The Heart of War: Book Seven of the What's Left of My World Series

by C. A. Rudolph

  Gil peered over. “See what day? When all this finally got real and we stopped fucking around?”

  “The day when I felt so inclined to burn my orders, give all this crap up, and tell the bureaucrats and pencil pushers at HQ to go to hell.”

  Gil chuckled uproariously. “Yeah, sure. I hear you. For what it’s worth, neither did I. And that’s in your case, not mine.”

  “So I take it you’re fine with this?”

  “Sure. I don’t have a choice—I don’t get to make that call, August,” Gil said. “Orders are orders. And my feelings on the matter are secondary, if not fully irrelevant. Yours should be one and the same, Special Agent in Charge, Mr. task force leader, sir.”

  August sighed exhaustedly. “How the hell did we get here? During the start-up phases, the Shenandoah campaign in its entirety was designated a recovery effort. We were to secure the region, relocate evacuees, provide sanctuary and support, rebuild, resettle, reposition and replicate. Security is essential and takes precedence during any mass crisis; that goes without saying. I was of the impression that’s why I was assigned here…found out differently when they allocated me to the damned Annex. And now, I’ve somehow become a foot soldier, a mercenary executing the king’s dirty deeds, up to and including domestic terror campaigns.”

  “August,” Gil began, securing his coffee in the cup holder, “you need to slow down, take a step back, reevaluate all this, and most of all, chill out. You’re making this gig into something it’s not. This…it’s just a job, brother. It’s what we do; it’s what we’ve always done.”

  August chuckled. “How many times have I heard that line before, Gil? Just doing my job. How many lives, innocent or otherwise, have been ruined under the guise of someone like you or me doing his damned job?”

  Silence fell between the two where only the murmur of the SUV’s engine could be heard. After a moment, August reached for the papers and returned them to the folder from which they’d been removed.

  Gil studied him. “I need you to be straight with me. Are you going along with this? Or are you planning to buck the system? Kick back against authority for the first time ever in your star-studded career? I’d like to know something before we go about our day…you’re not exactly giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling.”

  August thought a moment. “I don’t know, Gil.” He sighed again. “I’ve been on both sides of this. I’ve given orders and taken them. I’ve never been insubordinate, and I don’t tolerate insubordination. I respect authority and the chain of command…it’s in my blood. I’ll follow my orders and adhere to the terms of this recent…addendum, but I’m doing so under protest. I won’t do it without making my objections known.”

  “You sure you want to go down that road, knowing how it could be interpreted in our current setting? They could charge you with high treason, hang you from the tallest tree with the shortest rope.” Gil retrieved his coffee. “What are you going to do? Go straight to Seth Bates and file a formal written complaint? What makes you think he’ll give a shit?”

  “Fuck Seth Bates.” August sneered. “He isn’t the king’s hand anymore. He screwed up one too many times, and Bronson booted him from the castle. Now he’s running the ham-fisted equivalent of mobile janitorial missions. He’s recovered some contraband, brought in a few new detainees, hoping it would help him regain Bronson’s good graces, but it hasn’t worked. That emasculate shit stain is a lame duck. Lucky to be alive, if you ask me.”

  “Tell me how you really feel about him,” Gil joked. “Sorry, guess I overlooked how privy you were to upper-tier insider intel.” A pause. “I guess that leaves the big cheese himself. You think Bronson will give a shit?”

  August got a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach at the mention of the regional commander’s name. If he ever were to pay Bronson a visit, he’d be lodging a great deal more than a formal complaint over the recent addendum to his orders. “I’ve met him…spoken face-to-face with him before. He’s got a bit of a God complex, but he seems reasonable. I think Solve for X was his creation initially. I could see it in his eyes when he handed it off to me. He looked delighted but nervous, like an inventor presenting a product to an investor, or one of those contestants on that Shark Tank show.”

  “Ha! I remember that one!”

  August remained on topic. “But this addendum…it’s something else. It’s…beyond him.”

