Patriot: An Alex Hawke Novel Page 3

  And the Cole? Hell, she had been a sitting duck. Never had a chance.

  Crew members started reporting that the sentries’ Rules of Engagement, set up by the ship’s captain according to navy guidelines, “would have prevented them from defending the ship even if they’d detected a threat.” The crew would not have been permitted to fire without being fired upon first! You’re beginning to see the problem. But, wait, there’s more.

  A petty officer manning a .50 cal. at the stern of the Cole moments after the explosion that fateful day saw a second boat approaching and was ordered to turn his weapon away unless and until he was actively shot at. “We’re trained to hesitate,” the young sailor told the board of inquiry. “If somebody had seen something that looked or even smelled wrong and fired his weapon, sir? That man would have been court-martialed.”

  The commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet concluded: “Even had the Cole implemented Threatcon Bravo measures flawlessly, there is total unity among the flag officers that the ship would not and could not have prevented or even deterred this attack.”

  Hello?

  Now you got yourself a Class A shitstorm brewing in the Pentagon. Now you got the commander of the Fifth Fleet—which patrols five million square miles, mind you, including the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and parts of the Indian Ocean—saying, hold on, a U.S. Navy destroyer versus a crappy little fishing boat? And the fishing boat wins?

  That’s when the call for help went out. And that’s where I come in.

  My outfit, a little ole Texas company at that time, called Vulcan Inc., was just one of many providers contacted by the U.S. Navy and the Department of Defense. They wanted to see just how quickly people like me could respond to their “urgent and compelling” need for the immediate training of twenty thousand sailors in force protection over the next six months. The navy was basically saying to all of us, Look, we have to train X number of sailors at X types of ranges and we need to do it now. Can you handle that?

  My name is Colonel Brett “Beau” Beauregard. I’m the founder and CEO of Vulcan Inc. And I knew this was my shot. Mine was the only company that checked every box on the navy’s list. At the time, I had only twenty full-time employees. At Vulcan’s original training facility on the Gulf of Mexico south of Port Arthur, Texas, hell, we hadn’t even trained a measly three thousand people.

  That was the total ever since opening our doors three years earlier. But Beau? Nothing if not aggressive. First in my class at West Point, decorated U.S. Army Ranger, strong as a team of oxen, captain of the Army gridiron team that beat Navy to win the Thanksgiving Army-Navy game my senior year.

  Go, Army! And as I always say, “It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.”

  That navy contract? It was worth over seven million dollars. I was worth about seven cents. And I had only thirty days to get my guys ready. I got myself started bright and early next morning, you better believe I did.

  I began construction on a little idea I’d cooked up called a “ship-in-a-box.” It was a floating superstructure made of forty-foot steel tractor-trailer containers. It was painted battleship grey and fitted with watertight doors and railings. Imagine an elaborate ship’s bridge on a movie set, but one designed to withstand live ammunition in real-life firefights. Stone cool.

  For one month, no one around here slept much. But the old colonel’s magical training boat-in-a-box was ready for the navy when day 30 rolled around. To my great surprise, and delight, Vulcan won that damn navy contract. Over the next six months down at Port Arthur, Vulcan personnel trained nearly a thousand new sailors a week! We taught them to identify threats, engage enemies, and defeat terrorist attacks while aboard ships either in port or at sea.

  Almost immediately, I identified one of the navy’s biggest problems. This was the original gang that couldn’t shoot straight! It had been maybe years since a whole lot of these guys had even held guns in their hands. U.S. Navy sailors who had never even used a firearm since boot camp!

  Hundreds of sailors started flowing through the facility every week. The ATFP approach developed by my team, Anti-Terrorism Force Protection, was the very finest available on the planet at that time. We ramped up the manning, training, and equipping of naval forces to better realize a war fighter’s physical security at sea. ATFP became the U.S. Navy’s primary focus of every mission, activity, and event. This mind-set was instilled in every one of the sailors who went through the program.

