Tier One (Tier One Series Book 1)

by Brian Andrews

  Smith nodded, but looked disappointed by the order.

  “It’s not a trust issue, Shane. Just being careful.”

  “I know.”

  “And put a detail on Grimes.”

  “I already did. I can tell you every time she takes a leak and how she likes her coffee in the morning.”

  “Good,” Jarvis said. “I’m particularly interested in any outside contact.”

  “Understood. So far, she’s had none. Oh, have you heard what Dempsey’s calling her?”

  “No,” Jarvis said. “What?”

  “The Lady Grimes.”

  Jarvis laughed. “Think she’ll have a sense of humor about it when she finds out? Because they always find out.”

  “Probably not,” Smith said with a grin. “Good thing Dempsey knows how to duck a punch.”

  As soon as Shane was gone, Jarvis picked up his iPad. He closed the file on Mossad’s asset in Frankfurt and entered a five-digit security code to access the Ember personnel records. He scrolled through the list until he found the entry for Elizabeth Grimes. With a double-tap of his index finger, her classified CV filled the screen. He stared at her official White House headshot and bio:

  Kelsey Clarke is the Assistant Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security & International Affairs Division of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Her charter is to pursue innovation and excellence in the technical support of US defense, intelligence, and national-security objectives. Her work focuses primarily on ensuring that science-and-technology issues are given proper consideration during policy and budget-development processes in the domain of national security. Current areas of interest include cyber security, counterterrorism, defense against biological and chemical threats, nuclear deterrence, emergency response and communications, international relations and counterintelligence, and other matters relating to the future of national security.

  Ms. Clarke is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point. After completing two tours of service in the Middle East, she left the Army as a Captain to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University, where she earned a JD-MPP from Harvard Law School and The John F. Kennedy School of Government. Immediately prior to joining the OSTP, Ms. Clarke worked at the Brookings Institution as an instrumental team member on the Twenty-First Century Defense Initiative, where she conducted research, analysis, and outreach addressing the future of war, the future of US defense needs and priorities, and the future of the US defense system.

  Jarvis shook his head and laughed. The page might as well read: Kelsey Clarke, aka Elizabeth Grimes, the most talented, brilliant, pain-in-the-ass woman imaginable. He scrolled farther down the file and scanned her military-service record, marksmanship scores, and fitness report. Oh, and don’t forget: type A personality to the third power, movie-star good looks, and deadeye shot. Christ, no wonder Kittinger selected this woman to act as his personal mole in Ember. He wasn’t an idiot. No one hands over $40 million, two corporate jets, a bat cave packed with guns, and a mandate to go kill people with no strings attached. Grimes was Kittinger’s ace in the hole; she was his insurance policy. She had the smarts to judge Jarvis’s decisions, and the mettle to question his authority if she deemed it necessary.

  The bigger question was: Why did she want to be here—almost desperately, it appeared? She didn’t seem the type to jump at the chance to be a bureaucrat’s mole. She wanted something—everyone did. Maybe Kittinger had some dirt on her?

  He scrolled back up to her picture and blew air through his teeth.

  You’re going to make my life miserable, aren’t you, Elizabeth Grimes?

  CHAPTER 21

  5209 Brigstock Court

  Williamsburg, Virginia

  May 4, 1930 EDT

  Dempsey fidgeted in the leather passenger seat of Smith’s Tahoe, trying to ignore the terrible itch that had been tormenting him all day. The burns on his neck and shoulder had been the most severe and the last to transition from the pain phase of healing to the itching phase. He preferred the pain. An itch that couldn’t be scratched was like—

  “You’ve gotta stop doing that,” Smith said, glancing over at him.

  “Doing what?”

  “Tracing that scar on your left forearm. I noticed you doing it in the TOC at MacDill months ago, and you were at it again during Jarvis’s brief earlier today.”

  “Old habit, I guess,” Dempsey said with a shrug. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

  “You have to do a better job policing your mannerisms. That behavior is something Jack Kemper did. You’re John Dempsey now. John Dempsey doesn’t do that. The shape of the scar is distinctive enough; you don’t need to draw people’s attention to it by rubbing it.”

