The Days Before: A Prequel to the Five Roads to Texas series (A Five Roads to Texas Novel Book 8)

by Brian Parker

  Yi needed to think further on the matter. If it ever came out that he knew beforehand, then his life would be forfeit. But in the turmoil following the death of ninety percent of the world’s population, would that information ever come to light?

  He stood and walked to the door, and then down the hallway to his bedchamber. He always thought more clearly after depositing his seed into one—or both—of the women he had chained to the bed.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Sanjay,” he said, unbuckling his belt.

  EIGHT

  * * *

  WASHINGTON, DC

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK

  Grady waived a hand in the air to get the bartender’s attention for another drink. It was his fourth. If he hadn’t been a regular, they probably would have cut him off. The bartender nodded and he stared back into the fire. Last night had been a fuck up of colossal proportions. The ambassador was dead and Havoc had egg on their faces since they were providing the outer ring of security that was breached. He’d fucked up by violating his own rules about not getting distracted on a mission.

  “That couldn’t have gone worse for us if we’d flown the damn thing ourselves.”

  Grady looked up to see Pete Thompson holding two glasses of dark liquid on the rocks. He accepted the drink without comment.

  “We should have seen it coming,” Pete stated. “The goddamned Arabs have been using weaponized drones against us for years. The Russians against the Ukrainians, ISIS against the Coalition, Houthis against the Yemenis and the Saudis, Mexican cartels against the Federales… The list goes on and on. It was only a matter of time.”

  “Havoc Group can’t defend against a threat like that,” Grady repeated the mantra he’d said so many times to himself since the incident. He glanced around the crowded balcony bar to ensure that no one was in earshot of their conversation. “The DoD has been trying to figure out a defense against them for years without any luck. Those things have a five-mile range, can be remotely piloted or programmed to follow GPS coordinates, and are virtually undetectable to radar and the naked eye until it’s too late. It was by sheer luck that the attacker didn’t remove or cover the navigational lights. Otherwise, the damn thing would have just exploded and we would have probably been searching for an RPG firing location.”

  Pete had heard it all before and took the opportunity to drain his entire glass. “Another?”

  Grady looked at the drink that his friend had brought him only a couple of minutes ago. He hadn’t drank any of it. “No, thank you. I have one coming.”

  Pete grunted and took the drink for himself. “It’s not our fault,” the older man said, sipping the whiskey. “You’re right. There’s not a goddamned thing we could have done about it. Worst disaster in Havoc’s history.” He threw back that drink as well and grimaced. “I’m getting fucked up tonight. Christina knows not to wait up for me.”

  Grady waited as Pete went to the bar and spoke to Rachel. The older man returned a moment later with two beers, one of which he set in front of Grady.

  “I said I was good,” Grady stated as he stared Pete in the eyes.

  “Okay.” Pete took a pull from his beer, and then rested his forearm on the lounge chair’s arm. “They’ve determined it was the North Koreans who conducted the hit. The Brits asked the Agency to conduct a raid on the complex that the ambassador told the SecDef about. The Agency denied the job, but released Havoc from our contract so we could do the job.”

  “Say again?” Grady asked, leaning on his old Army jargon which meant that he didn’t hear Pete correctly.

  The man across from him hadn’t leaned in conspiratorially or tried to hide the statement behind a faked cough like they always did in spy movies. He’d said it as plain as the nose on Grady’s face: The Havoc Group had been hired to conduct a revenge hit on foreign soil.

  “The British government,” Pete repeated. “They’ve contracted Havoc to investigate the ambassador’s claims.”

  “You mean the information that he passed the SecDef at the airport?” Grady hadn’t been privy to the conversation and hadn’t been told what the true nature of the meeting was about.

  Pete nodded. “Turns out there was a defector who brought a video tape from the North. He had video evidence of human experimentation. Real nasty shit, apparently.” He peered around the small rooftop bar once more before continuing. “The Brits want us to go there and kill everything we find. Send a message to the Regime, y’know?”

