RW11 - Violence of Action (12 page)

Trace continued. “Where is Blanchard now?”

Tony’s eyes flickered open. Life was seeping out of them. They were growing dim. He’d given up all hope. In his own way he was preparing for his fate. But he would tell Trace what she wanted to know before leaving. He had to. She had taken his manhood from him. She now owned him. He could only obey her. She was his master. Only she could give him release. “Oregon.”

“Where in Oregon?”

“My brothers and the colonel will destroy the place where the mud people, the Jews, the queers, the race traitors, where all who are filth in Yahweh’s eyes have gathered to keep His People from securing our own nation.”

“Will he—will
Yahweh
—use the nuclear weapon to accomplish this?”

Karras smiled. The effort was gruesome to watch. “Yes. Yes. They must burn. Their city must be destroyed. All must see the light of Yahweh before they die. Then victory—the final victory—will be at hand.”

“He’s speaking in the language of his religion,” said Trace. “I don’t know that I’ll get much more that will be useful. He’s slipping into the protection his faith gives his mind and soul. It would take more time, more pain, to draw him out of that place.”

“I want all he’s got to give.”

Trace looked at me. Her face was emotionless, impassive. She was caked in Karras’s blood. Her hands and arms up to her elbows were a wet red sheen. Her features were smeared with splatters from his ruptured body. “You cannot go back,” she said to me.

“I know,” I replied.

Trace twisted the knife deeper into Tony’s guts. He bucked weakly but made no sound. “I’ll let your spirit go if you answer me,” she whispered. “This is my promise to you.”

Trace’s words must have resonated with him, because he finally exhaled the words I’d been waiting to hear: “Portland will be sacrificed…”

When Tony Karras died three minutes later, he’d given me the piece of information I needed to plan the next step of our mission—the location outside Portland where he was to hook up with two of his Nemesis pals. I’d kill the cocksucker Blanchard for making this necessary. That was
my
promise to him!

“Blanchard and his crew are way out in front of us,” I said as Trace stood over Karras’s corpse. “We need to talk to Karen’s whiz kid about this Christian Identity bullshit to figure out what some of Karras’s mumbo-jumbo meant. But Portland makes sense as a target for these assholes. It’s as liberal a motherfucking Sodom and Gomorrah as you can find—outside of San Fran-Fucking-Frisco.”

A hard knock at the door interrupted my train of thought. I
hate
it when that happens! “What!”

“Dick? It’s Paul. We need to talk…now!”

I caught the Emerson in midair as Trace tossed it to me. “You get cleaned up,” I told her. “Have Karen’s people get you some clean clothes. I….”

Trace pulled her hair back with both hands. Now it too was streaked with the dead man’s blood. She looked up at me. I held her gaze. “Don’t worry about me, Captain. We’ll get through this and come out stronger on the other side.”

“Coming out!” I yelled as Paul began knocking on the fucking door again. As Trace and I left the room I jerked my thumb back at where Karras was lying in his own stew. “Get Clay in here and tell him to clean this mess up. Blondie’s got to disappear. I don’t care how or where. Just tell Mulcahy to bury him deep. Clear?”

Paul stepped aside and then glanced into the room. The smell was overpowering. When he saw what was left of Karras I heard him start to gag. The man on the carpet, hog-tied and de-nutted with a face full of blood and his guts hanging out, was not a pretty sight. “Holy shit,” exclaimed Paul, grabbing onto the doorframe to support himself.

I stopped and spun around to face him. “You got a problem with this?”

Paul looked me dead in the eye. He was a young, tough, ball-busting stud and I liked the hell out of him. But he would either ride the tiger with me or find another berth in safer, saner waters. It was his call. Moment of Fucking Truth time. He broke eye contact with me and looked over at Trace. She stood tall. She offered no excuses. “No problem here,” he said quietly.

I looked over at Trace. She turned and started down the hall. “Yeah, kid,” I replied. “Good man. Get that shit in there squared away and meet us in Karen’s office. Bring your ball and bat. We’re heading for fucking Oregon unless these crazy sons of bitches blow it up before we get there!”

“Aye, aye, Skipper!”

I closed my eyes. For the first time in my life I hated being called Skipper.

Karen tracked me down in between my taking a whore’s bath in the men’s room and attending the last briefing before we lifted off for Portland. The quick wash-up had given me my first few minutes alone since the helo had landed at the Manor and whisked the kids and me away. I needed the break in the action. Already tired and sore, the nasty session with Karras had overloaded my senses. I’d needed a few moments alone to refocus on the mission.

