Crossfire: Series: Book #1

By Paul Rodricks

About the Book Series,

Terror Bloodline:

 

Crossfire - a fact-paced international Terror-thriller, is Book #1 of the Terror Bloodline 3-Series storyline, featuring the intrepid Ex-CIA Covert Agent - Jonathan Bradley.

Now assigned to the FBI, for investigating ongoing homegrown Islamic-Jihadist terror plots, including the planned simultaneous suicide-bombing of the two Synagogues in the New York City, he has to deal with the illegal covert operation of the Israeli Mossad on American soil, besides the personal calamity of aggravated assault and rape of his lady friend working for the District Attorney's Office, which case remains unsolved by the NYPD.

      The story progresses with flashbacks into Jon Bradley's life and his career as a covert CIA field agent in Beirut and the Middle-East ending there with his betrayal in the midst of an ongoing secret operation to hunt down the alleged Hezbollah terrorist mastermind of a series of Islamic-Jihadist terror plots abroad.

 Ex-CIA operative, Jon Bradley, is further swept into investigating the sudden, brutal homicide of his mentor and friend, the former Vietnam CIA agent suspected to be the local Mossad's Sayan operative.

     Books #2 Inflight & Book #3 On Target continue with the action-oriented plot of dangerous and intriguing characters revolving around a family sharing a terrorist bloodline, including their agenda of personal vendetta.

Summarily, the 3-part series of the Terror Bloodline abound with terror-cell plots, personal conflicts, rape, vengeance, child abuse, betrayals, murders, and illegal arms & drug trafficking, mingled with deceit and dangerous interplay by the FBI, CIA, Mossad, and MI6.

Culminating in a mad race to hunt down and eliminate the fugitive Lebanese Hezbollah Terror Mastermind from carrying out the deadliest suicide-bombing act in modern history.

Fields of Action: Beirut, Lebanon - New York City - London - Jerusalem.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Rodricks
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201639297

Paul Rodricks

He is a keen researcher and investigator into many human-interest subjects, such as on genres: Thrillers+Adventure+Crime+Suspense. This has led him to pen for his valuable readers, fast-paced and adventurous tales about intriguing characters. Both real and fictitious. He has traveled extensively, which has given him insight into portraying his characters from ordinary folks to spies, corrupt politicians, criminals & killers, terrorists, and the like. His new sports thriller, Soccer Most Foul, depicts the scourge of matching-fixing plaguing the beautiful game. He is also known to write on Historical fiction and is an avid songwriter, Poet, and composer. He'd love to hear from readers. Invites you to visit his blog: PaulsWRITERSDIG7.blogspot.com

Book preview

Crossfire

Book #1

of

Terror Bloodline

Series

Ex-CIA Jonathan Bradley 3-Book Thriller

by

Paul Rodricks

––––––––

Copyright

Copyright© 2020 by

Paul Rodricks

All Rights Reserved

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

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at [e-mail]

Thank you for your support.

Also, by Paul Rodricks

Historical Fiction

The Chronicles of Moses -

The Man who would be Pharaoh

Non-fiction

Creative Song Lyrics Writing

Creative Music Composing

Sports-fiction

Soccer Most Foul -

A Match-Fixing Thriller

Forthcoming:

Terror Bloodline Series Thriller -

Featuring Ex-CIA Jon Bradley

Inflight Book #2

On Target Book #3

Dedication

Sevannah

&

Qrez

"Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.

Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal."

- Pamela Vaull Starr.

Epigraph

This is the wonderful thing about espionage, nothing exists any more.

- Sir William Stephenson, Spymaster

&

"Alas..., Motherless dwells Lebanon,

The land of the majestic white cedars,

Woe to you, daughter of the mighty Phoenician

Torn from your mother's womb

How despairingly low have you fallen?

Your green valleys choke with bloody vengeance

Hostage to the cloudbursts of mindless violence

The mountains burn and echo with gunfire

While the warlords sit and haggle over the fodder for your pyre -

Who’s to be the next in the line of Crossfire?"

