Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Bonus Story

  Rope on Fire

  A John Crane Adventure

  Book One

  By Mark Parragh

  A Waterhaven Media Publication

  First Edition - July, 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Waterhaven Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Edited by Courtney Umphress

  Cover Design by Kerry Hynds, Hynds Studio

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  When you’ve finished Rope on Fire, more of John Crane’s world is waiting for you at MarkParragh.com and the John Crane site at AgentCrane.com.

  Discover the further adventures of John Crane and other books coming from Mark Parragh. Download free bonus material. And join the Hurricane (Reading) Group to get the first word on upcoming releases, check out deleted scenes and bonus material, and always be first to read John Crane novellas and other new stories before they go on sale.

  For Nina

  Without whom the world would be a very different place

  Chapter 1

  Adale, Somalia

  The pilot’s wife was an insufferable, nagging harpy, but she was right about one thing. One day, she often said to her husband, one day, all this smoking will be the end of you.

  Just before 4:00 a.m., the pilot stood outside a Quonset hut at a deserted airstrip near the shore, waiting for his passenger to show up. At the far side of the cracked tarmac, a white Beechcraft Baron sat silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky. Beyond the plane, he could just make out whitecaps on the black water and hear the rolling of the surf. The pilot flicked his spent cigarette butt away and removed a crumpled pack from his dirty coveralls. They were Lebanese Cedars, cheap and not very good. But they were a quarter the price of Marlboros, and the pilot smoked incessantly. It added up.

  His wife worried mainly about his health. Her best friend’s brother had lost his larynx to smoking and had to talk through a little box that made him sound like a machine. The pilot wasn’t worried. His grandfather had smoked even more than he did, and he’d lived into his 90s. The pilot was confident that he had cancer-proof genes.

  What neither he or his wife had considered was how smoking had ruined his sense of smell.

  The pilot didn’t notice the stench of his coveralls, which hadn’t been washed in months. He didn’t notice his horrible body odor. He simply smelled nothing.

  The figure that detached itself from the shadow of the hut was behind him, dressed in black, and moving in darkness. The figure advanced across the tarmac toward the pilot. He had been trained to move silently, and he made no sound. So there were good reasons why the pilot didn’t see or hear the figure moving steadily toward him. But an odd medicinal odor might have warned him—if years of heavy smoking hadn’t ravaged his sense of smell.

  The pilot put another Cedar between his lips and dug for his lighter. Then some primal instinct alerted him. He turned and discovered a man standing barely ten feet behind him. The man was tall and lean, dressed entirely in black. A silenced pistol hung at his side, in his left hand. In his right he raised something that looked like a toy gun, with a plastic frame and a wide muzzle, and pointed it straight into the pilot’s face.

  The man smiled as the pilot’s cigarette slipped from his lips and fell to the tarmac. Then he pulled the trigger. There was a soft pop, and a pale green ball smacked into the pilot’s mouth and splattered like shaving gel.

  The pilot stood in confusion for a moment. The green foam expanded and clung to his skin. Was it a joke? Then his hand crushed his pack of Cedars, and his eyes defocused. He went rigid for a moment, then completely limp, and collapsed in a heap on the tarmac. His crushed cigarette pack spilled loose tobacco which blew away in the cooling breeze from the sea.

  ###

  John Crane gave the Sandman a look of newfound respect, then put it away. He prodded the pilot with the tip of his boot and got no reaction. The damn thing actually worked. For something that looked for all the world like a toy, he had to admit that was pretty impressive. The foam was called Trance-8, a very potent mixture of isoflurane, desflurane, and a couple other analogs. His handlers had made grandiose promises for the stuff. Crane hoped it would keep the pilot out long enough for him to complete his mission and get out. He could have simply shot the pilot, but why kill the man if he didn’t need to? But mostly, Crane admitted to himself, he’d wanted to test the Sandman before he turned it on his target. He still had two doses of Trance-8 for al-Sarary.

  Crane dragged the inert pilot inside the hut. There he stripped off the coveralls and pulled them on over his black mission uniform. He found a battered baseball cap on a shelf and put that on as well. The coveralls didn’t fit well, and they stank like death. But it could be worse, Crane reminded himself. It could always be worse. He stepped outside into the pre-dawn breeze and waited.

  John Crane was an agent for a US covert operations team known as the Hurricane Group because its budget and administrative personnel had been hidden away inside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Crane was barely thirty years old and on only his second mission for the Hurricane Group. It was not going according to plan.

