Lucky Strikes: Carter Matheson Series, #1

By David Temple

Carter Matheson is a hunter. He hunts bad men. And when the government needs a problem to disappear Carter disappears them. Permanently.

 

When the Deputy Director of National Security learns a leak inside the White House is one of their own and they are trading secrets with the enemy, the semi-retired Special Operative hitman assembles a team to find them.

 

Bouncing from his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to his contact in Wilmington, North Carolina, Carter lands in Nicaragua of all places, and is soon on the the trail...of someone on his trail.

 

Follow Carter and his team as they find the leak in the system...then fill it full of lead. 

 

If you like Lee Child's Jack Reacher, and Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne, you'll rip through the pages of the utterly addictive Carter Matheson Thriller Series.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: 82 MERCER Publishing
• Release date: Jan 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393505075

David Temple

David Temple has worked as a Morning Radio Host, an actor in TV & Film, and has had decades of experience as an international voiceover artist. His first book, Discovering Grace, was turned into the award-winning independent film, Chasing Grace, where it lives on Netflix, AmazonPrime, Pureflix, and in over 100 countries. The Carter Matheson Series features a retired special ops assassin who works to keep his family, friends and country out of harms way. The series includes: Lucky Strikes and Behind The 8 Ball. The third book, Knuckle Down, has recently been re-released after a major overhaul. David's latest character is Detective Pat Norelli, a rookie detective with beauty, brains and a determination to solve any case. The Poser is available now, and the sequel, The Impostor, is coming early 2021. David lives in San Diego with wife Tammy. Want to learn more and stay in touch, visit: DavidTempleBooks.com.

Book preview

1

The Man

My name is Carter.

I am a hunter.

I hunt bad guys.

2

The Corp

It makes sense to live in solitude when you’re a hired killer. That way, those around you aren’t likely to fall victim to the anxiety that is sure to come your way.

Can it be a lonely existence? Solitary yes, but not necessarily lonely. After all, I can be great company.

Wait, let me back up.

Just so you don’t think I’m a bad guy, I’m a hired killer—for all the right reasons. I was trained alongside an elite, but small group of extremely skilled artisans. Our job was to protect our country—no matter the cost.

The United States Army is the Corp upon which this country is based. However, there are those among us—like my father, Lt. Col. Bulldog Matheson, who thinks the Marines are the absolute, when discussing military strength and force.

My best pal, Mack, while a military-brat too, started in the Navy. As a Navy Seal. Why? Because his father, and his father were both in the Navy. However, Mack will admit that it became a poor choice—not because they are not as powerful and efficient as the Army or the Marines, but because he doesn’t like confined spaces.

A little-known, top-secret super-submarine—an elite creation of the most powerful mechanics and most intelligent equipment in the world, will remain nameless for obvious security reasons. He got a special pass to switch leagues. That’s when we met and formed a pact that we would be inseparable allies in the forces against our country.

You’ll meet him later. Back to my background.

I have a home outside the small town of Mission Grove, NC, not far from Charlotte. Having lived all over the world, I have come to find the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and the Carolinas to be the most beautiful land in this great country. I like being near my brother Jonathan, his wife, Angela, and my two nephews, Christopher and David, but more often than not, I spend most of the time on my seventy-seven acre retreat. It’s a sacred place.

I have Prepper friends who wouldn’t think of living anywhere else. We have wood to burn for heat, and the shade of trees to stay cool. And we have well water that’s free and lasts forever. The few who have seen my property refer to it as a hidden fortress. It has a modest cabin, a workshop, a garage to house my car, my truck and a few yard instruments. It also has a small lake fed by mountain streams, and enough wild life to keep me fed for years.

It also includes an underground bunker. But you’ll never find it. Trust me.

When the bomb drops, or an EMP shuts our electronics down, or idiots come out of the city looking for either a free ride, or some drunken craziness, I’ll be hunkered down and completely safe.

3

The Journey

On Friday, I’d risen early—as I do every day, worked out by chopping a chord of birch from my property, and stacked it neatly in a drying barn a hundred yards from my cabin. Breakfast was the same every day: steel cut oats, three eggs over easy and black coffee. After one hundred sit-ups and the same number of push-ups, I shit, showered and shaved. I’d also packed up, boarded up and set up to begin my next assignment.

