Viper Team Seven (The Viper Team Seven Series Book 1)
Read Viper Team Seven (The Viper Team Seven Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Rykar Lewis
VIPER TEAM SEVEN
By
Rykar
B. Lewis
Viper Team Seven
Text copyright © 2014
by Rykar B. Lewis
All
rights reserved
Table
of Contents
Welcome aboard.
You are about to be taken into the world of
Viper Team Seven
– the
creation of which has consumed my life for the last several years. This project
has changed me in so many ways and has been such a pleasure to work on. The
book that follows is more than just words on a page; it reflects a great part
of my life. The story and characters that were molded during the entire process
have come to life for me, and I hope the same will be true for you.
The story that
follows is not merely my own. I owe its existence to so many people. Firstly, I
must thank the Lord Jesus Christ for His love and salvation, and for giving me
the ability to write this book. I also give immeasurable credit to my father,
Major Colt W. Lewis, U.S.M.C. (ret.). He spent innumerable hours helping me
research and find ideas for this book throughout the years, and thus I bestow
on him the title of “Intelligence Officer.” I sincerely thank him for his
assistance, technical advice, proofreading and editing, and for his service in
the Marine Corps, which inspired the writing of this book. I also owe endless
gratitude to my mother, Sandi A. Lewis, who selflessly spent so many years of
her life raising and homeschooling me. She taught me how to write as a child
and guided me through this project with her superb writing skills. She has my
deepest appreciation for her refinement of this novel. More than anything else,
I thank and love my parents for always being there for me and for being Godly
examples.
I am deeply
grateful for the cover design by Edd Natividad. He truly captured the essence
of this book. His creativity and cover designing skills are unparalleled. If
readers do judge this book by its cover then it will do well. Furthermore, I
greatly appreciate the proofreading and editing of Lila Armstrong. She added so
much to this work and helped to mold it into the final product. I also owe the
greatest of thanks to the men and women of the United States Marine Corps. They
risk their lives every day to keep America free so that writers like me can
continue writing books. Their sacrifice is eternally remembered and
appreciated.
Thank you, too, for reading
Viper Team Seven
. I trust that you
will enjoy the story. If you have any questions or comments about this book,
please email me at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you. Also,
if you like
Viper Team Seven
please do me the favors of writing a review
and recommending this book to your family and friends. I hope you have as much
fun reading this book as I did writing it.
Enjoy the story,
Rykar Lewis
Roundup, Montana
This
book is dedicated with love to my dad – the hero and role model of my life.
1
Thursday, January 16
th
– 2127 hours
New York City, New York
Three minutes.
That’s all Alka vun Buvka had to get out of the illustrious Paramount Hotel.
Vun Buvka was not a suicide bomber, just a bomber, and a very skilled one at
that. He knew his mission: wage terror on the Great West. And that was
precisely what was going to happen in exactly two minutes and forty-five
seconds. He had planted a bomb in his own room on the fifth floor, which was
strategically located in the center of the towering hotel. Accompanying the
bomb was approximately a hundred pounds of C4, ready to explode. He knew this
mission was risky, but he was ready for it. He had practiced his escape several
times throughout his week’s stay in this hotel, but now it was different;
everything seemed to be moving at half speed. And vun Buvka could not afford to
move in slow motion. He knew he could have easily set the bomb’s timer for half
an hour but he lived for thrilling moments and close calls. Although he hoped this
wasn’t going to be too close of a call.
Vun Buvka
descended the long staircase leading from the fifth floor to the fourth. He
didn’t have much time, but he didn’t trust taking an elevator down to the lobby.
If, for some unknown reason, the blast took place while he was in an elevator,
he didn’t want to be stuck in there with no oxygen. So he was taking the long
way down.
He ran down the
staircase at top speed, tripping once or twice during his flight. Midway down,
he was blocked by a tired family coming up the stairs to their hotel room. Vun
Buvka felt his breath vanish at the sight. This couldn’t be happening.
Quickly and with
determination, he began pushing through the family. Some of them resisted
slightly, others muttered with irritation. Several precious seconds were wasted
by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs.
The Iranian
bomber bolted onto the third floor and glanced at his watch. One minute and
thirty seconds until the explosion. He wondered if he had time to run down two
more staircases. He had to try.
Vun Buvka flung open the staircase door. Suddenly he heard voices and
footsteps on the stairs below him. His stomach knotted. There were more people
coming toward him. He knew he had to get out of the building, and fast. His
eyes darted left and right, searching for a sensible answer to his dilemma. Not
having anything else to blame, vun Buvka cursed the time. He measured his options:
take the stairs and risk being blown to pieces by his own bomb, or take an
elevator and worry about whether or not he could get out fast enough to escape
the coming destruction.
