Delphi Initiative Read online

  He squeezed his fists together; he felt the presence of the two men beside him. He knew they heard the same order and were having the same doubtful thoughts. He rose to his knee, knowing the others were doing the same. He checked his rifle a final time then stiffened.

  “Echo Team, phase lines,” he said.

  Before he finished the words, he could see in the moonlight his men moving up on the building from the shadows to their pre-determined assault locations. He moved along a front porch and squatted down in a stack with two other teams, his group locked in the middle of nine men that would breach the front door. Nine more would be forming up the same way on the back door. This left two teams to provide overwatch with high-powered rifles and ready to pop choke and smoke into the windows if needed.

  “Echo, you are a go,” he heard from the command bird.

  “Fuck,” he whispered. It’s a damn Ruby Ridge all over again. They were really doing this the stupid way. “Echo Team, on my count… three, two, one.”

  There was an explosion as both the front and back doors of the home exploded simultaneously. Flashbangs were launched in with more violent explosions. Before the flash could diminish, he was following his men into the structure. There were more flashes and booms, followed by automatic weapons fire, most from his men, but others from weapons he knew were not friendly.

  He entered the house with his carbine up. In predetermined order from days of training, he cut right into a narrow hallway. Others moved up the stairs, as others fought a gun battle in the back of the home. He could hear the boom of sniper rifles outside. Someone called out they were hit. Another man screamed for a medic. Jonathon turned a corner. He knew his teammates were pinned to his back, following close. A bearded man in a white cowboy hat rushed from a room with an 870 shotgun.

  “Don’t you do it,” Jonathon shouted.

  A bright flash and pain in his chest let him know he’d been hit. He fell back against the next man in the stack. He leveled his rifle and pulled the trigger, all controlled shots, and the cowboy dropped to the floor with holes punched into his chest.

  Jonathon was guided back against the wall, letting the next man in stack take his place. Someone shouted “clear.” His teammate moved around him and pulled away at the Velcro on his vest.

  “You’re good, boss. Your armor took it all. You’re one lucky guy.”

  He heard shouts of “clear” from different areas of the house. He exhaled and investigated the smoke-filled rooms. He couldn’t believe they’d hit a farmhouse in the middle of the night with the lights on. How stupid. Whoever asked for this better have a damn good reason.

  “Status,” he said and received reports from his men. He had two down with light injuries. All tangos were dead. No prisoners.

  He walked to the dead cowboy on the floor and knelt beside the body. He was young, early middle-aged, white, bearded. His white George Strait Stetson hat was splattered with blood. Jonathon leaned in and lifted the dead man’s shirt sleeve. On his right arm was a 75th Ranger tattoo. He stood and walked back into the entry room of the farmhouse. Men were moving down the stairs, their weapons hanging from slings.

  His partner was standing against a wall. Eric Castle, years younger than him but possibly twice as smart, or at least the man thought so. Castle pointed a finger as three men in white jackets walked into the house with cameras and briefcases.

  “Damn, tech services didn’t take time moving in. The smoke hasn’t even cleared.” Castle looked at Jonathon’s torn vest pulled back. “You hurt?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Plates did their job.” He walked into the doorway leading into a large living room. The techs were all over the room, snapping photos. The room was covered with maps and drawings of the Mall of America.

  “These guys were the real deal,” Castle said. “They were really going to hit the damn mall.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Yeah, and we just killed a bunch of people for what they were planning to do, not what they’d done.” He looked around at the techs already taking evidence. “We kicked in the doors and we killed them.”

  Chapter Five

  The midnight-blue minivan drove down deserted side streets. It hit corners fast and headed into the center of the island, leaving the tourist districts behind them. People were standing on their porches and in their yards, looking at the distant fires in the city. The van turned off a street and onto a dirt road that ran through thick trees.

  Tommy leaned forward between the seats. “Natalia, where are we going?”

  “We have secured transportation off the island, but we have to leave now,” Natalia said.

  Tanya shook her head and looked at Tommy. “We should go to my office. We’ll be safe there.”

  The black man in the driver’s seat laughed. “Your office has been blown to shit.”

  The second shooter, sitting on a third-row bench seat behind Tommy, put his hands on the back of Tommy’s seat and said, “The island isn’t safe for you. We have to leave before they lock the place down.”

  “What do you mean lock it down?” Tommy asked. “What the hell is going on here? Who were those guys?”

  Natalia pointed at a turnoff. The driver took the right turn and raced onto a narrow one-lane road going uphill. Looking straight ahead she said, “We don’t know who they are.” She turned and looked back at him. “Your name came up on a threat report forty-eight hours ago. It identified you directly, using your real name.”

  Tanya shook her head. “That’s impossible. Tommy has been erased. Thomas Donovan doesn’t exist; his record is clean.”

  “Well, one Thomas Donovan living in the big VI has been put on the FBI most wanted for conspiracy to commit violence against the Capital,” the Hispanic man behind them said.

  “It can’t be. I would have been told,” Tanya said.

