Expedition (The Locus Series Book 2)

by Ralph Kern

  The two men climbed the stairway. Passing the bustle of people in both uniforms and office wear, they walked down an unremarkable corridor which opened into another reception area where another soldier sat tapping away at a keyboard.

  “Long time, no see, Lulu.” Dillon propped himself on the desk and leaned over the woman who stared daggers at him. “Is the man in yet?”

  “Off. Now.” She looked pointedly at the large man. Dillon acquiesced with a nod and a smile. He slid from the desk as Grayson rolled his eyes. One day, Sergeant Louisa Franklin was going to either put in a complaint of harassment or shoot him. One of the two. Frankly, the man deserved either response. “Yes, he is in. And you two are late.”

  “Blame the captain over there. I’m sure he could give you a long boring tale about the scandalous lack of parking spaces for us minions.”

  Grayson gave a pained smile of his own before pointing at the colonel’s door. “Straight through?”

  “Yes, but take him a coffee.” Sergeant Franklin pointed at the percolator. “You know how he gets in the morning.”

  “Roger that.” Grayson grabbed a mug and topped it up from the gurgling machine sitting on the sideboard. It had taken him a long time to get used to the informality of this place, enlisted and officers divesting themselves of the burden of usual military etiquette. Once he’d got over himself, he’d actually found it a refreshing relief from the stuffiness of the bases he’d spent the rest of his career in.

  But still, there was one person in this place you didn’t jack around.

  Grayson rapped on the door, and heard a voice boom from within, “Enter.”

  The office was large, filled with an imposing desk and a conference table. Large screens on the wall displayed every news channel from CNN to Al Jazeera. Other wall-sized displays, which usually showed real-time mission reports from various operations around the world, were curiously blank.

  Victor Millard sat at the head of the conference table. He was as lean as Grayson and exuded health, despite pushing fifty, his face chiseled and clean-shaven, and his back ramrod-straight. Next to him was a stranger, a woman Grayson had never seen before.

  The colonel pointedly lifted his arm, looking at the expensive watch, and raised an eyebrow. “Gentlemen, I trust you have excuses, but frankly we have a lot to cover and I don’t want to hear them. My expectation, when I order you to a meeting at 0800, is that you turn up on time. Am I clear?”

  “Licky Chicky, boss.” Grayson proffered the mug toward his commanding officer by way of an apology, as he looked at the woman sat around the table from him. “I’m afraid we didn’t realize we had another guest.”

  “Sit down,” Millard responded curtly in answer.

  Grayson and Dillon nodded, before lowering themselves into two free chairs. Brown manila envelopes were already in place in front of them.

  Colonel Millard reached across the table and drew the mug toward him and took a long sip before giving a satisfied sigh. “Good coffee, Karl. And, while I’m feeling complimentary, good work on Al Bashari. Swift and terminal retribution in such a personal manner sends a far clearer message to the ISIL Remnant than a drone strike or bombing run. Well done.”

  “From what I hear, the Cleaver of the Vortex had it coming,” Grayson said as he leaned back in his seat. “Any more word on the boys and girls he ambushed?”

  “On top of the Marine killed in the theater? Nothing new. The sergeant of that unit is going to be spending the rest of his days hopping around on one leg.”

  “Better hopping than wheeling or dead,” Dillon responded dismissively. “So why the hell did you pull us? We had half a dozen operations on our board.”

  “Oh, you’ll like this.” Millard gave a wry smile before leaning forward and tapping on his tablet. One of the wall screens came alive, showing an amateurishly drafted poster. On it was what was clearly a camera-phone image of Grayson and Dillon walking in the street, and beneath them Arabic text. “Apparently, you two now have a hell of a bounty on your heads. Literally, just for your heads. All other parts are strictly optional. I must admit, when I was told just how much, I considered turning you in myself.”

  “Shit,” Grayson muttered, the repercussions of them being outed so publicly painfully evident to him. Not least of which is that he’d be ordered to move house as part of the standard safeguarding response to this kind of threat. Again. “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it. The Vortex is too hot for you right now. There’s not a chance in hell we can embed you back in there with that kind of temptation hanging over you. Every person you meet will be looking at you and wondering if pissing off the CIA is worth the pay check the Remnant is offering.”

