Execute Authority

by Dalton Fury

  Kolt finally found his voice. “Sir, respectfully, what the hell? We played by your rules. Maybe if we hadn’t, we would have stopped this from happening. How in the hell is this our fuckup?”

  “You didn’t stop it,” Webber snapped. “If you had, you’d be a hero right now. But you didn’t. You didn’t communicate the threat to Secret Service—”

  “Bullshit. Simmons ignored—”

  Webber raised a hand. “No, Kolt, it’s not bullshit. You did what you always do. You tried to handle it yourself instead of following the playbook. You saw your opening and instead of calling for execute authority, you ran with it. So it is your fuckup. And now it’s my fuckup too, because I didn’t sideline your ass when I found out about this.”

  Raynor took a deep breath, biting down hard on his protest. Almost anything he said now would probably only make things worse. “Who’s taking the squadron?”

  Webber raised an eyebrow. “Right now, that’s the last thing I’m worried about.”

  “Sir, Noble goes to alert status in three days. At least let me bring my replacement up to speed.”

  “Racer, you’re not getting it. We’re shut down.”

  “The squadron?”

  “The Unit.”

  Raynor suddenly felt light-headed. He understood now why Webber looked so utterly defeated. “That’s … I…” He realized he had no idea what he was even trying to say. “Permanently?”

  “Possibly. You’ll recall that the CG signed off on the former SECDEF’s plan to create a single unified JSOC counterterror unit. Now he’s got the justification he needs to stand us down. I think it’s safe to say we’re not going to get any support from the new administration. I guess it’s up to ST6 to save the world now.”

  Kolt remained silent. A million second-guesses ran through his head.

  Webber let out another heavy sigh. “Or maybe not. It’s tough to say how this is going to shake out. Someone did almost kill FLOTUS. Her husband may just be grateful enough for you trying your damnedest to save her that he’ll overlook your maverick ops. Hell, he might even give you my job.”

  “I’m sure he can think of a better punishment than that,” Raynor said halfheartedly.

  Webber managed a tight grin. “Go home, Racer. Park your ass in a chair. Don’t talk to anyone until you talk to me first. You’ve survived worse.”

  “Yes, sir.” Raynor started to turn away, then paused. “Sir, what about Shiner? They are looking for him, aren’t they?”

  Webber gave him a hard stare. “Forget about Shiner. He’s not your problem anymore.”

  * * *

  There was a light burning in the window of the Rockville safe house. After the confrontation with Racer in the Jersey City tower, Miric’s first thought was that somehow his old enemy had gotten there ahead of him and laid a trap, but after the initial moment of dread, he dismissed this possibility. He had followed Racer to the airport, watched him disappear into the boarding area. There was no way that Racer could have tracked him down so quickly, or known about the safe house. Besides, enemies did not announce their presence by turning the lights on. A more likely explanation was that he or Dooley had left a light on by accident when they had left days earlier, but when he entered the dwelling, he realized that was also not the case.

  Mehmet was sitting in a chair in the living room.

  Miric’s dread returned with vengeance. The Turk had been very clear about the fact that there would be no contact between them while he was in the United States. If Mehmet was breaking his own protocol now, it did not bode well for Miric. Mehmet appeared to be alone and unarmed, but Miric doubted either was the case.

  Miric took a seat opposite the MIT officer. “I had not expected to see you here.”

  “Why New York?” Mehmet snapped.

  “This is how you greet me? No ‘well done, old friend’?”

  “It was not well done,” Mehmet said, his voice rising toward a shout. “You understood what was to happen, did you not? What we needed you to do?”

  “I did,” Miric replied.

  “New York was too far away. Why strike there?”

  Mehmet had left the particulars of choosing the time and place of the hit to Miric, albeit within a specified range for both. The failure in Baltimore had made it impossible to meet the original deadline, and the subsequent lack of opportunities had forced him to ignore the geographical constraints.

