Crusader One

by Brian Andrews

  Kate had found someone.

  On the surface, her Facebook post was innocent enough. A picture of her sitting next to a guy at a restaurant, saying that she’d had a “great night” out with Steve at their favorite local Italian joint. To the untrained observer, the scene might even appear platonic, but he knew Kate; he knew her better than anyone. Kate looked relaxed. Not just her face, which seemed capable of selling a state of ease no matter the tension raging underneath. Kate carried discomfort in her shoulders. It was a subtle sign, visible only to him—or had once been, he supposed. In the picture, her shoulders, and her upper arms, were relaxed and at ease. This was happy Kate—a content Kate he had not seen in the several years leading up to their separation. This alone was enough evidence to prove this wasn’t her first date with Steve. Also, by calling it “their favorite” Italian place, she communicated they had a history of dinners out. Third and most important, Kate was not an impulsive woman, especially when it came to intimacy. For her to post this picture meant that Steve had passed the vetting period. This Facebook post was her subtle and yet self-assured way of presenting her new beau to the world. She had never posted about Steve before, not once.

  Fuuuuuck.

  He wanted to rip Steve’s arms from his “I play golf for exercise” body. Without any arms, this poser couldn’t hold Kate’s hand, or wrap her in a hug, or caress her in bed . . .

  God, arrrrhhhh!

  He leaned over and retrieved the bottle of ibuprofen from the nightstand bolted to the deck beside his bed. He shook out four tablets and then tossed them to the back of his mouth, chasing them with nasty warm water from the half-empty bottle on the table.

  “I shouldn’t have looked,” he mumbled, staring down at his feet. “I shouldn’t have fucking looked.”

  The sound of knuckles on the bulkhead jerked him back to the here and now.

  “You awake?” said a familiar voice.

  Dempsey looked up at Smith, who was standing in the doorway already dressed in his cargo pants and short-sleeve shirt. Dempsey shot him a what the hell does it look like? scowl and gestured to his half-naked self sitting on the bed.

  “You okay?” Smith pressed. “You look pissed off.”

  Dempsey sighed, then stood and stretched, his back cracking as he twisted left and right. “Nah, I’m good,” he said, boxing Jack Kemper’s demons and letting John Dempsey retake control. “Just getting fucking old. I used to be able to sleep like a baby inside a hollowed-out log or under a helicopter in the friggin’ dirt; you’d think I could catch some Zs in the master suite on the whale.”

  Smith laughed. “Yeah, well if these accommodations don’t work for you, I’m happy to trade bunks with you. Hell, I’m even willing to find you a nice piece of real estate in the cargo hold. I’m sure we’ve got a foam roll and a sleeping bag around here somewhere.”

  “You know, I might just take you up on that,” he said with a smile.

  “I’ll grab you a coffee and meet you in the TOC,” Smith said, turning to go.

  “Dude, I don’t want any of that foo-foo shit that you and Grimes drink,” he called after him.

  “Uh huh, yeah, sure.”

  “I’m serious, Smith . . .”

  With Smith gone, Dempsey reached for the handle of the tall wooden locker built into the bulkhead beside the bed. He retrieved and donned a pair of 5.11 TACLITE Pro cargo pants and a black sports shirt and then slipped into a pair of socks and ankle boots. He twisted left and right, trying for that one last pop still hung up in his battered spine, but instead of relief, he was rewarded with a stinger that shot down his left leg. Wonderful. He winced as he gingerly straightened out. The last thing he needed right now was to aggravate the spot where Munn and the spine surgeon had knitted his vertebrae back together after he’d taken a sniper round against his SAPI plate. This was a reminder that some old wounds never fully healed.

  He pushed through the door and it swung into Grimes—the door catching her in the hip.

  “Shit—sorry, Lizzie,” he said, steadying her by the arm.

  She shrugged off his hand. “No worries,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

  The tension was back.

  Oh Jesus, not this again, he thought, wondering what was going on now. That silly shit at the bar was just silly shit in a bar. He thought they’d moved past that. There was no way they could let it affect them as friends, or especially as teammates.

