Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Target Response:
    Target Response:
    Target Response:
    Ebook265 pages4 hours

    Target Response:

    By William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Who Is Killing The Army's Killer Elite?



    The attacks strike like lightning, a murder blitz targeting America's most ultra-secret organization, the Army's clandestine assassination arm known as the Dog Team. Without warning, Dog Team operatives are being systematically slaughtered, decimating the republic's last, best hope against those who would destroy our freedom.



    Surviving the initial onslaught are two of the Team's master assassins, Major Joe Kilroy and Captain Steve Ireland. Now, this supreme warrior duo gathers the remnants of the unit to form the Dog Team's Death Squad to unleash their counterstrike: complete annihilation of a shadowy global cartel owing allegiance to no flag, with a private army of international mercenaries. . .



    The darkest and deadliest secret war that ever rocked a nation is about to begin.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPinnacle Books
    Release dateJul 1, 2010
    ISBN9780786025305
    Target Response:
    Author

    William W. Johnstone

    William W. Johnstone is the #1 bestselling Western writer in America and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of hundreds of books, with over 50 million copies sold. Born in southern Missouri, he was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. He left school at fifteen to work in a carnival and then as a deputy sheriff before becoming a full-time writer. 

    Read more from William W. Johnstone

    Related to Target Response:

    Related ebooks

    Action & Adventure Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      The Navy Seals

      Jul 6, 2021

      The Navy Seals
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why So Serious?

      Nov 28, 2021

      Why So Serious?
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Long Live The Tiny .22

      Aug 16, 2022

      Long Live The Tiny .22
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Fault Line

      Mar 24, 2022

      Fault Line
      22 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Crocodile Escapades

      Dec 1, 2021

      Crocodile Escapades
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Out Of The Deep

      Jul 31, 2018

      Out Of The Deep
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Flight Of The Condors

      Apr 6, 2021

      Flight Of The Condors
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How To Save A Loggerhead

      Jul 11, 2019

      How To Save A Loggerhead
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Sporting Life In Africa

      Nov 3, 2021

      A Sporting Life In Africa
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Condor Time

      Jun 1, 2022

      Condor Time
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Gridiron Glory To Wwii Legend

      Jun 26, 2019

      Gridiron Glory To Wwii Legend
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ants Go Marching: More than an expert traveler, the fire ant is the ultimate invader.

      Jul 11, 2013

      Five World War II bombers took off from a Florida airfield on Oct. 5, 1967 to bomb the American South. An article that ran that morning in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune said that three B-17s and two PV-2s laden with 10,000 pounds of death-dealing cargo

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What’s In The Water

      May 10, 2019

      What’s In The Water
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Miraculous Last Stand

      Dec 15, 2021

      A Miraculous Last Stand
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Showdown On Lake Erie

      Jan 4, 2022

      Showdown On Lake Erie
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Battle Not Easily Buried

      Aug 30, 2020

      A Battle Not Easily Buried
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hard Labor

      Mar 26, 2019

      Hard Labor
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Anabasis of Godspeed

      Mar 1, 2023

      Then proceeded to BAGHDAD and AMMAN. Godspeed was almost afraid of butterflies. They sickened him during the breeding season when they swarmed around any source of water in the viceregal district where he was born. The day was hot and everything was

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Misled Zeppelin

      May 9, 2018

      Misled Zeppelin
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      “Don’t Move Me”

      Sep 23, 2021

      “Don’t Move Me”
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Target Response:

    3/5

    3 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Target Response: - William W. Johnstone

      THIRTEEN

      ONE

      Jungle hell.

      Kilroy had survived and thrived in some of the world’s worst:

      The upper reaches of the Amazon where the borders of Brazil and Venezuela blur into each other in a steaming green inferno whose denizens had long ago traded curare-tipped poison darts for shotguns and machetes.

      The Suud, that near-impassable morass of hundreds of square miles of reeds and marshland where the White Nile flows south toward the desert flats below Khartoum.

      The emerald forests deep in the interior of New Guinea where tribal folk still follow the practices of cannibalism and head-hunting.

