Headquarters Battalion, Fort Belvoir
November 11, 9:14 A.M.
There was a time when Major Hamilton Breen loved his life and every day that comprised it. That time ended just three months and one week ago. Sitting in the back of a nondescript white van on a dirty, winding street in Little Afghanistan, Breen could not believe how his life and outlook had fallen into such a gloomy state.
It’s a good thing you are, above all, a patriot and a professional, he thought.
Breen had loved, deeply, where he lived and worked at the University of Virginia campus. He adored the woman he was dating, an American history professor who challenged if rarely changed his traditional views. They both enjoyed his motorcycle on the weekend—a Yamaha Star Eluder, big transcontinental job, not a Harley. They loved the feel of the wind in their faces. Breen was excited by his work, teaching. An attorney and a criminologist, he had joined the Judge Advocate General’s Corps because he loved his country and took its laws and responsibilities very seriously. He wanted to have an active hand in shaping the next generation of Constitutionalists.
So what did the United States Navy do with me, he thought. They sent me on a mission where we executed a man without a trial.
Maybe they sent him as a counterbalance. A conscience in a business that did not need or want one. Without being asked, he was made an essential part of a fledgling dark ops team known as Black Wasp. Not that the thirty-seven-year-old wasn’t given a choice. Either he participated in the open-ended prototype counterterrorism project known as WASP—Wartime Accelerated Strike Placement—or he went on a sabbatical and did nothing until the army forgave him.
The navy was not forgiving.
The transfer wasn’t quite that cut-and-dried, but that was the heart of it and it was abrupt. The team needed a law-and-forensics member and he was it. Of course, he was not told, at first, that he would be seconded to Fort Belvoir as a “tenant organization.” The Black Wasp unit was attached to the Headquarters Battalion, where they were listed as “support personnel for worldwide military contingencies.”
Maybe the army did not know that at the time. If Black Wasp’s first mission had failed, the team would probably have been disbanded and forgotten.
Cut down by success, he thought bitterly.
Success had meant moving to Virginia—away from his dear Inez, away from JAG, away from everything except the two warriors who made up the rest of the team. He had always missed Inez Levey when she went on her field trips to explore some forgotten part of history. Soon the FaceTime sessions slowed and then … stopped.
Stop thinking about it, he reminded himself. It didn’t help.
Right now, those two soldiers were busy. Lieutenant Grace Lee, twenty-six, of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Airborne, and Marine Lance Corporal Jaz Rivette, twenty-two, were making their way through a courtyard house built on a slope of Sher Darwaza mountain. Breen watched their progress via a link with the heads-up display in their helmets. Metal was automatically outlined in red by the threat detection system, a variation of facial recognition software. So far, the TDS had identified keys, an old flip-style cell phone, and a grapefruit knife.
Rivette was on the right, Grace on the left. Their mission was to free a Sikh family—parents and two young daughters—who were held hostage by bandits searching for jewelry and cash.
The major’s job was to watch for any outsiders who might be coming their way. He was not to lend any other tactical support. He eyeballed passersby, visible through video cameras hidden around the vehicle and providing a 360-degree view of the exterior. In case Grace and Rivette were trapped, or in the event the enemy sent out a “moving hostage”—someone who could reconnoiter but also be shot in the back if they tried to flee—his job was to help extricate them. If something went wrong, his only job was to extricate himself.
The day was bright and cloudless and the two had approached on the shadowed courtyard side of the home. That was the side overlooked by the mountain. Using an acoustic receiver designed as a windshield sunscreen, they had ascertained that the captive family had been divided. The children were in the tiny kitchen and the parents were in the living room, tied and gagged. The sounds were extremely muffled, suggesting they were also lying on the mattresses that would typically cover the floor.
A tall man in a black keffiyeh appeared from a doorway on the left. In his hands, pointed down, was the unmistakable outline of an M16A2 carbine.
Lieutenant Lee—who carried no firearms, only an eight-inch camo knife—jumped at the man with a high forward kick. The toe of her boot caught him just under the jaw and knocked him against the doorjamb. She came down beside him, crouching. With her left hand she grabbed the hand holding the gun while with her right hand she swung the knife up and buried it deep in his gut. The Afghani moaned as she rose, still holding his hand and pulling the blade toward his sternum.
He dropped without another sound. While Grace extricated herself from his chest, Rivette had moved ahead, toward the kitchen.
“Bathroom!” Grace hissed into the helmet comm.
Rivette spun. They had already noted that the bathroom door was closed and the marksman knew just where to look. His Colt .45 automatic pistol was up and aimed even as the TDS identified a Russian AS Val assault rifle being raised in the marine’s direction.
Rivette fired once, putting a bullet between the man’s eyes. The enemy went back and then dropped, the gun falling to the carpet.
Now that Black Wasp had announced itself, it was time to move.
“Target A!” ordered Lee, who was in command of the incursion.
Grace took the lead so she would have a clear path to whoever came from that direction. Rivette moved ahead while covering their rear.
Suddenly, a text message appeared in both heads-up displays and on Breen’s monitors:
Report to Briefing Room A
Both combatants swore. Breen pressed a red button on Lee’s screen. The dead men vanished. So did the citizens of Little Afghanistan who had been milling around him. The Afghanis were all holograms programmed into the heads-up displays. The simulation in the small training village built north of the Tulley Gate was over.
“I liked the last one better,” Rivette said as he and Grace walked from the house. “Pulling out the wounded marine made me feel connected, y’know what I’m saying?”
“Sikhs were not part of your experience growing up,” said the five-foot-two Lee.
“Maybe … yeah,” the San Pedro, California, native replied. “Neither was rock climbing and gymnastics, but I like that too. And SCUBA.”
