The Measure of a Man

By F.D. Crandall

Neal Archer is a former Marine intelligence operator in the Persian Gulf. He's now working for D.I.R.E., a top-secret intelligence think-tank run by his old operational control officer, retired Marine Colonel Kingston Roberts.

But this think-tank does more than analyze data. They secretly conduct covert operations for friendly countries that cannot be associated with such activities, providing those countries, with plausible deniability.

Archer and Colonel Roberts are searching the globe for Tomas T.R. Rocha, a former U.S. operator, now an international criminal wanted for supplying weapons and explosives to terrorist cells worldwide, including Al Qaida and the Taliban.

Each timeArcher and Rocha cross paths, they leave death and destruction in their wake.

Rocha is finally tracked to the Port of Sacramento in California, where his cargo ship, The Star of Gibraltar, is filled with another shipment of advanced armaments and weapons-grade plutonium for the terrorists.

As Archer and his team close in on Rocha, they stumble across an opportunity to catch not only Rocha, but the high-ranking extremists buying his wares.

After a running gun battlein and around the port, Archer becomes trapped by the terrorists, out of ammunition and cut off from the rest of the team.

Seeing his old friend in trouble, Rocha gathers all of the ranking extremists in the hold of the ship and detonates the cache of explosives hidden throughout the vessel, killing himself and the leaders of Al Qaida. The resulting explosion destroys most of the Port of Sacramento.

Archer and Colonel Roberts have a change of heart about their old nemesis; from an internationally wanted supporter of world terror to a rediscovered patriot who, in the end, gave his own life to save his friends and his country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467850216

F.D. Crandall

F.D. Crandall is a former law enforcement officer who has turned his retirement into his life-long dream... to write fiction. He was born and raised in Miami, Florida. After his service in the United States Marine Corps during Vietnam, he continued his love for action and excitement as a firefighter, police officer, deputy sheriff, Correctional Peace Officer, and finally an analyst for a major state law enforcement agency, retiring in 2000. He then completed two tours in Afghanistan as a security contractor for a U.S. Special Forces firebase in Uruzgan Province, and then a Marine Corps Forward Operating Base in Helmand Province. He is now working on the sequel to his first book; "Danger Close".

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© 2009 F.D. Crandall. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/13/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-5821-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-5021-6 (ebk)

Contents

Prologue

Dedications

Acknowledgements

The Hunters and the Hunted

In Washington with the Head Hunter

From the Pan into the Fire

Contact

The Morning After

Home Sweet Home – For a Minute

Wheels up for the P.I.

Thanks… I needed that

Welcome to the Philippines – Now go Home

Go Time… FINALLY

Where do we go from Here

The Next Morning – Two Days Later

Location – Location - Location

Ready… Set… Wait a Minute?

In and Out

It’s Just a Momentary Lapse in Judgment?

Once a Patriot – Always a Patriot

Do You Smell Smoke?

The Final Round

Zero Eight Hundred Zulu

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

There are so many secrets, and so many have lied — and died — to keep them.

From the beginning of World War II, when our national intelligence activities were performed by a military unit known as the Office of Strategic Services, to today’s Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the newest players, the Department of Homeland Security, the uncountable volumes of suppressed information still held as top secret by these organizations is staggering.

In the years following WW-II and the official establishment of the C.I.A., born from the O.S.S., the U.S. intelligence community has carried out or orchestrated hundreds of covert operations throughout the globe in an effort to curtail the burgeoning terrorist threats that plague the many countries that are either victims of terrorist aggression or safe harbors for the fanatical leaders and their minions.

Stories abound regarding various intelligence based clandestine operations being carried out by these and other agencies, which include military covert units such as the U.S. Navy Sea Air and Land Commandos, or S.E.A.L. teams, the United States Marine Corps’ Force Recon and the United States Marine Corps’ counter-intelligence battalions.

Combined operations between these and other Military units are the basis for many legends and war stories that have been chronicled in books and movies for decades.

Though this book is a work of fiction, it is based on the compilation of various actions that have been suppressed or have become a casualty of misinformation throughout the last half-century.

Neal Archer, a former clandestine service operator and now a private contractor to the U.S. intelligence communities, had been on alert for days now. Waiting in the small, unassuming office in Malaysia he had been working out of for weeks. Archer was waiting for the call that would inevitably direct him to his next hard target search.

The call came, but it is not what he wanted to hear. The men he was contracted to find were moving again, at least according to his operational control in Washington. Now he had to gear up and move out again. This time to the highlands of Malaysia to scour the countryside for the weapons and explosives suppliers he was hunting.