  Just make a joke. It’ll go away.

  “What—no kiss?” he teased.

  “Screw you, JD,” she said and walked away.

  “I was just kidding,” he called and chased after her. When he caught up to her in the short hall leading to the TOC, he said, “I thought we were good? It was just a drunken kiss—just alcohol, impulse, and camaraderie—nothing to be upset or embarrassed about.”

  “Yeah, well, trying to kiss the ugliest guy in the bar ain’t the reason I’m upset,” she quipped, all Elizabeth Grimes now. She turned to him. “I fucked up the operational response to the attack,” she said, grim-faced. “This is a twenty-four-seven job. That can never happen again.”

  She held his eyes, looking for . . . something.

  “And I’m sure it never will,” he said.

  “It can’t,” she said tightly. “I signed on to this job for a reason. You know what I want. I need to see this through—to see those responsible for my brother’s death erased from the earth. When I worked at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, I was literally in the heart of government, and yet I felt completely disconnected. I was effecting real policy change, but every victory felt entirely academic. At Ember, it’s the opposite. Every mission, every operation, every victory—they’re all immediate, tangible, real. And there are no second chances. I have to get it right, every time.”

  “Look, I get it. But that’s not the only reason you’re here.”

  She nodded. “You know that. I’m here for Spaz. And if I’d been on the job the other night, maybe we would have gotten Rostami ourselves.”

  Dempsey’s stomach tightened at the mention of Grimes’s brother, his lost SEAL teammate. He did get it. More than most, perhaps. Her soul was raw and bleeding, and the only way it would heal was by meting out justice to the bastards responsible for her brother’s murder.

  “Don’t kick yourself for being human,” he said. “One slip-up doesn’t mean you failed your brother. The operational tempo this past year has been insane. You guys earned a night of decompression. It was just Murphy’s Law kicking in, nothing more.”

  Her expression, which had softened, turned angry again. “You guys,” she parroted back. She glared at him, and he wasn’t sure what he saw in her eyes. “But not you, right? You don’t need any decompression because—what?—you’re a superhero? A steely-eyed frogman who never lets his guard down? The comic book superhero version of a SEAL my brother was trying to be?”

  He stood frozen, not sure what to do. “Clearly you’re upset with me . . .” he started.

  “Forget it, John,” she said, opening the door to the TOC and turning away. “It’s all good. We’re cool.”

  He paused a beat before following her in. What the hell is going on? I don’t get women. I don’t fucking understand them at all . . .

  When he stepped into the TOC, he saw Munn tipped back in his chair, his Oakley boots on the long conference table, sipping his usual black coffee.

  “There you are,” Munn said to him. “Smith has your whipped-cream sundae here,” he said, gesturing with a thumb at the tall ceramic cup beside his, thick foamed milk floating on top.

  Dempsey laughed and flipped Smith the middle finger, then took his seat between them. Grimes grabbed a seat on the other side of Munn.

  “Ooh, the band is all here,” Richard Wang announced as he entered from the door that led back into the lounge and the bunkrooms. As usual the kid had the look of a college fraternity pledge—just one not likely to make the frat. He ran a hand through his thick and unkempt bl
ack hair, pushing it out of his face; then he dropped into a seat at the end of the table. The perfect seat, Dempsey mused, straddling the operators on this side of the table and the analysts who would normally fill the other side. Wang was a cybergenius, and while they had cross-trained him to work as a field asset, he was not and never would be an operator.

  “Don’t get comfortable, folks,” Jarvis announced a beat later as he entered, immediately commanding the room. He was carrying the handled stainless-steel tumbler he had lately been sporting his coffee around in and was dressed in dark jeans and a sports coat over an oxford shirt, left open at the collar.

  “Our friends are finally ready for us,” Jarvis continued. “We’re heading out; bring your coffee if you want.”

  “Are we taking the SUVs?” Smith asked.

  “No. We have a ride coming. They should be here any minute.”

  “Weapons?” Dempsey asked.

  Jarvis nodded. “We’re guests with permission to carry, but be discreet.”

