Peter Nealen's Blog, page 4

Non-State Actor Chapter 2

Somebody had heard something. I heard a voice speaking Mandarin on the other side of the door. And he didn’t sound like he was unconcerned.

After all, a garage door isn’t silent when it goes up. They had to know that somebody had just broken in. The question was, how ready were they?

The door ahead of me opened, and the light flashed on. Fortunately, while I’d been keeping to the shadows as much as possible, my night adaptation hadn’t kicked in all the way, thanks to the porch lights, so I wasn’t blinded, as the short Chinese man with a Glock in his hand peered out through the door.

The pistol was all I needed. His eyes widened as he took in the three figures moving toward him with purpose, and he hesitated for just a second before lifting the gun.

He should have dropped it and run. In that split second of hesitation, I already had my sights on him and my finger tightening on the trigger.

The gun barked in my fist, and his head snapped back a little as my 9mm hollowpoint punched a puckered hole in his forehead. He stiffened, then fell down the steps at my feet with a crash.

I was already going over his body, stepping on his back with Jake right behind me, his hand on my shoulder, his Glock elevated since I was blocking his shot.

Plunging through the doorway, I checked my immediate front and found myself briefly face to face with a second man, who was still staring in shock at the guy I’d domed, though when he looked up, I could tell that the shock was wearing off fast.

The PLA might not have much in the way of current combat experience, but if these fuckers had come up through Central America and Mexico, they had probably seen some shit.

We were in the kitchen, and as I stepped through the doorway, this guy lunged for the small dining room next door. I let him go, since he didn’t have a weapon in his hands at the moment, and cleared my corner before turning back toward the rest of the house.

Maybe it wouldn’t have any legal standing, but a part of me was still reluctant to just gun people down stateside. I needed a justification.

Never mind that we’d still probably get buried for breaking and entering, if this ever got to the cops. Which it probably wouldn’t, since this was a high-crime neighborhood, and the PLA wasn’t going to call the cops to support a team they brought across the border illegally.

Not that we were going to get sloppy here. We’d learned the hard way that these bastards had the highest of top cover.

The kitchen was empty, but voices were raised frantically out in the living room. With Jake covering the hallway that led toward the back, and presumably the bedrooms, I began to pie off the opening to the living room.

I wasn’t under any illusions that that wall was going to give me any actual cover. Drywall doesn’t stop bullets. But concealment can be almost as good in a situation like this, and I wasn’t going to give them more to shoot at than I absolutely had to.

The man who’d run out of the kitchen was bent over the couch, pulling a shotgun out of a duffel bag. That was enough, and Jake and I shot him at the same time, the twin barks of our pistols almost deafeningly loud in the small kitchen. He sat down hard, one leg collapsing under him, and the shotgun slipped from his hands to hit the floor with a faint thud.

I followed the shot. As soon as I’d fired, there was no point in trying to stay behind the wall. Movement was the best option.

Besides, I was wearing low-profile plates under my shirt. They weren’t magic, but they might keep me alive for the next few seconds.

One of the others had gotten a pistol out and took a shot at me as I pushed through the doorway, the bullet smacking plaster out of the drywall next to my head as I went. I hadn’t paused after taking that first shot. I just pivoted toward the front of the house and the corner of the room, clearing my sector but exposing myself as I went. I was already turning back toward the middle of the room, trying not to flinch as I waited for the second round to tear through my armpit and end me, but KG had come through right behind me, and his Glock hammered three times as he Mozambiqued the guy who’d shot at me.

As I turned back, I saw a slight figure in black go out the window. Two more pistol shots echoed from outside, ending that escape attempt.

The living room was clear, and I turned toward the hallway, where Ken and Custus were already moving in. KG and I fell in with them, while Jake and Patrick held on the living room and the bodies leaking blood out onto the carpet.

There were two bedrooms and a bathroom in the back. Ken and Custus went into the first room, moving fast, and KG and I went for the second, pieing off the bathroom as we went past.

The door was partially ajar, and I took it as fast as I could, shouldering it aside and riding it to the stops as I pushed inside, trusting KG to take the opposite corner and cover my back.

The room wasn’t large, and the man who’d been hiding behind the door didn’t have a lot of room. He wasn’t ready for my assault, either, and I slammed into him with the door itself, feeling the resistance more than anything else. I quickly cleared my corner as I drove the man into the wall with a grunt, pushing hard to pin him behind the door and hopefully give him no space to bring a weapon to bear on me.

He still got a shot off, the bullet splintering the door and burning my side. Shooting blind went against the grain, but this guy was trying to kill me, so I levered my Glock around the edge of the door and dumped the rest of the magazine into him at point blank range.

The reports echoed strangely, and the man screamed as the bullets tore into him. At least one either missed him or went right through his soft tissues, blowing out through the drywall and into the hallway. Fortunately, there shouldn’t be anyone there; I’d taken a fraction of a second to try to remember where everyone else in the house was before I’d started shooting.

I felt the weight on the other side of the door go slack. “Got one here.” My slide was locked back on an empty mag, and even though I’d heard the man’s gun hit the floor as he slumped, I wasn’t in a position where I wanted to take chances. KG circled around me, squeezing past the bed, and pointed his own Glock at the gap between the door and the wall.

Stepping back, I let the door swing out, and the man I’d shot slumped to the floor, leaving a red smear on the wall. From the way he fell, his eyes still open, and the sheer amount of blood on the wall and the other side of the door, I could tell he was dead.

“Clear.” KG lowered his pistol and looked at his watch. I was already reloading. Clear or not, there was no way in hell I was going to let my weapon stay unloaded for long.

