Rogue Force, page 1
R O G U E F O R C E
(A TROY STARK THRILLER—BOOK 1)
J A C K M A R S
Jack Mars
Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising six books; of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising twelve books; and of the TROY STARK thriller series, comprising three books (and counting).
Jack loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.Jackmarsauthor.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!
Copyright © 2022 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. 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 it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Hubskyi_Mark, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY JACK MARS
TROY STARK THRILLER SERIES
ROGUE FORCE (Book #1)
ROGUE COMMAND (Book #2)
ROGUE TARGET (Book #3)
LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)
OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)
SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)
OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)
PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)
OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)
HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)
FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES
PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)
PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)
PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)
PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)
PRIMARY VALOR (Book #5)
PRIMARY DUTY (Book #6)
AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES
AGENT ZERO (Book #1)
TARGET ZERO (Book #2)
HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)
TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)
FILE ZERO (Book #5)
RECALL ZERO (Book #6)
ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)
DECOY ZERO (Book #8)
CHASING ZERO (Book #9)
VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10)
ZERO ZERO (Book #11)
ABSOLUTE ZERO (Book #12)
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
October 15
1:35 pm Eastern Daylight Time
Ross Dock Picnic Area
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Almost nothing about the man was as it appeared.
He seemed tall, a bit over six feet, but he was wearing two-inch lifts inside his fine leather boots, which themselves had one-inch heels. He seemed to have a thick blonde beard. In fact, it was a cleverly crafted fake, glued to his face with the skill and care that Hollywood cosmetic specialists use when working on film actors.
He seemed to have long blonde hair, tied in a ponytail. Same. The wig was as high-quality as the beard and affixed to his head with equal care. In fact, his head was closely shaven, his real hair was dark and, if allowed to grow out, would show him to be a victim of early male pattern balding. He wore colored contact lenses to make his brown eyes seem pale blue. His eyebrows were dyed blonde and could easily and quickly be dyed back to their normal color.
He often went by the name “Sven.” He had no idea why, but he found this amusing. Perhaps because he was as far from a Nordic Sven as humanly possible, both physically and in outlook. He also found it amusing how a man like him, what some might call a true believer, even a religious extremist, could find common cause with a nihilistic businessman, a man who was happy to tell you that he believed in nothing but the material world that he could touch and see.
He shook his head and smiled. It helped that the pay was good. Very good.
He left the car in the parking lot and walked across the grass to the far southeastern corner of the park. He skirted the edge of a large family gathering, which he supposed had about 30 people, and was monopolizing four picnic tables and two charcoal grills. The adults stood around, drank beer, and ate hotdogs and hamburgers. The children chased each other in circles. A couple of dogs jumped and barked. A few of the older kids were messing with a small toy drone.
It was a lovely fall day, great for a barbecue.
The park was just north of, and well below, the George Washington Bridge. The bridge loomed overhead in the near distance, cutting across the pale blue sky. Sven could see the westbound cars and trucks crossing it on the upper level, moving from New York City to New Jersey. Below the bridge, on the distant side of the Hudson River, the skyline of Manhattan marched south.
This was a good spot. He had considered Liberty State Park, but it was too close to the target. Impact would happen much more quickly from there, which would have given him no time to disappear. Yes, there was more chance of interference when launching from this distance, but how much chance was there really?
Not much. Not much at all.
Sven was carrying a large, heavy pack, which weighed on his shoulder. When he was close to the water’s edge, he set it down. Then he went back to the car, and got another heavy pack, nearly identical to the first. He glanced back at the family. No one over there was looking at him. Soon, he was alone by the water again. He opened both packs and pulled out the various parts of the drone. They tended to fasten together with relative ease.
It was much larger than the toy drone that the kids had, but it was still relatively small as drones went. He connected the four sections of the fuselage, making the body about two meters in overall length, and quite bulbous. Along the inside of each side of the fuselage was a closed compartment, which contained the drone’s payload, and to which he had no access. They were by far the heaviest parts.
