Sam Wick Rapid Thrillers Box Set Read online

  Sam Wick Rapid Thrillers Box Set

  Books 1-4

  Chase Austin

  Thrillverse publishing

  Contents

  WICKED DECEIT

  About Wicked Deceit

  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

  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

  WICKED HUNTER

  About Wicked Hunter

  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

  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

  WICKED BLOOD

  About Wicked Blood

  Part 1

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part 2

  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

  Part 3

  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

  ABOUT WICKED STORM

  WICKED STORM

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Wicked Deceit

  A Pulsating Race-Against-Time Thriller

  ABOUT WICKED DECEIT

  What do you do when your own President wants you dead?

  You call Sam Wick.

  Task Force-77 (TF-77) is a black ops team of NSA and the US Military. This is the team the U.S. government calls when it needs to get people out of the most dangerous places on earth.

  Sam Wick. Task Force 77's best. Master Extractor. Perfect Assassin. Where the government cannot and will not go, he will.

  His mission: Extract Carlos Cruz-Diez—a New York Times reporter—from the clutches of death.

  Location: Venezuela Consulate in Vienna, Austria.

  The Obstacle: Venezuela’s National Intelligence Service has sent sixteen of their best to execute this mission.

  Timeline: Twenty-four hours. Time is running out. Bullets are flying. Bodies are piling up. Nothing is as it seems.

  Will Sam Wick succeed?

  CHAPTER 1

  President Chambers, Caracas Venezuela

  What could you possibly offer the man who controlled not only your destiny but that of your whole country? The man who ruled with an iron fist. The man who had the Russian President on his speed-dial. The man who had once given the finger to the US President at a diplomatic convention. What could you possibly give the President of your country on his birthday?

  But Henrique Arias Cárdenas, the director of the Venezuela Intelligence Service, had more on his mind than a birthday present while he waited in the visitor’s lounge of the Palacio de Miraflores—the President of Venezuela’s office. He glanced at the 19th-century wall clock above the majestic office door behind which the President was about to meet him. It was thirteen past two in the morning and the city was quiet after a long day of travails, but Henrique wasn’t even thinking of sleep. There wasn’t any time. He sat at the edge of the couch with his back straight, his hands sweating even in the temperature-controlled room.

  Since his phone rang an hour ago, he was racking his brain to construe a reason for the urgency of this meeting but got nothing. Not a pleasant situation to be in, especially for the Director of Venezuela’s premier intelligence agency.

  He already had a meeting scheduled with the President at eight in the morning, just before the whole country would start celebrating their leader’s birthday. Festivities had been planned for the next seven days, and over the past few weeks, he and his men had been busy foiling the attempts by radical extremists to devise disruptions in the celebrations. His office had been diligent in sending daily briefs to the President’s office. What then had warranted this late-night summons? What was it that could not wait for six more hours?

  One of the officers standing alert near the grand door lifted his right hand to his earpiece and then glanced at Henrique. It was time.

  As Henrique fell in step with his escort, he coughed twice, attempting to relax the lump in his throat. It didn’t work. He took his hands out of his trouser pockets to reduce the sweating; that didn’t work either. Then the big gates opened before him and it was too late to do anything. He took a deep breath and hoped for the best.

  The President was standing at the royal desk, his fingers resting on a folded publication. Henrique walked in and stopped at a respectful distance, carefully observing the President’s face to gauge his mood. The man was not just upset; he was seething with anger.

  He glanced at the publication in the President’s hand and recognized the font. It was a copy of the New York Times. He said not
hing. The President’s laser-focused stare was unsettling, making him unsure of his next steps.

  “Venezuela is a mess, a bloody mess.” His boss read out the front-page headline, looking straight at him. He jerked his hand, and the newspaper slid across the table to Henrique who stopped it, with a swift gesture, quickly glancing at the columnist’s name—Carlos Cruz-Díez. “You know why he can so boldly accuse us of these baseless charges?”

  Henrique appeared alarmed by the anger but maintained a stoic silence. It was a rhetorical question.

  “I should have killed him. I should have killed him and hanged him for others to see and learn, instead of letting him leave the country.”

  “We can still do it.” Henrique finally had something to offer.

  “How?”

  “He visited our consulate in Vienna a few days ago.”

  “Why did no one tell me that?”

  “It was in the PDB,” Henrique said, referring to the President’s daily brief sent by his office.

  The President considered it for a moment.

  “How soon?”

  “He is going to visit again. We can take care of him then if you want.”

  “How?”

  “It’s better if you remain unaware of the modalities.”

  The President weighed this momentarily-Plausible deniability-before a slow smile appeared on his lips. Henrique smiled too. This was his birthday present to the President.