Pistols were hardly ideal for a hit like this, but they were concealable, and we were all trained well enough that we could be damned sure of our shots at CQB ranges.

“Ten minutes.” While we were reasonably sure that the cops weren’t going to get involved, for a couple of reasons—Li’s involvement not being the least—there was still an outside chance that we’d get rolled up if we lingered too long. The police probably would eventually investigate, but we intended to be long gone by then.

We were all wearing shooting gloves for that very reason.

I holstered my weapon, leaving security to KG for the moment. The bedroom was fully furnished, but aside from the bed, the Chinese special operators weren’t using it as living quarters.

The explosives and weapons packed in the crates that were set against the wall pretty well confirmed to me that these were PLA special operations. None of the weapons were of Chinese make; these guys were smarter than that, and they’d probably crossed the border empty-handed. The weapons were mostly M-16s and Smith & Wesson M&Ps. I suspected, just from looking at them, that if the serial numbers were matched up, they’d probably turn out to be some of the same weapons that had been stolen from the Springs PD only a week before.

That story hadn’t gotten out much, and the Springs cops were being very tight-lipped about it, but information gathering was a very large part of our work, and we’d been in Colorado for a couple of weeks.

The explosives were even more concerning. Those weren’t homemade, Anarchist’s Cookbook HME. Not even Tannerite from the local gun store. The green blocks of C4 weren’t the commercial stuff, either. That stuff was straight up, US military demolitions.

Considering we were within spitting distance of Fort Carson, Cheyenne Mountain, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, and the US Air Force Academy, the presence of military-grade C4 in Chinese illegals’ hands was saying something.

I glanced over the pile of weapons and explosives. “Do we want to try to take this stuff?”

KG shook his head. “Not a chance. The risks of getting caught with stolen police weapons is too high. Let the cops find this slaughterhouse and try to figure it out. They’ll probably do us a favor and try to sweep it all under the rug just to avoid letting this cache go public.”

I snorted. “I doubt that. Not with this many bodies on the ground. They’ll just conveniently leave out the weapons’ provenance.”

“Maybe. We still don’t want to take the chance that we’ll get stopped with them.” He turned toward the front. “Let’s finish tossing this place and get the hell out.”

We moved out into the hallway, and from there to the living room, though not without deconflicting with Custus, who was still posted on security on the door to the first bedroom.

Jake and Patrick were already going through the notes, maps, and tablets scattered on the coffee table and the couch. Just at a glance, there was a lot there. None of it good. These guys had targets aplenty.

“Get photos of everything. Leave it where it fell, if you can.” KG was looking around, as well. “We can analyze it later.”

I glanced over at one of the bodies slumped on the floor, tilting my head to get a better look. It was Li. He’d taken two rounds to the chest, right about in the A zone, and he was staring in shock, unblinking and unseeing, at the ceiling. There was another M&P on the floor next to his hand. “Hadn’t expected him to grab for a weapon.”

Jake glanced at him. “Guess he didn’t want to get taken alive.” He shrugged. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

“Probably for the best.” KG hadn’t ever been what I might call callous, but he didn’t have much sympathy for PLA operatives setting up for what looked like it was supposed to be a rash of assassinations of American military personnel around Colorado Springs. I had to agree. “Only so deep we can get into the ‘traveling interrogation van’ business, anyway.”

I didn’t know where, exactly, the PLA operative named Yan had been taken, before he’d finally been dropped off, probably dehydrated and undernourished, somewhere a long way out in the desert. He’d spilled his guts before then, which was part of why we were there, in that house, with an assortment of rapidly cooling Chinese bodies.

Patrick looked up as he was snapping photos of several of the documents, most of which appeared to be in Mandarin. “We’ve got this. Probably better if we don’t all mass exodus out of here, after all the gunfire.”

I glanced at KG. Patrick had a point, though security was still a factor we had to consider. He shrugged. “He’s right. Everybody but me, Patrick, Jake, and Brian, make yourselves scarce. Try not to be seen leaving, either. If you can get out the back, do it.”

“There’s a lot of shadow out on the other side of the fence.” Clint had come inside. “We should be able to disperse pretty quick.”

“Do it.” KG holstered his own Glock, which he’d still had in his hands. “We won’t be far behind you.”

It didn’t take long to get out the back and over the fence. I was already a couple of miles away, circling around to my rental truck—which was not in my true name—by the time the sirens started to wail through the night.

 

Non-State Actor comes out in ebook and print on November 21.

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Non-State Actor Chapter 1

This was not a neighborhood of Colorado Springs that I would ordinarily have been comfortable walking through, alone, at night. Even strapped—there was no way any of us were going anywhere unarmed anymore, especially not after the attempts on our families recently—there was a significant threat to worry about, and that had nothing to do with our target.

After all, there had been an armed robbery right on the street only a few blocks away, only a few nights before.

It wasn’t so much that any operator who worked for Pallas Group Solutions had much to worry about from an armed robber—not that any such criminal encounter couldn’t go horribly wrong in seconds—but that it was probably going to result in that operator having to break off, reducing the number of guns we had on target.

If it didn’t canc the mission altogether.

I turned a corner and scanned the street ahead of me. On the surface, it looked like an ordinary residential street. There was nothing visible to point out the gang presence there. Even most of the yards were reasonably well kept up, though there were still a couple with more than one vehicle pulled up on the grass. Or rocks, in one case.

The target house was about two blocks down, though I couldn’t see it past the trees on the street. I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets—coincidentally keeping my cover shirt down over the holster, trauma kit, and multiple magazines on my belt as the evening breeze picked up—and kept walking, doing my best to look like just some Joe Schmoe out for a walk.

