Vengeance: A Derek Stillwater Novel (Derek Stillwater Thrillers Book 8) Read online

  VENGEANCE

  A Derek Stillwater Novel

  MARK TERRY

  OROX

  Books

  VENGEANCE

  Copyright ©2014 by Mark Terry

  OROX Books 2014

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  Cover art: Judy Bullard, Jaebee Creations

  Layout: Natasha Fondren, the eBook Artisans

  Also by Mark Terry

  Derek Stillwater

  The Devil’s Pitchfork

  The Serpent’s Kiss

  The Fallen

  The Valley of Shadows

  Dire Straits

  The Sins of the Father

  Gravedigger

  Monaco Grace

  China Fire

  Standalone Novels

  Hot Money

  Edge

  Dirty Deeds

  For Kids

  Monster Seeker

  Monster Seeker 2: Rise of the Dark Seekers

  (Ian Michael Terry with Mark Terry)

  The Battle For Atlantis

  The Fortress of Diamonds

  Collections

  Deadly By The Dozen

  Catfish Guru

  Nonfiction

  Freelance Writing For A Living

  31-1/2 Essentials For Running Your Medical Practice

  “Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.”

  —Samuel Johnson

  “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

  —Quentin Tarantino, “Pulp Fiction”

  1

  Syrian Airspace

  While his partner, John Hammond, double-checked his own parachute’s static line, Derek Stillwater sat next to him in the open side hatch of the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, and threw up. The vomit flew downward and back.

  In his earpiece the voice of the helicopter’s pilot said, “Drop zone in five.”

  “Affirmative,” Hammond said, and looked at Derek, who was leaning out the hatch as if he was going to hurl again. Reaching over, Hammond clamped a gloved hand on Derek’s wrist. “Are you ready?”

  “Affirmative,” Derek muttered.

  Hammond was with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division. He’d come out of Delta Force, spoke fluent Arabic and Farsi. “They told me you were like this before ops.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Derek said. “I get it out of my system early. So to speak.”

  “You do that.”

  “Two minutes,” the pilot said.

  In the inky blackness below them, the occasional village or city lit up, but otherwise it was a dark and quiet night.

  Dr. Derek Stillwater was an expert in biological and chemical terrorism and warfare. He had come out of Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, spent some time with the CIA, then the U.N., and most recently had been a troubleshooter for Homeland Security before being borrowed by the Secretary of State for a few special projects.

  Hammond and Stillwater were dropping covertly into the Syrian civil war to determine if the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on the Syrian rebels. The President of the U.S., in a manner Derek thought was enormously naïve, had warned publically that the U.S. would stay out of Syria unless they used chemical weapons, which was a “red line” that would bring the U.S. into the civil war.

  Derek personally thought POTUS should have kept his mouth shut.

  “One minute.”

  Heaving in a burning lungful of air, Derek spit out the hatch and made a face. “I wish I hadn’t eaten curry. That crap burns on the way back up.”

  In their ear the pilot said, “Here’s your zone.”

  Derek grinned and gave Hammond a thumb’s-up. He flipped the lenses to his night-vision goggles down. “Say hello to gravity, buddy,” and lunged out of the helicopter.

  Derek hit the ground a few moments later, peering through the NVGs at the desert-like landscape around them. He began hauling in the parachute, looking around for Hammond. A moment later he saw his partner land about forty yards away.

  They had landed on a plateau on the edge of farmland in the Aleppo governate. The city of Aleppo, pretty much the heart of the Syrian civil war, had a population of about 2.2 million people. The governate was home to the major city and a lot of villages and even more farmland.

  Derek got his chute gathered and put away and met up with Hammond. According to U.K. and French intelligence, the Syrian government had probably used sarin gas on rebels in battles in the nearby village of Khan al-Dasa. He and Hammond were approximately fifteen miles northwest of the village.

  Hammond checked his watch. “Right on schedule.” He took his HK MP7 off his shoulder. “Let’s get moving, old man.”

  Silently, flitting through the dark, the two of them headed at a brisk pace in the direction of Khan al-Dasa. They would need to skirt several farms and one river, and they needed to do it in about three hours.

  It was warm and dry, a cloudy night with a slight breeze. After the first hour they stopped for a break. Derek checked their location on a wrist-mounted GPS and pointed. “We’re wandering a little bit east, but we’re ahead of schedule.” He ate an energy bar and hefted his own HK MP7. It was a bit smaller than the Hechler and Koch MP5, especially designed for Navy Seals by the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He was a fan of the MP5, but he liked this gun, which was smaller and lighter. He also hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

  Crouching beneath an olive tree, Hammond scanned the orchard, cocking his head. Suddenly he raised his hand.

  Derek instinctively slid to the ground and away from Hammond. Flipping down his NVGs he tried to identify what had alerted Hammond. Then he saw it. Three men, maybe thirty yards away, walking through rows of olive trees. They were headed in their direction.

