Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller Read online

  PRAISE FOR STEPHEN TEMPLIN

  “As action packed as a Tom Clancy thriller … harrowing … adrenaline-laced.”

  —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

  “Pulses with the grit of a Jerry Bruckheimer production …”

  —Washington Post

  “Reveals an intimate look at the rigorous training and perilous missions of the best of the Navy’s best.”

  —Time

  “Well written … an exciting book.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “Cuts straight to the chase. The literary equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster … compelling and inspiring.”

  —Miami Herald

  “A rare glimpse into the thinking, training, and tactics of the Special Forces at a time when their shadowy work is playing an increasingly crucial role in the war on terror.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Another great novel reflecting our spec ops forces’ global capabilities. Written by a proven and insightful master storyteller.”

  —Howard E. Wasdin, former SEAL Team Six sniper and NYT bestselling author of SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper

  “A masterful blend … not knowing if you’re about to take a bullet to the head from a SEAL sniper or get hit in the gut with a punch line.”

  —Dalton Fury, former Delta Force commander and NYT bestselling author of Kill Bin Laden

  “Grabs you on page one and is hard to put down.”

  —General Henry H. Shelton, former commander

  in chief of the US Special Operations Command

  and 14th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  “A must read.”

  —Jack Coughlin, former gunnery sergeant, USMC, and bestselling author of Shooter

  “A muscular thrill ride that’s rich with detail and full of heart and energy. A standout in the ranks of modern action-adventure thrillers.”

  —Mark Greaney, #1 NYT bestselling coauthor of Command Authority, by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney

  “Eloquent, realistic, humorous, and thought-provoking …”

  —Mark Beder, former lieutenant commander, SEAL assault team leader

  Assassin’s

  Sons

  Assassin’s

  Sons

  [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller

  Stephen Templin

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Some tactics have been changed to protect operators and their missions.

  All Rights Reserved © 2017 by Stephen Templin

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Stephen Templin

  www.stephentemplin.com

  ISBN-13: 9781545229828

  ISBN-10: 1545229821

  Cover design by Kent Templin

  Also By Stephen Templin

  Special Operations Group Thrillers

  Trident’s First Gleaming [#1] Chris, Hannah, & Sonny

  From Russia without Love [#2] Chris, Hannah, & Sonny

  Autumn Assassins [#3] Max & Tom

  Assassin’s Sons [#4] Max & Tom

  Special Operations Group Short Story

  Dead in Damascus [#0] Chris & Hannah

  Nonfiction

  Navy SEAL Training Class 144: My BUD/S Journal

  SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper

  I Am a SEAL Team Six Warrior (Young Adult version of SEAL Team Six)

  SEAL Team Six Outcast Novels

  SEAL Team Six: Outcasts [#1]

  Easy Day for the Dead [#2]

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  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

  Part Three

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Enjoy this Book?

  Dead in Damascus

  Summer 2009

  Get a Free Bestseller

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The carefree autumn Friday on campus at the Hilltop seemed to confirm that Tom Wayne’s decision was the right one. Going to work full-time for the Agency and hunting terrorists and insurgents was what his dad wanted him to do, but studying political science here at Georgetown was what Tom wanted to do. He sat outdoors on a bench in Red Square, near the Intercultural Center, with his girlfriend of one year, Charlotte. Students sat on benches, low walls, and brick borders, and some sat on Copley Lawn, but most of them milled about and chatted on the red-brown paving stones in Red Square.

  Tom had experienced other cultures firsthand while in the military—making friends and killing enemies—but Georgetown was a safe place to experience diverse people. He enjoyed watching students campaign for Republican and Democratic candidates—a civilized revolution. They freely advertised the DC A Cappella Festival and One Acts Festival and displayed banners for organizations such as Farm Aid and intervarsity sports. Having served four years in the Army, Tom was a bit older than most of his classmates, but he blended in and felt at home here.

  Chattering and laughter filled the air as the aroma of grilled beef wafted on a gentle breeze—members of the Grilling Society were cooking hamburgers for a line of about thirty students. The sunlight sparkled through Charlotte’s blonde hair and glistened off her baby blues, but it was her kindness and optimism that shone brighter. He wanted to marry her someday, but he wasn’t quite there yet. Her birthday was in a couple weeks, and he’d saved money to buy her a present, but he was still in the process of covertly gathering intel from her friends as to what to get her. Her contented personality should make it easy for him to choose a present, but it had the opposite effect: How do you make someone who seems happy about everything especially happy about one thing?

  “Those burgers smell to-die-for,” she said.

