First Strike (A Brady Hawk Novel Book 1) Read online

  “Yeah —you look sane.”

  “We’ve got far bigger problems to worry about than my sanity—like a traitor in our midst.”

  Hawk rounded the corner and jammed his foot on the brakes, bringing his vehicle to a skidding stop. With a large black SUV in front of him, he turned around and looked over his shoulder while shifting the car into reverse. Before he could step on the gas, another SUV backed out of the alleyway and boxed him in. Several armed men stormed out of the vehicles and surrounded him.

  “Hawk!” Alex said. “What’s going on?”

  He sat in the car with his arms raised. “I’m surrounded.”

  CHAPTER 2

  SENATOR J.D. BLUNT GNAWED on an unlit cigar for a moment before looking at the wiry freshman senator from the Defense Budget Committee across the long conference room table. Meetings that started at 7 a.m. always put him in a foul mood before the first word was ever uttered. But the subject that convened that particular gathering would’ve made his blood boil no matter when it started.

  He slowly removed the cigar from his mouth with his middle and index finger on his right hand and took a deep breath. He put his head down and glared at the man.

  “I’m sorry, Senator,” Blunt said as he snapped his fingers. “What’s your name again?”

  “Hirschbeck. Guy Hirschbeck.”

  “Senator Herschel,” Blunt began, purposefully butchering his fellow senator’s name, “I don’t think I heard what you just said quite right.”

  Hirschbeck straightened his tie and glanced down at the paper on the table in front of him. “I said I recommend ending Project Z, whatever that is. All I know is that it’s a black hole in the defense budget. Perhaps it’s your discretionary fund for all those trips you take to the Bahamas with your aides.” He paused. “You know, the ones you used to take without your wife Carolyn.”

  Blunt leaned back in his chair and smiled. He pointed at Hirschbeck with his cigar. “You know, Huffman, I like you. You’ve got a lot of gumption.”

  Hirschbeck glared at the man. “The people didn’t elect me to become popular with the rest of congress—they elected me to clean up the wasteful spending people like you are making.”

  Blunt stood and stuffed the cigar in his mouth. He then leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the table. “You really wanna take a run at me, son? You better bring it. This project that you know nothing about—and never will—is what’s keeping you safe at night. I suggest you back off before you learn the hard way that serving on the defense committee isn’t about winning approval ratings from the people but about doing what’s necessary to keep them safe.”

  “We have laws, Senator, and—”

  “We also have madmen running around in the Middle East who want to destroy this country, and every time one of our drones drops a bomb on them, five terrorists are born for every one we kill. Project Z is not only more effective militarily but also politically. If you want to try and pull the plug, go ahead. But there will be consequences for you.”

  Hirschbeck swallowed hard. “Are you threatening me?”

  Blunt sat down and clasped his hands together. “I never make threats—only promises.”

  ***

  BLUNT TOSSED A STACK of papers on his desk and pulled out a bottle of bourbon from his bottom right drawer. He didn’t see his chief aide, Hunter Preston, follow him into his office.

  “A little early to be drinking, isn’t it?” Preston said.

  Blunt ignored the question and kept pouring a generous portion. “It’s a little late for me when I have to deal with jerk wads like Hasselman.”

  “It’s Hirschbeck, sir. And I suggest you learn his name because he’s not going away any time soon.”

  Blunt took a long pull on his drink. “We need to dig up some dirt on him, make him resign in disgrace.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, isn’t this the game you played last time that ended up with your exploits to the Caribbean made public?”

  Blunt grunted and swallowed another swig. “The good people of Texas are a forgiving bunch. There aren’t any more skeletons in the closet for them to dig up—well, at least there aren’t the kind that would make my constituency turn against me.” He paused and stared out the window. “Did you need something?”

  “Yes, General Johnson needs to speak with you. There’s been a development. He said it’s urgent.”