  Vulcan was so successful that in 2003, Vulcan would train roughly seventy thousand sailors at our rapidly growing Port Arthur, Texas, facility.

  One night I told my brand-new wife, Margaret Anne, I felt like that scrappy little dog who finally caught that school bus he’d been chasing. We expanded the Port Arthur operation again and again—up to over seven thousand acres, more than twelve square miles, including considerable conservation areas to preserve wetlands and restore wildlife habitat. I made sure we reseeded hundreds of acres with native oak and swamp cypress.

  And I made one other important addition to the facility.

  I’d shot me a massive black bear over in Red River County east of Dallas. Took that bad boy with a black powder rifle. Old Blackie now stood on his hind legs in the lobby of the main Lodge, a 598-pound symbol of Vulcan’s trademark tenacity—jaws frozen open, right paw raised high, ready to strike. It became the corporate logo, on every piece of paper my company generated in the years that followed. I’ve still got the T-shirt.

  In a few short years, Vulcan achieved worldwide fame. We were providing private military assistance to any country that could afford our services. And here’s the thing: we did not play favorites, and politics never entered into the equation. I was a soldier of fortune, after all, and this soldier was looking to make his fortune. I was soon working with the military and military intelligence agencies of countries around the world. And not once did I show a trace of favoritism toward any client or any government; that’s what kept me in the game.

  I got pretty good at building impenetrable firewalls between our clients. The degree of security afforded each major account was so highly regarded that the Americans, the Russians, and even the Chinese were all equally comfortable that their most closely held secrets were safe with us. Hell, at one point early on, Vulcan could claim both Israel and the Iranians as clients at one and the same time!

  My own journey to the pinnacle of power had begun; and neither America nor, later, the world, had a clue what they were in for. I made it to the very top, and I clung to my position tenaciously. But the center would not hold. Events, politics, politicians, and most devastating of all, the media, overtook me in the end. The whole world would turn on me, viciously, and bring me down.

  Because in the end, me and my guys, the former heroes of Vulcan, we who had taken bullets for the Americans and everyone else, would become objects of scorn and ridicule in the press and everywhere else. And many believed it was all through no fault of our own. Hell, I believe it to this day! Did some innocent people get shot? Yeah, it’s called war. Did we shoot first? My opinion? No, we did not. I’ve seen the evidence. I stand by my troops to this day.

  First America, and then the rest of the world, like dominoes, threw Colonel Beauregard under the bus. My men were labeled wanton murderers in the world press. Cowboys with neither scruples nor morality. Hired killers who would turn on anyone if the price was high enough. Eventually, the old colonel disappeared from the front pages of the media . . . some said I was only biding my time. Some said I wanted nothing to do with the world anymore and had gone into seclusion in some remote location down in the Caribbean. And that’s just what I damn well did.

  Now, here comes the funny part.

  That I would return to the front lines one day in the not too distant future, exponentially more powerful than ever before, was unthinkable at that dark time. Or that I would seek my ultimate revenge on a duplicitous world that had shamed me, nearly destroying me.

  As it all turned out in the
end, Vulcan’s rapid fall from grace and glory was not the end of me. Not by a long shot. As one of my hardasses said when he saw me back in a Jeep, “The colonel has definitely not left the building.”

  In fact, all this ancient history I been telling you? It was only the beginning of my story.

  Respectfully Submitted, November 2015

  Colonel Brett T. Beauregard, U.S. Army, Ret.

  Aboard Celestial

  Royal Bermuda Yacht Club

  Hamilton, Bermuda

  CHAPTER 2

  Paris

  April 2015

  Most evenings, like tonight, Harding Torrance walked home from the office. His cardiac guy had told him walking was the best thing for his ticker. Harding liked walking. He even wore one of those FitBit thingamajigs on his wrist to keep track of his steps. Doctor’s orders after a couple of issues popped up in his last stress test. But the truth was, Harding liked walking in Paris, especially in the rain.

  Ah, April in Paris.

