Edge of Glory

By Ray Roddy

Present oil prices are destroying the economies of Iran and Russia. Is this what happens when we push two of our biggest enemies to a breaking point? We can only wait and see but. should it happen, how could we possibly fight 3 million men and machines on their soil. If the Russians step in and help nuclear options are off the table, Closing the busiest sea route for oil will cause a spike that could destroy the faltering World economy and enable the Russians to make $billions. We have to stop them and this may be the only option. The best trained soldiers in the world in lightning attacks. Violence, death, destruction, money and sex combine in this almost futuristic look at the world tomorrow..................End

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491758861

Ray Roddy

Ray Roddy is an Irish-born author and businessman. He was educated in England and made his business debut in Canada where he spent many years before moving stateside with his three daughters and, now, three grandsons. This is his fourth novel.

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EDGE OF GLORY

Copyright © 2015 Ray Roddy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5885-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5886-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015902074

iUniverse rev. date: 4/27/2015

CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue: Russian State of Crimea. Dawn. August 12, 2015.

One: Moscow. Tuesday, August 11, 2015. 1600 Hours.

Two: Moscow. O’Connor Import/Export Company, August 12, 2015. 0600 Hours.

Three: On the Black Sea. Sevastopol, Crimea. August 12, 2015. 0750 Hours.

Four: New York. Courtyard Inn. August 12th 1300 Hours.

Five: Sevastopol. Russian Air Base. August 12, 2015. 1700 Hours.

Six: Sevastopol. August 12, 2015. Ninety-Seven Minutes before the Drone Strike in Iran.

Seven: Washington, DC. War Room at the Pentagon. August 12, 2015. 1600 Hours. One Hour Prior to the Drone Attack.

Eight: One Hundred and Twenty Kilometers East of Tehran. August 12, 2015. 2359 Hours.

Nine: War Room at the Pentagon. August 12, 2015. 1800 Hours.

Ten: Tehran, Iran. Palace of the President. August 13, 2015. 0600 Hours.

Eleven: The Pentagon. August 13, 2015. 0200 Hours.

Twelve: Tehran. Heroes of the Revolution Square. August 13, 2015. 1100 Hours.

Thirteen: Washington, DC. Hotel Baron. August 13, 2015. 0900 Hours.

Fourteen: Northwest of Washington, DC. Admiral (Ret.) Powell’s Modest Horse Ranch. August 13, 2015. 1600 Hours.

Fifteen: Tehran. Presidential Palace. August 13, 2015. 2300 Hours.

Sixteen: Washington, DC. August 13, 2015. 1730 Hours.

Seventeen: Batumi, Western Georgia. CIA Listening Station on the Black Sea. August 13, 2015. 2200 Hours.

Eighteen: London. Library Room at Sketch’s Private Club. August 14, 2015. 1430 Hours.

Nineteen: On the Black Sea in Southern Russia. Sochi. August 15, 2015. 1800 Hours.

Twenty: Moscow. East Wing of the Kremlin. Office of the President. August 15, 2015. 1700 Hours.

Twenty-One: Approximately 200 Nautical Miles Southeast of the Iraqi Port of Basra. August 15, 2015. 1700 Hours.

Twenty-Two: Sochi. Southern Russia. August 16, 2015. 0300 Hours.

Twenty-Three: Southern Iran. In the Zagros Mountains. August 16, 2015. 1100 Hours.

Twenty-Four: Washington, DC. The War Room. August 16, 2015. 2230 Hours.

Twenty-Five: Iranian Military Air Base North of Tehran. August 17, 2015. 0630 Hours.

Twenty-Six: Iranian War Zone. August 17, 2015. 0700 Hours.

Twenty-Seven: Tehran. Azadi Square. August 17, 2015. 1800 Hours.

Twenty-Eight: The White House. Oval Office. August 17, 2015. 1800 Hours.

Twenty-Nine: Tehran. August 17, 2015. 2300 Hours.

Thirty: Tehran. August 18, 2015. 0730 Hours.

Epilogue: Washington, DC. Hotel Baron. September 8, 2015 1700 Hours.