- Boulos (Author)

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

About Book #2 – INFLIGHT

Book Review

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Description: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/images/map-lebanon.png

Location: War-torn Beirut city, Lebanon, in the Middle-East. Infighting among the various warring factions engaged in no-holds-barred attack on each other, i.e. The Christian Phalangists, and the Sunni Wahhabi and the Shia Islamists belonging to the Palestinian Hamas, and the Hezbollah - backed by the Syrians and supported by Iran - their principal enemy being Israel and next the United States of America.

Bayrt - Early August, 2003

Mission Code: "Mermaid’

It is the beginning of the weekend, the time is about 6.00 PM and the CIA field operative, Jonathan Bradley, is cruising along the road to the Zaitunay Bay on the Beirut waterfront, when he receives a call.

He sees the emergency red light up on his special self-destruct cellphone equipped with the GPS.

His Control directs him to a safe car-park zone, where he is instructed to leave his embassy car, and to wait there to be picked up by a CIA’s informant-agent arriving in a white Toyota pickup truck.

Bradley memorizes the vehicle’s plate registration number, and the brief description of the local man who he is supposed to meet.

Mermaid, the mission code, is thus activated.

Jon shows himself as a battered Toyota arrives and cruises to a stop beside him.

A beaming, lean, bearded face leans out of the driver’s window, asking Bradley by his alias, "You are Sayyid Boutros – Mr. Peter, the Ameriki Embassy man?" His eyes run up and down Bradley’s tall, rugged figure.

Jon observes that the man’s features match with the description provided by his Control.

The Lebanese man is dark-skinned in his mid-thirties, with close-cropped black hair, brown eyes, bushy eyebrows, and is wearing an open-neck blue shirt. A black and white checkered Keffiyeh is loosely wrapped around his shoulders and the scrawny neck.

"Na’am. Yes..."

Oh, you speak Arabic? I am Jameel, and is apparently satisfied, Mr. Peter, please get into the car. I am to drive you to the place in the east of Beirut.

Bradley gets into the passenger seat and shuts the door. He knows that the southeast of Beirut is a dangerous place to be at any time of the year - day or night, especially for the Americans and the westerners.

It is mostly Shia’ Hezbollah controlled, and the sectarian killings and systemic kidnappings are the rule of the day, not the exceptions.

Over the decades, several hostages of foreign origin have died in captivity or have been murdered, and almost the same situation prevails today.

They drive eastward through the partially destroyed housing and commercial blocks, heading into the predominant Shiite territory. Here, street names virtually non-exist.

Beirut city and parts of the southern Lebanon have been fragmented by eight years of civil war, the plight compounded by the Israeli invasions, and the massacre of the Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila.

Is your Arabic good? Jameel breaks the silence so far between them.

Passable

"That will not do. I will do the talking if we are stopped. As you’d know, Mr. Peter, the appearance of a sudden roadblock is commonplace here. I am a Shiite myself from the west of the Beqa’a Valley. So, I don’t think we will face any problem. Inshallah. God willing. By the way, we are visiting my cousins in the south. You are my guest."

OK. I can remember that.

Then Jameel side-glances at Bradley studiously and remarks, "You look like us, you know? Lah... Lah, No... No, I think, more like someone from the east of the Mediterranean."

He waits for Jon’s answer, who merely mutters, Perhaps, showing his disinterest in the subject. Now, how far is this place?

We will be there in a while.

Jameel is slowing down to take the side road leading into the proper Beqa’a valley suburbs."

They are now driving down a dusty dirt-track past shelled-out buildings and a part of an equally deserted industrial area.

On getting deeper into the Hezbollah-held territory, that fact becomes obvious from the sighting of the yellow and black flags flying on every form of structure – buildings, shops, houses, restaurants, street lighting poles, trees and vehicles.

Being aware of the region’s bloody past and the present, Jon knows that Hezbollah – The Party of God - is the result of the merger between its Islamic Jihad Organization and the Islamic Amal, the Shi’a resistance group.

