Read Online Threatcon Delta by Andrew Britton - Free Book Online Page A

bared, so to speak, would be spotted by the kind of expert bodyguard who killed Yerby. This mission required HUMINT by someone who knew how to track and keep his distance—or move in for the takedown.
    Kealey sighed miserably. Allison had told him, as a psychiatrist—before they scuttled all kinds of professional ethics and busted a few of the Commandments to boot—that Kealey found it difficult to say no since doing so could result in death. That was the burden of being a peacekeeper in any capacity.
    “How much time do I have to kill?”
    “Estimated time of departure, an hour and a half. Thank you, Ryan.”
    Kealey waved it off, not looking in Harper’s eyes.
    Harper went to an office and left Kealey with one of the laptops. Kealey transferred the funds for the house to Ellie’s account and considered calling Allison. He decided against that, too. She was as much a part of his former life as Harper was. He cared for her but he did not want to immerse himself again emotionally. Agreeing to take on this mission—which he had, even though he hadn’t—was enough of a step in the wrong direction.
    Kealey went to the small officers’ mess a short walk from the JIB. It was a pleasant walk in the late afternoon, reminding him of how many tarmacs he had crossed in so many cities over too many years.
    He chose a Cobb salad, sat in a corner, and watched as men and women began filing in for early dinner. He remembered when officers seemed so much older than he was. Now Kealey was at least in the upper twentieth percentile of age.
    And most of these guys don’t have to get physical the way I do, he thought as he looked over the rainbow mix of in shape, slightly out of shape, and some who would never make it through boot camp today. They also weren’t mostly white men. Maybe half of them were. The rest were women and a rainbow of races. It seemed as if the world had come to Kealey. Yet here he was, ready to go out and fight it again. He wondered how many of these people identified themselves as hyphenates? Asian-American, Latino-American, Gay-American, Muslim-American. There was a time, even at the height of the “melting pot” in the early twentieth century, when someone was American first. You were Irish-American or Italian-American pretty much just one day a year, when there was a parade. He wondered how many of these people identified themselves as Americans first. He wondered if it would be politically incorrect—or even perceived as “hate”—if he dared to ask those questions aloud.
    It was a pretty good salad, though. Better than the prefab-tasting meals in “his” day.
    He didn’t mind waiting in the mess hall but a couple of cafeteria workers were hanging Christmas decorations before the real dinner rush started. The scraping of ladders edged closer to Kealey’s seat until he realized they were probably going to displace him and left. At least they waited till December to decorate, Kealey thought. He especially loathed the new trend of decorating for Christmas even before Halloween.
    He didn’t have a badge to go walking around the base, so he returned to the JIB. He watched aircraft of all stripes coming and going.
    This mission has got to be it, he decided. The last one. He was too jaded to keep going. He did not tell himself he needed rest, because he knew too many people who grabbed some premature rest from a bomb or a bullet. But he did need peace. Like a mystic who had seen too much horror in the world, too many territorial squabbles on the world stage and on the political stage, he needed to find something new sitting on that mountaintop in Connecticut. Next Christmas, he promised himself, he was going to spend the day flying in his own little plane over his own secluded home.
    He stopped still at the thought, just before he was going to enter the JIB. He whipped out his cell phone and called Harper.
    “Don’t tell me you got lost on base,” Harper answered.
    “It’s Christmas,” Kealey