American Terrorist Trilogy

by Jeffrey Poston

  Carl listened to the exchange while he tested his voice. “Nancy, can you hear me?” He cleared his throat.

  “Affirmative, Zero. What’s your position?”

  “I’m lying on top of an FBI agent in a bathtub.”

  “Gawd, sometimes you’re so melodramatic, Carl.” He heard the relief in her voice. “I meant, your position in the house.”

  “In the bathtub!”

  Merc Three added, “She means, what part of the house? We’re coming in there to get you.”

  “Oh, my bad. Got my head banged pretty good. Still seeing stars. We’re in the master suite. Left rear room of the house as you look at it from the street.”

  He tried to move, but discovered he was solidly pinned in place. A standard size tub was barely large enough for one adult. Yet the three of them were entangled in the tub and pinned by a massive portion of the collapsed roof.

  “Lenore,” he whispered. “You with me?”

  “Alive but immobile,” came the reply. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

  “I’m stuck,” Lisette said.

  “I know. We’re going to get out of here real soon.”

  “Agent Palmer, mind telling me how we got hit with missiles? We have a goddamn drone on overwatch. I thought you said they had zero air support.”

  “We’re working on that, but those appeared to be ground-launched missiles, probably shoulder-held weapons with low-yield warheads.”

  “Well, they were pretty damn precise. They had to have air support for that kind of targeting.”

  Wizard’s voice came on the net. “Not necessarily, Boss. They could have been guided by GPS satellite or by a laser target designator on a drone. Or they could even have used a laser designator on a standoff plane, like they used in the old days.”

  Old days? Carl thought. That’s how we used to fight wars when I got out of the Air Force twenty years ago.

  A sliver of light lit their dark tomb as the mercs shoved debris off the tub. A few minutes later, they got out of the tub and stumbled across the debris field into the street. Lenore and her daughter walked arm-in-arm behind Carl and Three.

  “Carl!” Cummings said.

  Lisette gasped.

  When Carl turned to the girl, Three then stood behind him and also gasped.

  “Jesus, Boss!”

  “What?” He shrugged.

  Cummings reached to his back and pulled away two armor plates, each about the size of her palm. Both were pitted with long grooves.

  Cummings said, “Remember what I told you about the P-90 when they came for us the first time eight months ago?”

  “I remember. They fire armor-piercing rounds. That’s why we procured these battle suits.”

  Cummings nodded. “Looks like you took several glancing shots.”

  “Eighty-five thousand dollars well spent, I’d say,” Three added. “But we’re going to have to get you a new battle suit, Boss. This one’s had it. Its integrity is completely compromised.”

  Cummings added, “Yeah, buy me one too.”

  They started moving again and Carl said, “What’s our status, Three?”

  “You mean, other than the fact that we just got our collective asses kicked?”

  Carl grunted. “Other than that. Did we lose anyone?”

  “Not yet.” Three said it like it was not a premonition but rather a certainty.

  Carl stopped walking and looked at his field commander.

  Nodding toward the big black SUV with its passenger side caved in, Three said, “Thirteen. He’s done.” The glass and Lexan laminate that made the front window bulletproof was shattered.

  Carl rushed around the vehicle where Merc Thirteen sat in the driver seat and climbed up on the runner. The man sat normally in the seat, but his hands were in his lap. He was awake and his blue eyes were alert. Prominent crow’s feet made him look older than his forty years.

  “Edgar, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Boss.” The man didn’t move. He was uninjured except for a sliver of metal that had severed his spine from the back of his neck but hadn’t cut his jugular or airway. The metal piece was lodged in the headrest and was all that was keeping the man upright.

  “They tell me it’s bad.” Edgar’s gaze flitted toward Carl.

  “It’s bad.” Carl nodded. “You have family?”

  “I have a mom somewhere. Haven’t seen her in years. Tell her I’m sorry for being such a shitty son.”

  “I’ll tell her the truth. I’ll tell her you’ve been fighting a classified counterterror war for the president.”

  “Thank you, Boss. It has been an honor serving with you.”