DEDICATION

To a dedicated and understanding wife plus the team at iUniverse with particular cudos to the editing department, without either this book would not have been possible.

PROLOGUE

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RUSSIAN STATE OF CRIMEA. DAWN. AUGUST 12, 2015.

A SLEEK, BLACK PORSCHE 911 turbo held the hairpin turns. Its tires and the road were one. The driver, a young, blond major, kept his jaw set as he took turns at over one hundred kilometers per hour. On the rare straight stretches, he pressed the accelerator to the floor and reached speeds over 200 KPH Though the road was not made for speed, he managed to hit the limiter set at 300 KPH once. Ivan Stanislos slowed down and lowered the screeching voice of Ozzy Osbourne on his satellite radio in one fluid motion as his dashboard displayed a familiar incoming number.

Yes, Uncle, how are you today?

I am well, my nephew, very well indeed. Have you arrived at your destination? Ivan’s uncle, also his Godfather was one of the world’s most powerful men, was in his leather chair sipping strong tea. The Russian president, Vladimir Putinov, smiled the type of smile that scared children. The mission you undertake today is of the utmost importance to me, to yourself, and to Mother Russia. Do the job well, and you will be rewarded.

I would never let you down, Uncle. Whatever this mission entails, you will have my total loyalty along with every skill I possess. I will be on station in seven minutes, sir.

Good, very good. Your orders await you. Do our country proud. And nephew, I need you to leave the complex the minute you have successfully accomplished this mission. Do not look back or turn back. I need not remind you that what happens there will be our secret. Take some time off, chase some beautiful women, and return to Moscow in two weeks. Understand?

Fully, Uncle. I will make you proud as always. Until later.

Putinov carefully replaced the phone on its golden cradle and looked out over Lenin Square, which was deserted. His people, he thought, would be proud of him that day, the day he took care of that arrogant American president, the day he restored pride in his country, not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars he would add to his already burgeoning accounts.

Halt! commanded one of the two guards at the entrance to a secretive Russian air base built on the Black Sea. It was under a long-term lease agreement with the Crimean government. More than a year earlier, Crimea with all its vast resources had rejoined Russia and become a federated state, much to the annoyance of the Ukraine and its Western allies. The two guards approached the black Porsche with trepidation; word had spread on the small base that an extremely important visitor was due that day, and only Russian mafia, politicians, and oligarchs drove cars that expensive.

Your papers, sir. snapped the guard on the driver’s side. He took the papers from the smiling major, who was more than aware he was something special. Some of his comrades would have said overly aware. He was passed through and directed to Testing Site Gagarin Building Four.

What a beauty! Major Ivan Stanislos thought as he approached the metal monster in the huge warehouse. Hundred-foot wingspan in the shape of a flying V. American technology exceeds ours by so much. Just look at the radar-absorbing paint they use. He stroked the dull-gray hull and saw the US markings.

He turned to Major General Spassky. Sir, how did we get one of theirs?

Ours now! replied Spassky. You have seen your orders directly from the Kremlin. He looked at his watch. You have a little more than thirteen hours to familiarize yourself with the plane and its equipment. Our scientists have built the remotes you’ll need, and you’ll have just one chance prior to the mission to fly the drone. He peered again at his watch. At fifteen hundred hours, all Western satellites will be suborbital from this position just in case the American drone is not as invisible as they think it is.

Many hours later, the gray shape took off low over the Black Sea and ascended to ten thousand feet, under almost all commercial flights. The major smiled as he set the coordinates for a small town outside Tehran. The Iranians targeted would know nothing; the plan was near perfect, and the world would suspect the only country with a drone capability of that size.

At twenty four hundred hours, the angel of death swooped down to two thousand feet, flying just under Mach 1. It honed in on its prey. Major Stanislov smiled as he took over the controls from the drone’s computer. The infrared screen lit his determined face as he flew gently on course for a little town ahead. He eased the flaps up as the air brakes throttled back to three hundred knots. The computers showed him his position. He hit the fail-safe button to his right and opened the bomb bay doors. Two five-hundred-pound bombs were released from their cradles and hurtled to earth. They exploded twenty feet off the ground for maximum damage over a radius of a square mile.

