by David Spell
At 1430 hours, Ashley pulled to the curb on Ferry Street, a half block south of Bridge Street Park. Aaron handed the girl the money that he had promised her. He had already gotten her cell phone number.
“I appreciate your help. Any idea what you’re going to do next?”
The young woman didn’t answer, turning away and looking out the driver’s window.
“Okay, well I need to go,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
“Wait,” she finally answered, wiping her eyes. “I can stay in the area if you think you might need me. I don’t really have a plan. I don’t have any family and now that I’m away from…him, I’m not sure what to do. You’re the first person in a long time who’s been nice to me.”
Richards was surprised at the show of emotion. He had never been in any kind of a relationship with a woman, always preferring to conquer and move on.
“Well, yeah, I’ll be here for three days. That’s how long the job is. I might need a ride after that. You want me to call you?”
Ashley smiled and nodded. “Sure. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll move on. I’ve always wanted to live somewhere warm. I may drive down to Florida and see about starting over there.”
“Sounds good.”
Aaron climbed out, retrieving his backpack and duffel bag from the back seat. Ashley turned to watch him.
“I never said, “thank you.”
“For what?” Richards asked, pulling on his backpack and slinging the duffel over his shoulder.
“For getting me out of there. For giving me a chance to start over,” the young woman sniffed. “I really appreciate it.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond so he just nodded, pushed the door closed, and watched the silver Nissan Altima disappear down the street. The “park” wasn’t much more than an undeveloped half acre lot at the end of a block. The grass was tall but there were a few park benches and picnic tables scattered around.
Richards slipped into a small wooded area opposite the location where he could await his ride. The small patch of trees provided just enough concealment to give him an advantage if this was some type of set up. He knelt down and opened the black bag, withdrawing the M4 and inserting a magazine. The former soldier pulled the charging handle to the rear and let it slam forward to chamber a round and then pushed the selector to “Safe.”
A white Ford van slowly rolled down Ferry Street at 1505 hours, making the slight right onto Bridge Street, the back border of the small park. The vehicle stopped on the side of the road and the horn honked one time, the prearranged signal. Richards approached from the right rear, staying in the blind spot of the van’s mirrors. He clutched the pistol grip of the rifle inside the unzipped duffel.
When he came parallel with the passenger window, Aaron saw that the driver was the only one in the front of the van. He tapped on the window, startling a bald black man who was looking in the opposite direction. Richards pulled the door open and started to get in, noting that the driver was wearing a black kulfi, the traditional Muslim skull cap.
“No, you gotta ride in the back,” the driver said, with an accent that indicated he had grown up in New Jersey.
“What the hell? Why do I have to ride in the back?”
The older man shrugged. “Man, the boss told me to tell you that it was operational security and that you’d understand.”
Aaron shook his head and shut the door, walking to the rear of the vehicle and carefully opening the back doors. The rear windowless compartment was empty and the fugitive climbed inside, seating himself against the left wall, his rifle within easy reach. Once the door was shut, the van lurched forward, taking him to an unknown location. The boss was right, Richards thought. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t want the other person to know where they were going, either.
CENTURY TACTICAL SOLUTIONS, LEESBURG, VIRGINIA, TUESDAY, 0935 HOURS
Chuck stood in front of the large flat-screen television mounted on the wall in the conference room, watching the non-stop coverage of the attack from the previous day in D.C. After arriving at the office, dealing with his inbox, and returning a few phone calls, the big man had needed to refill his coffee mug. He also wanted to find out what the latest developments were on the terrorist attack.
Cell phone footage and overhead coverage from a local news copter provided the world with a clearer picture of what had actually happened. The helicopter video started two minutes after the van had exploded. The news crew circled the area, the vehicle still on fire, a billowing plume of black smoke rising into the air as survivors scurried to tend the wounded. A number of bodies lay motionless around the area, the corpses sprawled in grotesque positions, some even missing limbs. People continued to rush to the scene from inside the relative safety of the courthouse and the police headquarters building.
Seven minutes after the explosion, the four gunmen had made their presence known, each pair coming from opposite ends of the block. While the cell phone videos were shaky as those holding the devices ducked behind whatever cover they could find, the news copter managed to get clear and chilling footage as the police fought back against the terrorists.
One of the heroes of the day was a beefy man in civilian clothes who had crouched down just outside of the police headquarters, firing a long shot from his pistol that dropped one of the bad guys. After the wounded terrorist blew up himself, his partner, and several others, the chunky detective moved with surprising quickness across the street, crouching behind an SUV for protection, getting closer to one of the last two attackers. Another of the gunman managed to detonate his suicide vest as police officers shot him multiple times. The explosion took out several cops and others, blasting more shrapnel across the already chaotic scene.
Suddenly, there was only one terrorist left, crouched behind a pickup truck, struggling to reload his AK-47. McCain watched in awe as the older, plainclothes officer charged the last killer. The cop fired his handgun just as the other man stood, trying to aim his rifle. The officer’s rounds dropped him onto his back, ending the terror. Very impressive, Chuck thought. If that last killer had managed to detonate his vest, things would’ve been even worse than they already were.
