by Dalton Fury
Grauer tapped his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “There may be a workaround. I’ll look into it. But understand this, Kolt. If we find your guy, I’ll be obligated to report it to the authorities immediately. Radiance isn’t a vigilante organization. I’m not going to put POTUS, our company, or anyone else at risk to facilitate your revenge.”
“This isn’t about revenge, Pete. Shiner has to be stopped.”
There was another long silence from Grauer. Finally, he spoke again. “Son, I get where you’re coming from. You’ve always had good instincts, and judging by what you’ve told me, you are probably the one that should be hunting this guy. But you’re out there flappin’ on this one.
“Five years ago, we sent you into the FATA because Jeremy couldn’t send anyone from the Unit. Any one of his operators would have taken your place in a heartbeat, but he knew he couldn’t send them. He recognized his limitations, Kolt. That’s a part of leadership that I don’t think you’ve ever really grasped. You need to, or you’re going to crash and burn again, and this time, you won’t come back from it.”
Grauer was right about everything, including Raynor’s shortcomings as a senior leader. Following one-size-fits-all regs and bullshit orders had always chafed him, especially when it meant passing over the most obvious and effective solution. The harsh truth was that he was fundamentally incapable of being the kind of soldier Grauer and Webber and everyone else had always told him he needed to be. How he had made it as far as he had was as much a mystery to him as it was to everyone else.
“Just help me find him. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Grauer studied him across the table for a few seconds, then glanced at something behind Raynor. “I think those folks are here for you.”
Raynor felt a cold surge of adrenaline slam through him. He’d known that eventually someone would take note of his absence from the compound, at which point Penske would notify the law and have an APB put out on him. But he had not expected it to happen so quickly. He turned slowly to see six familiar faces—Slapshot, Digger, Shaft, Hawk, and the rest of the alpha team—settling in around a pair of tables in the center of the dining area. They wore civilian clothes, but the former Ranger colonel was too canny not to know a group of Delta operators when he saw them.
Raynor looked back at Grauer. “It’s nothing. I’ll take care of it. Can I count on you, Pete?”
“All right, son. I’ll do what I can, which won’t be much.” He downed the dregs of his coffee and then rose. “I’ll let you pick up the tab. It’s not like I’ll be able to write it off as a business expense. I’ll call you at the number you gave me earlier when I have it set up.”
“Thanks, Pete.” Raynor stood and shook the other man’s hand, then picked up his coffee mug and headed over to join his mates. He grabbed an empty chair and sat down next to Slapshot. “How the hell did you all find me?”
“You think I didn’t see that card you took from your desk?” Slapshot said. “The one with the Radiance logo. Did the math. I’m good at story problems. Gave the opportunity first to A team, and they jumped at it. I called shotgun. When we got into town, Hawk there called Pete Grauer’s secretary and she told us where to find him. And you.”
“She just volunteered the information? Pete’s not gonna like that.”
“I can be very persuasive,” Hawk chimed in.
“I’ve noticed,” Raynor replied. He also did not fail to notice that the female assaulter was smiling confidently, which was a stark contrast to the dour expressions of the others at the table. “So, I guess you’re here to talk some sense into me. You wasted the gas.”
Slapshot looked away from Raynor for a moment, glancing at the others as if looking for a vote of confidence. “Here’s how it is, boss. We’ve got you covered back home. At least for a little while. The guys will give Penske the runaround for a while, cover a few command and staff meetings for you, but that won’t hold muster long. So, if you’ve got this out of your system and you’re ready to head back now, no harm, no foul. That’s what’s behind door number one.”
“And behind door number two?”
There was another shared silent communication, and then Digger spoke up. “We’re with you, boss. All the way.”
Shaft added, “When he killed Brett and Webber, he made it personal for us, too. We’ve got as much right to take that fucker down as you.”
Raynor shook his head. “Door number three. You guys forget you saw me, and head back now before Penske declares you AWOL. I’m not letting any of you throw your careers away over this. I’m at the end of mine.”
“There’s a problem with that,” Slapshot said. “If you’re cashing out, you really aren’t in a position to give orders anymore.”
Raynor frowned, then looked past his friend to the others seated around the table. “I appreciate that. I really do. But I won’t let you follow me down.”
His plea was met with stone-faced silence. Except for Hawk, who looked … different. It took him a moment to realize why.
She wasn’t his subordinate anymore.
He shook his head, trying to clear the thought away before it took root. He didn’t need a distraction like that. Not now.
“So I guess it’s not going to be door number one,” Slapshot said. “Well, I was afraid of that. So, where do we start looking?”
* * *
Rasim Miric had also driven all night to reach the Washington, D.C., metro area, arriving at the Rockville safe house about the same time that Kolt Raynor was sitting down with Pete Grauer some thirty miles away.
