White: A Novel by Christopher Whitcomb Read Free Book Online

of New Operator Training School, or NOTS, only to be shipped off to the U.S. Marine Corps Scout/Sniper school for another month of “specialization.”
    Thirty, thirty-one . . .
    Then had come the Puerto Rico mission. Terrorists had kidnapped the governor’s daughter and would have killed her if not for the team’s brilliantly executed assault. Jeremy remembered peering down into the cellar hole where they had secreted her, a violent attack raging around him, bullets flying up from the dark space below. He remembered leaning in with his MP-5 and blowing the back of the terrorist’s head off.
    “Good shooting,” FBI headquarters had said after the OPR investigation.
At least it was better than Yemen,
Jeremy thought.
And better than what I just witnessed in the jungle.
    Fifty.
    Jeremy blew out a couple cleansing breaths, adjusted his hands on the cheap polyester carpet, then continued.
    He’d seen the Americans through the magnification of his rifle scope. Three white males, thirty to thirty-five years of age, three-day beards, Western clothing. And that Bass Pro Shops hat. By the time Jeremy had mentioned them out loud, GI Jane was already running.
    Americans.
    Nothing unusual had happened for some time after that. The task force entry team had separated the men into two groups, knelt them with their hands flex-cuffed behind their backs, and slipped burlap bags over everyone’s head. Everyone except Mahar. This was a technique perfected in Iraq during the war, Jeremy knew. Special operations teams working with CIA Special Activities Division interrogators had determined that the initial disorientation and pursuant fear yielded significant on-scene intelligence.
    Sixty-one . . .
    So it made sense to Jeremy that he would see the same thing there in the jungle. GI Jane had moved first to Mahar, kneeling beside him and placing her hand on his shoulder. She talked for a few minutes, evoking an occasional nod or turn of the head, but from Jeremy’s distance there was no way to tell what the terrorist said.
    After a few moments, Jane stood up and walked over to the second Indonesian. The task force team leader—a Delta Force sergeant everyone called French—stood over the man with his M-4 assault rifle hanging from his right hand. French wore Vietnam-era OD fatigues with the sleeves rolled up, a Ranger hat, and black SWAT gloves.
    GI Jane had knelt down on one knee, as if she planned less conversation and didn’t want to get too comfortable.
    Seventy-two . . .
    After a few more minutes, she moved across the compound to the three Westerners. They had been arranged side by side, close enough that they could have held hands if not for the flex cuffs.
    Seventy-five . . .
    She spoke to the one on the left first. GI Jane pulled the burlap bag off the man’s head, exposing what Jeremy now saw as bleach-white hair and skin the color of Xerox paper. GI Jane asked the man—whom Jeremy guessed to be an albino—a couple questions and jotted a few notes on a small pad she kept in the thigh pocket of her BDUs.
    Seventy-eight . . .
    After a moment or two, she replaced the burlap bag, walked over to French, and mumbled a few words. It was only then that everything began to unravel.
    My God,
Jeremy thought.
    He paused his push-ups and blinked his eyes, trying to shake off images of what had happened next.
    JORDAN MITCHELL LIVED for acquisition. From the companies he bought up through hostile takeovers and proxy skirmishes to the secrets he gathered through government sources and industry moles, everything in his world came down to spreadsheets delineating what he had and what he yet had to have. He was CEO and principal stockholder of Borders Atlantic, after all—one of the world’s largest multinational corporations—a man
Forbes
ranked as number five among the world’s richest men.
    According to trade projections, his recent Quantis project, which included new Middle Eastern cell phone broadcast monopolies, had positioned him well