Patriot Dream Read online

  Table of Contents

  Patriot Dream (Special Operations Group, #5)

  Patriot Dream | [#5] A Special Operations Group Thriller | Stephen Templin

  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

  Epilogue

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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 best-selling 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 best-selling 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 best-selling 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 best-selling 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

  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

  Patriot Dream[#5] Chris, Hannah, Sonny, Max, & Tom

  Special Operations Group Short Story

  Dead in Damascus[#0] Chris & Hannah

  Sonny Spy Down[#1] Sonny

  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]

  Patriot Dream

  [#5] A Special Operations Group Thriller

  Stephen Templin

  Friends... they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

  –Henry David Thoreau

  Philosopher

  Chapter One

  Five covert CIA operators—two of them dead men walking—stepped off a Pershing 62 muscle yacht docked in the Mediterranean. An orange ball of morning light rose above the heart of Rome, about thirty klicks away, increasing the motion of ships on the sea and planes over Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport in the distance. The higher the summer sun climbed, the hotter Rome became.

  Chris Paladin felt uneasy as he took a seat in the back of a gray Fiat Freemont, a midsize SUV parked on the pier. Max Wayne was one of the dead men walking, but he maintained his devil-may-care posture as he rode shotgun. Tom Wayne was Max’s younger brother and the other dead man walking. He got behind the wheel, put the SUV in drive, and used the GPS on his phone to navigate.

  Tom steered away from the sea. The municipality of Rome spread across almost five hundred square miles, including the airport, outlying farms, the famous downtown area, and more. Tom weaved through Ostia, a subdivision on the southwest edge of the city. Behind a row of buildings, trash bins overflowed with garbage. Farther ahead, the streets became clean, and Tom rolled along Tancredi Chiaraluce Street beside the yellowish Tiber River. He continued for a klick and a half past small boats and yachts moored in the river and sitting on dry land.

  Max and Tom were infected with a deadly virus called BK-16, a new assassination bioweapon developed by the Russians—and they only had one day to live. Their five-member team had to snatch the antidote from a Russian lab thirty-two klicks away. If they failed, there’d be no coming back from the dead for Max and Tom.

  Beside Chris sat his best friend, Hannah Andrade, whom CIA had tapped to be their team leader. She was still recovering from a severe concussion. Chris’s stomach twisted. She should’ve taken more time to recover. But there was no time to worry—he had to focus on the mission. They all did.

  “Can’t you go faster?” Max asked. “We have to reach the lab before the FSB does.” FSB was short for Fedral’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosh—Russia’s spy agency.

  Sonny Cohen gave Tom some of his Queens, New York, attitude: “You drive like old people hump.” Sonny was an experienced operator “on loan” to CIA from the Army’s Delta Force. He’d worked with Chris and Hannah on two missions and with Max and Tom on one, but this was his first time operating with all four operators at the same time.

  “You two whining about his driving isn’t going to get us there faster,” Chris said.

  The street split away from the river and rolled past undeveloped countryside and farmland before entering the burbs.

  Hannah read something on her cell phone. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Chris asked.

  She tapped her phone. “Langley wants us to destroy the lab, too.”

  “As if we didn’t have enough to do,” Sonny said.

  “Now they tell us,” Max said.

  She turned to Chris and asked, “What do you think?”

  Chris pondered for a moment. “If there’s a chance to destroy the lab, sure. If not, oh well. Getting that antidote is number one.”

  “You guys hear that?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes,” Tom
said.

  Max nodded. “Yep.”

  Sonny grunted.

  Seeing Hannah check her cell phone reminded Chris to see if his battery was charged. It was. He also wanted to verify that a secret app CIA had installed on his phone was functional. He typed a code into his search bar, 4 Nikkia, using the name of his elementary school friend.

  A secure screen of apps appeared, and he opened the car hacking app, developed by Langley. If this mission went south, he could use his phone to “borrow” a car to escape and evade capture. Using his smartphone, he could access most vehicles through their remote key systems, vehicle locators, remote engine starters, Bluetooth, radio, cellular, or WiFi. Most automakers bought equipment from the same small number of suppliers using the same small number of frequencies. Once those frequencies were hacked, the door to their operating systems opened wide. Automobile security was more than a decade behind in closing those doors, and the car industry didn’t have an effective business model or incentive to catch up. Satisfied that the app was operational, he closed it.

