Kingdom Come

by David Rollins

  About Kingdom Come

  A helicopter with the Russian President aboard is shot down over northern Syria and captured by the Scorpion, the last remaining and most feared ISIS combat commander. The only person who could possibly effect a rescue is former OSI Special Agent Vin Cooper. But unfortunately for the President, Cooper’s not in the saving-the-world game any more.

  A small US Special Ops unit witnesses two Russian Hinds downed over northern Syria. The last remaining and most feared ISIS commander known as the Scorpion captures the survivors - the Russian President, his entourage, and the briefcase containing the launch codes for Russia’s nukes.

  And those missiles are still mostly aimed at US cities.

  With this haul in his possession, the Scorpion is proclaimed the Madhi, the final caliph of the Koran’s apocalyptic legends who will defeat the West and usher in the End of Days - when the dead shall rise and walk the earth.

  As millions of Muslims flock to the Scorpion’s black standard and corpses rise from their graves, it’s left to that lone US Special Ops unit to sort shit out. Only it’s led by Major Vin Cooper, who is now a reservist and not into the whole saving-the-world thing any more.

  Contents

  About Kingdom Come

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Epilogue

  About David Rollins

  Also by David Rollins

  Copyright

  For Sam and Ruby.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Lieutenant Colonel Mike “Panda” Pandolfo, USAF (Ret.) for his time, knowledge and patience.

  Thanks to Tricia and Jan for reading drafts and telling me when things were going off track. Essentially, if you don't like the book, they share the blame.

  Thanks also to John for proof reading.

  Thanks to Deonie who did an amazing job with the edit.

  And thanks to William, from Bold Fox Designs, who crushed the cover design.

  Finally, and I guess a little unusually, I’d like to acknowledge and thank Sam Harris and his excellent podcast series, Waking Up, for stimulating this idea.

  One

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  America LOVES and RESPECTS its veterans. They are the best of us.

  Lieutenant Colonel Arlen Wayne, my supervisor, leaned forward and tapped the letter on the table. “God knows you’ve had plenty of time to think about this. What do you want to do?”

  “Order drinks.”

  “Vin, alcohol is not the answer to everything.”

  “It’s not?” I nodded across the pool at Juan, the drinks waiter, my newest best friend, and indicated two. “You look good,” I told Arlen. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.”

  He shrugged, a little self-conscious.

  Something was going on. Arlen looked years younger. With a few post-adolescent pimples he could almost pass for lieutenant. Keeping company with Marnie, Anna Masters’s younger sister, was obviously agreeing with him. Or maybe his paunch hadn't agreed with her and she’d put him on a diet or enrolled him in Bikram-Spartan-Zumba or whatever the current fitness fad was these days. And those gray tips showing up in his hair last time I saw him? Gone. Clearly he’d developed a Just For Men habit. Why is it that women want to change their partners into something better groomed and less sports-and-swimsuit oriented, whereas a man just wants his other half to remain that sweet non-judgmental hottie who told him she thought blow jobs were fun? It’s one of the laws of the universe. Newton discovered it. Or was it Galileo? Hello, Venus, have you met Mars?

  “You tired, Vin?”

  “Why?”

  “You keep slipping away on me.”

  I smiled at Hong, who chose that moment to strut past our table and throw me a knowing smirk. Her nickname for me was Hung. Hong and Hung. Cute. “Yeah, actually I’m exhausted.” Arlen followed my gaze, which ended in a very brief bikini, a slender caramel-colored back and long straight black hair. “But that’s vacations for you.”

  Admiring that bikini until it reclined on a sun lounge, Arlen said, “We were discussing your retirement. My question was, do you really want out?”

  I was tired, which was why I’d written that letter resigning my commission in the United States Air Force that he was waving around. The last few years in the Office of Special Investigations had been tough, and not just physically. There was the mental strain. You can only save the world so many times before things take their toll, right? And I could hear the tolling.

  “Assuming you actually do resign, any thoughts on what you might do once you’re out?” he asked. “There’s not much call outside the military for blowing things up.”

  “Balloon animals at kids’ parties?” I reminded him.

  “I mean it, Vin. The things you take for granted in this line of work would get you locked up once you’re out in - let's call it the real world. Don’t take this the wrong way, but your normal is kinda fucked up from pretty much every perspective except your own. People like you…”

  “People like me…”

  “People in your line of work… the thin blue line – outside of the military somewhere, some police department, is the nearest you’re going to get to a world you can function in.”

  “You’re saying I’m disabled.”

  “Emotionally, morally…yeah, that’s a good way to describe you – disabled.”

  “Right.”

  “Look, if you want, I can make some calls. You’re a decorated veteran with a Silver Star. That’s a commodity you can sell. There’s the US Marshals. I know people.”