  The mission brief had been simple enough. Grab Yemeni terrorist financier Musi al-Sarary at a point fifty miles north of here, where the highway ran close to the beach. Then load him into a zodiac and haul him out to the destroyer USS Dunham waiting in international water. He should have been back aboard the Dunham by nightfall. He should have enjoyed a hot meal and swapped stories with Chris Parikh, a fellow Hurricane agent on his own parallel mission. By now he should have been fast asleep in a comfortable bunk. But al-Sarary hadn’t shown. Crane suspected they’d moved the location of his meetings with local terrorist leadership for security reasons. And so here Crane was, at four in the morning, at a remote airstrip in rural Somalia, wearing stolen coveralls that stank. Improvising. His handlers at the Hurricane Group weren’t much for improvisation.

  Nearly an hour passed before Crane heard a car engine in the distance, and saw headlights snaking toward him through the dunes. He pulled the cap over his short, dark hair and let
the brim hide as much of his face as possible. Crane was clean shaven, with lean features and gray eyes. He looked nothing like the pilot: a short, doughy man with a three-day beard. But for security, al-Sarary took one plane in and a different plane out, so he hadn’t met the pilot. Crane wasn’t so sure about his escorts. If they didn’t notice anything, he’d have al-Sarary to himself in the air. If they did, he’d have to fight them all here on the runway. Crane took a deep breath and strode toward the Beechcraft like he belonged there.

  He was finishing his walk-around inspection when a battered Land Cruiser pulled up twenty yards away. Four men got out. Three were Somali, wiry, heavily armed. The fourth was clearly the important one. The others opened the door for him, carried his bag. The fourth man was of Middle Eastern extraction, shorter and heavier than his escorts. He looked like he’d kitted himself out from an L.L. Bean catalog. Musi al-Sarary looked just like his surveillance photos.

  He walked toward the plane like he was eager to be out of Somalia. The others surrounded him, sweeping the perimeter with their Kalashnikovs.

  “You’re late,” Crane snapped in French.

  The nearest guard snorted. “Things take time here. You still get paid.”

  “Well, get him aboard,” said Crane. “I need to finish checking the engine.”

  He walked around the plane and opened the port engine cover, letting it hide him from view. He pretended to tinker with the engine as the guards loaded al-Sarary’s bags into the hold. Then he closed the cover and announced, “We’re clear to fly,” to no one in particular.

  The guards had moved back a safe distance. Al-Sarary was already in the passenger cabin, in the right rear club seat. Perfect.

  He stuck his head inside. “Are you ready to leave, sir?”

  Al-Sarary waved a hand dismissively. “Go, go.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Crane. “We’ll be airborne in a couple minutes.”

  That much was true, Crane thought as he secured the door. Al-Sarary just wouldn’t be going back to Nairobi. After a short visit with the US Navy, he would be headed for a black site somewhere, where he would provide invaluable intel about the financial underpinnings of Al-Shabaab and several other jihadist networks.

  Crane climbed into the pilot’s seat and ran through the checklist as quickly as he could manage. The last thing he needed was for someone to find the pilot. He started the engines and ran them up to speed. Then the nav and taxi lights. Just a few more seconds.

  He set the autopilot and turned it off and then released the parking brake, and the plane edged forward.

  Dawn light stained the sea red as Crane taxied down the airstrip. At the far end, he spun the plane around and went through the final checklist items: cowl flaps, props, mixture.

  He was just ready to begin his run when he saw a wedge of light off to his left. The door of the Quonset opening. It was time to go.

  Crane slammed the throttles forward, and the Beechcraft obediently shot down the runway, gaining speed.

  As soon as he could, he pulled back and felt the nose wheel rise off the tarmac. Figures were running now in the darkness. But it was too late. The Beechcraft leaped into the air. Below, Crane saw muzzle flashes, but the plane was moving fast now, climbing sharply. He couldn’t hear the gunfire over the roar of the engines, and no bullets hit the plane. Al-Sarary didn’t seem to notice.

  Then Crane turned and took the plane away, out over the Indian Ocean and into the breaking dawn.

  He climbed to ten thousand feet and put the plane on autopilot. Now came the interesting part. He slowly slid the Sandman from a pocket of the coveralls and unfastened his seatbelt. Movement would be tricky in the tight cabin. At least the plane’s owners had helped a bit by removing the two rear-facing club seats right behind the cockpit.

  Behind him, al-Sarary was jotting on a legal pad in his lap.

  “Everything okay back there, sir?” Crane asked. “I’m getting a warning light on the cabin door.” He folded down the co-pilot’s seat.

  “It’s closed. Of course it’s closed. Look at it.”

  “I’m going to put us on autopilot for a second and check it out, okay? Don’t worry.”

  Crane started to climb around his seat when al-Sarary suddenly whipped a pistol from beneath the legal pad.

  Crane froze. “Sir! Be careful!” The Sandman was in his other hand, still hidden behind the seat. He flipped off the safety.

  “Who are you?” al-Sarary asked in English. “American? CIA?”

  Crane dropped his French. “Actually, we’re part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” Al-Sarary looked skeptical. “No, seriously.”

