Oath of Office (a Luke Stone Thriller—Book #2)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

June 6th

3:47 p.m.

Dewey Beach, Delaware

Luke Stone’s entire body trembled. He looked at his right hand, his g*n hand. He watched it shake as it rested on his thigh. He couldn’t get it to stop.

He felt nauseated, sick enough to vomit. The sun was moving west, and the brightness of it made him dizzy.

Go time was in thirteen minutes.

He sat in the driver’s seat of a black Mercedes M Series SUV, staring down the block at the house where his family might be. His wife, Rebecca, and his son, Gunner. His mind wanted to conjure images of them, but he wouldn’t allow it. They could be somewhere else. They could be dead. Their bodies could be chained to cinderblocks with heavy shipping chains, and rotting at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay. For a split second, he saw Rebecca’s hair moving like seaweed, back and forth with the current, deep underwater.

He shook his head to clear it.

Becca and Gunner had been abducted last night by agents working for the men who had taken down the United States government. It was a coup d’état, and its planners had taken Stone’s family as a bargaining chip, hoping to stop him from toppling the new government in turn.

It hadn’t worked.

“That’s the place,” Ed Newsam said.

“Is it?” Stone said. He looked at his partner in the passenger seat. “You know that?”

Ed Newsam was big, black, and rippling muscle. He looked like a linebacker in the NFL. There was no softness to him anywhere. He wore a close-cropped beard and a flat-top haircut. His massive arms were dark with tattoos.

Ed had killed six men yesterday. He had been strafed by machine g*n fire. A flak vest had saved his life, but a stray bullet had found his pelvis. Cracked it. Ed’s wheelchair was in the back of the car. Neither Ed nor Luke had slept in two days.

Ed looked at the tablet computer in his hand. He shrugged.

“That’s definitely the house. If they’re in there or not, I don’t know. I guess we’re about to find out.”

The house was an old three-bedroom beach house, a little bit rambling, three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. It fronted the bay and had a small dock. You could pull a thirty-foot boat right up behind it, walk ten feet of dock, climb a few steps, and enter the house. Night was a good time to do this.

The CIA had used the place as a safe house for decades. In the summer, Dewey Beach was so crowded with vacationers and college-age party types, the spooks could sneak Osama bin Laden in there and no one would notice.

“When the hit comes, they don’t want us in on it,” Ed said. “We don’t even have an assignment. You know that, right?”

Luke nodded. “I know.”

The FBI was the lead agency on this raid, along with a Delaware state police SWAT team that had come down from Wilmington. They had been quietly amassing in the neighborhood for the past hour.

Luke had seen these things unfold a hundred times. A Verizon FIOS van was parked down at the end of the block. That had to be FBI. A fishing boat was anchored about a hundred yards out in the bay. Also feds. In a few minutes, at 4 p.m., that boat would make a sudden run right at the safe house dock.

At the same instant, an armored truck from SWAT would come roaring down this street. Another would come down the street one block over, in case anyone tried to make an escape through the backyards. They were going to hit hard and fast, and they would leave no wiggle room at all.

Luke and Ed were not invited. Why would they be? The cops and the feds were going to run this thing by the book. The book said Luke had no objectivity. It was his family in there. If he went in, he would lose his head. He would put himself, his family, the other officers, and the entire operation at risk. He shouldn’t even be on this street right now. He shouldn’t be anywhere near here. That’s what the book said.

But Luke knew the type of men inside that house. He probably knew them better than the FBI or SWAT. They were desperate right now. They had gone all-in on a government overthrow, and the plot had failed. They were looking down the barrel at treason, k********g, and murder charges. Three hundred people had died in the coup attempt, and counting, including the President of the United States. The White House was destroyed. It was radioactive. It might be years before it was rebuilt.

Luke had been with the new President last night and this morning. She was not in the mood for mercy. The law was on the books: treason was punishable by death. Hanging. Firing squad. The country might go old-school for a little while, and if so, men like the ones inside that house were going to get the brunt of it.

All the same, they wouldn’t panic. These were not common criminals. They were highly skilled and trained men, men who had seen combat, and who had won out against heavy odds. Surrender was not part of their vocabulary. They were very, very clever, and they would be hard to dislodge. A paint-by-numbers SWAT team raid wasn’t going to be good enough.

If Luke’s wife and child were in there, and if the men inside managed to fight off the first attack… Luke refused to think about it.

It wasn’t an option.

“What are you going to do?” Ed said.

Luke stared out the window at the blue sky. “What would you do, if you were me?”

Ed didn’t miss a beat. “I’d go in hard as I could. Kill every single man I saw.”

Luke nodded. “Me too.”

*

The man was a ghost.