That came to a quick end when Karen stormed down on me, declaring, “Torture. Dick, you and Dahlgren tortured that man to death!” She was pissed and I couldn’t have cared a fuck less. I was in the mission-prep mode and had no time for bullshit. Danny Barrett was in-house and in the process of getting dialed in to what had occurred since we’d left him with a ton of paperwork. With Danny along for the ride I was feeling a bit more comfortable about the shitty odds we were facing. Mulcahy had arranged for an Air Force Lear to take us from nearby Andrews Air Force Base to a base near Portland, Oregon. The most direct line of travel had been plotted and approved by those on high. We’d break all speed records getting to our anticipated ground zero, courtesy of the Air Force’s best flight crew. Marine One, the president’s helo, was standing by on the White House helipad to move the team and me from OISA out to Andrews. Three armored SUVs were down on the street wasting gas as we fiddle-fucked around getting our shit in order. Their mission was to get us from OISA to Marine One by the most direct route available. The clock was ticking and here I was getting a lecture on appropriate conduct when I needed to be with my team and getting gunned up.

I’d put a request in for the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to assist in the mission. They would outload for Portland from Andrews as well. It would take their C-141 Starlifter a bit longer to make it to the West Coast than our Lear but I needed the HRT’s shooters as backup. Blanchard’s team were among the best. Their training and real-world experience were extensive. They were almost as good as Red Cell had been in its heyday under my command. The hit on the NEST team was a stark reminder of just how lethal Blanchard’s boyz were. I knew no local police department stood a chance against his operators in a running gun battle…if the cops ever found them to begin with. I wanted as much firepower and expertise on the ground with me as possible once we started kicking doors and taking names. And I needed guys who know nukes. Before he’d gone on to the happy hunting grounds Karras had given us the location of the two-man Nemesis cell he was supposed to link up with after finishing his surveillance in D.C. His civilian flight across the country didn’t leave until 0900 tomorrow morning. With what I knew now, thanks to Trace’s handiwork with my Emerson, I figured we had perhaps twenty-four hours before Blanchard intended to detonate the SADM.

Twenty-four hours at most.

“The president said any and all means. You were there. You heard him.”

Karen flared. “Dick! I highly doubt the president could have imagined that five minutes after he hung up you’d be gutting an America citizen on the floor of a U.S. government agency and using his turn of a phrase to justify your butchery!”

I was tired. I was worn down. I was pissed off and I was ready to take my people into Harm’s Way. I didn’t need a lecture on ethics or morals or any other such bullshit just now. Especially from a professional manager, and despite her talents and abilities, that’s what Karen is. She sends others to carry out the policies she only puts on paper. She never gets wet, she never gets dirty, she never pulls the trigger, and she never watches those who carry out the ground wars bleed and die. She never writes the letters home to their loved ones who never halfway get the truth about how their husbands, sons, and brothers…and now wives, mothers, and sisters…serve their country and make the ultimate sacrifice for it.

That is what they pay me to do.

And I do it very fucking well, thank you.

It was time to cut this shit short. “Listen close Fairfield, because I haven’t got a lot of time to waste soothing over your outraged sense of propriety. Karras was a fucking terrorist. Sure, he had a U.S. passport and looked and talked like you and me, but he was a terrorist just the same. You think he was going to happily tell me what we need to know right
now
? He was yapping about his rights and his lawyer and the civil suit he was going to file from the moment he woke up after Trace clobbered him with her fucking .45. If I’d followed the rule book, Karras would be chatting it up with some slick-shoe mouthpiece at $300 an hour while Portland and most of its people were getting roasted on a nuclear spit!

“Take a note, Karen! Extraordinary times demand extraordinary means. I’ll take the lives of half a million American citizens over the rights of one fucking lunatic any day of the week. I didn’t like what we did, I didn’t enjoy it, and I sure as hell hope I never have to do something like that again. But it had to be done and I did it! So either shut the fuck up and help me get this show on the road or put the cuffs on me. I can’t wait to read about how the president let half a million voters be turned into black glass as I’m doing reps on my old friend the weight bench at Club Fed. It’ll make for good jail-house conversation and maybe even another Rogue Warrior best-seller!”

Karen took two steps back and looked hard at me. She’d heard me loud and clear. It was decision time. Leaders lead and overcome all odds to get the job done. Managers manage and give leaders all the wrong reasons why they can’t possibly accomplish the mission at hand. I was about to find out if Karen was a dyed-in-the-wool manager or if there was hope for her in the future. When she spoke her voice was low, dangerous, and about as sexy as a jury’s guilty verdict. “You know the president absolved you of any wrongdoing this afternoon. You damn well know he accepted all responsibility for whatever had to be done! You’re free and clear, Captain Marcinko.

“But perhaps you’ve forgotten this? The president
didn’t
give carte blanche to Trace or Paul or anyone else on your team. I may not own you, but I sure the hell own them. I could put Dahlgren away for life for what she did to that poor son of a bitch. And Kossens, too, as an accomplice and conspirator. Did you bother to consider
them
, you arrogant bastard?”