  They all stood and moved around the table to follow the boss out, Dempsey conspicuously leaving his cup of foo-foo coffee untouched on the table. He walked in the single-file line through the narrow hall and exited two mahogany doors that looked like they belonged in an uptown law office rather than a mobile operations center inside a Boeing jet. On the other side, he stepped into a transverse bulkhead stretching port to starboard and perpendicular to the long axis of the aircraft, with ladder wells in both outboards. The one on the left was wider; beyond stretched a narrow hall with forward access to the cockpit and flight-crew quarters. The team split, descending both ladder wells to the cargo hold below.

  The ceiling was low but just tall enough for Dempsey to stand. On either side were four metal cages full of tactical gear. Past that was a door that led into the IT and comms suite. The tech suite ended in a chain-link gate with access to the aft portion of the aircraft, where the cabin above came to an abrupt end, and the cargo hold extended floor to ceiling to allow room for the vehicles and drones they carried—including a rather tall flat-black MRAP vehicle that needed a lot of headroom. For this trip, only two black Yukon SUVs were in the aft hold—and a handful of drones of various sizes and shapes, from dragonfly-looking things that would fit in your hand and operate from a smartphone app to the twelve-foot, thirteen-hundred-pound RQ-7B, which could fly to altitudes of eighteen thousand feet with a loiter time over six hours. That drone had been specially modified to launch from a catapult system straight out the rear cargo door of the jet. They also had several of the smaller and much slower RQ-11B DDL drones—a hand-launched drone that could be broken down to fit in a backpack and controlled by the team from a laptop for up to three hours thanks to a new battery system.

  Dempsey and Munn entered the first cage, and Dempsey opened the gun cabinet. He selected a Sig Sauer 229 for his primary and a Glock 43 as a backup. Then, he stepped aside for Munn to make his selections. Dempsey checked both pistols, making sure they had rounds chambered. Then, he slid the larger 229 into a leather waist holster he wore at the small of his back and the Glock into a compact ankle holster concealed by his left pant leg. He stuffed two extra mags for his primary into a covert magazine pocket on his upper-left thigh and two more for his ankle gun into the mirror-image pocket on the right side. He looked over and saw Munn smiling at him.

  “What?”

  “If you strap on a fanny pack you could probably carry another dozen magazines . . . you know, just in case.”

  Dempsey laughed. “What are you packing?”

  “Just a Glock and a spare mag.”

  “Well, not everybody shoots like you, Dead-Eye Dan,” Dempsey said, slapping the doc on the back. “You ready?”

  “Yeah, man. Let’s do it.”

  They joined the others outside the cage, where Jarvis stood like a Roman centurion, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “So what’s the plan, Skipper?” Dempsey asked.

  “To meet your Israeli counterparts,” Jarvis said simply, and then under his breath added, “and fate willing, stop a war.”

  Dempsey nodded, but Jarvis had essentially told him nothing. What about the DNA results on the corpse? Surely the lab results were back by now. Was the boss keeping something from them? Then a terrible thought occurred to Dempsey—was the silent treatment something else altogether? What if Jarvis was just as much in the dark as they were? What if Jarvis didn’t have a plan?

  Ridiculous. Kelso Jarvis always has a plan.

  Dempsey followed his teammates to the door—an oval egress hatch with a pneumatic staircase. Grimes hit the button, invisible mechanisms hissed, and the steps lowered to the ground. Dempsey ducked his head and stepped out into the blinding glare. The morning air was crisp and comfortable, and Dempsey inhaled deeply. Beside the aircraft, three gray Lexus SUVs idled, parked in a semicircle. The vehicles didn’t have the “government agent” look of the black GMCs the Ember team had brought. On the side of each, in dark block letters, was written, MUSA ERETZ ISRAEL MUSEUM RESEARCH TEAM.

  “Time to go see what the Israeli version of Ember looks like,” Smith whispered to Dempsey as they walked to the waiting vehicles. “What do you think their facility will be like?”

  “Don’t care,” Dempsey said. “The only question that matters is, will they help us kick some ass, or are we going to have to do it by ourselves?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Acquisitions and Research Center

  Nechushtan Pavilion, Eretz Israel Museum

  Ramat Aviv Neighborhood, Tel Aviv, Israel

  May 6

  0800 Local Time

  If Ember had been located in Tel Aviv, Dempsey imagined this was precisely how Jarvis would have done it—hidden in a basement vault on the grounds of the Eretz Israel Museum, perfectly camouflaged in the heart of the City That Never Sleeps. Hell, Dempsey halfway expected Ian Baldwin to emerge from a frosted glass door with Chip and Dale in tow and greet him with a paternal smile and an understated “Good morning, John.”

  So eerie.

  The Nechushtan Pavilion, with its ancient artifact exhibits, reconstructed Bronze Age mine, and smelting furnace, was a helluva lot more interesting than Ember’s biz jet hangar at the Newport News airport. Dempsey wasn’t a “museum guy,” but even a door kicker like him could appreciate what the museum curators had accomplished here in showcasing the dawn of mining and metallurgy. The room they were passing through presently appeared to be an artifact cataloguing and restoration suite. A young woman sat on a bench, gloved and white coated, intently scrutinizing what looked to Dempsey like a dingy copper pot. She worked without even a sideways glance in their direction. That was probably all part of the arrangement—you work here, we work here, but we don’t interact—like two realities occupying the same dimension but offset in frequency so as not to interfere with each other.

  Double eerie.

  At the end of the room, a beautifully exotic and yet familiar-looking woman stood in front of a steel door with her arms crossed over her chest. She wore a dark-gray flannel shirt, unbuttoned and over a light-gray T-shirt, with black jeans and black boots. He searched his memory banks for her name and the place they’d met, but came up with nothing but fog. Too many damn concussions, he grumbled silently to himself. She was flanked by two men, both younger than him, who sorta looked like operators.

  In his former life, Dempsey had worked often and intimately with his Israeli counterparts in Shayetet 13, Israel’s equivalent to the US Navy SEALs. The Israeli commando unit had not only trained with his Tier One unit but also deployed with them on more than one occasion. At the end of one such deployment, an Israeli operator he’d befriended had gifted him a pair of brown canvas IDF jump boots, boots Dempsey had worn for two years until the soles were gone. He’d also worked with Sayeret Matkal—Israel’s principal Special Operations unit—on a joint hostage-rescue operation in the dense jungle of Ethiopia. Success on that mission had been more about Sayeret Matkal’s effectiveness than anything he’d co
ntributed, he remembered reluctantly.

  “As a courtesy, you may retain and carry your weapons, but please understand this is our home, and we ask that you follow our rules—especially those pertaining to operational security,” the Israeli woman said without introducing herself. She did not seem pleased to be greeting them, nor pleased to extend the “courtesy” of letting them retain their weapons. Undoubtedly this had been Jarvis’s handiwork, leveraging his relationship with Harel.

  “Wouldn’t want you to overextend yourselves,” Munn said under his breath.

  Dempsey elbowed the doc and then flashed the woman his best cool-guy smile. “We appreciate the hospitality, thank you,” he said. “It’s your house and your rules. We’ll do our best to stay out of the way and not step on any fingers and toes.”

  The Israeli woman stared at him without smiling or blinking, and then turned away, shielding the touch panel beside the door with her body before punching in a code.

  Strange rhythms this morning . . .

  Dempsey glanced back over his shoulder at Jarvis for wordless affirmation, but the Ember Director was lost in thought. The magnetic lock clicked open, and one of the two Israeli operators held the door for them. Dempsey led the Ember contingent—Smith, Munn, Adamo, Grimes, Wang, and finally Jarvis—through the door. He trotted to catch up with the Israeli woman and said, “I’m John, by the way.”

  “Yes,” she answered simply. “John Dempsey. Former Tier One Navy SEAL and now Special Activities Director at Ember. We’ve met.”

  He felt his cheeks flush. Fuck, I knew it, he thought, silently chastising himself.

  “I thought you looked familiar,” he said.