Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

15

Rubin didn’t like that Jonquille was sitting right out in the open where one of the squirrel men could kill her if something went wrong. These men were elite soldiers. GhostWalkers in their own right. They might have different skills, but they were seriously good in the woods and they could handle themselves in a firefight.

Diego was secreted somewhere with his rifle. He would never take that aim off Sean the entire duration of the meeting. Luther was backup, but that was two against an army of GhostWalkers. Rubin had no idea how he’d allowed Jonquille to talk him into this. Still, it was done, and he refused to show anything but absolute confidence.

“You might just skip to the part that tells me what’s going on,” Rubin said, his tone mild. That was his way. Low. Calm. His eyes on Sean’s face. Unblinking like the predator he was. He was judge and jury. Maybe executioner. “I don’t want to hear bullshit, Major. I want to hear absolute truth.”

Rubin, he really is sorry about this entire mess.

This was not the way to handle it. If there was a reason, he got a lot of men killed for nothing, and I killed them.

“Oliver Chandler was not only envious of Whitney’s army of soldiers, but he decided to create his own army. He decided what he wanted in them, and like Whitney, he canvassed the ranks of various branches of the service for men who scored high on the tests who would be willing to serve in what we thought was the GhostWalker program. All of us signed up for that program. There were rumors about it and we were willing to take our service another step further. Our psych evals were good, as well as our physicals, and we all had clean records.”

Sean pushed an unsteady hand through his hair. “He was so pleased with his army. There were problems with some of us, but he was willing to overlook them, at least at first. Then he started talking about some of us being expendable. Those he considered flawed were used for high-risk assignments. He had ‘special’ assignments he needed done personally. Those missions had nothing to do with our country and everything to do with lining his pockets. We knew he was developing weapons for Whitney to turn over to the United States, but he held back on some. He held auctions for those weapons.”

Rubin was suddenly alert. You getting all this, Diego?

Yeah, letting Luther know as well.

I despise traitors, Luther chipped in.

“The men came to me and told me what was going on, even though they weren’t supposed to talk to anyone about their ‘covert missions.’ Chandler not only was auctioning off weapons but he was renting his soldiers to the highest bidders for operations that had nothing to do with the United States. Drug trafficking. Planting bombs. Guarding crime lords. You name it. Chandler considered these men expendable because they weren’t perfect. He held the rest of us back to defend him. We were his personal army.”

There was bitterness in Sean’s voice. He shook his head. “No soldier in my unit is expendable. We’re in this together. We all took the same oath to serve our country. Chandler is selling our country out. When I tried to go up the chain of command, I was shut down.”

Rubin understood a little better the one-sided conversation they briefly overheard between the one soldier leading the ground crew and the unidentified person he was talking to.

“Just before we hunted the ground crew, we heard a very brief conversation between the soldier that was enhanced and giving orders and someone on the phone. Apparently the pilot you had flying the plane was taken prisoner and their pilot had commandeered the plane. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but now it sounds as if that could be Chandler. If you’re acting outside of him, he is aware of it.”

“Are you certain it was Barry? He’s one of us. I was worried so I didn’t tell everyone the plan. I knew we had a leak somewhere, but I never suspected Barry. I thought it was … another man.” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Man, I feel bad. I was pretty abrupt with him. Now he’s dead. He died trying to get us all help. And they have our pilot? The Swamp Man?”

“Apparently they want to get information out of him.”

“They will never get him to talk. He’s the last person to ever talk,” Sean said. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Barry. I can’t believe he’d betray us. Sell Swamp down the river to Chandler. This doesn’t make sense.”

“The plan was to get Jonquille on the plane and then to surround all of you and kill you. They planned on taking her to Chandler. Where were you taking her?”