  Blunt nodded and dismissively waved his hand at Preston. Once his aide closed the door, Blunt dialed Johnson, the general tasked with leading Project Z, or for those in the know, Firestorm. General Johnson was hardly more than a figurehead required to get approval on all missions involving Brady Hawk. The program’s two other special operatives were less active and used only as a replacement for Hawk if something should happen to him or if he was preoccupied. Blunt was the one actually in charge of the scope of Firestorm while Johnson managed the handlers, oversaw the daily administrative tasks, and helped plan missions.

  “What’s going on? I’m facing a shit storm here with a nosy little freshman senator,” Blunt said.

  Johnson sighed. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as we just lost contact with our top asset in the field. I wanted to see if you could possibly call in a favor for me and see if we can find out where he is and get an extraction team together to pull him out.”

  Blunt drummed his fingers on the desk. “I told you when this started that you and your team were on your own, and I still mean it. No calls. No favors. If he can’t figure a way out, he obviously wasn’t the right man for the job.”

  “But Senator—”

  “Figure out another way or let him twist in the wind. Whatever got him caught, he should’ve been more careful.”

  “How do you expect me to run a program like this?”

  “Very carefully.” He paused. “Besides, regardless of what happens to our asset, everything is going as planned.”

  CHAPTER 3

  ALEX DUNCAN HAD TYPED FURIOUSLY on her keyboard, trying to reposition the few satellites she could maneuver. The last transmission she saw revealed a chilling image—Hawk boxed in and surrounded with his last hopeless words echoing in her mind. I’m surrounded.

  But when the satellites came into the proper position, Hawk was gone. So was his Land Rover, along with every one else. The street was quiet, devoid of even a trace of human activity.

  She continued her search with the satellites but knew there wouldn’t be much chance of finding Hawk, if any. After several hours of fruitless monitoring the bank of screens in front of her, she decided to get a few hours of sleep. She awoke at 5:30 a.m. and waited until a reasonable hour to report Hawk’s situation to Senator Blunt. But since she told him what happened, she hadn’t heard a word.

  Damn it, Hawk! If you’d have just listened to me.

  She needed coffee—a gallon of it, at least. Locking up her office, she wandered down the street toward her favorite diner, The Golden Egg. After she took a seat at the counter, she said hello to her favorite chef, Cookie, and didn’t even have to place an order. Cookie slid a full mug of black coffee in front of her and rattled off her usual order: scrambled eggs, hash browns, buttery grits, two crisp pieces of bacon, and wheat toast. The wheat toast made her feel like she was at least making an attempt to eat healthy. It was a lie she happily told herself and tried desperately to believe it.

  I’ll run it off at the gym.

  She grabbed a copy of The Washington Post that had been abandoned on the seat next to her. “Congress Debates Refugee Policy” blared the headline above the fold. She shook her head.

  If people only knew what really goes on in this town …

  She flipped the pages until she reached the “Beltway Roundup” section that covered all the ins and outs of what was happening among the D.C. elite. That’s when she saw his picture—Simon Coker, the head of the CIA, the man who oversaw her firing. His mere image dredged up painful memories she would’ve rather remained bu
ried deep within the recesses of her mind.

  “If you’re not okay with how we do things here, perhaps it’s time you see your way out and never come back,” Coker had told her in their last face-to-face meeting.

  She’d demanded to see him, upset over the interrogation tactics she witnessed with a suspected terrorist. She confronted him, warning that she had a copy of the torture and would leak it to the press if he didn’t change the way the agency conducted interrogations in the future. He ignored her and promised her that if she did such a thing, she’d experience something far worse.

  Their back and forth lasted for less than a minute before he had her escorted off the premises, never to return. She didn’t even have a chance to retrieve the thumb drive she’d copied the interrogation on. A rookie mistake on her part, one she vowed never to make again—a vow that manifested itself through her meticulous record keeping. All the shoeboxes full of thumb drives scattered throughout her house since she started working for Firestorm proved that she had indeed taken her promise seriously.