  Grady found himself wrapping his hand around the beer Pete had given him and then swallowing half of it before he replied. “The US government does not officially sanction assassinations.”

  “Neither does the British government, that’s why Simon Groves is the man ponying up the money for the hit.”

  “Groves?” Grady choked. “He hates us. He blames the incident on Havoc since we were the perimeter security.” That much had been made abundantly clear during the post-mission debrief earlier that morning.

  “Sure, he does. Think about it, Harper,” Pete said. “Groves isn’t acting on his own behalf. The British ‘fired’ him,” Pete made air quotes with his fingers, “so they could keep their noses clean, officially. But don’t you think for a moment that it wasn’t a direct order from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office; maybe even directly from the Prime Minister.”

  Grady exhaled loudly. “This is some heavy shit, Skipper.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What’s Kizer gonna do?”

  “We’ve already accepted the contract,” Pete replied. “Bill wanted me to offer you the first shot at it.”

  “You know that I’m part Vietnamese, not Korean, right? They’d sniff me out in an instant if I tried to go undercover.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to go undercover. This is a direct action op.” Pete leaned away from the table and finished his beer. “You’ll pass for a Nork in the dark or from far away, though,” he said with his characteristic wide grin that had always reminded Grady of the proverbial Cheshire Cat.

  “When do you need to know if I’ll take the job?”

  “That’s why I’m here. The Brits want this done as soon as possible to make sure the—”

  “You want another IPA?” Rachel asked. In that practiced manner of a long-time bartender, she’d managed to sneak up on them while they talked. She held Grady’s original Scotch that he’d ordered before Pete showed up.

  “Uh, yeah. Two,” Grady replied, accepting the drink. “Oh, and a water, please.”

  “That sounds good,” Pete stated. “I’ll have the same.”

  “Okay, be right back.”

  Pete watched a couple of women at the bar while Rachel poured their drinks. When she returned and set them down on the table he took a sip and bared his teeth. “So, like I was saying, they want this done as soon as possible to send a message. If we wait too long, then it’ll just be another unfortunate event in a shitty country.”

  Grady nodded, it made sense to strike immediately. Like a petulant child, they needed to be punished for their actions right away or else they wouldn’t know why they were getting swatted. He hated that Pete was here to get an answer right away, but that was how Kizer ran things. He wanted your commitment up front before he put too many other resources against it.

  And this was a big fucking deal.

  As far as Grady knew, The Havoc Group had never taken a direct action job before. They got into firefights all the time, killing people, sure, and he’d even been involved in bringing down the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, but that mission had been at night when the building was mostly empty. Raiding a facility with the intent to kill everyone inside was not typically what private security companies were used for. That was firmly in the realm of “inherently governmental” and was performed by units like Delta and SEAL Team Six.

  “What’s the bid?”

  “Five million.”

  Grady choked and brought his fist up to his mouth as he coughed. Several patrons looked over at him and one
of the women at the bar whom Pete had been ogling sneered.

  “That’s… That’s a lot,” he finally managed to say.

  “Largest contract Havoc has been offered for non-wartime business.”

  “That’s a lot,” Grady repeated.

  “Are you gonna get all cockeyed from the dollar amount?” Pete asked.

  “No, Skipper, it’s just—damn, that’s a lot of money for a gig.”

  “Yeah, it is. Three million, seven hundred and fifty to the lead contractor, he sets his team and procures the gear, travel, and accommodations out of that amount.”

  “Wait. What?” Grady asked. “That’s not how Havoc usually does business.” It was true. Normally, the company took care of all the logistics. The operators showed up, did their thing, and then got paid by the company.

  “This isn’t a normal business proposal. Bill doesn’t want his company associated with the mission if things go sideways. We’re gonna get the team to Japan, after that…”

  “So, how’s it—”

  “Money is transferred into the lead contractor’s offshore directly from the Brits. The lead is then responsible for everything else.” Pete took a larger sip of the beer. “So, what do you say, ol’ buddy? You want to go into Pyongyang in less than a week?”