He stood in an upstairs bedroom at the back of the old beach house, staring at his prisoners. A woman and a little boy, tucked away in a room with no windows. They sat side by side in folding chairs, their hands cuffed behind them, their ankles cuffed together. They wore black hoods over their heads so they couldn’t see. The man had left them without gags in their mouths, so the woman could speak quietly to her son and keep him calm.

“Rebecca,” the man said, “we might have some excitement here in a little while. If we do, I want you and Gunner to stay quiet. You’re not to scream or call out. If you do, I’ll have to come in here and kill you both. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Gunner?”

Beneath his hood, the boy made a sort of croaking noise.

“He’s too frightened to speak,” the woman said.

“That’s good,” the man said. “He should be afraid. He’s a smart boy. And a smart boy won’t do anything stupid, will he?”

The woman didn’t answer. Satisfied, the man nodded to himself.

Once, the man had a name. Then, over time, he had ten names. Now he didn’t bother with names. He introduced himself as “Brown,” if such niceties were necessary. Mr. Brown. He liked it. It made him think of dead things. Dead leaves in fall. Barren, burned out woods, months after a fire had destroyed everything.

Brown was forty-five years old. He was big, and he was still strong. He was an elite soldier, and he kept himself that way. He had learned to withstand pain and exhaustion many years ago in Navy SEAL School. He had learned how to kill, and not be killed, in a dozen hot spots around the world. He had learned how to t*****e at the School of the Americas. He had put what he learned into practice in Guatemala and El Salvador, and later, at Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo Bay.

Brown didn’t work for the CIA anymore. He didn’t know who he worked for and he didn’t care. He was a freelancer, and he got paid by the job.

The money, and it was a lot of money, came in cash. Canvas bags full of brand new hundred-dollar bills left in the trunk of a rental sedan at Reagan National Airport. A leather briefcase with half a million dollars in random tens, twenties, and fifties from Series 1974 and 1977 waiting in a locker at a gym in suburban Baltimore. They were old bills, but they had never been touched before, and they were as good as any General Grant minted in 2013.

Two days ago, Brown got a message to come to this house. It was his house until further notice, and his job to run it. If anyone showed up, he was in charge. Okay. Brown was good at many things, and one of them was being the boss.

Yesterday morning, somebody blew up the White House. The President and Vice President escaped to the bunker at Mount Weather, with about half the civilian government. Last night, somebody blew up Mount Weather with all the kiddies still inside. A couple hours later, a new President took the stage, the former Vice President. Nice.

A total flip, from liberals running the show to conservatives, and it all happened in the course of one day. Naturally, the public needed someone to blame, and the new masters pointed their fingers at Iran.

Brown waited up to see what happened next.

Late in the night, four guys pulled up to the back dock in a motorboat. The guys brought this woman and child. The prisoners belonged to someone named Luke Stone. Apparently, people thought Stone might turn into a problem. This morning, it became clear just how much of a problem he was.

When the smoke cleared, the whole overthrow had gone belly up in a matter of hours. And there was Luke Stone, standing astride the rubble.

But Brown still had Stone’s wife and kid, and he had no idea what to do with them. Communications were down, to say the least. He probably should have killed them and abandoned the house, but instead he waited for orders that never came. Now, there was a Verizon FIOS van out in front of the house, and a nondescript flying deck fishing boat maybe a hundred meters out on the water.

Did they think he was that dumb? Jesus. He could see them coming a mile away.

He stepped into the hallway. Two men stood there. Both of them mid-thirties, crazy hair and long beards—lifetime special operators. Brown knew the look. He also knew the look in their eyes. It wasn’t fear.

It was excitement.

“What’s the problem?” Brown said.

“In case you didn’t notice, we’re about to get hit.”

Brown nodded. “I know.”

“I can’t go to jail,” Beard #1 said.

Beard #2 nodded. “I can’t either.”

Brown was with them. Even before this happened, if the FBI found out his real identity, he was looking at multiple life sentences. Now? Forget it. It might take months for them to identify him, and in the meantime he would sit in a county jail somewhere, surrounded by low-rent hoodlums. And the way things were right now, he couldn’t bank on an angel to step in and make it all go away.

Still, he felt calm. “This place is harder than it looks.”

“Yeah, but there’s no way out,” Beard #1 said.

True enough.

“So we hold them off, and see if we can negotiate something. We’ve got hostages.” Brown didn’t believe it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Negotiate what, safe passage? Safe passage to where?

“They’re not going to negotiate with us,” Beard #1 said. “They’ll tell us lies until a sniper gets a clear shot.”

“Okay,” Brown said. “So what do you guys want to do?”

“Fight,” Beard #2 said. “And if we get rolled back, I want to come up here and put a bullet in the heads of our guests before I get one myself.”

Brown nodded. He’d been in a lot of tight spots before, and he had always found a way out. There might still be a way out of this one. He thought so, but he didn’t tell them that. Only so many rats could make it off a sinking ship.

“Fair enough,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do. Now take up your positions.”