  The Hispanic man behind them grunted. “Your boyfriend is a bad man and apparently has some nasty shit planned for tonight.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Tommy asked. “Who were those men?”

  Natali turned in her seat so that she could see him. She sighed. “I told you, we don’t know who is doing this or why, but it’s more than that,” she said. “Once O’Connell dispatched us to bring your ass in, people started dying. People like you.”

  “Who is O’Connell?” Tanya asked.

  “He is a friend,” Tommy said. “Another one of those questions you don’t want answered.”

  The Hispanic man laughed. “Yeah, I’d say he’s a friend. He took a big risk sending us here. Some big people want you dead,” he said as the van pulled up next to a small house on the edge of a low-cut field.

  Tommy had been there before. They used it as a strip for planes. It was his exit point on the last three ops, and it was also the way O’Connell had gotten him onto the island almost eighteen months ago.

  “Why do they want me dead?” Tommy asked. “Can one of you make this easy for me, spell it out?”

  “Well obviously, you and your island friends have been planning terror attacks. They need to kill you to stop it all.” The big man paused and looked out the window, toward the burning city. “Guess they were too late. Now nothing left but to kill you so you can’t talk about it.”

  Tommy shook his head. “Who the hell is setting me up?”

  “And why?” Tanya asked. “What do they think Tommy is going to do?”

  The van door opened, and Natalia stepped back. She pointed toward the coastline far behind them. It was glowing, parts of the island city still flashing with explosions. “We don’t know, but O’Connell ordered us to get you out; they will kill you for this.”

  Tommy stepped from the van and froze. “What do you mean? You think I did this? You know I didn’t.”

  Natalia moved away from the van and stood at the edge of the field. The men left the van and closed the doors. One of them walked to a shadowed lump in the field and pulled at a tarp, uncovering an aircraft.

  Natalia looked at Tommy. “We have to leave; the airspace will be closed soon. They will lock down the island, searching for you.”

  He reached out and grabbed her arm. “What do you mean I did this? Why would they say I did this?” he repeated.

  She shot him a cold stare then looked at her arm, and he released it. The tall man entered the aircraft as the second began making pre-flight checks. She glanced down at her watch and said, “The Colonel’s friends at the FBI gave him a heads up that there was credible intelligence that there was going to be a terror attack in the US Virgin Islands. It named you directly. They wanted to know if he had a way to reach you.”

  “Who would do that?” Tanya said.

  Natalia grinned and pointed at Tommy. “You’re looking at him.”

  “This is bullshit!” Tommy said, close to losing his temper.

  The small plane’s engine came to life. Natalia looked at the Hispanic man, now in the pilot’s seat, and waved. She looked back at Tommy, and her face softened.

  “Yes, we know you didn’t have anything to do with it. And when the outside channel showed your name recruiting men for a contract, the Colonel knew someone was trying to frame you.”

  “All of this, just to get Tommy?” Tanya said. “Why?”

  “I said we don’t know.” Then Natalia nodded. “We hacked their local communications and have been listening in since we landed. It wasn’t sophisticated. They were using generic Motorola radios on open channels. They sent multiple teams to attack hotels all over the island. Another team hit the Capital and your office.

  “The last team was sent to kill you and take your body. Then they will pull up stakes and vanish. Your body will be discovered by the police and be broadcast on the evening news tonight.” She paused and looked at Tommy’s bloody hands. “T
hey probably should have sent more to your apartment.”

  She pointed to the aircraft and urged them aboard.

  Chapter Six

  He pushed the overcooked eggs across his plate with a fork. He wasn’t hungry, even if he had found them palatable. Far past midnight, the diner was nearly empty. Winston would have preferred a hotel room, but he was determined to catch the first flight out of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport down the street, and that meant he only had a few hours to kill.

  He’d purchased his ticket using one of his cleared TSA profiles and headed straight for a place to burn time. Even though his personal credentials were clear, traveling was still one of the places he’d found himself most vulnerable. Once through the security check and in amongst the people and unarmed, he always felt naked and alone. He’d had a long career with the Ground Division and there were at least a dozen people in a half dozen countries who would love to see him dead or extradited for the work he’d done.

  Winston sat in a booth facing the south door, dressed in dark jeans, a grey sweatshirt, and a dirt-stained red ball cap. He was as invisible as any other blue-collar worker stopping in for an early breakfast. The diner was long and narrow. A counter stretched the length of the small dining room, booths along the wall, with long windows. There was a cook in the back, and a tired waitress behind the counter wrapped napkins around silverware when she wasn’t making rounds filling coffee cups.

  Winston looked up from his plate. The only other people in the diner were a young couple two booths down and a uniformed police officer at the very end. There was a TV over the center of the dining counter. The volume was off with subtitles running across the bottom. Some blend of cliché 50s music played over a speaker in the ceiling. Winston sipped at the black coffee, staring at the TV screen, hardly comprehending the stories the local newsman was reading.

  Suddenly his mind clicked when a corner box on the screen showed a familiar image—the Mall of America. Scrolling along the bottom of the photo was a thick blue banner. Breaking News, Terror attempt thwarted against America’s largest shopping mall.