  However, that new habit didn’t help Alex in her immediate plight following her firing from the CIA. Coker’s vendetta against her was so strong that he manipulated her records to the point that it was nearly impossible for her to get a job. She came home one day to find a bouquet of flowers on her apartment steps with a note that read, “Here’s a gift card for McDonald’s. Perhaps you can apply for a job there and they’ll take you.” It was signed “SC”.

  She went inside her apartment and proceeded to break most of her dishes in a fit of rage. In just over two years, she went from joining the CIA to being broke and destitute. It was a stunning turn of events for Alex, who’d always dreamed of being a spy since she learned the truth about her mother. When she was seventeen, she came across some documents in her parents’ attic and learned that her mother was a spy for the KGB. Her mother admitted that it was only partially true—she was a double spy, feeding benign information back to Moscow while divulging key secrets to the CIA.

  But one of the field agents Blunt recruited had also worked with Alex at the CIA and recommended he talk to her. Her acumen as a handler and analyst was exactly what Blunt needed. She’d maneuvered around Coker’s blackball and decided she wasn’t going to waste a second chance at spycraft. Yet there she was. On her fourth mission with Firestorm, she’d lost Hawk.

  Her phone buzzed on the counter next to her. It was Blunt.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said after she answered. “Hawk should’ve stuck to the mission.”

  “That was the mission,” she said before mouthing “thank you” to Cookie who’d just put a hot breakfast plate in front of her.

  “Don’t try to defend him,” Blunt said. “It looks better for you to admit that he went rogue.”

  She sighed. “I told him to get out of there before prayers ended.”

  “Hawk’s gonna do what Hawk’s gonna do. Just keep looking for him. Don’t worry. He’ll contact us when he gets the opportunity.”

  She inhaled her food and slapped a generous tip on the counter.

  “Thanks, Cookie,” she said, grabbing the copy of The Washington Post and turning toward the door.

  Despite her suspicious nature, she never noticed the man sitting in the back corner who got up when she left and followed her outside.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SMELL OF BURLAP overwhelmed Hawk as he took a deep breath and struggled to free himself of the bindings around his wrists, which bound him to a wooden chair. Even if he could free himself, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see what awaited him. Armed guards? An explosive device? A sword-wielding man? He couldn’t imagine a single pleasant image on the other side of the sack tied snuggly around his head. So he stopped trying and decided to save his strength.

  I bet Alex is freaking out right now.

  Just the thought made him smile. He knew she liked him. Call it instinct—or experience—but he just knew. Despite baiting her, he knew getting her to profess her love for him over the coms would be next to impossible. And he wouldn’t give her a shred of hope until he met her face to face. There was only so much you could learn about a person by talking over a long distance. The face-to-face meeting was crucial—and it wasn’t about looks either, though if Hawk was honest with himself, he knew it was around twenty-five percent about looks. The rest, however, was about chemistry. And while they seemed to have chemistry on their missions, he wouldn’t know for sure until he spent some time with her in person. He needed to look into her eyes, touch her hand, smell her perfume. He needed to see if she could jam or had two left feet when his favorite Michael Jackson song—“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”—came on the radio. He needed to watch her as she answered his questions—the personal kind.

  Just thinking about Alex gave him the distraction he needed to avoid dwelling on the reality of his current situation—hands tied behind his back to a chair with a sack secured around his head.

  Hawk jolted back to reality when he heard a door slam across the room. A guard removed the sack on Hawk’s head and then exited. He peered into the room, struggling to adjust to the sudden flood of light. Repeatedly squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them, his surroundings began to come into focus—and it was a more dire situation than he hoped. Armed guards stood near the door. Tall and muscular, they looked like they’d used their weapons plenty in the past. Then another man entered the room right behind them. He wasn’t carrying a gun, but he had something in his hand.

  “He’s all yours,” the guard said before leaving through the only door.

  Two guards accompanied the latecomer as he strode across the floor toward Hawk. The man brandished a knife, scraping it lightly across his thumb as he stared down his prisoner. Initially, Hawk didn’t recognize the man—but it was clear he was the one in charge.