  “Beyond? What, do you think he’s got some other mastermind or evil genius driving it? Every portion I’ve read bears his signature.”

  “He may be signing off on the final drafts; he has to. But these concepts…they’re not his. The methodology isn’t his. It’s too unrestrained…too hard-line.” August paused. “Bronson is a diplomat, a career civil servant. He’s teleconferenced, written reports, and caressed ass cheeks his whole career to get where he’s at. He’s not a pro, and he’s definitely no operative.”

  Gil rotated left in his seat. “Slow down. What are you implying?”

  August regarded his fellow agent. “Read between the lines, Gil. These methods, techniques and tactics…it’s tradecraft.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  August shook his head. “I wish I were.”

  “Well, who’s feeding them to Bronson?”

  August gritted his teeth. “If I tell you this, you can’t share it. I mean it, Gil. From this point forward, you are sworn to secrecy. What I divulge, you take with you to the grave.”

  “Done.”

  August paused for a good while, peered over, then uttered his wife’s name.

  Gil Norris’s eyes expanded. “You’re fucking joking.”

  “Bronson had her brought in to assist the op not long after I transferred out of the Annex,” he explained, his tone dampening. “She’s been working closely with him ever since, and I’m telling you, every scheme in that postscript is a rewritten copycat pirated from the CIA anti-insurgency playbook. They’re atrocious. And they’re just the beginning.”

  “And you know this for certain?”

  August shrugged. “Married couples talk sometimes. I remember tidbits of things she’d let slip when she’d had a little too much white zin; like the new and improved anti-insurgency methods the CIA established in the Middle East and Afghanistan after their black sites and enhanced interrogation techniques went mainstream and the entire civilized world learned just how fucked up they were. Black sites still existed but were mandated to become a lighter shade of gray. Interrogations remained status quo; they had to be, but the methods of breaking respondents were augmented to fall in accordance with basic human rights and international law. The approaches that worked best were deemed torture and couldn’t be used anymore.

  “In short order they learned that one-on-one vanilla interrogator-versus-respondent interrogation didn’t always work. In fact, it did so rarely since most of the respondents were typically military or civilian operatives who’d received months of resistance training. The CIA needed a boost. The thinktank geeks at Langley did some brainstorming, and it didn’t take long to discover one. They brought in the respondent’s family, the children, specifically. They’d scare the hell out of them with dogs barking and foaming at the mouth at them, make them watch cockfights or put cages of rats, spiders, or snakes beside them, kill a family of rabbits, whatever it took to make them scream, cry and urinate themselves. Made for a lot more willing respondent, most times.”

  “I would think so,” Gil reacted, almost chuckling.

  August regarded him with a sharp eye for a split second. “But there were times when those lengths still didn’t work, for whatever reason, so they resorted to something else entirely. Direct action, switching their focus to widespread, brutal collateral damage. One anniversary, I took Bea to Outback Steakhouse. She loved that place. She had a blood rare filet that night, some sangria, and damn near put down a fifth of Evan Williams on her own.”

  Gil licked his lips. “I could do that right about now.”

  “She told me abou
t this Mullah Muttaqi…one of the Taliban’s ministers of intelligence, a mark so notorious that her team was given a carte blanche directive to find him and bring him in. They commandeered a platoon of Expeditionary Marines, raided houses and businesses, plundered an entire region to get him. They spent two days interrogating him one-on-one; all conventional methods proved to be ineffective. No matter what they tried, they just couldn’t break him. He just laughed in their faces, quoted excerpts from the Koran, and prayed.

  “So they went after his family. They tied his wife up right in front of him and grilled her for hours, and I mean literally, as in they placed a dozen quartz heat lamps over her chair. Blistered every inch of her skin on her face and shoulders…but he didn’t budge. They got her wet and hit her with electricity, and nothing. They put a gun to her head, and he just flat out told them to pull the trigger. They moved on to his son and his three-year-old little girl with Down syndrome after that. Interrogators yelled at them, subjected them to barking dogs, loud death metal music, and snuff films. Both kids soiled themselves and were left to sit tied to chairs for two days in their own waste while the flies ate at them. The hardheaded son of a bitch still wouldn’t give.