      The bamboo thickets and teak forests of Myanmar’s Shan State where Burmese warlords and their private armies war incessantly for control of the lucrative opium and heroin trade.

      From the Congo to the Philippines, from the Solomon Islands to the Florida Everglades, in some of the planet’s wildest places, Major Joseph Kilroy, U.S. Army, had plied his peculiar trade and come out not only alive but victorious.

      Kilroy—the killer.

      Now a strange destiny whose source lay in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. and the corporate boardrooms of Manhattan had led him here to a deadly showdown in the swamplands of the West African coast.

      It was in the fan-shaped Niger River delta where that great watercourse flows into the sea by a hundred nameless tributaries. Here, well east of the port city of Lagos, in one of the innumerable mangrove swamps dotting the coastline, Kilroy prepared to make his breakout.

      He’d been penned in the swamp for three days and three nights, hunted and harried by his foes. He’d have made his break long ago if he’d been alone. But he had a partner.

      When the enemy first struck their treacherous blow, Kilroy had fled into the swamp with Captain Bill Raynor. He and Raynor were the sole survivors of a ten-person Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) team on a covert investigative mission to Nigeria. The clandestine operation required them to pose as civilians.

      The other eight members of the team had perished when an explosion destroyed their plane in midair shortly after taking off from a Lagos airfield. They were homeward bound to deliver the results of the fact-finding mission to their handlers in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

      The hidden bomb that blew them and their aircraft to bits had also destroyed the evidence they’d amassed during their probe. Damning evidence that incontrovertibly proved that a leading global corporation had conspired against vital national security interests of the United States.

      Sheer chance had prevented Kilroy and Raynor from being on board the doomed flight. They’d been scheduled to depart with the others but a last-minute change in plans had resulted in their separating themselves from the team to follow up a hot investigative lead that took them to the Vurukoo oil fields.

      Raynor was an investigator, a veteran sleuth from the U.S. Army Military Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, on loan to the DIA for the Nigerian probe.

      Kilroy was no detective. He was a specialist, a trigger-puller supreme. A troubleshooter. His motto: When I find trouble, I shoot it.

      He was a member of the Army’s ultrasecret assassination arm, the Dog Team.

      In the secret vaults where the Army’s black ops files were kept, Kilroy held the rank of major. He outranked Captain Raynor, but was content to outwardly play an unassuming subordinate role as part of his cover. His assignment was to keep Raynor alive.

      The two of them had been in their tent in the Vurukoo oil patch when they had learned by radio that their DIA teammates had been blown out of the sky.

      Moments later, the enemy had struck.

      They had come in the form of a company of well-armed Nigerian troops, an elite unit of hand-picked soldiers from the capital who’d each sworn a loyalty oath to Minister of Defense Derek Tayambo. One of the most powerful and dangerous figures in the government’s ruling cabinet in Lagos, Tayambo was a key player in a continent-spanning terrorist conspiracy.

      There’d barely been been time for the two Americans to grab some arms and provisions and flee the oil fields before the attackers swooped down on them in force. Blocked from the land route, the duo fled into the swamp.

      Now Kilroy and Raynor had two deadly threats to contend with: their pursuers and the swamp itself.

      The swamp was rank marshland half flooded by overspill from the Rada and Kondo branches of the Niger River in oil-rich Vurukoo province. It knew two states of being: gloomy daylight and darkness.

      The scene could have been from earth’s primeval dawn hundreds of millions of years ago:

      Twisted mangrove trees writhed in eerie shapes, their snaky boughs intertwining to form a canopy of foliage that kept the swamp below locked in a perpetual daytime dusk. Contorted roots formed a gnarly woodwork web that floored land and water. Patches of solid ground were few and far between. Black stinking mud was everywhere.

      Weed-tufted islets were honeycombed by slow-flowing channels that frequently pooled into ponds and lagoons. A layer of jade green scum topped dark stagnant water. Here was the haunt of crocodiles, snakes, and insects.

      The heat was seething; the humidity, stifling. A murky haze overhung the steaming water. The air was thick with swarming clouds of flying insect pests. Stinging mosquitoes, biting flies, and noxious gnats that flew into eyes, mouths, and nostrils.

