Ritt

by Anne L. Parks

  Text copyright ©2018 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Stoker Aces Production, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Special Forces: Operation Alpha remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Stoker Aces Production, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  For Drue…who knew that this is where I needed to be.

  These fallen heroes represent the character of a nation who has a long history of patriotism and honor – and a nation who has fought many battles to keep our country free from threats of terror.-Michael N. Castle

  Chapter 1

  U.S. Embassy

  Amman, Jordan

  The fluorescent lights did nothing to abate the jackhammer in Lance’s head. Ten and a half hours on a plane from New York to Amman, Jordan had left him with the mother of all migraines. The drive from the airport to the US Embassy had been quick, but laced with blaring horns and jarring turns. Driving was apparently not a forte of the Jordanian people. More like lunatics trying to qualify for the Indy 500.

  Tom Dix, the CIA spook leading him down the hallway, was talking a mile a minute. Lance should’ve been paying closer attention to what Dix was saying, but the steady drumbeat between his eyes was distracting as hell. He couldn’t really blame the guy. Thrown into an impromptu job interview for a position Lance couldn’t elaborate on until they decided Dix was the man they wanted had to be unnerving as hell. Dix was handling it relatively well—all things considered.

  Too bad Lance couldn’t find a comfortable spot with the guy. He got that Dix had to be somewhat narcissistic relaying his accomplishments, but something was off with the delivery. Lance wondered if the guy was naturally this self-obssessed . Dix hadn’t given anyone on his team an ounce of credit for their successes. That didn’t sit well with Lance. No team flourished based on one person’s accomplishments.

  Every time Dix began with, “I was responsible for…”, Lance’s head pounded like a gong. Normally he’d be able to block out the pain—but that was typically when he was on an op and had other issues occupying his mind. Things like staying alive, and keeping the men under his command safe.

  This was not an actual operation. Lance had one final spot to fill on the new special operations team known only by the highest levels in the government as The 13. Highly covert in nature, Tom Dix only knew the position would be a huge move up from where he was currently assigned.

  A woman approached them from the other end of the hallway. She was tall, athletic build, fair skin with dark red hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She was in the same spook uniform all the other CIA weinies wore, but she filled hers out in all the right places. Black suit with a white shirt—it actually looked kinda hot on her. Her features were serious. Her mouth dipped at the corners slightly as her darkened gaze fell on Dix.

  “Riley,” Dix greeted her as they approached the doorway. The air instantly chilled.

  “Dick…” she drew out.

  Lance forced his face to remain placid, but he was ready to burst at the implication of how she felt about the man next to him. Not much of a stretch to see this woman was not a fan of Tom Dix.

  Dix gestured to Lance. “I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Commander Ritt Knight, Navy SEAL. He’ll be observing things for the next few days. Please make yourself available to answer any questions he may have.” He glanced at Lance. “This is Riley Bray.”

  Lance took her outstretched hand and shook it. Soft. Firm grip, but not like she was trying to prove she was one of the guys by breaking bones.

  “I’m his second in command,” she said with a smirk.

  Peripherally, Lance watched Dix’s fake smile drop.

  “You’re here strictly as an observer in this meeting, Bray, and nothing more. You speak only when spoken to. Understood?” Dix’s tone was sharp. Apparently, there was no love lost the other way, either. How on earth could anything get accomplished if the top two people could barely stand each other?

  Spooks…weird bunch.

  She placed her fingers to her lips and twisted them as if she was turning a key in a lock.

  Damn, this woman has attitude—teetering on the edge of insubordination. Lance wasn’t sure if he was disgusted or impressed.

  A bit of both.

  Dix huffed and entered the room. Riley waited for Lance to enter, but he gestured for her to go ahead of him. Ducking to the back of the room, he took a seat in an empty chair along the wall. Riley did the same, but adjacent to where he sat. The placement offered him an opportunity to observe her.

  And her to observe him as well, he noted.

  Dix stood at the front of the room in front of large screens and addressed the group of top brass and top dogs within the CIA, as well as a few advisors to the President.

  “Current intel indicates the head of the Syrian faction of ISIS in the east will be meeting with ISIS leaders from other regions in the town of Palmyra. We’ve put together a team of SEALs to go in, and capture them for interrogation,” Dix explained.

  “I thought the 1/75th Rangers from Izraa were slated for this op?” A man in a gray pin-striped suit asked.

  Dix’s eyes widened a fraction. He flipped through the papers in his file.

  A throat cleared from the other side of the room. Lance’s gaze landed on Riley. She sat forward in her seat a fraction of an inch. “That is correct, sir, but following the attack on the forward compound there, the operation has been diverted here. The latest intel received was recovered by CIA operatives in the field placing this mission under CIA jurisdiction.”

  The men nodded and turned their attention back to Dix.

  “Where will the prisoners be held after capture?” One four-star general asked. Joint Staff. Cairn was his name.

  “We have facilities here on the compound that can house up to four men. If there are more than that, we will utilize the forward compound in Izraa, as a last resort. That would be specifically for lower level captives.”