  And the women on the streets, too, you know? God in heaven. Paris has the world’s most beautiful women, full stop, hands down. The clothes, the jewelry, the hair, the way they walked, the posture, the way . . . the way they dangled their dainty little parapluies, the way they goddamn smelled. And, it wasn’t perfume, it was natural.

  Plus, his eight-room Beaux-Arts apartment was an easy stroll home from his office. His ultradeluxe building was located on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, right next to Sotheby’s. Saint-Honoré was the shopping street in one of the fancier arrondissements on the Right Bank. Where there are beautiful shops, there are beautiful women, n’est-ce pas? Especially in this extremely ritzy neighborhood. Or arrondissement, as the froggies like to say.

  Tell the truth, he’d lived here in Paris for ten years or more and he still didn’t have any idea which arrondissement was which. Somebody would ask him, Which is which? He’d shrug his shoulders with a smile. He had learned a handy little expression in French early on which had always served him well in his expatriate life: “Je ne sais pas.”

  I don’t know!

  At any rate, his homeward route from the office took him past the newly renovated Ritz Hotel, Hermès (or “Hermeez” as the bumpkins called his ties whenever he wore one when he visited Langley), plus, YSL, Cartier, et cetera, et cetera. You get the picture. Ritzy real estate, like he said. And, just so you know, Hermès is pronounced “Air-mez.”

  Very ritzy.

  Oddly enough, the ritziest hotel on the whole rue was not the one called the Ritz. It was the less obvious one called Hôtel Le Bristol. Now, what he liked about the Bristol, mainly, was the bar. At the end of the day, good or bad, he liked a quiet cocktail or three in a quiet bar before he went home to his wife. That’s all there was to it, been doing it all his life. His personal happy hour.

  The Bristol’s lobby bar was dimly lit, church quiet, and hidden away off the beaten path. It was basically a dark paneled room lit by a roaring fire situated off the lobby where only the cognoscenti, as they say, held sway. Harding held sway there because he was a big, good-looking guy, always impeccably dressed in Savile Row threads and Charvet shirts of pale pink or blue. He was a big tipper, a friendly guy, great smile. Knew the bar staff’s names by heart and discreetly handed out envelopes every Christmas.

  Sartorial appearances to the contrary, Harding Torrance was one hundred percent red-blooded American. He even worked for the government, had done, mostly all his life. And he’d done very, very well, thank you. He’d come up the hard way, but he’d come up, all right. His job, though he’d damn well have to kill you if he told you, was station chief, CIA, Paris. In other words, Harding was a very big damn deal in anybody’s language.

  El Queso Grande, as they used to say at Langley.

  He’d been in Paris since right after 9/11. His buddy from Houston, the new president, had posted him here because the huge Muslim population in Paris presented a lot of high-value intel opportunities. His mandate was to identify the al-Qaeda leadership in France, then whisk them away to somewhere nice and quiet for a little enhanced interrogation.

  He was good at it, he stuck with it, got results, and got promoted, boom, boom, boom. The president had even singled him out for recognition in an Oval Office reception, had specifically said that he and his team had been responsible for saving countless lives on the European continent and in the United Kingdom. What goes around, right? Let’s just say he was well compensated.

  Harding had gone into the family oil business after West Point and a stint with the Rangers out of Fort Bragg. Spec-ops duty, two combat tours in Iraq. Next, working for Torrance Oil, he was all over Saudi and Yemen and Oman, running his daddy’s fields in the Middle East. He was no silver spooner, though; no, he had started on the rigs right at the bottom, working as a ginzel (lower than the lowest worm), working his way up to a floorhand on the kelly driver, and then a bona fide rig driller in one year.

  That period of his life was his introduction to the real world of Islam.

  Long story short?

  Harding knew the Muslims’ mind-set, their language, their body language, their brains, even, knew the whole culture, the mullahs, the warlords, where all the bodies were buried, the whole enchilada. And so, when his pal W needed someone uniquely qualified to transform the CIA’s Paris station into a first-rate intelligence clearinghouse for all Europe? Well. Who was he to say? Let history tell the tale.

