Read Project StrikeForce Online
Authors: Kevin Lee Swaim
Project StrikeForce
Project StrikeForce
Kevin Lee Swaim
Copyright © 2014 Kevin
Lee Swaim All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To Dave Wallace, who always told me I could.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all the active and retired military
members who helped with this endeavor. Any mistakes contained herein are
entirely mine. Special thanks to my beta readers. Your feedback was invaluable.
January
Fairfax, VA
J |
ohn Frist stood a rooftop away,
watching people enter the Red Cross building, the traffic noise from Arlington
Boulevard blaring in the background.
He
pulled at his jacket as the brisk January wind knifed through him and clutched
his binoculars tighter. The cold sharpened the smell of the city, the car
exhaust and asphalt mixed with the barest hint of rot from the mulch around the
damp shrubs below. He scanned the building across the parking lot but nobody
noticed the Ryder truck parked at the entrance. The lax security was rare in
the DC area.
Who would bomb the Red Cross?
He had parked the Ryder truck just minutes before,
quickly making his way to his rooftop perch. It took just seconds to disable
the alarm on the rooftop door. He had reconnoitered the path the week before,
looking for cameras, but the route through the side stairwell was clean. Even
so, he kept his head down and the jacket pulled tight.
What would anyone remember anyway? Just a man in
his late-twenties, dressed in slacks and a tan polo like the other office
drones, his brown crew-cut grown shaggy and the hint of a five o’clock shadow.
The civilians inside the Red Cross building went
about their jobs, unaware of how they had failed. He could picture them in his
mind, asking each other about the game while getting their over-priced coffee or
flirting with the pretty girl down the hall.
They were ignorant of the real threat to the
United States; ignorant of what real Americans had sacrificed so they could
remain fat, stupid, and happy. He missed his parent’s funeral, killed by a
drunk driver during his second year in Iraq. He followed procedure, informed
his CO, but when he called the Red Cross, the record was lost. They blamed it
on the Army, but he knew better. Without the Red Cross verification, his CO
denied his emergency leave.
The country was going to hell. He would never
begrudge a man providing for his family, but the flow of illegals never ended.
Before his deployment he thought illegals should be allowed to serve in the
military as a path to citizenship, but now he understood it was a pipe dream. Illegals
filled the cheap jobs companies needed to keep the economy humming. The
politicians were fat and happy from all that money, a river of cash they rafted
through on their way home to their nice houses and fancy cars.
That was about to change.
He worked the toe of his shoe against the roof
ballast rock, his knuckles white as he gripped the binoculars. A school bus was
pulling up to the front of the Red Cross, next to the Ryder truck. Were there
kids inside? He stared through the binoculars. Yeah, kids. Maybe twenty. Maybe
thirty. School trip, perhaps, coming to see the Red Cross regional
headquarters.
Could he make it back down and across the parking
lot?
No. It was too far. The kids were in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Casualties of war.
He swung the binoculars around. His escape route
was clear. The explosion would trigger car alarms for blocks, the bleating
noise echoing among the buildings, the dust thick in the air, choking, making
it hard to breathe. People would flood out of the building. They would gasp and
cry—a few might rush to help. He would go with the flow of people down the
stairs and escalators, gaping at the destruction. Some would head to their
cars, shocked, and he would go with them, an innocent bystander among the
sheep.
A stolen car waited in the north parking lot. A
quick wipe clean and he’d ditch it soon after in a wooded lot a few miles away.
A bus ride to his truck and he would be back at his apartment before lunch.
He bent and placed the binoculars on the roof,
grabbed his cell phone, and hit the speed dial. The call connected.
There was a deafening roar as the shock wave
slammed against him, knocking him back. He peeked over the edge and smiled in
awe at the destruction.
* * *
April
Washington, DC
The President of the United States
of America sighed heavily, the sound echoing against the hardened concrete
walls of his underground bunker, thirty meters below the White House. “I can’t
believe it’s come to this.”
