RW11 - Violence of Action (10 page)

While I was meeting with the honchos two floors below, Paul ran Blondie’s fingerprints through the system. What came back was just one more fucking surprise in a day full of fucking surprises. Blondie was one Tony Karras. And Tony Karras was a U.S. Navy SEAL. A teammate. Thanks to OISA’s pull deep inside the Pentagon, Paul had been able to pull the jacket on Karras faster than Bill Clinton unzips his pants. In a hurried conversation outside the soundproofed interview room, Paul told me that Karras had served with distinction in the Gulf War and again in Somalia. All the go-to-war shit was interesting but it was his current assignment that rang deafening bells and whistles.

Karras was currently an operator with a military team code-named Nemesis.

And Nemesis was in the business of handling man-packed nuclear weapons.

Just when the idea that we were dealing with home-grown terrorists was starting to sink in, this latest development hit me like a hammer to my skull. If the bad guys were in fact Americans, I’d just taken for granted that we were gonna turn up some sort of backwoods fundamentalist militia, an isolated sect of inbred crazies who’d learned how to steal a SADM on the Internet or some such bullshit. Now I saw how seriously I’d been kidding myself.

These were guys who had the benefit of all the same training and resources that I did. The kind of men who I might have tried to recruit for SIX or Red Cell. I’m not so fucking naïve that I think every SEAL or Delta Force member is by definition a fine upstanding citizen of the Republic, but it had never occurred to me that my own backyard could be the breeding ground for this kind of sickness and evil.

I’d heard bits and pieces about Nemesis for several years since it was, in some ways, a distant relative to my own commands. Tucked away in a remote corner of Smoke Bomb Hill on Fort Bragg, Nemesis was a highly classified nuclear weapons project that involved a team of experts in the storage, transport, and tactical delivery of SADMs. You might say I tried to keep these weapons safe (or at least in our own hands) so that Nemesis could put them in play if the call to do so ever came. Members agreed to have their lives monitored by the military and NSA. Their overseas travel was restricted, and their private lives were closely watched. In essence, Nemesis operators became shadow prisoners of our own ability to wage a nuclear war.

Working in two-and four-man cells, the operators of Nemesis were the elite of the elite in Special Forces. With a single suitcase nuke and its accompanying detonation code they had at their disposal a device capable of killing upwards of 150,000 human beings. The Russians, too, had developed hand-carried atomic munitions which intelligence sources were sure had been planted in Western Europe—and by some reports the United States itself—by elite Russian Spetsnaz soldiers. The American SADMs were a better product in every respect. They were also better protected than the Russian tac-nukes, which after the collapse of Communism were rumored to have hit the black market with a price tag of $10 million per device.

This was all familiar backstory, but then Paul gave me the real kicker—no one at the Pentagon could find anyone currently attached to Karras’s Nemesis team. They’d vanished the day before. Gone.
Kaput!
And with them a shitload of their high speed, low drag weaponry and equipment. It wasn’t much of a stretch to figure they now also had at their disposal the nuke that NEST had just lost out in New Mexico. Fuck, I thought to myself as Paul finished updating me, send a pro to do a pro’s job. No wonder they’d been able to take NEST out. They were better than the lads from DOE. Way better. I’d heard through the grapevine a composite team of specwar operators had been formed to handle SADM missions exclusively. It sure the fuck looked like they’d lost control of their chain dogs. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out I was now up against the first fucking string and playing by their rules.

“Find out
everything
they have on Nemesis. First and foremost, who’s in charge of their operations these days,” I told Paul. “I need it yesterday. Nothing held back! I know just enough about these Nemesis cocksuckers to make my dick wiggle. We’re on borrowed time and let everyone you talk with know it. Karras’s little friends could set the fucking device off right now and all we’d be able to do is stand here with our collective cocks hanging out and our fingers up our asses! Questions?”

Paul shook his head and took off down the hall double time. I needed him to find this information, but also I just didn’t want him around when Trace and I had our little meeting with
former
SEAL Tony Karras. Paul was blooded but he was still young in a lot of ways. I needed to be sure how far he’d go. As much as I hated the thought, I knew we were going to have to lean on Karras hard. Way hard. Rogue hard. There was no time left and no other way. He’d crossed over to the other side. I didn’t know or give a rat’s ass about his religious or political beliefs. From what I’d heard on the tape, they were plenty fucked up, but that was his right. He could subscribe to any dumb-ass way of thinking he chose, but when he tried to take away the rights (and lives!) of others, he was gonna have to answer to me and my own brand of justice. I have no time for people who want to take advantage of America’s freedoms and tolerance to further their own agendas of hatred and prejudice.
Take a note!
I believe in two things. One: my country. Two: me. Period. Get in the way of either and I’ll take you down and out. Karras had fucked up in a big way. First, he’d become a terrorist and I hate terrorists. Second, he’d dishonored the fraternity of frogmen I belong to. Third, he’d gotten caught being a terrorist and I
hate
guys who get caught at their business!

This was going to be messy.

Trace was standing in the far corner of the sparsely furnished interrogation chamber when I blasted through the door. I ignored her and went straight for Karras. He tried coming up out of the chair he’d been sitting in but I was on him before both cheeks of his ass were off the seat. Stripped down to his Jockey shorts he was a lean, tough bit of rawhide and muscle. His cuffs had been removed. That was a good thing. I hate hitting a man who can’t hit back.

And I love hitting one who won’t.

He tried sidestepping my hard left hook to his rib cage but in doing so walked into an open-palm right that connected with a harsh
craaack
alongside his temple. That fucking move always puts a smile on my face. Karras weighed in at maybe 170 pounds and my rabbit punch buckled him at the knees, as intended. To his credit, he tried a half-assed head butt to my gut and to reward this last great act of defiance I smashed my right fist down hard into the small of his back. He yelped as red-hot pain surged through his kidneys and lower spine. He dropped to his knees in front of me, his hands gripping at my pants’ legs as he tried to hold himself upright.