  “The honor is mine, Soldier.”

  Carl pulled his Glock and fired a shot into the side of Thirteen’s head, then hopped down from the runner. He regarded Lenore Cummings, her mother, her daughter, and the silent mercs that had gathered around. “When it’s our turn, that’s how we all should go out.” He nodded at Thirteen’s SUV. “Fast. Without suffering.” He holstered his weapon.

  Cummings touched his arm and said, “Thank you, Carl.” She looked around at the mercs and sideways-hugged her daughter. “Thank you all.” She wrapped her free arm around her mother’s shoulder too. Carl could tell the elder woman had heard all about the events of the past eight months, but this was her first encounter with explosions and gunfire. Her eyes were wide, her gaze distant, and her lower lip trembled as she clasped her arms in a self-hug.

  Cummings looked at Carl again. “But I’m not real clear on your plan. You came in by yourself, even with battle armor? You had no backup?”

  “I had you, Lenore. You said you were armed twenty-four-seven, so I knew that’s all the backup I needed in there. And you proved me right.”

  Three said, “Agent Palmer, I hear sirens.”

  “I’m coordinating that as we speak. Your cover is that you are a covert FBI team sent to retrieve the Cummings family.”

  “Copy that. Please have the police respectfully dispose of Thirteen’s body.”

  “Copy that.”

  Carl looked at his team. They looked pissed, like they’d just had their asses handed to them. Lenore Cummings looked angry, like a lioness ready to pounce on someone, anyone. Her mother looked shell-shocked, and Lisette comforted her grandmother with hugs.

  What is the world coming to when a pre-teen girl is so accustomed to violence that she can comfort an adult?

  Carl said, “Three, what’s our next available designation?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Carl looked at Cummings. “You are now designated as Nineteen. I hate to do this to you, add you to the team, but I figure the safest place for your family now is with us, especially if you’re wearing an armored battle suit.”

  She nodded.

  “Thirteen was about the same size as you, so grab his weapons and battle armor and get suited up. We have work to do.”

  Chapter 7

  Grainger and Hollis Koll gazed at the monitor on the wall in Grainger’s private office next to the bunker’s control center. Agent Cummings’s house was almost completely destroyed, and the master suite was open to the sky. The high-definition camera of the Atlas mini-drone gazed down into the structure from five hundred feet, allowing the Koll brothers to watch the mercenaries haul roof plywood and shingles off the bathtub and Carl Johnson, Agent Cummings, and her daughter leave the blasted-out house.

  Hollis growled. “Bastard just won’t die.”

  “He has more lives than a damn cat.”

  Hollis shook his head. “I’ve seen dozens of hostage rescue ops, but this—” He pointed at the monitor. “A direct frontal assault? By himself? Through the front door? That’s just plain stupid! He just charged in there and went for the girl.”

  Grainger pointed at the monitor as the drone showed the trio walking into the street, toward the waiting SUVs. “She’s working with Johnson. He knew she would assist. And after what he did to her and her daughter, that scares the hell out of me.” Grainger parke
d his elbows on the conference table and steepled his fingers at his bottom lip. “How could we even have anticipated that? When did they form an alliance?”

  “Had to happen months ago, yet they cleverly kept it out of the debriefs.” Hollis shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got him outclassed in manpower and weapons. It’s a numbers game, and it’s just a matter of time before we overwhelm him.”

  Grainger leaned back in his chair. “All of a sudden I’m not as confident as you are about that outcome unless we increase our pressure. I mean, think about it. Carl Johnson began his operations against Agent Cummings and the FBI and the Terror Event Response agency simultaneously with only four mercenaries and an ex-CIA hacker. And now he has a dozen mercenaries, all prior SpecOps men, plus Agent Cummings now. And the president has authorized transportation, logistics, weapons, surveillance assets, and intel support for him.”

  Grainger looked at his brother. “He’s no longer just a terrorist. It’s like everyone who comes into his orbit suddenly brings their A-game and joins his team.”

  “Like Agent Cummings.”

