Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

Knuckles looked like he was going to lose his mind. He backed up to her, still focusing on his sector of fire, and hissed, “What the fuck is it with your family and drug lords? I’ve never seen someone get in more trouble than you.”

Two men scrambled down a staircase we’d passed on entry, spilling into the hallway and firing pistols. Retro and Blood cut them down, but the narrow confines of the corridor were a funnel of death and a stupid place for a discussion. I said, “Keep going toward the back of the house. We’ll clear the route to exfil. If we find him, great. If not, we’re leaving as soon as we hit an exit.”

Jennifer grimaced but nodded. We started moving at a fast jog down the hallway, bypassing rooms and looking for an exit. Leaving uncleared sections of the target was like pulling my teeth with a pair of pliers, but I wasn’t looking to kill everyone here. All we wanted was to find Jennifer and we’d done that. My team wasn’t big enough to dominate the building, and getting into a gunfight now was just asking for someone to get hit.

We reached the end of the hall and broke into a large den set up like a conference room, a long oak table upended at the far side with gun barrels hovering over it, French doors showing the lawn of the backyard. The barrels began to spit fire and I broke left, shooting on the run and diving behind a couch, while Knuckles went right. The rest of the team met a fusillade of bullets, and I saw Retro go down while Jennifer leapt back into the hallway.

I began to suppress the table with controlled pairs and shouted, “Back out, back out!”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Knuckles dragging Retro through the door. One man rose an inch too high behind the table, his weapon snapping forward, and I stroked the trigger, popping him upright before he fell backward. The firing went into a lull as they all ducked. I seized the opportunity, retreating back into the hallway, jerking Retro the final way behind the cover of the wall.

Knuckles was on him, stripping the plate hanger off his chest and feeling for blood. He poked something and Retro sat up with a scream. Knuckles said, “In and out of the thigh. He’s bleeding, but femoral’s okay.”

A man appeared down the hallway from the direction we’d come. I snapped five rounds his way and he ducked back into a room. “We’ve got to move. Blood, get him up. Knuckles, take point. Find another way out of here. Jennifer, take Retro’s UMP.”

She said, “Pike, wait. That guy you hit has the phone. I saw him when he went down. He’s the key.”

I pushed her forward, down the hall. “Move!”

Blood got Retro into a fireman’s carry and said, “You want to leave this many men to our rear? You saw the doors at the back of the room, right? They’ll be shooting at us on the open lawn.”

Knuckles said, “He’s right,” and began ripping through a bag strapped to his leg, jerking out a simple breaching charge. He prepped the blasting caps, unwound the Nonel tubing to its full length, then attached the initiation device. Saying, “This is the last time I go anywhere without frag grenades,” he lobbed the mess deep into the room, the tubing fluttering from the charge to the detonator in his hand like the tail of a kite.

Now committed, I slapped against the doorjamb and said, “Jennifer, on Retro. Cover him from threats in the hallway.”

We stacked left and right of the door, ineffectual fire coming through the gap. Knuckles glanced my way, and I nodded. He initiated the biggest flash-bang I’d ever used.

We flowed in, shooting four men staggering about in a daze. Two more were down from the charge, one dressed in much nicer clothes than the others, with only a pistol at his side. The boss. No wonder they had last stand going. Knuckles and I played cleanup while Blood went back out for Retro. He returned with Retro over his shoulder, Jennifer right behind. She ran to the first man I’d shot and went through his pockets, pulling out an old-fashioned flip phone.

I said, “You happy now? Can we go?”

She nodded and I got on the radio. “Decoy, blow the breach. We’re on the way.”

25

Mark Oglethorpe, the secretary of defense said, “Individual interruption? Yeah, that’s possible. The GPS signal is pretty weak and it doesn’t take much to cause interference, but it’s still a lot harder than people think, especially to affect a UAV flying at altitude.”

Colonel Kurt Hale saw the rest of the council relax a little in their chairs and was glad at the change in conversation.

In accordance with the charter for Project Prometheus, he’d sent a flash message to all thirteen members of the Oversight Council about the Prairie Fire alert. He had the authority to launch without council approval, but by no means could he do so without informing them. It had taken about forty seconds for his phone to ring, with the president requesting his presence at an Oversight Council meeting the following morning.

Bright and early, Kurt had driven straight to the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the West Wing of the White House, and was met by George Wolffe, the deputy commander of the Taskforce.

A career CIA case officer, Wolffe had been sent early to bend the ear of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency for any information coming out of Mexico. Kurt had Pike’s situation report on the specifics of the operation but needed the broader scope of the impact.

George smiled, and Kurt knew it was good news. “So far, it’s being laid out as a gangland hit between rival cartels. The biggest story is who was killed. Apparently it was the number one guy in Juárez for the Sinaloa cartel.”

Taking the stairs at a fast walk, looking at his watch, Kurt said, “No mention of Americans?”

“None. The prime suspect right now is Los Zetas. That’s what’s on the street and what’ll become solidified over the next few hours.”

They both exited at the second floor and saw the Secret Service agents already positioned outside the conference room. Which meant the president was inside, and they were late.

In truth, Kurt felt some trepidation about the meeting, now made worse by his late entrance. Project Prometheus itself had almost imploded six months ago based on a crisis engineered from Iran, and Kurt had resigned because of decisions being made that were, in his mind, ridiculous. Now he was back in charge because President Warren had said so, and he was about to brief something that was unpalatable. Something his enemies might want to use to harm him, regardless of the good or bad for national security.

Entering, Kurt nodded at the group while George took a seat in the back, out of the line of fire. Kurt moved to the head of the table, right next to President Peyton Warren. He raised an eyebrow and Kurt said, “Sorry, sir, I was getting some last-minute updates.”

Before the president could respond, he began the briefing, laying out everything he knew, including the fact that the Taskforce’s cover was secure—so far. He spent the next thirty minutes getting peppered with questions, but none were what he would have considered irrelevant. It seemed the Taskforce had turned a corner, which was unexpected. The organization, he knew, had prevented more than one catastrophic event since its inception, but always after fighting the council for authority to execute.

Maybe preventing a worldwide pandemic by disobeying council orders has convinced them of the Taskforce’s worth. Or maybe the council is just getting used to breaking the law of the land.

In the past, he’d seen these same men spend most of the time asking questions related to how close they were to getting exposed. How close to wearing handcuffs instead of how best to prevent a calamity.

Today, the queries were a relief, but they made him a little wary as well. A tinge of paranoia was a good thing, as it brought healthy debate. Treating Taskforce missions as routine was dangerous, because complacency bred mistakes, and he didn’t like the mantle of failure resting on his shoulders alone. Surprised, he realized he wanted the skepticism of the past.