  “When are you planning to go in?” General Cairn asked.

  “Two days.”

  Riley shifted slightly in her seat. A flag officer swiveled sharply, facing her. Admiral Turner. Lance knew the man by reputation. He was a badass in the Navy.

  “Riley, what’s your take?”

  Lance sat up in his chair. If the flag was asking for her opinion, he trusted her. Maybe more than he trusted Dix. That spoke volumes in Lance’s book.

  Dix shot a warning glare across the room at Riley. She ignored him, and sat straighter in her seat.

  “Sir, I would have to say, unequivocally, no-go, at this time.”

  Bright red flooded Dix’s face. His eyes bulged. He looked like a puffer fish about to explode.

  All the men at the table swiveled in their chairs toward Riley.

  “Your reasons?” Turner asked.

  “The intel we’ve received has not been thoroughly vetted.”

  “I can assure you,” Dix said, his voice booming in the small confines of the room, “the information is good. Ms. Bray is speaking out of turn and without review of the latest intelligence analysis.”

  Turner stared at Riley, then turned to Dix. “Perhaps you should make your deputy apprised of these things prior to having her attend meetings where her opinion will be relied upon.”

  Wow…smacked down by the Admiral. That had to sting.

  And it would probably come back on Riley two-fold. By the way she was sitting there, it appeared she unfazed by the potential verbal assault she might face when the meeting concluded. Not that her opinion seemed to matter to the larger group. The op was a g
o—given the highest priority, which meant it was going to happen soon.

  The meeting broke, and Dix was grabbed by a suit. Lance caught his attention, told him he’d see him back at his office. The room cleared. Riley had ducked out without a word to anyone. Lance stepped into the hallway and looked down both sides. He caught sight of her halfway down the hall in the opposite direction of Dix’s office, and he took off after her.

  “Ms. Bray,” he called.

  She stopped and turned toward him, her eyes wary. “Riley.”

  “Riley,” he said, and stopped in front of her. “Tell me why you think the op should be a no go.”

  “Like I said, the intel hasn’t been thoroughly substantiated, in my opinion.”

  Lance stared at her. She was tense. Her lips clamped shut, grinding her teeth. He had a lot of experience reading people. There was more to the story than she was letting on. “What else?”

  She exhaled and shifted on her feet, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “I have a bad feeling.” She looked at him, scanning his reaction. Most people didn’t give bad feelings the proper amount of credit. Lance did. More than one man had been saved from the unexplainable bad feeling that came from reading a situation and leaning on experience. The gut feel had saved his ass on more than one op.

  He wasn’t sure what Ms. Bray’s experience was, but she seemed pretty confident in her convictions up to this point. It couldn’t have been easy countering her boss in a room full of men way above her pay-grade and sticking to her guns. Lance admired her for that.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She looked him straight in the eye, and never wavered. “It was too easy. We had a wealth of information that basically fell into our laps. I question whether the SEAL team has had adequate training for it. All the planning has been rushed, and the only reason I can see for all this hastiness is your arrival.”

  Suckerpunch. Lance’s hackles went up. He drew in a steadying breath. “So, this is my fault?”

  She resumed walking down the hallway. “Not at all. Dix is solely on the hook for this one. Him and his enormous fucking ego.”

  “You don’t like him much.”

  She whirled around and faced him. “Look, Commander Knight—”

  “Lance.”

  She drew her eyebrows together. “I thought your name was Ritt?”

  “Lance is my call sign.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, Lance. I would like nothing more than to endorse Dix because it would get him out of my hair and my unit. But, if he’s going to be put in a position where he’s responsible for people’s lives, I can’t give you what you want. That man cares for one thing, and one thing only—himself. He doesn’t do anything that won’t will further his career and make him look good.”

  “According to what I’ve read, his record is clean. Sparkling, actually. No one has died under his watch.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But—mark my words, it will happen. It’s only a matter of time.” She turned and walked into her office, closing the door behind her. Conversation over.

  Lance stared after her for a moment longer. A shiver ran through him. Something about her touched a deep nerve, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

  One thing he did know—Riley Bray was a force to be reckoned with.

  Chapter 2

  Riley dropped into the chair behind her desk and dropped her head back. Closing her eyes, visions of the past hour burst through her skull like popcorn. There was no escaping the rash of shit coming down from Dix. Not that she cared. She wasn’t going to sit by and let him set her team on a course for failure without at least raising a concern. It wasn’t her nature.

  Of course, if he ever found out she had given him a not-so-glowing recommendation to Ritt—Lance—whatever his name was—life was going to become increasingly uncomfortable there. For some unfathomable reason, the higher ups thought Dix was a genius and trusted him. The asshat had already talked to his bosses about Riley being obstinate. The only thing that had saved her so far was that she was damn good at her job.

  Plus, Dix knew there was a better than average chance the team would rebel if Riley were let go.