  Hawk scanned the room, identifying three exit points, the least desirable being the door they’d just entered. How heavily guarded it was and where it led remained a mystery, but the two opaque windows on each side of the large room shielded the bright sunlight. Wherever they led, it was into an open area outside. There were still plenty of unknown variables, but he liked his chances there as opposed to an unknown corridor.

  As the man walked toward Hawk, he didn’t flinch. If they’d wanted him dead, he’d already be dead. And in the off chance that they only wanted to keep him alive for propaganda purposes, he sure as hell wasn’t about to read some radical diatribe before they chopped his head off. Hawk figured his death would be short and sweet, though he lamented the fact that he’d die without ever drinking another pint of his favorite scotch.

  “Mister Hawk,” the man began, “it seems we have something in common.”

  “What? We both don’t mind killing another man?”

  The man furrowed his brow and glared at Hawk. “Is this sarcasm? I never quite had a knack for picking up on it when I studied at UCLA.”

  “Now, we definitely don’t have as much in common as you think. I’m a Trojan, and we Trojans hate Bruins.”

  The man closed his eyes and shook his head, annoyed at Hawk’s attempts at humor. “This isn’t comedy hour, Mr. Hawk.”

  “Well, it sure ain’t a day at the spa either,” Hawk snapped.

  “Perhaps I should start over. My name is Rasul Moradi, and I understand we have a common enemy—one that I’d rather see dead.”

  Hawk looked off in the distance at the two guards who’d entered with Moradi. Half listening to his captor, he tried to calculate his chances of escape while he surveyed the other men in the room.

  I’d put it at 10-1 that I don’t make it. And I like those odds.

  “Does the name Nasim Ghazi sound familiar to you?” Moradi asked.

  Hawk slowly returned his gaze to Moradi. It did indeed. Nasim Ghazi was the whole reason he was in Kirkuk, tracking down Al Hasib’s chief bomb maker. He couldn’t strike without being there, and Firestorm wanted eyes on him to develop a plan to take him out. If the powers that preside
d over Firestorm had their way, Ghazi’s death would appear as an accident so as to avoid a retaliatory backlash. The rumor was that Ghazi liked to admire his work, often returning to the scene to study how the bomb exploded in an effort to better place the next bomb he detonated. Ghazi had just struck the U.S. Consulate in Kirkuk, and Hawk had been dispatched within minutes after it happened to look for the infamous bomb maker. If he got close enough to kill the man somehow and make it look like an accident, all the better. As long as Hawk could see Ghazi, all would be well, and for the time being, Ghazi was off doing who knew what, plotting against any number of Al Hasib’s enemies.

  “I’ve heard of him,” Hawk said. “What do you want with him?”

  “Same as you, I suppose,” Moradi said as he looked at the ground. Then he looked up. “I want him dead.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Let’s just say it’s personal.”

  “What?” Hawk said, feigning not hearing.

  Moradi bent over and got right in Hawk’s face. “I said, ‘It’s personal’.”

  Hawk eased back in his chair before jerking forward violently. He cracked Moradi’s nose, sending him sprawling on the ground in pain. Hawk rolled over and whipped his chair against the floor, shattering it as his bindings loosened. He worked to get free as the guards rushed toward the commotion about fifteen meters away.

  In one swift move, Hawk shook the ropes free and rolled onto the floor next to Moradi, who writhed in agony. Hawk pulled Moradi’s gun from his holster and used his former captor as a human shield. He knelt down and picked up Moradi’s knife as well, shoving it in his pocket.

  “That’s far enough,” Hawk said to the guards as he held a gun to Moradi’s head. The two guards appeared confused until Moradi ordered them in Arabic to put down their weapons.

  In a perfect situation, Hawk would’ve wasted the two guards and Moradi too. But this was far from perfect with the element of the unknown making him hesitant to develop a solid plan. Taking risks in a familiar environment was one thing, but rushing in blind with no support was foolish. He ordered the guards to sit against a pole along the edge of the wall. Quickly, Hawk worked to secure them to the pole with the rope that had just held him moments ago. He then ripped part of their shirts and created a makeshift gag.