Search and Destroy by JT Sawyer (mobi reader TXT) 📕

protection. He also served as Burke’s bodyguard when the CEO ventured into the public eye.

Bypassing the growing crowd at the elevator, he headed to the stairwell entrance at the end of the hallway, opting for some exercise enroute to the eighth floor. He had missed out on his usual three-mile run around the neighborhood in lieu of having breakfast with his wife Cassie at home, going over colors and decorations for the baby’s nursery in the back bedroom of their house. Deciding on whether to go with ballerina pink, coral pink or birthday candle pink seemed tedious, but he had no complaints sitting beside his wife, who always appeared more radiant than the day before.

Only two weeks left working for Burke, then his eight-month-long contract as an advisor to the CEO would be coming to an end. It was the longest he had ever stayed in one place during his sixteen years with the CIA, the bulk of which had been with the Special Activities Division in various hotspots around the world.

For the first time in his career, he was torn between being eager to return to his former work in clandestine ops overseas and wanting to remain stateside with Cassie and the baby girl he was about to become a father to.

If he hadn’t met his wife at a DOD interagency meeting four years earlier, he doubted he would have ever formed a long-lasting relationship with anyone in the civilian world. Now, they were expecting their first child, and he was about to be reactivated to join his old unit, pulling him back into the world of clandestine ops.

Initially, Shepard had figured his work on the Perseus project would be a deskbound position analyzing data related to past terrorist events, but he had taken a liking to the soft-spoken CEO and gained new insights into the technological end behind the scenes related to mission logistics, satellite intel and drone data that he had been utilizing as an operator for years.

Burke had first made his name in the world of geospatial and satellite imagery software, attracting the attention of the DOD and NSA, whom he worked for periodically as a civilian consultant before forming his own corporation ten years ago in Arlington. Two years ago, he was approached by Neil Patterson, who proposed a contract to formulate software that would enable a government agency to target politically driven assassinations connected with forthcoming coups.

After being given the green light by the Director of National Intelligence, Jason Begley, who oversaw the fiscal expenditures by the CIA and other U.S. intel-gathering agencies, Perseus was on the fast track for development.

Patterson signed off on Burke receiving the highest level of top-secret clearance that a civilian could possess, which enabled him to obtain intel from NSA feeds involving phone calls, surveillance cameras, and emails along with patterns in social media, geopolitical issues, and online news events. To further refine the system, Patterson eventually included databases from TSA, Customs, and Interpol.

But the shortcoming that became evident to Burke after sixteen months of grueling research was that Perseus was too technology-driven and was lacking the critical human element involved in threat analysis and counterterrorism—someone versed in direct action using covert methods of eliminating high-value political targets so Perseus could learn and assimilate the patterns used in both rogue and sanctioned assassinations throughout the world.

Shepard could serve as a consultant, providing the real-world, gritty feedback that was sorely lacking in Perseus’ early formatting.

Terrance “Cal” Shepard was the missing component that Burke needed and allowed Perseus’ far-reaching capabilities in anticipatory threat neutralization to be fully realized.

At first, their meetings strictly revolved around understanding the surveillance methods and human intelligence gathering involved in the acquisition of a terrorist target, but Shepard’s considerable input eventually led to Burke realizing that there were cultural, geographic, and even ethnic factors that played into an operator’s field assessment and ultimately how the target would be eliminated.

Far from being a one-shot kill from a distant sniper rifle by an agency operative, Shepard instilled in Burke that killing enemy combatants involved a wealth of skills, including hand-to-hand combat, knife-fighting, explosives, hand-formulated poisons, and IEDs, to name a few, and that the successful execution of a mission was supported by a network of deskbound intelligence analysts, indigenous assets, satellites, drones, and air or amphibious assets to insert and extract the covert action teams.

The emphasis on logistical support was stressed repeatedly, and Shepard tried to inculcate in Burke that neutralizing a terrorist abroad wasn’t a lone wolf activity like in the movies. A .50 caliber bullet sent downrange to snipe a target probably had a cost of $50K or more, given what it took to get that shooter in place at a particular moment in time on foreign soil while covering his tracks for a safe exfil and avoiding any geopolitical repercussions in the aftermath.

But covert action was still far less costly than a small ground war, and Burke and Shepard both wondered if the Perseus technology would make men like Shepard a relic from another era.

As he exited the door on the eighth floor, he rounded the corner, pausing by the desk of a petite brunette who was hammering away on her laptop.

“Morning, Becky, how are you doing?”

“Just fine, but I’ll be even better once this report is finally typed up. Mr. Burke has us working double-time to get things finished before the end of next week.”

“Looking forward to moving on to another research project?”

“That would be nice, but I’m sure bummed you’re not coming back. Did you get another consulting gig somewhere else?”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. And you’ll be missed as well. It’s just time for me to move on. Government contracts are like that—feast or famine.”

“But we’ll see you at the party tonight, right…and your wife?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, planning to only make a brief appearance at the celebratory gathering at Burke’s estate outside the city. Giving high-fives amid champagne toasts was something unfamiliar to him. After a successful mission, he and