* * *
The small
freight ship cruised silently above the calm waters of Norfolk, Virginia. Everything was so peaceful on the ocean; everything but the crew on board the
freight ship now coming into the bay at high speed. They didn’t want to be late.
2130 hours was their deadline to be in the bay, no later.
The freight ship
had sailed from China with cargo that supposedly consisted of toys for
children. The ship had made a quick trip by Egypt and from there had sailed
directly to the United States. The cargo the freight ship had originally carried
was replaced for the new “cargo” from Egypt, and it was definitely not
children’s toys. It was, however, the Iranian suicide bomber’s favorite toy.
The freight ship,
loaded with fertilizer and every other kind of explosive imaginable, was to
lower its anchor in an unauthorized location. That place was next to the great U.S.
Naval carrier, the
USS George Washington
. The terrorists’ objective was
to come alongside the
George Washington
and, when the signal came, blow
up the freight ship’s cargo, sinking both of the vessels. The operation was
codenamed FIRELIGHT for the light it would give the bay as the mighty U.S. ship sank to the bottom of the sea.
The terrorists didn’t fear dying; they would be in a better place if they
died, or so they thought. Nevertheless, they still blindly followed their game
plan. And maybe, if everything turned out all right at the Paramount Hotel and
the other targets, they would stamp their initials in the history of the United States forever. Making history was second only to terrorizing the American people. The
scenarios about to take place would shake the Americans beyond belief. It would
all start right here, on a little freight ship carrying the most deadly
terrorists in the world.
* * *
Vun Buvka
decided to take the elevator. He dashed to its door and slapped the “down”
button. As he waited for the door to open, he suddenly wondered if other people
were in it already. If so, would they be stopping at the second floor? He would
hope with all his might that they wouldn’t. If they did, he would have to kill
them, and right now he was just trying to escape and make a name for himself,
not kill a handful of people in an elevator. The mass killing would come in exactly
one minute and fifteen seconds.
The elevator
door jarred open. It was empty. Vun Buvka thanked Allah and leaped inside,
pressing the “main floor” button almost in mid-air. He glanced at his watch and
was relieved to see he had precisely one minute left. It wasn’t much, but
that’s all he had, and he intended to use every millisecond of it.
Vun Buvka’s
senses were telling him he was approaching the second floor. If someone were to
get on from there, he wouldn’t have enough time to make it out of the hotel
alive, whether he killed the person or not.
He was sure the elevator was beginning to stop; or was it just his
nerves? The light in the elevator showed he was now at the second floor. The
.44 Magnum semi-automatic pistol that vun Buvka carried on his person at all
times, was drawn and pointed at the elevator’s doors, ready to slice a bullet
into the first piece of flesh that came into his sight. The only thing he could
do for now was wait.
* * *
Khan Lahud, the
freight ship’s captain, went over his plans with his team for the hundredth
time. The freight ship had successfully come alongside the
USS George
Washington
, and was ready to carry out Operation FIRELIGHT. Now Lahud was
just making sure his crew understood everything they had to do. In mid-sentence
he was cut off by the crackling of his radio. Lahud grabbed the radio. Holding
it to his ear he found it was a man on the
George Washington
, demanding
an explanation.
“
USS George
Washington
to the freighter beside us. Do you copy? Over,” the voice began.
“Loud and clear,
George Washington
,” Lahud responded, his mind working overtime to try
and remember what he was supposed to say.
“Identify
yourselves and give an explanation. Over.”
“We are a
freight ship carrying goods from China. We want to unload them as soon as we
can. Over.”
“You’re not
supposed to unload freight here. I don’t–”
“Then
where
do I unload it? I have a schedule to keep too you know. Over.”
“Not here,
anyone knows that. Over.”
Lahud was going
to try to buy himself as much time as possible. “Are you the Officer of the
Deck? Over.”
“Look man, I
ain’t the OOD, but I am still smart enough to know where freight ships can and
can’t unload their cargo.
And it is definitely not here.
Understand?
Over.”
“Well, until I receive
an order from the OOD of the
George Washington
, we are
not
, I
repeat,
not
moving anywhere. Over and out.”
With that, Lahud ended the conversation. He and his team continued all
the last minute preparations. Glancing at his watch, Lahud noticed only a few
minutes remained until his team could unleash the fury of Operation FIRELIGHT.
* * *
The President of
the United States of America was enjoying himself immensely. He was in New York for his daughter’s thirtieth birthday party, and he was more proud of his “little
girl” than he’d ever been before.
Mark Winnfield –
smart, loyal, and conservative as could be – had not spent much time with his
daughter, since taking the Presidential Office in January of 2013, and finally
he’d decided to spend some time with her and be there for her thirtieth birthday.