He slowly and meticulously connected the drone’s four arms and eight rotors. At the end of each arm, the rotors were attached horizontally both above and below the bracket there. When he was finished, the drone looked like a very large, very scary, very pregnant spider. It was all black, with two sensors on top, and nine cameras mounted on an appendage from the bottom. Eight of the cameras were multi-directional, and could move autonomously, including both up and down. The ninth camera faced down and was also multi-directional. The thing had a field of vision that no living creature could match.
Sven took out the controller, opened it, turned it on, and let it run through its diagnostic tests. The controller was simply a small black laptop with a few buttons and a tiny readout. It had to be close, within about ten meters, to launch the drone. It was really more of a launcher, and a navigator, than a controller.
Once the device was in flight, no more input from the human end user was necessary. The system would become fully autonomous. The destination of the drone was pre-programmed. The navigator would remain in contact and guide it there. The drone’s actions when it arrived at the destination would depend on how the targets presented themselves.
“Wow!” a voice said behind him. “Can we see your drone?”
Sven was on his knees. He turned and two small children were there, a boy and a girl. The children were brown-skinned, with dark hair. The boy was about a head taller than the girl.
Sven would have preferred if no one had come this close. But it didn’t matter. He was a tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed man who flew drones as a hobby. He would be long gone, and his appearance would have changed, before it occurred to anyone to think differently about him. He smiled and stood. He made sure to raise himself to his full augmented height.
“He was very tall,” he could imagine the children saying.
“Sure, kids,” Sven said. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?”
English was not his first language, but he had studied for years to eliminate any hint of an accent in his voice.
“It’s a
The girl was silent, staring at the thing in wonder.
The controller had finished its tests. Of course, everything on the drone was operational. It had been tested and re-tested just this morning. The man had brought it here with nearly infinite care. Now it was ready.
“Watch it fly,” he said.
He pressed the green button on his controller. The rotors spun, making a low whining noise. After a moment, the thing tentatively lifted from the ground. For a few seconds, it almost seemed to struggle with the weight of the payload it was carrying. Then it went up about one or two stories, hovered for a moment, and headed toward the bridge.
“Wow!” the boy said.
“Wow!” the girl echoed.
The man, whose real name was not Sven, reached down, picked up the empty black bags, closed the controller, and slipped it under his arm. “Well,” he said. “That’s it for me. Have a nice day, kids.”
“Mister, what about your drone?” the boy said. He pointed south, where the drone was now a dark speck, about to fly under the George Washington Bridge.
“Don’t you want it?”
Both the boy and the girl’s faces said they were disturbed that the man would launch such a wonderful toy, then simply walk away and forget about it.
He smiled brightly again, to reassure them that there was no problem.
“Oh, it’ll be fine. It’s going to meet some friends on the other side of that bridge.”
* * *
The drone flew south above the Hudson River.
Within two minutes, it had passed beneath the George Washington Bridge. It stayed low, skimming just five meters over the water, its giant span a shadow looming above it. Once past the bridge, it ascended to 20 meters and continued on.
It was on its own. It had no mind in the way humans might think of one. It had no memory of the past, and no real anticipation of the future. It had no loved ones. It had no fear, and no courage in the face of fear. It was not capable of guilt or remorse. It had no preferences. It didn’t judge anything as good or bad. It had no opinion of what it was about to do. It wasn’t excited, nor did it have any second thoughts. There was no sick feeling of anxiety deep inside its belly.
But its computer brain was more than enough to guide it. It absorbed and adjusted to a steady stream of data about its environment - height, wind speed and direction, along with visual data about objects in its path, such as large ships, or any potential hostile intervention that might stop it from carrying out its directive.
There was no such intervention, nor was any going to come. Given the vast scope of the river, and the city, and the drone’s height above the water, it was nearly invisible out here. If it appeared on anyone’s radar, it would seem to be the toy of an obsessed hobbyist. People had not yet begun to think of drone attacks against civilians as something to worry about.
Its destination was now 7.4 miles south, southeast. The tall buildings of New York City were directly to its east, passing by at approximately 28 miles per hour. It was a sunny, breezy day, and the drone was very stable in flight. It began to accelerate, its speed increasing rapidly. In the final seconds before contact, it should top out at a little over 100 miles per hour.
