Cold Warriors (A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller, Book #3) Read online

  From the Back Cover

  FROM USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR J. ROBERT KENNEDY

  The country’s best hope in defeating a forgotten Soviet weapon lies with Dylan Kane and the Cold Warriors who originally discovered it.

  While in Chechnya CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane stumbles upon a meeting between a known Chechen drug lord and a retired General once responsible for the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal. Money is exchanged for a data stick and the resulting transmission begins a race across the globe to discover just what was sold, the only clue a reference to a top secret Soviet weapon called Crimson Rush.

  Unknown to Kane, this isn’t the first time America has faced this threat and he soon receives a mysterious message, relayed through his friend and CIA analyst Chris Leroux, arranging a meeting with perhaps the one man alive today who can help answer the questions the nation’s entire intelligence apparatus is asking—the Cold Warrior who had discovered the threat the first time.

  Over thirty years ago.

  In Cold Warriors USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy weaves a tale spanning two generations and three continents with all the heart pounding, edge of your seat action his readers have come to expect. Take a journey back in time as the unsung heroes of a war forgotten try to protect our way of life against our greatest enemy, and see how their war never really ended, the horrors of decades ago still a very real threat today.

  About J. Robert Kennedy

  USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy has been ranked by Amazon as the #1 Bestselling Action Adventure novelist based upon combined sales. He is the author of over twenty international bestsellers including the smash hit James Acton Thrillers series of which the first installment, The Protocol, has been on the bestseller list in the US and UK since its release, including occupying the number one spot for three months.

  He lives with his wife and daughter and writes full-time.

  "If you want fast and furious, if you can cope with a high body count, most of all if you like to be hugely entertained, then you can't do much better than J Robert Kennedy."

  Amazon Vine Voice Reviewer

  Find out more at www.jrobertkennedy.com.

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  Books by J. Robert Kennedy

  The James Acton Thrillers

  The Protocol

  Brass Monkey

  Broken Dove

  The Templar's Relic

  Flags of Sin

  The Arab Fall

  The Circle of Eight

  The Venice Code

  Pompeii's Ghosts

  Amazon Burning

  The Riddle

  Blood Relics

  The Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers

  Rogue Operator

  Containment Failure

  Cold Warriors

  Death to America

  The Delta Force Unleashed Thrillers

  Payback

  Infidels

  The Detective Shakespeare Mysteries

  Depraved Difference

  Tick Tock

  The Redeemer

  Zander Varga, Vampire Detective Series

  The Turned

  COLD WARRIORS

  A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller

  Book #3

  by

  J. Robert Kennedy

  COLD WARRIORS

  By J. Robert Kennedy

  Copyright ©2013 J. Robert Kennedy

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  1.1

  Table of Contents

  The Novel

  Acknowledgements

  Thank You from the Author

  Newsletter

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  For Hermann, Erica and Michaela Kapp, my German “Granddad”, “Grandma” and “sister”.

  Für Hermann, Erica und Michaela Kapp, meinem deutschen “Opa”, meiner deutschen “Oma” und “Schwester”.

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

  George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

  “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the western hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”

  President Theodore Roosevelt, 1904

  PREFACE

  The weapon referred to in this novel exists. What isn’t known is how many were manufactured, and how many were smuggled into the United States and other NATO countries by the Soviet Union. Some estimates have Soviet scientists building over one thousand of these weapons over nearly thirty years. And if just one had been successfully deployed, it could be devastating.

  The author will leave it to the reader to decide whether a country hell-bent on the elimination of our way of life would have even attempted such a thing, and whether or not they would have been successful.

  Checkpoint Charlie

  West Berlin, West Germany

  February 12, 1982

  “You failed.”

  Alex West frowned at his handler, Gord Justice. He had always been a cold bastard of few words when on the job. Loosen his lips with a good scotch and he had one of the raunchiest senses of humor West had encountered in his travels.

  No bottle of scotch was in sight.

  “Nice to see you too.”

  Justice grunted, motioning with his head that they should go, the Soviet spy exchanged for West now reaching his own handler. The traditional Berlin fog was heavy at this time of night, but the checkpoint was well lit on both sides, this far from a shadowy exchange usually executed at the Glienicke Bridge under the cover of a sparsely populated area, its most famous pedestrian U2 pilot Frances Gary Powers in 1962.