Half a dozen young men were gathered around a pair of cars in a driveway on the other side of the street, drinking and probably partaking in a few other substances. They were watching me keenly, while I hunched my shoulders a little and ignored them, at least by all appearances, watching them back through my peripheral vision.

It’s amazing, sometimes, just how much you can see when you let your eyes unfocus a little and let your peripherals open up.

One of them got off the tailgate of the pickup, setting his beer down, as I walked by, his eyes locked on me. I could feel his gaze more than I could see it, but I was already keyed up and ready to fight as it was. It probably took more effort to keep myself from turning and staring him down than it did to maintain my unhurried, unconcerned pace.

I heard one of them say something in Spanish, the tone mocking and challenging at the same time. I ignored it, prompting an equally mocking laugh, and what was unmistakably some version of, yeah, keep walking, punk.

Just so long as they settle for mockery and don’t actually try to come pick a fight. Because then I’m going to have to kill at least one of them, and my part in the night’s mission is over.

Just keep thinking about the mission.

I’d been on both sides of the gun against people like that for months, now. Gangsters, human traffickers, drug runners. Try as I might to keep my moral and emotional equilibrium, the hatred could only build, the more I saw of the heinous shit these people did.

Ducking beneath the overhanging limbs of a sycamore that grew over the sidewalk, I passed into the shadows. A slight tilt of my head to glance over my shoulder, and I saw that the kids on the truck and the car weren’t following. Raucous laughter echoed down the street.

Good. Laugh it up, fuckers. You might be singing a different tune tomorrow.

I neared the curve just ahead, walking casually toward the intersection with a walkway coming from the public park off to the north. Two more shadowy figures were walking down that cement path, spaced far enough apart to appear not to be associated with each other, though I recognized Jake and Brian by build and stride.

Slowing as I got closer, I looked toward the target house, now less than a hundred yards away. The sidewalk in front was still empty and still, and the lights were off, except for the single porch light. It looked entirely inoffensive, and any of the neighbors might have dismissed the place as belonging to a recluse. There was rarely any traffic in or out during daylight hours.

We knew better.

Jake and Brian slowed as they got closer to where I was now loitering in the shadows next to the nearest house’s plank privacy fence. There were hardly any streetlights in this neighborhood, which was playing to our advantage that night.

“Any movement?” Brian wasn’t whispering, but he wasn’t yelling, either. Which was a bit of a switch for “Scrappy.” He was good at his job, but he tended to be a little headstrong, to put it mildly.

“Nothing yet.” I didn’t want to draw attention by hitting my watch’s light, but I was pretty sure we were a few minutes early.

We’d debated just how to approach this. Colorado Springs was a lot more dangerous than the last time I’d been there, as the crime rate just kept going up, which actually provided us with some cover for action. When you’re waging a shadow war against people who used criminals and illegals as proxies, high-crime areas make for good camouflage. Your operations can just sort of disappear into the noise.

On the other hand, it can restrict some of your options. We’d considered doing the SWAT gambit, like we had in Georgia a while back. Roll up in a black up-armor, hit the house hard and fast, wearing no badges or identifiers but otherwise dressed and geared up just like the local cops. We wouldn’t technically be impersonating officers, but we’d be close enough for any bystanders to figure that was what we were.

However, the more we’d looked this neighborhood over, once we’d identified our targets, the more likely it seemed that anything resembling cops would trigger an all-out exodus, and the people we were after would be in the wind by the time we got to the house.

So, we were going to have to be a little more subtle, move a little more slowly.

I did have a radio on my belt as well as my pistol, magazines, and other useful kit. In the operating environment we’d worked in with PGS for months, phones were often the best form of comms, but on a live hit, with multiple elements of ones and twos closing in on the target on foot, there was nothing like a good, old fashioned radio. “This is Backwoods. In position with Scrappy and Chihuahua.”

There were dudes I would rather work with, but this entire night’s op was going to be pretty damned fluid.

“This is Kermit. At the back fence with Ziggy and Scooby.”

“This is Bone. Had to divert. Still a few blocks out.” That could be a problem. We didn’t want to make this hit without a certain critical mass. If Rob got held up too long, we might have to go without him.

It was late in the evening, and normal people should be heading for bed soon, but this entire op was hinging on people who weren’t normal.

And I didn’t mean us.

“This is Rip.” Ken had become my partner since Drew’s death in Mexico. His laid-back drawl was as even and unconcerned as any of us were trying to be that night. “I’m in position. Got eyes on Leprechaun and Hybrid. Waiting for the go.”

“Solid copy on all.” KG was our team leader, or coordinator, or manager, or something. Roles in PGS tended to be a little bit vague, defined by who had the information and the commander’s intent from Goblin first. For the A team, that was KG. So, he was team leader. “Still on follow. Our boy stopped for a snack, so he’s a little behind.”

KG was following Thomas Li, who was, at least on paper, an upstanding employee of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Thanks to intel we’d extracted from a rather reluctant PLA operative named Yan, we knew what he really was.

Not that the CSSA wasn’t already an organ of Chinese Communist political warfare, but Li was into something else. Which we intended to shut down that night.

I let out a faint sigh, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing ever goes according to plan on these things. Unfortunately, the longer we loitered, the more likely we were going to attract attention before things went loud.

Not that I was too worried about the Colorado Springs PD. They were overloaded, and this neighborhood was pretty damned low on their priority list as it was. Which was part of the whole reason we were there that night.

No, I was worried about the likes of that bunch I’d passed a few minutes before. When the law retreats, other forces fill the vacuum.

It wasn’t lost on me that such a thought applied to what we were doing.

