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  Too Secret Service

  By

  Declan Finn

  Too Secret Service by Declan Finn

  Cover art by: Margot St. Aubin

  Copyright 2019 John Konecsni

  Printed in the United States of America Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights Worldwide English Language Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

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

  All rights reserved 2019 Any attempt to reproduce this material without permission will end badly for you, do we understand each other?

  Also by Declan Finn (In Order):

  NONFICTION

  For All Their Wars are Merry:

  An Examination of Irish Rebel Songs

  Pius History:

  The Facts Behind the Pius Trilogy

  FICTION

  Codename: Winterborn (with Allan Yoskowitz)

  Codename: Unsub

  It was only on Stun!

  The Pius Trilogy

  A Pius Man: A Holy Thriller (Book 1)

  A Pius Legacy: A Political Thriller (Book 2)

  A Pius Stand: A Global Thriller (Book 3)

  Pius Tales (Anthology)

  Set to Kill

  Sad Puppies Bite Back (A Parody)

  Love At First Bite

  Honor at Stake

  Demons are Forever

  Live and Let Bite

  Good to the Last Drop

  Saint Tommy NYPD

  Hell Spawn (Book 1)

  Death Cult (Book 2)

  Infernal Affairs (Book 3)

  City of Shadows (Book 4)

  Crusader (Book 5)

  Deus Vult (Book 6 Coming soon)

  Prologue

  As of January 1st, 1997, there had been more than twenty thousand backpack-size tactical nukes missing from the weapons stockpile of the former Soviet Union. Each of them had the power to vaporize midtown Manhattan. By January 1st, 2005, half of them had been located and neutralized. They were merely misplaced by the stupidity that came with every bureaucracy, with the extra dose unique to the Russian Empire: they had been labeled radioactive, so, many had been, quite logically, shipped to a radio station in Siberia.

  Ten THOUSAND had vanished.

  In an all-out search for the weapons, international search and destroy missions were launched by governments looking to either remove the bombs from the global market, or to obtain the weapons for themselves. In the frantic search, Russian Mafiosi, Middle Eastern terrorists, and United States strike teams came into conflict. Almost as frightening as the original disappearance were the two hundred found by the Federal Bureau of Investigations on United States soil. Fortunately, those who owned them were stupid enough to have tried to have passed them off as coffeemakers.

  By 02 January 2006, nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety of the backpacks were accounted for, ten remained missing.

  * * * *

  Wednesday, November 9th, 2006

  “Dear President Weaver,

  In the new year, you are planning to visit ten international cities, promote ‘peace’, and spread your imperialist ways. You are ignoring the wisdom of your predecessors—the only thing welcome are American dollars.

  “We have ten tactical nuclear weapons. If you care anything for your safety, or the safety of any of those cities you intend to visit, stay out of international affairs. Stay home or die.”

  Silence had reigned in the Oval Office for the past minute. The utter horror, ten international cities simply wiped off the face of time, was too intense to grasp at one sitting.

  “What the hell do we do?” asked President Charles Weaver, whose countenance had suggested hints of Mr. Clean, only without the white hair at the sides. The forty-year-old President had been balding for the past twenty years, but the last hairs had come out only after being sworn into the Oval Office. He was an ex-SEAL, and that alone would have been enough to prompt the press to compare him to Jesse Ventura, hair loss aside. His head had the almost perfect symmetry of a basketball. Since Israel had finally—after years of it being an open secret—publicly acknowledged having a nuclear stockpile a month before his inauguration, he focused all his energies on international affairs, leaving domestic policy to the vice-president and the permanent bureaucracy.

  “I don’t see many options,” said the head of the CIA, David Grant. “Your first trip is to Northern Ireland nine weeks from tomorrow. Why 10 bombs when one will do?”

  “They don’t want to chance the Secret Service might disarm most of them,” said Treasury Secretary Judith Stevens. The sixty-year-old had started her career as an accountant and worked her way up to CEO of the country’s largest firm of tax lawyers and accountants, experiencing firsthand the maliciousness of the old IRS production quota system. She had spent years fighting higher and higher levels of a “Service” that “protected the revenue” by setting collection “goals” for its auditors. Now that she was in charge of them, IRS agents trembled with fear. Her once flaming red hair had intermingled with the ever-spreading silver, and her blue eyes often seemed incandescent. Her white suit contrasted greatly with the gray suits around her, emphasizing her presence.

  “The Secret Service?” scoffed FBI Director Winston S. Scofield, Esq., referred to regularly in the press with the derisive title of the “smartest man from Mississippi.” “What makes you think they’d scare anybody?”

  “Scaring people is your department, Director,” Stevens rebuked. “But as for what we should be doing, we alert the United Nations. We tell them to be on full alert for items coming into the country, scan every FedEx box with a Geiger counter if need be.”

