Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels)
Burke’s Revenge
Bob Burke Action Thriller 3
a novel by
William F. Brown
Copyright 2017
When you finish reading Burke’s Revenge, turn the page once more and you’ll learn how to get another of my best suspense novels,
Aim True, My Brothers, ABSOLUTELY FREE.
CHAPTER ONE
Fayetteville, North Carolina
The Fayetteville, North Carolina, Regional Airport isn’t very large. It only has four gates and a handful of flights going in and out each night; but it’s available, it’s quick to get in and out of, and it sure beats flying into Charlotte, Raleigh, or Charleston, if Fayetteville is where you are trying to go. Ten minutes after his flight landed, Bob Burke was through the TSA exit, down the escalator to the ground floor, and out the front doors, where he found himself in a warm, soft, late-summer, Carolina evening. Try doing that at O’Hare, he smiled to himself, or damn near anywhere else.
It was 9:30 p.m. and the sun had already set. Without giving it any thought, he paused and looked up. Even through the bright airport lights, he could see a quarter moon and a few bright stars in the sky; causing him to take a deep breath, happy to be back home after four hectic days in Chicago. Most of the other passengers who came in on his flight had peeled off and headed for Baggage Claim, so the sidewalk was empty, as was the parking lot and the entry road beyond. Well, Bob thought, at least they hadn’t rolled up the runways for the night.
He was a second-generation Army brat and Fayetteville was beginning to feel like home again. He had spent the past two years working in Chicago, putting up with O’Hare, traffic congestion, and those ugly Chicago winters; and only went back because he had a business to run up there. Teleconferences and e-mail were great, but any manager worth his salt knows he must put hands on, press the flesh, and show his smiling face around the office every few weeks. To maximize his time up there, he always booked the last flight that would get him back to Fayetteville that night. It meant changing planes in Charlotte and taking one of those tiny Dash-8 commuter jets. He hated those trips, especially when those God-awful early-evening thunderstorms blew up on that last, tiring leg home. Still, a Dash-8 beat a three-hour drive on winding roads through the fields and farms of Carolina. As they say in Fayetteville, “You can’t get there from here.”
As usual, most of the passengers on his flight were Army, headed up the road to Fort Bragg. They were dressed in the latest camouflage Army Combat Uniform, beige desert boots, and a beret — maroon, tan, or green, depending on their jobs. Funny, Bob thought; he had been taking this flight once or twice each month for the past six months, and he had yet to run into a familiar face from “back in the day.” True, it had been almost three years since he quit the Army and took the job in Chicago, but he used to be a fixture in Special Ops here at Bragg and in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost a decade. He knew almost everyone back then, and everyone knew him, or so he thought. Now, however, other than his own “guys” from the Rangers and Delta Force, it seemed that “the Ghost” really had vanished. He shouldn’t be surprised. There were 55,000 soldiers stationed at Bragg now, and two years away from that high-energy military lifestyle seemed like a lifetime. Oh, well, he thought, time marches to its own beat, and so must he.
The Fayetteville airport was definitely “no frills,” — no food, no drink at night, and no shuttle buses to the parking lots. He stepped off the curb and began to hoof it across the Short Term Lot, crossing several landscaped medians, and on into the Long Term Lot, where he had parked his new Ford 150 pickup truck. He was dressed in his usual “gone-to-the-office-and-don’t-give-a-damn,” casual business attire — L.L. Bean chinos, a button-down blue Oxford cloth shirt, no tie, a wrinkle-free blue blazer, and his newest country affectation: a pair of lightweight cowboy boots. He carried no luggage, only two carry-ons. Over his left shoulder hung a small, black computer bag, and in his right hand was a Halliburton high-security aluminum briefcase, which had a week’s worth of homework from the Chicago office jammed inside. The Army taught him to pack light, and preferably to pack nothing at all; so he left his business suits, dress shoes, ties, and all the rest of that crap in the closet of his Chicago office. With Global Entry, he could avoid the whole TSA hassle to begin with.