*

Luke shrugged into his heavy tactical vest. The weight settled onto him. He fastened the vest’s waistband, taking a little of the weight off his shoulders. His cargo pants were lined with lightweight Dragon Skin armor. On the ground at his feet was a combat helmet with an aftermarket facemask attached.

He and Ed stood behind the open rear door of the Mercedes. The smoked window of the rear door hid them somewhat from the windows of the house. Ed leaned against the car for support. Luke pulled Ed’s wheelchair out, opened it, and placed it on the ground.

“Great,” Ed said and shook his head. “I got my chariot, and I’m ready for battle.” A sigh escaped from him.

“Here’s the deal,” Luke said. “You and I are not playing around. When SWAT goes in, they’ll probably put guns on the porch door that faces the dock, and swing a hammer on that backyard door. I don’t think it’s going to work. My guess is the backyard door is double steel and doesn’t budge, and the porch is going to be a firestorm. We’ve got ghosts in there, and they’re not going to have the doors covered? Come on. I think our guys are going to get pushed back. Hopefully nobody gets hit.”

“Amen,” Ed said.

“I’m going to walk up behind the initial action. With this.” Luke lifted an Uzi submachine g*n out of the trunk.

“And this.” He pulled out a Remington 870 pump shotgun.

He felt the heft of both guns. They were heavy. The weight was reassuring.

“If the cops get in and secure the place, great. If they can’t get in, we don’t have any time to waste. The Uzi’s got Russian-made overpressure armor-piercing rounds. They should punch through most body armor the bad guys could be wearing. I’ve got half a dozen magazines fully loaded, just in case I need them. If I end up in a hallway fight, I’ll go to the shotgun. Then I’m going to be shredding legs, arms, necks, and heads.”

“Yeah, but how do you plan on getting inside?” Ed said. “If the cops aren’t in, how do you get in?”

Luke reached into the SUV and pulled out an M79 grenade launcher. It looked like a big sawed-off shotgun with a wooden stock. He handed it to Ed.

“You’re going to get me in.”

Ed took the g*n in his large hands. “Beautiful.”

Luke reached in and grabbed two boxes of M406 grenades, four to a box.

“I want you to move up the block behind the parked cars on the other side of the street. Just before I get there, rip me open a nice hole right through the wall. Those guys are going to be focused on the doors, expecting the cops to try to do a knock-down. We’re going to put a grenade right in their laps instead.”

“Nice,” Ed said.

“After the first one hits, give them one more for good luck. Then get yourself down and out of harm’s way.”

Ed ran his hand along the grenade launcher’s barrel. “You think it’s safe to do it this way? I mean… that’s your people in there.”

Luke stared at the house. “I don’t know. But in most cases I’ve seen, the prisoner room is either upstairs or in the basement. We’re on the beach and the water table is too high for a basement. So I’ll guess that if they’re in this house, they’re upstairs, in that far right corner, the one with no windows.”

He checked his watch. 4:01 p.m.

Right on cue, a blue armored car came roaring around the corner. Luke and Ed watched it pass. It was a Lenco BearCat with steel armor, gunports, spotlights, and all the trimmings.

Luke felt the tickle of something in his chest. It was fear. It was dread. He had spent the past twenty-four hours pretending that he had no emotion about the fact that hired killers were holding his wife and son. Every so often, his real feelings about it threatened to break through. But he stomped them back down again.

There was no room for feelings right now.

He looked down at Ed. Ed sat in his wheelchair, grenade launcher on his lap. Ed’s face was hard. His eyes were cold steel. Ed was a man who lived his values, Luke knew. Those values included loyalty, honor, courage, and the application of overwhelming force on the side of what was good, and right. Ed was not a monster. But at this moment, he may as well be.

“You ready?” Luke said.

Ed face’s barely changed. “I was born ready, white man. The question is are you ready?”

Luke loaded up his guns. He picked up his helmet. “I’m ready.”

He slipped the smooth black helmet over his head, and Ed did the same with his. Luke pulled his visor down. “Intercoms on,” he said.

“On,” Ed said. It sounded like Ed was inside Luke’s own head. “I hear you loud and clear. Now let’s do this.” Ed started to roll away across the street.

“Ed!” Luke said to the man’s back. “I need a big hole in that wall. Something I can walk through.”

Ed raised a hand and kept going. A moment later he was behind the line of parked cars across the street, and out of sight.

Luke left the trunk door up. He crouched behind it. He patted all his weapons. He had an Uzi, a shotgun, a handgun, and two knives, if it came to that. He took a deep breath and looked up at the blue sky. He and God were not exactly on speaking terms. It would help if one day they could get on the same page about a few things. If Luke had ever needed God, he needed Him now.

A fat, white, slow-moving cloud floated across the horizon.

“Please,” Luke said to the cloud.

A moment later, the shooting started.