  Grayson leaned back in his chair, gritting his teeth. The ISIL Remnant was just that, the sad remains of their defeated caliphate, but they could clearly still pull together a decent counter-intel team and a fair-sized bounty on people who’d screwed with them enough.

  “Fortunately, we have another job for you. Celia?” Millard gestured at the woman at the table. “Meet Captain Karl Grayson, Army, and Chief Petty Officer Max Dillon, Navy SEAL. Two of our finest Tier One operators now attached to the Special Activities Division Special Operations Group. Celia here is a friend from across the pond.”

  “Pleased to meet you, gentlemen,” she spoke for the first time. “Celia Bradley, from the Special Intelligence Service—”

  “MI6?” Grayson interrupted, glancing across at Millard, perplexed at the thought of a foreign agent in the headquarters of one of the most secretive bastions in America. No wonder the mission feeds were shut down. The UK may be friendly, but that didn’t mean Millard wanted them seeing just what the CIA was up to.

  “We prefer to call ourselves SIS these days.”

  “The question still remains, sir,” Grayson continued, addressing his boss. “What is she doing here?”

  “Gentlemen—” Millard said, his deep voice lowering even more.

  “Are you like Jane Bond?” Dillon rocked back on the back two legs of his chair.

  “No, we prefer not to do that kind of thing anymore, either,” she retorted in a cutting tone. Clearly, she was no stranger to banter.

  “Captain, CPO, I appreciate that you’ve been in a war-torn hellhole for the last few months, but a little professional civility with our guests now your back stateside, please,” Millard admonished loudly.

  Dillon waved his hand, as if he was wiping away the conversation and leaned forward. “Apologies, boss.”

  “The good news for you two, is with all of our other SOG teams currently tied up in the Vortex, we have a job for you.” Millard spoke loudly, giving no opportunity for further banter. “How does a trip to Nassau, in the Bahamas, sound to you?”

  Grayson felt his eyebrows raising. “A hell of a lot better than some sandy shithole if I’m honest, boss.”

  “Glad to hear you like the sound of it,” Maynard said. “Open up the packets.”

  Grayson reached for the brown manila envelope on the table and lifted the flap. Pulling out the briefing book within, he flipped it open. On the first page was a photograph of a man dressed in what he immediately recognized as a British Royal Navy dress uniform. The board on the left of his chest was covered in as many medals as your average third world dictator, while braiding swept across to the right.

  His eyes, even inanimate in the picture, conveyed both kindness and sadness in equal measures. Combined with his plethora of medals, Grayson got the impression this was a man who’d seen a lot in his time.

  “This is Vice Admiral Sir John Reynolds,” Bradley said as she flipped open her own book. “Formally of the Royal Navy. Now retired.”

  “And?” Grayson quickly flipped the pages over, seeing behind the photo a service record. It was a hell of a long spreadsheet.

  “And,” Bradley said, “we have reason to believe, involved in the proliferation of naval weapons technology, including possible weapons of mass destruction.”

  Grayson li
fted his eyes from the document, looking at the woman across the table. WMDs? Now this new job had just become interesting and real fast.

  “So.” Dillon casually flicked through his own packet. “You want us to off him?”

  “No,” Bradley said. “Or at least not yet. Chances are he’s just the broker. We need to find out what he has, how he obtained it, who he’s selling it to, and why.”

  Grayson nodded, lowering his gaze to the document. A thought occurred. “How come you guys aren’t handling this in-house?”

  “Because he’s here, just off our coast,” Millard took over. “And, quite rightly, SIS figured if shit is going down, then we’d want to know about it.”

  “Good point, well made,” Dillon murmured distractedly as he continued reading the document. “What I want to know is, do you guys not have PowerPoint over in the UK?”

  “I’m just an old-fashioned kind of girl,” Bradley responded without humor.