“Bastard!” he hissed through clenched teeth. “My fucking lawyer will have your convict ass for this!”

I almost lost it at this point. The image of Beckstein’s scrambled brains was still fresh in my memory and now this clown was crying for a lawyer to ride in on a white horse and defend his civil rights. Sorry Charlie, I’ll say it again. You wanna destroy the greatest nation on earth, you do
not
get the benefit of its protections.

I reached down and grabbed both of Karras’s little pink ears. With a brutal jerk I lifted the now howling SEAL up off the floor. His hands flew to the sides of his head. I was going to rip the fucker’s lobes right off his skull! When I had his feet off the floor I let go of the right ear. I snaked my hand down between Tony Baloney’s legs, grabbed a mittful of nutsack, and crunched his balls together until I thought his eyes were going to explode out of their sockets. The sounds coming from his lips were loud, unintelligible, and yet were sweet music to my tone-deaf ears. I knew he’d had enough when I saw his eyes begin to roll up into his skull. Without a word I dropped him in a heap at my feet.

“Now that we’re properly introduced, how about we talk,
motherfucker
?”

Squatting down beside Karras, I watched him slowly curl up into a tight little ball of human misery, both hands gently cradling his cracked eggs as he rolled back and forth on the Air Force blue carpet. “Can you hear me, Tony?” I mocked. “Everything okay, sweetheart?”

“Uhhhhhhhhh….”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I replied. “First things first. I am officially
not
a convict as of today. Second, we no more talkie-talkie about lawyers, okay? You must love the motherfuckers because they’re all you’ve talked about since we dragged your nasty ass in here. It’s funny, given how you seem to treat them. Me, I don’t care for lawyers one way or another. I’d rather fuck a geriatric whore than spend five minutes in a room with an attorney. Besides, it’s cheaper to get fucked by an old whore than by a slick lawyer. So, no more lawyer talk, okay?”

Karras glared up at me. I could feel the hate coming from him like a stiff ocean breeze off the Silver Strand in Coronado. I breathed it in deep. Hate makes me strong. When someone hates me I know I’m doing my job. I feel sorry for people with no enemies—their lives must be so fucking boring.
Señor
Busted Balls could hate me all he wanted. “Marcinko!” He spit my name from his lips like cobra venom. “You got shit! You can work on me all you want! I ain’t giving you
nothing
!” He closed his eyes and put his head down on the carpet. “Fuck you,” he wheezed. “Fuck you.”

He was sounding like a broken record and it was annoying me. I stood and turned to Trace who hadn’t moved from the corner. Her face was impassive but her normally gray-green eyes were a darker shade than I could recall ever seeing them. There was a kind of scary calm about her that I’d witnessed when we’d done our first job together down in El Salvador. She’d killed a lot of hairy-assed men that night. As we’d waited on the side of a rugged volcano for the extraction bird to arrive I realized Trace Dahlgren was as serious a stone-cold killer as any motherfucking man I’d ever gone to war with. She was ice, damn near as heartless as me. I figured then it was the Apache blood in her veins. She’d make a good companion to ride the river with. Right now I needed her skills and her emotional detachment for what was to come next. Speaking loudly enough for Karras to overhear me, I told her what I’d learned from Paul.

“He’s a Nemesis operator. His entire team is MIA from Bragg. A NEST team got hit a few hours ago in New Mexico. Their payload is missing and presumed under enemy control. Paul is running down background for us now but I need answers. Fast. We have the president’s personal authority to do whatever it takes to accomplish this mission. Whatever it takes.”

Trace locked eyes with me. I didn’t blink and neither did she. “Tie him,” she said. Pure ice.

Hearing this, Karras jumped up and bolted for the door. He hadn’t taken two steps when my sidekick caught him high up on the hip and sent him slamming into the far wall. In an instant I was all over the stupid bastard. Two quick punches to the face stunned him long enough for me to take my belt off and bind his hands behind his back. Trace removed her belt and grabbed Karras’ ankles. Like she was cinching up a calf at a rodeo she secured the dazed man’s feet, then looped and jerked her belt up and through my own so Karras was now bent backward in the shape of a human bow.

“Got a knife?” she asked.

I took my Emerson CQC-7 from my right pants pocket. With a flick of my finger, the black steel blade popped out. Reversing the knife in my hand I handed it to Trace. “All yours,” I said.

“You cannot do this to me!” Karras was back with us again. Fucking thickheaded SEAL. He wasn’t sticking to the role I’d written for him in our little scene. At least he looked the part—that is, he looked like shit. I’d smashed his nose downtown and opened the wound up again when I’d nailed him in here. He was bleeding like a pig at slaughter time and was near buck-naked. Tied like he was there was no way he could get loose. He was talking like a player, though. I had to give him that.

“Tony,” I explained patiently, “not only can we do this to you, we
are
doing this to you. I know some of the very bad things that you’re involved in, but I want to know more. Your pals changed the rules on us. Fair fighting is out, and the Rogue’s Rules of War are in. We’re gonna get to know each other real well. Think about it—confessing your sins might do you some good.

“My friend Trace here is Apache by birth and upbringing. If anyone is entitled to a have a problem with your America for White People Only bullshit, I’d think she is. She killed her first man when most white girls were playing with their first Barbie. It’s my understanding she learned the ancient ways of her people, including the skills necessary to get naked little white boys like you to sing like birds. I’m giving you to her because I want to hear you sing. I’ll ask her to stop only when you’ve told me all you know about Nemesis, the missing nuke, and where I can find both.”