Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller) Read online

  Other Titles by Max Allan Collins

  The Reeder and Rogers Series

  Supreme Justice

  Fate of the Union

  Thrillers

  What Doesn’t Kill Her

  Midnight Haul

  Regeneration (with Barbara Collins as “Barbara Allan”)

  Bombshell (with Barbara Collins as “Barbara Allan”)

  Nathan Heller novels

  Ask Not

  Target Lancer

  Bye Bye, Baby

  Chicago Confidential

  Angel in Black

  Majic Man

  Flying Blind

  Damned in Paradise

  Blood and Thunder

  Carnal Hours

  Stolen Away

  Neon Mirage

  The Million-Dollar Wound

  True Crime

  True Detective

  Triple Play (novellas)

  Chicago Lightning (short stories)

  Mallory novels

  No Cure for Death

  The Baby Blue Rip-Off

  Kill Your Darlings

  A Shroud for Aquarius

  Nice Weekend for a Murder

  The “Disaster” series

  The Titanic Murders

  The Hindenburg Murders

  The Pearl Harbor Murders

  The Lusitania Murders

  The London Blitz Murders

  The War of the Worlds Murder

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

  Text copyright © 2017 by Max Allan Collins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477819432

  ISBN-10: 1477819436

  Cover design by Ray Lundgren

  FOR ALAN TURKUS

  who elected to publish

  CONTENTS

  “In the scheme . . .

  ONE

  “Do you want . . .

  TWO

  “My fellow Americans, . . .

  THREE

  “America is the . . .

  FOUR

  “When even one . . .

  FIVE

  “No man is . . .

  SIX

  “Liberty may be . . .

  SEVEN

  “History and experience . . .

  EIGHT

  “The point in . . .

  NINE

  “The most terrifying . . .

  TEN

  “The government, which . . .

  ELEVEN

  “How far you . . .

  TWELVE

  “If you take . . .

  THIRTEEN

  “It is difficult . . .

  FOURTEEN

  “The time is . . .

  FIFTEEN

  “Peace, above all . . .

  SIXTEEN

  “There are plenty . . .

  SEVENTEEN

  “Behind the ostensible . . .

  EIGHTEEN

  “There’s no bigger . . .

  NINETEEN

  “Heroes may not . . .

  TWENTY

  “You can fool . . .

  TWENTY-ONE

  THANKS IN ORDER

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  “In the scheme of our national government, the presidency is preeminently the people’s office.”

  Grover Cleveland, twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States of America. Served 1885–1889 and 1893–1897. The only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms.

  ONE

  From a hilltop in Azbekistan, through night-vision binoculars, Jake McMann looked down on the Kerch Strait Bridge, wondering if he was about to make history.

  That such a detached thought would float through his mind wasn’t unusual—keeping a distance, being outside yourself, was part of any field agent’s makeup. Still, McMann considered himself a genuine student of history—with a Ball State University degree to back it up. And the professional path he’d taken indicated how seriously he took such things.

  His short brown hair riffled by the evening breeze, his muscular frame draped in black fatigues, the CIA operative grinned at himself—me making history. Jesus.

  But wasn’t he on the front line of a predicted, even inevitable conflict? Why shouldn’t he be seized with the sense that, on this night, he would have the chance to make an entry on the pages of history?

  Or anyway a footnote.

  Never one to question orders—in or out of uniform, McMann was a soldier—he nonetheless couldn’t help wondering what the hell he and his team were doing in this tiny Crimean Peninsula excuse for a country. All he knew was that they were here to reconnoiter from this position, and wait.

  Azbekistan had been just one victim of Russia’s annexing of most of the peninsula back in 2014. The Russians had built the bridge below, from the Taman Peninsula in Krasnodar Krai to Kerch on the Crimean; they’d opened it in 2020, one year behind schedule, back when they still controlled the little country.

  Five years later, with mounting threats from the United Nations and determined fighting by Azbekistani rebels, the Russians retreated to their side of the bridge. Now, barely six years later, they threatened to return and overrun Azbekistan yet again. McMann’s four-person team had been sent here to assess the country’s defenses. But why bother? The Russian invasion seemed inevitable, as did the fall of Azbekistan (again).

  The strait wasn’t that wide here, less than three miles, and McMann thought he heard some kind of noise echoing off the water; but with the swirling wind, he couldn’t pick it out.

  Turning, he looked down the hill to the south. He saw nothing, at first. Pulling on his night-vision goggles, he spotted two men climbing the slope to join him.

  The taller, almost spindly one—Willie Meeks, McMann’s partner—was an African American agent from Villa Rica, Georgia, a sleepy suburb of Atlanta. McMann and Willie were called Ebony and Ivory by their peers back at Langley, but McMann supposed that was better than Salt & Pepper, which similar duos had been christened back in the Agency’s glory days in the 1960s and ’70s—back when black agents in the CIA were more rare than female ones, and there weren’t ten of those.

