Brother's Keeper

Joaquin De Torres

Description

Jason Li is seconds away from pulling the trigger to end his life.

Difficult to believe considering three years ago he was on the fast track to becoming a Navy fighter pilot, following in the footsteps of his older brother and modern combat ace, Lt. Jordan Li. But now Jordan is dead; killed in what the Navy claims was a "freak accident" over the Pacific Ocean.

Jason never got over the death of his brother-his mentor, his hero. Now discharged from the Navy for chronic mental breakdown, Jason has no career, no family and no reason to live. It's time to finish it. He begins to squeeze the trigger when suddenly-
The doorbell rings.

Standing there is a stranger who informs him that everything the Navy told him was a lie—a stratagem for one of the most daring Black Ops missions ever attempted. His brother was the centerpiece of that operation which has now reached critical mass.

The Navy has reason to believe that Jordan may not be dead after all. They need Jason-enraged, victimized and unstable-to find his brother deep within China.

If he accepts, the Pentagon gives him his life back, and the chance to fly the most advanced fighter plane ever designed.

But if he refuses, hundreds of thousands of people will die.

Sujets

• Military
• War
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 03 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456610791
• Langue: English

Extrait

BROTHER’S KEEPER
 

 
By:
 
Joaquin De Torres
 
 
edited by
Dr. Joseph De Torres
 


 
 
Copyright 2012 Joaquin De Torres,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1079-1
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 


 

 
For my brother,
 
Joe .
 
For all the years you stood by me during
my personal dramas, the hardships, the writer’s block,
the rewrites, and the rejection letters.
 
Throughout the tears and the devastations, you kept me focused; demanding the next chapter; pushing me to create a better scene.
 
You made sure I never gave up.
 
As a writer, it pains me that I have no words to describe how much I appreciate everything you’ve done to make me
a stronger writer, and a better man.
 
This is for you, bro.
 

 


 

 
“There is a destiny that makes us brothers,
no one goes his way alone;
all that we send into the lives of others,
comes back into our own.”
Edwin Markham
 
 
“We came into the world like brother and brother;
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.”
 
William Shakespeare
 

 



 
 

 
Prologue
 
“JORDAN! GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, GODDAMNIT!”
Jordan jammed the stick hard right, launching the aircraft into a diving barrel role that lurched his intestines up to his throat. An instant before he recovered from the maneuver another blinding bolt of light slammed into his portside wing, flipping him over like a toy counterclockwise with a deafening crack.
“JESUS! I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH MORE THE PLANE CAN TAKE!” Jordan Li spat as he gained control of the aircraft.
“JORDAN! BANK LEFT! TWO-FOUR-FIVE DEGREES AND PUNCH INTO HYPERSONIC!” The frantic voice pierced through the repetitious blare of the engine stall alarm. The aircraft shuddered with every thunder clap as it banked through the showers of forked light.
“Roger that, Rudy! Going hypersonic in three, two, ONE!” But as Li pushed on the throttle to bullet through the maelstrom, a massive bolt struck the spine of his plane. Shockwaves rifled through the cockpit and his body. Then the lights went out.
“OH SHIT! I’VE LOST POWER! REPEAT! I’VE LOST POWER!” Jordan yelled as his fingers instinctively pressed the switches and buttons to fire up the engines again. “I HAVE NO INSTRUMENTS! REPEAT! NO POWER! THROTTLE, AERELONS, RUDDER, THRUST-NOT RESPONDING! RUDY, I’M A DEAD STICK!”
“EJECT, JORDAN! EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!”
 