  Winston smiled and shook his head. Only a few hours out, and his mission was breaking news. Now interested, he stared at the screen and waited for the usual images of terror suspects’ faces to pop up. Instead, a grid of American faces, some in uniform, filled the screen. On first thought, Winston was pissed that they were revealing the identities of his team; they were professionals and exposure would ruin them. But then his brain froze when he read the text at the bottom.

  Extremist militia group raided. Six dead in what the FBI calls the successful takedown of a domestic terror cell, the “Minneapolis Six” cell, feared to be related to the raids in a multi-state takedown.

  “Domestic terror cell? What the …”

  Winston felt himself sweating now as a live video feed showed cars with flashing blue lights. In the background was the farmhouse, the porch he’d stood on hours earlier, now surrounded by police. A detective in a long dark coat was giving an impromptu press brief. He wanted to ask the waitress to turn on the volume, but he knew better than to draw attention to himself. He looked up and could see the uniformed officer was elbow deep in a slice of pie, and the loving couple were more interested in each other than the television.

  Suddenly he felt confined, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He pulled a twenty from his wallet, placed it on the table, and moved as slowly as his body would allow him for the rear exit. Back in the Range Rover, he opened all the vents and ran the AC on high. He had the satellite radio tuned to network news as he drove toward the airport.

  Winston pulled into the long-term parking structure, driving all the way to the roof, and killed the engine.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he whispered.

  Something was very wrong and, somehow, he’d gotten himself in the center of it. The news anchor on the radio was reporting on the stopped terror attack in Minneapolis, but there were more, in what the FBI and Homeland Security were calling a coordinated effort to stop an assault on America. Cells in San Antonio, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. All cells raided, all put down with no prisoners. The terrorists described as veterans and paramilitaries with grudges against the government.

  He shook his head as he listened and flipped between networks, all giving the same canned reporting. There was no mention of the Al-Shabaab Cell of Somali terrorists that he’d been sent to the center of America to try to stop. No mention of the state department task force that he’d been assigned to for the last ninety days. He reached for his phone, considering calling home. He had networks of people. He could call the operations desk at Langley; they would know what was going on. He still had friends there.

  He stared at the display on the smartphone, saw the missed calls, and froze. They were the ones who had sent him here. They set up this assignment in the middle of the country with a bunch of burnouts. Winston had shut the phone volume off, not wanting to be harassed for leaving the farm a day early, for not sticking around for the celebration. He looked at the timestamps of the missed calls. The last was twenty minutes ago.

  He flipped the phone and removed the battery and SIM card. He needed to get off the grid fast. If they knew enough to take down the farm, then they probably knew he was missing, and they had his number; they’d be tracking him. And even if they didn’t have a team roster, they soon would. His Alias was written on enough paperwork back at the farmhouse, and—he paused, looking at the Range Rover’s steering wheel—he was in an agency vehicle. They would know it was missing.

  “Shit,” he mumbled. “Why didn’t I call a damn Uber?”

  He opened the door and walked to the back, retrieving his black duffel bag filled with his personal belongings and gear. He considered for a moment dumping the vehicle in a field, maybe burning it in a back lot. No, leaving it at the airport was the best tradecraft. Obvious so they would quickly find it, but leaving the vehicle here would force the Feds in pursuit to consider he boarded a plane. They would have to check out every lead and split their resources, tracking down flights and destinations.

  An hour ago, if he hadn’t seen the news report, that would have been the actual case, but there was no way he would fly now. Even if he managed to get in the air, they would pop him as soon as he landed. They would be after him… they might already be on the way.

  He tossed the keys in the back and shut the doors. He then walked across the walkway and into the airport. He headed for the departure check-in counters and moved past them before he ducked into a bathroom. It was empty. He took his bag into a stall and closed the door. Quickly, he switched out his clothing and flipped his reversible jacket inside out. He tossed the red ball cap and ran his fingers through his hair. He then broke down his gear and forced as much as he could into a collapsed 5.11 covert backpack that had been stuffed inside the larger black duffel.

  He waited in the stall until he heard a group of people enter, then he walked out to the sink, where he washed his hands and combed his hair. An old man in a tweed jacket stood next to him. Winston made casual conversation the way annoying strangers tended to.

  “This weather, am I right?” Winston said in a voice with just a hint of southern accent.

  The man looked at him and gave a friendly smile. He looked tired from traveling. Winston waited for the old man to leave the restroom then he followed close behind, still talking as if they were together. The man nodding, obviously annoyed at having picked up a new friend.

  A lone man in jeans, a grey sweatshirt, red ball cap, with a black duffel bag had entered the restroom. A pair of men, one of them in khaki pants with a sport coat and nondescript backpack had exited. Winston followed the old man toward the security check, being careful to look away from the obviously posted security cameras. When the elderly man turned toward the roped lines. Winston continued walking past them then turned toward the baggage claim, and beyond to a ground transportation sign. Moments later he was outside and in the back of a taxi headed toward the Union Depot Train Station.