      At the height of the pursuit, there must have been 150 troops fanning out into the swamp and environs in search of Kilroy and Raynor.

      The swamp at least was impartial. It was hostile to all human trespassers in its domain, be they transplanted Yankees or homegrown Nigerians.

      Nigeria’s population is 55 percent Muslim and 45 percent Christian. The traditionalist Muslims of the dry northern uplands and the dynamic, business-oriented Christians of the south have a long history of bitter rivalry.

      Most of Minister Tayambo’s company of loyalist troops were Muslims from the arid north. The others were mostly city and town dwellers from the coast. The swamp fought and hindered them as it did the Americans they hunted.

      No human antagonist but rather a lethal swamp dweller was to spell doom for Bill Raynor. It got him at midday of the second day that he and Kilroy were in the marsh.

      The previous thirty-six hours had been a nightmare ordeal of hunger, thirst, fatigue, privation, and harrowing danger for the two men.

      They’d managed to scrounge up a single canteen of fresh water and a couple of handfuls of foil-wrapped Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs) before taking it on the run. Kilroy was armed with an AK-47 with a single banana clip containing about thirty rounds, a .44 Magnum handgun, and a wicked foot-long survival knife in a belt sheath.

      Raynor had an M-16 with a single clip and a 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol with one clip loaded and a couple of spares in his pockets.

      The initial attack had come swiftly, without warning. Only the chaos and confusion of its opening moments had allowed them to grab those minimal armaments and rations before cutting a hole in the rear of the canvas tent they’d been occupying in the camp and fleeing for their lives as hostile troops invaded the oil fields.

      Even so it had been a close-run thing, with enemy bullets nipping at their heels as they disappeared into the brush at the edge of the swamp.

      Since then Kilroy and Raynor had been playing a murderous game of hide-and-seek with their pursuers. The hunt was relentless, going on day and night. By the second day the ordeal was seriously taking its toll on the fugitives.

      The swamp water was undrinkable, a hell-broth of deadly germs and impurities. Kilroy and Raynor strictly rationed the precious store of clean water in the single canteen they shared, limiting themselves to a single mouthful each every few hours. Despite which, the water level in the canteen declined with alarming rapidity.

      It was a losing game. They sweated out more fluid than they took in—the threat of dehydration loomed. There could be no boiling of the swamp water to purify it. They couldn’t risk betraying their position to the hunters with telltale fire and smoke.

      Hunger, too, made its inroads on their dwindling reserves of strength and energy. Between them they had about a half dozen MREs. They stretched out their food stores, making them last. Their mostly empty bellies were knotted with want.

      No less pressing was the lack of ammo. They evaded the troops as best they could to preserve what limited rounds they had. Sometimes there was no getting around a clash. When discovery by one of the roving bands of hunters seemed imminent, the fugitives opened fire.

      Kilroy was a dead shot. Each time he pulled the trigger, he killed a man. Raynor was a marksman but nowhere in Kilroy’s league. Kilroy was world-class. Trouble was, he had too few bullets.

      By Day Two the thirty-round banana clip of his assault rifle had been cut in half, with a dead Nigerian trooper for every expended round. His high-powered .44 had a greater reserve of ammo to draw on. Kilroy wore the long-barreled revolver on a belt holster and the gun belt sported about twenty loaded cartridge loops.

      He now wore the gun belt over his shoulder, with the holstered .44 hanging butt-out under his left arm. He’d rigged the weapon that way to keep it dry during the many crossings of waist-high water he’d had to endure.

      Even when wielded by an expert such as he, though, a handgun was no match for the enemy’s assault rifles and small machine guns. Kilroy had no desire for working that close to the foe.

      He and Raynor had killed about two dozen of the opposition since the pursuit began, but at no time had they been able to get close enough to the dead to scavenge their weapons, food, or water. They were constantly forestalled by the nearness of other packs of manhunters, who at the sound of gunfire gave out a hue and cry and closed in to resume the chase.

      The fugitives had a simple plan: lose their pursuers, break out of the swamp, and then steal a ground vehicle or boat and beat it back to Lagos.