Headlights appeared on the street, their glow preceding them as the car came around the bend in the road, washing across the houses and the slightly barren, threadbare lawns. I couldn’t be sure that it was our target, but I still eased back deeper into the shadows beneath the tree branches growing over the top of the fence behind me, Jake and Brian doing the same.

Sure enough, though, the car pulled up in front of the house we’d identified a few days before. It was Li.

The lights went out, then the dome light came on briefly. Even at that distance, in the dim yellow glow of the overhead lamp, I could make out Li’s features, as he got out, slammed the door, and headed up toward the house.

We let him get inside, staying in place, watching and listening. There was still the possibility that the Chinese illegals that Li was coordinating with had lookouts elsewhere in the neighborhood. The triads had a history of working with other gangs, at least in the US, and these bastards had already gotten into the country across the southern border, working with the cartels and an American human trafficking network to do it. I scanned the street, seeing only porch lights and dimly lit windows, mostly with the blinds drawn.

Nobody wanted to be too exposed to the street here.

“Go, go, go.” KG kept the command low and even, probably because there was nothing to be gained by yelling before a shot had been fired, and he didn’t want to attract attention.

Brian, Jake, and I were already moving, though we still maintained our façade of being strangers out for a casual evening stroll. That alone might have been somewhat suspicious around here, but so far, we hadn’t triggered any alerts.

I met Ken, Patrick, and Custus coming in, with KG not far behind them. I might have heard a faint rattle as Clint, Tom, and Phil went over the fence and into the back yard to cut off any squirters trying to escape.

The easiest entry was going to be the front door, which was why we didn’t want to use it. The attached garage was going to be a better approach, since they were probably going to be watching the front. So, while Ken, Patrick, and Custus moved to the corner, hopefully out of view of the front windows and the door, the rest of us—KG circled around on the other side of the street to join us—moved on the garage.

Brian had drawn the short straw. It was possible that we might have managed to clone a garage door opener, if we’d been able to identify the right vehicle and been right there when it opened the door. That was dicey, though, and we simply hadn’t managed to pull that off. Fortunately, there were simpler, lower-tech ways.

Brian had a length of coat hanger wire stuck in his belt, and as we surreptitiously drew our pistols and stayed as far into the shadows as we could get, he bent it, thrust it up through the slight gap between the top of the door and the doorframe. He fished around for a moment, then pulled.

I heard the snap as he caught the door release, freeing the armature from its rail. He let go and grabbed the bottom edge of the door, heaving it up overhead as Jake, KG, and I ducked underneath, leading with our Glocks, searching the corners of the garage as we straightened up and started to move toward the door leading into the house, muzzles tracking toward it while we moved.

 

Non-State Actor comes out in ebook and print on November 21.

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A Chat with Brad Torgersen

Tonight, Brad Torgersen, Army Warrant Officer, Baen science fiction author, and SPOTREPS contributor, joins us for a bit of a chat, about SF, writing, culture, the wasteland that is the internet, and whatever else comes up. (You know how these streams go by now.)

Brad’s become a bit of a controversial figure in certain interweb circles, mostly Culture War related, so tonight Mike will be asking him the most important question of all: “Brad, why are you so terrible?”

Come and join us.

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Always Legion

Military contractor Dav Toron left the Legion to avoid the incompetency of its growing number of points. There’s no avoiding the chaos of his next mission.

Running protection for a House of Reason Special Aide turns into a kinetic nightmare as a corrupt local government, intergalactic rebels, and violent pirates converge to plunge a backwater edge planet into utter violence and chaos.

With his team cut off from all support, Dav falls back on his Legion training to keep those around him alive. But when he forges an alliance with a stranded Legion squad and planetary natives looking to stand up to those seeking to topple their government, an opportunity to save the small planet presents itself…if Dav and his ragged team of outnumbered and outgunned warriors can survive long enough to take it.

Best-selling author and veteran Peter Nealen teams up with Anspach and Cole and draws from his own experiences as a paramilitary contractor to deliver this thrilling tale of sacrifice, determination, and combat.

Always Legion is a stand-alone novel set in the period between Legionnaire and Galactic Outlaws.

Get it on Audible or Kindle today.

***

So, almost a year ago, Jason Anspach approached me about doing a Galaxy’s Edge project. The Lost was successful enough that the Wargate boys wanted some more. The end result is Always Legion, a story about a disillusioned, cynical leej turned contractor, who finds himself drawn back in by sheer necessity.

This was a lot of fun to write. If you’re new to Galaxy’s Edge, there’s a lot more awesome military SF waiting for you.

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September Livestream

Mike keeps wanting to rename the livestreams “Slack Ops,” and this one might just fit. We don’t have a guest this month; it’ll just be the three of us. So, this might well be a bit more free-form than usual. Expect talk about writing, politics, philosophy, and probably a few other things that I can’t foresee.

Come and join us.

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Bit of a Different Stream

We’re doing something a bit different for the stream this month. Instead of directly talking about books, we’re going to get into culture. Specifically, the doomerism that is infecting much of the online discourse lately. Larry Correia joins us again, since he and Brad Torgerson got into the subject with a bunch of randos on Twitter lately.

Despair and demoralization are the path to defeat. You’re not being “enlightened” by embracing them. You’re just making failure inevitable.

Come join us.

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Frontiers of Chaos Is Out!

Today’s the day. Follow Pallas Group Solutions into the violent darkness of the Frontiers of Chaos.

A killing in Seattle

A massacre in Northern California

A mysterious new client

In the aftermath of what appears to be a targeted killing, a mysterious billionaire approaches Pallas Group Solutions with a new job. He seems to be more interested in their intelligence gathering capability than security.

