People Raged: and the Sky Was on Fire-Compendium (Rick Banik Thrillers Book 1) Read online

  People Raged

  and the Sky Was on Fire

  A Rick Banik Thriller

  By Craig Martelle

  Copyright © 2016 Craig Martelle

  Fairbanks, Alaska, USA

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 10: 1533359245

  ISBN 13: 978-1533359247

  Cover artwork, concept, & typography by Christian Benulato

  www.coversbychristian.com

  Other Books by Craig Martelle

  It’s Not Enough to Just Exist (Jan 2016)

  Free Trader Series

  Free Trader Series Book 1 – The Free Trader of Warren Deep (Feb 2016)

  Free Trader Series Book 2 – The Free Trader of Planet Vii (Mar 2016)

  Free Trader Series Book 3 – Adventures on RV Traveler (Apr 2016)

  Free Trader Series Book 4 – The Battle for the Amazon (estimate Aug 2016)

  Rick Banik Thrillers

  People Raged and the Sky Was on Fire (Parts 1 & 2) (eBook only May 2016)

  People Raged Compendium (May 2016 – paperback only)

  End Times Alaska Series

  Book 1: Survive (Jun 2016)

  Book 2: Run (Jul 2016)

  Book 3: Return (Aug 2016)

  Disclaimer: This story is fiction. Any similarity to real people or real locations is merely coincidental and entirely unintentional. Actual place names were used to add realism – all places can be found on Google and viewed using Google Street View. Events described at these locations reside solely in the imagination of the author.

  For Rick Gainey

  A man who gets things done and never asks for the credit

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Why Would You Do That?

  The EPEC Way of Life

  Mosul, Iraq - 2004

  D Minus 23 – The Plan Takes Shape

  The Company Wants In

  D Minus 21 – A Recruit?

  A New Direction

  D Minus 21 – Making A Connection

  Tiger Team

  D Minus 20 – Making the Hard Choices

  A Long Night

  D Minus 19 – The First Chemistry Lesson

  Selling the Plan

  D Minus 19 – The Zealots

  Starting a New Day

  Gap Analysis

  D Minus 18 – The Mother of Satan

  D Minus 18 – A Steak and a Stake

  Mondays Are Always Mondays

  A Tip

  D Minus 17 – Running on Empty

  A Gift for the Boss

  D Minus 17 – Learning Tradecraft

  Hostage Rescue Team

  Entering the Lair

  D Minus 16 – The Tedium

  The Takedown

  Debrief

  D Minus 15 – Interesting News

  Rage

  Thorny Rose

  D Minus 14 – A Better Conversation

  A Company Man

  A Slow Weekend

  D Minus 12 – A Full Load

  A Hospital Visit

  Another Monday

  Senate Select Committee

  Building a New Team

  Tuesday Looks Just Like Monday

  D Minus 10 – Observation and Shopping

  Wednesday Looks Like Monday, Too

  D Minus 9 – Make the Call

  The Phone Call

  The Situation Room

  Handing Over the Reins

  D Minus 7 – Preparations

  The Supply Warehouse

  D Minus 7 – Ready to Go

  Who is it?

  Find Him!

  D Minus 6

  A Slow Weekend

  A Different Monday, But Still Monday

  Rick Is The Man!

  Takedown Plan

  The Apartment

  The Storage Unit

  Bad News, Worse News

  Securing the Airport

  D Minus 1

  Thanksgiving

  D-Day

  Black Friday

  D-Day – Executing the Plan

  For God’s Sake – Go to the Car!

  Where Is He?

  D-Day – Where Are They?

  Seize Them

  NOW!

  NOW!

  Aftermath

  Afterward

  Source Materials

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sometimes we have to work hard, and it’s no fun. My friend Rick was never intimidated by a long day or an endless to-do list. He plowed through, getting everything done that needed doing, delivering high-quality recommendations that were thoroughly researched.

  He remains to this day a standard that most cannot realize. He lived much of his life on the road for his job, to better provide for his family. He sacrificed for them. When he was home, he had a full schedule with his family to get the most out of every minute.

  It was my pleasure to work with him.

  Rick inspired the anti-hero Rick Banik, the man behind the scenes who gets things done, letting others have the freedom to go about their business, and do what they need to do without fear.

  There are many out there like Rick, nowhere to be seen, but making great things happen. Mister Rogers once said that in a crisis, always look for the helpers, because those are the people who make bad things better.

  I spent more than twenty years of my life in the Marine Corps, most of in the Intelligence Community. To those good people I worked with, Colonel Morris USA, Paul Marx USMC, Gunny Gagne USMC, Colonel Bicknas USMC, Larry Zimmerman USAF, General Noonan USA, and so many others – thank you for your time and insight, helping me become better at the job of understanding people.

  And finally, let me thank my editor, Kat Lind who improved the readability and believability of the characters. She is truly a gift for any author.

  Why Would You Do That?

