Seawolf End Game (44 page)
Absence of the Normal (Coming Summer 2013)
Seawolf: Mask of Command
Seawolf End Game
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Book 1 in the Friends from Damascus series
Haunted by a past she can’t escape, CIA’s top assassin Talia Cavalieri is facing her most dangerous assignment to date. She must neutralize an international team of eight special ops commandos. Known simply as the friends from Damascus, the rogue unit continues to elude her on a world-wide chase. Talia uses every trick in her considerable arsenal before the final showdown. When things get personal, she must make a decision that promises to change her life forever.
The Ural Mountains, Russia
T
he military convoy weaved its way up the narrow mountain pass. Sheer, rocky slopes dominated both sides of the road as the trucks labored up the steep grade. Major Andre Popov had made the trip a hundred times—always the same route, always the same number of vehicles, always the same number of security troops. He’d made the long, boring trip so many times he found himself slumbering in the cab of the lead truck.
“Complacency kills,” Popov had once told his men, and it certainly did in his case. As his driver shouted in sudden alarm, Popov managed to open his eyes long enough to see the streaking RPG round just before it struck his truck. Popov and half of his fifteen men in the vehicle were killed instantly.
More rocket propelled grenades rained down on the trucks loaded with Russian security troops as withering fire raked across the vehicles, finishing the job. The soldiers who managed to escape the fiery trucks were cut down in a well-prepared crossfire by the Chechen rebels hidden among the rocks on both sides of the road.
The three vehicles in the middle of the seven truck convoy were hardly touched. But with the road in front and behind now completely blocked with burning troop transports, the large tractor-trailers had nowhere to go and stopped. The drivers were civilians who simply drove the trucks, and realizing what was happening, they saw no point in resisting, hoping to be spared the fate of Popov and his security troops.
The leader of the rebel force opened one of the sealed containers in the rear of the lead tractor-trailer to verify its contents. He saw the single stainless steel pressurized canister surrounded in a cocoon of foam. The warnings on the canister made clear what it contained. The thirty nerve gas canisters the convoy had been carrying were just the latest in a series of shipments to a destruction facility high in the mountains and far away from a population center. The guerillas handling the cases wore gas masks in hopes of protecting themselves in the event of an accident. But the leader of the rebels knew better and wore no mask. If someone was careless, and one of the canisters ruptured, no gas mask would protect them from the topical nerve agent. Less than five micro liters on the skin would be enough to kill and there was no antidote.
“Well?” The Chechen leader heard a familiar voice.
He looked down from the bed of the truck and saw the American mercenary who’d helped plan the operation. The American—whom the Chechen guerrillas knew as “Andric”—had a chunk of his left ear lobe missing, and his nose looked like someone had smashed it with a meat cleaver some years earlier. He’d also noted that when it got cold, the scar-faced American limped slightly. The rebel leader knew “Andric” was little more than a well-paid mercenary, but he’d been instrumental in every step of the planning for the operation as well as the training of the guerrilla force.
“They are all here,” the Chechen leader admitted, a bit surprised.
“Good.” Andric was dressed like the guerillas, but instead of an assault rifle he carried just a pistol on his side and a double-edged commando knife in his boot. Of course, the Chechen leader thought, the American needed no weapon. He’d seen him kill a Russian intelligence agent who’d almost uncovered their operation when it was still in the planning stage. The American had killed the agent with his bare hands, striking with such cold efficiency the Chechen leader would hardly have believed it possible.
“Tell your men to finish off the drivers, and get those wrecks out of the way.” The American glanced at a stop watch around his neck. “I want to be rolling in fifteen minutes.”
“The drivers aren’t soldiers,” the Chechen leader pointed out. “They are civilians.”
Andric nodded in understanding. But the Chechen saw the man’s lifeless eyes turn to the helpless men in the ditch. As if to make his point, the American walked over to the ditch where the three drivers were down on their knees in the snow with their hands on their heads. Without a hint of pity or compassion, he drew the automatic pistol at his side, racked the slide, and shot all three in the head as they pleaded for their lives.
The Chechen leader watched in shock from the back of the truck. He hated the Russian Army for all the devastation they had brought to his people, but even he had not yet brought himself to be so ruthless. He was about to speak but the scarred face turned toward him, the eyes angry.
“Now, either get your men off their dead asses, or I’ll find someone who will!”
Eleven minutes later, the last truck filled with deadly nerve gas was turned around and headed back down the mountain.
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Book 2 in the Friends from Damascus series
Former Mossad operative Gideon Meltzer: Founding member of Friends from Damascus. To eliminate extremists bent on destruction, this no-nonsense terrorist hunter and his crack black-ops team will go anywhere and risk anything. The daring theft of highly enriched uranium by religious fanatics forces Gideon’s team to partner with an unlikely ally: a beautiful, blind, Persian computer genius named Alaleh Koyunlu. On the run from both the intelligence agencies who think she orchestrated the theft and the terrorists who set her up to take the fall, she leads the team on a world-wide hunt for the missing material. With the clock ticking and millions of lives on the line, they’ll stop at nothing to bring down their prey.
Pelindaba Nuclear Research Facility, South Africa
H
e had feared rain.
The forecast for the evening called for showers, but the front moving through hadn’t produced any, and Farid Raad could see a few stars poking through the cloud-filled sky. The last two nights his team had been forced to cancel their plans because of weather. His men had trained to a razor’s edge. They were ready. Hiding in a small Pretoria warehouse for nearly a week, then delaying the operation for forty-eight hours had affected their mental preparation. They’d had too much time on their hands contemplating exactly what their mission meant: both its importance and the fate that awaited them once inside the facility.
The team was handpicked from thousands of believers. All sixteen members had extensive experience fighting the American-led infidels that overran Afghanistan. They’d trained in Malaysia, deep in the jungle at an aging and long-abandoned airfield from World War II.
All of the men were skilled with small arms before being considered for the great honor of joining Farid’s team. Even so, they’d spent nearly a month on nothing but weapons training. They’d fired tens of thousands of rounds at targets placed along the edge of the jungle airstrip, literally cutting trees down with a hailstorm of machinegun, assault rifle, and pistol bullets, as well as rocket propelled grenades. Even the New Zealand mercenary who’d trained them admitted Farid and his men were “ready for anything.”
A three-dimensional model of the target had been prepared in an army surplus tent. Then, after hours of fine-tuning the plan, rehearsals had been conducted on a full-scale mockup constructed on the airstrip using metal stakes and white engineering tape. All the work was done at night, and although it was believed the American spy satellites wouldn’t notice the slender engineering tape on the field, Farid had taken the precaution of removing the tape after every practice to avoid discovery of their activities. They’d trained each night for over a month, meticulously going through every possible detail. Breaching teams had been designated, rocket teams, snipers, demolitions… they’d worked tirelessly until every man could fulfill his duty blindfolded.
Infiltration into South Africa from Zimbabwe had been potentially hazardous, but the Zimbabwean contact took them across the border without any trouble. It wasn’t until they reached Pretoria that Farid’s men learned of their target. Even now, as they saw their objective brilliantly lit before them, Farid was still the only member of the elite force who knew the full extent of their mission.
He checked the luminous dial on his watch.
It was time.
Farid turned to his comrades lying hidden around him in the tall grass. He pointed toward the breaching team. These men had received additional training and were equipped with everything they would need to safely infiltrate the compound.