The pressure of a body, simulated weight, was provided by sensors in the fine, wireless gloves the two wore. The fabric did not interfere with dexterity or the operation of their weapons. Shoulder pads and boots with shifting gel in the lining simulated physical hits. The guns were real, firing blanks.
Major Breen wasn’t convinced this setup was more effective than the cardboard cutouts that used to spring up suddenly for quick-shoot, no-shoot calls. But he had to admit that, inconsiderate of the cost, there were only two places where bleeding-edge technology like this was being fielded, and that was the U.S. military and Disneyland.
Breen emerged from the van. He was wearing fatigues and a leather jacket, which comprised the bulk of his wardrobe since he got here. Grace and Rivette emerged from the structure as they always did: helmets tucked protectively under their arms as they critiqued themselves and each other. It was necessary, he knew, but Grace and Rivette had taken on a sibling quality that turned every discussion into a debate.
“… should maybe have hung back at the bathroom,” Rivette was saying. “Instead of shooting long, I could’ve pushed him back inside and muffled the report in his gut.”
“And if his accomplices heard anyway, I might have faced two or more kidnappers while you were still in the loo,” Grace pointed out.
“Nah, I’d’ve been out,” Rivette insisted. “That Colt’s got a back kick, helpful if you use it right.”
Breen remained silent while the two entered the van, secured their quasi-VR helmets in a foam-padded footlocker, then plopped into the two seats that hadn’t been removed for Breen’s equipment. It wasn’t just the back-and-forth between his teammates that caused him to withdraw. The major was not quite sure how he felt right now. As much as this drilling had gotten familiar, even old, and as curious as he was about why the meeting had been called, he was not the same kind of warrior as these two. He did not need to see action.
Rivette had already pivoted to the next topic as he fell into one of the seats. “I’ll bet it’s that plane crash,” he said.
Grace was still thinking about the drill and seemed to have no opinion; Breen had not thought about it until the lance corporal had mentioned it. He could be right. The matter was South African, and the U.S. was impatient when it came to potential terrorists.
Not that I blame them, Breen thought as he shut the door behind Lieutenant Lee. Even if Washington weren’t obsessive about combatting its enemies, Pretoria had limited resources to apply to an investigation of this type.
Their destination was Building 247, the Army Force Management School off Mount Vernon Road. The drive took ten minutes, during which Breen remained silent, Rivette ranged over a variety of topics that included monologues about the firearms the Afghanis had been carrying, and Grace sat mostly watching a replay of the drill from Rivette’s head cam. The woman liked to know what she had missed, just off to one side, because she was so present during a confrontation.
The three-story brick building had an appropriate collegiate look and feel.
There was no insignia, no indication of rank, and no name patch on the uniforms of the three Black Wasp members. They had the focus and demeanor of MPs on a mission and the three received—but did not return—only brief looks from the personnel they encountered. The glances were largely because Grace and Rivette carried weapons on their hips. Typically, the only guns and knives in the building were used for instruction or security.
They had never been to this building before. A security guard was seated behind a desk, facing the doors. Before her was a sign that said VISITORS. After sternly eying the Colt and eight-inch blade, the corporal rose, asked for ID, and demanded that the weapons be surrendered.
Her hand was on the butt of her own sidearm, a Sig Sauer 9mm XM17. When he saw it, Rivette nodded approvingly.
“Helluva pistol, especially with the extended-capacity magazine,” the lance corporal remarked.
“Mister, I gave you instructions—”
The radio looped to her belt crackled. “Corporal Franklin, they’re cleared as-is,” a voice said. “Please direct them to Briefing Room A.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman replied.
The corporal’s hand came off her gun. Sitting, she tapped a button on her laptop then removed three visitors’ passes from a credit-card-sized printer. She handed one to each guest and watched while they put them on.
“Make a right turn behind me and continue to the end,” the corporal said. “You will know Briefing Room A by the black letter on the door.”
Breen could not tell, and did not care, if she was being sarcastic. It was not unknown for soldiers entrusted with localized commands—like a gate or parking garage—to turn into generals.
Grace and Rivette walked ahead of Breen. Whatever this was about, they were both going to be itchy today. Grace followed the morning drills with breakfast and then a ninety-minute martial arts workout. She trained in the gym just a short walk from Little Afghanistan. Her targets were practice dummies, heavy bags, and leather pads on the walls. She used bo staffs, katanas, throwing stars, escrima sticks, nunchucks, and her knife to attack imaginary foes. Occasionally, someone who did not know her kung fu skills challenged her to spar. Whatever was thrown at her in the gymnasium ring invariably failed to land. Whoever threw it was invariably thrown.
After breakfast, Rivette went to either the indoor or outdoor shooting range. Regardless of whatever outfit was at the gunnery, a thumbprint scan gave Rivette unlimited access to the field and arsenal. His first words to the officer in charge were always the same: “Surprise me.” The young man always preferred to be alone, since the only competition he cared about was with himself. If others were there, they invariably struck up a rivalry—typically announced without words but with looks and then pops of a handgun or rifle.
Just as inevitably, the challenger was bested.
In their time here, both Grace and Rivette had found more admirers than fist- or gunslingers who were looking to take them down. The military was also quick to appreciate skill. Especially when your life might depend on it one day.
They arrived at Briefing Room A and Grace knocked.
“Enter.”
She opened the door and the three stepped in. The shades were drawn and the fluorescent lights had a dull, ivory tinge. The room was neither as spacious nor as welcoming as the first place they had met the man inside, the Officer’s Club not far from here.
But the man was the same. And so was the serious set of his expression. He was standing beside a round conference table and waited until Breen had shut the door before addressing the team.
“Good to see you,” he said, the hint of a smile cracking his strong, resistant jaw. “We have business.”