The Point Of A Gun: Thriller Read online

  Steven W. Kohlhagen

  The Point Of A Gun

  Thriller

  BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

  80331 Munich

  THE POINT OF A GUN

  by

  Steven W. Kohlhagen

  Thriller

  Published by LitArt-World / Edition Bärenklau, Germany © 2017

  In the near future, America is experiencing a dramatic increase in terrorist attacks---by jihadists, White supremacists, and Mexican cartels. In the face of these failures by the U.S. Government intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracies, an ad hoc vigilante effort has exploded on the scene. And, surprisingly, this shadowy and deadly vigilante group appears to be led by one of the U.S. Government's most senior and trusted Counterterrorism (CT) insiders. The President convenes a top secret Task Force to investigate and uncover who is spearheading this rogue, inner circle operation. Is it his CIA CT rep? The FBI Special Agent in Charge of CT? Or maybe it's the Army's Senior Special Ops CT expert. Boldly, the President decides to place all three on his Investigative Task Force, hoping to draw out the guilty party or parties, and put an end to the spiraling violence and chaos. Will his gamble pay off ? Or will things spin even further out of control. As the story careens full throttle in parallel between the thrilling action of the vigilantes’ frequent murders of terrorists in the act and the attempts by the senior CT officials to discover the rogues’ identities, neither the reader, the President, the innocent Task Force members, nor, ultimately, the President’s hired top secret investigator knows the real identities of the vigilante leaders.

  As they close in, the murders---both terrorist and vigilante--ratchet up. The questions then become: what are the risks to America if the public gets wind of the vigilante murders? and what does the president intend to do with the vigilantes if, in fact, they are found alive?

  Steven W. Kohlhagen, bestselling author of WHERE THEY BURY YOU and CHIEF OF THIEVES, has set a new standard for terrorist novels and action-packed thrillers. Don´t miss it!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Joe Kiehl for his career of service to our country and for sharing his helpful insights about the United States counter-terrorism community. The Point of a Gun is a work of fiction. Without Joe’s insights and guidance, I’m afraid it would have been, instead, an unrecognizable fantasy.

  I would also like to thank the editors and publishers of Edition Bärenklau, without whose efforts and support this work could never have come to final fruition. And I would like to acknowledge a huge debt of gratitude and thank you to my friend Manfred Quintus, whose tireless German translations of my novels have magnified their impact and readership, and have brought my family’s work full circle.

  Additionally, I would like to thank May Kung for lending her name to one of the characters. Her continuous intellectual support in one of my previous careers and her two hours of military support one afternoon in the North Carolina woods provided the inspiration for the May Kung character in this novel. The character in the book, of course, is not the real May Kung.

  And to Charles O’Reilly, whose one comment was worth a thousand words.

  As pointed out above The Point of a Gun is entirely a work of fiction. I would like to thank Ron Star and his team at Arnold and Porter for dragging me out of harm’s way on repeated occasions. Any mistakes, despite the help of those mentioned above, are entirely of my own making. Any resemblance in this novel to real or fictional events or persons (living or dead) is unintentional and part of that fiction.

  And, of course, I would like to thank Galen, to whom this book is dedicated. She released me to live with Samms and the Rogues for a year. Thank you for that. And, in fact, for everything.

  GLOSSARY

  FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  DHS: Department of Homeland Security.

  CIA: Central Intelligence Agency.

  JSOC: Joint Special Operations Command.

  DNI: Director of National Intelligence

  WTF!: White House Anti-Terrorism Task Force.

  NCSC: National Counterintelligence and Security Center.

  ODNI: Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

  INS: Immigration and Naturalization Service.

  TSA: Transportation Security Administration.

  NSA: National Security Agency.

  ISIS: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

  JSOTF: Joint Special Ops Task Force

  SOCOM: U.S. Special Ops Command.

  JTTF: Joint Terrorism Task Force.

  SAC: Special Agent in Charge.

  ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

  SIA: Special Interest Alien.

  DIA: Defense Intelligence Agency.

  HSI: Homeland Security Investigations

  OEOB: Old Executive Office Building.

  JCS: The Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  CCC: Conference of Conservative Causes.

  PART I

  THE PALADINS

  Chapter 1

  The adrenalin kicked in and she felt her heart race as she knew what awaited around the corner. She slowed to eighty as she felt the old Chevy take the turn.

  Reached down to turn up the volume on her playlist. “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere” blaring from the speakers.

  And there he was. Thumb out. Backpack at his feet. Hoody covering all but his eyes.

  She braked hard, slid screeching toward the center yellow line, and laughed as she realized she’d reached for the Glock 17 merely out of habit. There’d be time for that. Tucked it back into the holster in the back inside of her jeans.