Before the bumper-to-bumper crowd had a chance to form into a headache, I head south on Highway 77 before connecting to East 74, and heading away from Charlotte. I had the coast in my sights. This second leg of the route has always been a supreme pain in my ass. The road pretends to be an interstate, yet doesn’t allow for much speed until well outside the city limits. In fact, it isn’t until you hit the small college town of Wingate that you felt as though you had left the city. It was the stop and go and stop and go that wears one out.

Want to take 77 and head North toward my alma mater of DC, or South to my old stomping ground of Miami? The trip is a breeze.

Want to spin your wheels North-East toward my brainiac pals in the Research Triangle think-tank of Raleigh-Durham, or South-West toward my film friends in Atlanta? Again—no problem.

But if you want to make haste toward the Outer Banks of the great Tarheel State, then your patience is going to be worn to a bone.

Just like mine was. Times ten.

---

I arrived in Wilmington around midday. The business I had to attend to was attended to rather quickly. It began with a short briefing with several highly intelligent and hyper-efficient brainiacs. I was then led to the office of Jerry Bronson.

Jerry always was and is to this day one of my favorite people walking the planet. What he says, he means. What he says he will do, he does. And if he can’t do something, he won’t. He took me under his arm a long time ago when you needed a good bit of patience to be around me. I don’t know if it was anger I had toward my dad, angst I had toward my schooling, or agitation I harbored against my brother. All I know is that Jerry was the most consistent man I knew. And while he wasn’t perfect, he would admit that also.

He was a smart man with a bright future and worked really hard to get where he had gotten and without taking shit from anyone. That’s likely why he rose so quickly. However, he also had a way of stepping on people’s feelings. He wasn’t mean, he just told it like it was. And you either liked that or hated that about him. There were some people in management, both on his level, as just above his level, that didn’t care for his style. And some of those people, we’d come to learn later, had a way of making his life miserable. One of those ways was moving him from Washington, DC to Wilmington.

Can you say demotion? Yes, but he even took that shit soup in stride, ate it like it was tasty and kept on chugging, because he knew what it took to create real results and he did it, every time.

This particular afternoon, we spent the first third getting caught up on old times, rolling down memory lane like neither of us had a care in the world.

We spent the second third of our time talking trash: past wives, current ones, past girlfriends, current ones, affairs of others, sordid details of our own, what craft beer we were drinking, what new gun we were buying, or where we’d go for vacation if neither time nor money were an issue.

And we spent the final third of our time discussing the details of my next mission. The information would include stats I needed to memorize about my next target, as well as locations, flights, hotels, rentals, Tools of the trade I’d need to use, and anything else he could think of.

Jerry was fond of saying, This job is going to be a lot different and more difficult than all the others.

But nine times out of ten, it wouldn’t take me long to memorize the details, organize my plans and get on with my business. Since I’d known Jerry for a dozen years, I came to appreciate his being a straight shooter, in more ways than one. Being a no-nonsense guy, made him even more likable mainly because it was hard to find many of those these days. He’d been that way since day one. Heck, he likely popped out of his mom’s belly barking something like, Okay, here’s how we’re going to handle this. Clean my ass, let me grab some lunch outta those puppies and I’ll be on my way.

During all of our training, he would tell us, An ounce of planning is worth a pound of knowledge.

He was known for taking sayings and twisting them to suit his needs. He’d done the same with the knees of many a target, and sometimes necks—if the opportunity required such. Jerry was one of the few men I’d ever met that never changed his expression for anything, or anyone. I often joked with him—another characteristic he was not known for—that if someone ran into a room screaming the building was on fire he’d nod his head, scratch the ever-present two-day stubble on his fat chin and say, after a long, heavy sigh, Well, then I suppose we should start to think about getting our big fat asses out of here…lest we get burned. And with that he’d take his time making his way to the nearest fire exit—lighting a cigarette during his slow departure.

Jerry and I wrapped things in less than two hours. He wasn’t much for wasting time. I wasn’t either. We both appreciated that. After all—life is short and then you die.

Yeah, I’m a real philosopher.

