by Alex Howell
Mason Walker Series
Books 1-3
Alex Howell
Copyright © 2019 by Alex Howell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Book 1: The Search
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Book 2: The Warrior
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Book 3: The Cleansing
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Bonus
Book 1: The Search
Prologue
Date: July 4th, 2013
Time: 10:17 p.m.
Location Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
This will be my final mission.
Underneath the night sky, in yet another foreign country he knew nothing about other than the enemy’s terrain, Mason Walker thought of how the boy who had once sworn his life to the Navy was now the man who looked for every opportunity to get out alive tonight.
Everything had changed three years ago on this date. He proposed to his girlfriend, Bree, learned that she was pregnant, and discovered that he could get an early out if he joined the SEALs’ black-ops team. Considering the chance for an early out and to be with his wife, it was a request that he took hurriedly.
But things had only gotten harder in the time since. Bree welcomed their daughter, Clara, into the world—an event Mason had to miss because of military duties. Bree got sick with a far-too-early attack of breast cancer and Mason had to miss most of her treatment because, again, military duties. Bree recovered and appeared well, an event Mason actually got to make—for all of 24 hours before, once again, military duties called him back overseas.
Work sucks, he thought frequently, but he knew if he got through these three years, not only would he have his family for the rest of his days, the military would be paying him and providing benefits for the rest of his life.
But, first, he had to get through tonight.
They approached a building that had once been a hotel about five stories high. Inside, about six actuaries from an ally of the United States —the unit’s leader, Lieutenant Jack Jones, did not tell them who it was since it did not matter—sat, taken hostage by ISIS sympathizers. Mason swore that the day he never had to see the letters “I” and “S” together back to back would be the greatest day of his life, for they had caused him the most grief of all.
The actuaries had come to negotiate war reparations to Ethiopia from an event that, Mason felt sure, had taken place decades ago. But it was not a soldier’s job to question orders, it was his job to execute them. The fact that he was already having these thoughts made Mason even more aware that this had to be his last rodeo.
Mason stood on a hill about 20 yards from the compound. Men in black robes and uniforms stood before the front entrance, but none stood by the side. There were windows about six feet high on those sides, perhaps windows that guests may have used at one point. Now, though, they represented opportunity.
“No unnecessary shots fired,” Mason said, reminding his men that this was to be strictly a search-and-rescue mission.
No one said anything else, but no one had to. Mason had worked with these men on far too many missions to ever doubt their commitment and loyalty to him. Still not enough to stay in.
He waved his hand forward, and the team split into two, each one taking the two sides of the building. They moved like cats without collars, so quiet that the enemy would not know of their arrival until the silenced bullet went through their skulls or the SEALs arm locked around their neck, putting them to sleep. Mason came to the first window and used the silent glass cutter tool to create an opening.
Mason entered the room, noting that no one was here—and, for that matter, nothing was there either. No beds, no closets—even the electrical outlets looked like they had been tampered with and attempted to be removed, although the terrorists had not so easily succeeded.
He signaled the room was clear, and the other half dozen black ops entered with ease. Mason moved to the door and pried it open slowly, noticing that the hallway was not lit. He barely jutted it open, but had to quickly put his foot out, forgetting that hotel doors had a tendency to slam shut with ease.
Fortunately, he caught it just in time.
Always the little things.
He moved into the hallway, his NVGs confirming that the first floor was absent, save for the guards outside, who were of no real threat right now. However, a flip to thermal goggles showed that there were footprints leading upstairs. Mason motioned clear once more and led the men up the stairs.
He paused just before reaching the second floor.
There, barely noticeable in the infrared vision, but certainly visible with night-vision, was a trip wire. If he had needed to move as he had with the hotel door, he would have likely triggered something bad—at best, an alarm, at worst, a bomb that would kill many people.
He motioned for the rest of his squad to take notice. They all moved over the wire with ease, and Mason switched back on his thermals. The terrorists, it seemed, had taken their hostages to the fifth and
final floor.
That figured. There was no real point in making the mission too easy.
He and the rest of the squad ascended with ease, swapping between thermal and night-vision views as needed. Though the area contained many more trip wires—and, noticeably, a couple of bombs—they were easily identifiable. Those did not worry Mason.
What did worry Mason, however, was that if there were six actuaries on this final floor, there were likely to be many, many guards along the way. It was going to be a nearly impossible for them to move with silence. How was he going to free the actuaries…
Well, that was why he was promoted to the black ops units. Because not only was Mason Walker tactically sound, proficient in all types of firearms, and a useful soldier, he was a quick thinker, an improviser of the highest degree, and creative to a fault. He could make any commanding officer flinch from afar, but at the end of the day, it usually worked.
He reached the final floor in the stairwell and motioned for his men to pause. He switched to one final view, a view that had not been released to the public, but was created for just these purposes—x-ray vision.
He stood with his rifle aloft and his eyes pointed forward, noting six people sitting on the ground and ten standing, all of them with guns. It was highly unlikely that the ISIS terrorists would have resorted to any trickery, so, for now, Mason had to assume that the ten were the targets that, if necessary, had to be taken out.
If necessary, though. Those were the two words Mason kept repeating to himself.
The only problem was, it sure was looking quite necessary. But silenced guns were only relatively speaking; the chances that someone would hear gunfire from a couple rooms over was essentially guaranteed.
Mason needed a new way.
It all came to him at once as he looked up at the ceiling, seeing a sturdy pipe that would support his weight. He pretended to fiddle with the handle a couple of times, as if it was locked, and noticed that one guard looked his way. The guard, though, probably assumed that it was someone from downstairs and did not do anything.