This search actually started years before and had been resurfacing every so often ever since. Not enough to become a sanctioned priority for the C.I.A. and its many counterparts, but just enough to keep Archer and the people he worked for busy when they were not doing the bidding of their contracted masters.

Archer had given up a lot in his life to continue this hunt. His fiancé had just left him and he hadn’t been home for more than a week at a time in four years. He had no real friends and no family he still spoke to. His was a lonely existence interspersed with moments of stark terror, and sporadic nightmares that had been haunting him for months.

But he continued. He persevered. He walked a taut tightrope of emotions that had served him well but had also drained him.

We should all take comfort in the idea that there are actual people in this world that are noble and heroic enough to risk their lives to make it possible for us to read and enjoy fiction in its purest form.

Dedications

I dedicate this, my first excursion into fiction, to those many people throughout my life that have influenced me in one way or another.

Some of them were good and helped to shape me into what I am today; some of them were bad and darkened my feelings about life in general. The later have taken years of therapy and medication to recover from.

To the memory of my loving parents, Frank and Lauretta Crandall, who adopted me as an orphan and loved me as their own; who never wanted me to join the Marine Corps, but were proud when I did, and; whose remembrance is a daily ritual for me since their passing.

To the United States Marine Corp with whom I served honorably from 1971 to 1975. Well… let’s just say that there were good times and bad times and leave it at that.

To my fellow officers in my long, multi-agency law enforcement career, who knew me for what I was; uncompromising and dedicated, which to the brass translated into stubborn and a pain in their collective asses.

In all fairness I have to admit that I screwed up and ruined more of my own career than anyone else’s possible influence on it. As they say; it was real and it was fun, but it wasn’t real fun.

I would not have survived my wild life or have all that I have today were it not for the love, caring and understanding of Joyce, my indulgent partner in sickness and in health for the last twenty years. She and my children, Michelle, Jennifer and Christopher are the only true constants that I can name in a life filled with both triumph and tragedy; all of my own making.

Acknowledgements

Dr. Stuart Stu Greenfeld, a retired Deputy Secretary of the California Department of Education, was instrumental in the critical review of this book, and without his guidance I believe it would not be what it is today. He is a true friend and an ardent supporter.

Mary Black, Staff Services Manager for the State of California was the editorial and subject matter coordinator for the project. Her keen eye for detail and flair for editing were essential for the book, and me.

And my dear cousin Hal Leach, long retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, who was an unwitting accomplice in this book by being the inspiration for much of the character development. Thank you Hal… Semper Fi.

And finally, I have to thank the management and baristas at the Starbucks in Southport Town Center, the crew at Carol’s Restaurant in West Sacramento, and Stacy at Nick’s Dinner in West Sacramento for their indulgence and patience with me while I wrote most of this novel at their back tables.

The Hunters and the Hunted

It’s twilight in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. It’s hot and muggy and Neal Archer is about to make camp for the night. He’s been a long time on a fateful mission; to hunt down and capture one of his own.

Through piercing blue eyes, the Miami-Born third-generation Irish American relentlessly scrutinized each Malaysian soldier in his military escort before he bedded down, studying their body language to discern who could be trusted.

Neal Archer was nothing if not intensely committed to every mission he had been sent on and rarely trusted anyone but his partner Levi Lighthorse, a full-blood Oglala Lakota Sioux, born and raised on the sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The two together had become a deadly team against extremists and insurgents across the globe.

Like most of the missions Neal Archer was sent out on in the last six years, Levi was the field operational control. For this operation he was working his computer and communications magic from a small, clandestine office at Subang Airport, coordinating search missions for Rocha with their boss in Washington by hacking into U.S. intelligence satellite feeds that were believed to be impenetrable.

Levi Lighthorse also trained and worked with the teams, but he was more unique than the average operator; an American Indian graduate of M.I.T., with a PhD in engineering and integrated binary systems, whose expertise was in designing, building and now hacking government supercomputers.

This mission had been unusually brutal for Archer as they ardently worked to complete the latest assignment from Colonel Roberts, their primary operational control for the past six years and the head of the Defense Intelligence Research Experiment, also known as D.I.R.E., code named Crystal Palace.

Twice in two weeks Archer had barely eluded Islamic radical factions who would do anything to capture an American in their country. Fundamental Islamic extremists think of Westerners as infidels and an enemy of the extreme form of Islam advanced by the likes of Al Qaida and the Taliban.

Since some of the soldiers in the highlands with him were Muslim, Archer had to wonder if any of them aligned with the extremists. Could they be trusted not to let the insurgents infiltrate the unit and get to him?

Ultimately he had to. These soldiers were his only lifeline in this part of the world.

Fortunately the military component supporting Archer and Lighthorse on this operation was the Grup Gerak Khas, a Special Forces unit of the Malaysian Army.