  Grainger nodded. “From his debriefs, we knew he was maintaining surveillance on her family, and we figured she’d reach out to him as some kind of early warning. That’s why we didn’t ambush his team when they went to rescue the kids. We didn’t know if he’d be on that team or if he’d remain at the restaurant. But this—” He pointed at the monitor. “This is a game changer.”

  They watched Agent Cummings peel hard-shell body armor from a dead mercenary and fit it on herself. “I’ve seen her dossier, so now Johnson has yet another highly trained weapons expert on his team. She’s seen combat in a dozen FBI SWAT raids.”

  Grainger paused for a few moments of strategic contemplation, then said, “It’s time to escalate. Put the asset on standby.”

  “Are you sure? That’s going to get messy.”

  Grainger pointed at the monitor again. “Messier than blowing up houses?”

  “Point taken.” Hollis leaned forward. “We need to up our surveillance game too. We need live coverage. That drone”—he pointed at the monitor—“stores thirty minutes of compressed video and transmits it in a micro-burst transmission. That was the only way it could remain undetected by Johnson’s government drones.”

  “I agree. Have one of our government contractors secure us a position on the next space launch. In fact, get that launch moved up to tomorrow. The president has all the military satellites locked down tight, but we can get some civilian satellites up there. It won’t be full coverage, but if we can keep Johnson on the move, keep him guessing, we’ll negate his tech advantage.”

  Hollis nodded. “Okay, and I’ll prep the asset to be airlifted to the next location Carl Johnson surfaces at.”

  “We should also be ready to hit his next safe house as soon as we find it.”

  “I assume the asset’s rules of engagement are—”

  “There are no rules, my brother. Carl Johnson and his team must die.”

  Chapter 8

  Two days ago, he’d thought he was finished as the American Terrorist. After killing the last member of the Mexican Triad, he’d been mentally prepared to walk away from that life and begin the painful task of living a lonely future without his son. Then Rainman had pulled him back in with the attack on Cummings. Now he sat in a trendy coffee shop watching a potential CIA informant exit the mailbox store across the street.

  It had taken several months for TER Director Aaron McGrath to cultivate this particular contact, though Carl and his team were skeptical of the man’s coincidental claims. The man allegedly had intel about a shadow government agency or international cabal called Atlas and claimed that organization was behind the attempt to assassinate the first woman president of the United States. McGrath, however, had been unable to find any hard evidence of the existence of any such entity beyond three hundred or so odd companies that had the word Atlas in their names. The shadow organization, if it even existed, was shrouded in an impenetrable veil of secrecy. They’d had many discussions about whether or not the man was a plant or part of Rainman’s master strategy, though eventually everyone agreed there was only one way to find out for sure.

  The mailbox store was part of an old brick strip mall with big glass windows. Posters depicting mail services, color copies, business cards, and myriad other printing services covered almost every square inch of the windows. It was the perfect place for the informant to covertly study the coffee shop because no one could see him behind all those posters until he stepped through the metal-framed glass front door.

  The man looked exactly as Carl had been told to expect. Tall and lanky in his mid-forties with shoulder-length, slightly curly blond hair, he was a nondescript man with a receding hairline. No one would ever suspect Frank Pearson of being a high-level CIA analyst. He looked more like an artist or musician. Carl thought he looked like Willie Nelson in his younger days.

  Carl gazed into his coffee cup. He’d changed up his regular house coffee for a mocha this time. He didn’t know why. He just needed something different. There was a foamy flower-looking design floating in the brown liquid. He took a sip and savored the bitter flavor of the organic coffee, the smoothness of the chocolate, and the cinnamon aftertaste. He thought about his nemesis, Aaron McGrath, growling at the mere image of the man’s face in his mind. He’d gotten Mark killed…and yet, he hadn’t. President Shirley Mallory was also responsible. And Agent Palmer. And Agent Cummings.

  Then he shook his head. No, those people were just doing their jobs, trying to find a missing girl. They thought Carl had kidnapped her because he looked like the man who had. Their actions had gotten Mark killed, but Carl knew he himself was equally responsible because of how he’d responded to the feds’ interrogations. That’s what hurt the most. Carl could have prevented his son’s death.

