by Evan Currie
Pierce nailed his second in charge with a glare most men would turn away from, but Johnson had been with him a long time. “Tell me that you’re joking.”
“Sorry, sir, that’s what the callers said.”
“Jesus.” The colonel shook his head. “Just what I need. Druggies on bath salts or meth, I assume?”
“No evidence one way or the other, but considering the reports out of Florida, Texas, and other states over the past few years, that would be my guess, sir.”
“Just great. Okay, get the men ready to roll out. The state troopers have asked for our help, and we’ve got the governor’s declaration of emergency on our side,” Pierce ground out. “Just pray to God we can clean this up quickly, or it’s going to be splashed over every network in the country by this time next week.”
“Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 6
CORONADO, CALIFORNIA
Eddie Rankin frowned as he walked through the newly assigned squad HQ. Who the hell redecorated?
Someone had shifted the couch and moved several tables out into the open from somewhere. Chairs were scattered around the room too, and he needed to dodge around them as he made his way inside.
“Oh, come on!” he muttered, almost swearing as he stumbled over a box someone put in the middle of the room, hidden just around a corner constructed by the placement of the tables. “What the f—”
He fell silent, his hand automatically dropping to his belt where his forty-five was resting against his hip. The last time I stumbled through a mess like this was in Iraq, and there was a Kalashnikov waiting for me at the end of the maze.
He picked his way through the room, glancing in each door as he passed until he spotted a lump on a sofa against the wall of the deepest office in the place. The lump already had a Smith and Wesson pointed at the door, however, and given that it was snoring, Rankin threw himself to one side and really did start swearing.
“Holy fuck, you crazy bastard!” he snarled. “Lower that damned hand cannon before you twitch in your sleep and blow a hole through someone!”
Hawk Masters snorted and yawned. “Relax, you wuss. I heard you coming from so far off I even had time to disable the claymores.”
“Claymores!” Rankin ducked his head around the corner. “You’d better be…”
He trailed off as he noticed two of the little green cases staring at him from the other side of the door.
“You’ve fucking lost your mind,” he said, his voice flat, as Masters rolled off the couch and holstered the big 500 revolver.
“Probably,” Masters admitted as he stretched out and yawned. “What time is it?”
“Almost 0900,” Rankin scowled, making sure that the antipersonnel mines had indeed been disarmed. “You mind telling me what’s with the damned ambush setup?”
“Someone tried to gut me last night.” Masters shrugged as he walked out and headed over to the coffee pot and prepared it to brew. “It woke up my paranoia a bit.”
“Hold up. Time the fuck out.” Rankin crossed his hands, signaling the play. “What do you mean, someone tried to gut you?”
Masters drew a wickedly curved blade from his belt, holding it up. “Chopped right through my sidearm with this thing and did a fair impression of Jackie Chan while kicking me all over my base housing. I’m living down here from now on.”
Rankin shook his head, trying to process the first statement. “Holy hell, man. Was it…one of them?”
“He seemed as human as we do, but I guess a doctor will determine that.” Masters shrugged. “He was nothing or no one I’ve ever met.”
“And he tried to kill you?”
“Gut me,” Masters corrected as he waited for the coffeemaker to do its work. “With a knife, all personal-like.”
That was an interesting point: You didn’t go after someone with a knife when you knew there was a better-than-fair chance he or she had a gun nearby. Not unless you had a personal stake, or were a total idiot. A silenced forty-five with subsonic rounds would be a much safer proposition, though he was personally partial to a good assault weapon from at least five hundred feet.
“Shit. You must have cut him off in traffic or something on your way down here.”
“I took a cab, jackass,” Masters growled, feeling more than a little put out by the whole situation.
People trying to kill him was par for the course while on the job. It wasn’t normal while he was on base in California, however, and usually he had some sort of idea why he was being attacked.
His thoughts on the matter were interrupted when a rumbling set of curses was heard from the office’s entryway. He and Eddie twisted around in time to see Admiral Karson hopping on one foot as he pulled one of Hawk’s makeshift caltrops off his shoe.
Eddie Rankin went near as white as a sheet, and stiffened to attention as the admiral got his feet back on the ground and stalked in their direction. Hawk just yawned again and took a seat by the closest desk, throwing his feet up as he took his first sip of coffee.
“Who the hell made this mess?!” the admiral thundered, an angry yet frightened-looking Captain Andrews following in his wake.
Hawk waved his free hand lazily. “That would be me, sir.”
Karson glowered at him, then stalked over to loom above him. “You can’t booby-trap your offices!”
“I’d say I managed a decent job of it. Caught Eddie with some of it too.” Hawk looked up to meet the admiral’s gaze, his expression bored. “I should have the lights rewired so that you can’t turn them on from by the door. That’ll make it even easier.”
“Let me rephrase,” Karson spat out. “You may not booby-trap your offices.”
“Put me up on charges.”