  But he could not explain all that to Mehmet; not if he wanted to go on breathing. “It was necessary,” he said. “And it does not matter. I heard on the news, the president’s wife will be moved as soon as the doctors say she is safe to travel.”

  “It was reckless. What if you had killed her?”

  “You chose me because you know that no one else can do what I can do. And that is what I did. Your plan is safe.” He stopped, realizing that the Turk had probably already decided his fate. But perhaps there was a way to sway him. “There is a complication.”

  Mehmet’s eyes narrowed. “Complication?”

  Miric chose his words carefully. “I recognized one of the men protecting the American president. He is somebody I…” He faltered, his throat tightening with unexpected emotion. “I knew him once. An American commando.” Miric recounted what little he knew about the man called Racer, including the incident that had cost him his eye.

  “If he was with the president’s security detail, then he may still be with the same organization,” Mehmet mused. “Did he recognize you?”

  “No.” He did not know for a certainty that Racer had recognized him as anything but the man he had pursued in Athens. If Mehmet believed otherwise, he would almost certainly kill him on the spot. Even revealing this much was taking a grave risk, but if he could convince Mehmet that an American commando called Racer was the real enemy, it would not only buy Miric a reprieve, but give him a chance to settle an old score.

  “But that may change,” he continued. “The police will eventually find CCTV of Konstantin Khavin with the assassin, just as you intended. If this man sees my picture—” He let the thought hang. “He needs to die. Let me hunt him. Who better to kill him than the Russian Spetsnaz who helped Lyle Dooley shoot the American president’s wife?”

  Mehmet considered this for a moment, then nodded slowly. “This is personal for you. Very well, I will give you your chance to hunt this man. But you will do this my way.”

  PART THREE

  FINAL MANEUVER

  TWENTY

  The place Lieutenant Colonel Kolt Raynor bunked at night was a beat-up old single-wide trailer, parked in the middle of a grove of mature pecan trees at the end of a rural chicken farm road a few miles northwest of Fort Bragg. The exterior screamed for a pressure wash. The interior, while clean and orderly, had a weary feel to it. The furniture, what little of it there was, was mismatched, thrift-store chic. The austerity of the place had never bothered Raynor. He certainly could have afforded better, but simply didn’t see the point.

  He had moved into the trailer not long after earning his spot in the Unit, sharing the space with his friend Josh “TJ” Timble, but he didn’t really think of it as home. “Home” was a place he had left behind all those years ago when he’d joined the army. It was an ideal, not a fixed location. A place for memories, something to fight for, die for. The trailer wasn’t any of those things.

  It had been, once. Back when he and TJ had shared the place, it had felt a lot more like a real home, a refuge from the craziness of the constant high operational tempo, but that had ended with the disastrous mission in Pakistan in which Raynor had lost an entire assault team and TJ while attempting to rescue his old friend, who had been captured by the Taliban. During the three years that followed, the trailer had become a sort of self-imposed prison for Raynor. He withdrew from the world, drank himself to oblivion, and generally let everything go to shit for a while. Although he had redeemed himself, made it back into Delta, the trailer had become just a place to crash when he wasn’t away on Unit business, or
simply at the Unit, which was most of the time.

  Now, it felt like a prison again.

  He had not interpreted Webber’s admonition to stay put as a literal order of house arrest, but there really wasn’t anywhere for him to go. So, after a trip to the grocery store to replenish his bare cupboards, he did exactly as Webber had instructed. He parked his ass in one of his cracked red leatherette chairs, and turned on the television.

  The twenty-four-hour news cycle was dominated by two stories: the recuperation of the first lady, and the ongoing investigation of the deceased would-be assassin.

  FLOTUS was in stable condition in a New York City hospital, but would soon be transported to the VIP surgical suite at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where she would undergo surgery to repair the damage done by the would-be assassin’s bullet.

  The talking heads were quick to point out the distinction between the facility named for Major Walter Reed, army physician and pioneer of the science of epidemiology, and the previous hospital in Washington, D.C., the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which had closed in 2011 after scandalous reports of patient neglect. The name had been carried over to the new joint-service military medical complex, which had expanded the facilities of the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.

