Ultraviolent: Book Six in The Mad Mick Series Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by Franklin Horton

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

  Editing by Felicia Sullivan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Also by Franklin Horton

  The Borrowed World Series

  The Borrowed World

  Ashes of the Unspeakable

  Legion of Despair

  No Time For Mourning

  Valley of Vengeance

  Switched On

  The Ungovernable

  Blood And Banjos

  The Locker Nine Series

  Locker Nine

  Grace Under Fire

  Compound Fracture

  Blood Bought

  The Mad Mick Series

  The Mad Mick

  Masters of Mayhem

  Brutal Business

  Northern Sun

  Punching Tickets

  The Ty Stone Series

  Hard Trauma

  Child With No Name

  The Way of Dan Series

  Burning Down Boise

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Random Acts

  About the Author

  Franklin Horton lives and writes in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia. He received an English degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has written over thirty novels. He lives a hermit’s life on a remote mountaintop along the Clinch Mountain chain, splitting his day between writing and tinkering in his shop like one of his characters.

  You can follow him on his website at franklinhorton.com.

  While you’re there please sign up for his mailing list for updates, event schedule, book recommendations, and discounts. He’s also active on social media so follow him on Facebook or Instagram to keep up with the latest releases.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part II

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  A Sample

  Random Acts

  Prologue

  While everyone was appreciative of the sun on their skin, ready to put the long, powerless winter behind them, the mood in Conor's compound was heavy. His last mission had marked a turning point for him, with his life afterward being markedly different than his life before. For one thing, his old friend Doc Marty had been killed on that last mission and they hadn’t been able to recover his body for a proper burial. Conor had been the one tasked with telling Doc's daughter Shannon that he'd died and the experience had been just as miserable as Conor had expected. The entire time he was speaking with her, Conor had imagined how easily the situation could have been reversed. Doc could have been standing there telling Barb that Conor had met the same fate.

  Shannon's relationship with Ragus had changed after that, although it may have reached the same point eventually anyway. Both were orphaned and had no family now except for Conor and Barb. It was hard to say if Doc's loss was the fuel that increased the momentum of their relationship. Maybe his death simply marked the removal of the only barrier that slowed Ragus and Shannon from their inevitable fate.

  Either way, they'd moved in together shortly afterward, setting up a home together in the cabin that Shannon had once shared with her father. Conor saw no reason to stand in the way of their wishes. He understood better than most that one should take joy in life when they could because there were no guarantees. Being happy today was no promise you'd experience the same tomorrow. Being alive now was no guarantee you'd be alive a few hours later. Such was their world.

  While Conor, Barb, and Doc were gone on their last operation, the folks living at the firehouse had packed their belongings and headed south, hoping to find a better life. Their leader, Wayne, had stayed behind. The group blamed him for much of the hard times that had befallen them and he had no interest in living in the shadow of their accusing glances.

  With the rest of the compound gone, Wayne had stepped up to help Ragus and Shannon from a tough spot. He'd saved their lives and become a welcome addition to Conor's compound. A career carpenter, Wayne helped Conor deal with some of the infrastructure issues that had long been on his list to tackle.

  While that last mission was tainted by the loss of Doc, it had also given Conor the opportunity to meet his daughter Abela for the first time. His time with her in Israel had been magical. Upon returning home, Conor felt her absence in a way he hadn't expected. There was such a range of intense emotions. A year ago he hadn’t even known he had a second daughter and now he was overwhelmed by the intensity of his protective instincts. He knew Abela would be safe with her mother, Shani, but Conor wanted to know her too. How could he do that from a distance when international travel was nearly impossible?

  Yet one of the most powerful aftereffects of that last mission was the loss of Ricardo. He wasn’t the one who’d originally recruited Conor into his line of work, nor had he been Conor's original handler. However, in the post-9/11 reorganization of the American intelligence apparatus, people like Conor had been shifted off the government's black-budget payroll and sent to work for private companies. Men like him did the same work as they'd always done, but now they were contractors, making their existence easier to hide and easier to deny.

  Ricardo was European and about ten years younger than Conor. He served as a broker for a vast network of specialists in the dark arts. He managed an arsenal of kidnappers, interrogators, smugglers, assassins, bombers, armorers, hackers, and eavesdroppers working all around the world. When he took Conor under his wing, the two became friends. Ricardo took good care of him, making sure that Conor always had the things he needed to do his job.

