The Days Before: A Prequel to the Five Roads to Texas series (A Five Roads to Texas Novel Book 8) Read online

  THE DAYS BEFORE

  a prequel to the

  Five Roads to Texas series

  Written by

  BRIAN PARKER

  Illustrated by

  AJ POWERS

  Edited by

  AURORA DEWATER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Notice: The views expressed herein are NOT endorsed by the United States Government, Department of Defense or Department of the Army.

  The Days Before

  Copyright © 2019 by Brian Parker

  All rights reserved. Published by Phalanx Press.

  www.PhalanxPress.com

  Edited by Aurora Dewater

  Cover art designed by AJ Powers

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Five Roads to Texas: a Phalanx Press Collaboration

  If you haven’t read the start of the journey yet, you can get your copy here.

  Works by Brian Parker

  Available in ebook, audio, and print

  Five Roads to Texas

  The Days Before ~

  Five Roads to Texas ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07CV411SH

  After the Roads ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07FPWD1L7

  The Road to Hell ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07N9563CV

  Easytown Novels

  The Immorality Clause ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01HWOH1VC

  Tears of a Clone ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBDUZSH

  West End Droids & East End Dames ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B07436C21L

  High Tech/Low Life: An Easytown Anthology ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B0787D6ZY6

  The Path of Ashes

  A Path of Ashes ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00XATPU9E

  Fireside ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B015ONZOU8

  Dark Embers ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01CPSAI1A

  Washington, Dead City

  GNASH ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01ACTBBZQ

  REND ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01AYEQRUI

  SEVER ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01C7VEMG2

  Stand Alone Works

  Grudge ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5QS6J6

  Enduring Armageddon ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00XZA2UQY

  Origins of the Outbreak ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00MN7UFBW

  The Collective Protocol ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00KUZDY4O

  Battle Damage Assessment ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00PCND2RI

  Zombie in the Basement ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6DUXY2

  Self-Publishing the Hard Way ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNQCZ9I

  Plus, many more anthology contributions and short stories.

  Look for more adventures of The Havoc Group coming soon!

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  BELGRADE, SERBIA

  MAY 7TH, 1999

  “Are we really doing this, Skipper?”

  “Shut up, Grady. I need this paycheck.”

  Grady regarded his partner skeptically. “No, you don’t. We each made almost a hundred and fifty K last year.”

  Pete “Skipper” Thompson grinned, his teeth glowed white in the moonlight compared to his camouflaged skin. “I have two ex-wives. You know how much I pay in alimony each month?”

  Grady shook his head at the retired SEAL and adjusted the heavy, olive drab backpack he wore. If they were captured, the gear in the pack was the only thing that could potentially tie them to the US Government. The rest of their kit, including the weapons they carried, was purchased from local civilian stores and from the Company arms dealers in Europe. The giant backpack was a dead giveaway as to whom they were currently working for though.

  The air smelled faintly of smoke, whether that was from cooking fires or from something else, Grady wasn’t sure. Whatever the Albanians and the KLA were up to tonight was no concern of his. As long as they stayed out of his way, he wouldn’t have to kill any of them. After Havoc’s standard twenty-five percent corporate deductions, this mission was worth forty-five thousand take-home for each of them.

  Not a bad week’s worth of work.

  “What? No witty comeback?” Pete asked, cutting the lock connecting the ends of a chain wrapped around a wrought-iron gate on the side of a hospital.

  “The less talking we do, the less of a chance that a local will figure out who we are,” Grady replied, scanning up and down the street.

  “I’ve been doing this shit for almost twenty years, junior,” Pete mumbled as he set the chain down gently. “A local is going to be much more worried about two guys sneaking around in the dark with rifles than what language they’re speaking.”

  Grady disagreed, especially in Yugoslavia. Guys with guns were commonplace, but guys with guns who spoke English? That was less common. Sure, the NATO peacekeepers were here, but they went out in large groups with vehicles during the day. They didn’t sneak around the streets at night—and they sure as hell didn’t break into buildings carrying laser designators on their backs.

  “Agree to disagree, then,” Grady said.

  Pete held the gate wide for Grady so the 80-pound backpack wouldn’t hit the metal and make a lot of noise. Getting through the Belgrade streets unseen had been tricky as any one of the double-parked rows of cars could have held an informant, but they probably would have been fine if anyone questioned them. Getting caught inside the hospital grounds, however, was a sure way to get one of the local militias called on their position. The hospitals were an unofficial no-go space for combatants. Grady and Pete were damn good, but they only had eight hundred rounds of 7.62 and less than a hundred rounds of 9mm between them, so not getting caught was the optimal outcome of the evening.

  Pete closed the gate quietly behind them as Grady took point. He’d been given access to a US Army Field Artillery battalion’s Falcon View system to determine line of sight feasibility and chose the hospital as the best observation point. Then, he studied aerial photographs of the hospital layout for an entire day, practicing the ingress and egress repeatedly in his mind. Now that he was on the ground, he felt like he’d been here a hundred times before.

