Oath to Defend Read online

  OATH TO DEFEND by Scott Matthews

  First Edition, May 2013

  Copyright © 2013 Scott Matthews

  Produced by Pedernales Publishing, LLC.

  www.pedernalespublishing.com

  Cover by John Zercher

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Guardsman Publishing, LLC., PO Box 7893, Springfield, Oregon 97475 or email

  [email protected]

  ISBN: 978-0-615-81348-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  To all the men and women who took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and have kept their word.

  Acknowledgments

  There are many people I need to thank for helping me with my first novel, THE ASSASSIN’S LIST, and this one, but I don’t want to sound like an actor at the Oscars who has to be dragged from the stage, so I’ll be brief.

  Thank you Diana for your encouragement, for your eyes that catch all the little and sometimes big mistakes I make when you proofread, and for your constant love.

  Thank you family and friends for encouraging me to send Adam Drake out on another adventure, and for liking his first.

  Thank you beta readers! You know who you are.

  And, thank you Barbara Rainess and Jose Ramirez at Pedernales Publishing for insisting that my first novel be as good as we could make it, for recommending a great editor, for providing Author Services that make publishing as an indie author so easy, and for the great covers you’ve created for me.

  1

  Undercover agents do not like to stand out, especially when they’re in a foreign country, they don’t speak the language, and they’re new. Randy Johnson, rookie DEA agent on his first deployment, was no different. But standing six foot seven, with red hair, freckles, and a baby face that reminded you of your fifteen-year-old younger brother, he had no choice.

  While on assignment in Cancun, Mexico, Randy chose to accentuate the obvious by wearing shorts, a pink linen guayabera shirt, and a red Boston Red Sox hat. His job was to look like a tourist and observe and report on cartel members spotted in and near the Mayan Riviera. He remembered faces. He’d been taught to compartmentalize them, identify features, and then compare them to photos in the DEA’s cartel scrapbook.

  Randy was waiting for Juan Garcia Salina to show up at the Presidente InterContinental Resort. An informant had reported that he liked to eat lobster and shrimp curry at the hotel’s seaside El Caribeño restaurant. Salina was believed to be responsible for the recent torture and execution of a Mexican army general who had cooperated with the DEA.

  The man Randy recognized on this muggy, overcast day sitting at the poolside bar and drinking a cold glass of Superior Beer was not, however, a cartel member. Randy had recognized the face of the bodyguard of a man at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, the man thought to be behind the assassination attempt on the Secretary of Homeland Security a month ago in Portland, Oregon.

  Jamal James, a former NFL defensive tackle weighing three hundred and fifty pounds and standing six foot eight inches tall, worked for David Barak. Barak had been the CEO of International Security and Intelligence Services, or ISIS, a top international security firm. After the attempted assassination, the FBI had wanted to question Barak, but he and his bodyguard had vanished. Both his corporate offices in Las Vegas and his residential compound in the mountains near Mt. Charleston, north of the city, had been searched. The FBI found evidence on a restored computer hard drive that linked Barak to the assassination team and made him appear to be its mastermind. But they didn’t find anything that revealed where he might be hiding.

  Randy saw the big bodyguard walk to a table where three men were having lunch and lean down to speak with one of them, who handed him an envelope. The bodyguard then turned and walked back to the hotel lobby.

  Although the men at the table were not on the DEA watch list, Randy took a quick picture of them anyway with his cell phone, left money on the bar for his beer, and hurried after Jamal James. The man was moving like a bus through the traffic in the lobby.

  A black Range Rover sat idling at the parking attendant’s stand. James tipped the attendant and hoisted his massive body into the passenger’s seat. The Range Rover settled an inch or two with the added weight before the air suspension restored the SUV’s balance. The vehicle drove off.

  For a moment, Randy Johnson hesitated. Stay on post as ordered, or follow? Follow the bodyguard, he decided. If the Range Rover led him to Barak, he’d be able to send a Flash Priority One alert that every DEA agent would envy. Handing the well paid attendant a five dollar bill, he signaled for a taxi.

  “Stay with that Range Rover, Carlos, and I’ll double your fare,” he said, glancing at the driver’s ID and picture as he slid into the back of a green and white Camry.

  “Not necessary, señor. With this traffic I cannot lose it. Where do you think it is going?”

  “No idea, no idea at all. Here, swipe my Visa card in case I have to leave in a hurry.”

  “Does this involve your wife, señor?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Couples come here after weddings. Sometimes men follow wives after they fight.”

  The young agent had to laugh. Carlos Rodriguez, the middle age taxi driver, had probably seen his share of honeymoons gone bad.

  “Not fighting with my wife, Carlos. You and I might go a round or two, though, if you lose the Range Rover.”

  For the next forty-five minutes, they drove down the coast from Cancun. Highway 307 was a four-lane divided freeway and they maintained a steady seventy miles an hour, slowing only for a couple of traffic lights and reduced-speed zones. The towns they passed through weren’t much to see, Puerto Morelos and Tres Rios, but the beauty of the Caribbean Sea on the left and the thickening mangrove jungle on the right served to heighten the young agent’s sense of adventure.

