs in London and San Francisco.

  There was never any lack of work, and as the sound of the rotors faded at Bagram, there was going to be even more.

  “I ’VE GOT BAD NEWS, gang,” Summers said. “The Israeli-Saudi peace pro
cess has been literally blown all to hell.” She removed her glasses and stared at Kyle. “Terrorists hit the private reception for the main players two nights ago with a couple of TOW missiles. Seventeen dead, including Secretary of State Waring and his wife, and the foreign ministers of Israel and Great Britain. More wounded, including Prince Abdullah.”

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed Darren Rawls. “Did they get the bastards who did it?” He turned suddenly, in time to see Kyle drop his backpack and collapse on it, staring up at Sybelle with a look of fright on his face. Rawls had never seen such a change in the man’s iron character.

  “Yeah. It was a four-man suicide squad. It gets worse. The attack apparently was the trigger for a coup attempt in Saudi Arabia. Low-grade fighting is going on throughout the country.”

  Kyle had his face in his hands. The party! He had warned Jeff about the impossible security situation up on that hill! “Fuck all that. What about Pat and Jeff?”

  She took a knee beside him and lowered her voice. “Both injured, but alive. Pat is going to be okay because Jeff managed to throw her under a table and covered her with his own body. He’s hurt bad.”

  The other five members of the Trident team looked at each other for a moment, then down at their two leaders, and back into the sky full of planes…it all began to make sense. It wasn’t just another 9/11: It might be the start of World War III. Rawls asked, “So what are we supposed to do, Sybelle? And why aren’t you still at the White House?”

  “I hated the job, so the president and Middleton decided to put me back on temporary duty with Trident. We might balloon up to a full-sized platoon of dirty fighters like you people and be ready to do whatever Middleton is assigned.”

  “So are we going to rotate back to the States?”

  She handed Rawls a thick manila envelope filled with orders and vouchers. “No. You guys will be the nuggets around which we all will build the new strike team. You have a few hours to get cleaned up, grab some chow, and sleep before your plane leaves for Kuwait. Someone will meet you on the other end and take you to a special ops camp where we will be putting this thing together. I’ll follow soon.”

  Swanson stood, and so did she. “I’m going to see Pat and Jeff before I go back anywhere else,” he said. It was not a request.

  “I know,” she said. “Me, too.”

  8

  S YBELLE SPED THE H UMVEE out of the Special Ops area and along the perimeter road to the complex of big hangars alongside Bagram’s 10,000-foot runway. Waiting inside one, out of sight, was a Cessna Citation X, with its two Rolls Royce jet engines already idling at a soft whistle. The swept-wing aircraft with the high tail wore the markings of Excalibur Enterprises, Ltd., entirely white but for two slim dark blue stripes along the sides and the gold corporate symbol. It was another of Sir Jeff’s toys, a luxury mid-sized business executive jet being flown today by a pair of pilots from the commando arm of Britain’s Royal Air Force.

  They dumped the Humvee and jogged up the stairs into the lap of luxury, each grabbing a cold beer from the galley before plopping into cream-colored seats across the standup aisle. A crewmember looked back to check that they were buckled in, and the plane rolled. The protective shade of the hangar gave way to the bright sun and the aircraft took its place at the end of the taxiway, third in line for takeoff behind an AC-130 Spectre gunship and a giant C-141B Starlifter transport. Moments later, the engines whined louder, the brakes were released, and the Citation X slipped away from the ground.

  Kyle and Sybelle drank their beers but said little while the plane climbed to 37,000 feet, banked to the west, accelerated to a comfortable pace of Mach.92, about 600 miles per hour, and began chewing up the time zones. Kyle went into the curtained dressing area in the rear of the cabin, got out of his Afghan outfit, did a towel wash in the basin and changed into fresh clothes that had been placed there for him. Sybelle took her turn changing while Kyle opened fresh beers. Both now wore tan slacks, white running shoes and socks, and white polo shirts that were embroidered with the Excalibur gold emblem on the right chest. A casual observer would see just two more workers from somewhere within Sir Jeff’s multinational corporation. They were a couple of spooks hiding in plain sight.

  An entertainment center at the front of the cabin doubled as a secure communications console, and Sybelle closed the door to the flight cabin and called the Trident headquarters office at the Pentagon. The face of Benton Freedman, his black hair rumpled, appeared on the big flat screen. On his own screen, he could see Summers and Swanson. “Hello, Kyle. Welcome back,” Freedman said.

  “Hey, Lizard,” Kyle responded.

  “Is General Middleton around?” Sybelle asked.

  “No. He’s been dashing all over Washington from the White House to Foggy Bottom to the Hill. I’ll tell him that you checked in. I assume you are on your way to London, and not coming directly back here?”