“Commander, you are riding my last nerve. I brought you back into the fold in good faith—”
“You yanked me back in because I know things you don’t know,” Hawk corrected, “and, while you don’t realize it yet, you really don’t want to know. Don’t try and play it off like you did me some kind of favor. I’m the one who’s going to get his ass killed doing your bidding, and I’m not about to make it easy for the killers.”
Karson seethed visibly for a time, while Andrews and Rankin watched as quietly as possible from the sidelines. It wasn’t every day you saw a lieutenant commander tell an admiral to go suck it, but it looked like Masters was actually going to get away with it.
“Yes, let’s talk about that, shall we?” Karson ground out through clenched teeth. “What the hell happened?”
“It was an assassination attempt.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Karson warned him. “I mean, do you know what it was about?”
Hawk shook his head. “Not a clue. Never met the man, and I don’t think I’ve pissed off anyone to the point where they’d try to kill me on a naval base. Any hits on his identity?”
Karson glanced over to Andrews, who shuddered but managed to snap out a response to the question.
“Nothing. Complete blank. No hits from the CIA, NSA, Interpol, or any federal or state agencies,” she said. “He doesn’t have a record, criminal or military.”
“Fabulous,” Karson muttered, turning away from the insubordinate lieutenant commander whom he needed too badly to discipline the way he’d prefer. “So I’m stuck with the same question. Was it someone who’s interested in the program, or did you just annoy someone other than me into a killing rage?”
“No answers for you there,” Hawk said, dropping his feet to the floor and standing up as he finished the last pull of his coffee. “All I know for sure is that the guy was trained. He was good — really good — and I’m only breathing because I got lucky.”
“Oh, much better. So he was trained well enough to outmatch a SEAL, even if it was one like you.” Karson rolled his eyes. “Any other good news for me?”
“No, that’s about it.”
“Fantastic,” the admiral muttered. “Well, I’ve got some for you. You can stop worrying about the kill attempt last night
.”
“Oh yeah? Says who?”
“Says me,” Karson glared, daring Masters to say anything this time. “I have something new for you to worry about. Now shut up and pay attention. We’ve got a situation that was bumped over to me by the NRO after some captured signals from a guard operation up north raised some eyebrows.”
The admiral tossed a computer tablet into Masters’s chest, turning away as the SEAL tried to catch the device before it bounced off him and hit the ground.
“Look it over. I want a report and options in one hour,” Karson said as he started to pick his way out of the office. “And clean this mess up!” Captain Andrews followed him silently after giving Hawk a withering glare.
“Yeah, yeah, right away, sir,” Hawk mumbled as he started to look over the files that were open on the tablet, “just as soon as the sun shines out my ass, sir.”
“Jesus, Hawk. Have you fucking lost your mind?” Eddie demanded once the admiral had left. “That was Karson, for Christ’s sakes! He’s on the SOCOM command board.”
“Fuck him.” Hawk shrugged, reading as he spoke. “He doesn’t know shit about what’s going on, and as long as that’s true he can’t do a damned thing to me.”
“Besides toss your ass in Leavenworth, you mean?”
“Sounds nice. Big strong walls, armed guards — I could use the relaxation,” Hawk said. “Now shut it and check this out.”
Eddie scowled, but walked over and leaned in to check out the file. “What’s this?”
“Something’s going on up in Barrow, Alaska. They sent some state troopers up there along with some guard boys,” Masters said. “Lost contact.”
“Lost contact? In country?” Eddie scoffed. “Did they forget to charge their damned cell phones?”
“No answer, not on any frequency — cell phone, landlines…They even sent e-mails,” Masters replied. “Looks like they tried everything but smoke signals. There’s a Coast Guard cutter off shore that even tried signal code.”
“Holy shit. Someone stepped in a big steaming turd,” Eddie muttered. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah. No good ones, though,” Masters said, opening some pictures. “The satellite photos don’t look promising, I can tell you that. Check this out.”
The images had been taken in low light, and they’d obviously been enhanced by computers at the NRO, but Eddie Rankin was used to decoding lousy surveillance pictures and these weren’t half bad. He stared for a long moment, his mind parsing the shapes he was looking at, then let out a low and long whistle.
“Are those bodies?”
“Yeah. You remember the drone pics we got out of Darfur?” Hawk asked.
“All too well. Jesus, this is in Alaska?” Rankin didn’t want to believe it.
“Yeah, I don’t know what the hell is going on up there, but I’ll stake any wager you like that it’s not a damned riot.” Hawk switched the tablet off and paced the room for a moment.
“Is it one of ours, though?”
“That’s the question,” Hawk admitted, shaking his head. “There’s not enough information yet to tell for sure…but damn it, it’s fucking Alaska, Eddie. What the hell else could it be? The Russians invading?”
Eddie snorted.
That was so unlikely, it made the supernatural seem downright pedestrian in comparison. Not that the Russians didn’t have the capability, mind you. Despite public opinion, what remained of the Soviet empire was no group of pansies. The Spetsnaz could easily have pulled off something like this, if they’d had reason to do so and something to gain. What they couldn’t have done was pull it off so cleanly that the NRO and NSA had no indicators at all, and that’s what made the file confusing.