  She pulled over on the shoulder and watched in the rearview mirror as the kid she knew to be Abdul grabbed his pack and started trotting along the shoulder toward her car.

  She turned down the volume and rolled down the front passenger window.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Boise.”

  Bullshit.

  “That’s ten hours from here. What were you doing in Laramie?”

  “I actually started in Chicago.”

  “And somebody just let you out here on the road? In the middle of nowhere?”

  He shrugged. “Guy was a jerk.” Sayin “jerk” like “herk,” but with a poor Spanish pronunciation and accent.

  You ain’t seen nothing yet, Abdul.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jose. Jose Gonzalez.” Acting like an innocent little Mexican kid.

  She had to suppress a smile. “I’m Bobbi Sammons. But everybody calls me Samms. With two m’s.”

  She leaned toward him. “I can take you part way. I’m headed in that direction until I head north to Pocatello.”

  Abdul, pretending to be Jose, looked around. Licked his lips.

  “Doesn’t matter to me, Jose. You can wait for the next ‘herk’ or hop in. Up to you.”

  He opened the back door and started to climb in.

  “Unh uh,” she said. “Front seat, Jose, or wait for the next ride.”

  He looked at her menacingly, no longer pretending to be a timid Mexican. But his face betrayed that he thought better of it, returned to being the fictional, timid Jose, closed the back door on his pack, and climbed in next to her.

  “Seat belt,” she said as his door closed. She restarted the song, turned up the volume for Dwight Yoakum, and floored the car toward ninety.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Abdul was no longer playing either the timid Mexican or his true malevolent, hating self. He was nervous. Looking like he was asking himself, “Who is this crazy lady driving like a maniac?”

  She glanced back at the satchel, knowing the contents. Abdul was transporting this bomb to a meeting with his part
ner in Hanford, Washington tomorrow, where the two of them were planning an attack on the nuclear waste cleanup site there.

  She looked down at the phone in her lap. Hit send. “Mission accomplished…see you in five.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Abdul asked. “Texting while driving.” Spanish accent now gone as he took a closer look at her, smiling awkwardly.

  “It’s not illegal to erase an unwanted or unwelcome message or object with one finger, Jose. You have the right to exit the vehicle at any point you want.”

  He shrugged. Looked back at his pack. Reached back and adjusted it to lean against the back of the seat.

  Samms lurched the wheel to the right and then back to the left as he reached back, watching him catch himself on the dashboard.

  “What’s in Boise, Jose?” Accent on ‘Jose’, teasing him, making sure he remembered his name.

  “Friends.” He hesitated, then added, “Amigos from Mexico City.”

  “What do they do there?”

  “Students. They go to college in Boise.”

  “What school is that, Jose?”, stepping up the pressure. Having fun with him now. Torturing him.

  He frowned. Started to say something, then stopped.

  “What college, Jose?”

  “I don’t want to talk to a strange lady about my friends.”

  “I’m not a strange lady. All my friends think I’m normal. Boring, but normal.”

  He grimaced. Looked like he was thinking of a way out of this situation with this crazy lady. “Why are you going to Pocatello?”, he asked.

  “None of your business. But I own a string of housecleaning businesses. Franchises in each city. Do you know anybody that cleans motels and houses in Boise? We mostly hire illegal Mexican aliens.”

  He glanced at her quickly, doubt in his eyes. “No, I don’t. Can you turn down the music?”

  “No. You want me to stop and let you out?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I know many Mexicans in Boise, Jose. But none of them are college students. Are you sure nobody you know in Boise works for me? Cleaning houses and motels?”

  He shook his head.

  “Maybe our meeting on the road today was meant to be. Do you want a job supervising illegal Mexican aliens for me in Boise, Jose?”

  Each time saying the false name ‘Jose’ a little louder, emphasizing it. Taunting him.

  He was sweating now. Shook his head again. His body language saying, “How do I get out of here?”

  A service station appeared up ahead on their right as they sped around a hill, a lone car at the gas pumps.

  Abdul looked at it, started to point at it.

  “I need to stop to pee and get gas,” Samms said, braking hard and turning into what she knew to be the last service station after Laramie. No other buildings in sight.

  She screeched to a halt outside the rest room doors at the side of the station and got out.

  “You better go to el banos too, Jose. We won’t be stopping for another four hours.”

  She opened her door, stepped out, and stepped around the front of the car to the ladies’ room. Watched him hesitate and look back at his pack as she stopped one step inside the bathroom, the door hitting her on the butt.

  He opened his passenger door, stepped behind her, looked hesitantly once more into the back seat, walked the ten yards to the men’s room, and opened the door.

  *

  The man in the driver’s seat in the car parked at the pumps watched them both closely.

  He glanced at the young girl behind the counter in the service station’s convenience store. She was as oblivious to the two entering the bathrooms as she had been of him, sitting at the gas pump, but getting no gas. In fact, getting nothing. Just sitting in the car, watching.

