ringing its ass off as I toweled dry my hair. The gut-busting workout had left me feeling refreshed. “Marcinko here,” I barked into the cell. Five minutes later I punched off the line with my brain in overdrive. It hadn’t been the Avon Lady calling.
Our presence in Washington was requested. Make that required . Karen Fairfield at the Office of Internal Security Affairs, or OISA, was sweating right through her pretty panties over reports coming in from the D.C. cops about a murdered attorney, a terrorist threat, and—oh, yeah—a missing nuclear weapon. All Hell was breaking loose in the Oval Office and Karen wanted us on the road yesterday .
Did I forget to tell you? After my return to the Manor I’d been invited— invited , mind you—to attend a meeting at the State Department proper. It seemed there was a renewed need for the Rogue Warrior and his special brand of counterterrorism. We cut a nice financial deal as security consultants under purposefully vague contractual terms through State. Our credentials and badges (yes, badges ) were issued through the U.S. Department of State’s own Bureau of Diplomatic Security by the authority of its chief in charge of the Coordination Center and Special Projects / Office of Overseas Operations, or CCSP/OOO. Then we were seconded to the new outfit called OISA that reports directly to the president of the United States.
I am once again sanctioned to kill my enemies wherever I find them.
After briefing Paul and Trace, I began packing my overnight bag. It was the bit about the missing nuke that made the hair on the backs of my hands stand up on end. If a Tango, or Tangos, had gotten their nasty mitts on such a thing, there wasn’t a city or citizen in the United States that was safe. OISA was sending an NSA chopper to pick us up and move the new Rogue Warrior and his team most ric-tic to the murder scene where the cassette had been recovered.
This was Big Dog time. Tactical nuclear weapons. Who the fuck knew how to get their hands on this kind of heavy shit other than me and a handful of my operators from Red Cell? I guessed that was why they were bringing us in. It was a dirty damned job and dirty deeds done cheap have always been my specialty. I zipped the black bag shut and slammed a fresh magazine into my Glock. Trace was downstairs yelling for us to move our asses. The chopper was coming in.
Chapter
3
“I may be accused of rashness but not of sluggishness.”
N APOLEON , 6 M AY , 1796, to the
Executive Direction, Correspondence ,
Vol. 1, NO. 337, (1858–1870)
A hundred miles outside Los Alamos, New Mexico, the glare from the early morning desert sun was already intense enough to turn the infrequently traveled stretch of highway into a shimmering river of black and silver. The black-clad figure in the middle of the highway completed his task quickly and then gave a quick thumbs-up to the unseen shooter he knew was covering his back. He trotted away from the spike strip he’d positioned across the two-lane blacktop highway and scrambled back up to the firing position where he’d left his RPG and its two olive drab–colored high explosive grenades. Glancing toward a nearby shallow rise in the road, he slid the first rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher’s tube. Within just a few moments he heard the sound he’d been anticipating—the hum of the engines of an approaching convoy. Lowering himself into the gritty sand of his makeshift shooting platform he flicked the launcher’s safety to the OFF position but kept his right index finger well away from the weapon’s trigger. An accidental discharge was not part of today’s game plan.
Three hundred meters to his south and one hundred feet higher on the crest of a small hill, the team’s hard-target interdiction specialist could also hear the telltale rumble of the approaching target. Snugged comfortably into his right shoulder was a .50-caliber Barrett M82A1 rifle. Its 10X Leupold & Stevens Mark IV M-1
Our presence in Washington was requested. Make that required . Karen Fairfield at the Office of Internal Security Affairs, or OISA, was sweating right through her pretty panties over reports coming in from the D.C. cops about a murdered attorney, a terrorist threat, and—oh, yeah—a missing nuclear weapon. All Hell was breaking loose in the Oval Office and Karen wanted us on the road yesterday .
Did I forget to tell you? After my return to the Manor I’d been invited— invited , mind you—to attend a meeting at the State Department proper. It seemed there was a renewed need for the Rogue Warrior and his special brand of counterterrorism. We cut a nice financial deal as security consultants under purposefully vague contractual terms through State. Our credentials and badges (yes, badges ) were issued through the U.S. Department of State’s own Bureau of Diplomatic Security by the authority of its chief in charge of the Coordination Center and Special Projects / Office of Overseas Operations, or CCSP/OOO. Then we were seconded to the new outfit called OISA that reports directly to the president of the United States.
I am once again sanctioned to kill my enemies wherever I find them.
After briefing Paul and Trace, I began packing my overnight bag. It was the bit about the missing nuke that made the hair on the backs of my hands stand up on end. If a Tango, or Tangos, had gotten their nasty mitts on such a thing, there wasn’t a city or citizen in the United States that was safe. OISA was sending an NSA chopper to pick us up and move the new Rogue Warrior and his team most ric-tic to the murder scene where the cassette had been recovered.
This was Big Dog time. Tactical nuclear weapons. Who the fuck knew how to get their hands on this kind of heavy shit other than me and a handful of my operators from Red Cell? I guessed that was why they were bringing us in. It was a dirty damned job and dirty deeds done cheap have always been my specialty. I zipped the black bag shut and slammed a fresh magazine into my Glock. Trace was downstairs yelling for us to move our asses. The chopper was coming in.
Chapter
3
“I may be accused of rashness but not of sluggishness.”
N APOLEON , 6 M AY , 1796, to the
Executive Direction, Correspondence ,
Vol. 1, NO. 337, (1858–1870)
A hundred miles outside Los Alamos, New Mexico, the glare from the early morning desert sun was already intense enough to turn the infrequently traveled stretch of highway into a shimmering river of black and silver. The black-clad figure in the middle of the highway completed his task quickly and then gave a quick thumbs-up to the unseen shooter he knew was covering his back. He trotted away from the spike strip he’d positioned across the two-lane blacktop highway and scrambled back up to the firing position where he’d left his RPG and its two olive drab–colored high explosive grenades. Glancing toward a nearby shallow rise in the road, he slid the first rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher’s tube. Within just a few moments he heard the sound he’d been anticipating—the hum of the engines of an approaching convoy. Lowering himself into the gritty sand of his makeshift shooting platform he flicked the launcher’s safety to the OFF position but kept his right index finger well away from the weapon’s trigger. An accidental discharge was not part of today’s game plan.
Three hundred meters to his south and one hundred feet higher on the crest of a small hill, the team’s hard-target interdiction specialist could also hear the telltale rumble of the approaching target. Snugged comfortably into his right shoulder was a .50-caliber Barrett M82A1 rifle. Its 10X Leupold & Stevens Mark IV M-1
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