Actually, good reader, I had. That’s what a good commander and spec-warrior does. He considers his actions and all the possibilities of how they may affect him and his teammates. That’s how you hold Mr. Murphy in check. Karen was playing her management wild card to bring me back in line. However, fluffing up her comfort zone was not my problem. Colonel Mother-Fucking Max Blanchard and an AWOL nuke were my problem. It was time to bring this little
chitchat
to an end. Like I said, I had a few things to do, and being captain of the OISA debate team wasn’t on my short list.

“I take my orders from the president. He gave me that authority,
his
authority. By any and all means. You want to fuck with my kids all I have to do is invoke that authority, a copy of which is now in the hands of my attorney and the original is on its way to an off-shore safety deposit box. Trace and Paul acted on my orders, and I acted on the president’s. You can’t fucking touch them or me without bringing down the president. We both know you won’t go there. End of discussion.”

Karen reluctantly nodded her assent. We were playing hardball now. She had her job to do and I had mine. “I’ll tell Clay to handle the Karras matter appropriately under the current circumstances,” she said with a hint of bitterness in her voice. “I believe you said—make that
ordered
—that you want him buried deep. He will be. Like all the other poor bastards you’ve dealt with outside the rulebook the rest of us have sworn to live by. Clay is good at his job. It’s one of the reasons I hired him and primary reason the president trusts him. He’ll hate me for this but he’ll get the job done…but for me, not for you.

“Good luck, Dick. One word of advice—don’t look too closely in any mirrors along the way. You may discover you’ve become what you claim to hate the most.”

In an instant she was gone, walking away both from me and from whatever it was we’d enjoyed together as lovers. I watched as the elevator doors closed behind her. I tried to put Karen Fairfield out of my mind as I turned and headed for where Barrett and the kids were waiting for me.

I came across Paul pacing in the hallway outside the room where we were planning to have our briefing. “Dick, I did what you said and Clay is taking care of Karras’s body. Look, I don’t want you thinking that I can’t handle whatever business needs to get done. I know I don’t have as much experience as Trace, but I’m a part of this team and you don’t need to worry about me having a breakdown or some bullshit like that.”

“I know Paul. You’ve proven that to me.”

“Thanks. But I still need to talk to you for a sec before this briefing.”

“Make it short. We’ve got too much shit to do and less than no time to do it.”

“It’s about Nemesis. I’ve got the sheets on Karass’s Nemesis team members who went missing yesterday like you asked, and then went ahead and pulled the file on Blanchard. It’s Blanchard I have to talk to you about.”

“You know him?”

“Yeah, I met him when I did some early special ops training at Bragg. He really tried to take me under his wing, teach me the ropes. Kinda gave me the creeps to tell you the truth.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, somehow he knew about my dad’s service in Nazi Naval Intelligence during the war and about his work for the CIA in Europe afterwards. At first, his interest seemed really cool. I mean, he was like King of the Delta Force or something and I was a kid hoping not to shoot my foot off with my own gun. He knew a ton about history and was always lecturing me about how America was falling short of its destiny, how we’d lost sight of the real meaning of the Constitution. He was an incredible storyteller, a little intense maybe, but didn’t seem way out there or anything. Then I noticed he’d always want to bring the conversation back to my father’s war record.”

“I’ll bet he did.”

“Dick, you know it’s not something I talk about very much. I mean, why should I? I look the fucking poster child for Hitler youth. All I need is for people to know my dad was once a card-carrying, sieg-heiling Nazi. But Blanchard said I should be proud of my heritage. He said intelligent people understood that the Nazis should be appreciated for their fight against the spread of Communism. He had this uncanny way of using all his historical knowledge to make crazy ideas like that sound sort of plausible. Then one night, after a couple of drinks, he started in on some truly scary stuff—talking about a ‘White Man’s religion’ and how America was meant to be a homeland for people like him and me, people of pure Aryan blood. That’s when I had to tell him. About my mom being a nice Jewish girl from Philadelphia and all. You should have seen the look on his face. I thought he was gonna pass out he was so surprised. He never spoke another word to me again after that night.”

“Jesus. How long ago was all this?”

“Ten years ago, give or take. Like I said, I was just a pup.”

“He was fucking trying to recruit you for his team. Holy shit, ten years ago Blanchard was already putting this thing together, or at least planning for something like it.”

“Once Nemesis came up in the mix this morning, the whole thing came back to me. I’d written Blanchard off back then as just a racist nutcase, but I gotta tell you, when you’re the focus of his attention and he starts spinning his nasty little web of half-truths and historical misinterpretations around you, it’s damn hard to resist. There’s something truly compelling about the guy. I can see how he’d be able to inspire a hard core group of shooters to rally around him to pull off this fucked-up shit.”

“C’mon partner, let’s get Trace and Danny. Between all of us mongrels and mutts, I’m betting we’ve got more than enough juice to teach fucking Max Blanchard a different kind of American history.”