Stanislov watched the two huge explosions rip apart the small town and the target building at its center. Nothing will survive that. Stanislov turned the drone back toward Tehran for the final part of his mission.

ONE

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MOSCOW. TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2015. 1600 HOURS.

BRENDAN O’CONNOR NODDED TO his glamorous assistant-cum-secretary-cum-girl-Friday, Lydya Jenna-Rostov. Apparently, Russian females hyphenated their names, adding their maternal names for reasons unknown to Brendan. He cared little, however. He needed good cover, and she was efficient, intelligent, and well endowed. Her cleavage made the Grand Canyon boring in comparison. She has legs that appear to start immediately below her cleavage, though that might be more my line of sight’s problems, thought Brendan.

Her legs were almost as stunning as her breasts, but what topped off her amazing body was a face right off a cover of Vogue. Stunningly perfect skin stretched over typically Slavic cheekbones that framed hypnotic, ice-blue eyes. Brendan had a permanent woody just being around her.

Best in his mind was that she had a brain, natural intelligence. She spoke four languages fluently and could get by in several others. Her management and computer skills were beyond anything Brendan had even dreamed of finding for his import/export office in Moscow, a city where if you were talented, you were elsewhere.

He’d employed her more or less based on her looks and her body and the chance of spending several hours a few times a week buried between her perfect breasts. During the interview, he’d rarely gotten above those beautiful attributes. Later, he realized he’d apparently never read her résumé and was stuck with the fact that he’d never do the things he dreamed of nightly to that simply exquisite body as she was way too valuable to lose.

I’ll be gone the rest of the day, Lydya. Anything you need before I leave? That was a laugh. He had become the spare link in the operation, which was running smoother than a pint of Guinness down a dry throat on a summer day.

No, Mr. Brendan, all is good. She flashed him a brilliant smile and a wink that would keep him awake tonight pondering the possibilities or lack thereof.

O’Connor stepped outside into Moscow’s heat and pollution. The sky was a brownish haze. The heat wafted up from the filthy street that smelled of kielbasa, sewage, and body odor. The Russians had yet to master the concept of daily showers and, to Brendan’s knowledge, they had not invented a working underarm deodorant. Brendan did his usual scan of the street, his training making it an almost natural movement. He threw his suit jacket over his shoulder and headed toward Bolshaya Dmitrovka on the fringe of the Moscow night scene. In just a few hours, the darkened streets in that area would be filled with illegally parked Porsches, Rolls-Royces, and Ferraris stolen from all over the world and smuggled into Moscow.

The Russian mafia comprised the old KGB as well as the Russian oligarchs. The Russian economy ran on bribes and violence. Communism was perfect as long as you were at the top. Russia’s vital industries, originally controlled by the Kremlin, were in the hands of the mega-rich. The oligarchs controlled the vast oil fields and the mining, fertilizer, and transportation industries. The only catch was an all-consuming partner, the leader of Mother Russia.

As Brendan moved slowly through the crowded, hot streets, he mused on life so far from the rancid back streets of dirty Dublin to his training in the field as a particularly deadly assassin. Forgiven for his actions by the Brits, he had switched sides and entered the service with MI6. That had not completely been his choice, but his options had been limited.

His life changed for the better with his loan to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency that had so much more latitude than had his employers in Whitehall. MI6 had been castrated by budget cuts and left-wing political agendas that worried more about individual rights than rights of the masses, the protection of whom had become the symbol and emblem of the secret service. The various services were being held to an impossible code written by successive bleeding-heart governments. Their hands were so tied that they couldn’t apprehend a subject without virtually letting him shoot his quarry or set off a bomb in a crowded subway first. At least the Americans have veered from that path, thought Brendan. They use their drones to smash insurrection and terrorism around the world, sometimes too much. Innocents did indeed die, but at least the idea was right.