Midway across the dark parking lot, he stopped and looked around. He had only been gone for five days; but it had been “O-Dark-30” when he left, and he had been in and out of way too many parking lots since then. Apparently, “no frills” also extended to parking lot lights. Half of them were out, while the other half were spaced too far apart to accomplish much of anything, leaving large, dark patches all through the large lot. Fortunately, the quarter moon gave off enough light for an old infantryman like him, so he set off walking through the rows and the median strips to his right, where he was pretty sure he had left the pickup.
As he walked, he pulled his set of keys from his pocket and looked at the “keyless entry” key fob. It had one of those little red horn buttons for dummies like him who couldn’t remember where they parked. It also had a remote starter button designed for “Susie housewife,” so she wouldn’t need to plant her warm butt on a cold car seat on one of those nasty Chicago winter mornings. Unfortunately, the remote starter could also set off a car bomb, if the Gumbahs he crossed in Chicago and New York finally figured out who and where he was. So, all things considered, Bob usually opted for the third and somewhat safer button, which would only open the door locks and make the headlights flash.
Before he did, however, he took one more look around. Sure enough, he finally saw his white Ford 150 three vehicles down in the next row, parked in the shadow of a humongous, midnight blue Chevy Tahoe SUV. When he got within fifty feet, he pressed the button to open the electric door locks, which also triggered a quick, bright flash from the truck’s headlights, revealing a cluster of men huddled between his Ford and the SUV. First impressions are usually correct 99% of the time, and what he saw in that brief flash of light was four men with long hair, blue jeans, beer guts, leather biker jackets, and some serious tattoos. In the row beyond them, his headlight beams revealed four chromed-up Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The bikers were so focused on breaking into the two trucks that the bright flash of the headlights took them by surprise.
“Turn off them goddamned lights, and get yer ass outta here!” the closest biker turned and growled at Bob. He appeared to be the biggest of the bunch, perhaps six foot three and 225 pounds, probably the dumbest of the bunch too, which was why they left him standing guard. Behind him, one of the others held a “Slim Jim” in both hands, working its thin metal strip on the driver’s side door of the Tahoe, pushing it up and down and trying to pop open the door lock. Another biker leaned over his shoulder, watching and waiting, while the fourth held a ball-peen hammer at the ready, in the event the more sophisticated entry methods failed.
“Sorry, Gomer,” Bob answered back, “but that’s my pickup truck and I’m not leaving here without it.”
“Wuddju call me?” the first biker’s eyes narrowed as he straightened up and turned angrily toward the much smaller man approaching them.
The biker behind him with the ball-peen hammer wasn’t nearly as shy. “Oh, this here’s yer truck, boy? This piece a’ crap 150?” he asked, as he swung the hammer into Bob’s passenger side window, smashing it into a thousand little pieces.
Even a freshly-minted country boy like Bob Burke knew that down south here, you don’t mess with a man’s woman, his hunting do
g, or his pickup truck, probably not in that order, and the goober with the hammer had just made a big mistake. At only five foot nine inches tall and maybe 165 pounds, Bob Burke was easy to underestimate, but people rarely did that twice. When he left active duty as a Major with twelve years and six combat tours in the Rangers and Delta Force, he walked out the door with most of the top medals the Army hands out for doing what he did. That included a Distinguished Service Cross, a couple of Silver Stars, and five Purple Hearts — plus three bullet wounds and enough shrapnel in various body parts to require “hand wanding” at TSA checkpoints. He also walked out as an expert with most things that shot bullets, from a 9-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic pistol to the M4 Assault Rifle, a 105-millimeter howitzer, when needed, and his personal favorite, the 50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. He was even more skilled in most of the Asian martial arts.
Bob looked at the biker with the ball-peen hammer and then at his window. “You know,” Bob said as he lowered his computer bag to the pavement, “you should think twice before you pull this crap around Fort Bragg. There’s no telling who you might piss off.”
“Yeah?” Ball-Peen eyed him up and down. “What’re you, another Army puke?”
“Used to be,” Bob answered as he continued walking straight at them, his steel briefcase in his right hand and his eyes scanning every angle and opportunity he saw. “Now, I’m just ‘the telephone guy.’ ”
“The telephone guy?” The biker frowned and spat on the ground, not understanding.