  Outside the SUV, buildings became taller, more numerous, and packed closer together as Chris and his teammates entered the heart of Rome. On the right appeared the red brick remains of ancient public baths, covering a hundred thousand square meters of land and standing thirteen stories tall.

  “We’re a klick away from the lab,” Tom said.

  With five people in the SUV the interior had become uncomfortably warm, but they were near their target so Chris didn’t complain.

  “What, is the A/C broken?” Sonny asked.

  Max put the cooler on high.

  “About damn time,” Sonny said.

  The deeper they traveled into the heart of Rome, the less the rules of the road seemed to matter. A Roman in an orange Lamborghini thundered between lanes and ran a red stoplight, but in this thick traffic, Tom couldn’t drive faster than thirty miles per hour. Other drivers missed the Lamborghini in a sort of organized chaos. The Lambo disappeared like part of a dream.

  They passed the remains of a palace, temples, and other ancient buildings resting on a lush, green hill to the left. Then came the Arch of Constantine, standing two stories high, one epic archway flanked by two smaller ones. In spite of its height, the arch was dwarfed in the shadow of the Colosseum—over thirty times taller.

  The Colosseum reminded Chris of the 2000 film Gladiator, and he experienced the anxiety of General Maximus Meridius, waiting for the gate to the arena to open—waiting to do battle. Chris wanted to touch the sound-suppressed FN P90 personal defense weapon in the swing-out shoulder holster concealed under his suit jacket. He thought the physical contact with it might provide reassurance and deliver him from his anxiety, but he knew it was a bad habit to get into. Maybe not now, but sometime in the future, an enemy could notice him touching his concealed weapon and his cover could be blown. Chris resisted the impulse to handle it.

  The others also carried the futuristic-looking weapon with its polymer rectangular design and two odd curvy holes in the bottom of it. The unusual Belgian configuration gave the FN P90 major league muzzle velocity, accuracy, maneuverability, and ergonomics in a light, concealable package—excellent for “low-visibility” ops such as this. At twenty inches in length and weighing less than six pounds, it was larger than a pistol but smaller than an assault rifle. Chris simply liked it because it was reliable, quiet, and lethal.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled long and hard. He recited one of General Maximus Meridius’s lines: “Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.”

  Max quoted Gladiator, too: “At my signal, unleash hell.”

  “This is Sparta!” Sonny shouted.

  “Wrong movie, King Leo,” Hannah said.

  Sonny shrugged his shoulders.

  Tom kept his eyes on the road. “In both those movies, the heroes died.”

  “Thanks, buzzkill,” Max said.

  Sonny spoke loudly: “Live fast, die young, and leave a classy corpse.”

  Hannah pursed her lips. “Nobody’s going to die.”

  Under the opposite side of Chris’s shoulder holster, he carried two extra fifty-round magazines of FN 5.7 x 28mm ammo. On his belt, he carried two flash-bangs and one smoke grenade, each of French origin—nothing they carried could be traced to the US.

  Tom hung a right and passed a touristy section of hotels and restaurants. “How many FSB officers did the scientist say were in the lab?”

  “Ten,” Max said.

  Sonny snorted. “She didn’t know.”

  Under Chris’s shirt was a mic that transmitted speech vibrations from his throat: “Radio check.” In his ear was a receiver the size of a pea that was magnetized for easy retrieval later.

  “Yeah,” Max said.

  “Sounds good,” Hannah said.

  “Loud and clear,” Tom said.

  “I’ll have two soft tacos, a bean burrito, and a Coke,” Sonny said.

  Hannah rolled her eyes and Chris and Max chuckled.

  Tom pulled into an alley between two rows of buildings. A dozen cars were parked behind the structures. Finding a parking spot in Rome in midday should’ve been difficult, but Hannah had arranged for an asset to hold a spot for them with his silver-colored Citroen C3. It was parked two buildings away from the lab. As soon as Tom neared it, the Citroen pulled out, and Tom steered the SUV into the space.

  “Wish we could do this at night,” Chris muttered, “under the cover of darkness.”