  His competition? Most guys inside the Agency, working in Europe at that time, right after the Twin Towers? Didn’t know a burqa from a kumquat and that’s no lie—

  “Monsieur Torrance? Monsieur Torrance?”

  “Oui?”

  “Votre whiskey, monsieur.”

  “Oh, hey, Maurice. Sorry, what’d you say? Scotch rocks?” he said to the head bartender, distracted, not even remembering ordering this fresh one. “Sure. One more. Why not?”

  “Mais oui, m’sieur. There it is. C’est ça!”

  Apparently his drink had arrived and he hadn’t even noticed. That was not a first, by the way.

  “Oh, yeah. Merci.”

  “Mais certainement, Monsieur Torrance. Et voilà.”

  His drink had come like magic. Had he already ordered that? He knocked it back, ordered another, and relaxed, making small talk, le bavardage, with Maurice about the rain, the train bombing in Marseilles. Which horse might win four million euros in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp tomorrow. The favorite was an American thoroughbred named Buckpasser. He was a big pony, heralded in the tabloids as the next Secretariat, Maurice told him.

  “Really? Listen. There will never, ever, be another ‘Big Red,’ Maurice. Trust me on that one.”

  “But of course, sir. Who could argue?”

  Harding swiveled on his barstool, sipping his third or fourth scotch, depending, checking the scenery, admiring his fellow man . . .

  And woman . . .

  And this one rolled in like thunder.

  CHAPTER 3

  He’d always said he’d been born lucky. And just look at him. Sitting in a cozy bar on a cold and rainy Friday night. He’d told his wife, Julia, not to expect him for dinner. Just in case, you know, that something came up. He’d explained to her that, well, honey, something troubling had come up. That whole thing with the state visit of the new Chinese president to the Élysée Palace on Sunday? About to go au toilette!

  “Sorry, is this seat taken?” the scented woman said.

  What the hell? He’d seen her take an empty stool at the far end of the bar. Must have changed her mind after catching a glimpse of the chick magnet at the other end . . .

  “Not at all, not at all,” he told her. “Here, let me remove my raincoat from the barstool. How rude of me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tres chic, he registered. Very elegant. Blond. Big American girl. Swimmer, maybe, judging by the shoulders. California. Stanford. Maybe UCLA. One of the two. Pink Chanel, head to toe. Big green Hermès Kelly bag, all scruffed up, so loa
ded. Big rock on her finger, so married. A small wet puffball of a dog and a dripping umbrella, so ducked in out of the rain. Ordered a martini, so a veteran. Beautiful eyes and fabulous cleavage, so a possibility . . .

  He bought her another drink. Champagne, this time. Domaines Ott Rosé. So she had taste.

  “What brings you to Paris, Mrs. . . .”

  “I’m Crystal. Crystal Methune. And you are?”

  “Harding,” he said, in his deepest voice.

  “Harding. Now that’s a good strong name, isn’t it? So. Why are we here in Paris? Let me see. Oh, yes. Horses. My husband has horses. We’re here for the races at Longchamp.”

  “And that four million euros’ purse at Longchamp, I’ll bet. Maurice here and I were just talking about that. Some payday, huh? Your horse have a shot? Which horse is it?”

  “Buckpasser.”

  “Buckpasser? That’s your horse? That’s some horse, honey.”

  “I suppose. I don’t like horses. I like to shop.”

  “Attagirl. Sound like my ex. So where are you from, Crystal?”

  “We’re from Kentucky. Louisville. You know it?”

  “Not really. So where are you staying?”

  “Right upstairs, honey. My hubby took the penthouse for the duration.”

  “Ah, got it. He’s meeting you here, is he?”

  “Hardly. Having dinner with Felix, his horse trainer, somewhere in the Bois de Boulogne, out near the track is more like it. The two of them are all juned up about Buckpasser running on a muddy track tomorrow. You ask a lot of questions, don’t you, Harding?”

  “It’s my business.”

  “Really? What do you do?”

  “I’m a writer for a quiz show.”

  She smiled. “That’s funny.”