None of them are prepared for what they find.

In a whirlwind of violence and intrigue, the contractors of Pallas Group plunge into a world of human trafficking and elite capture.

And find themselves on the hunt for an underworld facilitator who’s closer than they expected.

It’s a pursuit from the Pacific Northwest to the Tri-Border Area of South America.

And as the bodies pile up, things can only get darker.

Get it in ebook, paperback, or hardcover today. (Audio will be in production soon.)

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Silver or Lead on Audio

It’s finally here for you audiophiles. Silver or Lead is out on audio.

Threats Lurk in the Shadows….

And Sometimes in Plain Sight

The Pallas Group Solutions Contractors have put the hurt on Chinese operations in Mexico. In the aftermath, alliances shift and powers that hadn’t appeared to be involved before start to take a hand.

In a world of unrestricted warfare, PGS has to adapt.

While the Chinese covert war has changed axes, Chris and his fellow contractors head south to deepen the disruption, entering into the Northern Triangle of Central America.

But their involvement is no longer as clandestine as they’d hoped.

And new foes are joining with the old to come after them.

Can they stay one step ahead?

As some people have pointed out, yes, the title came from Pablo Escobar’s infamous ultimatum, “Plata o Plomo.” The police (or whoever else) could take his silver, or they could die. While this story isn’t about Pablo, who’s long dead, the principle remains the same, and we see it in action quite a bit in these pages (or hours, if you’re listening to it).

Check it out.

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Frontiers of Chaos Chapter 3

The phone buzzed, and Nick King grimaced as Vicky sighed. It wasn’t an angry sigh. While she looked like a supermodel, and could sometimes sound about as vapid—though Nick was pretty well convinced that those instances were her version of sarcasm—she had made it clear that she knew what she was getting into, and while she might not like sharing Nick with the job, she was more willing to do that than not have any of him at all.

For Nick’s part, he was still desperately holding off on thinking through her hints that he needed to meet her dad.

It’s not that I’m scared. I’m just wondering just how fast this is really going. After all, they’d only been dating for a couple weeks. She seemed to have plans, and he was still figuring out just where he stood.

After all, he’d seen some pretty horrific drama over women in his day, and he was wondering where the catch was.

He grabbed the phone. “Sorry, babe.” He almost flinched at using that term, but Vicky just rubbed his arm with a smile. She liked it when he called her that.

His eyebrow went up as he looked at the screen and saw that it was Matt Patric. He and Matt had been partners when he’d first started with Pallas Group Solutions, just after the hit on their first client in Atlanta. Matt had been shot up badly during the fight for the Bowman Ranch in New Mexico and had been on the bench because of it for months. Last Nick had heard, Matt was about ready to come back, but that didn’t explain why he was calling now.

Levering himself up off the couch, Nick brought the phone to his ear. “What’s up, man?”

“Hey, Nick, are you at home right now?” The two of them lived less than fifty miles apart, Nick in the small town of Lyons, and Matt in Fort Collins.

Nick’s frown got deeper as he went completely still for a moment. Something about Matt’s tone was off. Something was wrong.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

Matt sighed. “It might be nothing. A guy I know from way back reached out to me yesterday. Started asking some very pointed questions about the company.”

Nick felt his blood run cold. Matt was right. It might be nothing. It might also be a fishing expedition by one of several enemies they’d made over the last year or so.

“Now, from what I’ve been able to find out, he retired a few years ago, and he’s been doing some off-and-on contract work. It might just be that he’s interested in joining up. Might.” Nick could almost hear his friend shake his head. “Something doesn’t feel right, though.”

“You think somebody’s digging.” It wasn’t really a question.

“I think it’s entirely possible. Especially after that intel brief we got.”

Nick grimaced, already heading for his back room where his go bag was waiting. Vicky was watching him from the couch, with concern written all over her features. She wasn’t asking questions or hounding him, though. She just waited.

That was slightly unnerving all by itself.

“Does he know where you live? Do you need me to come over?”

Matt hesitated. Nick could imagine what his friend was thinking. He’d probably be in the same spot. None of them wanted to be wrong. None of them wanted to be easily stampeded. If it was nothing, Matt was afraid that he’d never live it down. The job required a certain amount of paranoia, but that wasn’t the same thing as jumping at shadows.

“I mean… Yeah. He knows where I live. I had him over a few years ago, before he retired out of Group.” Matt got hesitant again. “I don’t think there’s necessarily a threat, though. Not yet. He was just asking questions, and he lives quite a ways away. Last I heard, he was moving out of Colorado Springs and heading to Florida.”

Nick stopped, standing over his go bag, staring at the far wall with narrowed eyes as he thought it through. Matt didn’t want to panic or get the rest of the company stirred up for nothing. If it was nothing. “Okay, bud. Just let me know.”

“Thanks, man. Just thought I should pass the word that somebody was asking around. I know Goblin hasn’t exactly advertised.” Matt sounded a little relieved. He was concerned, but without a smoking gun, he didn’t want to go overboard. “See ya at work in a week.”

“Yeah, man. See you soon.” But as he took the phone away from his ear, Nick remembered the brief that Matt had mentioned. He’d been a little involved with securing a chemical plant down in Honduras at the time, but a few guys from the A Team had infiltrated a network of special operations trained hitmen, coordinated through the dark web, and had gotten fairly deep until they’d had to break their cover to stop the same network from kidnapping or killing their principal.

Somehow, he doubted that the sudden interest in PGS after that was coincidental.

He was still standing there, his phone in his hand, thinking, as Vicky came to the door behind him. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I don’t know.” He looked down at the phone and the go bag at his feet.