  “Time is ticking,” Hannah said. “We have to snatch the antidote before Minotaur does.” She used the codename of the FSB officer who a defected scientist said was coming to pick up vials of BK-16 and its antidote.

  Tom stayed behind the wheel with the engine running while Chris and the others exited. Hannah carried an empty satchel to pack the antidote in. The foursome converged on the back of a sand-colored four-story building—the lab—and climbed its metal stairs. The stairs were an unadorned back exit, sturdier than a fire escape. The defected scientist had given them details of the building, inside and out; the location of the antidote; and keys.

  On the third floor, they “stacked up,” taking positions on both sides of the door—weapons ready. Chris lined up first to enter. He’d done numerous building entries, and each time he expected the unexpected. Much of the time, his expectations were fulfilled. Chris took a deep breath.

  Hannah produced the key from her pocket, unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  Chris slipped inside as point man. The hallway extended left and right. He aimed left and advanced. In a corner was a potted plant that smelled of mint. The hallway turned ninety degrees, then turned again.

  Now he was in a long corridor with a blond man standing at the other end. The man turned around. Chris shuffled forward and motioned for him to freeze. But the man reached for something on his hip and drew it—a pistol. Chris maintained his forward progress and shot him twice in the chest. The shots made less noise than the quiet clicking of the P90’s parts: tick-tick.

  “Agghh,” the man grunted.

  Chris silenced him with a shot to the skull. Blood splattered, and he dropped like an anchor.

  “Who is it?” a male voice asked in Russian from somewhere in the building.

  Chris stepped over the body and blood spatter. Then he rounded the next turn. The hall had taken him in a crooked S shape. There was a door to his right. Chris and the others stacked up.

  Once again, Hannah unlocked the door. This time, she threw it open.

  Chris stepped into a break room where five armed men were standing. Or at least, Chris thought it was five men—there was no time to count. A bald thuggish guy in the northeast corner aimed a pistol in Chris’s direction, but Chris gunned him down and pressed deeper into the room. Keep advancing... don’t jam up everyone behind you.

  In his peripheral vision, Chris saw Max peel off to the opposite corner, and Sonny dissected the middle of the room. More sound-suppressed shots were fired—tick, tick, tick—but Chris
was too focused on his area of responsibility to see which of his teammates was shooting or who or what they were shooting at.

  A door opened from somewhere, but Chris couldn’t distinguish whether the sound came from inside the room or an adjacent room. He posted in the northwest corner and guarded the break room. Although he thought he’d seen five enemies in the space, now there were only four bad guys sprawled out bleeding on the deck. Maybe he’d counted wrong. Or one had escaped.

  Sonny stood rough and ready in another corner. Max was in his spot, too. Now they commanded the whole room and its six doors.

  Hannah inserted a key into the doorknob of one of the two storage rooms on the west wall—where the scientist said the BK-16 and its antidote was stored.

  In the middle of the room were white plastic chairs neatly wrapped around four wooden tables, and against one wall was a gas stove next to a kitchen counter with a microwave, paper towels, sugar, olive oil, and other kitchen items. One of the doors on the east wall opened. From Chris’s angle he couldn’t see through the doorway, but Max had a better view, and he shot multiple times into the room beyond.

  Then a door near the northeast corner opened, and a party-crasher burst through, waving his pistol like he was about to go postal. Both Chris and Sonny got the drop on him. Chris rapidly pulled the trigger and stitched the party-crasher’s arm to his side, and Sonny embroidered his front. Chris finished him off with a pop to the side of the skull. Party-crasher’s upper body maintained momentum into the room, but his feet seemed glued to the deck, and he did a face-plant.

  Party-crasher’s open door gave Chris a slice of a view into the next room, but he couldn’t see the whole room, and he couldn’t leave his teammates to investigate. Sonny had a fuller picture from his angle—he fired through the doorway.

  Three shots rang out. They weren’t sound-suppressed, and Chris couldn’t process where they came from—things happened too rapidly.

  Hannah was still inside the storage room. Chris hoped she was okay, but she was a big girl, and he didn’t flood the radio with useless chatter.

  Chris spotted a fifth body on the floor of the room he was in. He’d lost sight of it earlier because it had fallen beneath some tables that obscured his vision.