      The goal seemed a long way off. So far it had taken their best efforts merely to stay alive and keep ahead of the foe, a course that had resulted in driving them deeper into the swamp.

      Disaster struck on the second day.

      Infrequent breaks in the canopy of foliage overhead revealed a heavy, overcast sky. A pale disk of sun smoldered behind gray clouds. The dusky gloom deepened as the steamy heat increased.

      Kilroy and Raynor were approaching the ragged edge of exhaustion. The night before, they’d managed to grab several fitful hours of sleep, doled out in small doses when the pursuit slackened.

      Soldiers sought them by night, bearing flashlights and flaming torches. Some came on foot, others in small boats.

      During the intervals when they’d temporarily outdistanced their pursuers, Kilroy and Raynor took turns, one standing watch while the other snatched a portion of troubled sleep.

      All too soon, a glimmer of light, a shouted voice, a splash or crash in the underbrush warned that the hunters were nearing. The fugitives would flog their fatigued bodies into motion, plunging deeper into the swamp as the chase began again.

      Now, at midday of the second day, Kilroy and Raynor continued to push their way onward, stumbling along like automatons.

      They came upon a rare stretch of solid ground, a low rise covered with thigh-high reeds that opened into a glade. Kilroy thought to himself that they’d finally caught a break, if only for the moment. Hard ground instead of muck to stand on, and a respite from the relentless pursuit that dogged their trail.

      Raynor lurched forward, staggering, almost falling. He reached out, resting a hand on a gnarled tree trunk to support himself. He paused for an instant, left arm extended straight from the shoulder, clutching vine-wrapped tree bark, heavy head bowed, looking down as he labored for breath.

      Suddenly he cried out in surprise and pain, pulling his arm back as though it had been burned. The cry echoed through the trees.

      A black, ribbonlike wriggler clung to his bare forearm.

      At first Kilroy thought Raynor had been bitten by a snake. The swamp teemed with them, most of them venomous. Kilroy had already had more than one close brush with green mambas. He’d given the grass-green reptiles a wide berth, knowing the mamba for one of the world’s most virulent and aggressive species of poisonous snakes.

      No serpent had battened onto Raynor, however. He’d been bitten by a foot-long black centipede.

      Features contorted with pain, breath hissing through clenched teeth, Raynor used his free hand to grab the segmented crawler.

      Don’t!— Kilroy began, but he was too late.

      Raynor tore the creature free from his arm, threw it down on the ground, and stomped it, crushing it beneath his boot sole.

      Kilroy went to him. Ain’t that a bitch? Raynor said, mustering up a sickly grin.

      Kilroy examined the other’s arm. The centipede’s head was still attached to it. It had buried twin pincerlike mandibles deep into Raynor’s flesh, where they clung so tenaciously that when Raynor had tried to free himself from their biting grip, its segmented body had torn loose from its head.

      The walnut-sized head had a smooth, shiny, helmetlike black carapace. The centipede’s primitive but tough nervous system kept its severed head alive even though separated from its body.

      Fucker doesn’t want to let go, Raynor said, making an effort to keep his voice flat, even-toned. He reached for the head to pry it loose but Kilroy stopped him.

      You don’t want the jaws to break loose and stay in your flesh, Kilroy said.

      I’m not going to keep its head for a souvenir, Raynor gritted.

      It’ll have to be burned off, said Kilroy.

      There was no place to sit but on the ground—and who knew what else might be lurking in the weeds. This was prime snake country, and with the abundance of blackwater channels, crocodiles were never too far away, either. Better to administer the treatment with Raynor standing up.

      Kilroy unbuttoned the flap of the left breast pocket of his safari-style shirt and took out a cigarette lighter, a heavy-duty metal job with a nonreflective matte black finish. This’ll hurt, he said.

      It already hurts, so go ahead, Raynor said.

      Kilroy flicked on the lighter, a trusty model that had served him well in the past. It did not fail him now but burned with a steady yellow flame. He liked his cigars, and if he’d had one available he would have lit it and applied the hot end directly to the centipede’s head. But he didn’t, so he used a broken twig instead. The twig was sodden with dampness and took a bit of time to ignite. When he got the pointed end of it going he blew on it, fanning it into a glowing orange red ember.