  This level of digression was typical, as the pundits dissected every minute detail of the story and speculated about everything from the method of transport—it was thought that she would be flown to Joint Base Andrews aboard a VC-25A from the presidential fleet; if the president did not accompany her, the plane would be designated Air Force 1F—to the matter of what medical procedures she would undergo upon arrival, and whether or not she would be able to make a complete recovery. The empty chatter was aggravating to Raynor, but far more troubling to him was the amount of attention given to details of how FLOTUS would be moved.

  The other story in the news, the investigation into the dead shooter’s background, was once again drawing attention to the problem of domestic terrorism and emphasizing the intense dissatisfaction of the American people with their government. Although the media seized on the opportunity to stage on-air battles between hard-left-leaning gun-control crusaders and staunch, unashamedly racist defenders of the patriot movement, there had been some actual developments in the case. The founder of the militia with which Lyle Dooley had been affiliated had reportedly turned himself in to the FBI, and was, according to a Bureau representative, “cooperating fully.” Other members of the group had moved quickly to distance themselves from Dooley, presenting him as an unstable loner and an outsider. Raynor guessed their disavowal of Dooley had more to do with the fact that the sniper’s bullet had struck the first lady instead of her husband than because they disapproved of his extreme action.

  There were also unconfirmed reports that Dooley had not been acting alone. Although investigators were not commenting, there were rumors that police detectives, or possibly federal agents, had chased someone through the Goldman Sachs Tower following the assassination attempt.

  Raynor breathed a little easier at that news. If the media were reporting it, then the FBI was probably taking it a lot more seriously than they were willing to let on, which meant that eventually someone would get around to asking him what had happened, and maybe then they would realize that he belonged in the game, not on the bench.

  Twenty-four hours after leaving Webber’s office, he was still waiting for that call.

  He was just about to pop a frozen dinner in the microwave when he heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside. He glanced out the window above the kitchen sink and saw a familiar white BMW X7 pulling up alongside his own black Chevy Silverado. It was Brett Barnes’s rig.

  The doors opened and two men got out, Barnes from behind the wheel, and Slapshot from the shotgun seat. The latter carried an overstuffed plastic grocery bag in each hand.

  Raynor went to meet them at the front door.

  “Chimichangas y cervezas,” Slapshot said, holding up the bags. “Figured you’re probably getting sick of ramen noodles already.”

  The sergeant major seemed like his usual gregarious self, but Barnes looked around anxiously.

  “Thanks,” Raynor replied. “But are you sure you want to be seen around me?”

  The big man pushed past Raynor and went inside, setting the bags on the counter. “Fuck, what are they gonna do, fire us?”

  Barnes’s frown deepened, but he didn’t say anything. It clearly wasn’t a laughing matter to him, but he had come anyway; Raynor had to give him that.

  He took a cold Corona from Slapshot and grabbed the bottle opener from the top drawer. “Anything new?”

  “Not a lot,” Barnes said, breaking his silence. “Webber has me reporting directly to him, but all he really had to say was ‘look busy.’ We burned through some frangible and blew a shitload of doors in the shoothouse, which we all probably needed after the last few weeks.”

  “Are you the acting Noble Zero-One?”

  “What?” The young major looked shocked by the suggestion. “No, sir.”

  “This is gonna blow over, boss,” Slapshot added. He cracked the top off another bottle and handed it to Barnes.

  “You guys staying awhile or just stopping by?”

  “Do we need a reason?” Slapshot retorted. “Come on, boss, admit it. You’re happy to see us. But yeah, there is something else. We stopped by the SCIF.”

  Raynor stood a little straighter. “Have a seat,” Kolt said as he moved toward the big chair. “Just kick those clothes off the couch.”

  “Your new BFF, hipster boy, is getting RFI’d to death about a certain one-eyed foreign national you had him tracking.”