“Is somebody in trouble?” She was leaning against the doorjamb, her voice quiet.

“Maybe.” He sighed and looked down at the phone again. “I’m sorry, babe. I’ve got to look into this.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got the week off.” He could hear the warm smile in her voice, and he almost didn’t make the next call. “I’ll be here, waiting.”

With an enormous effort, Nick kept his eyes on the phone and called Doug.

“You know it’s our time off, right, Nick?” Doug Chen wasn’t what Nick would have ever considered lazy. He was a former Delta operator, though Nick had no idea just how long he’d been in The Unit. Judging by his performance under fire, Nick was guessing he’d been there for a long time.

He was, however, old enough and wise enough not to want to borrow trouble, and he’d made it clear more than once that time off was time off. Not because he was difficult about it, but simply because he recognized, from long years of experience, the risks that burnout presented to men in this profession.

“I know, and I wouldn’t call, but I heard from Matt. Seems that somebody he knows from way back contacted him and was asking a lot of questions about the company.” He hadn’t kept his profession from Vicky, but he also hadn’t gone into a lot of detail with her, either.

That got Doug’s attention. “Was he, now?” He sounded pensive. “You’re in Colorado, right?”

“Yeah.” Nick felt his game face coming over him. He wasn’t crazy; Doug thought this was a threat, too.

“Shit. I can’t get there in any less than forty-eight hours. Hold on.” The phone went quiet, though the call was still open.

Nick dropped into a crouch to double-check his go bag, mainly just for something to do while he waited on Doug. He knew that everything was there, but if he was busy, Vicky wouldn’t be asking him questions he wasn’t sure he could answer.

“Okay. I’ve got a buddy out that way. He’s in Colorado Springs, so it’s gonna be a minute. Can you get over to Matt’s place?”

“Yeah.” It would mean going alone, because if there really was a threat, he didn’t think he could wait until a former Special Mission Unit operator got all the way up from Colorado Springs. That would take at least two hours. If this guy knew where Matt lived, and his questions were meant to gather intel for a hit, then things could get real, fast. “I’m on my way now.”

“Watch your back, Nick.”

***

Matt Patric’s house wasn’t all that fancy. One story, brick, with an attached garage, it looked more like a middle-class factory worker’s house than a GWOT contractor’s house, but that was probably why Matt still had it. The good money in the contracting world hadn’t lasted forever, and as the pay had steadily dwindled—along with some of the jobs—those who had lived high on the hog, playing at being “contractor rich,” had often found things tightening. Matt had been careful with his money, and so he was better off than some guys Nick knew.

He stopped his old Bronco just down the street and sat behind the wheel, just observing the neighborhood. It wasn’t the sort of place that anyone would usually expect terrible violence to happen, in contrast to some of the gang-riddled barrios where they’d worked recently, especially in Mexico and Honduras. He’d been at this long enough, though, that he could sort of see through the illusion. The manicured lawns, the neatly trimmed trees, the well-kept-up houses, and the nice, clean vehicles on the street and in the driveways weren’t an impenetrable shield toward the forces of crime and violence.

Especially if those forces had the sort of funding, training, and political backing that some of the people PGS had found themselves up against did.

Nothing jumped out at him. He checked every vehicle and nook and cranny he could see, but if there were real pros involved, he knew that nothing might stand out. There were no out-of-place vehicles in front of Matt’s house. No one loitering on the street who didn’t belong there. Everything was quiet.

Something didn’t feel right, though.

He pulled across the street and parked in front of Matt’s place. Maybe he’d gotten there in time. But something was telling him that something was wrong.

He wasn’t carrying his PGS Glock; he was off work and so he was still carrying his own personal carry handgun, a P365. He made sure that it was still concealed but easy to reach, and got out of the vehicle, starting toward the door. The fact that he was circling around toward the garage and staying out of direct line of sight from the door and the windows was mostly unconscious at that point.

He took one more glance around at the quiet neighborhood. No sirens, no surreptitious faces in windows. There was no outward sign that anything was wrong. But he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck going up.

Only a carefully considered, professional caution kept his handgun in its holster as he moved to the door, reached out, and knocked, still not quite standing in front of it.

The door swung partway inward at the impact. It hadn’t been latched.

He thought he heard a faint noise from inside, but his pistol was immediately in his hands as he pushed through the door. Maybe the “right” answer would have been to back off and call 911, but that was Matt and his family in there.

He cleared the door quickly, sweeping the living room over his pistol’s sights. There wasn’t a lot out of place, but there was one overturned chair.

More sounds came from the back bedroom. Almost like a faint scuffle, and then he heard a low voice. “Shut the fuck up.”

Every impulse told him to drive straight to that room, but he knew that he needed to be really careful, since he was on his own. Single-man CQB is a nightmare by any metric. The average man only has about a hundred twenty degrees of peripheral vision, and three hundred sixty degrees of security are needed in a combat situation, especially in a close-quarters fight. CQB is a game of angles, and with only one set of eyes and one gun to cover every angle, it gets complicated, fast.

Keeping his back to the wall as much as possible, avoiding full exposure to the next door, he moved to cover the kitchen first, seeing no movement there, though there was enough wreckage in there to suggest a struggle. He saw some red spatter on the counter and his blood would have run cold, if he hadn’t already been deep in the zone.

He noted it and moved on, his muzzle moving to the next danger area.

The kitchen was set toward the back of the house, just across from the short hallway between the garage and the two bedrooms. Nick paused at the corner, taking a deep breath as he brought his pistol back to his chest, the muzzle pointed at the opening next to him, then pivoted around the corner, punching the weapon out as he searched for targets.

