The Ericksen Connection

by Barry L. Becker

Pulaski momentarily lost his balance when Ericksen's

THE NEXT MORNING Ericksen spotted the six-foot-four, 225-pound Pulaski leaving the mess hall. He walked up to him. "You're not fit to wear that uniform." At six-foot-one and 185 pounds, he was just a pound over his collegiate wrestling weight. "We'll find out, won't we?" said Pulaski. His face flushed red with anger. Pulaski enjoyed beating the shit out of warriors who either challenged him or verbally disagreed with him. He hadn't lost a fight in over two years. Both men were experts in close-quarters combat. Soldiers leaving the mess hall gathered to watch. Pulaski threw the first punch to his head and missed, and in less than a tenth of a second, Ericksen delivered a swift, powerful kick, buckling Pulaski's knee. Pulaski momentarily lost his balance when Ericksen's right-hand punch landed flush on his temple, knocking him to the ground. The former All-American college wrestler took Pulaski down with a burst of speed and pummeled him with vicious shots to his head and face, smashing his nose, cutting his right eye, and splitting his lip open. Ericksen continued pounding his bloody face and then finally stopped. He stood up and looked down at Pulaski. "Go to hell, you lying bastard!" Pulaski groaned in pain as Ericksen turned and walked toward the mess hall. (A note: I mentioned in my book this was a tier-one operators from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose platoon consisted of Delta, Navy SEAL Team-Six, USAF Controller, and a CIA operator from the Special Activities Division (CIA's paramilitary clandestine section).

deposit the

Excerpt from The Ericksen Connection: Al-Bustani Group Headquarters, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. WOLFGANG BELTERMANN, A TALL, MUSCULAR German with a salt and pepper beard and hair, approached the large oak door that led to the chairman of the Al-Bustani Group of companies office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The bodyguard stood ten feet from the entrance with his pistol holstered and waved him to enter. Abdullah, Omar, and Beltermann sat on a large, deep brown leather sofa. Khalid's oldest son, Faisal, his chief security director, sat on a black leather chair. Ziad walked by the window overlooking a parking lot a few hundred yards away. He rubbed his eyes with his hand, turned, strolled to a leather chair, and slumped down in it. A minute later, a Hummingbird robot drone maintained a holding pattern directly outside Khalid’s office window. Equipped with a video camera and zoom lens, the drone transmitted images back to the CIA's unmarked van three hundred meters from the office. Another CIA team of operatives shot a laser ear microphone to the chairman's tenth-floor suite window from their parked van on a street two hundred meters away. The system transmitted an invisible infra-red beam to the window, causing a slight vibration from the window panel and generating a modulated sound converted into electronic signals by the receiver in the Agency's van, and started recording the meeting.