  To Hammond, Derek made a gesture indicating he thought they should head out, crawling out of the men’s paths. With a nod, the two men began a slow, silent crawl at a lateral direction from the travelers. When they had moved about twenty yards from their original location, they stopped, sprawled on both sides of the trunk of an olive tree, MP7s aimed and ready.

  The three men were wearing jeans and T-shirts, smoking cigarettes and talking amongst themselves. Derek knew how to order beer in a dozen languages, but Farsi wasn’t one of them. He was fluent in English and Krio, a native language of Sierra Leone. Krio was not useful in Syria.

  Through his NVGs he saw that the men also carried rifles. So they probably weren’t farmers. The trick was determining if they were part of the Free Syrian Army, the so-called “good guys” in the conflict, or part of the al-Qaeda, a number of whom had arrived in Syria to help the FSA. Or, if that wasn’t headache enough, it was possible they were members of Hezbollah, who had arrived to help the Syrian Army. Hezbollah was another U.S.-designated terrorist organization that typica
lly acted as Iran’s proxy-troublemakers.

  Fifteen minutes later the men were gone. Hammond leaned over and muttered, “Sounded like FSA. Probably a patrol of some sort. Not very disciplined. Ready?”

  With another thumb’s-up, they scrambled to their feet. More cautious now, they moved at a trot through the olive grove, stopping regularly to look for more scouts. Thirty minutes later they were out of farmland and skirting a small village about six miles from their destination.

  They saw far more evidence of the military, including a couple tanks. Everything they knew about the FSA suggested they didn’t have many tanks, so it was probably the Syrian Army. Their job was to get in to Khan al-Dasa, meet a contact who would show them bodies. Derek would take tissue samples and run some field tests, then he and Hammond were to hump their way back in the direction they came for a helicopter pickup at six in the morning. If they missed the pickup, they had to wait until midnight the following night. Derek thought their plan was optimistic and so did Hammond, which is why they had several contingency plans.

  After they moved well away from the small military encampment, they broke into a trot. The last detour had put them fifteen minutes behind schedule.

  This time it was Derek who raised his fist, indicating for them to halt. He pointed off toward their left. Slowly they edged closer. A few dozen more yards and they came to more groves of olive trees. Peering through the NVGs, Derek saw dozens, even hundreds of lights. But they weren’t that close to a city or even a village.

  What they were seeing a quarter to a half-mile away was a military encampment. A very large one.

  Lying on the ground next to him, Hammond said, “Well, shit.”

  “Got to be the SAA,” which was their shorthand for the Syrian Arab Army, the official military of the Syrian government.

  “Yeah. And they appear to be spread out between us and our destination. Shit.”

  “Yeah. Shit. Okay, to the west or to the east?”

  Hammond pulled out a topographical map of Syria and examined it under the light of a red bulb. “We’ve got a river off to the west. Probably not big, but a problem.”

  “East it is.”

  “Yeah.” Hammond popped an energy gel and swallowed water from his canteen. Glancing at his watch, he said, “Our ETA is worthless.”

  “Validating our arguments at Incirlik.”

  They had started the mission from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. For the most part the mission had been pulled together by some CIA people with input from Derek and Hammond, although Secretary Mandalevo kept putting his oar in, irritating the crap out of both of them. They had argued that the timeline was so optimistic as to be impossible. Mandalevo and the CIA’s flying monkeys had argued that if Senator McCain could drive in undetected, two special forces guys with black helicopters and NVGs would be able to get in and out without a problem.

  Both Derek and Hammond had responded with suggestions for highly unlikely anatomical storage containers for the CIA’s plans.

  Now they were already well on their way to proving why they didn’t like the Langley desk-jockeys’ ideas.

  Back on their feet, they headed in a circuitous eastern direction that would presumably take them around the SAA’s camp. Neither one of them had any desire to trip over any guards posted on the outer perimeter.

  It took them twenty minutes to move to a location due east of the encampment. A peek at his GPS indicated they were still about seven miles from their destination.

  And then gunfire split the night.

  Derek and Hammond hit the ground. Hammond whispered, “That’s west of us. What the—”

  A boom sounded off to the east. “Mortar!” Derek said.

  More gunfire sounded off to the west. Sounds tore through the air followed by motors firing up and more gunfire.

  Hammond started to his feet, but Derek yanked him back down. “We’re in the middle of a fucking firefight. Plan, dammit!”

  The battle was just starting up and they were squarely in between the two warring groups.

  Suddenly the distinctive whoosh of a rocket-propelled grenade tore over their heads. From the north.

  “South,” Derek hissed, hoping he was right.

  Both men leapt to their feet and began sprinting back in the general direction they had come from. From their left appeared three pickup trucks. Men with rifles stood on the back, AK47s over the cab of the truck. Gunfire tore the air.

  Still sprinting, Derek returned fire. After a moment’s hesitation Hammond did the same, shouting, “We’re supposed to be on their side.”

  “Keep running!”