No one could pull off something like this without there being something in the intel pipeline. Often signs were overlooked, only obvious in hindsight, but the file contained reports from both agencies as well as the CIA, and they had no indicators pointing to Alaska, let alone Barrow.
In the modern world, no one spoofed signal intercepts like that. No one. That left something that wasn’t from the modern world.
“What do you want to do?” he finally asked.
Hawk hesitated briefly, then shook his head. “No choice. Call the boys in, and tell them to pack warm. We’re going to get eyes on and find out for ourselves what the fuck is going on.”
“All right, you got it,” Eddie agreed. “Where are you going?”
Hawk shrugged as he walked over to the door. “Need to beg the admiral for marching orders, supplies, and some transport.”
Eddie snorted — he couldn’t help it. Only Masters would intentionally annoy the shit out of someone and then head over to beg for favors. “Good luck with that.”
* * *
Captain Andrews carefully kept quiet as she watched the admiral out of the corner of her eye. He’d been silent ever since they’d gotten back to his temporary office, and it was painfully clear that he was in no mood for conversation at the moment, not that she blamed him.
She’d thought that Masters was a bit off since the moment she’d met him, not to mention the team of people he’d called up. A bag of mixed nuts was the best descriptor she could imagine for them, short of falling into obscenities.
I don’t know what this project is all about, but if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the admiral was building some sort of suicide squad.
The idea was chilling, but as much as she didn’t want to believe it, it fit the facts. The only problem she had was that she couldn’t imagine what they’d be used for. It might make sense if they were actual criminals, men who could be disavowed more easily, but for all their colorful records, they were still SEALs in good standing. Even Masters once again held his security clearance, so there was no clean way to disavow them as a group. Individually, it would be more possible, she supposed.
Whatever was going on, it was clear that Masters had either some sort of leverage on the admiral, or he was certifiably insane.
Speaking of which…
Her train of thought was derailed when the subject of that particular train wreck knocked on the door and waited patiently, suddenly all military in his bearing.
“Enter,” Karson ground out, waiting until Masters was standing in front of him before he continued. “Have you reviewed the file?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Opinion?”
Masters considered the question for a moment, then spoke quickly but calmly. “Send us up to get eyes on. I can’t determine anything from what’s in the files, but I don’t like the looks of the situation.”
“What’s to like? We’ve lost a whole deployment of guardies, not to mention the state troopers and maybe the whole damn town.” Karson shook his head. “I’ll get you your plane.”
“Thank you, sir. Let’s keep everyone else clear of the area until we check it out. Biohazard maybe?”
“Chemical spill.” Karson nodded. “Something from the oil wells maybe. I’ll have a suitable story circulated. Who knows? It may even be true.”
“Yes, sir,” Masters said. “I’ll have my team ready to go in four hours.”
“The jet will be waiting for you,” Karson replied, nodding. “Good luck.”
Andrews watched as Masters saluted the admiral like a real navy man, turned on his heel, and then strode out. The entire situation was so bizarre, and she didn’t know what to think of any of it.
“Confused, Captain?”
She turned back, startled by the admiral’s question, but managed to stammer out a reply. “Uh…yessir.”
“So am I.”
She frowned, started to say something, but was stopped when he held up his hand.
“Don’t ask. You aren’t cleared for it.”
“Yessir,” she said again. What else was there to say? “Do you want me to go with them, sir?”
Karson looked up, his eyes level with hers for a moment. Honestly, he hadn’t considered it. Women didn’t take on ground-combat roles in the US military — it j
ust wasn’t done. That said, this was a deployment on US soil and, on paper at least, it should primarily be a scouting mission. There was also the fact that he wanted very badly to know what Masters seemed to know.
After a long moment he nodded. “Pack your things.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain,” Karson called out after her before she could close the door.
She turned around. “Sir?”
“Masters is in command of his team, and you’re only there to observe,” he told her. “Watch him. I want to know what he knows and how he knows it…but most of all I want to know what the hell is going on. Clear?”
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
“Go then.”
She went.
* * *
The team was waiting for him by the time Masters got back to their headquarters in the subbasement.
“So?” Rankin asked as soon as he walked in.
“We’re deploying to Barrow, Alaska,” he said. “Draw cold-weather kit from the base supply and meet at the airfield in four hours.”
“What’s the mission?” Hale spoke up, not moving even slightly from where he was sitting.
“Officially, a simple peek and poke,” Masters answered. “CBR gear is being assigned to us because the cover story is that there was a chemical leak from the nearby oil wells.”
Robbie Keyz winced. “That’s just a story right? Chem gear sucks, and bio stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“As far as we know, yes, it’s just a story.” Masters rolled his eyes.
Keyz had a lot of nerve, talking about biochem gear that way. He gave everyone around him the creeps just wondering if he was packing anything that might go boom if jostled improperly.
“As far as we know?” Keyz demanded, grimacing even more clearly. “What do we know?”