 
Jason’s eyes flew open.
He was still sitting at the table. He swallowed hard, and shook the nervous tingles from his spine. How many times had he had this vision? How many times had it brought his mind and body to paralysis? How many more sleepless nights, cold sweats and angry tears would it suck out of him?
“Not today. Not anymore.”
Jason used his index finger to launch the gun into a spin on the table. The 9mm Glock pistol spun on its side and finally came to a rest, its barrel pointing to one of the standing framed photos he placed in a semi-circle before him. This time it landed on mom and dad. He spun it again; it stopped on Uncle Yu’s photo. He drank down his fifth shot and spun it again; it stopped on his brother Jordan.
Jason sat back and considered this. He had been drinking and spinning the gun for the last 10 minutes, not particularly realizing that the gun had stopped at his elder brother’s photo almost 75 percent of the time. Yet, it only stopped on his own photo twice in like 30 spins. He didn’t know why. He had spun the butt of the gun with the same pressure and speed each time, but this was getting absurd: The gun kept stopping on Jordan’s photo.
He poured himself another shot from the now half-empty bottle of Hennessy XO cognac, a drink made for savoring-not today. Savoring, enjoying, luxuriating-these words no longer existed in Jason’s vocabulary. The vividness of life had faded for the 26-year-old; in fact, it was now colorless and opaque. Dark and light; black and white; it was all the same. He barely tasted food, much less the dulling sweetness of his once favorite liquor. It was simply a liquid now. He took another shot and spun the gun again: It stopped at his brother’s picture.
“What the fuck is going on!?” He spun it again, and again, and again-all three times, the barrel pointed squarely on Jordan’s photo. He grabbed the frame and brought it to his face with trembling hands. He instantly remembered when the photo was taken of his ruggedly handsome brother. It was three years ago. Jason himself took the photo when Jordan came to visit him while on leave. He remembered the text he received, having read it several times a day.
“Hey Bro! Our carrier is leaving San Diego for the Ring in two weeks, so I thought I’d take some leave and see you. I can even visit with my old instructors. Speaking of flight school, I’m sorry to say that I’ll miss your graduation. I’m now a member of the new F-1 Cyclone squadron, and will get some serious flying time in the Navy’s newest bird! I’d love to tell you more, Bro, but it’s all highly classified. You’ll understand when you get your wings! Uncle Yu would be hella proud of you. I’ll call you later today. I love you, and I’m very proud of you, bro. Jordan.”
The six days they spent together was the last time Jason saw his brother alive. So much had happened; so much had changed. The memories never faded, however; in fact, they are what kept him alive this long. But now even the memories weren’t helping. Life was now shit. He was all alone in this world.
He poured another round and placed Jordan’s photo back on the table. He downed the shot and poured another.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” he said aloud. “If the gun points to me on this spin, it’s today. If it points to Jordan, it’s tomorrow.” He slammed the shot, and spun the gun one last time, putting extra power on the spin.
It stopped almost dead center on Jordan’s picture. Jason smirked with satisfaction.
“It’s decided.” He stood up and stepped away from the table. “I’ll kill myself tomorrow.”
 
Chapter 1
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
 
Deep Strike Command
U.S. Naval Station
Yokosuka, Japan
 
Two days prior.
 
Scott Rivers ran his fingers through his gray-speckled hair with trepidation. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, squeezing his eyes shut. This was going to be the most difficult assignment of his long career.
He looked down at the dossier he’d been studying for the past three days, going through the two-inch-thick stack of classified documents on one of DSC’s “persons of interest.” As head of the Deep Infiltration Task Group, the covert arm of the DSC, it was his job to select from dozens of qualified aviators for special flight sorties behind and beyond enemy lines.
These men not only had to match the technical skill set of the program, but possess the socio-psychological framework needed for the types of missions often considered suicidal. The chosen few who matched the profiles, passed the rigorous interviews, and scored well on various strategic aptitude tests, would train as members of the Department of Defense’s most secretive group of aviators-the Black Crow Squadron.
The squadron was such a covert team, so concealed from the rest of the fleet and the admiralty, that even contemporary squadron commanders had no idea what they really did. Their clearances and their duties were well beyond the scope of the frontline naval aviator, in that their orders reflected significant geo-political implications and matters of the highest security.
Black Crow pilots were not keepers of the peace, deterrents to war, bomber escorts or part of the forward fighting units like carrier pilots. Black Crows were aerial hit squads, the special forces units of the sky. Their mission was to fly deep into enemy territory under the cover of night or in horrific weather, and exact damage so great and precise that the enemy would be virtually crippled, delayed indefinitely, or completely decimated in that particular effort. These missions were run not just against enemies of the U.S., but against nations whose war machine developments were deemed too dangerous to allow their completion; and if already completed, too dangerous for their deployments or exportation.
Assembly plants, production warehouses, finishing factories, underground railways, smuggling routes, supply depots, weapons bunkers, sponsoring corporations, and satellite and Internet relay stations were all potential targets for the Black Crows. But these were generic targets in nature; there were also the “choice” targets. The homes, villas, chateaus, private planes, yachts and motorcades of warlords, drug lords, dictators, top commanders, renegade leaders, and corporate CEOs who financed them were on the list. Special weapons labs, terrorist training compounds, recruitment camps, weapons sweatshops, and key cyber engineering personnel were all targeted.
Intelligence and pinpoint locational data provided by the Navy’s OPTICA spy satellite and the thermal imaging and identification radars on the planes made AFA or, assassination-from-above missions, a major part of the DSC’s top secret and clandestine protocol. And doing this as deep as 3,500 miles into the enemy homeland gave “deep strike” an entirely new meaning. To put it succinctly, there was nowhere in the country a building, a route, or a person could hide where OPTICA and the Black Crows couldn’t find, hunt down and eliminate.
The enemy governments and militaries kept these attacks and assassinations secret from the general public and the media for the preservation of national pride, as well as hiding the fact that most of the targets we