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[h3]Prologue
"Running With The Devil"
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[b]Walter Reed Medical Center
Bethesda, MD
Four Months Ago[/b]


Rick Flag Sr. rode the elevator in silence. He was alone on this trip to Walter Reed, his usual entourage of staff officers and advisors had been left behind in North Carolina. Even the military garb had been traded out for jeans and a white t-shirt with a black bomber jacket. To most of the people walking the hospital halls Flag appeared to be just another a middle aged man, fit for his age and for sure ex-military by the look of him. But that wasn’t uncommon in a place like Walter Reed.

Flag was no stranger to the hospital. He’d spent time here in early 2002, rehabbing on a broken shoulder that came during Tora Bora. Ricky had been laid up here for two weeks after tearing his ACL during Ranger school at Ft. Bragg. Even the old man himself was committed to the psych ward after MACV-SOG duty, a sensitive subject for the Flag family. Inside the special forces community of the 60’s and 70’s it was one thing to show off your battle scars and medals with pride, but when those scars were mental, when the damage done followed you stateside, nobody wanted to talk about that.

A guard stood outside the hospital room he wanted. An MP with a sidearm on his left hip and an M4 slung aroun his shoulder. He eyed Flag as the older man approached. Flag had a visitor’s lanyard around his neck so the guard knew he had at least passed some sort of security downstairs. Flag slowly pulled his ID out his jacket pocket and showed it to the guard. When the MP saw it his eyes widened and he snapped to attention.

“At ease,” Flag said with a nod. “Corporal, how about you take a coffee break for about ten minutes or so?”

“Yes, sir,” said the MP. He started to walk away when Flag called for him.

“Yes, general?”

“Forget you ever saw me,” Flag winked. 

The MP gave an informal salute and hurried off while Flag slipped into the hospital room. It was dark inside and there was an odor of sweat and a lingering smell of something Flag couldn’t quite place. Later, when it was much too late, he would identify it as the smell of scorched flesh and sulfur.

He found Shrieve laying in the hospital bed staring off into the middle distance. His left arm was handcuffed to the bed’s railing while his right arm… didn’t exist. There were bandages on his right shoulder and side that confirmed that the right part of his body had been burned severely in a blast. His right arm was gone from the shoulder down. Shrieve’s eyes focused and then would glaze over after a few seconds. He never acknowledged or even turned his head towards Flag.

“Colonel,” said Flag. “I know you know who I am. My damn picture is plastered on almost every wall in Fort Bragg. And I know you. Always like to know who the ones running my taskforces are.”

Shrieve acted like he hadn’t heard Flag’s words. He continued to stare off into space like he was catatonic. Flag read the evals on his trip up from Bragg. The Colonel had all motor functions in his remaining limbs, even with the burns and scar tissue. Whatever was going on with him was in his head. 

“Doctors seem to think you have shellshock, PTSD, whatever they call it these days. Easy to understand why…I read the action reports, Shrieve. A DEVGRU rapid response team in East Africa conducting a raid on a suspected narcoterrorist compound in Somalia pulled off a HIHO drop and glided twelve miles over enemy and hostile territory to land within a football field of the compound. These sixteen SEALs get to the target and find… the reinforced gate blasted wide open and a goddamn slaughterhouse inside. At least thirty dead bodies, Americans among them. Signs of drug running, human trafficking, and even human sacrifice. I saw the photo of one soldier with a pentagram carved in his head. Only one sole survivor. You, Colonel. You’re missing an arm and burnt worse than my first wife’s attempts at cooking. But you’re alive. The big question is, what the fuck were you doing there?”

Flag saw Shrieve stir a bit at that. The general had to repress a grin.

“An entire unit of Delta Force that was supposed to be stateside training is just running around Somalia doing god knows what. The Department of Defense had to move heaven and earth to get this shit covered up. [i]I[/i] had to move heaven and earth. According to the official records you died as well, Colonel. You couldn’t be stabilized so you died here at Walter Reed before you could be interrogated. That’s the story I put out at least. You're a dead man, Shrieve. And I can do whatever I want with a dead man. No rules, no code of conduct on treatment. Because once you're dead, you can't die again."

