The sons of perdition, p.1
The Sons of Perdition, page 1
THE SONS OF PERDITION
RICK JONES
CONTENTS
The Sons Of Perdition
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
Free Thriller Sampler
About the Author
THE SONS OF PERDITION
By
Rick Jones
PROLOGUE
ONE YEAR AGO
The Estate of Senator Declan Marr, Washington, D.C.
March 17, 2022
They were known as the Sons of Perdition, eight elite members of the CIA’s black-arm paramilitary unit. They had no identities, no parents, no backgrounds, no social security numbers, or birthdates—they were nonexistent to everyone except for the leading principals at Langley.
At 0000 hours, the unit closed in on the estate of Declan Marr, a leading Republican senator, wearing the tactical gear of shin, shoulder, and forearm shield composites. They also wore dragon-skin armor to stop rounds from high-capacity weapons. And their Kevlar helmets were loaded with a boon of gadgetry such as NVG hardware and a Bluetooth communication system.
As they approached the estate with their suppressed MP7s at eye level, they were feline silent. When they reached the property’s perimeter, they hunkered deep inside the shadows and behind a neatly pruned hedgerow.
The manor was a two-story Tudor-style home that was surrounded by manicured lawns and nicely trimmed elms. To showcase the landscape, solar-powered lamps were directed on the trees and flowerbeds. Even at night, the flowers—the azaleas, the purple phloxes, and begonias—all bloomed with a riot of colors.
As the unit stayed low within the shadows, the grounds appeared empty. But Senator Marr always employed a protective detail that was 24/7/365. Though the area appeared vacant, the intel in regard to Marr’s security team insisted that the unit was always in motion.
Sage Whitmore, who commanded the team, altered the mode of his headgear. The extended pair of lenses began to turn automatically as they focused with surgical sharpness after using thermal imaging. The grounds were clean of heat signatures, the detail posted elsewhere.
Whitmore, enabling his Bluetooth communicator, spoke just above a whisper, “Sierra One to Homebase.”
“Homebase. Go.”
“Targets nonexistent in the sub-area of operation. I need operational eyes on this one since the visibility of approach could compromise the unit.”
“Copy that. Standby.”
Whitmore, still examining the grounds through his innovative headgear, waited for the greenlight call.
Homebase was not a fixed base at all, but a cube van with a high-tech computer system that was linked to geospatial satellites. To lock onto a satellite and then renavigate its focus to a certain set of coordinates, encrypted ciphers had to be typed into the computer which sent a message to the mainframe at Langley, and then after verification codes had been acknowledged so that the satellite system would realign and focus onto the new set of coordinates. In this case, it was the location of Senator Marr’s estate.
Manning the console inside the van that was parked one hundred feet west of the manor, Jimmy Sakahari served as the unit’s handler. By comparison to the military team, he was rather elfin in size, about five-five and weed thin. Yet his keen sense around the computer and his ability to mobilize his team on the field to achieve the means was second to none. By manner, he was a calm and cerebral individual who looked at every facet of an operation before engagement. Tonight, as the handler for the Sons of Perdition, he was about to direct his unit through hellfire to steal away Senator Marr’s scepter of rule as a United States senator.
Typing a series of encrypted codes into the computer, several banks of monitors were operational against the van’s wall, though the screens were staticky. After a final tap on the ENTER button, the monitors showed a topographical image of the Eastern seaboard of the United States. After striking the keys to insert the coordinates, the monitors seemed to readjust themselves. The Eye in the Sky was refocusing its line of sight to Washington, D.C., and locked onto the position.
“Zoom in,” Sakahari calmly stated into his lip mic.
The TV monitors zoomed in and refocused, though the stilled image was now an overhead view of the entire D.C. area.
“Zoom in by twenty.”
The monitors changed. Now the screens showed a twenty-four-karat D.C. neighborhood.
“Zoom in by fifty.”
On screen, the coordinates shifted as did the picture. Now, the focal point was the senator’s home.
“Shift to thermal.”
The automated system changed on command, the screen shifting to pick up heat signatures through the walls of the estate. There were seven people inside the home.
Then just as evenly, Sakahari said, “Bring up structural schematics on Screen Two.”