  “I don't think so.” The US Marshals? Playing nursemaid to convicted felons? Not my bag.

  “Then what about the CIA?”

  This one got the wry snort. “Really, Arlen? The CIA? You know how we feel about each other. Just my luck I’d find myself under Bradley Chalmers.” That was not a place anyone wanted to be, not even Mrs Chalmers, assuming there was such a person these days.

  “Chalmers has just been confirmed Associate Deputy Director.”

  “And you're suggesting I go there?”

  “The Company is a big organization.”

  Chalmers running the CIA, or almost running it. Look out world.

  “That’s kinda your fault – him getting the number two job.”

  “Not my bad, Vin. Don't pin that on me. The President of Mexico lobbied hard for him after the
work he did nailing Arturo Perez for the Horizon Airport massacre.”

  Another snort. There’s irony for you. Arturo Perez, a.k.a the Tears of Chihuahua. He was the butcher who, in order to cover the smuggling of a planeload of blow onto US soil, slaughtered twenty-seven innocent civilians at Horizon Airport, a privately owned airstrip outside of El Paso. Chalmers didn’t nail Perez. I did, and at great personal risk I might add. It was Arlen handing all the evidence I’d collected over to Chalmers that delivered the tool a gold-plated promotion.

  “What are you snorting about?”

  “Something’s stuck up my nose. A glob of Chalmers.”

  “He owes you one.”

  “And I’m sure he’d just love some payback.”

  “The Company is not some personal fiefdom,” Arlen reminded me.

  “Someone should point that out to the CIA.”

  “Back to my original question. You gotta make a living.”

  “Well, I’m not going to make it doing police work.” That right there was my problem: the gumshoe thing. No, thanks. Maybe I just needed a break; go do something simpler.

  “Okay, so we’ve established that the Air Force isn’t the problem per se. Is it the OSI?”

  “Maybe.” If I were saying that, I would be bucking the trend. OSI was the most desired job within the Air Force, other than pilot, with a long line of people wanting in.

  “You’re starting to sound like a millennial, Vin. Next you’ll tell me you want to become an Instagram brand ambassador.”

  “Healthy sarcasm with a side order of stereotyping. Nice. I’m rubbing off on you.” I watched Hong climb out of her lounge chair, sashay over to the pool and dive in. Arlen watched too and there was an appropriate thirty seconds of silence while we both appreciated the show, undistracted.

  He gave a polite cough to restart proceedings. “You know, you’re not being very helpful. There’s always room in this man’s Air Force for another fobbit.”

  Fobbit – Army slang for a soldier who didn’t patrol beyond the forward operating base or FOB. Arlen was actually big noting himself here. Let’s be honest, it had been a long time since he was anywhere near a FOB, let alone outside the wire. These days he was more the Power Point ranger type, a producer of slide presentations for meetings. But that’s okay. The meat eaters can’t do their thing without the plant eaters. We weren’t getting anywhere. “You haven’t come all the way out here for this.”

  “This and other things.”

  Right, it was the other things he was really here for.

  “There’s, um, something I wanted to talk to you about.” Arlen looked almost sheepish. “Marnie.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “No.”

  “You’re getting a dog together.” Juan returned with a couple of Glenkeiths and rocks. “Thanks, Juan,” I told him, and got the chit to sign in return.

  “Vin, I’m going to ask her to, you know … marry me.”

  That was my next guess. “Really? Arlen! Congratulations, buddy.”

  “A bit premature. I haven’t asked and she hasn't said yes.”

  “Right, but that’s the sort of question you only ask when you already know the answer.” Marnie was Anna’s sister. That’s Anna Masters, my former partner and, well, partner. A picture of Anna formed. She was smiling at me, her blue-green eyes sparkling, the sun leaving highlights in her chocolate-colored hair, a gentle breeze playing with the halo of butterflies above her. But then the picture changed into the last time I held her, her limp body cradled in my arms and a ragged bloody hole in her chest. But I kept the grin on my face throughout the brief trip down memory lane because what else was I gonna do?

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay with it,” he said.

  “Arlen, you don’t have to ask my permission.” And I meant that. Marnie was Anna’s younger sister by fifteen months. Last time I saw her, she was the spitting image of Anna, her hair dyed the same lustrous dark brown as Anna’s. But Marnie was not Anna. And I wasn’t Marnie’s father. “Go for it, fool. I mean sir.” My best pal married to my deceased ex-significant-other’s sister. There was symmetry in that. I picked up my drink. “To you and Marnie.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Means a lot.”

  We clinked glasses. “So, when’s the wedding?”

  “Don’t know. Soon, hopefully. If she says yes, I’d like you to be my best man.”

  “I accept, as long as the best man’s speech doesn't get censored.”