  Grady had never been to Korea, but he’d heard how shitty their winter weather was. It was only March 1st, probably still wickedly cold over there. He’d had minor frostbite before, but he could handle it again for a chance at revenge.

  “Yeah, I’ll go.”

  “Good,” Pete said. “You’re fired.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Pete reached into his light jacket and pulled an envelope from his inside pocket. He handed it across the empty space between them. “At this time, your employment with The Havoc Group is terminated due to the consequences of your actions in Arlington. You may be rehired at a future date if further investigation into the incident proves you were not at fault.”

  “I, uh—”

  “Who do you want for the mission?” Pete powered on past Grady’s confusion. “We’ll need to prepare termination notices for them to be delivered tonight. I’ll begin coordination for you on the part of the company. I already have a briefer from DIA coming in tomorrow morning. He’s authorized to provide up to TS level, but nothing beyond that.”

  “Is firing me part of the company distancing itself?”

  “You’re goddamned right it is, Harper. Now, you’re just some half-cocked, war-crazed soldier of fortune off on your own retaliation mission.” He smiled again.

  Grady thought about it for a moment. “I want five men, plus myself. That’ll give everyone an angel.” Guardian Angels were the term for a partner that could watch your back.

  Pete nodded. “Who?”

  He needed a demolitions expert, a commo guy, a sniper, a mechanic, and… A pilot could come in handy, he thought. Someone who could fly both rotary wing and fixed wing? Or was he better suited having another shooter, or maybe a linguist?

  “Baz, Rob Carmike, Alex Knasovich, and McCormick,” Grady replied.

  “That’s four. Who’s the fifth?”

  “Do we have any Korean speakers?”

  “Nope. I can arrange for one to meet you in Japan, though.”

  “Japan?” He knew Pete had mentioned the location in passing, but the details were fuzzy.

  “Your staging point.”

  “Okay. So we’ll have seven guys then.”

  “Who’s your last pick?”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” Grady said. “But I want Hannah Dunn on this op too.”

  Pete nodded. “Smart. You never know what kind of shit you may need to get out of, and having a pilot can get you out of a lot of trouble.”

  Grady nodded. That’s exactly what he’d been thinking when he made the pick. The problem was that a woman could also get them into a lot of trouble in other ways.

  “At least I’m not going to the Middle East,” he sighed.

  Pete slammed the rest of his beer. “Pack some thermal underwear, buddy. You’re gonna need it.”

  NEAR EL PASO, TEXAS

  The last few miles of the I-10 disappeared behind Jake Murphy as he took the final exit toward Fort Bliss. In his rearview, the flat desert stretched as far as he could see, but in front of him, the Franklin Mountains extended for miles toward the northwest promising many hiking adventures for the enthusiastic twenty-four year old.

  He showed his ID card to the soldier at the gate and returned the soldier’s salute awkwardly from his driver’s seat. He was still getting used to that. He’d gone directly from West Point after graduation to being a TAC at Cadet Summer Training, then to Airborne School where no one saluted officers, and then into the Infantry Officer Basic Course. They were kept pretty well apart from the rest of the installation, so he’d only been in uniform a few times when he’d run into soldiers outside. Then, he’d gone to Ranger School where he’d recycled in both Mountain and Swamp Phase, meaning he’d been isolated in the Ranger Training Brigade as a student for a total of one hundred and ten days. He finally graduated two days ago and began his long drive across country to his first duty assignment at Fort Bliss, Texas. It’d been a long time since he’d been saluted.

  Somewhere along the way, he’d been promoted to first lieutenant before he even got to his first unit. He hadn’t had to think about money at all since he’d lived in on-post quarters or in trainee barracks for the last two years, so he’d been shocked when he checked his bank account after almost twenty-six months of never looking at it. He had more than enough cash to rent an apartment on his own.

