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A gust of wind whipped across the long runway, catching the bill of Coleman’s ball cap. Before it could be whisked away, his left hand clamped down on top of it, and he sprinted the last forty feet to the jet. Coleman hopped up through the small hatch and pulled it closed behind him. Poking his head into the cockpit, he asked, “Are we are all set, Kev?”
Hackett nodded. “As soon as you strap in.”
Coleman took off his faded olive bush jacket, revealing a rock-solid physique. Handing the jacket to Stroble, he asked, “Is the gear stowed?”
“Yep.”
“All right. Buckle up, and we’re out of here.”
Coleman squeezed himself into the copilot seat, slipped on his shoulder straps, and donned a headset. Hackett had arrived an hour earlier, filed a flight plan, and prepped the plane. Coleman ran down a quick check of the instruments while Hackett maneuvered the medium-range executive jet into takeoff position. They stopped at the south end of the runway and looked right into the teeth of the oncoming storm. Curtains of rain were falling in at least three different areas to the north and east. With no time to waste, Hackett increased the power to the twin jet engines and released the brakes. The small eight-passenger jet rolled down the runway and lifted effortlessly into the air. Moments later, raindrops started to pelt the windshield, the wipers came on, and the craft banked to the west, passing over the northern end of Baltimore. Two minutes later, the rain was behind them. The agile craft quickly gained altitude, and at fifteen thousand feet, they broke through the clouds and were greeted by a bright sun that they would be flying straight into for the next three hours.
Coleman looked over his shoulder and asked Stroble to grab his sunglasses. Both Stroble and Hackett had served under Coleman when he had commanded SEAL Team Six. The three of them had been through the wringer together. They had enjoyed their years in the Navy, but they sure as hell didn’t miss the shitty pay and dog-and-pony bullshit. They answered to nobody but themselves now and were very selective about the jobs they took—most of them legitimate. Their company, SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation, did much of its work abroad. Between contracts, they helped train law enforcement divers from the various counties and cities that bordered the Chesapeake Bay.
Scott Coleman wasn’t sure which category this job would eventually fall into. The only thing illegal about it so far was that their fee had been wired into a bank in the Caribbean, where it would avoid detection by the IRS, or anyone else who might be of a mind to track the full activities of the SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corp
oration.
The old man was dying. That was plain enough to see. Coleman was a little surprised at how this had affected him. He hadn’t known Thomas Stansfield for long, but his admiration for him was genuine. In Coleman’s line of work, it was hard not to put the old spymaster on a bit of a pedestal. Stansfield had been one of the original covert operators. During World War II, his services were sought after by Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS. As one of the famed Jedburgh team leaders, Stansfield had been dropped into Nazi-occupied Norway during the war to help organize resistance. He had been battle-tested in the field for many years before taking a job behind a desk, a rare thing in Washington. The CIA, and thus America, was about to be dealt a serious blow by the loss of the wise old man.
Coleman’s recent business relationship with the head of the CIA was more than a little strange. Several years earlier, Coleman had taken certain political matters into his own hands. He had spent a good portion of his life trotting around the globe, eliminating people who were deemed a threat to the national security of the United States. On one of those missions, he had lost half of his team, only to learn later that the mission had been compromised by a senator with an affinity for booze and women. Coleman left the Navy in disgust when his commanders refused to tell him the name of the man who had compromised the mission. A short while later, he learned from his friend Congressman Michael O’Rourke who the guilty party was. The event changed Coleman’s life. He began asking the question: Who is a bigger threat to my country, a terrorist ten thousand miles away or the corrupt self-serving politician down the street? Coleman became involved in an intricate plot to correct the course of the government in Washington. Before the affair was over, a half dozen politicians had been assassinated, and their plan to restore some honor to politics had been hijacked by a cabal of Washington insiders. In the end, Coleman killed two of the cabal’s leaders, and a ceasefire was negotiated by Director Stansfield and Congressman O’Rourke. Both parties agreed that it would be best for the country never to know the details of what had happened and who had been involved.
At first, the deal was one of mutually assured destruction. Neither party could harm the other for fear that the real story would be sent to the press. This was how Coleman had become a freelancer for the director of the CIA—the men needed each other. The relationship was strange at first, but they had grown to trust and respect each other.
When they reached their cruising altitude, Hackett engaged the autopilot and turned to Coleman. “So, are you going to tell us what the hell is going on?”
Stroble heard the question and got out of his seat. He kneeled down in the doorway to the cabin to listen to Coleman. “There was an operation, and something went wrong. Two of the players are due back in the country tonight, and we are to collect them and bring them back to Washington.”
“I assume they don’t know we’re coming.” Stroble looked to his boss.
“No.” Anticipating the next question, Coleman asked him to grab his black duffel bag. From it, he retrieved two large folders. In the business, they were referred to as jackets. He handed one to Stroble and kept the other for himself. “Stansfield was kind enough to provide us with a little background information.” Coleman flipped open the folder and looked at a black-and-white photograph of one of their pickups. The man looked vaguely familiar. His real name was Jim Jansen. He was from Pittsburgh and had entered the Army right out of high school in 1974. After serving in Germany, he came back and went through Ranger School. The next stop was Korea and then the Green Berets, where he led an A-team and, Coleman already knew, met his wife, the other person they would be picking up. By the time gaps in Jansen’s personnel records, Coleman could tell that he’d been sheep-dipped by the Agency on at least three occasions during his years in the Special Forces. Sheep-dipping was a term used by the folks down at Fort Bragg when the CIA borrowed their warriors for missions that were not recorded in their regular jackets. Coleman skipped ahead to see if there was any mention of what Jansen had done for the CIA. As he expected, there wasn’t.
Coleman and Stroble continued to study the jackets and shared the important details they found with Hackett. None of what they read surprised them. It was not uncommon for retired Special Forces types to work for Langley both officially and unofficially.
Hackett eyeballed the plane’s instruments and checked to make sure the autopilot was functioning properly. As his eyes danced over the dials and digital readouts, he said, “As usual, the Culinary Institute of America is not giving us the full story.” Hackett was not a big fan of the CIA and liked to refer to it by the name of America’s most well-known chef school.
“And what makes you say that?”
“If this is such an easy op, then why are they sending us? Why not send a couple of their own people out to Colorado, or, better yet, why not call them on the phone and bring them in?”
“I never said it was going to be easy. Stansfield told me something didn’t feel right about this one, and that’s why he called us.”
“Did he tell you what in the hell these two did to get into hot water?” asked Hackett.
Coleman looked to Stroble first and then to Hackett. “Do you guys remember Iron Man?”
Hackett’s eyes opened wide, and Stroble let out a nervous laugh. “How could I ever forget him?” answered the latter. “He’s a one-man army.”
“Fuckin’ James Bond,” mumbled Hackett.
“Well, the Jansens”—Coleman held up the folder that had been in his lap—“were working with Iron Man on a very delicate operation. Apparently, things didn’t go off as planned. The Jansens reported that they had nailed the target, but Iron Man had been lost.”
“What?” asked a disbelieving Stroble.
“The Jansens were on the run and didn’t have time to get into details, but they reported that Iron Man is dead.”
Hackett shook his sun-bleached blond head. “Back to my original point. I still don’t see why they need us.”
“Because Stansfield has conflicting information about whether or not Iron Man is still with us.”