  Al-Sarary held the gun steady. He’d be weighing his options, realizing they were few and none of them good. Slowly, painfully slowly, Crane began to move the Sandman around his body.

  “You know how to fly this thing?” Crane asked dubiously. “How to navigate over open ocean? You don’t have much of a future if you shoot me.”

  “What future in your black sites?”

  Crane could see him summoning his courage. Christ, he was going to do it!

  “Better to die here. Without torture, without betraying my friends…”

  His grip tightened on the pistol. Desperately Crane thrust his leg back against the rudder pedals. The plane veered hard to starboard, and al-Sarary was thrown hard against the opposite side of the cabin. The pistol went off with a thunderous roar, but the shot punched through a side window.

  Crane was pressed against the edge of the pilot’s seat. His legs hit the yoke, and the plane went into a steep climb. Al-Sarary was pressed back against the rear seats, and Crane slid back into the passenger cabin and landed on his side on the floor.

  Then the plane leveled out as the autopilot started to bring it back under control. Al-Sarary fell across Crane’s legs, and his head slammed into the bulkhead. He pushed off Crane’s body, scrambling for purchase on the seats.

  As al-Sarary raised the gun for another shot, Crane sat up and fired the Sandman directly into his face. The green anesthetic foam expanded across his face. Al-Sarary had perhaps three seconds of consciousness, and he spent those trying to figure out what was happening to him.

  Then he was out. Crane carefully pried the pistol from his inert fingers.

  Breathing hard, Crane crawled back into the cockpit. The autopilot had brought the Beechcraft back on course. Crane confirmed that the plane wasn’t damaged—there was only the hissing of wind across the bullet hole—and then got to work.

  He pulled a waterproof plastic bag from his chest pocket and collected al-Sarary’s papers and his smartphone. Then he dragged the unconscious man forward. With some difficulty, he managed to belt him into the copilot’s seat and secure his wrists with a zip tie. He’d be out longer than Crane needed, but he didn’t want al-Sarary’s arms flailing around in the cockpit.

  When he was done, he climbed back into the pilot’s seat and rechecked the instruments. He took the plane down to five hundred feet and then reached into his collar and thumbed the switch on the mic he wore there.

  “Control, this is Ocelot. I have the package and am inbound your location. ETA thirty minutes.”

  A few moments later, a tired voice came back on the secure channel. “Roger that, Ocelot. You’re late.”

  Crane sighed. Yes, obviously. Things happened in the field.

  “Control, be aware I am flying a civilian aircraft,” and he gave them the plane’s tail number. “Be prepared to receive.”

  “That’s not protocol, Ocelot.”

  Crane placed his face in his palm in a moment of exasperation. Then he shook his head and thumbed the mic again. “Wow, I can’t argue with that, Control. When you’re right, you’re right. That is not protocol.”

  There was a long, static-filled pause. Finally, “Understood, Ocelot. Proceed. We are standing by to receive you.”

  Crane confirmed and switched off the mic. At least they probably wouldn’t blow him out of the sky now.
>
  The sun was above the horizon by the time Crane reached the USS Dunham, and the destroyer cast a long morning shadow across the calm surface. Crane saw the dark shapes of small boats in the water alongside her. They were ready for him.

  He brought the plane down to just a few yards above the water and came in slow. The destroyer’s bow was pointed toward him into the wind, so he flew slowly past on her starboard side and turned around, bleeding off speed. He adjusted the flaps and turned into the wind. He remembered his instructor telling him that eighty-eight percent of controlled ditches resulted in “few” injuries to the pilot and passengers. He supposed that was reassuring.

  Then he just did what they’d told him to do. He pulled the circuit breaker for the landing gear. He was going very slowly now, the plane nearly at stall speed. He edged it down, down, and then he switched off the engines and feathered the props.

  At the last moment, he opened the cockpit door so the airframe wouldn’t bend on impact and seal it shut.

  He felt the tail hit, and then the bottom slapped the water hard and the plane bounced. Crane went into crash position. Then they hit the water again, and he was thrown hard against the straps.

  Water poured in through the open cockpit door. The plane had stopped, but it was canted to one side, morning sun glaring off seawater right outside the canopy. He popped his harness and leaned over to struggle with al-Sarary’s. He got him loose, but the plane was going down fast. He hooked one arm through al-Sarary’s bound arms and grabbed the lip of the doorway with the other. Seawater was pounding his face. Crane took a deep breath, and then arms were grabbing him. The black fabric of wetsuits. The rescue divers hauled him out of the cockpit, his target dragging behind him.

  ###

  Crane stood on the deck of the Dunham, looking out across the sea where the ditched Beechcraft had sunk without a trace. Behind him, the medics had strapped al-Sarary onto a stretcher and were making sure the anesthesia hadn’t harmed him. He doubted he’d see the man again. That was fine. He had no particular desire to. He’d done his job and that was that.