Crusader One (Tier One Thrillers Book 3) Read online

  Six, seven.

  AK-47 gunfire—and the aft shooter.

  Jarvis dropped to a knee, exhaled, and started the count anew. On the three count, AK-47 rounds ripped down the passage, starting the pattern over again.

  Four, five . . .

  Jarvis leaned out into the passageway, sighting at the spot where he’d just seen the aft gunman. He waited, tension on the trigger . . .

  A head full of shaggy hair emerged.

  Jarvis squeezed off a round.

  The top of the head exploded in a red cloud, and the man slid down the door frame to the floor. Jarvis pulled back around the corner and checked his six, verifying the hatch behind him was still shut. A beat later, gunfire popped toward the front of the long passage.

  “One, Two,” came the report over the wireless. “Forward shooter is dead.”

  With both enemy shooters down, Jarvis moved swiftly around the corner and up the passageway to Three, scanning over his rifle. “You okay?” he asked, crouching beside the Israeli operator, who was still dug in next to the water fountain.

  The commando nodded tightly but pointed to where a red stain was growing on the thigh of his gray tactical pants.

  “Artery or bone?” Jarvis asked.

  The operator shook his head. “Just a graze. I’m operational.”

  “Two, One. I’m going to breach with Three on starboard. You go port.”

  “Copy. Repositioning to port.”

  Taking the lead, Jarvis and Three moved forward along the passage toward the bridge, clearing two crossing passages en route. When they reached the hatch to the bridge, Jarvis pressed his back to the bulkhead and used his tactical mirror to survey the bridge through the porthole window in the hatch.

  “Two shooters in the forward port corner and one in the forward starboard corner. One crewman at the helm, another on a radio with a rifle beside him, and then a man seated between them—probably the captain,” he reported softly into his mike. “Can’t see the rear corners.”

  A double-click in his ear told him that Two copied the report.

  Jarvis watched and waited as Three prepped a breacher charge beside the hinges on the hatch. In his mind, Jarvis pictured Two performing the exact same operation in mirror image. Once the charge was set, Three glanced at Jarvis. Wordlessly, they both repositioned clear of the blast arc.

  “Set,” Two reported a beat later.

  Jarvis lowered his head, looked away, and said, “On my mark—three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  The breacher detonation roared in the narrow metal passageway, the concussive shock wave hitting Jarvis in the chest like a club. He turned in time to see the hatch tumble into the bridge, blown completely off its hinges. Without missing a beat, he was up and moving into the bridge. He spun right first, killing the shooter he’d seen in the forward starboard corner. Next, he swung his M4 left and used a headshot to down one of two shooters in the forward port corner, at the same time as Two took out the other. In his peripheral vision, he saw Three clearing the rear starboard corner. He crouched low and continued to spin toward the helm. An AK-47 barked and a 7.62 round smacked the steel bulkhead just over his head. The higher-pitched double crack of an M4 discharging behind him ended that threat, but a different bearded crewman lunged and grabbed the barrel of Jarvis’s M4 midswing. At the same time, the bearded fighter drew a revolver from a thigh holster. Jarvis stepped in and smashed his helmet into the man’s nose and followed with a knee strike to the groin. The pistol discharged, sending a round into the floor. Jarvis stepped left, crashed his forearm down on the back of the man’s wrist, breaking the bone and freeing his weapon. He dropped his shoulder and took a knee, then squeezed off two rounds with upward trajectories, the first blowing out the crewman’s jaw and the second exiting the crown of the head.

  The Captain barked surrender in Arabic, and both he and the helmsman threw their hands up in defeat. The crewman manning the radio, however, was too slow and took a bullet in the temple from Three.

  “Bridge is secure,” Jarvis said as his teammates forced the remaining two men onto their faces.

  “Fantail secure,” came the reply from a voice he recognized as Four.

  “Mercury, this is Neptune. We have confirmed Ophelia in the cargo hold,” a new voice added, using the code word for the illegal Iranian arms shipment.

  “Check,” Jarvis said. “Any CASEVAC?”