  Chapter Four – The Present

  “Sir, I really think you should turn back,” Jack Cohen said as he, Admiral John Reynolds, and Petty Officer Hank Doolidge walked along the dirt track into the outskirts of Anchorage. “We’ve got this.”

  The wooden huts were near the hastily erected piers where the majority of the pirate vessels had moored. The fledgling shantytown bustled with the cries of bartering, the industriousness of people and even the bark of the odd dog which had somehow found its way onto the one or another of the ships which had arrived in the region.

  No, he had to stop referring to them as pirates. They were allies now. The fleet seemed to be their leaders preferred name for the community now. One which didn’t show any of the divisions of the past.

  “Nonsense, dear boy.” Reynolds patted Jack on the shoulder. “We’re all friends now. We have to start acting like it.”

  “Yeah.” Hank eyed the people looking at them with accusatory eyes as they passed. “But do they know that?”

  A woman stepped forward, her dark hair scraped back into a ponytail. She looked them up and down. “You the rescue party?”

  “Hello there.” Reynolds smiled warmly. “I’m hoping there’s not so much rescuing to be done as... a collection, miss?”

  “Kristen. My name is Kristen.”

  “My apologies, Kristen.” Reynolds reached out a hand and she tentatively shook it. Jack was always surprised how the admiral constantly took a moment to make everyone feel important. A skill likely cultivated from his long military career spent keeping the peace in the claustrophobic spaces of a warship. “If you’d be so kind as to take us to Mister Bautista.”

  She nodded, and inclined her head toward what appeared to be a communal eating area of long tables covered over by a wooden roof. “He’s in the commissary. This way.”

  She led the way into the commissary area where the crew of the Seahawk were wolfing down some kind of soup.

  “Admiral.” Mack stood to attention as she noticed him, followed a beat later by the other officer. She glanced around. “You three ain’t exactly what I consider the cavalry.”

  “I persuaded Heather... Captain Slater, that the soft touchy-feely approach was for the best.” Reynolds turned to Bautista, who had stood with the others, and thrust his hand forward. “Urbano, please accept our gratitude for looking after our crew.”

  “Yes,” Bautista said as he took Reynolds’s hand, far more hesitantly than the confident manner in which Reynolds had offered it. “As you say, touchy feely. I thought it best not to be on the receiving end of a barrage from the Ignatius if Commander Slater were to express her... displeasure at any mistreatment of her people.”

  Jack couldn’t help but give a snort, and clenched his fist which threatened to creep toward the gun holstered on his thigh. These pleasantries seemed wrong, even after all these weeks. Bautista wasn’t one to talk sanctimoniously of mistreatment. The bastard had tortured him, beaten him to a pulp with his bare hands, and now they were making nice?

  He snatched his hand away, instead tucking his thumb into his belt. They were allies. Brought together by circumstances, but that didn’t mean he felt filled with enthusiasm about being polite to this asshole, even if he had seemed to have turned into a damned hippy. And as for... Jack turned and surveyed what he could see of the ramshackle settlement as the continuing pleasantries washed over him. Yes. He was keeping a low profile, as he should. As far as the Ignatius and Atlantica were concerned, it was still open season on that saboteur, Karl Grayson.

  “Please, have some vegetable soup.” Bautista waved his hand toward the steaming urn set in the middle of the table.

  “Thank you, but no,” Reynolds said. “I’d like your permission to bring in a recovery crew. They’ll take some sensitive items off the Seahawk and assess her for repairs.”

  “Sensitive items? You mean weapons?”

  Reynolds gave a flash of a smile. “No, this helicopter was being test flown. It was the one we cannibalized to keep the other flying. We’ve managed to repair...” Reynolds corrected himself. “Almost managed to repair her using Atlantica’s 3D printers. We just want to ensure the radar and coms systems are secured. Heather gets somewhat tetchy about that kind of thing.”

  Bautista opened his hands in supplication. “We will ensure nothing happens to it until you can arrange its recovery or repair.”

  “We’re all one big happy family,” Jack muttered, a little louder than he intended.