He had been forced to abandon the rental car as soon as he was a few miles down the road from Raynor’s home. Raynor might have gotten a look at the license plate, but even if he had not, the shot-out taillight and bullet scars would surely attract the attention of the local sheriff’s patrol cars. He had dumped the car on a dirt road just out of view of the hardball road, then begun the long hike back toward Fayetteville. It had taken him an hour and a half, mostly because he had kept to the woods alongside the highway, out of view of passing motorists. After another hour of waiting in the parking lot of a roadside hotel in Spring Lake near Fort Bragg, a target of opportunity presented itself in the form of a lone traveler in a car with out-of-state plates. Miric intercepted the man before he could reach his hotel room, killed him without either of them making a sound, and then dumped the body in the trunk of the car before driving away.
It would probably be several hours before anyone realized the man was missing, and even longer before a search led authorities to both car and body hundreds of miles away in a Maryland neighborhood several blocks from the safe house.
Mehmet was waiting for him inside. He was not alone. Four men that Miric had never seen before were with him, eating as they watched the news on television. The men were Caucasians with no discernible traits to hint at their ethnicity. Miric assumed they were also MIT officers, there to assist with the final phase of the plan, but they might have been hired guns, just like him.
They might even have been there to kill him.
Mehmet did not introduce the other men. “Is it done?”
“Yes. I spoke with him, said exactly what you told me to. And I killed two of his friends. He will come after me. I am certain of it.”
The other man nodded in satisfaction. “Well done, old friend. Don’t worry. The next time you see him, you have my leave to extinguish the light in his eyes.”
So I am his old friend again? Miric thought. He was not fooled by the change in Mehmet’s demeanor, but it did at least indicate that he was still useful to the other man. Mehmet would not kill him. Not yet. Maybe not at all. If the plan succeeded, and why wouldn’t it, there would be no need.
Many weeks earlier, Mehmet had told him how the endgame would proceed. It was not enough to simply kill the American president, he explained. They could have done that at any time.
The knight—Miric—would attack first, weakening the NATO alliance by killing the pro-American
leader of Greece.
Then, a second attack, one that would appear to be a failed assassination attempt, but was in reality a feint, designed to throw suspicion on America’s most formidable rival, Russia. That suspicion would further weaken America politically.
The American people would know, or at least believe, that the Russians had tried to assassinate their leader, and yet there was little that could be done about it. Open war was extremely unlikely, especially with little hard evidence of a conspiracy. Even if the president ordered his espionage agencies and military to engage in a secret campaign of retribution—a new Cold War—the public would never know. The global perception that America was weak in the face of attack would become the reality.
The delay resulting from Miric’s abortive attempt in Baltimore had nearly derailed the plan. President Noonan’s foreign policy team was poised to undo the damage done by the loss of the Greek prime minister.
Of course the real reason Baltimore had been chosen was because it would ensure that the first lady would be taken immediately to Walter Reed hospital, per presidential medical emergency protocol, which was the real intent of that second attack: to maneuver the president into position for the final blow.
Checkmate.
President Noonan had to die. Although the preceding moves would make him appear weak, there was uncertainty about how he would respond to the unfolding events in the near term. It was not inconceivable that, in response to the assassination attempt and the injury to his wife and goaded on by the increasingly reactionary rhetoric of the media, he might do the unthinkable, initiate a full-scale military response or even play the game of nuclear brinksmanship with the Russian Bear, and in so doing, demonstrate the very strength that Mehmet and his government hoped to eradicate.
But Noonan’s designated successor, Vice President Bill Mason, had proven himself weak and ineffectual, as well as conflict averse, both as a military leader and as secretary of state in the previous administration. He would choose the course of appeasement, and America’s allies abroad would abandon her in droves.
Into that void of international leadership would step a new superpower: the Ottoman Empire reimagined, backed by the military might of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the economic power of the European Union, and the spiritual support of more than a billion Muslims all around the world.
The greatest risk to the plan, of course, was that the American authorities might see through the deception linking the attacks to Russia, and by recognizing Miric, Racer might have exposed that weakness. But rather than have him simply kill Racer, Mehmet had used Miric to draw attention away from the real attack.
He would have to risk exposure—and capture or even death—one last time, but if it meant that he would have a chance to repay the insult done to him by Racer all those years ago, it was worth it. Until he had come face-to-face with Racer, Miric would have believed it was enough to see America brought down. Now, he had something else to live for.
He ate and rested while Mehmet and the others continued to watch television until they heard the news they had been waiting for. The plane carrying the first lady of the United States had arrived at Joint Base Andrews, where a marine helicopter was waiting to transport her to the military medical hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
“It is time,” Mehmet said.
TWENTY-SIX
Even from a distance of nine hundred miles, Pamela Archer could smell the bullshit. The former U.S. Air Force officer had been at Radiance Security and Surveillance Systems for over six years, the last three of those as head of the UAV operations division and working closely with the company’s president, Pete Grauer. She knew how things were supposed to work, and knew when Pete wasn’t telling her the whole story.
Grauer had just ordered her to pull one of the three Predator B aircraft presently operating out of Key West, Florida—monitoring the Florida Strait for the Department of Homeland Security—and fly it almost a thousand miles north to fly circles around the D.C. restricted flight area. His stated intention was to provide a demonstration to lawmakers who were questioning the usefulness of Predator drones in combating the trafficking of narcotics and humans.
