Designated Survivor Read Online Free Page B

“They’ll get you geared up.”
    “It’s just Grace,” he said. “Honored to work with you guys tonight. I’ve spent a bit of time with Team 6 overseas.”
    Grace stepped beside one of the choppers and pulled on the bulletproof vest and helmet provided to him. The SEAL helping him reached to hand him a Sig Sauer P226-Navy 9mm pistol, the standard issue SEAL sidearm.
    “Thanks, but I brought my own,” Grace lifted his shirt to expose his Glock 19 on his side.
    “May I check it?” the SEAL said. “We’re very particular.” The patch on the man’s vest said Hendricks.
    Grace handed Hendricks his weapon and the man looked it over, released the magazine to see it filled with 17 nine-millimeter bullets in the optional oversized magazine and one in the chamber.
    “You ready, sir?” Murphy walked up and Grace turned to him to hear over the rotors spinning above them.
    “Not my first rodeo, as they say,” Grace said.
    “Very well, sir,” MCPO Murphy said.
    Hendricks handed the Glock back and Grace holstered it then climbed up into the helicopter. The interior of a Marine Blackhawk helicopter is bare and uncomfortable. The seats are metal frames with canvas stretched between them to save weight and to be easily removed if needed.
    The team split up and loaded onto the two aircraft, Murphy on one with two other men, Hendricks and the remaining two men of the six-man SEAL team boarded with Grace. Each chopper had a single Marine pilot up front. Straps were barely pulled down and connected to hold the men in their seats when the helicopters lifted straight up off of the ground then turned and went full throttle.
    “Flight time of 32 minutes, sir.”
    “Thanks,” Grace said.
    Grace looked out the window to see the lights and buildings only a few thousand feet below them. He pulled his personal phone out of the front left pocket of his khakis, checked for a signal, then typed in a message and put the phone back in his pocket.
    He leaned his head back in his helmet against the steel wall of the aircraft and closed his eyes. A little more than two hours earlier he was drunk and passed out on his floor after celebrating his return from a mission with his team. He’d been pleased that they hadn’t fired one bullet in the exfiltration of a high level member of the Russian government that had been turned and used as an asset for the United States for nearly a decade. Intel had come in that put the man’s life in danger and the team retrieved him. After the mission Grace went back to follow through on a promise to an asset that had aided in the rescue, only to have a shootout with a dozen Russian mafia bodyguards. His team ended up on the winning side of the battle. The body count didn’t bother him. When he first entered the game years earlier it didn’t take long to accept that in any altercation, one of the sides has to win and more often than not in his business, the other side has to die. He’d rather be on the winning side than the dead side.
    “Sir, we’re four minutes out,” one of the SEALs spoke through the microphone, the sound blasting into Grace’s headphones, waking him from an uncomfortable nap. He sat up and grabbed the button to transmit to the helicopters.
    “This is Grace. We’re diverting from the scheduled flight plan. Circle wide to the west of the target and come in low. There’s a clearing four clicks due west of the house. We’re landing there.”
    He gave out the coordinates of the new landing location.
    “Sir, our plan was to land outside the house for easy extraction,” Murphy’s voice came from the other helicopter.
    “Change of plans,” Grace said. “We need to land then proceed on foot to recon before making ourselves known. This is an order.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The pilots made adjustments and the aircraft turned left to compensate for the new orders and coordinates. A few minutes later they were almost touching the trees near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains