Rogue command, p.1
Rogue Command, page 1
R O G U E C O M M A N D
(A TROY STARK THRILLER—BOOK 2)
J A C K M A R S
Jack Mars
Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising six books; of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising twelve books; of the TROY STARK thriller series, comprising three books; and of the SPY GAME thriller series, comprising three books.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Hubskyi_Mark, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY JACK MARS
THE SPY GAME
TARGET ONE (Book #1)
TARGET TWO (Book #2)
TARGET THREE (Book #3)
TROY STARK THRILLER SERIES
ROGUE FORCE (Book #1)
ROGUE COMMAND (Book #2)
ROGUE TARGET (Book #3)
LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)
OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)
SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)
OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)
PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)
OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)
HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)
FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES
PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)
PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)
PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)
PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)
PRIMARY VALOR (Book #5)
PRIMARY DUTY (Book #6)
AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES
AGENT ZERO (Book #1)
TARGET ZERO (Book #2)
HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)
TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)
FILE ZERO (Book #5)
RECALL ZERO (Book #6)
ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)
DECOY ZERO (Book #8)
CHASING ZERO (Book #9)
VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10)
ZERO ZERO (Book #11)
ABSOLUTE ZERO (Book #12)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER ONE
November 10
An Industrial District
Outskirts of Madrid, Spain
Everything glowed a ghostly green, from the blank walls to the carpet beneath his feet.
Troy Stark moved up the narrow corridor, weapon drawn. He was dressed all in black with light body armor under his jumpsuit, protecting his chest, throat, groin, and legs. His helmet’s visor was up, and his night vision goggles were on his eyes.
He could feel Agent Mariem Dubois’s gloved hand, touching him at the waist. She was right behind him. Touching his body was an old trick. If she lost track of him with her eyes, her hand knew where he was.
People in the office, people they both knew, called her Mari. But not Troy.
“My name is Mariem,” she had said to him once. “Only my friends call me Mari.”
He hadn’t reached that place yet. To be honest, he wasn’t in a big hurry to get there. He just called her Dubois.
“Agent Stark,” Jan Bakker’s calm voice said inside Troy’s helmet. “Two unknown vehicles entering the complex. Large SUVs. Pulling to the front doors of the building.”
“Copy,” Troy said.
He pictured the front doors of the large warehouse building. One was a nondescript steel door that a man would walk through. Three others were large garage-type doors, opening to a vast cement space. That was somewhere up ahead here, maybe a hundred meters along.
Troy wasn’t certain. He and Dubois had infiltrated through the rear.
“We need to move it,” he said to Dubois, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Okay,” came her voice, even softer than his.
He began to pace quickly along the hallway now, catlike, his feet making almost no sound. He could hear his own breathing though, and it sounded loud to his ears. He was taking chances, throwing caution to the wind. There wasn’t much time.
He came to a corner and turned it, his weapon out ahead. No one.
Twenty meters down, the hallway seemed to turn again. Or maybe it ended right there. The place was like a maze. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.
Come on. Where is it?
“Stark,” Bakker said. “Six individuals emerging from the SUVs. No. Seven individuals. Very likely unfriendlies. Heavily armed. Three men with automatic rifles. Entire group moving to the doorway.”
“Copy,” Troy said mechanically.
“Entering the building. Less than sixty meters from your location.”
Troy and Dubois had powerful transponder units embedded in their gear. On his monitor, Bakker could see their location with exceptional accuracy. For a split second, Troy pictured the gentle giant Bakker hunched over his various screens, watching all the action: his mind racing out ahead, measuring distances, calculating possibilities, adding, subtracting, and coming up with…
“Abort,” Bakker said. “Abort mission.”
“Negative,” Troy said.
“Stark?” Dubois said behind him.
“Seven men entering,” Bakker said. “Three men, by my count, already inside. Ten opponents. You have no chance. Aborting is the best option.”
“We’ve come this far,” Troy said.
There was no way they were aborting this mission. The locker had to be in this hallway. It had to be. He moved faster now, head on a swivel, pivoting back and forth. It was a small metal door ensconced in the wall, almost like the glass door that holds a fire extinguisher.
“It’s here. It’s got to be here.”
“Abort!” Bakker hissed, his voice like a snake.
“Stark!” Dubois said. Now she spoke above a whisper.
“Ssshhhhhh.”
“Abort, please,” Bakker said. “Agent Stark.”
“There’s no way out,” Troy said.
“Back the way you came.”
Troy pictured the winding hallways that led back to the rear of this building. The design was insidious. He’d almost prefer to blast his way out the front than go back through there.
“We’ll never find our way back there.”
“I’ll guide you,” Bakker said.
Troy gritted his teeth. Frustrating. This was not the United States Navy SEALs. Abort the mission? Go back? In the SEALs, there was GO, and GO HARDER. There was no such gear as reverse.
“Okay,” Troy said. “Okay. Just let me check one more door. Then we’ll go.”
“Stark…” Bakker said.
“One more door. One more hall. And we’re done.”
He moved to the end of the hallway. It came to a T, with halls moving off in both directions at a ninety-degree angle. To the right, the hall disappeared into the deep, dark distance. From here, he couldn’t see the end of it. If they went that way, they could be cut off from retreat.
To the left, there was a door maybe ten feet away.
“Opponents close now,” Bakker whispered. “Very close. Wall to your right. Possibly on the other side of that wall.”
Terrific. Some of these walls were sheetrock, easy to fire a high-caliber weapon through. Troy was breathing hard. He could hear Dubois’s breathing right behind him. If those bad guys heard them breathing, what was to stop them from…
“Very quiet,” Bakker whispered in his ear. “Silent.”
“SHUT UP!” Troy wanted to scream at him.
This mission was a nightmare.
He went to the door and felt the handle. It had some play. It was not locked. At this point, Troy didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. If it had been locked, he could have just turned around and aborted the mission after all.
It would be an epic journey navigating their way through this confounding maze of hallways again to the rear of the building. And exiting from the rear would be no guarantee of safety. They’d still have to dash across an open lot and duck into some scrub woods on the other side. But going back would mean that he didn’t have to open this door.
Very slowly, very quietly, he turned the handle. The door disengaged.
He pushed it open.
There was a large empty space ahead. Dammit. That couldn’t be right. Couldn’t Bakker see these things?
Troy stepped into the space. He got the sense of a high ceiling two or three stories above his head.
Dubois was right behind him.
Suddenly, figures moved in the space. Ahead and to the right, and now to the left, people were moving. It was a set up. Red and green laser pointers appeared. Triangulated fire. There was no way to escape it.
“Duck!” Troy shouted. “Dubois! Move!”
He went counterintuitive on them, diving forward, further into the room.
A shot rang out, and then an entire volley. The sound was loud, echoing off the high walls and the ceiling.
BANG!
Then:
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Behind him, Dubois screamed.
Troy rolled onto his stomach, firing from the ground. He couldn’t see what he was firing at. He just aimed for the muzzle flashes.
The sounds were deafening now. A wall of gunshots.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
He fired until his magazine was empty. He reached for another.
Something hit him then, on his right side. Another one. Another. They’d found him, and now he was sunk. He rolled, but it was too late. Lights flashed on him and found him.
BANG! Another shot him.
BANG! Another.
They could hit him at will. There was nowhere to hide.
The pain was one thing. The rage and the frustration, though, was another. And Dubois. Where was she? She’d been hit right away. In real life, she’d be…
“Dead,” a male voice said.
The shriek of a whistle sounded, and the shots stopped.
All around them, overhead lights came on. Suddenly, it was bright in here. In the back of the warehouse space, a door opened. Two assistants came in and pressed buttons that opened two gigantic mechanical shades. Now, weak afternoon light streamed in.
Troy looked around the room. There were six shooters lined up against him. Four were to his right, on an angle, and two were on his left, on a similar angle. It was just as he had suspected. They were dialed in on the door that he came through, triangulating their fire so that it would take he and Dubois down, without any danger of hitting their own team.
Standing in the middle of the room was Miquel Castro-Ruiz, the director of this little agency and the producer of this farce of an infiltration exercise. The agency’s name was officially the European Rapid Response Investigation Unit, or ERRIU, if you liked. Troy didn’t like. He couldn’t imagine the word salad that name would become in all the various languages—it was bad enough in English.
