Fortress Frontier (Shadow Ops 2) Read online

  Copyright © 2013 Myke Cole

  The right of Myke Cole to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP in 2013

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  epub conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Warwickshire

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 9400 5

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright page

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also By

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Measure of A Man

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Taking Home

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cross Purposes

  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

  Glossary

  About the Book

  The explosive Shadow Ops military fantasy series continues . . .

  The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Suddenly people from all corners of the globe began to develop terrifying powers – summoning fire, manipulating earth, opening portals and decimating flesh. Overnight the rules had changed . . . but not for everyone.

  Alan Bookbinder might be a Colonel in the US Army, but in his heart he knows he’s just a desk jockey, a clerk with a silver eagle on his jacket. But one morning he is woken by a terrible nightmare and overcome by an ominous drowning sensation. Something is very, very wrong.

  Forced into working for the Supernatural Operations Corps in a new and dangerous world, Bookbinder’s only hope of finding a way back to his family will mean teaming up with former SOC operator and public enemy number one: Oscar Britton. They will have to put everything on the line if they are to save thousands of soldiers trapped inside a frontier fortress on the brink of destruction, and show the people back home the stark realities of a war that threatens to wipe out everything they’re trying to protect.

  About the Author

  As a security contractor, government civilian and military officer, Myke Cole’s career has run the gamut from Counterterrorism to Cyber Warfare to Federal Law Enforcement. He has done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A lifelong fan of fantasy novels, comic books and Dungeons & Dragons, Myke now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Praise for Myke Cole:

  ‘A mile-a-minute story of someone trying to find purpose in a war he never asked for’ Jack Campbell, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Fleet series

  ‘Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men . . . military fantasy like you’ve never seen it before’ Peter V. Brett

  ‘Hands down, the best military fantasy I’ve ever read . . . a chilling, enthralling story. Myke Cole just might be a wizard himself’ Ann Aguirre, bestselling author of Enclave

  In the Shadow Ops series and available from Headline:

  Control Point

  Fortress Frontier

  Breach Zone (coming 2014)

  For J. R. R. Tolkien, who planted the seed, and Gary Gygax, who watered it until it took root

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, my name is going on a project made possible by a small army of people. They include (but are not limited to) my agent Joshua Bilmes (and Jessie Cammack, Eddie Schneider, and John Berlyne) and the staff at Ace (Anne Sowards, Jess Wade, Danielle Stockley, Kat Sherbo, Rosanne Romanello, Brady McReynolds, Jodi Rosoff, and many more) and at Headline (John Wordsworth et al.). Thanks also to Michael Komarck, Larry Rostant, Nick Stohlman, Paul Jacobsen, Sarah Semark, and Priscilla Spencer, who plied their particular arts to bring this work to life. Thanks also to Joel Beaven, Tamela Viglione, and David Fields for careful test reading, and to Chris Evans, Robin Hobb, Ann Aguirre, John Hemry (Jack Campbell), Mark Lawrence, Shiloh Walker, and Violette Malan for lending their names to the effort to get people to believe that my work was good enough to spend money on. Special thanks to Mihir Wanchoo for consultation on the Hindi/Sanskrit language and Hindu mythology, and to the staff and class of Viable Paradise VI. Thanks also to the Drinklings, the staff of Qathra, and the New York Public Library (where this book was largely written).

  Thanks also to my family, in particular Madeline and Jasper, who daily teach me patience, passion, and not to be afraid to get excited about bugs, rocks, and bad British television.

  Thanks also to Ted Arthur and Chris Meawad, who have acted as delegates from my old DC haunts and paid careful attention to making sure I never lost touch with my drinking and running (or maybe running and drinking?) roots.

  Thanks to United States Coast Guard Station New York and Training Center Cape May (CO, Captain William Kelly and XO, Commander Owen Gibbons), who continue to hold me to standards I would never achieve without their incredible example. You lead from the front, and I am all too happy to follow.

  With Peter V. Brett again saved for last: brother, friend, mentor, battle-buddy. None of this would exist without you omnipresent on my six, ignoring your own hell to push me through mine. Thanks.

  Measure of A Man

  It was kind of a bummer, honestly. No special incantations. No wands or staves. No hat with moons and stars on it. I just get sappy and point and boom. Where’s the fun in that?

  – Former Ambassador to Finland Katherine Arajarvi

  Speaking to reporters on graduation from SAOLCC and assignment to a SOC Coven

  Chapter One

  Tide Comes In

  Oscar Britton is wanted for the murder of several soldiers and civilians, including his own father. He allegedly traffics in prohibited magical schools, most likely Negramantic practice. He has plotted the violent overthrow of the United States government and mishandled classified information. CONTACT: If you have any information concerning this case, please contact the nearest FBI office or, if outside the United States, the nearest United States embassy or consulate.