  And now Ricardo was dead.

  That last operation had been the result of a lucrative contract with a group of patriots called the Macallan Collective. They weren't happy with what was happening in government. With the majority of the country having no power, the country was effectively in a news blackout. Weasels in Washington were ta
king full advantage of this, running amuck and scrambling for power. Those politicians and bureaucrats with globalist leanings were rumored to be selling out the nation, working with the Saudis and the Chinese to undermine the freedom of Americans while lining their own pockets.

  The traitors had instituted a network of "comfort camps" across the nation. Citizens residing in those camps could get aid and have access to power if they were willing to surrender their weapons. The traitors controlling the government also made it clear that no communities would be getting their power restored until everyone in that community turned in their arms. The government planned to pit neighbor against neighbor, using people's desperation to manipulate them.

  Such an idea ran contrary to the beliefs of most Americans, especially after a year in which many had relied on their personal weapons to keep their families safe. People who would have scoffed at the idea of owning a personal weapon in previous years had desperately scrambled to find them when calling law enforcement was no longer an option.

  The Macallan Collective, a group of wealthy and powerful patriots, had planned an operation against the masterminds of this plan, hiring Ricardo to carry out their own. Sadly it failed because they'd been compromised by a mole within the Collective. Conor and Barb had been lucky to escape with their lives. Doc had been less fortunate.

  It hadn't only been Ricardo's operation that had been compromised—the entire Macallan Collective had been exposed. While Conor and Barb were isolated on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, knee-deep in their operation, traitorous elements in the government struck at the Macallan Collective and their supporters. Ricardo's chopper was taken down by a rocket. Throughout the government, the military, and the intelligence community, patriots were kidnapped, interrogated, and murdered.

  Conor and Barb had been lucky to escape the purge. He'd only been spared because a man named Billy Browning, an old enemy, had insisted to his superiors that a weapon like the Mad Mick could be useful. It had been Browning who intercepted Conor and Barb upon their return to America. He explained that there was a new sheriff in town, with new rules, and Conor had no choice but to abide by them. If he refused, Browning's thug would kill him and his daughter on the spot.

  Seeing no other path forward, Conor accepted. Browning gave him a new satellite phone and explained that when this phone rang, Conor had better answer. Browning assured Conor that he knew all about his compound in the mountains and had the ability to take it out with an air strike at the slightest provocation. As much as Conor wanted to kill the man, he'd learned a few things in his long career, and one of them was patience. He would do the things he needed to do to assure his family's safety. He would give the appearance of playing along while biding his time and waiting for his opportunity. As it always did, the opportunity for revenge would eventually present itself.

  For months, Conor, his family, and his friends labored on his compound in an information vacuum. While Conor had often given Ricardo a hard time, acting like he was bothered by the man's calls, those moments of contact were Conor's primary source of high-level intelligence. Conor had a sophisticated radio setup and could get situation reports from around the country, but none of that told him what was going on behind the scenes. With Ricardo's death, he'd lost his connections. He was afraid to reach out to anyone for fear they might be compromised.

  As months passed and the phone Browning gave him didn't ring, Conor began to wonder if it was all an elaborate psychological operation. Had Browning been toying with him, torturing him, by making him carry around that phone? By making him live in fear of a missile attack against his family? Six months later, in late summer, the phone rang just as Browning had promised. When he answered it, Conor was greeted by the voice he'd long dreaded hearing.

  "Browning here. I guess you've been expecting my call. It's time for your next assignment, Mad Mick. I'll be there tomorrow. Make sure you're home."

  After the call, Conor gathered his people and warned them of the impending visit. They were full of angry suggestions. Most wanted to launch an ambush on Browning's team and take them out but Conor wasn't ready to do that. He understood that a man like Browning, a veteran of decades in special operations, would have a plan in place to mitigate such risks. He'd never walk into a place like Conor's compound without some version of a "dead man’s switch," some way by which an attack against him would assure mutual destruction of all parties involved.

  Conor told his people that they would hear Browning out. In fact, Conor might even do what Browning asked of him, depending on what kind of assignment he had in mind. He reminded them that there would a moment when fortune would again favor Conor Maguire. When it did, he would take his revenge. For Doc, for Ricardo, and for all of the living left behind.