  “Her team was beside themselves, but those results only steeled Beatrice. She’s always been an…overachiever. She pulled a few strings with some of her assets at the Pentagon. Some calls were made, a story was manufactured, intel fabricated, and a kinetic operation came into being in the essence of a false flag. Muttaqi’s village was grated into compost by several thousand thirty-millimeter depleted uranium rounds from a squadron of A-10s. They made a second pass and carpet-bombed anything that was left, wiped about two hundred and fifty people—men, women, and children—off the map. They showed him the video, and he didn’t believe it, so they took him there and let him see the destruction for himself. They told him his sister’s village was next, and the planes were already airborne. A hundred people lived there, including his ninety-year-old grandmother. His sister had five children and twins on the way. It broke him.”

  Gil was beyond the point of being intrigued. “Well, goddamn. That was a gnarly scandal. Of course, you do realize there’s no way any of what you just said wasn’t classified.”

  August groaned. “Probably was then, not like it matters today. The only thing that matters is what we’re about to do now, on the domestic front. And what we’re becoming.”

  “You mean what we’ve become,” Gil corrected. “And what of your objections? Are you going to talk to your wife? Question her methods and hope she’ll reconsider? How do you think that’ll go over?”

  August sneered. “I don’t see it going over well at all. I think she’ll take it personally, and it’ll cause conflict. And in light of that, I’ve been considering other options.”

  Chapter 13

  FEMA Resettlement Camp Bravo

  Friday, January 14th

  The combat weapons armory at FEMA Camp Bravo was comprised of two melded-together shipping containers buried several feet beneath Earth’s surface. A concrete staircase led to the underground entrance guarded by a solid steel fireproof security door. Inside, it was lighted, climate controlled and contained hundreds of NATO and government-issue small arms, along with magazines and optics, slings, accessories, and spare components. It housed hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition in an assortment of calibers from 5.56 to 12 gauge. The gun cage itself was staffed by two guards, who maintained inventory, performed repairs, and kept the weapons clean.

  Beatrice Carter promenaded her way inside, immediately garnering the attention of two uniformed men. Her looks led the way, accompanied by the alluring scent of her perfume, which infiltrated the room, hooked onto each man’s nostrils, and dragged him in for the kill. Little did these men know by failing to live up to Beatrice’s expectations, a matching fate was exactly what she had in store for them.

  The guard seated closest to the counter greeted the slender blonde from his side of the steel screen. “Good morning, ma’am. It’s quite a rarity to have you visit the gun cage, isn’t it? To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “Pleasure?” Beatrice’s lips curled. “More like pure agony. I’ve about had it up to here with this gall dang Beretta.” She drew her service weapon and presented it, muzzle to the ceiling. In a deft movement, she released the magazine, racked the slide, and sent the chambered hollow-point round into the air, catching it in her free hand. Feeling more ostentatious than usual, she kissed the brass casing, grinned, then slid it along with the magazine into her back pocket. She then set her pistol on the counter. “It’s never been this dirty before. In fact, it’s so far gone now, I don’t have a clue what to do with it. I’d give cleanin’ it myself a shot, but I don’t rightly have access to the…necessities. You know what I mean?”

  The guard nodded, seeming to empathize with her plight. “Yes, ma’am, I know exactly what you mean. There’s definitely no excuse for a dirty weapon—I mean, unless it sees a lot of use.”

  The other guard closed in from behind to inspect both Beatrice and her problematic service pistol, but mostly Beatrice. “Would that be the cause, ma’am?” he asked. “Excessive carbon fouling due to, let’s call it, disproportionate use?”

  Beatrice squinted an eye and beamed. If it were her wish, she could own both of these men, deprived of the hassle of having to string them along. But stringing them along was the part of the game she enjoyed most. “I suppose you could say that…I mean, I do spend a good amount of time at the practice range, keepin’ my skills sharp, and it does see a good deal of routine duty usage, if you catch my drift. But I honestly can’t remember the last time it was cleaned. I started asking around and was given the impression someone here would know what to do with me—oh, excuse me, it.”

  The two guards smirked at each other.

  The first then opened a drawer, removed a form, and slid it through the opening in the cage, along with a ballpoint pen. “I’d wager you came to the right place. We’ll take good care of it for you, ma’am. It’ll be spic-and-span when you get it back.”

  “Marvelous. Speaking of which, any idea how long it might take? It is, after all, my service weapon.”

  “Typically, it can take as little as a few hours, all depends on how much fouling there is to remove. We have a few we’re working on in line before we could get to yours, though. Probably tomorrow morning at the earliest.”

  Beatrice placed three fingers to her upper lip, her eyes widening. “Tomorrow morning? Oh my gosh! That’s round about a full day without her!”

  The second guard cleared his throat. “Her?”

  “I’m sorry, it. The Beretta—my Beretta,” she corrected, appearing sheepish. “Whatever am I to do for so long without it? I don’t suppose you gents have any loaners lying around down here, do you?”

  “Unfortunately, that is one thing we most definitely do not have,” the first guard proclaimed. “We used to loan out weapons, but it’s become policy to no longer do so.”

  “And why would that be? Sounds silly to me.” She gestured to multiple racks of military-grade weaponry within the cage. “There’s obviously more guns down here than people in this camp.”

  The second guard snickered. “I don’t know for certain, ma’am, but from what I’ve gathered, there hasn’t been an open line of communications with any of the other camps for several months going. It’s got the higher-ups pretty concerned over infrastructure, and we’ve gotten the notion they’re real worried about inventory. It’s been more or less conveyed to us that nothing is to be unaccounted for, particularly guns and ammo.”

  Beatrice sent a sour look. She pouted, her lower lip seeming to stick out more as the seconds drifted past.

  The first guard observed her, regarded his colleague, then returned his attention to the sulking blonde. He was a sucker for a sad face, especially when it belonged to an attractive woman, and most notably when said attractive woman’s cleavage was visible above her neckline. “Tell you what, I never do thi
s, but for this case and this case only, I’ll make an exception.” He lifted a Sig Sauer P320 from a holster on his right side, verified the chamber was empty, and slid it through the opening. “I’ll loan you mine.”

  Beatrice’s eyes lit up, her pout gave way, and her lower lip retracted. She palmed the weapon and looked it over closely. “Really? Sure is a fine weapon. Sure you won’t get yourself in trouble for doing so for little old me?”

  The second guard shook his head, turned and started off. “This is between you and her. I didn’t see anything, and I was never here.”

  “Thanks, Tony,” the first guard said. “Technically it’s…ill advised. But like I said, you being who you are and me being who I am, I’ll make an exception. Besides, it’s only for a day. And it’s not like I’m handing off a loaded weapon to my enemy or anything.”

  Beatrice smiled, allowing her pearly whites to show. “Well, aren’t you just a doll. Got any spare mags?”

  The guard nodded and removed two full magazines from a carrier on his belt. “These should get you by for a day. If not, come by and get more; we have plenty.”

  Beatrice racked the slide, flabbergasted at the point of discovering an empty chamber. She conveyed her surprise inaudibly, her brows raised and pointed as if injected with Botox.

  The guard grinned awkwardly. “Almost forgot to mention, it’s policy that we not carry locked and loaded in the cage. Kind of bizarre if you ask me, but policy’s policy, I guess.”

  Beatrice agreed, but didn’t say she did. “Very well. I definitely appreciate this, never expected such special treatment, but I’m definitely glad I came to see you fellas today—I’m sorry, fella. Singular, not plural. Mr. Tony over there was never here.” She giggled like a schoolgirl dangling upside down on a swing. “Oh my, I almost forgot. There was something else I was meanin’ to ask you gents before I took off. Do either of you know anything on the topic of armament for the MQ-1C?”