  “You’re assuming the bombs aren’t already near their targets,” Grant interrupted. “Even if they aren’t, what are you going to do, tell the UN Peacekeeping force they have to be on the lookout for a bomb the size of a small suitcase on top of the stockpiles of weaponry coming into Ulster? Of course, we had better let the Mafia-infiltrated government of Russia look for a nuke coming into Moscow. Should we let Italy know about it, or just the Vatican?”

  “David’s right,” President Weaver stated. “If they knew a nuclear bomb was being—or worse yet, has been—smuggled inside their borders, there’d be blood in the streets. And that’s just Europe.”

  “That’s not all,” said Gus Sarantakos, the short Greco-American political advisor. “Think about what would happen if any of those cities actually had a bomb go off inside them. Serbia? Belfast? Palestine? Kashmir? Taiwan?”

  “Other than not showing up,” President Weaver noted, “what do we do?”

  “We can’t just settle for finding the bombs,” Judith Stevens said. “We only have their word they only have ten.”

  “What we’re all assuming,” Winston Scofield drawled, “is that they have any nuclear weapons.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Any threat to the President automatically falls under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service,” Judith said. Three years ago, when her hair had still held twice its fiery luster, she had still been the Secretary of Treasury, responsible for the Secret Service. The last President—incidentally a good friend of hers—had been shot and nearly killed by a Chinese male who didn’t like losing against the US and Taiwan. Since then, her time had almost been split evenly between the politics o
f the Treasury Department and the activities of the Secret Service, giving the service more direct attention than her last five predecessors combined.

  “But these people—if there’s more than one of them—haven’t even identified themselves.”

  “Better safe than dead,” President Weaver shot back, glaring at the FBI Director. “In my last job, some cynics claimed I didn’t have to think, I was in the military. But it seems obvious even to me”—looking at Scofield—“that this needs to be looked into by the best your people have to offer me. David?”

  “Not at this time,” lied CIA Director Grant.

  “Judith?” he asked with quizzing eyebrows.

  “There is the intelligence division of the Secret Service,” she answered. “They’re the ones who investigate every threat—even those written in crayon. We have an operations division within it that actually disarms threats before they strike.”

  “How many people in the unit?” Weaver asked.

  Winston leaned forward and started, “Well, depends on how you—”

  “I didn’t ask you, Scofield,” the President growled.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk with you about,” Judith said. She leaned forward. “If I may speak with you for a moment alone, Mr. President?”

  Scofield didn’t have to listen to what she said. The tone was enough. He knew Stevens had dug up every last bit of information on the Secret Service over the past three years. There was only one thing a step farther than the Intelligence Operations Unit.

  “No!” Scofield boomed, ready to leap from his seat. “Not Williams! You can’t! Letting him loose would send everything to Hell.”

  “Can’t what?” Weaver asked. “Let who loose?”

  “He’s a fucking demon,” Winston continued to protest.

  “Should I leave?” asked Grant, completely confused.

  “Go ahead,” Weaver told him. “I may be right behind you.”

  * * * *

  David Grant walked into the hallway, his assistant, Percy Walker, close on his heels. Percy was six-foot-six, towering almost a foot over Director Grant’s head. No one outside of Grant’s inner circle could tell if the black former Notre Dame quarterback was Grant’s bodyguard, assistant, or—according to agencies who hated him—his boyfriend.

  “Good meeting?” Walker asked in the baritone voice some thought sounded like the Voice of God on Judgment Day.

  “Your humor is breathtaking,” he answered, walking past Percy. Walker easily kept pace. “Listen: get on the horn, call Langley, and tell them to find Strongbow. We have something to do.”

  Walker furrowed his brows. “Strongbow? What have we gotten into? World War Three?”

  “Not yet,” Grant answered as they stepped into the elevator. “And get me the file on someone in the Secret Service,” he added as an afterthought. “Someone by the name of Williams.”

  “Why? What is he?”

  Grant considered his answer, remembering the look of terror on Scofield’s face. As the doors closed, he answered: “A demon.”

  * * * *

  Once the President had finally gotten Secretary Stevens and Director Scofield settled down—and on opposite sides of his desk—he asked, “Now, Judith, who is this man who scares Winston over here?”

  Stevens smiled. She knew the President must have loved phrasing the question that way, considering that it was a rare occasion he could ask it. Scofield was, after all, the first Director since Hoover who scared most of the Government. It was rumored he had reduced Hoover’s legendary safe to a little Palmtop filled with blackmail secrets. Once whispers of his nickname—Vacuum Junior—reached his ears, he took up the image, gaining about fifty pounds in the following quarter year, turning him into a nightmare rendition of Santa Claus. The only people other than the President he didn’t scare were Grant and Stevens.

  Judith leaned back. “Wayne Williams, Mr. President.”

  The President frowned. “The Atlanta Child Killer?”

  She winced at memories of reports from years ago. “No, sir. This man is a Secret Service agent. He used to be operations for Secret Service Intelligence.”

  Weaver leaned forward. “You mean he used to be the head of operations?”

  Stevens shook her head. “No, Mr. President. He was operations.”