Visibility was excellent. In another few seconds, it should receive its first visual data on the target. Its destination was known as Vessel, a popular tourist attraction in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of Manhattan.
It would arrive there momentarily.
CHAPTER ONE
2:05 pm Eastern Daylight Time
Vessel
Hudson Yards
New York City
“What a beautiful day!” Kate said. “What a view.”
“Gorgeous,” Adam said.
He didn’t know where he had gotten that word, but he said it a lot nowadays. “Gorgeous.” It was almost a mechanical response, but it seemed to fit much of the time.
He and Kate had come in to Manhattan on the PATH train from their waterfront condo over in Jersey City. Kate was certainly gorgeous, nearly fashion model tier, in fact. She was tall, with long blonde hair, high cheekbones, and an upturned nose. Today she was wearing skinny jeans and a light jacket and fuzzy boots. When she was excited, like now, her face and smile would light up the world. When she was sad, or bored, which she often was, you would do anything to make her happy again. With eight years in selling bonds at Stifel, Adam was making real money these days. He hoped money would be enough to keep her.
And the day, of course, was gorgeous. Wide open blue skies, breezy, with a hint of the coming winter in the air, and thin white clouds skidding across the sky. And the view from this strange… he wasn’t sure what to call it. Building? Sculpture? Monument? It was basically an interlocking honeycomb of stairs and landings, stairs and landings, stairs and landings, in a sort of circular pattern, 16 stories high. It was as if an architect was smoking pot while staring at an MC Escher sketch and decided to build what he saw.
The view from here, near the very top, looking back toward the wide expanse of river, with the steel and glass towers of Hudson Yards in the foreground, and the old train yards still visible below street level was… gorgeous.
There was no better word for it.
“Gorgeous, hon,” Adam said. “Really gorgeous.”
Kate laughed. Maybe she was delighted by the day. Maybe she was delighted by the word that he kept saying. Whatever delighted her, she was laughing as she leaned against the railing and clear panel of glass, and that was enough. When she laughed, everyone around her faded and then disappeared. That was the raw power of her beauty. And it was crowded here today - a lot of folks were quietly melting into the background.
Vessel had only reopened a week ago. Some angst-ridden teenager had thrown himself off from the top a few months back, and it was a long way down. The owners had closed the place to study what to do about that. Apparently, the answer was nothing. People jumped from high places sometimes. So now Vessel was open again, and there was a lot of pent-up demand. People wanted to be here. Adam and Kate wanted to be here. It was a place to be.
Maybe it was THE place to be. Adam liked the thought of that.
“Let me get some pictures of you,” he said.
His phone was never far from his hand. It was a new model, expensive, and encased in bright blue rubber to protect it from drops, spills, and all the other dangers that smart phones were vulnerable to. This one had a super high-definition camera, with the ability to instantly upload photos and video to cloud storage. The TV ads would lead you to believe that somewhere, right now, entire crews were shooting feature films with this telephone. Maybe they were.
He didn’t have to ask her twice. Kate was a natural ham. She loved to be photographed. He turned the video on, as she moved fluidly from pose to pose, like a fashion model. It was disconcerting the ease with which she did it, going from a pout to a bright smile, to a searing come hither look with no break in between. For a split second, it occurred to Adam that she must practice these moves, maybe in front of a mirror.
But then something else caught his eye. Behind Kate, a sort of black speck appeared. No, it was more than a speck. A second ago, it had been a speck. A second before that, it wasn’t even noticeable.
Now it was larger, coming from the direction of the river, and rising as though it had emerged from the surface of the water. Adam’s eyes tried to formulate it into a shape he recognized. Was it a bird? It was coming kind of fast for a bird. On the screen, Kate threw her head back, causing her luxurious hair to make a wave-like motion. Behind her, that thing was still coming.
What was it?
Now other people had started to notice. A man in a dark blue windbreaker pointed at it. Adam noticed the white logo on the man’s jacket: North Face.
A woman picked up her blonde-haired toddler and clutched him.
Three bored teenagers, all in black, and with skin as white as alabaster, were sitting on one of the many staircases. Now they turned to look at the approaching thing.
As Adam watched, it resolved into a shape he recognized - it looked like a sort of flying spider. His brain could make sense of that.