Winnfield’s daughter, Renee Winnfield, had been his first child; however, she
did have a younger brother who had died in the War on Terrorism in Baghdad, Iraq, in the year of 2009. It had been a hard blow for the entire Winnfield
family. The young man had been an Air Force F-16 pilot, and he was extremely proud
of his job. When he was deployed to Iraq he was pleased and excited. His mind
had been filled with glamour, glory, and heroism as he had told his father that
he was either going to come home a hero or not come home at all. In the end, he
had delivered on both accounts. He had been killed while pursuing an Iraqi MiG attempting
to get behind U.S. lines to blow up an ammunition vehicle. All Winnfield knew
about the incident was that his son had collided with the MiG while trying to
get behind it and shoot it down. The F-16 had clipped the MiG’s wing with its
nose, causing the U.S. plane to explode. The close proximity of the explosion
simultaneously downed the Iraqi.
Even though Winnfield’s
two children had been quite different from each other, they were close. When
the news had come of her brother’s death, Renee had seemed to shut out everyone
that tried to help her. But she learned that time heals wounds, and now
Winnfield’s only child was a very successful woman. Her assets included over
two million dollars, and one of the nicest homes in all of New York State. She was deep into gold and silver, and also owned a successful business in the
area, which alone kept her bank account fat.
Winnfield’s wife,
Mary, had not been able to make the trip. She had been ill for days before the
planned trip to New York, and on the appointed time of departure, she was no
better. But she insisted that Winnfield go without her, and after a little
hesitation, he went ahead. Now, he was glad he did.
The President’s
security personnel were standing watch, inside and out of the house, ever ready
for the unexpected terrorist attack.
Marine One
was stationed just a few
miles away, ready at a moment’s notice to extract the President and his
security personnel to safety. But Winnfield was not worried about a terrorist
attack or any other kind of disruption. He was having a great time.
Little did the President know, that outside the walls of the splendid
house, and away from the joyful noise of the party, loomed an evil force,
working restlessly to accomplish their well-planned mission.
* * *
The elevator
slowed to a stop. Vun Buvka slammed the “down” button with all the force he
had, but never taking his .44 Magnum’s sights off the doors. In an instant the
elevator abruptly plunged downward. Vun Buvka sighed with relief. He desperately
wanted out of the metal box that contained him.
Compulsively, he
again checked his watch. Only forty-five seconds left. He couldn’t decide if
that was good or bad. He wanted to see the United States be on the receiving
end of destruction, but he didn’t want to die in some elevator just for
vengeance. Now was not the time to think about that, vun Buvka told himself, as
he geared up for the mad dash he was about to make out of this hotel.
He hoped his
driver and car were outside waiting for him as planned, but he also knew that
the driver would speed off without him if only five seconds remained. But vun
Buvka had practiced for this, and now the show was all his. Let come what may.
The elevator
again slowed, and the “main floor” button lit up. Vun Buvka put his pistol in
its holster, concealed beneath his black suit coat. He didn’t want to draw any
more suspicion than necessary. Running out of the hotel at top speed was enough
to make people look, but if he had a pistol in his hand, he feared one of the
bell boys would try to be a hero and stop him.
The elevator doors
began to slowly open, and vun Buvka readied himself. In the next moment, he
squeezed through the narrow opening. He took off like a rocket, without
glancing behind him. He yelled in English for the bell boys to open the hotel doors
for him. Startled by his hollering, they consented. Now vun Buvka had a
straight shot out of the hotel. He spied his car as he burst through the doors,
and sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him to the passenger side of the
vehicle. The Palestinian driver didn’t even look at him; he just floored the accelerator
after he heard the door slam, and they disappeared into the night.
Finally vun
Buvka felt victory. Only five seconds remained until the Paramount Hotel
exploded, with over seven hundred and fifty people inside.
Vun Buvka and his driver didn’t notice the man standing a safe distance
away from the hotel in a nearby parking lot. He was an FBI agent, and he had
just seen the man that matched the description of Alka vun Buvka.
* * *
Again the radio
crackled, and a deep voice poured from it. “This is Officer of the Deck
Lieutenant John Thompson of the
USS George Washington
, and I demand a
legitimate explanation and a speedy exit. Over.”
Lahud grumbled
at the man under his breath and picked up the radio, carefully weighing his words.
Lahud was a professional, and he could not afford to say the wrong words.
“Lieutenant Thompson, sir, I understand you are the OOD of the
USS George
Washington
. Over.”
“That’s what I
said. And who is the man I am speaking with? Over.”
“Captain Sampson
Jones,” Lahud elegantly lied, “and I am currently in charge of this freight
ship. Now I am attempting to unload my cargo, and one of your sailors informed
me that it was not proper to do so here. Is he correct? Over.”