  Next to Meeks, Vitor Gorianov—one of the two analysts they’d been sent here to protect—was an American of Crimean descent, and also their translator. Craggy, and burlier than Meeks, Gorianov also knew his way around an AK-47, which was a nice bonus in circumstances like these.

  As the men neared, also attired in black, night-clinging fatigues, McMann eased the goggles back up to his forehead.

  “Where’s Liz?” Gorianov asked, in a near whisper, knowing voices really carried out here at night.

  The fourth member of the team, Liz Gillis—the other analyst, blonde, blue-eyed, boyishly attractive—was not yet thirty, but knew her shit.

  “She went for a walk,” McMann said, also sotto voce.

  “A walk?” Meeks asked, almost too loud. He caught himself. “You let that fresh-faced analyst go off on her own, in the wild?”

  McMann met his partner’s eyes. “She can take care of herself, Willie.”
>
  “In what could be a fuckin’ war zone any time now? Jake, get serious—she’s just a goddamn analyst.”

  From behind Meeks and Gorianov, a confident female voice came, softly: “A goddamn analyst who’s got the drop on you three.”

  They all wheeled toward her. Her blonde hair tucked under a black watch cap, Gillis stood there grinning. She was tall, almost willowy, yet the AK-47 looked perfectly at home in her delicate hands, its snout lowered but ready.

  Gorianov, his words clipped, asked, “What the hell were you doing out there?”

  “My job,” Liz snapped.

  “Keep your voices down!” Meeks said, too loud.

  McMann held up a hand and said, “Okay, everybody—unbunch your panties. Chill already.”

  He waited while they all took a breath.

  The entire team was tense, including McMann, and why not? The Russians seemed poised to invade, and Azbekistan appeared almost ready and willing for them to do so.

  Which was damn dumb: the Azbekistani army was not exactly intimidating, despite fancy new uniforms. As rebels, citizens fighting for their homeland, they had been tenacious pit bulls; as an organized, under-equipped army standing up against an overwhelming enemy, they were more like lapdogs.

  But at least they would look sharp as they got slaughtered.

  McMann asked, “What did you find, Liz?”

  “The Azbekistanis are sound asleep. Except for the ones just napping.”

  “Vitor?” McMann asked.

  “Same thing to the south. Maybe they think they can dream the Russians away.”

  “Where’s the closest Azbekistani force?”

  Meeks said, “Other than that glorified bridge tollbooth? A two-jeep patrol about a click away.”

  As they headed back toward their vehicle, a thought kept gnawing at the front of McMann’s mind: Why are we here? Everybody in the CIA, not excluding the agent at the desk in the lobby at Langley, knew this invasion was coming, and that the Azbekistanis were about to get rolled over. His four-person team could hardly prevent that inevitability.

  So why the hell were they here?

  They were still nearly a thousand yards to the trees where their car, a Skoda Citigo, was hidden, just off a back road, when the wind shifted and McMann suddenly heard distant thunder—or was it?

  The sounds were low-pitched, but as the wind brought them to him, he knew—no, not thunder. Spinning, he pulled down his night-vision goggles and trotted over to where he could look back down toward the bridge.

  Tanks.

  A whole damn column of them, already better than halfway across.

  “Damn!” McMann blurted. “It’s on—the Russians are on the move! Right the hell now!”

  All four of them sprinted toward the car. McMann ran hard, but some detached part of his mind recalled the Nazis storming across the border of Poland in 1939. Just up ahead were the two jeeps that Gorianov and Meeks had spotted earlier, lumbering toward them. For a second, McMann wondered if his little team would end up pinned down between the two sides.

  But the Russians were still a few clicks away, and the four of them would be long gone by the time the tanks rumbled through. That thought gave him some relief.

  Some.

  Running just behind him, like a relay man about to pass a baton, Meeks yelled, “You hear that?”

  Until now—lost in his immediate thoughts of escape and his reflective flashes about the history they were in the middle of—McMann hadn’t; but now he did—a low-pitched rumble, different from the tanks. But he didn’t turn and he didn’t slow as he sprinted through darkness across uneven ground, only then the noise was right above him, and he risked a glance skyward.

  On this moonless night, the planes were not visible, though he could make out parachutes dropping out of nowhere. Not only would he and his team fail to get away in time, they would soon have Russian paratroopers landing all around them.

  Ready to fight.

  “Faster!” McMann shouted.

  Somehow they all picked up the pace, though McMann had a grim feeling they wouldn’t even make it to the car, let alone get away.

  The Azbekistani jeeps were closing, but not as fast as Russian invaders were materializing from the sky. His team sprinted even harder—they had orders not to engage the Russians unless fired upon.

  McMann unsnapped his holster and drew his Glock.

  To his right, the first Russian thudded to ground. The paratrooper was a good distance away, judging by the sound, and they were now only two hundred yards from their car. Two football fields, two lousy football fields between them and the chance to get away before the Russians and Azbekistanis opened fire on each other.

  Sweat burning his eyes, his lungs burning too, McMann kept running, kept urging his team on. Young slender Liz was leading the way, Meeks keeping up with McMann, though Gorianov was slowly falling back.