She excused herself from the flight operations center where the three-person crews operated the aircraft remotely—one pilot and two sensor technicians per bird—and ducked into her office to continue the phone call in private.
“Okay, Pete. That’s what we’ll tell the shareholders. What’s the real story?”
Grauer made a sound that might have been a grunt of disapproval.
She headed off the denial she knew was coming. “Pete, I don’t mind if you want to joyride one of my birds, but just be straight about what it is you really want.”
Radiance did not actually own the aircraft—each of which cost in the neighborhood of seventeen million dollars—but operated them for DHS under an arrangement that allowed some latitude in how the aircraft were used. Archer was, nonetheless, very protective of her babies.
“It’s a favor for an old friend. A mutual friend.”
“Mutual?”
“It’s Racer, Pam.”
Pamela Archer sat down quickly.
Eight years earlier, as a UAV pilot for the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron operating out of Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, Captain Pamela Archer had been tasked with providing aerial surveillance and support for a special operations team—designated Hunter 29—searching the remote border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan for Taliban fighters. A malfunctioning sensor had forced her to pull her Predator drone off station, leaving Hunter 29 without overwatch deep in enemy territory, and in the hours that followed, Hunter 29 was all but wiped out. A subsequent mission to rescue the embattled team led to further casualties and the capture of a second team of American commandos. Four years later, she had learned the name of the sole survivor of Hunter 29, a Delta Force officer named Major Kolt Raynor, code named Racer.
Although she had done nothing wrong—indeed, as far as the Air Force was concerned, she had done everything exactly according to SOP—Archer blamed herself for the deaths of Racer’s men and the failed rescue attempt. If she had trusted her instincts about the sensor malfunction and kept her Predator over Hunter 29’s position just a little while longer, the Delta operators would have seen the enemy coming, and the tragedy would have been prevented.
She had been able to at least partially atone by helping Racer rescue his MIA comrades and thwart an al Qaeda attack on a CIA black site. While the debt Archer owed the men of Hunter 29 would never be fully settled, helping Kolt Raynor was one way to at least pay down the interest.
“What does he need?” she asked. “Be specific, Pete.”
“Racer needs overhead surveillance of the area surrounding Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda.”
Archer did not need to inquire about the significance of that destination. The joint military medical center in Bethesda had been in the news ever since the wounding of the first lady during the failed assassination attempt in New York City. If Racer wanted surveillance of the area around the hospital, it could only mean that he believed the threat to the first family was ongoing. “He’s working for the Secret Service now?”
“No, Pam. That’s why this is a favor to him. And something we’re not going to talk about.”
“Understood. I’ll take care of this personally.”
Grauer laughed—a gruff, humorless utterance. “I was afraid you’d say that. Promise me that this time you’ll keep the bird in the sky where it belongs.”
Pamela Archer just grinned.
* * *
After breakfast, Raynor and the others crossed the parking lot to the Best Buy in the main shopping center. They had to wait twenty minutes for the store to open, but were in and out in half that time. Their purchases—three LTE-capable tablet computers with prepaid unlimited data plans, six additional burner phones with Bluetooth headsets for each plus one more for Raynor’s new phone, and battery backups to ensure that they
could stay mobile almost indefinitely—were redistributed, and then they headed for Bethesda. Raynor let Slapshot drive while he called Grauer for an update.
Grauer informed him that a Predator B—formally known as the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper—was presently winging north from Florida, but was still more than two hours out. He supplied Raynor with the dedicated secure IP address of the raw video feed and the phone number where he could reach the flight operations crew. Raynor plugged the IP address into his tablet and was rewarded with live video of a scrolling green mosaic, farms and forests seen from an altitude of fourteen thousand feet. According to the embedded GPS tracker, the UAV was now over eastern North Carolina, cruising at 170 knots. He watched for a few minutes, then switched to a live-stream broadcast of CNN.
Like many in the military, and especially in JSOC, Raynor was of the opinion that cable news outlets were de facto intelligence services for foreign governments and terrorist organizations, reporting sensitive, if not necessarily classified information for the free use of America’s enemies. Now, they would be his primary source of intel, providing up-to-the-minute information on the location of Shiner’s target.
FLOTUS had already arrived at Joint Base Andrews, and would finish the journey to the hospital by helicopter. She was reportedly in stable condition, awake and alert. Raynor also learned that POTUS was not accompanying her, but was expected to visit her in the hospital later in the day, probably before she went into surgery.
The Delta operators drove up Rockville Pike, passing through downtown Bethesda and then past the main gates of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. WRNMMC wasn’t just a hospital, it was a military installation, and as such was a secure environment. But, because it was a hospital, providing medical treatment at all levels to thousands of patients daily—military personnel, dependents, veterans, and others—there were gaps in that security. The sprawling complex built around the distinctive tower—legend had it that the architect based his plans off a sketch made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt—was visible from the highway, and separated only by a wrought-iron fence. Through the fence, Raynor could see row after row of news vans parked on the front lawn, their telescoping satellite antennas poking skyward like naked tent poles.