  “They sure do. I’ll get us some.”

  She gave his hand a squeeze before he rose and walked fifty feet to where the line formed. He waited behind a student wearing a blue and grey sweatshirt with Jack the Bulldog on it, and he noticed a backpack lying unattended behind a long table. Tom went into Ranger mode. There could be a bomb inside. But he wasn’t in a combat zone, and he thought that maybe he was overreacting. Even so, he didn’t know the contents or the origin of the bag, so it was possible a terrorist had left it there with a bomb in it. He studied it as the line moved forward, and he neared it. There was nothing
unusual about the backpack itself—no lights or wires attached, and no strange odors or leakage. But he needed to get closer to be sure.

  His blood pumped harder, and his breaths became short and rapid. He pointed to the bag and blurted out, “Did someone lose a backpack?!”

  A few people looked at him and the backpack before shaking their heads. One of the cooks looked up from the grill, beads of sweat on his freckled forehead, and said, “That’s mine.” He returned his gaze to the grill and flipped burgers.

  “Sorry,” Tom said with embarrassment. He turned to look for Charlotte, but there were too many people in the way.

  Then two men caught Tom’s eye—businessmen in suits. They were coming from the area where Tom had left Charlotte. They weren’t smiling like others in Red Square, but not everyone was smiling. Their faces seemed whiter than their necks and their noses appeared longer than normal—as if they were wearing disguises. Both men had well-groomed black hair on their small, flat heads, small eyes, and short legs. That, combined with their long bodies and broad shoulders, made them look like they could be twins. But they sauntered past so quickly that Tom wasn’t sure. The pair continued to Copley Lawn, where he lost sight of them.

  More students poured into Red Square, probably just getting out of class. Suddenly an explosion and a sun-like orange fireball rocked the ground in the vicinity where Charlotte was sitting, and a thick cloud of white smoke rose up. The explosion heaved a crowd of bodies. Human parts and papers flew through the air. Students ran, screaming. Some dropped their backpacks. Others fell to the ground. A handful froze.

  It smelled like an IED had gone off, but this wasn’t Iraq, and the kids had no armor. Part of him knew she was dead while part of him insisted she was alive. Tom ran to her. “Charlotte!” He shoved through a wave of fleeing people. A fog of smoke that smelled like fertilizer hung in the air. A number of students were blackened and bleeding with their clothes torn. A young man had fallen to his knees and prayed.

  The part of Tom that knew she was dead grew astronomically, and the part that insisted she was alive shrank. His six-foot frame shrank, too, but he shouted to regain his stature, shouted to rise above the despair of the screams surrounding him, and shouted to keep her alive. “Charlotte!”

  As Tom closed in, he still couldn’t spot her, and when he saw the casualties and the massive pool of blood on the sidewalk, his heart bled out, too. In the sea of carnage, red-stained papers floated from a shredded backpack that was the same red color as hers. It can’t be. There was a hand attached to an arm but no body. No, no, no. Then he spotted her body. He attempted to deny the reality of it all and dropped to his knees and grasped her hand. Frantically, he tried to reattach her arm to her body, but it was hopeless. He couldn’t put her back together. He heaved, but only air came up. He dry heaved again. Charlotte was dead, and he wished he was dead, too. The dry heaves stopped, and he wept.

  On Friday evening Max Wayne surveyed the dusty furniture that he vowed to clean before Dad returned from the hospital, but right now he wanted to relax. He wandered into the kitchen to make popcorn. Max and his brother Tom had grown up in this 1940s red brick Cape Cod three-bedroom home in Kensington, Maryland, less than half an hour drive from CIA headquarters. Before Mom’s death, she’d convinced Dad to leave the military, but after she was gone, he returned to what he knew best, bought the house, and went to work for the Agency.

  Max and Tom grew up in the house. When they graduated high school, they left home to join the military. Last year, when Max parted ways with Team Six to go blacker than black with the Agency, he discovered how expensive housing near Langley was. Since Dad had more rooms than he could use and was seldom home anyway, Max took him up on his invitation to move in with him until he found something he could afford.

  The bell on the microwave went off, and he took out the popcorn. Its warm smell tickled his taste buds. He set it down next to the stove, picked up a hot saucepan, and poured melted butter over it. Then he carried his popcorn into the living room and sat down to some Netflix and chill time.

  He’d only taken a bite and begun to scroll through the videos when the doorbell rang. He wasn’t expecting anyone, so he left his popcorn and remote to fetch his Glock 9mm pistol from the bedroom.