  “You assume right,” Kyle said.

  The Lizard picked up some papers, glanced at them, put them aside, found a tablet, and read the notes. “I’ve been in touch with Delara Tabrizi over there and she is arranging transport so you can drive straight to the clinic. A package will be waiting with everything you need, including FBI creds. Kyle, there has been no change in the conditions of the Cornwells. Sir Jeff is scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning for a head wound and to pick out chunks of shrapnel that peppered his lower spinal area. Both legs are broken.”

  “How’s Delara?” Kyle asked. It was not a well-kept secret that he and the strikingly beautiful Iranian woman were lovers.

  “She got through the attack with some minor scrapes and I don’t think she has slept since then. She’s worn out, but refuses to leave them.”

  Kyle nodded. “I’ll make her get some rest. She’s the one person we cannot have keeling over from exhaustion. Can you give us a SitRep on Saudi Arabia?”

  “Not over this clear channel. Just tune in Sky News and the BBC, and as usual, al Jazeera is getting cameras into places that others cannot. The Saudi government insists that everything is under control. It is obviously getting messy.” The Lizard stared at the pinhole camera on the edge of his computer screen. “Sybelle, your former boss is very unhappy with what is happening over there.”

  He let the oblique reference dangle in empty air.

  “Yeah. I’m sure he is,” she said. “Tell the general the rest of the team is heading back to the base as planned. We’ll contact you again right after we see the Cornwells.”

  “Right. Give them my best.” Freedman clicked off the transoceanic call.

  Kyle bit his lip in thought. “I think the Lizard was saying that the president may be planning some sort of military response. He can’t stand by and let the Saudi government fall.”

  Sybelle typed on a small computer built into the narrow polished wood shelf that ran along the fuselage beside her seat, and Googled up SAUDI ARABIA OIL. Too many items to read, so she turned it off. “Losing that country would be ten times worse than losing Iraq. It would unhinge the entire global economy.”

  Swanson yawned, stretched his legs. “And the Russkies aren’t going to politely stand aside if we make a grab for the oil patch, and everybody in the Middle East already hates the Russians. The Chinese will be watching, and every country in NATO. Toss in the Indians, for good measure, which also would mean Pakistan.”

  “So who’s the enemy?” Sybelle kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet beneath her.

  “Everybody.” Kyle said. He closed his eyes, turned off his mind, and went to sleep.

  9

  MOSCOW

  A LOW, STEELY GRAY Ferrari F430 Spyder with the top down ripped crossed the cobblestones of Red Square and dashed through a gate in the tall brick wall of the Kremlin. In a metropolis where ransom kidnappings of rich men were commonplace, this driver moved freely.

  His safety was born from the union of respect and fear and security forces, and Russian President Andrei Vasiliyvich Ivanov was untouchable. As the best criminal dyna
sties always do, his family had a history of adapting to the times, no matter whether a ruthless Stalin or a reformer like Gorbachev ran the state. With the collapse of communism thirty years earlier, they became the cutting edge of the violent and bloody mafiya, then anticipated the oncoming typhoon of capitalism and embraced it. His father took that same sense of unrelenting toughness into the emerging private oil business, one uncle became a media magnate, and another was a venture capitalist who helped start fledgling businesses only to later take them over. It was a powerful combination.

  Young Andrei was sent into politics with a purpose, plenty of money, the backing of important allies, and an overreaching hubris. Assuming the role of a populist, he was generous and kind and was adored by common Russians. Bad things happened to anyone who challenged him.

  He was not a foolish man, however, and although he drove alone, a large SUV brimming with bodyguards and automatic weapons trailed sluggishly at a respectful distance in the Spyder’s wake. Andrei packed a holstered Makarov pistol and a submachine gun was beneath the seat of his car. Forty-four years old, single, muscular, and healthy, he seemed to possess limitless energy and could work for hours on end. He had been at it until after midnight and now it was just after lunchtime. The clocks seemed to always cheat him.

  As if fate had written his name in big letters, Ivanov had found the right place at the right time. Only a year earlier, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had surprised everyone by appointing young Ivanov to be president of the Russian Republic, expecting to have a useful puppet. Then the old man was unexpectedly forced to the sidelines by a mild stroke. Instead of being just a political figurehead, Alexei was thrust into the job of actually running the country and he responded with vigor and determination. While Putin struggled to regain his ability to walk and still had some problems speaking, Alexei Ivanov set about making him irrelevant. The young leader’s personality won over many international critics who had grown wary of Putin’s harsh attempts to re-create a Russia in which little was possible. By racing through the streets in his private automobile and making personal, surprise gestures to help individual citizens, Ivanov cemented his popularity with the masses.