Blood of My Kin Read online

  Blood of My Kin

  A Tom Greer Novel

  C. G. Cooper

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part Two

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Epilogue

  A Letter To Readers

  Also by C. G. Cooper

  About the Author

  “BLOOD OF MY KIN”

  By C. G. Cooper

  Copyright © 2020 JBD Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Duplication prohibited.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, locations and events are all products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to actual events or real persons are completely coincidental.

  This novel contains violence and profanity. Readers beware.

  A portion of all profits from the sale of my novels goes to fund OPERATION C4, our nonprofit initiative serving young military officers. For more information visit OperationC4.com.

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  Prologue

  He was a real gusher, this one. Ever stick a nail file into an overfilled water balloon?

  The stuff is seeping all over the beautiful tile floor. And it is a nice floor. Or rather, it was. Lovingly laid by the very man lying in the ever-growing pool at my feet. This house was his fixer-upper, a side project when he was in town.

  Who was he? Well, if you know me, you know he was either a) some hapless tramp that happened to get in the way or b) a dead bastard. You picked b, right?

  You’re right, of course. But you see, this guy, this man—I didn’t know he was bad. Not until a couple of days ago. And who he was before I confronted him and opened him up like a piñata was my friend. He was a comrade. A Navy SEAL just like me. One of the good guys.

  Dead bastard.

  Good riddance.

  Here’s the thing: I think most of us who’ve served start out with some altruistic idea of being a protector of what’s good, or an idealized idea of becoming a superhero. We think we’re going to put on a cape and fly off over the horizon to save the world. And we do for a time. At least some of us do.

  But what happens when all that ends? Say we get hurt. A bum knee that’ll never heal can send one of my SEAL brethren to the sidelines. It happens all the time. We’re humans made of flesh and bone, and that earthly material can only take so much. Some of us take our medicine and go, the cape packed up in mothballs. Some run to drugs and alcohol to hide or just deal with the pain. That’s a bigger problem than you know. Just read the latest edition of Navy Times.

  Then there are the rest of us, the ones who don’t want the pack away the cape. My journey to reclaim the cape came from circumstances beyond my control. I was pulled back in almost without knowing it.

  But the guy lying on the ground? Well, let’s just say he never got the memo that there are certain boundaries you never cross.

  I step to the left to avoid the blood creeping closer. I’ve already got enough drenching my body. No sense in getting more on my shoes.

  As I was saying, the mess on the tile floor was supposed to be one of the good guys, a hero, an avenging angel.

  Here’s how it happened: My kids were kidnapped almost six years ago. I thought they were dead. The guy who’s almost out of blood on the ground told me they were. He searched the globe, used every contact he had.

  One day, he brought home what was left of them.

  He held me during their funerals and let my tears ruin his expensive shirt.

  He told me they were dead. It broke me so that I couldn’t be put back right.

  We’d met in BUD/S—Basic Underwater Demolition School for all you non-SEALs out there—and had parallel careers in the Navy. We got out the same year. I upgraded my pilot’s license and he went into business for himself, starting a company to track down human trafficking rings. He wore the cape. He saved hundreds.

  What I didn’t know was that there isn’t a lot of money in that business. He had to beg and plead for funding from rich benefactors just to keep running. And he wasn’t that good a beggar.

  At some point, and it doesn’t really matter when, he started taking money from the dark side. I saw the transactions. Plus, he admitted it moments before he died. Case closed.

  But that still doesn’t explain how we collided, why he’s now lying dead at my feet.

  Well, as it turns out, some of the bad people he took money from paid him to look the other way, and at times, even gave him lots of cash to do their dirty work.

  That dirty work took the form of concocting a lie. It took time and effort, but he convinced me that my beautiful children had been kidnapped, sold into slavery, and killed somewhere along the way. That’s what they wanted me to think. That’s what he wanted me to think.

  I’m not going to say his name, because he doesn’t deserve to be mentioned, let alone memorialized.

  Luckily, I have new friends now. Good fr
iends who told me the truth.

  Cal Stokes, Marine. Friends in very high places. Owner of SSI—that would be Stokes Security International, though he spends more time with his new organization, The Jefferson Group. A cool operator with a snap in his bite.

  Daniel Briggs, Marine sniper. Cal’s right-hand man. From what I’ve seen the guy is the real deal. Warrior monk is the best way I can describe him. Never gets rattled. Not that I’ve seen, anyway.

  I never thought the Marines would swoop in to save my day, but they did. I owe them for that. They gave me the real story.

  My old friend’s body spasms. He’s dead as Dahmer, but his muscles still want to go on doing his evil.

  I wipe a hand across my forehead and look to the door.

  Cal and Daniel are waiting for me. There’s more to be done. A lot more before I’ll find my kids. But they’re out there somewhere. I can feel it. I guess I always have. Some gray area in my brain that couldn’t bring the rest of me to believe that they were dead. I thought it was just a father’s grief. It wasn’t. You know when a piece of you is gone for good. I know that now.

  Just as I know the liar who planted that particular untruth is gone, and just as I know that knowledge isn’t bestowed without strings attached. That just when you think you can work with the truth, the universe turns and gouges out the rest of your heart as interest on the loan.

  No need to clean up the mess. It is what it is. Nobody’ll find him. Not in this little Mexican craphole on the border of nowhere. Nobody cares, least of all me.

  Time to go. Lots to do.

  Let’s get going.

  Chapter One

  Deep Thoughts with Tom Greer.

  Before I forget, my name is Tom. Tom Greer.