  They found the fire escape exactly where it was supposed to be and began climbing the old iron ladder toward the roof, past the fourth floor. The ladder creaked and the metal groaned under the combined weight of the two men, but the bolts holding it to the wall held and they stepped up onto the roof.

  Grady jogged to the northwest corner of the building while Pete stayed at the ladder to provide security. The younger man shrugged out of the backpack and set the heavy bag down onto the roof. With a practiced motion, Grady unpacked the AN/TVQ-2 and opened up the tripod, screwing the locks down. Next, he placed a large boxlike device on top of the legs. The box was the Ground/Vehicular Laser Locator Designator, G/VLLD for short, and pronounced ‘glid’ eliminating the ‘V’ from the name.

  The G/VLLD was a long-range designator, used to bring laser-guided missiles and bombs on target with pinpoint accuracy. They were only two kilometers from the target, so close that Grady could just about spit into the wind and hit the Chinese Embassy.

  He plugged a few cables in, then connected one between the box and the tripod, and the second to a small box with ruggedized keys. He sighted in on the target building, comparing the squat, five
-story gray building with the one he’d studied back at the Agency’s facility. Satisfied that he was looking at the correct building, Grady placed the battery box on the back of the G/VLLD and powered on the device.

  It took a moment to power on, so he removed the UHF radio from the pack and began setting it up as well. The ultra-high frequency radio would allow him to talk to the pilots that he knew were somewhere above them. By the time he had the fifteen-foot whip antenna in place, and the frequency set, the G/VLLD was ready to go. He put the handset to his ear and transmitted one word.

  “Ballgame.”

  It was a short transmission, extremely unlikely to be discovered unless someone had used the same Air Force encryption key to time their frequency hop exactly with his and also happened to be monitoring that channel when he’d hit the transmit button. Yeah, right.

  “Seventeen minutes,” a voice replied brokenly.

  Grady knew what it meant and hit the timer on his watch. There were two B-2 Stealth Bombers, nicknamed Spirits, en route from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. They’d taken off from Kansas City while he and Pete ate dinner. The fact that they’d timed their arrival almost perfectly was mind-boggling to the operator.

  He gave a thumbs up to Pete, who nodded and transmitted a message of his own on the VHF radio he carried. Grady watched him carefully for more than two minutes before his partner returned the thumbs up signal. The mission was a go, approved at the POTUS level, and there’d be no more radio communication on that frequency.

  The time went by quickly for Grady. He checked and rechecked the frequency identification code that the bombs would use to find his signal and then follow his laser designation to the target. He tried not to think about the consequences of his actions. It was war and accidents happened in war all the time.

  He had to force himself to overlook the fact that this wasn’t going to be an accident. It was a deliberate act. If the cover story failed to pass the initial media shit storm, it could very easily be the start of World War Three. He didn’t allow his mind to dwell on the fact that the First World War had started right here in Yugoslavia.

  Regardless, Grady’s conscience would remain clear. The intercepted radio transmissions from the embassy were explicit. The Chinese were helping Milosevic. No one in NATO knew why, but tonight they were going to put an end to it.

  The bombers were going to hit several other legitimate military targets using GPS coordinates immediately after dropping the bombs he was responsible for controlling. Once his bombs hit, he had to ensure he powered off the G/VLLD to keep the other bombs from following the laser signal back to him. If that happened, it would be lights out and the designator equipment would be found during the investigation, thereby guaranteeing World War Three.

  Pete whistled and he looked at his watch. Two minutes until show time.

  Grady pressed his eye against the black rubber cup and sighted in on the Chinese embassy once again. Immediately below his chin was a dull chrome toggle switch that was currently in the OFF position. He flipped it up to the DESIGNATE position and held the G/VLLD on target.

  A minute later, the UHF handset that he’d clipped to his collar squelched a burst of static and then the same voice he’d heard earlier said, “Five slicks inbound.”

  Grady held the G/VLLD on target. The Agency man who gave The Havoc Group the contract hadn’t said how many bombs to expect, but Grady sure as hell hadn’t been expecting five. If the intent truly was just to send a message to the Chinese, telling them to fuck off and stay out of European affairs, then five seemed like overkill.

  The night sky lit up as the bombs hit nearly simultaneously. Grady kept the designator on, painting the target for a full ten seconds after the first impact in case one of the bombs was late, and then flipped the toggle switch to OFF. He ignored the billowing fireball coming from where the embassy had stood proudly just moments before. He had to break down the G/VLLD and get off the roof before the emergency crews began sending out their ambulances.

  “Bingo,” Pete said into his radio, breaking the frequency silence before he stowed the handset. “Going down,” he told Grady aloud as he swung a leg over the lip of the building and shimmied down the ladder. He’d pull security at the base of the ladder below while the younger operator broke down the equipment and began the EXFIL.