  Now is the winter of our discontent, Rick quoted while daydreaming, hoping the madness before him would stop. Our world is doused in gasoline, and while we vote on whether we should call it gas or petrol, a dark stranger lights a match and approaches. As they tally the ballots, the match drops and fire fills the sky. The people raged in disbelief that good men could fail so completely.

  The room smelled of emotionally charged sweat. Men, arguing about the way ahead. The catalyst? A single sheet of paper with a single paragraph. The cover sheet marked TOP SECRET//COMINT-GAMMA //ORCON/NOFORN, was cast aside, long since forgotten. Very few people in the country were allowed access to it. Even fewer actually read it.

  Rick sat along the wall, a mid-level analyst without a seat at the big table.

  He read the message before the meeting. One terrorist talking to another, translated, analyzed, condensed, re-analyzed, and reported. The analysis was odd, so he dug into the system and pulled the original analysis before it was reduced to one alarming paragraph. Then he pulled the first translation of the original conversation and finally he pulled up the conversation itself, in its native Arabic.

  He didn’t speak Arabic, but he had friends who did. He ran it by them. Their translation was different. The report with the analysis of the analysis of the translation was wrong. And the men in the meeting haggled over their interpretations as if they held the Holy Grail in their hands.

  Rick fidgeted, waiting for the opportunity to take the stage, deliver his conclusion and how he arrived at it. But would they listen? He waited until his boss, Colonel Tom Alexander, US Army Retired leaned back.

  Rick whispered in his ear, “Sir, they have it all wron
g. I pulled the original material and got another translation. It’s different. I think we need to stop the madness and start with a new look.” The Colonel nodded, excusing himself from the meeting, motioning Rick to follow as he worked his way toward the door.

  When they were in the hallway, the Colonel held a finger to his lips stopping Rick from talking. Once they were in the Colonel’s office and the door closed, Rick unloaded.

  “They’re wrong. They see an attack next month in Europe from a group that’s forming now. The linguists I talked with said that the group is already formed, and they weren’t talking about Europe, but right here. They’re in the U.S.!” Rick walked as he talked. His blond hair, shot through with streaks of gray, whipped about his head as he gesticulated wildly.

  The Colonel sat at his desk, calmly watching, letting Rick run through the course of his argument.

  Tom Alexander earned his education through an ROTC scholarship to the Citadel. He worked his way up through the infantry, successfully commanding a battalion as a Lieutenant Colonel, before moving to Intelligence. His monitor told him that it was critical for future promotions to get a staff billet behind him. He did well, earned his eagles, symbols of how high Colonels were supposed to soar before he’d had enough with the Pentagon. He topped out after a few unsavory conversations with politician Generals.

  He retired last year and started work at the Emerson Partners Enterprises Corporation think tank, a run-of-the-mill DC contractor that provided work for the intelligence community, the IC. EPEC drank from the terrorism spigot, a seemingly endless flow of money thrown at a problem identified in the media as the Global War on Terrorism.

  Rick finished and sat down, leaning back heavily.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Rick. Give me a report, something in writing, and I’ll take it back in there and present it. Rick nodded and walked quickly to his desk in the cube farm. He pulled up the report he’d already prepared on his yellow-tagged, Top Secret computer and hit print. The special printer sat in a closed room a few steps away. He held his badge to the door’s access panel, typed in his PIN and went in. He pulled the page from the printer, letting the door close behind him as he returned to the Colonel’s office.

  It was a good thing Rick glanced at the page before handing it over. The report in his hand wasn’t his. This was a report someone else had printed referencing a Talent-Keyhole classified image of a terrorist camp in North Africa. He checked the print time. Someone printed this report hours ago and forgot about it.

  He went back to the printer room. His report was now in the printer’s discharge tray. He put the first report back, then thought better of it. He shoved it into the burn bag to the side. A member of the night shift would close the bag and take it to the incinerator in the building’s basement. If whoever printed it wanted it, they would have already collected it.

  In Rick’s opinion, there was too much paper floating around the office spaces. He had to pass two sets of security guards and numerous bank-vault style doors to get to his desk. He carried nothing in and nothing out. It was the cost of doing business in the IC. He hadn’t printed his report before because he didn’t want to have to destroy it, but now it held a purpose and it would see the light of day.

  Rick was glad he stayed late the day before to work on this report. He always had some pet project going on in the background, taking positions and thinking about things the others didn’t. He gave himself more work than the bosses ever would, but published no more than a third of it. He went forward with something only if he could defend it fully. The others went forward with everything. He had no respect for those guys.

  Rick wrote a lot of reports. Maybe EPEC charged the federal government per word. He produced enough that it would be lucrative. And he was one of the slower analysts on the floor, something that did not cause him any shame. His reports were better, more concise, more thoroughly researched. The way the reports went forward made him wonder. Did anyone ever read them?

  He convinced himself that EPEC charged by the word. He shook his head. Maybe someday it would matter. He didn’t want anything to come back to him. He treated every scrap of intelligence as if it was critical, then pushed it aside when he learned it wasn’t.

