Search and Destroy Read online

  Search and Destroy

  A Cal Shepard Black Ops Thriller

  JT Sawyer

  Contents

  Thank You

  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

  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

  More Adventures to Come

  Contact Information

  Additional Titles by JT Sawyer

  About the Author

  Copyright April 2021, Search and Destroy, by JT Sawyer

  www.jtsawyer.com

  Edited by Emily Nemchick

  Cover art by ZamajK

  No part of this book may be transmitted in any form whether electronic, recording, scanned, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, incidents, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Thank You

  Thank you for buying this book! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

  Join my email list if you would like to receive notifications on future releases or a FREE copy of the Cal Shepard short story, Lethal Conduct, which recounts Cal’s harrowing mission in North Africa with his former search & destroy unit.

  Prologue

  Bethesda, Maryland

  The high-end security system, video surveillance cameras and three bodyguards at Ian Landis’ two-story home on the northern edge of the city would be enough to deter anyone who was unwelcome. It would even enable Landis to quickly scurry into the panic room with the steel door in the back bedroom in the event that someone was brazen enough to breach his layered security protocols. There he could wait safely, clutching his .357 revolver, until the police arrived within their eight-minute response time.

  These things had entered Cal Shepard’s mind during the past few days of planning, and he knew that eliminating a target like Landis would require reverse-engineering a solution, beginning with the panic room, whose vault-like door required a sufficient amount of energy to open and close.

  All panic room designs depended on a numeric keypad that in turn depended on electricity still flowing to the house. Even the pricey panic rooms that were built by specialty contracting firms like the one Landis had used or the type that Cal had penetrated before in Middle-Eastern palaces employed a dedicated hardline independent from the home’s main power source and circuit breakers.

  The weak link in each case was always the electrical conduit leading into the house from a subterranean cable linked to a hidden service box buried in the ground near the utility line, which the contracting company tapped into.

  No juice, no numeric keypad, and no access to the $50,000 panic room.

  Cal scanned his phone one more time, examining the blueprint image for the layout of Landis’ house coupled with the copious notes he had taken during the past three nights of physical surveillance around the property with a tiny drone obtained from a colleague at Langley.

  For several hours since sunset, he’d remained hidden in the thick tangle of scrub oak at a nature preserve a quarter-mile distant from Landis’ home, peering through his binoculars at the two Colombian bodyguards casually strolling near the back porch while the third man was on the second-floor balcony, which overlooked the country club grounds to the east.

  The forested hillside in this valley was peppered with large mansions with liver-shaped pools amid neatly manicured lawns just like this, giving the illusion that you were out in the country when in fact you were never more than thirty minutes from the city center.

  Though Landis divided his time between his home, DC and Texas, he spent most of his nights here, out of the spotlight, so his sexual habits didn’t draw attention to him and sully his image as an upstanding businessman and oil lobbyist in political circles on the Hill.

  Cal watched the black four-door Crown Victoria turn into the driveway then head up the hill towards the house, stopping briefly to deposit a young woman in a sleek black dress and heels.

  The bodyguard nearest the swimming pool walked towards her, opening the front door and motioning for her to go inside after letting his eyes linger on her figure. Cal briefly saw Landis in the foyer, his face paler than usual and his eyes darting nervously beyond the woman towards the driveway before the guard closed the door.

  The man had good reason to be nervous, since he was one of the principal architects behind framing Shepard for the murder of his wife and friends.

  And now your day of reckoning has come.

  Cal had shown up at the natural area an hour before sunset for much of this week, blending in with the other joggers and hikers as he trotted along the web of trails, eventually making his way to the eastern flank of the property, which overlooked the luxurious homes across the two-lane road. There he would wait until night descended before secreting himself into the cluster of oak scrub to monitor his target.

  Unlike other outings, tonight he was armed with a daypack that contained a windbreaker, trauma kit, binoculars, a suppressed Glock 19 with a red-dot scope, three spare mags, a lock-pick set and a small specialized shape charge with a detonator. And unlike any other recon mission he’d been on, this time he was also equipped with four bricks of cocaine.

  Shepard sat perched like a wildlife biologist intent on studying a particular animal.