In sharp contrast elsewhere, the Beqa’a valley opens to its natural environment displaying clusters of small cinder-block houses with their olive orchards and the lemon trees, as they head deeper into the valley.

Five kilometers into the dirt track of the village brings them to the edge of a mountain.

Jameel slows down the car, looks around and drives it to a slightly uphill area. He finally stops, positioning the car midst the car wrecks and building debris, facing a row of housing blocks along a grove of white cedar trees.

The drive from the city has taken them about an hour and fifteen minutes, and it is now past the sunset.

They are in the month of August when the weather can be hot and muggy during the day, though the nights can get somewhat pleasant in the valley.

The streets and houses are dimly lit, but Jon knows that there are often blackouts in the valley.

From inside the car, they keep watch on the single two-storey house facing them down below across the street.

Soon a Toyota truck arrives with a few armed men in it. The men jump down from the vehicle, visually sweep the area, and most of them disappear into the building, leaving just three men to sentry the front and back.

Fifteen minutes later, a black Mercedes is seen driving up to the building.

When the car stops before the entrance, the driver comes out and opens the passenger doors alternatively to let out a woman and a man. Then he drives the Mercedes alongside the building and waits.

From the discernable features and the walk pattern of the woman, Bradley is able to recognize her as his MI6 counterpart assigned to the joint-operation of the CIA-MI6 mission code name: Mermaid.

Their covert mission is to unravel the identity of the rogue international weapons trafficker who, on the sideline, masterminds terrorist attacks on the American and Western interests.

Bradley fails to recognize the tall, well-dressed Lebanese man with her.

Jameel, do you recognize the man with the woman?

From this distance and in this half-darkness? No, shrugs off the local agent.

His beautiful companion, I’d certainly like to meet her. What guy wouldn’t want to? Perhaps, you could do me that favor, Mr. Peter, Jameel adds mischievously.

Jon does not like getting pally with the guy, or for that matter, with any mere acquaintance, particularly when out on a mission.

They are both using their aliases, but he is not Jameel’s Control. The local informants cannot not be fully trusted and often turn out to be double or triple agents.

Jameel, we are here to do a job.

I have been told only to drive you to this place, and back. I have no other instructions, says Jameel surly.

Bradley understands that the mid-eastern people are a highly emotional race. But he is in no mood to sit here and nurse to Jameel’s feelings.

That’s alright. For the present, we sit here in the car and watch. If the need arises, I will tell you what our next move is.

After the couple enters the building and is lost to sight, another Toyota vehicle arrives and parks a few meters away from the building; supposedly the rear guard.

The men spread out and randomly survey the grounds, including the building debris and car wreckage area, where Bradley and the local informant, sitting inside the latter’s beaten-up Toyota, are spying on their activities.

You are armed, aren’t you, Jameel?

You’d know, Mr. Peter that no one moves around Beirut without carrying a gun. I have a Glock in the glove-compartment, and there’s an AK-47 automatic with extra ammunition rounds in the Toyota’s trunk.

Good thinking, Jameel. We may need them if worst comes to worst, to shoot our way out.

Jon barely finishes speaking, when they notice the big flash of light streak in the darkness across the sky, and seconds later an RPG rocket strikes the building block adjoining the two-storey house, immediately followed by weapons firing from across the shelled-out blocks down the road.

The escort party takes shelter and responds to the firing.

A fire-fight ensues as darkness begins to fall. A barrage of RPG rocket firing is in exchange; one hits the lone standing two-storey building.

Guns and sniper fire from its rooftop suddenly stops as that part of the structure disappears under the rising gray clouds of smoke from fire, debris and dust.

Then several bullets hit Jameel’s vehicle.

Jon surmises that only a sniper with night-vision, probably using the Russian-make Dragunov rifle favored by the militants, could have spotted them from somewhere atop, but how would he know their exact location, which too inside the Toyota?

He has no more time to think save to act fast, as he tells Jameel to exit the car at