  He stealthily crept to the door and looked through the peephole. It was his brother, staring at the ground. Tom looked devastated. Max unlocked the door, opened it, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Tom looked up from the ground and his eyes paused at Max’s pistol. Then he took a deep breath and stared into Max’s eyes. “We’ve got another job to do.”

  PART ONE

  My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

  –Clarence Budington Kelland,

  writer

  1

  Max drifted on a gray border between the light of seeking justice and the darkness of doing whatever it took to get revenge. He wanted the bastards to pay for killing thirty-seven innocent people in the Georgetown bombing. He wanted payback for Charlotte’s death. Most of all, he wanted to smoke check the sons of bitches who hurt his brother.

  Max and Tom raced their SilentHawk motorbikes south along uneven, worn roads under the cold sliver of a moon hanging over south-central Turkey. They were to sneak across the border into Syria and pick up a USB flash drive containing a list of leaders behind the terrorist attack that killed Charlotte and so many others. A couple weeks after the terrorist attack, the young wife of an ISIL terrorist became disillusioned with her husband and ISIL’s lies, so she defected. She told CIA that a terrorist cell called Ringvereine, German for “Ring Club,” was responsible for the Georgetown bombing. To check the wife’s report, CIA reached out to a reliable asset working undercover as an ISIL contractor, who confirmed that Ringvereine was behind the attack. The asset also claimed to have acquired a USB flash drive containing the names of Ringvereine’s leaders. Max was trying not to take this mission personal, but it was.

  Only a little further and the brothers would switch their screeching engines to stealth mode. Max took the lead, guided by the red line on the map of the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) device mounted in front of him. CIA’s tech wizards had preprogrammed ATAK’s GPS navigation with a route that would dissect the gaps of Turkish and Syrian border patrols. Although the SilentHawks now ran on gasoline, they could run on jet fuel or propane if needed. The two-wheel drive responded quickly to Max’s commands and required less effort than a standard motorbike to keep himself upright. He pinned the throttle, but a curve made him let up on the speed and clamp down on the brakes to avoid doing a head plant. His braking regenerated power for the bike, increasing its efficiency for long-range ops such as this.

  The ride had taken longer than expected, and Max was going to have to make up for it in order to meet with the agent on time. He released the brakes and cranked the throttle. He sped out of the curve and flew along a dirt road that split a row of unlit farmhouses and fields of winter wheat swaying in the wind. His ATAK showed the air temperature at forty-one degrees, but the wind whipped the temperature down even lower. Like many of his fellow frogmen, Max hated the cold. Even so, he didn’t have to like it; he just had to endure it. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure his brother was still with him. Tom was also former military special ops, an Army Ranger before he left to attend college full-time and operate for the Agency part-time. Tom rode hot on Max’s tail.

  Up ahead the road divided, and Max soared into the left fork at breakneck speed. His bike fishtailed on the crumbling edges of the road. He eased up on the throttle, leaned, and turned until he regained control and returned to the center of the street. He had 450 cubic centimeters of engine, but the challenge was to keep it between the ditches. Any monkey could pin it and go broncobuster, but a true operator had to know when to ease off the throttle and squeeze the brake.

  Soon there were no more houses in sight, lessening the chances of bumping into farmers, families, and their friends. Ma
x exhaled a sigh of relief, his breath warming the inside of his motorcycle helmet, custom made with ballistic fiber to protect against small arms fire and shrapnel.

  The time clock on Max’s ATAK showed that he and his brother were back on schedule, seventy-five minutes away from their rendezvous in Syria. The wind continued to nip at him, but his circulation and metabolism were in peak physical condition, helping to warm him. His dad, who had trained him in the art of special ops from an early age, had told him more than once, “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.” Now he wore insulated gloves and a merino wool shirt under his fleece hoodie to keep him warm and an outer layer to shield against the breeze.

  This wasn’t a kill or capture mission, so no shots fired would be a perfect op—get in, get the names, and get out. But perfect ops were few and far between, and the sound-suppressed Russian ADS amphibious assault rifle strapped over his jacket would protect him. Its bullpup design and telescopic butt kept the weapon compact. Because Washington wished this mission to remain covert, and Russia supplied Syria with its weapons and training, Max could fire Russian bullets and leave behind empty Russian shell casings without leaving direct evidence of US involvement. Tom was similarly prepared.

  Tom’s voice came via the pencil eraser–sized receiver in Max’s ear. “Wish we had a sniper with us to set up overwatch for this op.”

  A throat mic hidden under Max’s clothing operated off the vibrations in his neck as he spoke and transmitted his words. “Less is more. That’s what Willy said.”