  Only this one is feral…a traitor to its own kind.

  Shepard would study him like he had each of his intended targets during the past sixteen years of working in clandestine ops with the Special Activities Division.

  Only Landis was special, and this job was unsanctioned.

  It was personal on a level Shepard had never felt before.

  Ian Landis normally would not have been able to control himself in the presence of such an exquisite being as the leggy brunette following him up the stairs, but his stomach was on fire from another bout of anxiety that even his prescription meds could no longer keep at bay.

  With the three mercenaries turned bodyguards watching him and the state-of-the
-art security system wired throughout every window, door and entry point onto his property, he tried to reassure himself that he would remain out of Shepard’s grasp.

  The man should have been put down already, like the rabid dog he is.

  His employer in Texas had assured him that Shepard didn’t know enough yet to alter their upcoming plans in Venezuela, but Landis didn’t like waiting for a wild card like the former agency operator to rear its head.

  Disgraced agency operator is more like it. And number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

  He entered his rectangular suite at the rear of the hallway, the woman’s heels clacking on the marble floor as she trailed behind him. Landis saw her reflection on the floor-to-ceiling mirrors behind his bed.

  He motioned with his hand for her to go to the bed, then he went into the bathroom, removing a nearly depleted bottle of anti-acid from the medicine cabinet and crunching down on a handful of tablets. When he was done, he picked up a finger-sized glass vial and tapped a fine line of unadulterated Colombian cocaine onto the counter then snorted the substance.

  The woman remained silent, as she had been instructed to do, keeping her gaze low. Landis wiped his nose of the powdered brain candy, walking towards her. Now, he could see the girl in her beyond the makeup and lip gloss used to cloak her underage appearance.

  His hands trembled as his eyes drifted along her soft neck, a feeling of dominion washing over him.

  An hour after the call-girl left, Shepard saw the master suite on the north side go dark. He leaned back, unzipping the main compartment of his daypack on the ground beside him and removing a small palm-sized drone. It was a newly developed model fashioned in the recesses of the CIA’s R&D division, and even he was impressed with the tech that was packed into the tiny device.

  After activating the drone, he pulled out his iPhone, the dimmed screen showing a keypad and camera-eye view. He enabled the infrared beams that would flood the grounds around Landis’ home, blotting out the security cameras.

  Shepard depressed the timer, which began counting down from sixty seconds, then he set it on the ground in an open spot outside the canopy of the grove.

  He crept from his wooded perch down the grassy slope and through more bushes until he was at the base near the inky-black street. There was no sidewalk or lights, and the curb abutted the preserve. He paused, crouching in the waist-high shrubs, watching the pre-programmed drone leaving its resting spot and heading towards the south end of the property directly across from him.

  Shepard counted to twenty, waiting for the drone’s IR beams to kick in as it hovered in place twenty yards from the side entrance of the house, then he sprinted across the street to a spot where the eight-foot-high wooden fence met a drain culvert that had just enough wiggle room to squeeze through.

  With the first obstacle out of the way, he removed the suppressed Glock from his pack then placed three spare mags in the left cargo pocket of his pants. Shepard wound his way past a water fountain, pausing beside the trunk of a large Italian cypress tree, then he made his way for forty yards to a gray faux rock, which covered the utilities box for the house. He counted off six paces, stopping at a sandstone slab. Unlike the other slabs in the hedges, this one’s edges were free of overgrowth, which he had noted during a previous flight with the drone.

  Shepard hooked the fingers of his free hand under the corner and lifted the slab, staring down at the secondary utility box for the panic room. He removed the palm-sized shape charge from his pack and set it along the side of the box, depressing the timer then replacing the heavy sandstone.

  He swiveled his head around, listening for movement, then retraced his steps back towards the outer edge of the swimming pool, hunkering down in the hedges.

  The two henchmen had moved, with one standing near the rear corner of the porch while the other man was patrolling near the sauna adjacent to the pool. The span of thirty yards between them would require accurate pistol work and minimal expenditure of rounds if Shepard was going to drop them both before the second man could react.