  “Negative, Mercury,” said Neptune. “Just a minor ankle injury.”

  “Roger. We have a non-urgent flesh wound here,” Jarvis said. “Ready for EXFIL.”

  “Copy. We have a helo en route, nine mikes out, with a proxy crew to take control of the ship. We’ll EXFIL the two wounded on that bird and everyone else will EXFIL as briefed.”

  “Roger that, Neptune. Nice work,” Jarvis said.

  “You, too, Mercury. Not bad for a Yank.”

  Jarvis lowered the barrel of his M4 until it pointed at the floor. He checked his watch and then let himself smile. They’d conducted a flawless ship takedown in less than ten minutes from initial boarding. The Israeli proxy crew would be here soon to sail the ship to Haifa and confiscate the rockets that had been intended for terrorists. Tonight, millions of Israelis were sleeping a little easier, but none of them would ever know the reason why.

  The next six hours passed in a blur as the survivors were taken off the ship, the command of the vessel passed to the Israeli Navy, and endless checks were conducted by the security detail. Jarvis felt a new sense of camaraderie and respect from the rest of the Shayetet 13 commandos as they flew together by helicopter back to base. Not only did he feel like part of the team now; he felt like a brother. After stowing their gear and debriefing with the Head Shed, they were free until the 2000 briefing. After checking in on the Israeli operator designated as Three to make sure the man’s thigh wound had been patched up okay, Jarvis stepped out into the light of day. But before wandering back to his very dark and very cold air-conditioned room to grab some well-deserved rack time, he needed to work out the knots from the tension of combat. Some guys hit the weights, others put on their running shoes, but Jarvis’s preferred means of decompression was an open-water three-mile swim. And so with goggles and fins in hand, he made his way to the beach in front of the base.

  As he stripped off his shirt, a voice behind him said, “There’s a wonderful gym on the base, I’m told.”

  Jarvis didn’t look over at the thin, middle-aged Israeli smoking a cigarette and sitting on a nearby rock. He’d already decided that the man’s presence was of no immediate concern—especially here, on a beach secured by the Shayetet 13. Nevertheless, the man had garnered Jarvis’s attention, because he was the only person on the beach dressed in slacks and a starched shirt. He was no Shayetet commando, this man, but Jarvis had assigned him an 85 percent probability of being a spook.

  “I imagine that most of the Shayetet maritime commandos are probably there now, if you’re looking for company,” the man continued.

  “I’m not,” Jarvis said, looking over, and set his brain to work trying to match this man’s face with everyone he’d met, seen in pictures, or surveilled. A beat later he had it; this guy had been in the TOC during last night’s pre-mission brief, standing quietly by the back door, chain-smoking.

  The Israeli stood and flicked the filterless cigarette toward the rolling surf. It landed on the wet sand, rolled a half foot, and then lay smoldering until a wave took it.

  “Those things will kill you,” Jarvis said.

  “So they tell me,” the man said with a wry smile. “But in my line of work, to live long enough to die from cancer would mean only one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That I was a miserable failure.”

  Jarvis laughed and decided he liked this spook.

  The Israeli took a step toward him and extended his hand. “Levi Harel.”

  Jarvis clasped the other man’s hand. “Kelso Jarvis.”

  “Nice to meet you, Commande
r. Shayetet 13 has much they can learn from one of JSOC’s Tier One SEALs. I hope they are taking advantage of the opportunity.”

  Jarvis scanned Harel’s face, probing for subtext or insincerity, but found none, and so he worded his reply accordingly. “I think there’s much we can learn from each other.”

  Harel nodded. “Indeed, indeed . . . Learning from each other is exactly the reason you are here as opposed to one of a half-dozen other Tier One operators who applied for the exchange program. I must confess, I’ve had my eye on you for some time—congratulations on selecting for O-5, incidentally.”

  Apparently, this chance encounter was clearly anything but. “It seems you’ve caught me at a disadvantage, Mr. Harel,” Jarvis replied. “You’ve clearly done your homework on me, but I wasn’t afforded the same opportunity.”