Once more, Mason pretended to fiddle with the lock, as if he could not get it to open, and then finally knocked. The man on the other side said something in Arabic, which Mason knew as “you damn stupid dog.” Quickly, Mason pulled himself up, to the pipe, propped his feet against the wall, and waited.
The door opened. The light of the hallway shined through, and the guard looked on in curiosity.
Then, in one swift motion, Mason put his ankles around the guard’s neck, choking him. The man gasped for air, but another SEAL came and disarmed him. The terrorist was out seconds later.
Mason knew, though, that all they had done was reduce the head count of the enemy from ten to nine, and that such a tactic was not bound to work again. He had to—
An alarm sounded.
Mason quickly switched to x-ray vision and saw the terrorists splitting into groups of five and four, with four coming his way and five going the other way.
“Damn!” he growled.
“The other unit must have tripped something,” one of the SEALs said.
“No time for blaming,” Mason said. “Get into position.”
The SEALs quickly aligned themselves, awaiting the arrival of the target. Out of the corner of his eye, Mason saw the bomb go from a red light to a green light, followed by some symbols he didn’t recognize.
What he did recognize, though, was the shortage of time.
The terrorists burst through the door, perhaps overzealous for a fight or fully aware that they were going to die because of this raid anyway. Mason dispatched them with ease, but the ISIS monsters were not his greatest threat at this moment.
Time was.
As soon as the four were eliminated, Mason sprinted into the hallway, using his x-ray vision to guide him to the room with the actuaries. He kicked down the door with a violent front kick, drawing screams from inside.
“Per favore, non farci del male!” one of them screamed.
Italian.
“Get them out of here!” Mason roared.
He went to go to the other side of the hall, where he noticed the SEALs engaged in combat with the other five. He had no worries about their skills, but a thought came to mind as his comrades moved in beside him.
He looked down and, though blurry and barely visible with the multitudes of floors, he saw the two guards who had been guarding the entrance moving to the left, prepared to ambush the six of the other unit.
Mason didn’t have time to warn the other unit. He also didn’t have time to run in and attack the enemy from behind.
He sprinted out the door, took a right from where he had come from, went down one flight of stairs, and sprinted across the hall, his feet moving him in record speed. His x-ray vision showed that the guards were one floor below him. If he timed it right, he’d open the door and kill both of them perhaps two steps before they would have gotten one of his own.
Without conscious thought, he charged to the door, rammed it off its moorings, and caught the two terrorists off-guard with his loud shout. He shot both of them dead before they so much as had a chance to steady their shots.
“All clear!” one of the SEALs above him yelled.
“Get out! Get out!” Mason roared. “Bomb!”
Mason let the unit on this side of the building run out. He could only hope that the men he had left on the other side had done their job without him. He had faith they had, but faith didn’t make a man survive in war. Only careful action, well-executed orders, and careful adherence to protocol did.
Except when Mason freelanced, at least.
Once his men had gone before him, Mason dropped down from the railings, grabbing one at the very bottom to prevent him from shattering his ankles. He sprinted through the hallway and to the front door.
Just before he turned left, the bomb went off.
The force of the explosion sent him soaring through the air about a half-dozen feet. Mason tucked his limbs close to him and rolled upon impact. He let out a loud grunt and a whoosh of air as he collected himself and righted his vision.
“Sergeant Walker, sir!” a SEAL called out as Mason rose. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he grumbled. “Hostages?”
“Recovered, sir.”
“Good,” he said as he spat smoldering debris out of his mouth. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
Mason rose under his own power, continuing to spit out ash and cough out smoke. The first SEAL reached the Jeep they’d use to escape and drove it over to Mason. Mason waved them off, telling them to grab the hostages first. In the time that it took the Jeep to head to the other unit and grab the Italian men, Mason sat down, reached for the locket on his chest, and opened it.
He stared at the picture of his wife and his daughter, just a mere one and a half years old at the time. She had on a gorgeous red dress, while his wife, Bree, sported a green turtleneck sweater, long brown hair—hair she had deliberately grown out as a way of giving the middle finger to cancer—and a smile that, even in this moment of war, hell, and battle also made Mason smile.
But the smile faded as he recalled how, over the last three years, he’d been home approximately a combined two and a half months, seemingly never overlapping with significant milestones in his daughter’s life. He could only pray that when he got home and saw his little girl, she would not think of him as the absentee father whom she could never trust, but a man who simply had his commitments that he had to fulfill.
“Sergeant Walker!”
Mason quickly looked up to see the Jeep pulling toward him. He’d have to stand on the back, for there were no more seats left, but that was fine. It would keep him awake.
He hopped on, secured himself, and then looked one more time.
Bree. Clara.
This was my last mission. I’m on a plane home in about six hours.
And, when I land, you’ll never see me leave again.
1
Date: May 11th, 2028
Time: 11:04 a.m.
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Mason grunted as he sat down in his chair, the effects of many years of service still visible and present in his body even after all this time. Simple acts like sitting down, lifting a cup of coffee, going for a jog—they did not hurt to the point of being debilitating, but they were enough to warn of an earlier-than-expected retirement and who knew what else. Part of the job. Gotta get with it for Clara.
A staff member from the store came and offered him water, but he politely declined, a habit he had developed to not accept gifts from strangers over the years. He stared intently at the door, patiently waiting. This was one thing he was good at—the ability to sit and do nothing. In some ways, in quieter moments, he liked to silently joke to himself that he damn well had better be good at it, given it was mostly what he’d done in the decade and a half since he left the black ops team at the Navy SEALs.