  Shepard had pulled off precision low-light shooting in more demanding parts of the world, but he always had his team for backup, along with Predator support and a sniper for overwatch. Now, it was him against three ruthless mercs and with every police department along the East Coast searching for him. And if this went south fast, there’d be no helicopter extraction to whisk him away in the night back to friendly forces.

  But the past week of being on the run had taught him that there were no more friendlies.

  He raised the Glock, lining up the red dot sight, then steadied his breathing, feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline pulsing through his veins as it had a thousand times in the past before an engagement where well-honed fighting skills and overwhelming violence were about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting enemy.

  Shepard squeezed off a single round, striking the burly guard to the right in the temple. The bullet blasted a chunk of bone splinters and red mist onto the ivory-colored wall behind him. Shepard swiftly swung his weapon to the left, squeezing off two rounds at the second man. The bullets found their home in his nose and forehead, dropping him backwards onto the grass.

  Shepard leapt up, rushing to the back porch then picking up the first man’s Beretta pistol and tucking it into his belt.

  Trotting to the left, he rounded the corner of the house. He retrieved a palm-sized stone from the walkway, thrusting it into his pocket, then crept to the side door, removing his lock-picking tools. Despite bringing a bump key matched to this particular style of deadbolt, bypassing a door lock was a two-handed operation.

  He tucked his Glock under his arm, inserting the key then giving the back of the key a light tap with the rock. He heard the comforting sound of the key overriding the pins in the internal mechanism of the deadbolt, then he turned the lock, pausing to open the door as he glanced down at his watch.

  Five, four, three, two, one…

  Shepard heard a brief thud in the shrubs behind him as the designated circuit breaker for the panic room and the security alarms on the doors and windows detonated.

  He had to move fast now, as the henchman upstairs would be checking in with the men on the ground if he noticed that the security switchboard inside was no longer illuminated.

  Shepard opened the door, his Glock extended out, sweeping the spacious kitchen in each direction then flicking off the lights so he wasn’t backlit when he entered the dining room. He did a visual sweep of the billiards room and solarium to the right then cautiously approached the winding staircase, hugging the wall as he made his way up.

  He heard a man speaking in Spanish as the last guard muttered into his walkie-talkie to the dead thugs by the pool. Shepard set his suppressed Glock on a small table beside him then did a partial chamber check on the Beretta before pointing it upstairs. He heard the henchman shouting followed by his footsteps as he rushed out of the room.

  Three nine-millimeter rounds in the chest put a stop to the lumbering figure as he bolted from the upstairs lounge, the man collapsing and rolling down the steps.

  Shepard stepped over the body, pausing to put another round in the head, then he retrieved his Glock and bounded up the steps. He heard the sound of the lock being engaged on the rear bedroom suite to the right, knowing Landis was probably rushing to the panic room door in the back closet.

  Shepard did a visual check of the two other rooms he passed, then removed the last shape charge from his pack, placing it on the gold faceplate of the steel door of the master bedroom. He depressed the five-second timer, jumping back around the corner as it blew open the door.

  He waited for the coming volley of rounds from Landis’ revolver, the five bullets punching through the drywall around the doorframe.

  Once Shepard heard the weapon’s hammer click repeatedly, he rushed from his position, darting inside the room.

  Aiming low, he squeezed off two rounds from his Glock into the half-naked figure crouched in the closet
doorway. The bullets tore through the man’s right leg, striking the femur and hip joint and sending Landis to the ground howling.

  Shepard moved to the closet, kicking the revolver out of the way then dragging Landis by his arm into the bedroom. He pressed his shoe down on Landis’ wound, causing the man to shriek again as the ivory tiles turned crimson.

  “I can give you something for the pain if you tell me what I want to know… Who paid you to put the hit out on Burke and his people?”

  Landis waved his hands, his cheeks quivering as he gasped in a breath. “Please, I didn’t know they would all die. I only did what I was told.”

  “By who?” He put more of his weight down on the man’s leg.

  “Roth…I work for Vincent Roth.”

  Shepard narrowed his eyes, vaguely recalling the name. “The Texas billionaire?”

  Landis gave a weak nod in between whimpers.

  “Why…why would he possibly want Burke out of the way?” He canted his head slightly, hearing the sound of sirens in the distance.