One bedroom door was closed. The other was open, and he saw movement, quickly shifting toward it even as someone hissed an epithet.

Common sense might suggest that this was the time to take it slowly and carefully, pieing off the door and engaging targets as they were exposed. That was leaving aside two details, though. The first, and most obvious, being that his friend and that friend’s family were currently being held hostage, and if these bad guys smoked either Matt or Linda, Nick knew that he’d never be able to live with himself. The first tenet of hostage rescue is that the hostage is worth more than the rescuer’s life.

The other factor was that most American interior walls will not stop bullets. They’ll barely slow them down.

So, as soon as he saw the man pointing a gun at Linda, almost out of sight through the narrow bit of doorway he could see through, he shot the man through the cheekbone and plunged into the room, pivoting toward the corner, his finger still on the trigger.

The man he’d shot was already falling as he cleared the threshold. Even as his eye and muzzle tracked toward it, there was an explosion of movement, the thud of a body hitting the wall, a curse, and then the bed was knocked almost a foot to one side, almost taking Nick’s knee with it. He shifted quickly, bringing his SIG to bear, but he didn’t have a shot.

Matt Patric was on the floor, fighting with another man in a balaclava for control of what looked like a CZ P10. Nick didn’t dare shoot for fear of hitting Matt, so he quickly grabbed Linda and got her down on the floor, even as he briefly checked the man he’d shot on the way through the door. That guy was down, hard, but Nick snatched the pistol out of his limp hand and pressed it into Linda’s palm before he turned to where Matt was wrestling with his assailant.

The P10 fell to the floor with a thump as the gunman stifled a scream, Matt now in full control of his wrist and torquing it, hard. In the next moment, Matt threw himself onto his back on the floor, kicking one leg up and over the gunman’s neck and putting him into an armbar. The man did cry out then, because Matt wasn’t going for submission. He was trying to do damage.

The gunman’s arm broke with a nauseating crunch, and then, even as the man let out a muffled scream, Matt twisted again, putting him into a scissor choke and bearing down.

He held the choke as the gunman frantically tapped. Nick hesitated, then accepted that Matt seemed to have things under control, so he pivoted back toward the hallway. That other bedroom and the garage still needed to be cleared.

That took seconds. When he came back, Linda was on her feet, the dead man’s gun in her hands, and Matt was getting up, having scooped up the other gunman’s weapon. That guy was limp on the floor, though after a moment, Nick could see he was still breathing.

“Call 911, honey.” Matt’s voice was a rasp, though it seemed more from exertion than any injury. He looked up at Nick. “Thanks, brother. Didn’t think anybody was going to get here in time.” He coughed. “Hell, I didn’t think I was going to need you, until I did.”

Nick holstered his pistol. “How much do we need to worry about the Fort Collins cops?”

“Some, but not too much.” Matt was already reaching for his own phone. “I’ll call the office and get some lawyers moving.” He shook his head. “Good thing Goblin keeps the ones on retainer that he does.”

“Good thing,” Nick agreed, even as he looked down at the two gunmen, one incapacitated, one dead. They probably weren’t going to get a chance to interrogate the one, but it was abundantly clear to him that they were going to need to take steps.

That network that Chris and Phil had infiltrated might have disappeared after they’d blown their cover to protect Gage Romero, but that obviously didn’t mean they’d gone away.

And Pallas Group Solutions was, apparently, squarely in their crosshairs. Nick didn’t believe for a moment that this had just been a burglary, and he suspected that, if they were to remove the balaclavas, they might well find that one of the two hitters on the floor was Matt’s old acquaintance.

He pulled his own phone out and called Doug. Even if he and Matt got wrapped up dealing with the Fort Collins PD, the word needed to get out to the rest of the company, and fast.

Frontiers of Chaos comes out in print and ebook on August 15.

The post Frontiers of Chaos Chapter 3 appeared first on AMERICAN PRAETORIANS.

Frontiers of Chaos Chapter 2

Seattle wasn’t the place for an armed Good Samaritan, but I couldn’t exactly let the guy murder our mark, either. Not that I had any particular attachment to Wise, but I also didn’t know for sure why we were supposed to be surveilling him in the first place. The client had been almighty close-mouthed about that part, and only the fact that I trusted Thad “Goblin” Walker as much as I did had led me to accept the mission as briefed. He had to have a reason for accepting as vague a tasking as this one, so I’d play along.

That meant, though, that without knowing for sure that Wise was a bad guy, I couldn’t just sit by and watch him get stabbed to death in the street.

Wise wasn’t paying attention to anything but the traffic, angling across the street, probably mainly to avoid the homeless weirdos on the corner. So, he didn’t see the hitter in disguise as the armed bum moved toward him, his hand dropping low, the knife now concealed in his palm and sleeve. The man was speeding up, the façade of chemically-enhanced vagrant falling away as he closed in on his prey.

This definitely wasn’t just another surveillance job. This was a hit.

I was already out of my chair, vaulting over the railing, realizing that I’d just committed myself and burned our surveillance. Not that that was going to stop me at that point.

Plans of action were flipping through my head as I moved, though most of them were just slight changes on the theme I’d been thinking through since I’d noticed the guy with the knife. I hadn’t been able to form a complete plan while he’d still been sitting there, but now that I saw what he was doing, the contingencies collapsed to a point right there on the street.

Over two decades of Recon and clandestine operations habits meant that I rebelled at the idea of yelling in the street unless there were already bullets flying, but the situation meant I had to draw attention to myself.

“Hey, buddy! You dropped something!”