Sam Mercer and Shaun Taylor had joined Chuck in the conference room, the three men speechless after what they had just seen. Mercer was a retired Army master sergeant, having worn the famous green beret before serving in the top-secret 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. Since retiring eight years earlier, Mercer had worked for Perkins as his aide and bodyguard.
Taylor had been the driver, administrative aide, and one of the bodyguards for the previous two ops directors at the CIA, Sandra Dunning and Admiral Jonathan Williams. He had proven himself under fire during the attack that left Dunning confined to a wheelchair. The two primary bodyguards had been killed during the shootout, but Shaun had managed to take out several of the attackers and administer first-aid to Sandra until help had arrived.
With the shakeup at the Agency, Taylor had been transferred out of operations to Human Resources. This had prompted the young man to resign and accept a position as the office manager for the startup company, Century Tactical Solutions. While he had the heart of a warrior, Shaun was an administrative whiz who kept the business running smoothly. He and Jennifer Hughes had been dating for the previous six months.
“I just got off of the phone with the president,” retired Major General Wallace Perkins said softly.
Chuck, Sam, and Shaun had been so engrossed in the news coverage that they had not even heard their boss enter the room. McCain forced himself to turn away from the carnage on the television and look at the general. Perkins was in his late seventies but was trim and fit, carrying himself like a man twenty years younger. The African-American had risen through the ranks of the Army as an Airborne Ranger, a Green Beret, and then ultimately to the rank of major general, serving in a variety of capacities before retiring.
Perkins had approached McCain and Kevin Clark the year before, asking
them to be a part of starting Century Tactical Solutions. At the time, the two warriors had just been fired from the CIA during Maxwell Sterling’s purge as he attempted to cover his tracks. After Sterling’s exposure and subsequent “suicide,” Kevin had been hired back at the Agency, taking over the operations division to rebuild it after so many of their best people been run off.
“Oh?” answered McCain, pointing with his thumb towards the TV. “Does he have any idea who was behind this?”
The general and President Benjamin Asher were close friends. An IT billionaire before ever running for president, Asher had provided most of the initial funding for Century Tactical as a silent partner. The president had also made it clear up front when they started the business that he might call on the tactical expertise of McCain and some of the others from time-to-time to help with situations that could not be solved through normal channels.
“Let’s talk in my office,” Perkins said. “There are a number of developments that we need to discuss. Shaun, would you ask Sandra and Andy to join us?”
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later, McCain and Fleming were seated in front of Perkin’s desk. Before he could ask where she was, Sandra Dunning came rolling into the room, braking her wheelchair as she parked next to Chuck.
“Sorry, I was on the phone with Jennifer Hughes. She shared a few interesting bits of information with me.”
Sandra had been crippled the previous year during an attack on her life. At the time, she had been the ops director for the CIA. The former director of the Agency, Maxwell Sterling, had attempted to have her killed after utilizing ops personnel to take out the billionaire Hollywood producer who had secretly taped Sterling having sex with underage girls. Even though she was now confined to a wheelchair, Sandra was thankful to be alive and also grateful for her job as the VP of Intelligence and Investigations at Century Tactical.
The general smiled. “I look forward to hearing what you have to share. Who else is out on assignment?”
“Sir, Scotty and Jimmy were at FBI HQ running the tactical refresher yesterday,” Andy, the training director spoke up. “Scotty called me after the attack and said they had pushed pause and were on-scene with the feds, helping with crowd control. They were hoping to finish that group of agents up today but it’ll be rescheduled.”
“How many more weeks before we’re done with that contract?”
The FBI had been one of Century’s first clients. One of the last things that Thomas Burns had done before retiring as the Assistant Director of the Counter-Terrorism Division at the Bureau was to hire the new business to provide a one-day advanced shooting and tactics course for the thousand agents in their division. After leaving the Bureau, Burns had brought his lifetime of experience as an investigation and interrogation specialist to Century Tactical. He was currently teaching an interviews and interrogations course for new FBI agents at their academy in Quantico, Virginia.
“Only two more sessions, Boss. It’s stretched out a little longer than we had planned. The Bureau has been getting pulled in a lot of directions and they’re still getting their staffing back up. We’ve had to reschedule a couple of times.”
“Did Smith or Jones have any insights to offer after being at the scene?”
“No, sir, other than the fact that all four of the gunmen were wearing suicide vests. Only two of them went off. At this point, they have forty-one dead and sixty-eight wounded. After the scene is processed, they’ll see what kind of info they can gather from the AKs and the unexploded vests. They’ll process the remains of the van and also be checking fingerprints and DNA on the bad guys.”
McCain’s phone vibrated and he looked at the screen.
“I probably better take this, sir,” the big man said, heading for the door. “It’s Kevin. I’ll be right back.”
Perkins nodded and glanced at Dunning. “You said you spoke with Jennifer?”
“Yes, sir. Kevin assigned her to the FBI as a liaison to help with the search for Aaron Richards.”