We wrapped up, I packed up, we stood up and he said, Now, get the hell outta here.

Always a pleasure, Jerry, I smirked, You know I mean that.

He nodded. Make me proud, soldier.

I was halfway down the hall when he barked, And don’t fuck it up this time.

Without missing a beat—or looking back, I shot him the bird.

---

Walking to my car, my stomach moaned like a disgruntled dog. Checking my watch, I realized I hadn’t eaten since I left my house. I scanned the industrial park. Slim pickings. I decided I’d just wait until I got to the beach. All the more reason to forgo fast-food crap and settle into fresh flounder from the ocean. The food would be better and the air would be fresher—cooler, too. It had warmed up pretty quickly. Getting this hot this early in April meant a long, steaming summer lie ahead. No complaints here. I liked the heat. Heck, spending many a summer in Miami and the Keys prepared me for all sorts of sweltering.

Besides, I hated the cold as much as I liked the heat.

Clicking the remote, my car silently unlocked and the running lights flashed their acknowledgment. Pressing another button, my windows lowered and the sunroof opened. I tossed my Titanium briefcase and the small nylon duffel bag Jerry gave me into the trunk. I looked around, more out of habit than anything, wanting to be sure there were no roaming eyes scoping my trunk.

Call it my own personal armory.

Built into the underneath of the trunk lid was a panel storing several handguns of a wide variety of flavors—all untraceable, of course. There was a .45 magnum, like the one Clint Eastwood carried in Dirty Harry. Funny thing was, many thought it was a .44 magnum. As he put it, "The most powerful handgun in the world." In reality, a .45 magnum is what he carried. And yes, it was quite likely the most powerful handgun, or hand cannon, that you could find. Mine was a slight retrofit of Harry’s. It had the space for a small add-on scope and had the ability to add a silencer, thus making it not only easier, but smaller than what the Average Joe could find at his local gun store. There was my all-time favorite: a chrome-plated .357 revolver. The gun was a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that it had saved my life a number of times. The curse was that it took the life of someone very close to me. That’s a tragic story I’ll share another time.

Rounding out the cache was a medium-sized, blue-black Russian Glock, a stainless-steel snub-nosed .38 that I used to tuck into tiny places and a .22, in case I needed to get rid of squirrels in the attic. Lining the wheel-wells and hidden beneath fiberglass panels, was a small arsenal of plastic explosives on one side, and in the other were hidden a variety of knives, several climbing ropes and a plethora of espionage knick-knacks. The tour-de-force was a Marksman’s wet-dream. Tucked underneath the rear window deck slept a .408 Cheyenne Tactical, or CheyTac. The high-velocity round had a maximum pressure of 68,000 psi. This weapon created such intense hydrostatic shock that it would, upon contact, disintegrate body parts, projecting them nearly 200 feet in all directions. The range of this killing machine was roughly 2,200 yards in the hands of a true professional. In the hands of a novice, it was nothing more than a thirty-nine-inch grenade launcher that would make spaghetti out of its targets. It was designed with military in mind, where a cartridge for both the anti-personnel, anti-sniper and anti-material role was needed. Rarely did I require this baby, but when the job called for complete annihilation—at nearly inconceivable distances, this beast was put into motion. There were few people that I knew who could master this precision-oriented killing machine. I was one of those people. I closed the lid, put on a ball cap and slid behind the wheel.

The day was shortening, while my hunger was growing.

4

The Spot

I arrived in Wrightsville Beach in under thirty minutes and quickly made my way to the southern part of the island. I call it Rightsville, because everything becomes right when I got there. It has none of the big city clutter and it’s not so small you feel like you’re living in the past. To me, it’s just plain right. It’s also quieter there; not as many tourists, but with the charm of a small town—like the one where I grew up.

Each time I came to this area—which has been for several years now, I would stay at a different place. I do that for several reasons. First, I like my privacy, which comes standard in my line of work. Second, I don’t like to set patterns or habits. The biggest reason I mix it up? I’m a travel nut. I love to visit different places, meet any variety of people and experience every bit of the local color that my time allows. It’s also helpful to be more than vaguely familiar with an area. I never know when I may need to get in, get done and get out—fast. It