  Even after Carl had gone berserk and launched a war that cost the lives of dozens of federal agents, they’d begged him—paid him hundreds of millions of dollars—to go save the president’s daughter because he looked like the guy who had taken her. So he’d had a choice to make. He’d wanted—needed—to kill the agents responsible for Mark’s death, but to continue his war, he’d have had to let an innocent sixteen-year-old girl die. He’d chosen to save the girl. And to save her, he’d had to work with the same federal agents who’d gotten Mark killed.

  Aaron McGrath still lived. Agent Nancy Palmer still lived. Agent Cummings still lived.

  Worst of all, the former vice president, Walter Breen—aka Rainman—still lived, though in hiding. With the attack on Lenore Cummings’s family yesterday, Carl now realized Rainman was still in play. For some reason, Rainman was no longer targeting the president; he was coming after Carl.

  Carl chuckled to himself. Let him come.

  Eight months ago, he’d been just a normal citizen, a fifty-three-year-old commercial real estate broker. During his private war with the government, he’d been mostly lucky—an unpredictable amateur who had managed critical victories with hired mercs against law enforcement and government covert kill teams. On the mission to save President Shirley Mallory, he’d even won a hand-to-hand fight against a highly trained Secret Service agent who was a former Delta Spec Ops soldier, but he’d been lucky in that fight too and prevailed only by a miracle. After that violent encounter, though, he’d realized he needed specialized training. He had no choice in the matter; he was now part of the world of terrorism and covert ops whether he wanted to be or not. His mercs arranged for a South Korean SWAT veteran named Lieutenant Yeong Dae Jin to train him in self-defense and weaponry, and then over the past few months, Carl had become a veteran of several combat operations…at the ripe old age of fifty-four. With nothing left to lose and a wealth of experience and training under his belt, he wouldn’t stop until Rainman was dealt with once and for all.

  Carl looked around the nearly empty coffee shop. A couple to his right rose from their chairs and headed for the door. A thirty-something w
oman to his left concentrated hard on her laptop and her cell phone at the same time. She had pale skin, too much makeup, and blazing red hair that was short on one side and long on the other.

  He took another sip and mentally shook off all the conflicting thoughts in his mind about the government agents and refocused on the CIA informant.

  The analyst paused in the doorway and locked gazes with Carl, then casually scanned the street right and left. Carl saw him tense briefly, then the man patted his pockets, threw up his hands in despair like he’d forgotten something, and retreated quickly into the mailbox store. In the next instant, two black sedans with stylish white POLICE lettering on the front doors pulled up right-to-left in front of the mailbox store. They stayed in the traffic lane beside the parallel-parked cars across the street and waited. Their new Dodge Challenger models had darkly tinted windows, so Carl couldn’t see inside.

  Several seconds later, a man walked in front of the coffee shop on Carl’s side of the street. Through the floor-to-ceiling window wall, Carl watched the man stroll casually from left to right, seemingly without a care in the world. He was a tall, slender, dark-skinned man in jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a black string tie. His shirt was tucked in at the waist and his hands were parked in his pockets. His shirt was stained with wet perspiration under the arms. He wore a high flattop hairstyle, faded very short on the sides, and trendy dark-framed eyeglasses. He looked like an intellectual or an urban artist.

  Both front doors on both police cars opened when the pedestrian was almost exactly across the street from them. They spread out like a pincer, and Carl recognized the chilling intent of the maneuver. If the pedestrian chose to run, he wouldn’t get far because the cops had him boxed in.

  The man seemed to have no awareness of the officers until one of them spoke to him. He pulled his hands out of his pockets as ordered and held them away from his sides. The four officers approached him in an aggressive posture twice familiar to Carl. Each officer had a hand on his holstered gun, ready for instant action. One of them made a whirling gesture with his free hand. The black man turned away from them and leaned his hands against the window wall of the coffee shop, feet spread wide.