“That’s what I said. Don’t tell me you’re stupid and deaf? That’ll be $200 for the window, you dumb grit.”
“Dumb grit?” Ball-Peen seethed. “Why you little…”
“What the hell you doin’?” the third biker using the Slim Jim on the Tahoe’s front door finally turned and snapped at Ball-Peen. “Go shut that guy up!”
“Yeah, come shut me up,” Bob smiled. There were four of them, each at least three inches and thirty pounds bigger than he was, but four out-of-shape bikers trapped in the narrow space between the two trucks didn’t concern him at all, especially not after they broke his truck window.
Once Special Ops, always Special Ops, Bob remembered someone telling him, and screw that defense stuff. The best defense is always a good offense. Of the martial arts styles he knew, his current favorite was Krav Maga, the radical fighting discipline developed by the Israeli Defense Forces. There was nothing defensive about it, and it definitely was not art. Some called Krav Maga “street fighting with an attitude.” You get in the first punch, the last, and everything in between, with the intent to maim or kill.
Despite his extreme daily workouts and peak physical condition, Bob Burke had no bulging Gold’s Gym muscles, and looked anything but intimidating. However, he was a man with a lot of “sharp edges,” as his lead NCO, Ace Randall, once put it. Whether he was using his hands, feet, a knife, a rock, or a steel-clad briefcase, he was incredibly fast, precise, and well-practiced; and the four bikers had already made several huge tactical mistakes. In addition to having larger mouths than brains, they had bunched themselves together in the narrow, three-foot-wide gap between the Ford 150 and the big Tahoe. That alone would have flunked them out of tactics at West Point, but speed usually tops stupid, anyway.
Time to force the first biker to do something stupid, Bob thought, as he closed in. What Gomer did was to telegraph a looping round-house right at Bob’s head. Too little, too late, and about what Bob expected. He shifted his weight far enough back to make the biker’s fist miss. As it flashed past his nose, Bob spun and snapped a quick kick into the guy’s crotch with his right cowboy boot. They were light and surprisingly flexible, but the “pointy toe” was sharp and hard. The biker never saw it coming. “Oooph!” was all he managed to get out, accompanied by a painful grunt and a burst of air. His eyes went round as hockey pucks as his hands went to his crotch and he doubled up in serious pain. Never one to risk breaking bones in his hands by punching a Neanderthal in the head, Bob let the briefcase finish off the first one, swinging it up. Its hard, reinforced steel edge caught the biker flush on the forehead and snapped him upright. As his eyes rolled back in his head, Bob knew he was out on his feet. He shoved Gomer backward into the two bikers behind him before they could react, and continued to wade into them, remembering Napoleon’s old maxim, “Audacity, audacity, always audacity!”
The next one in line was the redneck with the ball-peen hammer. He found himself struggling to shove Gomer aside and stay on his feet at the same time. Still, a hammer could be an extremely nasty weapon, as Bob well knew, and he had no intention of letting him use it.
“You’re the moron who broke my window, aren’t you?” Bob asked. “Like I said, that’ll be $200. Pay up!”
With an angry snarl, Jethro drew the ball-peen back, intending to bring it down on the top of Bob’s head. Like his pal, however, he was way too slow to pull that off. He was still turned, with his arm and the hammer behind him at the end of a long back swing, which left his neck fully exposed, when Bob sprang into the air and executed a perfect “Mae Tobi Geri” karate flying kick. The hard edge of his leather boot sole caught the biker flush in the throat, ending his night. Gasping for air, his hands went to his neck and the hammer went flying as he stumbled backward into the next clown in line behind him.
So far, Bob had used a simple street fighting move followed by a high-level karate kick to disable the first two, but things were still a bit crowded between the trucks. The next in line was the big mouth who told Ball-Peen to “shut him up.” He was the smallest of the bunch, and Bob figured that made him the “Leader of the Pack.” Seeing what happened to the first two, at least he was smart enough to quit playing with the Tahoe’s door, rip the Slim Jim out with both hands, and turn to face Bob. As he did, the flying ball-peen hammer hit him flush on the shin bone. “Ah! Ah!” he screamed, wide-eyed, grabbed his leg, and began hopping around; however, with two of his men already lying at his feet, that wasn’t a good idea either.