  I know. You probably read that last passage and are now thinking I’m a few eggs short of a full breakfast. No way anyone can walk out of a blood bath a sane man. Sorry, but I’m as sane as the lady sitting next to you in church. Maybe more so. Who knows what she’s like at home? Anyway, when you’ve seen and done what I have, you’ve gotta be firmly rooted to the ground, or you’re dead. I hope it’s okay if I give it to you straight. I tend to tell it without a chaser. Sugarcoating? That’s for children’s cereal. When folks do it, the assumption is that the person being talked to is somehow unable to process the goods and bads of reality.

  But I have a feeling about you, dear reader. I think you’re gonna get me, or at least get this part of my story. So, if you’re ready, keep turning, swiping, listening—whichever way you’re receiving this tale.

  If what I’ve said so far is way outside your comfort zone, don’t be afraid to offend me. Log off and never come back. Have a great life highlighted by rainbows and unicorns.

  Either way, I’m going on...

  Chapter Two

  The airport was hysterical with morning traffic. Businessmen in suits hurried with coffee cups glued to their lips, oblivious to everything non-digital.

  I walked past them all, in no particular hurry of my own, save to figure out a way to alleviate the body-wide itch left by the cheap soap I’d used to scrape off the blood. Pretty sure I was developing a rash, but I tried not to think about it.

  I was home, back in Nashville, TN. Music City. Home of the honky-tonk. It felt good to be back. It always did. My people are from Sweden. I’m a couple of generations removed from that land, but my dad, another SEAL, used to regale us with stories of our ancestors raiding foreign lands then coming home to a hero’s welcome. At the time, especially when I was an annoying, know-it-all teenager, I told him that not many Swedes had ravager blood.

  “We’re not Vikings, Dad,” I’d tell him.

  He’d just smile, peel off his shirt, and show off his impressive physique. “Tell me we’re not Vikings.”

  And he wasn’t wrong. I inherited his size and strength. I was taller than most of the travelers passing that morning. All except the gaggle of college basketball players, all sporting matching headphones that cut them off from the world.

  Nashville is home, the place I feel most at ease when I get back from my overseas adventures. The cockpit of a 777 is my restorative tonic. Hours and hours logged and meticulously catalogued at my employer’s headquarters. It can be a lonely place, but only in the same way a Himalayan landscape can be a lonely place for anyone not engaged in the act of self-discovery.

  I don’t live downtown anymore. Too much going on. Besides, the old farm is really coming along. My dad had inherited it while he was in the Navy. We went there a few times when I was a kid. Our family cemetery is there. I’ll probably be buried in it. My kids—that is, their headstones—are there. No idea what we were going to do with those.

  Out of the airport bookstore came a familiar figure. Brooks Brothers clean and studious to a T. His therapy was going well, from what I’d heard, but he still had a noticeable hitch in his step. However, if I knew Ned Baxter, FBI, he’d be meticulous in his recovery like he was about everything else. That hitch would be gone soon enough.

  I grinned inwardly as he made his way toward me. I ignored him and moved a little faster. He’d be raging for sure, but I didn’t like making it easy for Neddy-boy. Sure, he’d saved my life. Sure, he was helping to track down my kids. But there was something about him that invited a hard time.

  I made it all the way to the baggage claim before he caught up with me.

  “You’re home,” he said.

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’ve got a car outside.”

  “Mine’s at the garage around the corner,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t,” he said. “Avery took it home.”

  Of course, she did.

  I guess you could call Avery my sidekick. We’d saved each other, so I guess you might call us inseparable. She was in her last year of school at Vanderbilt and whip smart. Put her in front of a computer and she can make miracles that would make St. Peter jealous. Good thing for me, because the only computer I really understand is the one talking to me on the 777.

  “Fine,” I said, grabbing my bag from the carousel.

  We didn’t talk on our way out to the parking lot. Ned was cheap right to the core of his soul and would never valet, even though, Lord knows, he could afford it. From what I’d heard, his budget was nearly unlimited. He was on some kind of black budget, unseen by the who’s who in Washington. Remember those Marines I told you about? Cal and Daniel? Well, he works with them too—some sort of a liaison setup. I don’t know or care about the details. Sometimes it’s better not to ask. As long as you’re on my team, you do you.

  “When are they gonna give you a new ride?” I asked as we approached his nondescript navy-blue sedan. A castoff from some 1980s detective show.

  We got in and I winced from the smell of stale cigarettes. Ned didn’t smoke. I didn’t know how the hell that smell got in there. Maybe the government issued a special nicotine potpourri.

  “God, Ned, your car stinks.”

  “This car is fine,” he said, easing his way into the fabric upholstery. “What are you talking about?”

  I could’ve given him more grief, but I was suddenly tired. That’s what long hops do to me. I rarely sleep on the way home. Call it a commander’s protective instincts. Too many passengers to think about.

  But when I get out of the airport, it hits me like a dump truck.

  “Mind if I get a little shut-eye?” I asked. It was a good forty-minute drive home.

  I was asleep before he could answer. And with my head resting on the window, the dreams of my children came again.

  Chapter Three

  My dad, “The Admiral,” was waiting on the front porch, sitting in his customary rocking chair roost. He liked to sit right next to that damn bell. I’d almost cut it down on more than one occasion. It reminded me too much of the bell at Coronado. You’ve probably seen it in videos—the one the SEAL candidates ring when they quit. I think part of my dad’s addled brain clings to the memory, and sometimes he rings the bell just for the hell of it. br />
  He wasn’t a quitter. Never was. When he left, he said the Navy quit him. Maybe he was right. How do you tell these things?

  “How’s he been?” I asked Ned as we pulled down to the final stretch of gravel road, the house, the porch, The Admiral, and bell in view. I admired the fresh coat of paint I’d laid along the front porch. The place was really coming together.

  “I think he’s getting better,” Ned said matter-of-factly.