Endanger Species: Part 3: A Sleeping Dogs Thriller Read online

  ENDANGERED SPECIES

  PART THREE

  A SLEEPING DOGS THRILLER

  By:

  John Wayne Falbey

  Endangered Species is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 John Wayne Falbey.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-9855187-5-2

  Cover Design: Tatiana Vila

  ENDANGERED SPECIES

  PART THREE

  Table of Contents

  For Those Who Came Late…

  Chapter 25—Shannon, Ireland

  Chapter 26—Moscow

  Chapter 27—Zurich

  Chapter 28—Dingle, Ireland

  Chapter 29—Washington, D.C.

  Chapter 30—Mosul, Iraq

  Chapter 31—Dingle, Ireland

  Chapter 32—Tehran

  Chapter 33—Western Montana

  Chapter 34—Dubai

  Chapter 35—Dubai

  Chapter 36—Dubai

  Chapter 37—Dubai

  Chapter 38—Washington, D.C.

  Chapter 39—Dubai

  Special Preview of Part 4

  Cast of Characters

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Those Who Came Late…

  This is the third installment of the novel Endanger Species: A Sleeping Dogs Thriller. The book is being published in serial format—one installment at a time. The first two installments have been published as Endangered Species Part 1 and Part 2. The following is a brief summary of the action in those two parts:

  PART 1

  The world is descending into chaos. America is like a rudderless ship—its elected government gridlocked and ineffective. Its unprotected borders are penetrated daily by: agents of its worst enemies; drug cartels dispersing crime and addiction in its cities; and illegals carrying a variety of diseases. Unchecked deadly plagues are spreading globally. Rogue governments spit on Old Glory and defy a weakened America to stop them. Religious fanatics are dedicated to butchering all the world’s citizens who don’t convert to their beliefs. The future of America and the nations of the free world seems grim. And the worst is yet to come. A group of international power brokers, the Alliance for Global Unity, is close to achieving their goal—a single world government with them ruling it. Among their tools are a mysterious, brutal killer known as Maksym, a vengeful ex-Spetsnaz Russian SVR operative, and a doggedly determined FBI agent named Mitch Christie.

  But appearances can be deceiving. Behind the scenes, a shadow government of old fashioned patriots known as the Society of Adam Smith (SAS) is working to change the course of events. Led by Cliff Levell, a wheelchair bound former Marine and CIA operative, and armed with deep financial resources and critical positions in the military and intelligence communities, the SAS just might succeed. And they have an asset no one else has: the world’s deadliest hunter/killer special ops team—the Sleeping Dogs. Book 2 in the Sleeping Dogs trilogy takes the reader all over the globe as Whelan and the Dogs fight to stop a power-mad cartel. The Dogs are back; expect a high body count!

  PART 2

  Global chaos expands: from Russian aggression to worldwide jihadism, from China’s intention to make Southeast Asia its personal domain to a morally and financially bankrupt European Union, from violent and expanding drug cartels to Iranian nuclear designs. The puppet master behind the turmoil, the Alliance for Geopolitical Unity, is close to achieving its goal of a one-world government ruled by an international cartel of financiers. With America’s elected government gridlocked and ineffective, a shadow government, the Society of Adam Smith, is working desperately to stop the AGU. The key to their success is the world’s deadliest hunter-killer special ops unit—the Sleeping Dogs.

  In Part 2, keeping the six Sleeping Dogs alive is challenging. There is an outstanding Presidential Decision Directive that ordered the men to be terminated with extreme prejudice. An angry FBI agent, believing his wife had an affair with the unit’s leader Brendan Whelan, is pursuing Whelan with homicide on his mind. A rogue Russian agent seeks revenge against the leaders of SAS for thwarting his assignment to assassinate the president of the United States. And, most chillingly, a huge and mysterious brute named Maksym is systematically hunting down the Dogs individually. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance. There will be blood. Lots of blood.

  PART 3

  DOG PACK

  Chapter 25—Shannon, Ireland

  The corporate jet was owned by Ouachita Jet Services. The firm provided air transportation services to companies that could afford it, but were not yet in the same league with those that owned or leased their own aircraft. Ostensibly, Ouachita was using this plane for training purposes for its own crews. A series of flight plans had taken it to various locations in the United States. At each of the first three stops, a single passenger boarded. Two more boarded at the fourth stop, one of whom had a cast on one leg and was using crutches. There would be a fifth and final stop, and it involved a transatlantic flight.

  * * *

  It took Brendan Whelan two and a half hours to drive the 175 kilometers from Dingle to the airport in Shannon. He stuck to the national primary roads and drove the van into the airport parking lot about an hour before the flight’s scheduled arrival. To pass the time, he went into the Atlantic Coffee Co, located in the arrivals hall to the right of the passenger gate. It was a perfect vantage point for scanning arriving passengers. He ordered a cup of freshly brewed coffee and sipped it slowly while he waited. A few minutes later, a plainclothes member of An Garda Síochána’s elite corps located Whelan in the café and escorted him to a separate arrivals hall for VIPs.