“You bastard, you bastard!” Slim Jim screamed at Burke as it finally dawned on him that this night’s hijinks weren’t quite going as planned.
“Don’t let your mouth get your ass in even more trouble,” Bob warned.
The long, thin blade of a Slim Jim wasn’t designed to cut, but in the right hands, with enough malice behind it, it probably could. Still, grimacing, the biker managed to get it in a two-handed baseball grip, regain his balance, and swing it at Burke like a scythe. Bob had continued moving forward, intending to finish this guy off, but he was quicker than Bob expected. He managed to pull back at the last second as the blade whistled past, barely missing him, but it did slice through his shirt. Bob felt a sharp stinging across his chest, but that wasn’t enough to stop him. The biker’s follow-through left him over-extended, so Bob stepped in, dropped his left elbow on the biker’s clavicle, and snapped his collar bone. Without pausing, he drew the elbow back and smashed it into the guy’s face, flattening his nose like a ripe banana and driving him backward, weak-kneed.
Three down and one to go, Bob thought as he turned on the last biker at the end of the queue. “You’re next, Lem,” he told him. This one appeared to be no more intelligent than the other three, but he had more time to see what was headed his way. Rather than mess around with a hammer or a blade, Lem reached behind him for a blue-steel Desert Eagle .357 Magnum semi-automatic tucked in his belt, hidden under his vest.
The Desert Eagle was a huge and very heavy handgun — the perfect choice, if you want to clear out a bar-full of Hell’s Angels, stop a charging rhino, or intimidate some little guy in a dark airport parking lot. However, given what the biker was facing, a smaller and lighter pistol would have been a wiser choice. The night air was warm, Lem’s hands were sweaty from trying to break into the trucks, and he snagged the tall front sight of the Desert Eagle in his underwear. Boxers or briefs? That didn’t “make no never mind.” His confidence soon vanished as he frantically pushed and pulled on the big hand
gun, finally managing to rip it free. Unfortunately, by the time he did, Bob had picked up Jethro’s Slim Jim from the pavement and brought it around in a short, compact swing. The thin blade wasn’t particularly sharp, but speed translates into power, like Derek Jeter punching a hard line drive into the hole between third and short. It slashed Lem across his chest, arm, and shoulder, slicing through his pectoral, deltoid, and bicep muscles, and cutting them to the bone.
The biker screamed and the muscles in his arm, hand, and fingers must have involuntarily contracted, because the .357 Magnum went off with a thundering Blam! The barrel was pointing down after he ripped it loose from his pants, and the bullet ricocheted off the concrete and caught him in his own thigh. His grip on the heavy automatic failed, and he dropped it on the pavement, where he soon joined it and his other three pals, screaming and moaning.
It’s never a good idea to leave temptation lying around, Bob thought as he picked up the big automatic, bent down, and pressed it against the biker’s forehead. Through the pain, the guy’s eyes went wide cross-eyed as he found himself looking up the wrong end of the barrel of the Desert Eagle.
“You know, Lem,” Bob spoke to him in a calm voice. “This is a pretty nasty handgun to go pulling on strangers. Nobody’d blame me very much if I put a few more holes in you, just for spite, but I’m not gonna do that. I figure the one in your leg is going to keep you limping around rehab for a good long while. When you get out, though, you might consider finding another line of work, ’cause you ain’t very damned good at this one.”
Looking around, Bob saw two of the others were clearly headed for the hospital with Lem. Unfortunately, Gomer, the first one he put down, was already shaking his head and trying to get back up on his hands and knees. Other than a broken nose, a badly dented forehead, and no doubt some very painful testicles, he was becoming ambulatory and a viable threat again. “Can’t have that, now can we?” Bob asked as he took the .357 by the barrel and cracked Gomer on the side of the head. He went back down again like a sack of potatoes.