  “Señor, the Range Rover is turning. It’s heading into the Mayakoba resort. Do you want me to follow?”

  “Let’s make sure this is where he’s staying. Drive in. I’ll check it out. I might have to stay here myself some day.”

  “A very expensive place, señor. The Mayakoba is one of the best hotels in the world.”

  Carlos appeared to be right. The Mayakoba was surrounded by a mangrove jungle and was built around a network of crystal clear waterways and small inland islands next to a white sand beach.

  The Range Rover stopped in front of the main lobby. The bodyguard got out, rolled his massive shoulders, and walked in. No luggage was unloaded before the Range Rover drove off.

  “Stay here, Carlos. I’ll just be a minute.”

  The rookie agent approached the Mayakoba valet.

  “Hi, could you help me? I think that man who just walked by was Jamal Johnson, the best NFL tackle ever. Is he a guest here? I’d pay a small fortune for his autograph.”

  The valet smiled. “We do not confirm the identity of our guests, señor.” He extended an open palm.

  Randy Johnson returned to his cab and sent a text message to his DEA supervisor. Flash Priority One.

  2

  Liz Strobel, special assistant to the Secretary of Homeland Security, took the call in her office at the Nebraska Avenue complex from her counterpart in the Drug Enforcement Agency.

  “Liz, we have a lead on David Barak. Our spotter in Cancun just reported seeing his bodyguard. He’s a
pparently staying at some expensive resort on the Mayan coast.”

  “It’s about time. Thanks, Phil. Scan me a copy of the report.”

  “On its way. How do you want to handle this? You want us to send a team down?”

  “I have someone we’ll send, but I’d like your spotter to meet with him. Give me the contact information and we’ll handle it.”

  “Is DHS flying solo on this?”

  “They tried to kill the Secretary, Phil. He was the first on a list. The rest are Americans, too. So, yes, we’re handling it ourselves.”

  “Okay. Dinner sometime?”

  She smiled into the phone. “Thanks for the heads up, Phil.”

  She knew she wasn’t winning the award for the most social power person in Washington, but that wasn’t her game. Phil was a nice guy, but she just didn’t have time for casual dating. She needed the occasional escort for official functions, however, and she could always find one. If she were going to date again, the man would have to be someone who intrigued her, someone special, and she only knew one man like that. Unfortunately, he was mourning a wife he had just lost to cancer. For now, she had a job to do. She picked up her phone.

  “Drake, it’s Liz. You busy?”

  “Just pulling out old grapevines,” Adam Drake said, “trying to get the vineyard ready to replant.”

  She remembered his farm in the heart of the Oregon wine country, and the one time she’d been there. Drake had killed three jihadists who’d come after him one night, part of the same group that had tried to assassinate her boss. She’d been sent to help him get rid of the bodies. This was a favor to Drake’s father-in-law, the senior senator from Oregon.

  “Why aren’t you at your office?” she asked.

  “I’m taking a little time off. The media are still stirred up about those three young Muslim men who went missing. It’s hard to maintain a law practice with reporters three deep outside your office.”

  “We think we know where Barak is,” she said.

  He didn’t answer immediately, so she waited.

  “Will the Secretary honor his promise and let me go after him?” he asked.

  “That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Fill me in.”

  For the next ten minutes, she told him everything they had discovered and arranged for him to meet the DEA spotter on the island of Cozumel. It was a short ferry ride from there to the Mexican mainland and the resort where the bodyguard was staying.

  “Do you want me to reserve a room for you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “When you find him, don’t kill him. We have a reservation for him at our little resort in Cuba.”

  He chuckled. “We’ll see. I’ll call you from Cozumel.”

  Strobel hoped they were doing the right thing. As Drake had reminded her, Secretary Robert Rallings had agreed to let him go after Barak in exchange for Drake’s agreeing to serve as a private contract trouble shooter for DHS. The Secretary had been impressed by the way the former Delta Force operator had acted on his own initiative to identify the assassination plot, and then chase down and kill the assassins.

  It had been a close call. Four terrorists had tried to kill the Secretary at the home of Drake’s father-in-law, Senator Hazelton, after failing earlier in the day to kill him at a decommissioning ceremony at Oregon’s chemical weapons depot. With help from his former sniper partner, Drake had saved the Secretary, the senator, and his wife from a rifle-launched thermobaric grenade attack that leveled the senator’s lakeside home.

  The agreement with Adam Drake had been made because the Secretary of Homeland Security was occasionally asked for help by defense contractors who, among other things, suspected terrorist probes and didn’t want to read about an investigation in the press. After his experience in Oregon, the Secretary had decided that someone outside DHS, someone with a legitimate reason to be involved, like a snoopy attorney with special talents, could be brought in to handle things discretely. When he’d asked Drake to serve as his private trouble shooter, however, Drake had demanded a quid pro quo: let him go after the man who tried to kill his in-laws, and he would agree to the proposition.

