Jonathan Maberry
Joe Ledger: Special Ops
Countdown — Originally published as an eBook by St. Martin's Griffin; August 10, 2009; © 2009 Jonathan Maberry
Zero Tolerance — Originally published in THE LIVING DEAD 2, edited by John Joseph Adams; Night Shade Books; September 1, 2010. © 2009 Jonathan Maberry
Deep Dark — Originally published as an eBook by St. Martin's Griffin, November 21, 2009; © 2009 Jonathan Maberry
Changeling — Originally published in Midnight Echo Magazine issue #9 (Australia), May 2013. © 2013 Jonathan Maberry
Material Witness — Originally published as an eBook by St. Martin's Griffin, July 12, 2011; © 2011 Jonathan Maberry
Mad Science — Originally published in LIAR LIAR; Blackstone Audio, April 2, 2013; © 2013 Jonathan Maberry
Borrowed Power — Originally published as an eBook by St. Martin's Griffin, April 30, 2013; © 2013 Jonathan Maberry
Artifact — First publication; © 2014 Jonathan Maberry
The Handyman Gets Out — First publication; © 2014 Jonathan Maberry
Inside the DMS — First publication; © 2014 Jonathan Maberry
Interview with Ray Porter — First publication; © 2014 Jonathan Maberry
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Michael Homler, editor and friend. Thanks for always being there.
And, as always, for Sara Jo.
Countdown
NOTE: This story was written as a teaser for the impending release of Patient Zero.
The storyline here picks up in that novel.
Chap. 1
I didn’t plan to kill anyone.
I wasn’t totally against the idea, either.
Sometimes things just fall that way, and either you roll with it or it rolls over you. Letting the bad guys win isn’t how I roll.
Chap. 2
When I woke up this morning it was going to be another day on the job. I’ve been Baltimore PD for eight years now. I did four in the Army before rotating back to my life with a Rangers patch but no ribbons for doing anything of note because nothing of note was happening at the time. I got out right before 9/11.
It was different on the cops. Baltimore’s been a war zone ever since crack hit the streets during the 80s. Families fell apart, kids took to the street in packs, and every corner belonged to one of the drug gangs. Down there, “murder” is so common a word it doesn’t even give people pause. I wore the blue and knocked a few heads, made some busts, climbed the ladder. Couple of times it got Old West on me and there was gunplay. They taught me well in the Rangers, and the other older beat cops taught me even better. It’s never been about who draws fast or draws first — it’s only ever been about who hits what he aims at. I’m good at that. And if the scuffle is hands or knives or broken broom handles, well, I’m okay there, too. Baltimore isn’t the richest city in the world, and it definitely has its issues, but it doesn’t breed weaklings. The streets taught me a lot I didn’t learn from the Army or in a dojo.
In the years since the planes hit the towers, every police department in the country grew an umbilical cord attached to the bureaucratic monster that is Homeland Security. Shortly after I got my shield I got “volunteered” to be part of a joint task force that was cobbled together by lend-lease cops from Baltimore, Philly, and D.C., all of us on Homeland’s leash. We profiled suspects, invaded a lot of personal privacy, listened to thousands of hours of wiretaps, and tried to build cases — mostly against people whose closest ties to Middle Eastern terrorists was a collection of Sinbad movies at home. Every once in a while we’d get a minnow, but we never even caught a whiff of a shark.
Until we did.
I was sitting wiretap on a warehouse down by the docks. Our big break started as a fragment of info here and another fragment there — sketchy stuff, but we started seeing some movement patterns that looked covert. Conversations over the tapped phones started sounding like code, people talking about importing agricultural products when the warehouse was licensed to a shoe business. Stuff like that. Then somewhere in the middle of the night I caught a brief conversation on a cell phone line that was hardly ever used. Just a little bit of back-and-forth in which one of the players dropped the name “El Mujahid.” The immediate response from the other party was to hang the hell up.
El Mujahid.
The name was so frigging big that I had about three seconds of thinking it was a joke, like everyday Schmoes might drop the name Bin Laden into the middle of a conversation or as the punch line to a joke. We all do it. But this didn’t have that feel.
The transcript of the line I’d heard was this: “. . that will all change when El Mujahid—”
At which point the other guy curses in Farsi and hangs up. Farsi’s one of the languages I know. Actually, I know a lot of languages — that stuff’s always been easy for me.
I called my lieutenant and he called the major who woke up the colonel who woke up the Homeland supervisor. Suddenly I was the golden boy, and when a full-team hit was planned on the warehouse, I got to play. Perks of ringing the bell.
El Mujahid was the right name to hear on the wire. It means “the fighter of the way of Allah.” That son of a bitch was only a short step down from Bin Laden. If U.S. soldiers roll their Bradley over a landmine, chances are this asshole is responsible. If there was even the slightest chance to get a lead to him we had to move and move fast.
Chap. 3
There were thirty of us the next morning, everyone in black BDUs, helmet-cams and full SWAT gear. Each unit was split into four-man teams: two guys with MP-5s, a point man with a Glock .40 and a ballistic shield, and one guy with a Remington 870 pump. I was the shotgunner on our team. The task force hit the warehouse hard and fast, coming in every door and window in the place. Flashbangs, snipers on the surrounding buildings, multiple entry points, and a whole lot of yelling. Domestic shock and awe, the idea being to startle and overpower so that everyone inside is too dazed and confused to offer violent resistance. Last thing anyone wanted was an O.K. Corral.
My team had the back door, the one that led out to a small boat dock. There was a tidy little Cigarette boat there, and while we waited for the go/no-go, the guy next to me — my buddy Jerry Spencer from DCPD — kept looking at the boat with the calculating lust of a cop nearing early retirement. I bent close and hummed the Miami Vice theme, and he grinned. He had a few weeks before getting out, and that boat must have looked like a ticket to paradise for him.
The “go” came down and everything suddenly got loud and fast.
I had a Shok-Lok round chambered in the shotgun, and I blew the steel deadbolt to powder. We went in yelling for everyone to freeze, to lay down their weapons. Even if the bad guys don’t speak English there’s no one alive who doesn’t get the gist when SWAT waves guns, yells, and points at the floor. I’ve been on maybe fifteen, eighteen of these things in my time with Baltimore PD, and only twice was anyone stupid enough to draw a gun on us. Cops don’t hotdog it and generally neither do the bad guys, ’cause it’s not about who has the biggest balls — it’s about overwhelming force so that no shots are ever fired. I remember when I went through the tac team training, the commander had a quote from the movie Silverado made into a plaque and hung up in the training halclass="underline" “I don’t want to kill you and you don’t want to be dead.” That’s pretty much the motto.