Internally, Miquel called it el Grupo Clandestino—the Clandestine Group. He also toyed around with el Grupo Especial—the Special Group. He sometimes even referred to it as “el Grupo.” Troy got it. Miquel was trying to build a culture here, from scratch. He was trying to put a stamp on it.
Right now, Miquel wore a pair of khaki pants, black shoes, and a blue dress shirt, all smartly tucked, pressed, and shined up. He was going for the clean shaven look these days, losing the bushy unkempt look from when Troy had first met him.
Troy glanced back at Dubois.
She was sitting on the floor against the wall, about three feet from the door they had come through. Her black jumpsuit was covered in fluorescent green paint splotches. One paintball had hit her square in the helmet. It had exploded and sprayed the side of her face in green. She took the helmet off.
She stared at Troy. She touched her cheek gingerly. The paintballs hurt when they hit. She was almost certainly going to have a welt there tomorrow.
“How does it look?” she said.
Troy nodded. “Nice. I like the color. I’d keep it, if I were you.”
“What happened?” Miquel said. He spoke English perfectly, but with the lilted accent of someone who had mastered it later in life. “What did you do wrong?”
Troy shrugged. “Well, I agreed to a canned exercise with impossible odds of success. Those guys had perfect information about us and our whereabouts. That doesn’t exist in the real world. If we do our jobs right, the opponent is always guessing. In this case, they knew we were coming through that door.”
A couple of the shooters laughed.
Miquel raised a finger. “Incorrect. But a good guess.”
He looked around him at the open warehouse space. “Jan?”
“Yes,” came Bakker’s voice over the loudspeaker system.
“How many times did you request that Agent Stark abort the mission?”
“Uh…no fewer than three times. I also explained why aborting was the best chance of survival and offered to guide them out the way they came in. I would have requested he abort one more time, but he shushed me.”
Troy’s shoulders dropped. He nearly laughed. Bakker had something like a photographic memory for detail, and he recounted events in a robotically dispassionate tone of voice. If you didn’t see giant Jan Bakker in front of you, you might think he was an artificial intelligence come to life.
Troy shook his head. “We were trying to complete a mission,” he said.
What he didn’t say was there was no real risk involved.
Miquel raised a hand. “I’m not picking on you, Agent Stark. I’m only making a point, for all the people here. You’re not the only person from a commando background, and this is important for everyone. Yes, your opponents had perfect knowledge of your location. Yes, if you stepped through that door, you were both dead.”
“So what’s the point of that?” Troy said.
“During your military career, how many men died under your command?”
Troy shook his head. “My military career didn’t work that way. I was embedded in teams with highly trained teammates, the best in the world.” Troy raised both hands now, as if he were under arrest. “No offense to anyone in this room, but it is what it is.”
“Okay,” Miquel said. “Continue.”
“We went forward. We carried out missions. Everyone knew the deal. Everyone did their jobs. Whether I was in command of a team, or someone else was…that wasn’t the important part.”
“How many men?” Miquel said.
Troy shrugged. “Under my command. Six. I lost six of my guys. That’s true. I live with that. But again, they knew the risks going in. If they had known the outcomes ahead of time, I doubt even one of them would have done it differently.”
Miquel nodded. “And how many died that you worked with but didn’t command?”
Troy didn’t love this line of questioning.
Miquel smiled. “I want to be clear. I’m not putting you on the…how would you call it? The hot seat. I’m not putting you there. I’m not questioning your leadership or missions you carried out. This is a lesson for all of us.”
“Okay,” Troy said. “In teams I was a part of, including mixed units with personnel from other countries, I must have seen ten times the number of my own men die. Sixty, let’s say.”
Miquel gestured with his chin at Dubois.
“And now Dubois is dead too. She got shot in the head. You might have survived all that, we don’t know for a fact, but she didn’t. We do know that much.”
Troy looked back at Dubois again. She grimaced and shrugged. Her thick, curly hair had been matted down by her helmet. The green paint dripped down her face.
“I assume you don’t want her dead,” Miquel said.