  The flight was on time, a benefit of general aviation versus commercial. Travelers arriving on flights from EU nations weren’t required to make any declaration to customs and could proceed directly through the Blue Channel. The flight Whelan was to meet had originally been scheduled to arrive in Athens, but somewhere over the Mediterranean the pilot had filed an alternative flight plan for a landing at Shannon. Tech wizards working for an off-radar Mueller brothers company had hacked into Athens flight control and logged a wholly fictitious flight plan that showed the flight originating in Greece. The cover story was that a group of vacationing European high rollers had decided on the spur of the moment to spend a few extra days golfing in Ireland.

  For additional insurance, Whelan had enlisted the help of Caitlin’s father, Tom, who was Assistant Commissioner in charge of An Garda’s Southern Region. The region included County Limerick, but the airport in Shannon was on the other side of the River Shannon in County Clare, part of the Western Region. The Assistant Commissioner in charge of that region had been a close friend of Tom’s for more than twenty years. When the private jet landed, its “VIPs” were met by two additional plainclothes members of An Garda’s elite corps and whisked through the Blue Channel into the special arrivals hall.

  Whelan watched the first cop enter the hall, followed closely by Kirkland. Whelan expected that. Kirkland was the Zen master. He’d studied far more than just the fighting techniques of the martial arts. He was a compendium of Eastern
philosophies. He’d developed a sixth sense about unseen dangers that rivaled that of the greatest masters of the Oriental martial arts. It made him the perfect point man.

  Kirkland was followed, in order, by Thomas, Almeida, and Stensen. Whelan knew that was by design. Almeida was the outlier, the unpredictable one. Stensen and either Thomas or Larsen usually sandwiched him between them in civilian haunts.

  One Dog was missing. Larsen. Whelan stepped forward and greeted each man. There were hand pumps, fist bumps, bear hugs, and a lot of toothy grins.

  After several minutes, Whelan looked around. “Where’s Sven?”

  Thomas put an arm around his shoulder and leaned in. “He’s here. Somewhere.” He glanced around. “Look, Brendan, he’s…ah, different now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You heard about what happened to his family.”

  “Yeah. A horrible thing.”

  The two men stood eyeball to eyeball, Thomas’s ebony skin in striking contrast to the bright gray-blue of his eyes. “It did something to him, changed him.”

  “Like how?”

  Thomas thought for a moment. “He’s always been the most dangerous sonofabitch on the planet. But he had that wonderful sense of humor. That’s gone now. He trains incessantly…and broods.”

  “So what are you telling me, Quent? That he shouldn’t be included in whatever mission Levell’s cooked up?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I’m not saying that. In fact, the only way Levell was able to get him to join us was by promising that, as part of the mission, we would hunt down and kill whoever did that to his family. Cliff promised Sven he could do the killing.”

  Somewhere in the back of Whelan’s mind, a red flag went up. Larsen was fully capable of ripping humans, animals, and just about anything else apart with his bare hands. The thought of him taking his revenge in ways almost too inhumane to contemplate didn’t bother Whelan. He, as well as the rest of the Dogs, had done more than their share of gruesome bloodletting in the name of Constitutional freedoms, and undoubtedly would do more. What bothered him was the prospect that Larsen’s lust for vengeance would cloud his judgment, endangering the mission and their lives. It was something he was going to have to find a way to deal with.

  He looked over at the entranceway. Larsen was standing in it, filling it. At six one and two hundred sixty-five fat-free pounds, The Man With No Neck completely shrouded the An Garda officer standing behind him. Whelan approached him, contemplating whether he should smile or maintain a poker face. Given what had happened to Larsen’s family, a smile seemed inappropriate. He opted for the poker face. It matched the other man’s impassive expression.

  Whelan embraced his oldest and best friend and said softly, “I’m sorry about Sharon and the boys, Sven. I truly am.”

  After a few moments, Larsen began slowly to return the embrace. Then they stood, hands on each other’s shoulders, and stared at each other with the almost identical crystal blue eyes that all the Dogs, other than Thomas, had. But there was a difference. Looking into Larsen’s eyes was like staring into the sockets of the Grim Reaper’s skull. There would be blood.

  Chapter 26—Moscow

  Maksym took the train from Kiev to Moscow following the successful completion of the mission Federov had relayed to him. His men, masquerading as snipers for the Ukrainian military, had killed several Russian troops whose commanders had purposely sacrificed them for the operation. The soldiers, in turn, had been pretending to be pro-Russian Ukrainian civilians in the lands east of Kiev. The massacre had provided the desired cover for the Russian president; his elite forces had the excuse they needed to sweep across the border all the way to the Dnieper River, “liberating ethnic Russians from the diktats of the false government in Kiev”.

  Maksym had been called to Moscow by General Gennady Vasilyev, the SVR Director and man in charge of all Russian intelligence and security services operating outside Russia. Vasilyev had been appointed by and reported directly to the Russian president. His responsibilities included briefing the president every Monday, and any other occasions necessitating it. It was not lost on Maksym that today was Monday. He suspected Vasilyev and the president had a special mission in mind for him.