  “Yes,” Reynolds looked pointedly at Jack. “Yes we are. And that must not change.”

  “Agreed,” Bautista said. “The time for conflict is past now.”

  “Speaking of which...” Reynolds returned his attention to his opposite number. “We would like to invite you on board the Atlantica tonight. We are hosting a dinner. The first using food stuffs entirely produced since our arrival.”

  “So, I get to eat like a king while my people enjoy watery soup?” Bautista responded cuttingly, gesturing at the urn.

  “Urbano.” Reynolds let the pleasant smile fall from his face, replacing it with an earnest expression. “We need to work together, but considering our recent history, it has to be in small steps. Come aboard, start that process.”

  Jack felt himself bristling at the thought of Bautista returning to the Atlantica. Last time he had been aboard, a lot of good people ended up dead or injured. Not the least Captain Kendricks, who he’d shot in the shoulder. He forced himself to relax, or tried to at least.

  “Swords have to be turned into ploughshares at some point,” Reynolds continued quietly. “Help us do that. Please.”

  Bautista sighed, looking torn. Then he rallied himself. “Very well. Small steps.”

  ***

  Grayson stood in the shade of a hut, watching the meeting, watching Reynolds.

  Not for the first time, he wondered how different things might have turned out if he’d known one of his targets was on that damn ship. One of those responsible for him being here. One of those responsible for them all being here.

  But he hadn’t known. In the turmoil and confusion of the first month Atlantica had arrived, he’d never crossed path with Reynolds, both of them missing each other within its vastness. The man had pulled his strings from behind the scenes. And now, he was the Admiral—the self-styled president of the refugees.

  And then his master, Conrad Wakefield, had arrived on the Osiris, an even more impregnable fortress to Grayson than Atlantica herself, and the world had shifted again. He’d spent hours reconnoitering the heavily armed superyacht. He’d mentally roleplayed a thousand times how to get aboard, but Wakefield’s security team made Ignatius’s and Atlantica’s seem like mall cops. They were on the ball, and they were trained. The last time he’d tried in earnest hadn’t gone so well for him or his team.

  And dozens of others. He felt a twinge of sadness at the lives lost.

  Maybe he should thank Reynolds and Wakefield for helping him set in course the chain of events which led to him being here? After all, it had led him to Kristen, a
nd the birth of his son. Or damn them for all they had done, both directly and indirectly.

  Yes, he concluded, what they had been involved with was unforgivable.

  But, Grayson dwelled, as unforgivable as what Wakefield had done, it was just as unforgivable as what he himself had done. Maybe the means justified the ends? He had to hope so, as that was the only small shimmer of redemption which kept at bay the loathing he felt for his own actions. The murder of an officer on Atlantica, the sabotage of Ignatius, and the betrayal of trust. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age, but he had to hope it was worth it.

  The question was, would the greater good be Wakefield and Reynolds’s excuse, too?

  Bautista and Reynolds shook hands again. The group began walking toward the edge of the settlement while Bautista remained in the shade of the commissary, his arms folded in a pose of contemplation.

  Grayson leaned forward. He was so close. His quarry in their very settlement. He could take him now. Chances are Jack would have a go-team standing by to come pull them out of trouble, but he could get a lot of information out of Reynolds before the first shell from Ignatius dropped.

  No, while he was sure he could get information, there was the little problem of doing something with it while a full-blown rescue mission took place, which stayed his hand. And the fact Kristen and his son would be trapped in the middle of what would rapidly turn into a warzone as the fleet fought to get them back.

  The group moved further away. Slipping from his reach. Again. When they were safely away, Grayson joined his boss in the chilled shade of the commissary.

  “Urbano,” Grayson affected his casual tone and demeanor. The one which he knew disarmed people, making them underestimate him. A careful camouflage. “How was your chat? Negotiations successful?”

  “I think so.” Bautista nodded, reaching for a tin mug of water. “I have been invited for... dinner.”

  Grayson felt his lips curl in a sardonic smile. “On Atlantica? You’re in for a real treat.”

  “Yes, although they call it a diplomatic overture.”