  It took a special person to wade through the reams of reports to find the nuggets, the bread crumbs. As politicians liked to say, connect the dots. What they don’t tell you is there are the same number of dots as there are stars in a clear night’s sky. Weeding out those that don’t matter from those that do is an overwhelming job. What makes it harder is dealing with reports at the highest classification that are blatantly wrong.

  Those with chairs at the big table didn’t have the time to weed through the raw data. They only dealt with reports of pre-analyzed data, like the one they were beating to death in the conference room right now.

  Rick tried to work through how he felt. Raging about the endemic shortcomings of the IC wasn’t going to change anything. He needed to get back on track, fight individual battles, not the whole war.

  Rick’s report would change the flavor of the conversation from how do we inform our allies to one of how do we protect ourselves. The “NOFORN” classification meant Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals. It made informing the Europeans problematic. Not impossible, but it could only be done at levels far over Rick’s head, levels that people like Colonel Alexander aspired to.

  Rick handed the Colonel his report and prepared to follow him back to the conference room, but Tom stopped him. “I need you to dig more into this. Is there anything else? Build me a network diagram of who else these people talked with. Is there any kind of metadata originating from within the U.S.? Important people are going to have questions, and we need to be ready with answers. This changes everything. Thanks, Rick. Great work, as usual.”

  Rick smiled tensely before heading back to his desk. The Colonel hadn’t read his report before returning to the meeting. Rick had little confidence that he would properly represent his position, their new position, the right position. Maybe the Colonel would read it to the group.

  If he did, would he give Rick credit? Everyone had seen the exchange between him and the Colonel. Probably not. He’d let them all assume that it happened due to the sage guidance of senior management, in this case, one Colonel Tom Alexander.

  The EPEC Way of Life

  It was out of his hands. He’d done his job, and he’d keep doing it. What else could he do besides give it his best and keep his boss informed? It’s not like he had another avenue to express himself. The chain of command was just that, a chain with single links feeding upward. EPEC was a private company, started by retired Generals, run by other retired Generals, with active duty Generals as advisors and retired Colonels in most of the key positions. Rick had been with EPEC from the start, having left the military because the EPEC recruiter was a former boss who knew Rick belonged on the all-star intelligence team they were building.

  As Rick returned to his cubicle, he thought of the Top Secret TK imagery report left on the printer. He didn’t feel like he was on the all-star team, more like the Bad News Bears.

  Angry old men arguing over a report that was wrong.

  Bad intelligence led to bad decisions. In this case, it could lead to sending assets to the wrong side of the world, leaving the home front open to the bad guys. Rick couldn’t let it rest. He squirmed at his desk until he decided he had to go back into the conference room, back into the lion’s den, the only Christian fighting for humanity.

  EPEC. Its logo was a gladiator’s helm with crossed short swords beneath. It implied the good fight. Maybe it was lost on the owners that gladiators fought for another’s profit, ultimately dying in the end, quickly replaced by another gladiator. Then again, maybe it wasn’t lost on the owners. Rick never saw them in the arena, crossing swords with the enemy.

  Rick didn’t like being the gladiator, but he was well paid. For now, this was his job, and he’d give it his best effort.

  Before he went
back to the conference room, he did as he always did, he called his wife, checking in, energized by the sound of her voice while at the same time calming him because his family would be there when he got home. They’d make him forget the day as they always did. He couldn’t talk about what he did, but they could, so he’d get them talking and he’d listen.

  After they hung up, he looked at his phone, watching it switch to its blank screen. He didn’t have a screen saver on his phone, nor on his computer besides the ones available as part of the standard Microsoft server package. He used the starry sky on his computer.

  He wondered why they were allowed to have cell phones. His was the latest, greatest secure cell phone, the Blackphone 2. It didn’t have a camera, of course, but computer signals could be transmitted unwittingly through it. He’d seen some super-geeks roll out equipment in the lobby, behind a temporary shelter and then pull up screen captures from the computers of people who were talking on their cell phones.

  They didn’t test signal bleed using the Blackphone, but he still wondered. Everything it did was encrypted. He expected that it could be broken. Everything could if you wanted to badly enough, but if it took too long, then whatever you recovered would be stale, no good. Timely intelligence is the best intelligence.

  After that, the company changed the monitors and put filtering equipment on the cabling. The IT guys worked overtime. They complained that their system would be perfect if it weren’t for the users.

  Rick locked his computer terminal. He never left it logged in when he wasn’t right there. That was an express ride to unemployment. He wasn’t ready to get on that train.

  He boldly walked back into the conference room. At least, that’s what he felt in his mind. In reality, he turned the door handle slowly and let the door creep open while he tried to tiptoe in. Colonel Alexander looked at him, instantly angry.

  “I got it, Rick. I need you on that thing we talked about. Hopefully, you can have something for me by this afternoon, COB?”

  Close of business. That meant don’t go home until he had something, even though the Colonel would leave promptly at five. When the Colonel returned at exactly seven thirty in the morning, he’d open his Top Secret email and expect a report. A long report with lots of words.