These elite soldiers had been their only local contact for weeks, guiding and escorting Archer as he moved deeper and deeper into the Cameron Highlands hunting his elusive target, Tomas Ramon Rocha.

He was an elusive and dangerous ex-clandestine operator turned international arms dealer, now suspected of supplying radical factions around the world with modern weapons and explosives they couldn’t – and shouldn’t – easily get otherwise.

But Rocha used to be what Neal Archer still is; a covert counter terrorism and intelligence operator. They started out together in the United States Marine Corps counter intelligence teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was just five years ago that all three men were as close as brothers, assigned to the Marine Corps’ Second Intelligence Battalion in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They operated as a team, gathering intelligence for the Multi-National Force-West command in Al Anbar Province.

They were decorated veterans whose many successful exploits as a team ultimately attracted the attention of the C.I.A.’s National Clandestine Service Middle Eastern operations desk.

All three were quickly recruited and trained as a team who later became known as The Three Wise Men. They carried out covert incursions throughout the Middle East; a number of which were designated as assassinations.

But after so many missions going right, their last one together went terribly wrong, something that would forever divide the team.

The Three Wise Men had been assigned a mission that by all accounts didn’t exist; searching for rebel tribes who were collaborating with Taliban forces in the mountains of a country that we weren’t supposed to be in; Pakistan.

Archer and Rocha were tracking a band of suspected tribesmen miles ahead of Lighthorse, who was tasked with coordinating and leading the five-man ground support team.

The team, all indigenous C.I.A. assets, was ambushed and horribly executed by some of the very tribesmen they were searching for. Lighthorse was severely wounded and left for dead but became the sole survivor.

This massacre left the U.S. with shit on their face and no plausible explanation for the illegal incursion.

Since the operation wasn’t supposed to exist, the Three Wise Men officially weren’t there, and for that reason they were left to self-extract from the remote lawless mountain region of Pakistan and forced to hide out for days before they could make contact with friendly forces back in Afghanistan.

After they were all debriefed and Lighthorse recovered from his wounds, Archer and Lighthorse were repatriated, ultimately leaving the C.I.A. and coming to work for their old Marine Corps unit commander, Colonel Roberts at D.I.R.E.

Rocha on the other hand was emotionally scarred by the incident and deeply resentful of the U.S. for abandoning them in Pakistan. He disappeared from Kandahar the day before he was to return home and hadn’t been heard from for years.

Even though the C.I.A. would sporadically hear of a mysterious unidentified Latin American soldier of fortune in some third-world country dealing in the shadows – a mercenary for the highest bidder – Rocha was essentially dead to them.

The Three Wise Men had been reduced to two, Neal Archer, code named Lone Ranger, and Levi Lighthorse, code named Tonto.

In the past several months though, governments around the world had begun showing a renewed interest in T.R. Rocha.

He had reinvented himself as an evil, lying, unscrupulous merchant of death, evolving from decorated Marine, to well-paid mercenary, to an even better paid international arms dealer with no conscience of who he dealt to.

His dealings became so depraved that he was suspected to have played a major role in the supplying of explosives to Al Qaida in the London subway bombing and, according to some, the bombing in Madrid as well.

To Neal Archer, T.R. Rocha was a former comrade in arms and an old friend who made a decidedly wrong turn in life.

Lighthorse on the other hand despised Rocha for what he had become and had made it known on many occasions that given the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate in killing him.

But Rocha had a history of overcoming great odds. Tired and frustrated after years of living off of his wits on the streets of East L.A., Rocha did what no others in his family even thought of. He graduated from high school and joined the Marine Corps just two days later.

Rocha saw the Corps as a way to escape the environment he was born into and try and make something of himself despite the odds against him.

Archer and Lighthorse loved the clandestine service, which is why when they left the agency they stayed in the game as agents for D.I.R.E.

They loved the air of mystery, the secrecy, operating in countries that the U.S. didn’t recognize on missions the U.S. denied even existed. It was part of the job and they seriously loved the job.

Rocha had loved it too… at first, but after the clusterfuck in Pakistan he became so disillusioned that the lure of big money proved too much for him; it gripped him like cocaine to an addict.

Rocha found the life of a mercenary and arms dealer significantly more rewarding. He still had the air of mystery and got to work in the shadows, but he didn’t have to do it for God and Country; he did for the money, and there was a lot of that. But when Rocha went rouge, it hit Archer hard.

Meanwhile, Colonel Roberts, a mysterious, shadowy figure in Washington with countless unidentified contacts in the U.S. intelligence community, had been getting information from one of his many sources that Rocha and his crew were believed to be somewhere in the jungles