all over to the Humvee to wait until the bird lifted away.
In the idle interval, Sybelle eyed them all. Tired but still ready to rock. Each man had been handpicked, but she would immediately get rid of anyone she did not think was up to a job. Trident was not for sissies.
In the early days of the war on terror, certain powerful people in Washington recognized an opportunity when the various federal security agencies were being shuffled to better deal with the new challenge facing the United States. After a series of private meetings with President Tracy at Camp David, a small organization was created to aggressively carry the fight to the enemy through unorthodox methods, and it was named Task Force Trident. It was a hybrid; not strictly military, although its offices were in the Pentagon; nor was it civilian, although it could draw whatever resources were needed, from analysts to hardware, from any branch of the government. It did not have a budget.
On official organizational flow charts, Trident was given a little box somewhere under the broad black umbrella of MARSOC, lost in the secret labyrinth of special operations, down among such common things as beans and bullets. On a final Sunday of discussion at Camp David, President Tracy authorized the unit with a presidential finding. Because the potential was great that such a team might be misused for political gain, he implemented strict caveats: Only he would give the orders. By necessity, Steve Hanson, his chief of staff, knew about Trident, as did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. No one else. The secretary of state was not in the loop, so that office would have deniability if some Trident mission went sideways. Congressional leaders were not included because their staff members leaked like wet noodles.
The idea for the bold new organization had come to President Tracy as he studied the exploits of a relentless warrior named Kyle Swanson, who had overcome incredible odds to brazenly rescue a kidnapped Marine general in Syria. Valuable and very expendable, Swanson would be the point man, a lightly controlled renegade running operations that were far off the books, and hunting terrorists in distant pastures.
Major General Bradley Middleton, the officer whom Swanson had pulled out of Syria, was put in command of Task Force Trident and answered directly to the president of the United States. If Swanson needed something, he just hollered up the stovepipe, and he would get it.
Middleton intentionally kept the task force as small as possible to avoid attention. He brought in the tough, beautiful, and uniquely talented Sybelle Summers as operations officer. A Recon legend, Master Gunnery Sergeant O.O. Dawkins was drafted to handle general administration. And reaching beyond the Corps, Middleton snared Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman of the Navy, a technical genius. Freedman was called the Wizard at the Naval Academy, a nickname that his Marine co-workers quickly changed to “Lizard.” The team would plus-up as needed with specialists picked for exact missions.
Everyone in Trident knew their real job was to support Kyle Swanson and help him inflict maximum pain and damage on the enemies of the United States. Almost from the moment it was activated, Kyle and Trident had stayed busy with targets who thought they were untouchable, and even taking down the demented terrorist named Juba, who detonated high-casualty biochemical bombs in London and San Francisco.
There was never any lack of work, and as the sound of the rotors faded at Bagram, there was going to be even more.
“I’VE GOT BAD NEWS, gang,” Summers said. “The Israeli-Saudi peace process has been literally blown all to hell.” She removed her glasses and stared at Kyle. “Terrorists hit the private reception for the main players two nights ago with a couple of TOW missiles. Seventeen dead, including Secretary of State Waring and his wife, and the foreign ministers of Israel and Great Britain. More wounded, including Prince Abdullah.”
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Darren Rawls. “Did they get the bastards who did it?” He turned suddenly, in time to see Kyle drop his backpack and collapse on it, staring up at Sybelle with a look of fright on his face. Rawls had never seen such a change in the man’s iron character.
“Yeah. It was a four-man suicide squad. It gets worse. The attack apparently was the trigger for a coup attempt in Saudi Arabia. Low-grade fighting is going on throughout the country.”
Kyle had his face in his hands.
She took a knee beside him and lowered her voice. “Both injured, but alive. Pat is going to be okay because Jeff managed to throw her under a table and covered her with his own body. He’s hurt bad.”
The other five members of the Trident team looked at each other for a moment, then down at their two leaders, and back into the sky full of planes…it all began to make sense. It wasn’t just another 9/11: It might be the start of World War III. Rawls asked, “So what are we supposed to do, Sybelle? And why aren’t you still at the White House?”
“I hated the job, so the president and Middleton decided to put me back on temporary duty with Trident. We might balloon up to a full-sized platoon of dirty fighters like you people and be ready to do whatever Middleton is assigned.”
“So are we going to rotate back to the States?”
She handed Rawls a thick manila envelope filled with orders and vouchers. “No. You guys will be the nuggets around which we all will build the new strike team. You have a few hours to get cleaned up, grab some chow, and sleep before your plane leaves for Kuwait. Someone will meet you on the other end and take you to a special ops camp where we will be putting this thing together. I’ll follow soon.”
Swanson stood, and so did she. “I’m going to see Pat and Jeff before I go back anywhere else,” he said. It was not a request.
“I know,” she said. “Me, too.”
8
SYBELLE SPED THE HUMVEE out of the Special Ops area and along the perimeter road to the complex of big hangars alongside Bagram’s 10,000- foot runway. Waiting inside one, out of sight, was a Cessna Citation X, with its two Rolls Royce jet engines already idling at a soft whistle. The swept-wing aircraft with the high tail wore the markings of Excalibur Enterprises, Ltd., entirely white but for two slim dark blue stripes along the sides and the gold corporate symbol. It was another of Sir Jeff’s toys, a luxury mid-sized business executive jet being flown today by a pair of pilots from the commando arm of Britain’s Royal Air Force.
They dumped the Humvee and jogged up the stairs into the lap of luxury, each grabbing a cold beer from the galley before plopping into cream-colored seats across the standup aisle. A crewmember looked back to check that they were buckled in, and the plane rolled. The protective shade of the hangar gave way to the bright sun and the aircraft took its place at the end of the taxiway, third in line for takeoff behind an AC-130 Spectre gunship and a giant C-141B Starlifter transport. Moments later, the engines whined louder, the brakes were released, and the Citation X slipped away from the ground.
Kyle and Sybelle drank their beers but said little while the plane climbed to 37,000 feet, banked to the west, accelerated to a comfortable pace of Mach.92, about 600 miles per hour, and began chewing up the time zones. Kyle went into the curtained dressing area in the rear of the cabin, got out of his Afghan outfit, did a towel wash in the basin and changed into fresh clothes that had been placed there for him. Sybelle took her turn changing while Kyle opened fresh beers. Both now wore tan slacks, white running shoes and socks, and white polo shirts that were embroidered with the Excalibur gold emblem on the right chest. A casual observer would see just two more workers from somewhere within Sir Jeff’s multinational corporation. They were a couple of spooks hiding in plain sight.
An entertainment center at the front of the cabin doubled as a secure communications console, and Sybelle closed the door to the flight cabin and called the Trident headquarters office at the Pentagon. The face of Benton Freedman, his black hair rumpled, appeared on the big flat screen. On his own screen, he could see Summers and Swanson. “Hello, Kyle. Welcome back,” Freedman said.
“Hey, Lizard,” Kyle responded.
“Is General Middleton around?” Sybelle asked.
“No. He’s been dashing all over Washington from the White House to Foggy Bottom to the Hill. I’ll tell him that