  – FBI Web site: Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

  He races into the water, kicking up clods of wet sand, waves sloshing over the glass-polished surface of his shoes.

  A little ways out to sea, his people are drowning; those he loves, those in his charge. There is his wife, Julie, his daughters Kelly and Sarah. There is Sergeant Pinchot, who has made him coffee and given him his messages for the last three years. Beyond them are the thousands of me
n and women whose pay and housing he ensures. They wave their arms, gurgling salt water. The green of kelp mixes with the sodden green of their uniforms.

  The ocean reaches his waist. He ignores it. He cannot save them all, but maybe he can reach one of them. Kelly screams, Schwartz’s head disappears under water.

  The water is freezing, it reaches his chest, his neck. He paddles furiously, but his charges are no closer. The current resists him; he slogs forward as if he moves through molasses.

  Pinchot surfaces briefly, vomiting water. Crabs dance on her head. She vanishes beneath the surface.

  Bookbinder pushes forward, chest and arms burning with the effort of paddling. ‘Julie! Hang on, bunny! Sarah! Daddy’s coming!’

  But now the water is over his head. The exertion of his rush into the ocean has emptied him of breath, he must draw air.

  He draws seawater instead. The light of the surface is gone. He is too far, too deep.

  His lungs sag, heavy with brine. He drags to the ocean floor.

  Drowning, drowning. He has failed them all.

  Colonel Alan Bookbinder snapped awake, still freezing. He’d kicked the sheets aside, his body plastered with drying sweat. Beside him, Julie murmured, her slim body gone to the padded comfort of middle age but still beautiful.

  ‘Just a dream,’ he whispered. It came out as a croak. He couldn’t breathe.

  Dream or no dream, he was still drowning.

  He threw himself out of bed, hands flying to his chest. His veins felt too narrow to contain his roaring blood. He paced a circle at the foot of his bed, panic rising. Was it a heart attack? The doc had given him a clean bill of health just last month. No tingling in his extremities, clear vision. No faintness or weakness.

  Just a sensation of being . . . swamped. The panic mounted.

  Can’t breathe, can’t breathe!

  ‘Stop,’ he said out loud. ‘Get ahold of yourself.’

  He opened his mouth and filled his lungs, felt his head swim with the intake of oxygen. He could breathe just fine.

  He looked around his room. His officer’s saber, never drawn, hung over the nightstand. The television’s screen reflected the moonlight. Julie reached for his side of the bed, snagging a pillow in his absence. Harvey, their fat, ancient beagle, lay beside their bed. He lifted his head drowsily at the sight of his master awake and thumped his tail happily against the floor briefly before putting his head back down.

  Everything was as it should be. But the drowning feeling didn’t subside.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. You don’t need to be awake for another two hours. Normal behavior would be to go back to sleep.

  He would act normal until he felt normal. He took a step toward the bed and banged his shin hard against it. He swore, Harvey chuffed, and Julie came awake with a start.

  ‘Oh, bunny. I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, rubbing her eyes, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I had a bad dream and . . . I think I might have come down with something. I don’t feel right.’

  ‘Did you go to the bathroom? You know how sometimes . . .’

  ‘No, bunny, it’s not that.’

  ‘How bad is it, do you need me to . . .’

  ‘No, no, sweetie. I’ll just talk to the doc tomorrow.’

  Julie flopped back down on the pillows and extended her arms. ‘Well, come to bed, then. Bunny needs snuggling.’

  Bookbinder smiled. She had put on a few pounds. She talked incessantly about his bowel movements.

  But bunny needed snuggling, and he loved bunny very, very much.

  He nuzzled her neck and kissed her earlobes. She grunted affirmatively and drifted back to sleep in his arms.

  But the tide stayed with him, and he drowned, wide-awake, until the alarm went off.

  Kelly and Sarah squabbled over breakfast like only sisters could. Harvey sat expectantly beside the table, vigilant for dropped crumbs. Kelly’s dark ringlets bounced in frustration as she pointed at her younger sister. ‘Dad! Sarah finished the good cereal!’

  Bookbinder stared at the paper, not reading it, consumed by the current roaring through him.

  ‘Don’t bother your father, Kel,’ Julie said, putting another cereal box down in front of her. ‘He’s got a busy day ahead of him.’

  ‘I don’t want shredded wheat!’ Kelly groused.

  Bookbinder put down the paper and hugged his daughter, who leaned away, wrinkling her nose. ‘Shredded wheat loves you, and so do I,’ he said. ‘And I promise to pick up more of the cereal you like on the way home.’

  The drive to work rankled, the drowning feeling making the traffic more unbearable than usual. Even with his privileged spot, it was a long walk across the Pentagon’s north parking lot. He fell in with other soldiers making their way toward the entrance. With only generals outranking him, his arm was tired from returning salutes by the time he’d gone twenty feet.