  Part I

  Six Months Earlier

  1

  Oceana Naval Air Station

  After briefing Doc Marty, Barb, and Conor on the operation aboard the cruise ship, Ricardo turned them over to the SEAL team that had agreed to transport them to Cumberland Island, Georgia. Despite the involvement of a Navy boat team, this wasn't an official military operation. There were too many compromised commanders within the ranks of the military to trust putting this operation on the books. Instead, military commanders who were allied with the Macallan Collective had secured the cooperation of the SEAL commander at Little Creek. He'd agreed to conduct a patrol boat training mission along the coast that would conveniently correspond with the time Ricardo needed his team moved.

  Ricardo had performed similar operations in the past, both with Conor and other professionals on his payroll. Often, out of a sense of shared interests, connected officials within the intelligence community had arranged for Ricardo to embed someone in a military training mission. Usually, it was simply for transportation purposes. One of his operators would hitch a ride with a training mission, then disembark along the way to conduct his or her own separate, but very real, mission. It was the perfect way to get someone across the globe without leaving a paper trail or having their face show up on thousands of different security feeds.

  After handing his team off to the SEALs at Oceana, Ricardo spent a few minutes at the desk inside his tidy shipping container office, drinking a cold Stella Artois and sending messages by way of his satellite-linked laptop. When he was done, he stowed the laptop in his aluminum briefcase, shrugged on his jacket, and draped a scarf around his neck. He opened the container door and tossed his empty beer bottle into a nearby trash barrel. Before leaving, he turned off the lights and locked his container office behind him.

  The same driver who'd delivered Conor and his team earlier soon returned to transport Ricardo to his waiting chopper. When they reached the aircraft, Ricardo produced a bottle of Boone County bourbon. It was a single-barrel wheated bourbon that had been aged seven years. The stuff ran over five hundred dollars a bottle back when cash was worth anything. Ricardo had obtained the bottle in a truckload of premium liquors that had come to him in a deal.

  Ricardo handed the bottle over to the driver. "I don't know when I'll be back but I'd appreciate you keeping an eye on my office while I'm gone."

  The arrangement that allowed Ricardo to store a container office at Oceana Naval Air Station was a complex balance of security clearances, top-level authorizations, and the odd bribe. It didn't matter how many people stamped the paperwork. If there was no support of the boots on the ground no one could get anything done.

  Ricardo had learned that as a young man and it was advice he always heeded. He made certain that the people he relied on—drivers, pilots, maintenance staff, and security personnel—had not just the things they needed, but the occasional luxury that let them know they were appreciated. This applied to all of the military and civilian folks he worked with. He was always handing out cigars, cigarettes, and rolls of Skoal or Copenhagen. He handed off cases of beer and bottles of liquor. If nothing else, he was good for a new pair of Oakleys, a Benchmade folding knife, and an Affliction t-shirt.

/>   The driver smiled appreciatively at the bottle. "If I see anyone getting nosy I'll move them along."

  "Good man," Ricardo replied. "Now stay safe."

  He exited the vehicle with his gear and hurried over to the civilian Blackhawk that would deliver him to his next stop. Dennis, his head of security, was waiting on him, scanning their surroundings with a rifle in his hands. While Ricardo could get clearance to land his chopper at the base, his often overzealous security team wasn't welcome. Ricardo was fine with that. The base was one of the safer places to be in the current state of the country.

  Ricardo handed off the aluminum briefcase and his messenger bag, then climbed in. Dennis closed the door and returned to his seat while Ricardo was buckling in.

  "Where to, sir?" the pilot asked after Ricardo slipped on his headset.

  "The Chantilly office," Ricardo replied, adjusting the microphone.

  "Roger that. Chantilly coming up."

  The chopper lifted, banked, and accelerated. Even with minimal air traffic, pilots had learned to travel at higher altitudes than necessary and to only use lights when they had to. There were a lot of folks out there who found great sport in shooting at aircraft. It was a general indication of just how frustrated the American populace was becoming. Ricardo completely understood their feelings. Over six months had passed since the terror attacks that rocked the nation and little progress had been made toward getting the country back up and running.