The other occupant sat perfectly straight in his
chair, his thinning snow-white hair neatly combed, his large and weathered hands
resting on the table. “This is our best chance. The decision won’t get easier.”
Fulton Smith, the Director of the Office of Threat
Management, waited for the President to make his decision. He had been a
confidant to many presidents over the years, from his first meeting with the
hardened and vulgar President from Missouri to this young man from Texas. His
job was to ensure the safety of the Union, a promise he made to Harry Truman as
a young man and a promise he had reaffirmed to every chief executive since.
“How much will this cost?”
He handed the President papers from his metal
briefcase.
The President scanned the document, his face pale.
“Good Lord, we could build a stealth bomber for this.”
“You never said my budget was limited. This is the
cost. Besides, we’ve already started.”
“Why do you even need me to approve this?”
“Because no matter how much power I wield,
you
are the President.”
“How did you manage to move that kind of money
around? And all those people?”
Smith shrugged. “You know better than to ask. We
don’t have to do this, Mr. President. Just say the word and we kill the
project.”
The President stared off, lost in thought, and
then shook his head. “What if it doesn’t work? What if he dies during the
process?” The President stood and paced the small room, his feet shuffling
against the blue carpet. “If this ever went public, it wouldn’t just hurt me.
This would devastate the country. The people would never trust their government
again. You’re sure you can keep this quiet?”
Smith raised an eyebrow.
“Of course,” the President said, “I forgot who I
was talking to.” He paused. “It sounds like science fiction.”
“Not science fiction,” Smith said calmly, “an
extrapolation of current technology, backed by a large amount of money and a
very creative way of putting it together. We need this. I warned you. I told
you Afghanistan would be messy and that Iraq would be a meat grinder. We had a
plan to eliminate Hussein.”
The President glared. “What message would that
send? We can’t just assassinate a sitting head of state whenever we damn well
please. No, sir. I wanted the sonofabitch dead, but I wasn’t about to authorize
that. Better that we went to war.”
“Even with all that’s happened?”
“We might have overstated the case, but Iraq was a
threat and Hussein had to go. It had to be war, even a bloody one. Besides, you
warned me about the consequences of assassinating Hussein. You argued against
it as much as you argued for it.”
“War is very complex. There is always potential
blowback. I’d have preferred to have assassinated him back in the eighties, but
your predecessors wouldn’t authorize it. Too many unknowns with the Iranians.
That’s why we need this program. We can stop problems before they become so
unwieldy that the entire world gets sucked in.”
The President sat down and stared at the folder,
as if expecting it to bite. “You really think this will work?”
Smith waited, the silence of the room broken only
by the whispering of the air filtration system. “Mr. President, we need this.
Bombs and missiles and planes are good when fighting a large military force,
but to fight an idea? You need a targeted weapon. One man with superior
technology. One man who can do what an army can’t.”
The President shuffled through the paperwork. “Who’s
your candidate? Someone from Delta?”
Smith shook his head and handed the President a
dossier from his briefcase. “This is the best candidate.”
The President opened the folder, then rocked back
in his chair. “Are you out of your mind?”
“He’s an excellent choice, actually. Young, no family,
excellent military training, and he knows about complicated operations.”
The President slammed his fist against the table. “He’s
a damn terrorist.”
“The public doesn’t know who he is or that you’ve
captured him. With help from the Office, I might add,” Smith said gently. “And,
you’ve finished interrogating him.”
The President shook his head. “Anybody but him.”
“His combat record was excellent,” Smith
countered. “He was an exemplary soldier until his accident. You read the
reports.”
“A lot of soldiers had it rough and they didn’t
blow up a building, for God’s sake.” The President paused. “So many fine young
men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice on my orders.”
“He made his choice. The concussion and PTSD might
have twisted his mind. We can fix that. Physically he’s almost perfect. He’s
bright, articulate, and driven. Moreover, no one knows you have him. There are
very few loose ends to clean up if we fail.” Smith put the papers back in his
metal briefcase and sealed the locks. “Mr. President, we need a new type of
warrior for a new type of fight.”