Shrieve finally began to turn his neck towards Flag. When the two men made eye contact, Flag could see a spark behind the colonel’s eyes. He almost flinched at the site. Of all the horrible things he had seen over his decades as a soldier, the look in Shrieve's eyes was at the top of that list. He couldn’t tell if it was hatred, joy, insanity, or some combination of the three.

“The dead, general?” Shrieve rasped. “They can die… again and again and again.”

“In that case,” Flag said softly. “How would you like to see some more?”



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[b]Ft. Bragg, North Carolina
Now[/b]

“You got a typo on your ID, sarge,” the guard at the shack said to Rock. “Says your in-service date of 1937.”

“Soldier,” Rock grunted. “The army doesn’t make mistakes, you should know that.”

The guard laughed and passed Rock back the ID. He waved him through and Rock drove his truck on base. Fort Bragg was the same old dump it had always been. It was Camp Bragg the first time he came through here as a fresh faced and wide-eyed private. In those days it was a little more than a cow pasture with some barracks beside it. Now it was the beating heart of the US military’s special forces industrial complex. And Rock hated it.

He had hated special forces for a long time. Back during the war – even though he had served in over a dozen armed conflicts there was only one war – the commandos who dropped in behind enemy lines with just a few weapons and a poorly drawn map were special. Those were the special forces. These guys who ran around now looked more like outlaw bikers than soldiers, long beards and arms filled with tattoos. A lot of them acted like it as well. An entire organization built on secrecy and avoiding accountability had created… an organization of secrecy and avoiding accountability. Shocker there.

Rock pulled into a parking spot outside of a non-descript three story building. The door leading into the building had a piece of paper taped to it announcing “TASKFORCE M HQ - NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ALLOWED” Rock grabbed his spit cup and dip before he climbed out the truck and went inside.

“Sergeant Rock,” the man at the desk said.

He stood as Rock entered. He was wearing the battle dress uniform of the Army, his hat on the desk. The insignia on his lapels was that of a full bird colonel. He had dark hair with a shock of gray running through it and his eyes were sunken into his skull with dark rings beneath his eyes. 

“Colonel Matt Shrieve.”

He held out his left hand for Rock to shake. Rock noticed his right arm. While it was mostly covered by the sleeves of his BDU, the hand that poked out the cuff was silver, the fingers robotic.

“Welcome to Taskforce M,” he said with a wide grin that made the colonel look unhinged. “Most of the team are asleep. They’re more the nocturnal types…”

Shrieve laughed to himself, a little too loudly. Rock noticed he still hadn’t let his hand go, so he firmly removed it from his grasp.

“But you can meet the Bride. Follow me.”

Rock knew the military loved their goofy nicknames, but the Bride was a new one on him. He followed Shrieve down the carpeted hallways. It looked like your average run of the mill military office building. Flag had promised him something challenging, but he hadn’t said what exactly.

“The general speaks highly of you, sarge,” said Shrieve. “How does a staff sergeant get so chummy with the commander of JSOC?”

“I’m a family friend,” said Rock. “Flag’s father served with…”

Rock thought back to the jungles of Laos, the Ho Chi Minh trail, the heat and gunfire and the smell of napalm. The sound of chopper blades in the night and someone begging for mercy in a language Rock couldn’t understand.

“My grandfather in Vietnam. My grandfather and his dad served together in 'Nam.”

Shrieve eyed Rock strangely. A playful smile crept onto his face.

“You can drop the act, Sarge. I read your file.”

“So did I, sergeant,” a refined British voice said from around the corner. 

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“Thank you for your service,” the Bride of Frankenstein said with a mock salute. 

“Welcome to Taskforce M,” Shrieve said with an off-kilter giggle. “The M stands for Monster.”

The Bride gave a questionable glance to Shrieve before looking at Rock with a smile.

"Come meet the rest of the team."