  “Deal!” Arlen’s grin wavered. “Er …wait …”

  “Too late,” I told him.

  He returned to the official business at hand. “Are we getting anywhere on this other thing?”

  “Which one?”

  “You. Your future. The other reason I’ve come all the way out here. Vin, c’mon. The service exists for people like you.”

  “So you keep reminding me.”

  “You’re a violence junkie.”

  “And you mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  “I know you. Six months on the outside and you’ll be climbing the walls, looking for shit to fix, only the most you’ll be able to fix will be a leaky faucet.”

  “And that faucet had better watch the fuck out.”

  “You know I’m right.”

  Yes, he was right, but that wasn't going to stop me making him earn it.

  Another respectful period of silence while Hong got out of the pool, strutted across the terrace, toweled off her hair and reclaimed her lounge chair.

  “Vin, you want out, I get it. But after being in the service so long, you’re gonna have separation anxiety about it. So why not leave, and stay?”

  “Leave and stay… Have you changed your name to Major Major Major Major?”

  “Whatever that means…” Arlen waved his hand at something annoying. Me, probably. “Look, your obligation to serve in the Air Force was up long ago, so you’ve got options. You can leave and enter into government civil service. Or you can transition without any loss of rank or status to the Reserves or National Guard, and still accrue points for retirement at age sixty, assuming you live that long. Five years ago I would have thought that unlikely, but here you are still breathing.”

  “I’m just a li’l ol’ bullseye looking for an arrow.”

  “I’ve checked into this for you and, of all the options – and there are many – I suggest you separate and enlist in the Air Force Reserve as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee.”

  “Serve the standard one weekend a month and two weeks a year.”

  “Or serve 120 man-days per twelve-month period, but that would depend on which unit you joined.”

  “How does any of that make things easy for me exactly?”

  “Like I said, you can leave, but stay. Out on the one hand, in on the other. You’ll have left, but also stayed.”

  “As I said, Major Major Major Major.”

  “As an IMA, with your record of service, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll have the run of the Air Force.”

  “I can run the Air Force? Now you’re talking. There’s this little country I’d like to nuke. Actually, it’s several countries but they’re all pretty much in the same sandbox. I think you know the ones.”

  “I can get you assigned to active duty units, organizations, combat support agencies, Unified Combatant Commands and even the Joint Staff… Whatever you want. The Air Force wants to keep its people engaged, doing the jobs that are essential in wartime and/or during contingency operations, jobs that do not require full-time manning during times of peace.”

  “Jobs like whacking people.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. You said it – whacking folks is for people like me.”

  “I’ve got a job that will interest you.”

  “Is it whacking people?”

  “No. Focus.”

  “Is there a bar?”

  “No, there’s not. In fact it’s a no-alcohol gig and the government there is the opposite of stable.�
�

  “You’re not selling it.”

  Two

  Ronald V. Small @realSmall

  Syria is a basket case thanks to my predecessor. If only he’d had the guts to do more, like Russia. BIG MISTAKE!

  And that’s pretty much how I came to find myself serving as a combat controller, leading a four-man-team that had HALOed onto a hill in the north of Syria, surrounded by nutjobs and killers otherwise known as jihadists. As Arlen suggested, I was in the Air Force but also not in the Air Force. An IMA. I’d served in the role of combat controller before, back when I was a youngster, but things had changed. It was a new war, Afghanistan being so yesterday. And there’s a new name for this job – Joint Terminal Attack Controller. Could be because our work is terminal to the folks under the bomb runs we call in. Also could be that the T in JTAC explains what happens at both ends of the pineapple, as there were positions that suddenly became vacant in my old unit, the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron.

  My team and I had landed on the outskirts of Latakia, a Syrian city close to the Turkish border, where we’d watched the Russian bombers pound the skyline with high explosives and phosphorus for three nights in a row. And, trust me, there’s nothing precision about the way the Russians go about their business. A jagged ridge of orange and yellow fires that stretched as far as I could see showed where the black starless sky touched the ground. The outline boiled higher at points where the flames were consuming gas cylinders and fuel tanks or when an unexploded bomb suddenly joined the party.

  The road below us was clogged with refugees. Every now and again, they shuffled into small islands of smoky light from diesel fires ISIS fighters had lit in 55-gallon drums to ward off the cold. Some of the refugees drove vehicles, but most were on foot, a pathetic army of zombies shambling out of the darkness. Old men, women with crying babies, frightened children, wounded men, hospital patients and old folks on makeshift stretchers – all desperate to escape the hell that had devoured their homes and lives. People say if you see enough of this you no longer see it, so maybe I haven’t been here long enough.

  The jihadists, however, didn't appear to have any noticeable empathy towards the refugees. They swaggered like conquerors, even though they too had been separated from their spoils - the city - by the indiscriminate bombing.