Brendan’s time with the IRA had been short but not sweet. They, or at least the Russians, had trained him in all aspects of human warfare. Fortunately, with the demise of his rogue operator and his subsequent switch to undercover, trained MI6 officer, the Russians had never known his real name or details of the aborted assassination of one of the royals and the British prime minister.

He was approaching fifty but looked nothing like a half-century old. He was fit and endowed with a great head of hair and a lean, muscular body. He had mastered the art of Russian tae kwon do as taught to him by his old mentor and nemesis, Olga, and he used the discipline twice a day. His fit, athletic body showed the many scars of his life, but his mind was bright, clear. He knew his job and its responsibilities and balanced them well with the death and violence that had become the norm for him since his bout with Olga, the stone killer terrorist. He’d been loaned by MI6 to Mossad several years previously at the request of Ben Hayud, the director of the agency, a man who had followed Brendan’s career from those deadly days on the west coast of Ireland, where he’d learned the art of war and terrorism from an undercover Russian agent, one of the best.

The mission he had trained for had culminated in the death of Lord Mountbatten. He had seen the truth moments too late, but he had managed to save the prince of England whose son was the king. For that and later actions, he had been rewarded silently by his then-enemy and brought into the dark world of MI6, where his training and subsequent rededication to the right side of the law placed him in the thick of intrigue in Moscow.

For the life of me, Big O, I can’t get used to a full-blooded Irishman working for the Jews! Mick Rooney’s face was flush with an afternoon of drinking coming on the heels of a night of debauchery on the Moscow nightclub scene. Rooney was a man of unequalled strength of liver and the ability to drink with the Russians on par or better. That was his only real claim to fame, except of course his deep intelligence and a photographic memory that never failed him even after a bottle or three of Russian rotgut. Rooney was a huge man with hands the size of ham hocks; he was the resident CIA bullshitter. At least that was how he described himself. He loved Brendan, and they shared a passionate distaste for the Russian leader and his ex-KGB geeks that surrounded him. They knew how dangerous Little Muscles was; his overblown ego was bigger than he was, which in many ways left a lot to be desired. At least apparently.

Little Muscles was the code name Brendan and Rooney had given to the abhorrent Russian, who seemed to have a constant craving for public attention satisfied only by showing off in various, bare-chested, bravado poses. He was a sad, little man with a little man’s ego; dangerous, very dangerous. His classmates used to call him Little Cockroach.

Brendan shook his head and smiled at his old friend. You have the biggest mouth this side of Linda Lovelace! You could eat a banana sideways. It’s a good job this place is swept daily for the bugs neither we nor Ivan want recording your shit. Moscow was full of shadows and intrigue. It was a city built on mistrust, where foe was never clear and friend was even more opaque. The Russians, in their wisdom, had declared certain zones off limits for surveillance, and both sides adhered to it strongly. There were places where deals could be struck off the record.

Rooney winked and put two fingers in the air to single their attentive waitress for that many more of the same. Brendan rolled his eyes and shook his mane of hair. His deep-blue eyes settled on Rooney as his hands came up and cupped his chin. Rooney saw Brendan was in a serious mood. What’s up, Big O? Rooney had a penchant for nicknames, and if he ever did use a real name, it was probably because he was lousy at remembering them despite his photographic memory. They sat in the Twenty-Four Seven Bar in downtown Moscow, a huge restaurant bar where a cocktail with a mean kick could be had for a couple of hundred rubles. The owners had obviously taken pains to come up with a name for a place that never closed.

Brendan looked around for any interested souls. He believed in the open concept mode of spying because Ivan had a short attention span and was thus rarely interested in anyone who did business in the open. The Russians were a simple people; they were more likely to spy on you if you were in a titanium bunker a thousand feet below sea level or in the middle of a remote desert than if you sat chatting at a sidewalk café outside the ‘ministry of secrets’.. it made sense somewhat; Ivan believed people with something to hide hid.

These strikes and sit-ins are starting to put even Muscles on edge. His Russian Spring is moving ever closer, what with the dead journalists, civil disobedience, Ukraine, and punk rockers returning to jail and all.

Brendan smiled. "Yes, you know who I mean. After Syria