  Liz wanted to make sure her boss didn’t overlook the potential for disaster for the agency. Not only would the Mexican government be outraged if they found an American had killed a terrorist on their turf, but Barak’s ties to the drug cartels could also lead to more cartel violence north of the border.

  She left her office and walked across the hall to see Secretary Rallings.

  “Is he alone?” she asked Mrs. Cameron, the gatekeeper who had served as Robert Ralling’s personal secretary from his early days as Governor of Montana and later as a U.S. Senator.

  “He’s previewing the video for cyber security awareness month that goes out next week,” Mrs. Cameron replied. “Go on in.”

  Secretary Rallings was sitting at his desk and looking closely at a monitor. His jaw was clinched so tightly the muscles bulged. He waved her over.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked. “People will be afraid to trust us with any of their information. This makes it look like China can hack us whenever they want.”

  “People need to see what we’re up against, sir.”

  “I suppose you’re right, but I don’t like people knowing we haven’t stopped this.”

  She cleared her throat. “Mr. Secretary, I told Drake about the DEA spotting Barak in Mexico. He’s heading down there.”

  “You still have concerns, Liz?”

  “About Drake? No sir. We’ve seen how he handles things. I’m more concerned about Mexico finding out we sent a private citizen after a terrorist without telling them.”

  He nodded and said, “That’s the only way to keep Drake safe. With the cartel’s access to the Mexican government, I don’t want some drug lord letting Barak know we’re coming for him.”

  “Is that why you’re not informing the White House?”

  “That and deniability. By the time the White House tells State what we’re doing, Mexico would know it within the hour.”

  “What will you say if this goes wrong?”

  “I’ll say that I let Drake know we spotted Barak, as a courtesy. His plans thereafter were all his own. I owe him, Liz. He saved my life twice last month. I agreed he’d have first crack at this guy. Hunting terrorists is something he’s good at.” He rubbed his hands together as if washing them. “This will be okay.”

  “I hope so, sir, for both of us,” she said. She left the Secretary’s office thinking of the intriguing man they were sending in harm’s way.

  3

  Shortly after his call from the DHS, Adam Francis Drake sat in his old Ford pickup and looked at the lower half of his overgrown, diseased vineyard. Three years ago, a dentist from New Jersey had thrown up his hands, tired of the work a vineyard required, put the place on the market, and moved back east. Drake’s late wife, Kay, had fallen in love with the place and convinced him to buy it. Before she died from an aggressive ovarian cancer, he’d promised her he would complete the restoration of the old vineyard. It was a promise he intended to keep, but not until after he had captured or killed the terrorist named David Barak.

  Finished for the morning, he parked the pickup in the storage shed behind his gray sandstone farm house and headed for the kitchen, which now served as a temporary office. This was the first room in the old house they had remodeled, adding a gourmet gas range and other new appliances and saving only the fireplace and the plank flooring. He had added the HP TouchSmart computer that was mounted on the wall next to his round, ebony, breakfast table.

  Now he booted up the computer and started the Internet video conferencing program. The first person he needed to talk with was his secretary, and while he waited for her to respond, he made notes for the arrangements necessary for his quick trip to Mexico.

  “How’s Farmer Brown today?” his fifty-something secretary asked without looking up from the something she was r
eading.

  “Tired,” he said. “I need a vacation.”

  Now she looked up. “You’ve been on vacation for most of the month. You don’t get back to work, you’ll be closing this office, and I’ll be looking for work with an attorney with clients.”

  “Relax, Margo. This will be over soon. DHS just called. They spotted Barak’s bodyguard in Mexico. My ‘vacation’ in Mexico won’t take long, and then I’ll get back to work. I need to be there when they catch this guy.”

  “When they catch him or when you catch him?”

  “It won’t be me, if we keep talking,” he said. “I’m meeting a DEA agent in Cozumel. Reserve me a room somewhere nice. Better make the reservation for a week.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, giving him a tight-lipped smile.

  Drake recognized the look. Margo had been his secretary, legal assistant, office manager, and friend since his first days in the district attorney’s office. When Drake had stumbled onto the assassination plot and almost been killed, she had angrily said he was just playing soldier. He was too old to be chasing terrorists, she’d told him, and foolish besides for thinking he wasn’t going to get himself killed.

  She was wrong about his being too old. He was only thirty-five. He still ran five miles every morning and, for the last month, he’d been working at getting back in fighting form with daily stretching and an hour-long Krav Maga workout. He’d dug out a pistol range in the hillside behind the storage shed and could again put eight holes inside the ten ring consistently with his Kimber .45, at twenty five and fifty yards, rapid fire. He knew the risks involved in going after a smart terrorist like Barak, but Margo was definitely wrong about his being too old. He was just barely old enough to be president.

  He returned her smile. “Margo, I’ll be okay. I’m asking Mike to fly me to Mexico and send along a couple of his best men. While I’m gone, just check messages from home. Catch up on your soaps.”

  Before she had a chance to say or do something he would consider to be inappropriate, Drake clicked out of the video conference and called his friend in Seattle.