On the second monitor, the diagrams of a Tudor-style home appeared—the floorplans, the exit and entryways, and the position of the windows that overlooked the landscape. Six people moved about the first and second floors somewhat lazily as though jaded by the task of ceaseless roaming about. But there was one individual seated inside the office.
Into his lip mic, Sakahari said, “Bring up Office location on Screen Three.”
The third screen winked from static to a precision shot of clarity. The heat signature revealed a man sitting at his desk, the heat colors ranging in burning hues of red, orange and yellow.
And then: “Homebase to Sierra One.”
“Sierra One. Go.”
“The target is located inside Venue One. I repeat: the target is located in Venue One. The mobiles are maneuvering about the estate, though they’re located in the north and west wings. You’re good to approach the fortress from your position. Make it quick, Whit.”
“Copy that.”
Ending the call, Sage Whitmore signaled to his teammates to branch off and skirt the light as much as possible, then breach the south side of the estate. The ‘mobiles’ of Marr’s detail were canvassing the north and west wings of the home, so time was minimal.
Using the darkness that skirted the fringe of the landscape’s lighting to perfection, the Sons of Perdition fleeting shapes within the shadows, moved against the stronghold that was Senator Marr’s estate.
Dodge Hannaforth served his country as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. With all the decorative medals he received as a soldier, none of the military bling mattered to him. He served without expectation of reward or the pats on the back from those politicians who quickly forgot his name after the award pinning. Ceremonies, he believed, were simply dog-and-pony shows to show the public what a real hero looks like. But medals didn’t make the man. Actions did.
After he was discharged honorably from service, after dodging a number of rounds from Afghan warriors and avoiding IEDs, he was offered a job with a major security firm to lead a unit of sentries that specialized in shielding Washington pundits, namely senators and congressmen. He accepted the post. Now team leader for five years as Senator Marr’s master security tech, the senator still forgot his name on occasion—calling him Handiforth, Heneworth, and sometimes Danbury, a name that was not even close. Perhaps politicians like the senator, he considered, were so self-centered that those who existed just outside their bubble mattered little. To Senator Marr, Dodge Hannaforth was a marionette whose strings were manipulated by the sound of the senator’s voice. Do this, do that, get me a cup of java. And it was this lack of respectability that prompted his decision to leave the security firm to start his own corporation. Licenses were being purchased and background checks were being conducted. As soon as he jumped through all the necessary hoops, Dodge Hannaforth would be master of his domain—and not a gofer for people like Senator Marr who took his coffee black, no sugar.
And within his mind’s eye, he envisioned what it would be like to guide and direct. He, master of himself and protector of others, seemed to have a nice ring to it.
Then he smiled with a gingerly one-sided grin, the man caught within a dreamscape.
It was a s imple vision and desire, and nothing too complex.
Moving down the first-floor hallway that divided the north and south wings, Hannaforth checked the doors, the locks—everything was secured at such a late hour.
Then beyond the walls, he heard the clap of distant thunder. Going to the nearest window and parting the drapes, he saw a celestial staircase of lightning touching down several miles away. Apparently, a storm was approaching. Closing the curtains and making sure the pleats were straight, Hannaforth never heard the footfalls of his attacker.
The act was fluid and swift as a garotte was wrapped and tightened around Hannaforth’s throat. The wire bit deep and separated the skin to create a horrible second mouth. As the former Army Ranger did his best to disengage, his world began to spin violently. As the capillaries in his eyes burst, as the outer edges of his vision first turned purple and then black, Dodge Hannaforth was succumbing by the inches. Then with a final pull, the attacker pulled hard on the wire to compromise the trachea. After the crunch, Hannaforth immediately fell limp and was soundlessly lowered to the floor by his assassin.
All the dreams Dodge Hannaforth ever had about his future were forever gone.
One by one, the members of Sage Whitmore’s team neutralized the security detail with relative ease. The members were caught by surprise as their complacency became the devil’s advocate. They had not been prepared for the raiders, the security detail lacking awareness. In quick fashion, there was a dampened shot here and a muted shot there, all reducing the squad until no one remained alive except for Senator Marr who, by the light under his office doorway, was still on the job.
Sage Whitmore, along with the Sons of Perdition, advanced on their target.
Senator Declan Marr had always been an extremely ambitious man whose proud arrogance had been exhibited on the Senate floor quite often. And because of this, he had made a number of enemies both on and off the Floor.