  He navigated the maze of hallways, rife with historical displays lauding heroes. The army’s sole criteria for heroism was time spent behind a trigger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shot a gun, and they didn’t give purple hearts for paper cuts.

  He stopped by the building’s central gazebo, squatting amid a swath of green in the midst of the concrete maze. The cafeteria inside buzzed with uniformed personnel, sharp-suited civil servants, and contractors. Bookbinder stood on line for his morning coffee, then fought his way out of the crowded entrance.

  ‘By your leave, sir,’ said a navy lieutenant. He hesitated at that last word, his eyes searching Bookbinder’s chest for something he could respect. No combat infantryman’s pin. No expeditionary medals. No jump wings. Bookbinder was a high-ranking administrator, and his record screamed it from his uniform. There were soldiers and there were soldiers, and it was clear which category this lieutenant felt he fell into. Bookbinder read the lieutenant’s record on his ribbon rack – surface warfare qualified, Horn of Africa campaign medal. But he was still just a company-grade officer, and he owed Bookbinder respect. This he rendered as coolly as possible, the salute cracking so sharply that his hand vibrated.

  Bookbinder made his way to his office and pushed through the doorway reading ARMY MATERIEL COMMAND on the Pentagon’s E ring. Sergeant Pinchot greeted him with a wave from behind her desk just outside his office door. She looked like she’d been stuffed into her immaculate uniform. He paused, seeing her in his dream, drowning in freezing ocean water.

  ‘Oh.’ She frowned, noting his cup of coffee. ‘I just made you a pot.’

  ‘Well, I appreciate that, sorry. Good morning, by the way.’

  She shrugged. ‘Good morning, sir. Everything okay?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m just a little off. Can you do me a favor and see what the doc has open today? Put the appointment under your name and rank, I don’t want them kicking other people out of a time slot because a colonel called down.’

  ‘Will do, sir. Speaking of medical . . .’

  ‘Did you email me the body-weight waiver?’

  Sergeant Pinchot nodded. ‘It’s in your inbox.’

  ‘I’ll sign it, but this is the last time. You’ve got to start taking physical training seriously.’ He glanced down at his flat belly, due more to genetics and no great love of food than any commitment to exercise.

  ‘Hooah, sir. I’ll take care of it.’ She wouldn’t take care of it, just as she hadn’t taken care of it the last two times he’d warned her. He should have given her a command referral to the weight-control program already. He scolded and scolded, but he knew that deep down, Pinchot sensed that he would never do it. He wore a commander’s uniform with a commander’s silver eagles on his shoulders, but he lacked a commander’s heart.

  Bookbinder sighed and went into his office, closing the door behind him. The office radiated official dignity from its dark-stained cherrywood furniture to the walls completely covered with the trappings of a long and storied career; plaques, folded flags, chall
enge coins, trophies. Framed posters depicted dignified scenes. Washington accepted Cornwallis’s surrender in one corner. On the opposite wall, the Continental Congress signed the charter creating the army. There were no battle scenes.

  He settled into his leather commander’s chair and brought his computer out of sleep mode. The huge split-screen monitors were overkill, but they helped with keeping track of the giant spreadsheets that were his stock-in-trade. He’d left at 1900 hours last night. Three hundred emails already awaited him.

  He sighed, the current battering him unsparingly.

  The phone rang.

  He picked it up. ‘J1. May I help you, sir or ma’am?’

  There was a brief pause as the caller took the line off speakerphone. ‘Colonel Bookbinder, sir? This is HS2 Wainwright in Lieutenant Colonel Thompson’s office. We’ve had a cancellation if you’re free to stop by.’

  The doctor’s office had taken exactly three minutes to get him in. There was no cancellation. Pinchot had not used her own name and rank as he’d instructed. Who knew what poor soldier with a more urgent problem had just been bumped so the lofty colonel could be accommodated. But with the drowning sensation dogging him, he was grateful for the chance to get examined.

  Bookbinder massaged his temples and stood. He passed through the outer office and tapped Pinchot’s shoulder. ‘They’re taking me now,’ he said, meaning it as a remonstration for her failure to follow instructions.

  She tapped away at her keyboard, ignoring him. ‘That’s great, sir. I’ll take your calls.’

  The trip to Lieutenant Colonel Thompson’s office took longer than he’d expected. The elevator was being repaired, and there was a snarl of contractors on pedal-driven carts running cable down two of the usual thoroughfares. He passed flat-screen monitors dedicated to the perils of unauthorized magic use. Slick electronic posters featured grizzly digital photos of Selfers gone nova, their burned carcasses scarcely recognizable as human. It was followed by a Ten Most Wanted slide. Oscar Britton continued to hold the top spot.