  So why had she opened up to the Navy SEAL about her thoughts on the op and her boss? Somewhere during their conversation, Riley had decided to trust him. She’d told him she had a bad feeling, and he hadn’t rolled his eyes. In fact, he had no outward reaction. As if he fully supported the notion that covert missions to capture and detain terrorists for interrogation should be scrapped because of her bad feeling.

  No one had ever given her that kind of latitude before. The closest had been Admiral Turner, but even he had been swayed by Dix proclaiming she didn’t have all the information to make an informed decision.

  Fuck Dix, the panty-waste. He wouldn’t know how to manage a successful op if he was given step-by-step instructions with hand-signals and children’s illustrations.

  A light rapping at her door drew her out of her pissy little reverie. The head of Patrick Kelly popped through.

  “Hey, Riley, you got a minute?”

  Riley waved him in. Patrick sat in the chair opposite her, shoulders slumped forward. He was the most knowledgeable computer geek on her team—and looked the part, straight down to the plastic pocket protector in his short-sleeved dress shirt.

  “What’s up?” She asked.

  He ran his fingers through his dirty blonde hair and pushed his glasses up his nose. It was his nervous tick, and used to bug the crap out of Riley when she first met him. But over the past year she’d gotten used to his ticks, his soft voice, and his reserved personality.

  “Nothing big,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know about something that popped up. I came across outside web access into one of the email accounts. Looks like old credentials, nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve removed access and closed the loop.”

  “Do you know who the account belonged to?” she asked.

  “Anthony Carson.”

  Ah, that wasn’t surprising. The former political appointee was well known for OWA—outside web access—on his work accounts, even though it was strictly forbidden, especially within the Embassy. But that hadn’t stopped him from whining about needing access to his emails while away from his desk and outside the Embassy walls.

  Thank god the man had been sent back to the U.S. He was a major pain in the ass for security—and not just in the cyber realm. The guys at pass and ID hated him because he was forever harassing them about what he was allowed to bring in and out of the Embassy.

  Riley breathed out a heavy sigh. “Okay, thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

  The door to her office flung open and hit the wall. Dix stomped in, eyes ablaze, hands fisted at his side, knuckles white. He glanced at Patrick, who was nervously running his hands through his hair, a shade paler than he had been a moment earlier.

  “Out!” Dix hollered.

  Patrick ducked his chin to his chest and scurried passed Dix like a scared puppy. Dix slammed the office door shut. He took two steps toward her, his legs bumped against the metal rim of her desk.

  Shoving his fat finger in her face, he said, “Never undermine me like that in a meeting again.”

  Riley sat back in her chair. Dix was like one of those toy monkeys with cymbals. Once wound up, there was nothing to do but let them bang the crap out of the little round disks, make a lot of unnecessary noise until they ran out of steam. She stared at him, and stifled a chuckle as she superimposed a monkey in a red and white striped outfit over the man standing in front of her. She glanced at the clock on the wall over his shoulder. If this followed the normal timeline of a Tom Dix meltdown, she had about four and a half minutes to go.

  * * *

  Lance walked into the cavern that held Dix’s team and glanced around the space. About ten people sat at metal desks, staring at computer screens. One woman, young—fresh-faced but with an edge of experience that only time spent in the Middle East can provide. A door slammed s
hut, and a small guy scuttled past Lance and quickly sat at a desk in the corner. All the eyes in the room swung to Riley’s office, where a male voice boomed.

  “Never undermine me like that in a meeting again.”

  Lance could see Riley through the glass walls of her office. She sat facing Dix, hands folded neatly on the desk in front of her, face stone-cold.

  “Riley must’ve showed up the asshole in a meeting again,” one guy said. Lance had been introduced to him on arrival, and tried to remember his name. Abbott?

  “Like that’s hard to do. Dix doesn’t know his head from his ass,” the young woman said.

  “Which is why he often hangs it out there for the world to see.” The man caught sight of Lance, his eyes widened. The room fell silent and everyone turned their attention back to their computers. Lance was the outsider and no one knew where his loyalties ran.

  Little did they know that Lance had no loyalties in this group. Although, the more time he observed Dix and Riley, he was forming some very strong opinions about both. Some good, some bad. The good ones all seemed to be falling on Riley’s side.

  The bad…well…

  Lance was trying to keep an open mind regarding Dix. The man had come highly recommended, but for the life of Lance, he couldn't quite figure how.

  “You’re on thin ice here, Bray. I’m the one that holds your life in this unit in my hands. I own your ass. Get in line with the operation and stop making waves unnecessarily.”

  Dix leaned over the desk. “That is the last time you make me look bad in front of the brass.” He shoved his finger toward her face. “The last time.”

  Riley didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t flinch. Her features remained lax and unreadable.

  The woman has a Herculean set of balls.

  Dix stormed out of the office, charged down the hallway away from Riley’s office, and in the opposite direction from where Lance stood. Probably a good thing Dix hadn’t seen him. The knowledge that Lance had seen him light into his deputy’s ass in front of her subordinates was Class-A dick move. And probably would’ve come back on Riley in the end.