  Checkpoint C or as it had come to be known, Checkpoint Charlie, was established as one of the few controlled crossing points between East and West Berlin after the Berlin Wall was erected to stop the flood of East Germans, over 3.5 million of their best and brightest, to the West. After the wall was completed, this slowed to a trickle. Checkpoint Charlie was probably the most famous crossing point between the East and West in this divided city buried in the middle of a divided country, the Iron Curtain as Churchill named it unforgiving when it came to families and borders. When the wall had gone up as a barbwire fence in a single day on August 13, 1961, families had been cutoff overnight, those fortunate enough to be on the west side of the line of troops and barbwire blessed to live out a life of freedom, those on the east, doomed to life in a communist state, in one of the Soviet Union’s staunchest allies.

  “Control wants to see you immediately.”

  West nodded. “I should hope so,” he said, following Justice to a waiting car. Control had no sense of humor. He had neve
r met Control in all his years of spying for his country. Sometimes he was certain the voice at the other end of the speaker was a different person, and it probably was. There were too many missions for Control to directly oversee them all. Then again his missions were usually critical, not the casual photography job of Red Square that most embassy staff were asked to perform. His were much more cloak and dagger, far more life and death than most operatives were faced with.

  And in this case he knew the only reason he was walking across the border was that killing him would acknowledge what he had found out was true. He knew the Soviets were betting on him failing to convince his handlers of the truth. But if he failed, the potential devastation that could be wrought upon America was incalculable. It could mean the end of Western civilization, and a planet doomed to a post-apocalyptic horror dominated by an uncontested communist Soviet Union.

  “You realize how much shit you’re in?”

  West did. He was in it up to his nostrils. He had gone against orders, created an international incident that had required his side to hand over a valuable captured asset, and because he had been caught, he had none of the evidence he had accumulated. He was barely treading water in the cesspool he now found himself in.

  “When Control hears why I did what I did, something tells me he’ll have bigger things to worry about.”

  “You seem pretty confident.”

  “With reason.”

  “Why? Why did you do it?”

  West realized nobody on this side of the Curtain knew what was going on. They only knew one of their top men had gone cold, then through unacknowledged diplomatic channels had requested an exchange. It was almost unheard of; usually when captured, covert agents would simply endure their torture, then wait in a cell for an exchange—if they were still alive.

  But in rare cases when they felt their intel was far too valuable to wait, and if the other side holding them felt they knew nothing of importance, or could prove nothing if it were, they’d make an exchange for one or more of their assets who were being held in accommodations usually just as pleasant.

  West had nearly shit his pants in surprise when he had seen who he had been exchanged for. Viktor Zorkin, a master spy if there ever was one. They had exchanged fists and bullets and tails for years, and over their years of thrust and parry they had both been responsible for each other’s capture and defeats.

  But this was insane.

  How the hell did he get captured so quickly? I just saw him not even a week ago!

  They were warriors who respected each other, and as part of that unwritten code, certain leeway was cut by both, a leeway that had saved both their lives over the years, including this most recent mission. Their rivalry was old, going back to the start of both of their careers, and he found whenever he saw Zorkin in some other part of the world, he smiled slightly and gave the man a nod, it always returned if possible. It was almost a friendship, a friendship that reminded him of the old cartoon characters Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, Sam defeating Ralph mercilessly while at the job, but at the sound of the steam whistle, they would return home the friends they were.

  Old warriors.

  He felt old. He wasn’t, not by anybody’s standards but the young whippersnappers coming out of training, desperate to jump in and defeat the evil Soviet Union in one single, movie-inspiring stroke, their names forever to go down in history.

  More likely they’d end up on the Memorial Wall at Langley, an anonymous star to be remembered and eventually forgotten to all but their families.

  It was a brutal business.

  And he loved it.

  He climbed in the back of the car with Justice.

  “If Control clears you, I’ll tell you all about it,” he said.

  Justice’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Christ, Alex, it’s me, Gord. How long have we known each other?”

  West gave him half a smile.

  “Long enough to know you’d give me up in a heartbeat to save yourself.”