  CHAPTER 2

  Task Force-77 SAFE HOUSE, LUXEMBOURG

  Team Vesuvius was already in the briefing room when Sam Wick arrived. The three Vesuvius members - Jessica, Stan, and Mac - looked up as he entered. Their tense postures relaxed slightly at the sight of a familiar face. Wick scanned the space. It was a boardroom kind of setting with a long wide conference table at its center, surrounded by twelve mid-back mesh desk chairs. The wall opposite to the door doubled up as a projector screen. He instinctively walked towards the chair that had clear visibility of both the projector screen and the exit. Sitting down, he observed the others in the room.

  Team Vesuvius was one of Task Force 77’s (TF-77) support teams. TF-77 was a black ops team jointly created by the NSA and the US Army - an off-the-books team that comes into play when the diplomatic solutions failed. Powered with US military might across the globe and NSA’s intel, the team was well equipped to handle anything and that made it the one to go for the toughest missions on the most dangerous locations using means that any government would never authorize yet expect it to get done. During these deadly missions the TF-77’s assets, like Sam Wick, were supported by small on-the-ground teams like Vesuvius. These teams typically comprise three to four members—made available to field operatives depending on their mission.

  Jessica led the Vesuvius. She was the logistics liaison and an expert in close combat. Stan was a former marine and an Olympic-level shooter. Mac was the go-to guy for anything remotely associated with technology. Together these three represented one of TF-77’s ace support teams.

  Wick knew of the Vesuvius team and each one of its members. Though nothing in his expression showed it, he was glad he would be going into this mission with them.

  CHAPTER 3

  Vesuvius knew of Wick too. His reputation in the field preceded him. At 5’11”, he had a weather-beaten face that had a rugged attraction, not least because of his unreadable sea-blue eyes, bright with intelligence. With his slicked-back black hair and athletic build, he seemed like a man on a mission. He’d been born in Kansas, but he spoke with a neutral accent, due to his extended stay in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

  He was the man to whom TF-77 assigned its most insane and impossible missions and, so far, he had emerged from each in one piece. He talked less, absorbed more, and did his job with brutal competence. He had gone from ninety successful extractions to over three hundred in just over half a decade. Just twenty-seven years old, he was not flamboyant in the way many other operatives his age were. He [vb1] preferred simple, time-tested tactics over ones that dropped jaws, but he kept pulling off incredible feats - no matter the opposition, no matter the conditions, no matter the situation. His strategies and tactics were already turning into TF-77 mission case studies on whether brilliance could be achieved without being adventurous. Team Vesuvius—Jessica, in [AU2] particular—had seen all this in a few of her past missions with Sam. She was content that for this mission he was the chosen one.

  The door opened, and Andrew McAvoy entered. He was the keeper of this safe house and part of the mission control team of TF-77.

  “Good morning everyone.” McAvoy greeted them, walking straight to the laptop sitting at the end of the table. There were muted responses all around.

  McAvoy keyed in his password and the wall lit up with an image of a middle-aged man looking at them through a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses.

  “Carlos Cruz-Díez,” he said, pointing to the image on the screen. “Born and bred in Venezuela, Carlos is a prominent human rights activist and a columnist for major publications. For decades he was close to the Venezuela leadership, serving as a government adviser, but fell out of favor and went into self-imposed exile in the U.S.A. last year. From there, he has been writing monthly columns in the New York Times and occasionally for the Washington Post, criticizing the policies of the Venezuela President. Tomorrow morning, he is scheduled to visit the Venezuela Consulate in Vienna to get certain documents certifying that he has renounced his Venezuelan citizenship. His appointment is with Ana Sofía, Minister-Counsellor at the consulate, who helped him during his last visit too.” He paused. “According to our source, this time Venezuela is planning to do something major in the consulate involving Carlos. He has been extremely vocal against the regime of his country, and that’s why he is important to us in our support for the human rights groups in Venezuela. All this means his country’s President isn’t happy with him. Also, we have been trying to bring the Venezuela President to the negotiation table for months now. Till now he’s been a tough nut to crack. POTUS is not very happy with the way they are summarily turning down our requests for talks. We believe intercepting this planned act can give us an opening to bring them in the same room. Your job is to find everything about this plan and if there is a danger to Carlos’ life, then get him out of there, preferably alive. Any questions?”

  Hands shot up. McAvoy pointed at Stan to go ahead.

  “When was his last visit?”

  “He visited the consulate seven days ago along with his fiancée, Karina Anez, when he was asked to come back again in a week to collect the signed documents.”

  “Did anything suspicious happen during the last visit?” Stan asked the follow-up question.

  “According to our source, he walked into the consulate quite confidently because he believes nothing untoward can happen to him on Austrian soil. He reportedly told his friends he had been treated “very warmly” on his first visit and reassured them he did not face any problems. During his last visit, however, he gave Ms. Anez, his fiancée, two cell phones and told her to call someone close to the Austrian President if he did not come out within a reasonable timeframe. So it seems he does harbor some doubts.”

  “How long has he been in a relationship with this woman?” Mac asked next.