  “Got it,” Dempsey said, a little irritated at being henpecked, but Smith had a point.

  “As a Tier One operator, you relied on habits forged by your training and experience to save your ass whenever all hell broke loose. For a clandestine operator, habits are dangerous. Habits lead to patterns. Patterns are recognizable by the enemy. Also, habits dull situational awareness and promote operational laziness. Even the most effective agent can be undone by practices that, while useful in certain situations, evolve into habits. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience on this one. My goal is not to preach, but to hopefully help you from making the same mistakes I did.”

  Dempsey nodded. “Makes sense. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  They rode in silence for several minutes until Smith spoke again, this time his tone markedly more upbeat. “What did you think of the hangar?”

  Dempsey was about to answer, but the sight of a black GMC Yukon parked in Smith’s driveway stole his attention. He reached for the pistol holstered in the small of his back. “You expecting company?”

  Smith shook his head. “Relax. I’ve got a couple of surprises for you.”

  He pulled up beside the Yukon in the three-car driveway. Dempsey grabbed his duffel bag from the backseat and slung it over his shoulder. He looked admiringly at the large SUV in the drive, the windows tinted as dark as Virginia state law would allow.

  “Who are we meeting?” he asked, his curiosity growing.

  “No one,” Smith said, and tossed a set of keys to him. “That’s your new ride.”

  Dempsey caught the keys midair in his right hand. “So, there are some perks to this job, huh?”

  “Not enough to compensate for the wear and tear, but yeah, Jarvis knows how to take care of his people. You can check out the Denali in a bit; first, I have some other things to show you.”

  Dempsey followed Smith to the front door. In the past, they’d always entered through the garage. Up close, he noticed for the first time that steel bars were inset in the frosted glass. Smith unlocked the door, pushed it open, and pointed to small metal circles spaced every twelve inches in the door frame. The perimeter frame was heavily reinforced, and clearly designed to slow down an intruder using anything short of a breacher charge. Smith motioned Dempsey inside, away from any prying neighborhood eyes.

  “The door is red oak, with a bulletproof-glass center panel, and a reinforced steel retainer that mates with the doorjamb. The entire house is framed with one-inch steel rebar running laterally through steel studs and set into concrete pillars spaced every six feet. Lock that door and the house is virtually impenetrable.”

  “Dude, you’ve taken home security to a new level of paranoia.”

  Smith ignored the dig, and Dempsey decided he’d have to work harder if he wanted to get Smith spun up. Pushing his teammates’ buttons was what he did for fun—besides fast-roping out of stealth helos and shooting automatic weapons. Of course, those days were over, and maybe so were his button-pushing days. Nah, fuck that. If there was one morsel of Jack Kemper that needed to survive, it was his sense of humor.

  “Over here.” Smith waved Dempsey over to the ADT alarm panel mounted next to the front door. “You can operate the alarm system here at the foyer panel and also in the main c
ontrol room.”

  “Control room?” Dempsey asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “I’ll show you that in a minute. First, something else I think you’ll like.”

  Smith punched a code into the alarm panel, and the buttons turned yellow. Then, a small biometric panel popped out from the side of the panel with a click.

  “Left thumb,” Smith said, motioning toward the biometric sensor.

  “You’re giving me access?”

  Smith nodded.

  Dempsey placed his thumb on the sensor, and the control panel beeped. To his right, another click and another magic reveal—this time a rectangular panel hissed out from one of the two fluted columns that flanked the front door. Dempsey tilted his head for a better view and noticed the butt of a 9 mm pistol protruding from the column.

  He pulled the weapon free from the shuttle panel. “Okay, now that is pretty frickin’ cool.” He pulled the slide back a few millimeters and confirmed there was a round in the chamber, then placed the weapon back into the shuttle-panel holster. He slid his thumb across the biometric reader again, and with a hiss the weapon was gone.

  “There are five panels like this throughout the house, which I’ll show you, and each has the same weapon—a Sig Sauer 226, which I know is a SEAL favorite.”

  Dempsey shook his head. “Dude, that’s awesome, but why are you showing me all this? How long are we going to be roommates?”

  “Getting to that,” Smith said. “There’s a small armory in the control room that doubles as a panic room, and like these panels, it is remarkably well hidden. Let me show you the rest of the house and we’ll end the tour there.”

  Dempsey followed Smith through the house, making mental notes as he went. Strange that Smith was giving him the tour now, weeks after he’d moved into the guest bedroom. The home was new construction—no more than a year old, he surmised, from the lack of wear and tear—but the fit and finish put to shame the builder-grade crap he was used to seeing in Florida. He guessed the floor plan was more than three thousand square feet. The second floor housed three bedrooms, connected by a shared transverse hallway. One of the bedrooms had been converted into an office, but Dempsey had yet to see Smith use it. Dempsey scanned the office, noting a couple of framed degrees on the walls and a bookshelf stacked with titles on leadership, business, finance, and self-help: How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Big Short, Blink, Understanding Derivatives, Option Trading for Dummies, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . . .

  “Please tell me this is for your NOC and you don’t actually read this crap.”

  Smith smirked, evading yet another one of Dempsey’s attempts at levity. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Dempsey followed him out of the office and down the hall to a cantilevered balcony that looked out over the curved staircase into the foyer, living room, and dining room below. He immediately saw the tactical implications of this particular design feature. It provided a 180-degree field of fire to defend against a breach through the front door or windows. The waist-high safety railing was constructed of glass panels, spaced at regular three-inch gaps, and topped with polished steel tubing. Dempsey tapped a glass panel with the toe of his boot, making a dull thud that echoed in the open foyer above.

  “Ballistic glass with muzzle slots?”

  “Something like that,” Smith said, and trotted down the curved staircase.

  Dempsey took the stairs two at a time. In the hearth-room kitchen, Smith picked up the remote control for the sixty-inch flat-screen above the stone fireplace. He hit the “Mode” button and then punched in some numbers.

  “Zero-one-one-two-zero,” he said. “It works on all five of the TVs in the house.” The TV transformed to an eight-split screen with live feeds from the surveillance cameras. One of the feeds was from a camera looking down on them. Dempsey scanned the room trying to find the lens, but the techs had done their job well, hiding it somewhere in the built-in bookshelves flanking the hearth.

  “I’ll show you how to program the cameras and everything else from the control room,” Smith said, and changed the TV picture to ESPN SportsCenter.

  They left the hearth room and headed for the master-bedroom suite.

  “I will not be lured in there,” Dempsey said, pausing at the threshold. “Your GQ man cave shit may work on the chicks, but not on me.”

  Smith laughed. “Don’t worry, John. You’re not my type.”

  Inside the expansive master bedroom, he pointed to an alarm panel with the same setup as the panel in the foyer. Then he showed Dempsey how the top drawer of the right nightstand opened to expose a steel pistol box with the same biometric reader. The box clicked open to Dempsey’s thumbprint, revealing another Sig and two extra fifteen-round magazines. “There’s an MP5 in a coded lockbox in the master closet.”

  “Okay, you’re James-fucking-Bond. I get it. But I gotta tell you, it makes me a little nervous being roommates with a guy who thinks he needs this much firepower at home. Even the most trigger-happy SEALs I know don’t pack this much heat.”

  “You’ve got it backward, John. You haven’t been my roommate—I’ve been yours.”

  Dempsey gawked at the spook. Forget the firepower and security. This house was so far above his pay grade it made him uncomfortable. “What the hell are you talking about? I can’t afford this place.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re renting it to you for nine hundred dollars a month. C’mon, there’s more.”

  Smith led him through an insanely large bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub and cavernous walk-in shower enclosed by glass on three sides. The walk-in closet through the opposite door held rows of clothes—jeans, cargo pants, and a variety of shirts by 5.11 Tactical, Columbia, Merrell, and Oakley—all the outfitters loved by operators. Shoes, boots, and even flip-flops were lined up neatly on the floor. In the left corner hung several coats and sweaters. To the right, Dempsey spied a rack of suits.

  He made a snorting noise and gestured. “When the hell would I wear that shit?”

  “When the tactical situation demands,” Smith said, his tone low and serious. “You aren’t a team guy anymore, remember? You’re part of a task force that will demand you be able to shift among a variety of personas. You have a lot to learn about your new life, my friend, and training starts tomorrow. You need to learn to be more than just an ass-kicking shooter, John. Ember is not the teams. Going forward, your new motto needs to be ‘Patience, patience, patience.’ In our line of work, you have to let the plays evolve in real time, often to the point where you think you’ve fucked it all up. We’re going to teach you how to disappear, watch, and wait. Once you can reliably do those three things without blowing your cover and charging into battle, you’ll be one of us.”

  Dempsey sighed heavily.

  Smith read his mind. “Jarvis and I handpicked you for Ember. Not all of our reasons are self-evident to you now, but someday they will be. Trust me.”

  Dempsey wanted to believe that. He needed to be part of Ember, but he had doubts. Self-doubt was not something he was accustomed to. Not since Phase I of BUD/S had he felt this uncertain about his choices and the unknown future hurtling toward him.

  He followed Smith out of the bedroom and down into the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, Smith stopped, and Dempsey looked past him. The basement looked different from when he’d last seen it. More exercise equipment had been added. Some free weights, a rowing machine, and a stair-climber/elliptical hybrid now occupied the far corner. In the near corner, the heavy bag still hung exactly where he’d last seen it. Thank God for that, because he needed something to pound the shit out of tonight.

  To his right, beside the stairs, he spied another unassuming ADT alarm panel. He had lived in this house for three days; how the hell had he not noticed any of the integrated security features? He punched in the code—zero-one-one-two-zero—and then slid his thumb across the biometric scanner. Instead of a weapon popping out of the wall as he expected, he heard a click. Then a hiss, like gas escap
ing from an uncapped soda bottle. A hidden wall panel swung open, revealing a gap of several inches. Dempsey pushed the panel into the wall and peered inside the void.

  The hidden room looked like a miniature version of the Ember TOC, but a TOC intended for one or two people. Everything in the dimly lit room glowed an eerie blue, illuminated from backlit LED seams along the top of the walls. A simple black desk occupied the far wall and held three flat-screen computer monitors, each with its own keyboard. Inset in the left wall, he spied a rack of tactical-assault rifles protected by a glass panel. He stepped closer for a better view—an old-fashioned SOPMOD M4 favored by the SEALs, and three other high-tech models he was familiar with. Beneath the assault rifles, he saw two shoulder-held grenade launchers and a box of grenades. Above the rifles sat a long row of pistols, starting with the bulky Sig Sauer P226 on the left and progressing to an effeminate concealable pistol that could probably fit in his pants pocket along with a set of car keys. Finally, he surveyed the variety of folding and sheathed tactical knives mounted on the side panels.

  “The gun shelves slide to the left, and behind them you’ll find personal-protection equipment. Body armor, low-profile vests, flotation devices, dive gear, jump gear, and even MOPP gear. Most of that stuff came right from your personal cage at your last command, so it’s worn to your body. Inventory it all tonight and make sure you have everything you need, and let us know if anything needs to be replaced.”

  Dempsey blinked. Twice. It was like Shane Smith had somehow entered his brain and built him the perfect weapons room. He felt the strong and overwhelming compulsion to give Smith a gift in repayment. “The SUV, the house, and now this. I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about ‘Thank you, American taxpayer. And I swear to annihilate the deranged bastards trying to destroy our country, our God, and our way of life, or I’ll die trying.’”

  Dempsey clenched a fist and held it up at chest level. Smith slammed his fist into it.

  Both men stood looking at each other for moment, until Smith broke the silence. “Any questions?”