  “I’m sorry,” Harel said. “It’s a terrible habit. My staff tells me I’m always playing games, but I say life is too short not to play games. Besides, how we play says more about us than how we fight.”

  “If that’s your philosophy, then maybe for your next exchange program billet you should request someone from Navy Morale Welfare and Recreation instead of from the Tier One. MWR is all about fun and games.”

  “See, there you go,” Harel said with a chuckle. “I knew you had a sense of humor hiding in that commando body of yours.”

  Jarvis sighed. “As fun as trading jokes with you is, I’ve got a three-mile swim to do. So, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Not a problem. Go enjoy your swim. We can talk about your future another time,” Harel said. “When you’re not busy.”

  “Are you always like this?” Jarvis said, shaking his head.

  Harel shrugged. “Yes.”

  “In that case, what about my future is Mossad so interested in?”

  “Not Mossad, just me. In our current positions, we are instruments of policy. But down the road, men like us must transition or we become irrelevant.”

  Jarvis narrowed his eyes, intrigued. “And by transition you’re speaking of command?”

  “I was going to say that we must transition from being instruments of policy to the architects of policy, but command works, too,” Harel said, fishing another cigarette from his pack. “Very American construct, command.”

  “So you’re out here on the beach this morning to recruit me to be your—what? Your American mole in JSOC?”

  Harel screwed up his face at this and made an angry pffttt sound. “There’s no reason to insult me. I’m not looking for a mole. I’m here because I was hoping to forge an alliance. The day will come when we’ll both need a friend on the other side. I believe our countries share something much more intimate than defense contracts and Hanukkah.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We share enemies, my friend. Enemies everywhere.”

  Jarvis met Harel’s gaze, and in the other man’s eyes he saw integrity, wisdom, and hope. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “You’re the reason they put me on last night’s stick.”

  The spook flashed him a sly grin. “What’s the point of the exchange program if Shayetet is going to keep you locked up in the TOC? Like I said, there is much we can learn from each other. Allies work together. Allies fight together.”

  Jarvis flashed Harel a smile of his own. “You ever heard of Texas Hold’em?”

  Harel shook his head. “No.”

  “It’s a poker game. Maybe after the 2000 brief, if there’s nothing going on, we could grab a beer and I’ll teach you. After all, you like playing games.”

  Harel nudged a new cigarette from the pack. “I accept, under one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Beers are on me,” Harel said, turned, and walked away.

  He watched the man head up the beach toward Chateau Pelerin—the castle that rose like a fortress from the center of Atlit Naval Base. As the Mossad spy disappeared from view, Jarvis replayed in his mind the most profound snippet of their conversation.

  We share enemies, my friend. Enemies everywhere.

  PART I

  Never underestimate the power of murder.

  —Arkady Zhukov

  CHAPTER 1

  Present Day

  Key West, Florida

  April 8

  0830 Local Time

  Dempsey squinted against the glare of the morning sun.

  Despite it being April, and despite it being early, he could already tell that today was going to be a hot one. A bead of sweat ran down his back between his shoulder blades.

  Hot and muggy.

  Things could be worse, he told himself. I could be in Iraq.

  Key West was a ghost town this time of day. The streets were deserted, the town’s all-night revelers having long since found a bed to pass out in—their own, or that of a willing stranger. On the horizon, beyond where Greene Street dead-ended at Front Street, he could make out the marina and its docks stretching like fingers into the blue. The Keys formed the boundary line separating the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico from the Atlantic, and the mixing of currents helped support a vibrant marine ecology. But he wasn’t here on vacation. No snorkeling or deep-sea fishing for him today. He was in Key West on business. Ember business.

  His target was inside Captain Tony’s Saloon. As he scanned the area, the cool metal of the Sig Sauer 229 against the small of his back reminded him not to take anything for granted. It was extremely unlikely that either he or his target was being surveilled, but the events of the past few months had proven that simply being on American soil did not guarantee his safety.