  “Yes.” Raynor had to fight the urge to pump his fist, knowing that if higher was pushing intel analyst Kelly requests for information then the calculus had just changed. “Finally.”

  “One thing, though. They think he’s Russian.”

  “Russian?” Raynor shook his head and set the beer on the coffee table. “No, that’s just a bullshit alias.”

  “Hey, preaching to the choir,” Slap said.

  “Their logic train is all jacked up. I need to get the fuck over there.”

  Slapshot put a hand on his shoulder. “Kolt.” The sergeant major almost never used his given name. “Give it some time. Let them come to you.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “They will.”

  * * *

  After finishing off the six-pack, Barnes and Slapshot headed out, leaving Raynor to continue his electronic vigil.

  “Racer will be back in the saddle in a matter of days, if not sooner,” Slap said.

  “I don’t know, sergeant major,” Barnes said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. “Maybe this was that proverbial last straw?”

  “No, man, he’s been through tougher crap than this,” Slap said.

  They drove a few more miles in silence before Slap spoke again. “You’re not really a fan of Racer, I know.”

  “It’s not that, necessarily,” Barnes said quickly, making eye contact with Slapshot. “It’s just his style.”

  “You mean the kind of style where you lead from the front, risk your ass just as much as your men, don’t take any shit, and trust your NCOs?”

  Barnes sensed Slapshot was getting a little pissed about the topic, and knew he needed to reel it back in before the conversation became the talk of the squadron lounge in the morning. He knew enough from his short time in Noble to know that his own days would be numbered if that happened.

  “It’s just his maverick style of leadership,” Barnes said, trying for a conciliatory tone. “It’s not exactly the kind of leadership we were taught at West Point. Or anywhere else in the modern army that I’ve seen.”

  “How long have you been here?” Slap asked in a clearly irritated and rhetorical manner. “What, less than a year?”

  Barnes didn’t answer. He realized now that the less he said, the better. He knew he couldn’t
argue the fact that Raynor had been right about everything so far. And he had been fully aware of Raynor’s throw-caution-to-the-wind reputation, which was practically an unofficial class in OTC prior to joining the squadron.

  “I hear ya, sergeant major,” Barnes said. He wanted to say that maybe if Lieutenant Colonel Kolt Raynor had been a little easier to deal with and played by the book once in a while, things might be coordinated and supported a little better, but he kept these thoughts to himself as he turned onto the main highway and headed back toward Fayetteville. Slapshot was solidly in Raynor’s corner and not likely to tolerate even well-intentioned constructive criticism. He dropped Slapshot off at home, and then rolled the windows down to vent out the lingering odor of cheap Mexican food, attempting to preserve the new-car smell as long as he could.

  Home was a three-bedroom, two-bath rambler on Lindsay Road, west of Fayetteville and south of Fort Bragg. It was a lot more house than he needed at present, but he had high hopes, both for his career and his personal life. He was single by choice—special operations was hell on relationships—but he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life kicking in doors. He wasn’t a warrior monk like Raynor.

  He hit the button on the garage door remote as he pulled the BMW into his driveway, timing it perfectly so that he didn’t have to tap the brakes to wait for the door to roll up. He drove the vehicle inside, stopping with the front bumper a precise eighteen inches from the back wall. He made it as far as the door leading into the kitchen before remembering that he had left the windows down. As he turned back, debating whether or not it really mattered, out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a car parked on the street at the edge of his driveway.

  Barnes was instantly on his guard. He didn’t recognize the vehicle, a midsized sedan, but he knew it had not been there when he’d pulled up.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he headed back to the BMW. He slid into the driver’s seat, reached across the center console to the glove compartment, and took out his personal weapon, a Glock G21 Gen 4. As soon as the weapon was in his hand, he twisted, keeping the pistol aimed directly ahead as he got out again. He eased away from the vehicle, putting his back to the garage wall in order to keep an unobstructed view in every direction, and then started moving toward the still-open roll-up door. He quick-checked the rear of the Bimmer as he passed it, then turned to look outside.