Blood of My Kin
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.