  The ground grew increasingly uneven. Behind them the growling sound of a tank grew. A high-pitched hissing sound made Derek’s hair stand on end. A missile lit up the sky as a rocket took off from the direction of the FSA, arcing down in the middle of the SAA encampment. The air lit up with tracers and fire, the stench of smoke and gunpowder burning his nose.

  Without warning Hammond’s shadow disappeared ahead of him. A moment later Derek plunged into a long, deep trench, some sort of foxhole, and landed with a teeth-rattling clunk next to Hammond.

  “Well,” Hammond said.

  “If you’ve got a plan, I’m all ears.”

  “How about we get the hell out of here?”

  “I’m for that.”

  Hammond grinned, white teeth in a night-blackened face. “You know how I said you were all gloom-and-doom about this mission?”

  “Yep.”

  “You were right.”

  “Sorry to be, too.” Derek trained his NVGs down the length of the trench. He pointed. “That way?”

  “Why the hell not?” Hammond turned and raced down the trench in a crouch. Above them the battle tore on.

  Twenty yards later, sprinting down the trench, a mortar landed a dozen feet ahead of them. The explosion knocked them both to the ground.

  Derek crawled over to Hammond, who was shaking his head as if he was trying to get water out of his ears. “You okay?”

  Tapping one ear with his fingertips, Hammond said in a too-loud voice, “Too fucking close!”

  Derek put a finger to his lips to silence him, although he thought the sound of battle was muffled as well. He didn’t like the fact the mortar had landed in the trench. The SAA might be targeting it because it might be where they thought the FSA was located. They didn’t want to run into the FSA or the SAA, although if he had a choice, it would be the FSA, who would probably welcome any western assistance.

  The problem was, both the State Department and the CIA had insisted they not make contact with anyone except the civilian doctor who had the tissue samples. Particularly the SAA, who would quite correctly interpret it as interfering in their country’s sovereignty.

  Patting Hammond on the arm, he indicated he was going to climb to the top of the trench and take a look around. Crawling to the lip of the trench, which was probably seven feet deep, he focused his NVGs. It was no skirmish. It was a full-fledged battle. About a third of a mile away he saw a tank jerk as it fired. Looking in the direction it had fired, he saw a truck explode into a ball of flame and smoke. He thought he heard the screams of the men who had been on it, but maybe that was just

  his imagination.

  Scanning the horizon, he realized that about twenty-five yards further down the trench was a missile launcher. He and Hammond, if they hadn’t nearly gotten killed by the incoming mortar, would almost have run right into the group.

  Slipping back down to Hammond, he whispered, “Up and out. Back way. We can’t keep going this way.”

  With a nod, Hammond turned and crawled up the back of the trench, Derek alongside him. When they reached the top, they scanned the area. A good half-mile away was another orchard.

  They set off in that direction, leaving the sounds of battle behind. Suddenly they both froze. Running toward them were half a dozen men. Derek and Hammond raised their MP7s, ready to fire.

  A whistling sound shrieked nearby. Derek had j
ust a moment to think, “Incoming,” when another mortar struck less than a dozen feet away from them. The blast flung both him and Hammond to the ground. Derek felt heat. And pain.

  And then darkness.

  2

  Derek opened his eyes to see three men in black pants and dark shirts heaving Hammond’s limp body into the back of a pickup truck. Two of them wore black and white checked scarves wrapped around their heads and face. The third had a red and white checked scarf. Derek struggled up, reaching for the MP7, but pain tore through his arm and shoulder and the world grew fuzzy around the edges. One of the men said something to him in what he thought was Farsi.

  Trying to roll over earned him a kick in the ribs. On one hip he carried a Colt .45. Reaching for it, he saw the butt of the AK47 coming toward him and rolled. It grazed his temple. He rolled in the other direction, but realized his right arm wasn’t cooperating.

  The gun smashed into his head and he was out.

  The next time he woke, he was lying on his side in the back of the pickup truck as it bumped and rattled and lurched over a hard, pot-holed surface. Every bounce, every vibration, sent shockwaves of pain through his body. His hands were bound behind his back and he tasted blood in his mouth.

  The pain in his right arm and shoulder was thunderous.

  Craning his neck, he saw Hammond lying next to him. In the dim light he realized Hammond’s face was covered in blood. He appeared unconscious.

  “John,” he hissed.

  Someone kicked him in the left kidney. He awkwardly rolled over to glare at his captor. The one who had kicked him was Red Scarf. Beneath his hawk’s beak of a nose was a bushy black mustache. He wore a blue denim jacket over his black T-shirt.

  The three men in the back spoke with each other. Then one of the Black Scarfs pulled out a dirty, oily rag and tied it over Derek’s head so he couldn’t see.

  Lying there, feeling every bump and thump, Derek pushed back the fear that was rising in him and tried to get a sense of things. It wasn’t easy. The fear was like an electric eel, racing along his nerves. Whenever he pushed it away, it appeared somewhere else.