“Remind me who Aaron Richards is?”
“He worked for the Agency for about a year after getting kicked out of the Green Berets,” Sandra answered. “He was assigned to me but I never trusted him so I kept him busy on minor jobs. He was the one that Sterling sent to eliminate Jennifer after she found the hard drives with his movies on them.
“When Kevin took over ops at the Agency, he found a couple of things that he was able to use to get Richards fired. Now, he’s gone over to the dark side, selling his services to the Chinese.”
Perkins’ eyes widened in surprise. “That’s very serious.”
“Did the CIA Director issue an apprehend or terminate order?” Andy asked.
“No,” Sandra answered, disappointment in her voice. “Director Purvis came from the FBI and by all accounts is the right man for the job. He’s still trying to get a feel for the Agency after all those years at the Bureau. He felt that it would be better to work with the feds to locate and arrest him. Jen told me that they tracked Richards to his storage unit in Falls Church last Thursday. The trail got cold after that. She said that the search is getting put on the back burner with the bombing yesterday.”
McCain rejoined them, Perkins waiting until he was seated.
“What did our friend Colonel Clark have to say?”
“He told me that the president had already given you a heads up. Kevin said he’s on his way out here to discuss a contract assignment.”
“This must be something big,” Andy grunted, “if the good colonel is enduring the hour-long drive to Leesburg to talk to us face-to-face.”
“I think you’re right,” the general agreed. “The president didn’t give me any details. He just said this had his approval and fit in with the special assignments that he mentioned when we were setting the company up.”
President Asher had told Perkins, McCain, and Clark up front that politics being what they were, he wanted to have an unconventional option to use in the event he couldn’t use law enforcement, the military or even the CIA. Asher had followed the exploits of Chuck, Kevin, and their teams during the devastating biological attack on the U.S. by Iran. McCain had been over the CDC Enforcement Unit in Atlanta. He and his men had tracked down and arrested or killed a number of the terrorists responsible for deploying the zombie virus. They had also eliminated hundreds of zombies.
After retiring from active duty as a major in the Army Ranger regiment, Clark had accepted a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia National Guard. After the bio-terror attack, the chain-of-command had broken down after the power grid and cell towers went down. As the undead killed thousands, the former Ranger had organized a unit of twelve troopers to keep on fighting. Kevin and his soldiers not only took on the zombies, they also encountered and killed a number of violent gangs who were looting and terrorizing survivors around Atlanta.
When the Director of Operations for the CIA arrived at Century, he was accompanied by some familiar faces. McCain and the others greeted their friends before getting down to business with Clark. His driver/bodyguard/aide, former First Sergeant Ricardo Gonzalez, had served with Kevin in the Georgia National Guard after having spent a number of years in the regular Army.
The colonel’s two primary bodyguards were Eric Gray and Thomas Jackson. The two African-Americans were both Marine veterans. Gray had served with Fleming as a MARSOC Marine before retiring to work with the Agency. He had been one of the key operators that Sterling’s purge had affected, losing his job the previous year. Eric had been thrilled by Clark’s call to come back to work for the CIA as part of the ops director’s security team.
Jackson had left the Marines after twelve years to drive a truck. He had originally planned on retiring from his beloved Corps, but his career had not worked out like he had hoped. Thomas attained the rank of staff sergeant and was one of their top defensive-tactics instructors. Things had taken a bad turn after he had gotten bumped down two ranks to corporal for getting into a bar
fight and beating up four white sailors in San Diego.
It was a clear case of self-defense and Jackson would have probably been OK but one of the Navy pukes had ended up with a broken orbital bone and another’s leg was fractured in several places. That sailor ended up being medically discharged from the service. Thomas wasn’t generally a violent man but one of the swabbies had made the mistake of making fun of Jackson’s name. The booze only intensified the drunk’s Southern accent.
“What’s a black boy like you doing with the name of one of the South’s greatest generals?”
The staff sergeant had ignored him and kept drinking his beer. If the kid had stopped there, Thomas could’ve let the insult slide. He had heard it before. His father had been a colonel in the Air Force and had named his son out of respect for General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The colonel was a historian and had respected Stonewall’s skills as a military man and as a humanitarian, even if he was on the losing side of the Civil War.
The sailor had made his second mistake by poking him in the back, causing Thomas to spill some of his Miller Lite.
“I’m talking to you, boy! Don’t you act like you can’t hear me! I asked you a question! What…”
He never finished the sentence as Jackson had turned and smashed the heavy beer mug into the inebriated redneck’s face, dropping him to the floor unconscious. After a moment of shock, the other three sailors charged the Marine, swinging wildly. The staff sergeant fired a vicious sidekick into the lead attacker’s knee, shattering it with a loud crack.
A thudding straight right to the chin dropped sailor number three. The last one managed to land a punch of his own to Thomas’ mouth, splitting his bottom lip. The DT instructor quickly ducked down and performed a picture-perfect double-leg takedown, slamming the sailor to the floor. Jackson drove a knee into his attacker’s groin and dropped an elbow onto his face, taking all the fight out of the man.