  Grady worked frantically to disconnect cables, unscrew mounts and stow the gear. He’d practiced this part more than a hundred times over the past few days and was confident in his movements. The G/VLLD parts went into their padded slots and he zipped the bag closed. “Shit,” he mumbled and unzipped the bag to cram in the power cable he’d forgotten he held in his hand. Then he folded the radio antenna and wrapped a large Velcro strip around it. The UHF radio went into a pouch on the side of the backpack and he threw the entire thing onto his back.

  A quick scan of the area turned up no incriminating evidence, so he lumbered over to the ladder and climbed down noisily.

  “Be quiet, kid,” Pete chastised from below. Grady couldn’t help it. He wasn’t a small guy and the pack added an extra eighty pounds to his bulk.

  When his feet touched the ground, Pete gently pushed his shoulder toward the gate in case he’d gotten disoriented during the descent. They burst through the fence, leaving the chain and broken lock dangling loosely from the post.

  Three blocks away, their piece of junk Yugo Cabrio started on the second try and they were speeding away from Belgrade toward Tuzla, Bosnia with their infrared beacon shining brightly on the roof. Hopefully, the beacon would keep overzealous NATO pilots from lighting them up as a target of opportunity moving at night.

  It was a three-hour trip in the best conditions. Tonight, it would be much longer. Pete was more familiar with the city’s narrow roads, so he drove. They had to avoid areas subject to NATO bombing, known military checkpoints, and militia-controlled sections of the city.

  It took a while, but they finally made it out of Belgrade. Behind them, the night sky glowed as the fires reflected off the dark clouds of smoke hanging low over the city. So much destruction, Grady thought. He tried not to think about how many people he’d killed tonight, and how many of those were simply innocent embassy employees who knew nothing about their nation’s involvement in the war—how many of those dead were children? Didn’t embassy staff typically have their families with them?

  “This looks like a good spot,” Pete declared, pulling the Yugo off to the side of the road.

  Grady opened the car’s back door and unclipped the small go-bag containing his ammunition, food, and water from the large G/VLLD backpack. He tossed the small bag on the back seat and hefted the bigger one out. On the other side of the car, Pete had pulled the SINCGARS radio from his own bag and a small can of gasoline from the back. Together, they walked into the heavily forested area alongside the road until they were no longer visible to any passersby on the road.

  They took the equipment out of the bag, making a pile of military gear, and a pile of canvas and spare batteries. Pete doused the flammable items in gas and then tossed a flaming book of matches onto the pile. Grady took the rest of the gasoline and poured it on the radios and the designator. It wouldn’t really destroy them, but it would burn away paint, and melt rubber and plastic.

  Finally, in the light from the fire, Grady placed two thermite grenades on top of the pile of gear. He pulled the pins and released their bodies gently, letting the spoons fly before hopping away. The white-hot grenades melted metal, circuitry, and plastic. In seconds, the grenades had melted completely through everything and sat on the ground, burning. The metal collapsed in on itself and continued to melt, liquid metal puddling and then flowing away in a small stream.

  Grady watched the destruction until he was satisfied that there was no physical evidence remaining that could point to the embassy bombings as a deliberate action by the United States. The official story would be an errant GPS location entered into the bombs. Now that the G/VLLD and radios were gone, it should be e
nough to avoid an outbreak of war.

  “Ready?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied, tearing his eyes away from the pile of smoldering garbage.

  “Let’s go then. We’re still almost three hours away from home.”

  “You planning on moving to Bosnia?” Grady teased.

  “You know what I mean, asshole. Why don’t you drive, so I can send in our report,” he said, holding up the little blue and gray Nokia cell phone.

  Grady finally allowed himself to smile. “Payday?” he asked expectantly.

  “Payday.”

  ONE

  * * *

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  TWO YEARS AGO

  Aarav loosened the tie around his neck and unbuttoned the top button before wiping away the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. He was used to the humid Georgia summers, but today was particularly brutal at ninety-eight degrees with ninety-nine percent humidity. He wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing, waiting outside. No one was. That’s why some old guy had invented air conditioning over a hundred years ago.

  Regardless of the heat, Dr. Aarav Sanjay was on top of the world. He had a full-time government sponsor for his work and his family was finally financially well off. He’d bought a boat last weekend and was eyeing a lake house. Not many of his peers could say that.

  He’d toiled for decades in the field of biomedical engineering, scraping his way up the scientific ladder from being a skinny graduate student, to now being an adjunct professor at Georgia Tech. He enjoyed teaching and molding young minds, even if his new employer would have preferred he spend all of his time on their research. He’d never tell Ms. Amol, the head of the small research syndicate that he worked for, that his students often helped him see problems in a new light because everything he worked on was supposed to be secret, government employees only. But what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.