Wise looked around, confused, as if he wasn’t sure if he even should look toward the sound of my voice. This part of Seattle being the haven of drugged-out vagrants that it was, looking around at a shout could attract attention that no sane person wanted. Yet my tone hadn’t been the grating screech of a homeless guy on meth, so he looked around.

The guy with the knife did, too, and he stutter-stepped as he realized that I wasn’t walking toward Wise, I was walking toward him. I hadn’t drawn a weapon, though I was sure ready to, and every instinct was screaming at me to pull my Glock and go to work. Seattle might be a hellhole for self-defense, but I still had the paperwork I needed to carry concealed in Washington State, and if this guy gave me a reason, I’d drop him like a bad habit.

It wasn’t as if I was particularly attached to the Glock 19 in my waistband. It’s a good reason to have multiple guns, though.

He made eye contact for the second time, and I could see the wheels turning. Unfortunately, he sized me up and decided I was a threat that needed to be dealt with instead of avoided.

I was about ten feet away at that point, and he turned and charged.

To this day, I’ll never know what prompted him to do that. Maybe he thought that if he’d broken off, it would have burned his cover as a homeless guy, and he’d have been rolled up. Maybe he thought that he could cover the ground fast enough—after all, the twenty-one-foot rule is a thing—to put me out of action and still get to Wise.

Maybe he was just one of those guys who gets into the profession for the sake of killing, and now that he was somewhat more unsupervised, he figured to add a couple more Stateside kills to the scoreboard.

Since it is a truism that if you’re going to get into a knife fight, you should expect to get cut, I was already braced for it. I knew I probably wasn’t going to get my weapon out before he reached me, especially at that distance, so I didn’t try. He was too close.

Instead, as he lunged at me, coming in low with the knife aimed at my guts, I sidestepped, blocking the knife thrust with the heel of my palm to his forearm. That’s not a comfortable thing, and he almost dropped the knife as he staggered, the shock running through his arm at the impact, giving me an opening, at which point I kicked him in the knee.

His knee almost bent sideways, though he rotated just enough with the impact to keep me from snapping the joint. He was already recovering, though he dropped the knife and reached for his waistband, just as I took a long step back, my shirt already clearing as I gripped my Glock and ripped it out of the holster.

My backstep had given me some space, and fortunately, I hadn’t lost track of my surroundings in the sudden confrontation. A car sped past, the breeze plucking at my sleeve, as I leveled the weapon at the ragged man on the side of the street.

Wise was running, I saw through my peripheral vision, even though I was as focused on the bad guy in front of me as I needed to be. Probably just being smart and trying to get away from the violence. Nothing I’d seen so far made me think that he had any idea he was a target.

The man in front of me knew he was fucked. I could see it in his eyes as he froze, my 9mm leveled at his face. I was out of his reach, and his own handgun was too far from any position where he could bring it to bear before I shot him. This guy wasn’t like some of the others we’d run into in this shadow war we were in, who had apparently decided that death was better than capture.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one in play.

An engine revved, tires squealed, and there was a bang behind me. I started to involuntarily look toward the noise, and he started to make his move.

Fortunately, I saw the shift just in time, and my finger tightened on the trigger as I flicked my eyes back toward him, my focus settling on the front sight just as his SIG cleared his clothes.

There was no way I could hesitate. I shot him through the skull from less than six feet away, the bark of the 9mm deafeningly loud in the concrete and glass canyon of the street. He stiffened and fell over onto his side, his skull leaking red onto the pavement.

With a curse, more at the fact that I’d just had to smoke somebody in fucking Seattle, of all places, I shifted and turned, checking the rest of the street and our surroundings, looking for the next threat. I hadn’t heard any more gunshots, but even as I moved, tires squealed on the pavement and a car roared away toward the intersection and through, heading north. Something made me look at the plate. I was still in that combat awareness mode, so details jumped out at me. It was a Washington plate, though that meant less than the number, which I dutifully noted before turning back toward the other side of the street, just as the screaming started.

“Someone call 911!” At first I thought they were looking at the man I’d just killed. This could be very, very bad, but the clinical part of my mind told me that holstering and running were the wrong reaction. We had damned good lawyers at PGS, I was carrying an Idaho Concealed Carry Permit, which was honored by Washington State, and, provided there were no shenanigans on the part of Seattle PD, there was no way that I should get burned for shooting a man who’d just tried to stab me and then tried to shoot me.

While there were quite a few people staring at me and the gun, though, the 911 call wasn’t for the dead man at my feet. It was for Wise.

The car that I’d seen had veered onto the sidewalk, leaving dark streaks of burned rubber, and hit Wise as he’d shrunk away from the confrontation on my side of the street. They hadn’t slowed down, either; that much was obvious. Wise lay crumpled in a growing puddle of his own blood, about fifteen feet away where he’d been thrown by the impact.

The whole thing came together in my mind at that moment. The “homeless” guy I’d shot had been the primary, but he’d had backup, and when I’d intercepted him, the backup had swung into action.

Whatever the reason that the client wanted us watching Wise, apparently we weren’t the only ones, and now he was dead.

I cursed as I holstered the gun, glancing at Ken as he looked at Wise’s body. He met my eyes, his mouth thinned to a narrow line, and nodded slightly.

It was a hell of a situation, and I thought that both of us were probably thinking the same thing. We’d just been thrown into an extremely dangerous situation without even knowing it. If we got clear of the Seattle cops in any sort of reasonable amount of time, there were going to be questions. Lots of very pointed questions.

What the hell had we just stepped into?

Frontiers of Chaos is available for preorder now, and will be out August 15.

The post Frontiers of Chaos Chapter 2 appeared first on AMERICAN PRAETORIANS.