  “Vitor,” McMann yelled, “pick up the pace!”

  Somehow Gorianov found an extra gear. Again, for a moment, McMann thought they had a chance, right up to where the Russian soldier landed hard in front of him. Meeks circled around the guy, but McMann had no choice but to hit the brakes. Gorianov nearly ran up his back, but dodged left in time.

  That left McMann face-to-face with the Russian as the paratrooper came up, AK-47 at the ready, pointed right at McMann.

  The CIA agent shot the man in the head.

  It was all reflexes and his action meant that if they weren’t in a shitload of trouble before, they sure as hell were now.

  When McMann fired, the other three on his team opened up, too. This was a target-rich environment, getting richer by the second. Looking up, all McMann could see were shadows, but he knew each one was a Russian paratrooper . . .

  . . . and there were shadows everywhere.

  He holstered his pistol, then leaned down, picked up the fallen paratrooper’s AK-47, and started shooting, doing a slow, deadly pirouette.

  Not only were they suddenly in a firefight on the ground, but paratroopers who hadn’t even landed yet rained fire down on them. Gorianov took a hit, went to a knee, wincing, but kept firing. The next second, he was up and moving again, though not nearly as fast.

  The Azbekistani jeeps were on them, headlights lancing through the inky night, and men riding opened fire, raking the field with machine gun rounds even as they rolled forward.

  Because we don’t have enough trouble, McMann thought, emptying the magazine of the AK-47.

  Dropping the depleted weapon, he got out his pistol again. Their progress had slowed to a walk now as they moved toward the car, firing at Russians all around. McMann looked over at Meeks and saw a shiny black spot on his partner’s leg, leaving him barely able to limp along now, much less run.

  They kept fighting, did their best to keep moving. Gorianov got hit again, this time in the chest. They all wore body armor, but having been hit like that more than once himself, McMann knew it hurt like a son of a bitch and knocked the wind out of you as surely as a fist to the belly. Suddenly Gorianov was on his back, arms and legs flailing.

  With his free hand, McMann went to Gorianov and grabbed a fistful of the man’s fatigues and pulled him up to a sitting position. He was about to help the analyst to his feet when a Russian bullet exploded Gorianov’s skull, the lifeless, near headless body sagging back to the ground.

  Spattered with gore, McMann swung and fired at the paratrooper, killing him as dead as Gorianov.

  But their pistols were no match for AK-47s, and they were outmanned a hundred to one, not to mention the Azbekistani jeeps firing indiscriminately into the night, unaware that Americans were on their soil.

  Meeks took two hits, one in the body armor, one not, spun, dropped, fought his way to his hands and knees, then Gillis and McMann each caught him under an arm and dragged him toward the car.

  “Jesus, are we screwed,” Meeks burbled. Hurt bad.

  “And it’s all your fault,” McMann said, a standard line between them when the
shit was coming down.

  Meeks tried to laugh, but summoned only a choke, then he stumbled and Gillis lost her grip. McMann waved for her to keep going, and get to the car. If she could, maybe they could still make it out of here alive, that back road so close, so very close . . .

  McMann felt a sudden searing pain in his leg, and dropped to the ground, looking down to see a nasty wound in his thigh, shiny with bubbly blood. Turning to Meeks, he said, “Come on, Willie, quit loafing—time to go.”

  “Cut a guy some slack,” Meeks said, and smiled, and died.

  McMann dragged himself to his feet, no time for sorrow, just as an Azbekistani machine gun tore into Gillis and shook her like a rag doll, less than fifty feet from the Citigo. Her slender, bullet-riddled form dropped in an awkward pile.

  Shit.

  His leg burned, shock setting in, sweat pouring out everywhere as he limped toward the car, both sides of the battle seeming to turn their gunfire toward him, tracers streaming like fiery ribbons.

  He was hit once, twice, three times, two in the body armor, another time not, stumbled, fell, rose, like a nearly knocked-out fighter who should have stayed down for the count. Bullets buffeted him now, the car barely ten feet away. Machine-gun fire from one of the jeeps raked the vehicle’s hood, turning the engine into something worthless, no doubt.

  Still, McMann limped on, fell to his knees, got hit in the left glute. Which one of these sons of bitches had actually shot him in the ass? If that wasn’t covered by the Geneva Convention (some detached part of his mind said), it sure as hell should . . .

  Crawling, he got to the car, touched a tire, the feel of the rubber tread oddly comforting. He moved forward, the Russians coming right up on him now, the firing coming to a merciful stop. He reached up, his hand bloody, his arm barely working, and he touched the door handle.

  Then in a crystalized instant he realized why he and his team were there. It all fell into place—they had been sent here to die, so that . . .

  Cold steel against his temple cut his thought short—a muzzle. He tried to turn but couldn’t see who held the gun. Did it matter? McMann heard just the start of the shot that killed him.

  And felt no pain at all.

  He was history.

  “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”