      He pressed the tip against the centipede’s head where it butted up against Raynor’s flesh, right at the midpoint of the black helmeted carapace where its clawlike mandibles were buried in the muscle of the forearm.

      There was a hissing sound as the twig’s hot point met ebony exoskeleton. A line of nasty-smelling smoke rose from the area of contact.

      The creature’s eyes were a pair of shiny black beads on opposite sides of its globed head. They rolled wildly during the burning. Its severed head twitched and jerked.

      Raynor’s body was taut, quivering. Veins stood out on his face, his neck cording. His skin was sallow under its bronze tan, misted with a sheen of cold sweat.

      Blind instinct caused the centipede’s head to retreat from the stimulus of the burning point applied to it. Its curved mandibles retracted partway, wickedly barbed tips still penetrating the flesh.

      Kilroy touched the flame once more to the point of the twig, reheating the fading orange tip before applying it to the centipede’s head again.

      Raynor groaned. With a final wriggling spasm the mandibles pulled free and the centipede’s head fell to the ground with a soft plopping sound. Raynor let out with a gasp the breath he’d been holding.

      The job was only half done. Like most denizens of the swamp, the centipede was toxic. It injected venom along with its bite.

      Kilroy freed his knife from its belt sheath. He ran the lighter flame along the razor-sharp edge near the tip of the blade, sterilizing it as best he could.

      His free hand gripped Raynor’s wrist, steadying the other’s arm. The bite was on the top of the forearm. The area was already swollen into an egg-sized red bump. Kilroy made an X-cut over the affected area. Raynor bit down on the edge of his shirt collar to keep from crying out. There was a smell of scorched hair and flesh.

      Kilroy knew better than to try to suck out the venom. That would risk poisoning himself. No, that doctrine was exploded. His fingers gripped the flesh around the bite area and squeezed, expelling globs of blood streaked with brown mucouslike veins, spilling it to the ground. He was careful not to get any of the stuff on him.

      Raynor shuddered like a wet dog shaking itself dry.

      The metal lighter grew too hot to handle. Kilroy paused for a moment until it cooled off. He then held the flame against the flat of the tip of the blade, heating it until it took on a dull red glow. He pressed it against the wound, cauterizing it.

      Raynor’s legs started to fold at the knees. Kilroy got an arm around him, holding him up until the spasm passed.

      I’m okay, Raynor rasped, his voice a croak. He didn’t sound okay.

      Kilroy cut a long strip from the bottom of his shirt and used it as a makeshift bandage to wrap the bitten area of Raynor’s forearm.

      Stupid of me, Raynor said, shaking his head. I put my hand on the tree without looking and the damned thing got a piece of me.

      Look at the bright side—at least it wasn’t your gun hand, Kilroy said.

      Yeah, sure…

      Take a drink of water, Kilroy said, indicating the canteen hanging from a strap around Raynor’s neck and across his shoulder.

      Raynor shook his head. That’s all right. Let’s get going.

      Doctor’s orders. It’ll give you a boost and you need one now.

      No—

      Quit fucking around and do it. You can play hero later.

      Raynor unslung the canteen and screwed off the cap, which was secured to it by a tiny length of chain. He held the canteen to his lips and tilted his head back, taking a mouthful. He swirled the water around in his mouth before swallowing, the muscles of his throat working painfully.

      He held out the canteen to Kilroy. Not thirsty, Kilroy said.

      Now who’s playing hero? Cut the shit, Raynor said.

      Kilroy accepted the canteen, taking a small swig from it. The water was warm, almost hot, but the wetness was refreshing. He screwed the cap back on and reached toward Raynor to return it.

      You keep it, Raynor said.

      Kilroy made a face. Aw, for chrissakes—

      You’ll be doing me a favor. It’s one less thing for me to worry about.

      All right, but only because it’s easier than arguing about it. We’ve wasted enough time here already, Kilroy said. He fitted the strap over his head and slung the canteen down along his side.

      A faint noise behind him caused Kilroy to glance back over his shoulder toward

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1