  He slipped on his wraparound sunglasses and turned right, walking down Greene Street toward the corner and adding a tired stumble to his gait for anyone who might be watching from behind a window or inside a parked car. He pulled out his phone as he approached the corner and made a show of rotating and repositioning the screen for optimal viewing in the sunlight, when in fact his real objective was to scan the street and check his six. Satisfied, he walked to the corner of Telegraph Lane, where he stopped and leaned against the newspaper box, this time pretending to make a call while checking the next block. He spied a single car pulled in tight to the curb, facing him on the one-way street, and despite the tinted windows, he saw motion inside.

  He crossed the street, heading south on Telegraph and pretending to talk on the phone, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the car. As he approached, he could hear that the engine was running. And the driver, a twentysomething male, was watching him.

  Dempsey lowered the phone from his ear and reached around to slip it in a back pocket—putting his hand inches from his pistol. Suddenly, the rear driver-side door popped open. Dempsey’s hand went immediately to grip his Sig and his body came alive with adrenaline. He squared his shoulders to the vehicle, readying himself for whatever threat climbed out.

  A bare foot with brightly painted toenails appeared below the doorsill, followed a beat later by another.

  “You are such an asshole, Doug,” a young woman hollered as she stumbled out of the car onto the sidewalk.

  She slammed the door, and when she saw Dempsey looking at her, she smiled and attempted to straighten her tangled hair. With blushing cheeks, she crossed the street and headed north on Telegraph as the car pulled away from the curb. The driver beeped twice at the girl, who waved and then turned left on Greene Street and disappeared.

  Dempsey released his grip on the pistol and let his arm fall to his side. With no other cars, and no suspicious characters loitering in the vicinity of Captain Tony’s Saloon, he decided it was time to head inside. There was absolutely no telling how this encounter was going to go, so he readied himself for the worst.

  As he stepped inside, he expected to be hit by a blast of cool AC, but the bar wasn’t running any air-conditioning. He slipped off his sunglasses, pausing a beat to let his eyes adjust to the dim ambient light. He quickly checked the exits, having scouted the place in advance yesterday. Three middle-aged women occupied a b
ooth to his left. They looked sunburned, haggard from lack of sleep, and hungover. The only other patron in the joint sat on a stool at the bar, his hunched back callously turned to the entry. Overhead, hundreds of bras—donated over the years by inebriated female patrons—swayed gently in the breeze.

  “Sit anywhere youz like,” the overweight barkeep said without looking up.

  Dempsey nodded and feigned indecision about where to sit. Meanwhile, the bartender shifted his attention to the hunched figure on the stool.

  “Rough night, Doc?” the bartender asked.

  “Yeah,” the man groaned. “Coffee, Mike.”

  “Sure thing.” The barkeep laughed, filling a mug with coffee. “I hope last night ended with you landing a hot-bodied chick in your bed for once.”

  The man grumbled something inaudible in reply, and Captain Tony waddled into the kitchen. Dempsey walked to the bar, not happy that the initial approach would require him to place his back to the door. With a final glance at the entrance, he took the stool beside his target, keeping one foot on the ground, ready to move and react if needed. His gaze fell to the small tattoo on the man’s left wrist—a SEAL trident with six stars underneath.

  Dan Munn looked older than Dempsey remembered. And thinner by at least twenty pounds. The last time he’d seen his friend was in the hospital, when the former SEAL turned Special Warfare Surgeon was overseeing Jack Kemper’s recovery from spine surgery after he’d broken his back on a mission with his old unit. That was only a year ago, but it felt like a lifetime. So much change. So much pain and regret. Dempsey swallowed. Munn hadn’t met John Dempsey yet, and he wondered what would happen when his former teammate looked at him. Would recognition flash in his friend’s eyes? Would Munn’s eyes fall to the serpentine scar on Dempsey’s left forearm, an un-erasable mark of the SEAL he’d once been? Would their bond, forged in the kilns of violence and brotherhood, allow Munn to see past the modifications made to his face by the plastic surgeon’s scalpel?

  He blew air through his teeth; he was about to find out.

  Dempsey placed a gentle hand on his broken friend’s shoulder. “You look like shit, Munn,” he said. “Too many margaritas last night?”