  He caught the Metro from the train station and, after two connections, arrived at a stop near SVR headquarters in the Yasenevo district of Moscow. It was an administrative sub-district or raion of the South-Western Administrative district (okrug), and one of the 125 raions of Moscow. Maksym walked the short distance to the SVR headquarters, located in a wooded, undeveloped area of Yasenevo. He gave his name and showed his identification to the heavily armed guard manning the gate. Shortly, another man came out and led him through the bureaucratic warren to Vasilyev’s office.

  Maksym was surprised to find that the office was small and sparsely furnished, with bare walls and a stress-cracked concrete floor. Strange accommodations for a man who wielded so much power. Some said Vasilyev’s authority was second only to that of the president himself.

  The old general, leathery and gray, greeted him warmly then ordered the guide to leave the room and close the door behind him. He waived Maksym to a small, cheaply made chair that was uncomfortable for a man of his size and bulk. He also offered him vodka, which Maksym politely refused.

  Vasilyev was a tall, spare man, maybe six-four and less than two hundred pounds. At seventy-eight, his posture was beginning to stoop, but his handshake was firm. He took a seat behind his cheap metal desk and stared at Maksym for a while. He face was expressionless and difficult to read.

  At last, he spoke. “You are to be commended. It may please you to know that I mentioned your successful efforts in Ukraine to the president this morning.”

  Maksym smiled slightly, but said nothing.

  Vasilyev took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, wagging his head as he did so. “Alas, you still have much to atone for.” He began to drone boringly about how the Laski operation should have succeeded and why, in his opinion, it hadn’t.

  This was the part that Maksym had known was coming. The Laski affair. He knew there would be a price to pay for the failed assassination attempt on the life of the American president. And the death of Chaim Laski. And the temporary disruption of the financial distribution system Laski had managed prior to his execution by the Sleeping Dogs. Those meddlesome bastards. Especially Whelan. Maksym began to seethe.

  Compounding his rage was the fact that his attempts at revenge largely had been unsuccessful. Six attempts, including two on Whelan, and six failures. The fools he’d sent to kill Whelan and his family had clearly not been up to the task. He hoped they died painfully at Whelan’s hands. Then he had coerced that FBI agent, Christie, into taking Whelan’s life, but he also had failed. What, he thought, does that say about the supposedly vaunted agents of the Bureau? The men he had sent to kill Larsen had managed to kill his family, but missed the main target. Maksym had seen to it that they had paid the ultimate price for their incompetence. Now, he wondered, where was Larsen and when would he attempt his revenge?

  Knowing Stensen’s reputation, he had sent eight of the best killers he could find, all ex-special ops mercs. In the melee, Stensen’s house had been leveled but the authorities found the remains of only eight bodies. There should have been nine. Did Stensen escape too? Then there were the incompetent fools who had botched the attempt on Quentin Thomas. They had blown up a classroom full of rich, spoiled American children without first ascertaining that he definitely was in it.

  Kirkland, the one the other Dogs called the Zen Warrior, was a ghost. No one ever seemed to know where he was. For now, finding him and killing him would have to wait. But the sixth Sleeping Dog, the hard living, mouthy one the others called Colonel Sanders, he was the easiest to find. To avoid repeating the failures of the attempts on the others, he had hired a group of thugs from a New Jersey crime syndicate. Apparently they did find him. But then Kirkland showed up. It aggravated Maksym to do so, but he begrudgingly had to admire
Kirkland. Using a sword with a blade barely more than two feet long, he had butchered eight professional killers. All in a night’s work when you know what you’re doing.

  He, Maksym, would still have his revenge, but it would take longer than he’d originally thought. There was some solace in the fact that McCoy had been slain. But it wasn’t Maksym’s work. Someone else—who?—had done it. In the meantime, Vasilyev, and his boss the Russian president, would exact a penalty from him for the Laski affair. Inside, his rage grew. It was Federov, that arrogant Russian bastard, who had caused their mission to fail and resulted in the death of Laski. He was the one who was supposed to trap the Sleeping Dogs into assassinating the American president then kill them and make it look like those rightwing zealots in the SAS had put them up to it. Would Federov be punished, or was he, Maksym, to bear sole responsibility? If that proved to be the case, then he would kill Federov himself. And with great pleasure.

  “Are you listening to me, Comrade Kozak?”

  Vasilyev’s comment was more like a bark. It snapped Maksym’s attention back to the moment. “I’m sorry, General. I have had little time for sleep lately. It is catching up with me.”

  “Perhaps you should have had more coffee before you arrived here.” The old man was famous for his lack of patience.

  “That won’t be necessary. I will pay close attention.” Old fool. I don’t need an aging Russian spymaster to tell me how to do things. One hand on his scrawny neck and another on his bony thigh, then lift him high above my head and bring him swiftly down across my shoulders. His spine would snap. But now is not yet the time. Instead, I must kiss his wrinkled ass; grovel before him like a frightened little boy.

  “Yes, of course you will pay attention!” This time there was a snarl behind Vasilyev’s words. “I was saying that, as a result of the botched assassination attempt, the Americans have reelected that self-involved, arrogant windbag for another term as president.”