Inside the study of his residence, the senator closed the blinds against the intermittent flashes from the evening’s lightning storm. And instead of enjoying a cognac to help dim his energy, he opted for coffee, black with no sugar. The night, he knew would be a long one as he pored over documents in regard to a measure he was trying to pass.
Outside, thunder roared, the predicted storm moving closer. And then the lights started to wink, stayed on, winked again, then remained on. Senator Marr, waiting to see if the desk lamp would continue its vacillation between darkness and light, finally returned to the documents.
The senator, having been so for six terms, was now on the brink of taking the highest political seat in the land. He was lauded as a top candidate to run for president, the station was his for the taking if the public chooses. His polls were up, higher than they had ever been. And the incumbent, due to political failures on the international and domestic fronts, was waning in popularity. But success had to be earned and fought for, with the clawing and scrambling to the top rarely done so without taking out those who were in your way. And many had been in Senator Marr’s way over the years, too many to count with the fingers on both hands.
Outside, lightning. And then the subsequent boom of thunder.
The lamp winked, came back, winked again, and this time the senator tapped the lamp’s globe with the tip of his finger as though the action would steady it from flickering. It didn’t. The room went dark.
“Dammit.”
He tapped the lamp’s glass shade again.
Nothing.
“C’mon.”
More taps.
Then beyond the blinds came another stroke of lightning, a quick and dazzling flash of pure, unadulterated light that poured in through the louvered edges of the closed blinds and bled hotly across the area, the quick strokes catching movement across the room.
Senator Marr said, “Is that you, Demworth?”
Silence.
“Or Delmore? Whatever your name is.”
Nothing.
Senator Marr swallowed. Suddenly, his throat was as dry as ancient parchment.
Then from the senator: “Who’s there?”
As though on cue, a flash of lightning beyond the windows lit up the entire room, the staccato-like bursts revealing eight master soldiers who stood as still as Grecian statues before the senator. They were uniquely molded to be the killers who were collectively a liquidation team who operated solely for the black-op arm of the CIA.
I know who you are, thought Senator Marr. I know why you’re here.
As the lightning gave the senator staccato glimpses of illuminating light, he could see that no one moved or spoke. But he—even behind the shields of their headgear—could sense them pinning him with their sight.
“What do you want?” the senator asked.
Commander Whitmore, Sierra One, stepped forward with the point of his suppressed MP7 aimed at the senator’s center mass. “Sit down,” he told the senator evenly.
Senator Marr did not contest the order and immediately took his seat behind the desk.
After another flash of lightning, the desk lamp came back on. The illumination it cast, however, was feeble.
“Well, will you look at that,” the senator said referring to the light. “And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” After a beat, he added, “But from where I sit, I don’t see anything good in the light at all. What do you want?”
Whitmore continued forward with the hardware on his helmet in the ‘up’ position. His face was angular and handsome, though his eyes, which were as shiny as newly minted pennies were his most outstanding feature. “The files,” he stated simply, “where are they?”
“First, tell me. Who’s little boy are you? Who sent you?”
“The files, Senator.”
Senator Marr eased back into his seat. He was in his late sixties and overweight, which was indicative of his sagging jowls and the noticeable paunch that overlapped his beltline. “You think you can just walk into my home and push me around?”
“It’s easier than you think when your entire detail has been neutralized.”
“Yeah, well, you’re probably right, young man.”
“The files, Senator, and stop stalling. This is going to happen.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is. Problem is, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The files you keep on Senator William Hutchinson.”
“Ah, and there you have it,” said Senator Marr. “You’re here because Hutchinson and his CIA cronies sent you to retrieve his dirty laundry, is that it?”
“The files.”
“The files. The files,” the senator mocked. “There are no files. Everything is kept on a thumb drive.”
“Then give me the files that are on the thumb drive.” Whitmore took a few steps forward and pressed the point of his MP7 against the senator’s temple to the point where the flesh dimpled beneath the pressure. “Now.”
“If you pull that trigger, son, you’ll be cutting your throat and the throats of your teammates. Do you think for one moment that the CIA will allow you to go on knowing that any one of you at any given time can spill the details of my assassination to anyone who’s willing to listen? If you pull that trigger, you kill everyone inside this room. Believe me. Every one of you has already been deemed expendable. Think about it. You’re here to do the dirty work for a man who has no moral compass.”