The President fingered the papers, then slid them
back across the table. “Do it.”
Smith nodded, stood, and keyed open the steel door
with his electronic token. He gave the President one last glance.
The President looked old and weary, hunched over
the desk, recently emerged streaks of gray frosting his hair, his face starting
to sag. Smith had seen the Presidency wear men out, grinding them down, but
none so fast as this one. “Mr. President. Sleep well.”
The President nodded silently.
The steel door rumbled shut and sealed the
President alone in his underground bunker.
* * *
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Eric Wise sat on his parent’s
couch, an ice-cold beer in one hand and a Colt M1911 in the other. The beer was
courtesy of his retirement check, the pistol a gift from his grandfather, a
souvenir from World War Two. He did not usually drink until after four, but he
was commemorating. It was a warm spring day and he had been officially retired
for one month.
The second-hand couch was soft but shabby. The
particleboard coffee table appeared new, but the style was twenty years out of
date. He vaguely remembered the green and brown shag carpet. It was stained and
musty, even though he had shampooed it twice with a carpet cleaner rented from
the Home Depot on Glenway.
He was on a mission in a dusty little village in
Afghanistan when he got the news of his father’s death, and leave time for his
unit was exceptional, given their mission and the nature of their deployment.
He returned long enough to bury his father but was forced to stay longer so he
could place his mother in a nursing home.
Her mental decline had been sudden. The doctor
told him the death of a spouse could trigger a sudden downward spiral in an
Alzheimer’s patient. He was lucky to find a place that would take her on short
notice. She watched him go, leaving her in her sterile room, no emotion on her
face, no sign of recognition.
It was on his way back to Afghanistan that he hit
the wall and got sent back to Bragg for reasons never made fully clear. His
commanding officer broke the news. His career was over. No further deployments.
No further missions.
Instead, he was bounced out of Delta and back to
the regular Army. His CO suggested a security job somewhere, maybe a consulting
position with Blackwater.
When you’re out, you’re out. That’s the Delta
way.
He couldn’t imagine life in the regular Army, not
after Delta. Not after being an Operator. He was sure there was something
outside the Army for a man with his skills and training, until the other shoe
dropped. No consulting jobs. No private security gigs.
Blacklisted.
He considered staying in the Army, but he had his
twenty, so he retired.
He had sat around his parent’s house for a month,
waiting for his pension. The Colt was the only thing real to him anymore. The
checkered grips, the light smell of oil, a familiar friend. He sat with his
beer and .45 and wondered if he would finally blow his brains out.
The doorbell chimed. He sat up, the gun moving of
its own violation. He took a deep choking breath as it hit him. He was no
longer at war. He was not being hunted, nor was he the one doing the hunting.
He was a civilian, sitting in his parent’s house, drinking a Miller High-Life
at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning.
He walked to the door and looked through the
peephole. A black Ford Crown Victoria was parked at the curb, a driver at the
wheel, military by the haircut and way he watched the house.
An old man stood in front of the door, waiting.
His hair was thinned and white and he had a powerful face, though age was
taking a toll. He wore a dark navy suit, not stylish but not old and rumpled, a
shiny metal briefcase in his hand.
His blue eyes, though.
Eric shivered. The eyes were alive, precise and
sharp. The man was motionless, not even the slight swaying that people did
without noticing. The old man had discipline, either a soldier or a spook, and
access to a car and driver.
“Mister Wise, I know you are home. Probably
watching me through the peephole. I would like to talk to you about a job.”
Eric frowned. A direct spook. He wondered what the
old spook would think of him, his hair unkempt, salt-an-pepper stubble on his
face, beer on his breath.
Fuck it.
He shrugged and unlatched the chain, opening the
door. “A job, huh?” He dropped the Colt to his side and beckoned the man in.
The old man entered the house, glanced around, and
took a seat at the kitchen table, motioning for Eric to join him. “My name is
Fulton Smith, and I’ve come to offer you a job.”