  The girl turning the pages of what certainly she thought was a fascinating magazine.

  He sat and watched.

  *

  As Abdul took his first step into the men’s room, Samms put the suppressor on the Glock in the darkness of the ladies’ room, and stepped back out of the protection of the open door.

  The men’s room door hadn’t fully closed behind Abdul yet, so she took a second to look around.

  Nobody in sight, except for the car and its lone occupant at the gas pump.

  She strode the six strides to the still-closing men’s room door, ripped it open, and slammed into Abdul’s back as he started to turn, knocking him against the wall on the other side of the urinal.

  “You don’t make a very convincing Mexican, Abdul.”

  He looked up, puzzled, then alarmed at the pistol pointed at his chest.

  Too late.

  The first two bullets killed him instantly as they went through his center mass.

  She leaned over and put the third bullet into his forehead.

  She dropped a business card on the bloody mess that had been his head, stepped out of the men’s room, glanced at the pack on the back seat, and tossed her keys and the Glock into her now-abandoned car as she walked past it and out to the center island.

  There, she opened the front passenger door of the car, looked at the driver and said, “Jose, my ass.”

  Though to be fair, she added only to herself as she lowered herself into the passenger seat, my name’s not Bobbi Sammons. Or Samms, either.

  *

  Three hours later a phone rang at FBI headquarters in Washington.

  The man who picked it up heard a man at the other end say, “She’s done it again.”

  “You sure it was her?”

  “She left the card.”

  “What was on it?”

  “Same as always. Samms.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, some initials on the back. ‘BOBS’.”

  “Bob, like the name?”

  “No, ‘BOBS’, like in many men named Bob.”

  “Any idea who the Bobs are?”

  All he heard was the line go dead.

  Chapter 2

  “I need final authority to take out these two dirtbags,” the ex-Navy SEAL, formerly known as Andy Teeter, said. Sighting down his TAC-338.

  “You have authorization, Cheese,” said the voice in his ear.

  “Not good enough. Not authorization from you, Tom. I don’t hear Samms’ voice, I don’t pull the trigger.”

  “Those aren’t the rules.”

  “In this case, those are my new rules,” not moving his sniper rifle off the targets.

  He heard ringing. Then it stopped. Then started ringing again. Then stopped. Then started a third time. Their emergency signal to Samms.

  *

  The President entered the White House conference room. Closed the door.

  “Good morning everyone,” he said into the silence.

  Nods all around.

  In attendance were the Commander of JSOC, and the Directors of the White House Anti-Terrorism Task Force, the FBI, DHS, and CIA. As instructed, each of the five had brought the functional head of his relevant counter-terrorism division. These five division heads were to be permanently designated to work as the Task Force on this particular assignment. The President’s National Security Adviser was in attendance.

  Ten men and two women. One of whom was Samms.

  “You’ve all been briefed,” the President said. “Just to make it perfectly clear, the DNI and the twelve of us in this room are the only people on the planet who are to know the purpose of this group and any actions we decide to take. Clear?”

  More nods.

  “Only I can change that. Each counter-terrorism division head, please introduce your boss, in case not everyone knows everybody else.”

  Laughter all around.

  He asked Ted Noose, head of the White House Anti-Terrorism Task Force to introduce the agenda. That particular White House Task Force had been dubbed WTF! from day one, and Ted was known to all as “Moose.”

  “As you each know, assuming you were able to decrypt the briefing document,” Moose l
ooked up and chuckled, but only got impassive stares in return, “we are facing a rather unusual problem.”

  He glanced up, but again was greeted only by silence.

  What an asshole, Samms thought to herself. She looked at the other four division heads, knowing pretty much with certainty what was going through their heads. Other than their unanimous disdain for Moose, anyway. The existence and accuracy of the briefing documents had been a surprise to her, so she knew it was a complete shock to all those who had no knowledge of what she and the others had been up to. Well, it had been inevitable that somebody would put it all together. Was going to happen eventually. Today was as good a day as any.

  “Over the past seven months,” Moose said. “More than eighty-seven people who had been identified by one or more of your counter-terrorism agencies as being involved in possible terrorist acts, have been murdered.”

  “By any of our people?”, asked the CIA Director.

  “Not anyone we know by name,” the President replied. “And nobody, to my knowledge, is authorized to carry out domestic assassinations in this country. If anybody here knows anything different, now would be an excellent time for a full report.”

  He looked around the room and got the expected head shake from each.

  Unauthorized domestic assassinations. The guys will be disappointed to hear the President’s opinion of their actions.

  “The NCSC is charged with leading and supporting counter-terrorism efforts,” the FBI Director said. “Are you sure the ODNI has not brought them in on this secret? And, if so, why not?”