  But he wasn’t sure he was ready for that. He’d shared a room in some way for over six years, and before that he’d lived with his parents. The thought of being alone at night, while liberating in some ways, seemed extremely lonely. He enjoyed being around others talking, laughing, and joking. Jake was comfortable with roommates and he wondered about the housing situation. He’d planned on renting a hotel room for a couple of weeks, a month at the most, while he got to know the area and met the other officers in his brigade.

  He followed the signs to the post welcome center where his orders stated he was to report to first before he could go to his unit. He was excited and nervous that his journey as an officer was actually about to begin. Before this, everything he’d done in the Army had been as a student. In a couple of days, he’d be finished with inprocessing and be assigned a platoon to lead. Sixty young men—and possibly even women—would be under his direct day-to-day supervision. It was a lot of responsibility, but he was ready for it.

  The days went by quickly as he went through briefings about Fort Bliss and El Paso, and filled out dozens of forms to ensure that the Army properly accounted for him and paid the local housing rates. At the end of the third day, he was told to go to the First Armored Division headquarters where they’d assign him to a brigade.

  After he went to the Division, he was told to report to the First Stryker Brigade. They’d assign him a battalion once he’d properly inprocessed through them. His spirits lifted when he found out that he’d be going to the Stryker brigade instead of one of the armored brigades. Within a heavy division like the First Armored Division, the Stryker units were able to do more dismounted infantry training than their fellow infantrymen in armored battalions. The Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle was much more maintenance intensive than the Stryker, which took up a lot of time. The only drawback was that Jake hadn’t gone through the Stryker Leader’s Course after IOBC because he’d reported directly to the Ranger Training Brigade. He’d have to learn everything he could about the vehicle and their tactics on the fly.

  When he finally found the brigade headquarters, he parked and got out. As he was adjusting his uniform in the reflection of a truck’s passenger window, a voice called out to him. “Stop it, you look fine.”

  Jake looked up to see a full bird colonel standing near the driver’s door. “Oh, sorry, sir,”
he said, throwing his hand up in a salute. “I didn’t see you.”

  The colonel returned the salute and came around the front of the truck to where Jake stood. He glanced at the lieutenant’s left shoulder. “I haven’t seen you before, Ranger. Are you new to the brigade?”

  “Yes, sir. I just signed into post a couple of days ago.”

  “And you’re coming to Ready First?”

  Jake nodded, then stopped himself. “Yes, sir. I don’t know which battalion yet, but—”

  “Tell the S-1 that Ready Six said you’re going to One-Three Six.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Jake repeated again. “I didn’t know you were the brigade commander.”

  The colonel waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. You’re new.” He stuck his hand out. “Jim Albrecht. Nice to meet you, Lieutenant Murphy.”

  Jake shook it. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Do you go by Lieutenant Murphy or would you prefer your first name?”

  “Uh, it’s Jake, sir.”

  “Okay, Jake,” Colonel Albrecht said, leaning against the hood of his truck and crossing his arms. He carefully tucked a manila folder under one arm to keep from bending the paperwork inside. “We don’t have a brigade newcomer’s briefing scheduled until May, so I’ll give you a quick rundown of my philosophy. Are you married? Have kids?”

  “No, and no, sir.”

  “Okay, good. We try to encourage a family friendly environment in the Ready First Brigade, but if you don’t have kids, I’ll skip that whole part of the schpiel and focus on the meat. Where’d you go to school?”

  “The US Military Academy, sir.”

  Colonel Albrecht smiled. “Well, I won’t hold that against you, son. Since you’re going to One-Three Six, you’ll probably be given an infantry platoon right away. Lieutenant Colonel Richardson is hurting for Ranger-tabbed platoon leaders. A lot of lieutenants have been going the non-traditional route lately and opting out of Ranger School. Glad to see you didn’t make that same decision, Jake.”