  “Uh huh.” Justice wasn’t happy with the remark, but didn’t protest it because he knew damned well it was true. West had read his record before agreeing for the man to be his handler. He didn’t mind the fact that the man would sell him out to save himself, all he cared about was to what side. Justice was a patriot, through and through, and would never betray him to the Soviets, but to his own people, he’d sing like a damned canary if it were demanded of him, but only if it meant saving himself from some blemish on his immaculate career jacket sitting in a cabinet in a file room at Langley.

  He was a career man willing to step on anyone to get ahead.

  But he was definitely not a field operative.

  And unfortunately he was the closest thing to a friend West had.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just grumpy. You know I can’t tell you, but if Control agrees, I’ll ask you sit in.”

  This seemed to placate the wounded Justice, and the rest of the short ride was filled with talk of baseball, West’s beloved Cleveland Indian’s seemingly always a disappointment to Justice’s glee, he being a Yankee’s man himself. What Justice didn’t realize was that the Indian’s weren’t West’s home team. He had been forced to give them up, Cleveland instead part of his cover. Home teams gave away your home, something you didn’t want anyone finding out about in this business.

  They arrived at “The Exchange”, a secret underground complex in the American sector of West Berlin where underground tunnels could lead them pretty much anywhere in the sector they needed to go, away from prying eyes, including those of the KGB agents that had been following them from the moment they had left Checkpoint Charlie. They were tolerated because they were known. It was better to leave a spy in place as long as he was doing no harm. If you arrested them every time you identified one, you’d be spending more time trying to find his replacement than you’d save by keeping the known man in play.

  It was a game with rules, that men of honor played by.

  Unfortunately not every man playing the game was honorable.

  They exited the vehicle, switching to another that would bring them to their final destination, their original car now headed back outside with two stand-ins in the rear to play a little wild goose chase with their KGB shadows.

  “You know, this is probably going to end your career, my friend.”

  West nodded.

  “If I go out on this one, then it will have been worth it. As long as somebody listens.”

  Justice made a disgruntled sound.

  “No guarantee on that,” he said as they pulled up to the underground entrance to one of several CIA outposts in the city. Within moments West was in a room, a light shining on him, ashtray in front of him, still half-full from the previous debriefing.

  He didn’t smoke.

  At least not any more. He found it made him too jumpy if he was without. Which was something that could get you killed in the field.

  He pushed it aside, the thought of taking a long drag now disgusting to him.

  Chairs scraped in the darkness on the other side of the light, and several red cherries glowed in the dark as his interrogators indulged in their own bad habits, none having yet apparently conquered the addiction.

  “Welcome, Mr. West,” came the voice of Control. “Yet again we meet under less than auspicious circumstances.”

  Meet?

  West would hardly call this a meeting. Meetings implied two way communications in which you could not only hear, but see the participants.

  “I fear it’s the nature of the business we’re in,” he replied.

  “Yes, I seem to see you more than any other of my agents.”

  “Perhaps because I am given the more difficult assignments.”

  “Yet you ignored your latest mission’s parameters.”

  “If you heard my reasoning, you would understand why.”

  “How would you like to proceed, Mr. West?”

  “How about at the beginning?”

&nb
sp; Shali, Chechen Republic, Russian Federation

  Present Day

  CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane shoved the shopkeeper aside, racing between temporary stalls set up daily by their owners, and the more permanent structures for those who had the right connections—warlords who provided protection for a price.

  Which meant only the most successful vendors occupied the most desirable places in the markets. A Catch-22 if Kane had ever seen one.

  “Byekhk mah beel-lahh!” he yelled, apologizing to the downed vendor, one who hadn’t paid attention to the man charging through the market, instead immediately casting a watchful eye over his wares, knowing shoplifters took advantage of just these situations.

  And one had, hence his darting in front of Kane necessitating the less than gentle shove.

  His target was about thirty feet ahead of him, making great time, obviously familiar with the market, but Kane had the advantage. His target had to decide where he was going which took mental cycles that subtly slowed him down, and with each delay, Kane gained inches. And as long as he could rely on the crowd to stop and stare after the man who had shoved through them, he could use their momentary distraction to speed through with little interference.

  A dodge into an alleyway and Kane lost sight of his man, but moments later he was in the same narrow passage just in time to see him exit the other end and head left.