  “That was it? Just him? What is this person, Superman?”

  “That was the general idea.”

  “Mr. President,” Scofield interrupted, “after 9/11, the Secret Service wanted a covert renaissance man to counter threats. FBI, UDT, CIA, SEALs, Special Forces, Marines: everyone had something invested in this.”

  “The search for a threat-deterrent continued until they found whom they wanted,” Judith picked up. “A recruit who had gone through land, sea and air training in a year, then went through the Special Forces two-year training program in…considerably less time. He even spent some time here in the White House on guard duty.”

  Weaver merely looked at Stevens. “No one goes through all that in seven years. How could he?”

  “I still think he’s a demon,” Scofield muttered.

  “He somehow knew most of it beforehand,” Judith answered. “He was extremely intelligent and physically apt. We ourselves hijacked him for the Ops division of the Secret Service.”

  “What happened? Was he promoted?”

  “The Vatican happened,” Scofield replied.

  President Weaver narrowed his eyes. He remembered the Vatican incident. It was the event that propelled him from the head of the CIA to President of the United States. His predecessor had told out to the UN and a horde of minions who wanted to pillage the Vatican. “What did you do, Scofield?”

  “What I was ordered to, sir,” Scofield answered.

  Weaver paused for a long moment, then blinked. “Williams. Wayne Williams … didn’t he have relatives at the Vatican defense?” His eyes narrowed again, this time focused to cut Scofield in half. “He’s a relative of men from the defense of the Vatican, and you punished him for being related?”

  Stevens leaned in. “Actually, sir, Williams had been asked to give up his brother and father.”

  Weaver scoffed. “I’m surprised he didn’t shoot Barry for that one.”

  She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She considered how to explain this man to the President. To explain how dangerous he was. She steepled her fingers in front of her and took a deep breath, choosing her words cautiously. “Williams takes his job seriously. If someone sent in a threat just to make trouble, Wayne would personally talk to him. By the time he was done, the subject wouldn’t even say the word ‘President’ ever again. If a threat was real, he’d make sure it never would be ever again. He would never shoot a president.”

  Weaver nodded slowly. “So…?

  Judith shrugged. “Since Williams’ role as Special Presidential Agent was created under one party and implemented under another, in the name of ‘bipartisanship’, your predecessor didn’t want to air his predecessor’s ‘mistake,’ so Williams simply…went away.”

  “Went away? You don’t simply make a man like that just go away. Where is he now?”

  Chapter 1

  Down in Mississippi, every self-respecting male adult of the Caucasian persuasion knows how to shoot a gun by age eight.

  For the men with monosyllabic names strung together—Joe Bill Bob Et Al—one may safely assume they own about two guns per name.

  It was never considered a good thing when three men with a string of names were about to be taken by the Feds. A shoot-out was inevitable because double-digit IQs frequently didn’t know when not to shoot-- And those were just the Feds.

  In that state of swamps—no local dared call them ‘wetlands’—there was a small wooden shack. Unlike most small wooden shacks, it was bereft of boats, had no still, was not a hunting blind, and not a trace of meth to be found anywhere near. It did smell peculiar, and not in the usual way for an enclosed rural space crowded with three men. They were intent, but not bent.
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  Inside, along with strange sounds and stranger smells, gleamed clusters of small colored bright lights on humming equipment. An array of battered marine batteries were stacked in a wooden crate near the door, and a cluster of jury-rigged cables led to the smooth boxy shape of an industrial printer, merrily spitting out stacks of spendable green in 100 and 50 dollar denominations.

  Standing by the humming machine, examining the sheets of unofficial mint, was Larry. He was a great artist: his first arrest for counterfeiting had been ten years earlier when, at age 12, he passed a pen-and-ink drawing of a $100 bill. It would have succeeded had he used waterproof ink.

  Seated on a rotting bar stool, clacking on an aging laptop, was Moe. He had certain skills with a computer: he had gone from hacking his Gameboy to programming without ever having spoken to a girl in his 24 years of existence. Curly was the firm’s senior—and only—marketing rep: a self-promotion from credit card and texting scams.

  Larry hadn’t connections to get the paper for the new currency, so they were going to freshly print the style from pre-1996. Heavy, flecked linen stock found moldering in an old warehouse would have to do. He stood watching his artist brother’s expression, but held one of their three shotguns.

  “Don’t touch the ink, Lar,” Curly drawled. He could charm the pants off anyone, or blow their hat off with a deer slug without mussing a hair. His usual game was the con, but had yet to be caught, outside of a few annoying restraining orders and a some irate ex business partners. He’d done hard time only on Facebook and Twitter.

  Thanks to Curly’s experience as a grifter, the trio weren’t concerned about anyone checking the money to see if it were real. Because Mississippi was in its fiftieth consecutive year as the poorest state in the US, folks were just plain desperate. In 2000, someone at a Dairy Queen had cashed a $10,000 bill, received $9,998 in change, and was never questioned about the picture of incumbent President George W. Bush on the face of the bill.