Free Monster Hunter Nemesis by Larry Correia Page A

He’d expect meetings and heated arguments, maybe some internal investigations, that sort of thing.
    Myers sure as hell wouldn’t expect what would happen next.
    Despite his opponent’s considerable intellect and ability to spin lies with the best of them, Myers was at heart a decent, patriotic man. That made him vulnerable. Myers reserved his ruthlessness for paranormal enemies. Stricken didn’t make such distinctions. You’re either with me or you’re in my way. Considering what he suspected was coming down the pike, for America—hell, the human race—to survive, then they’d need somebody with the guts to do what was necessary running the show. Stricken knew he was that man.
    In any other time, Myers probably would have been sufficient. Now? He just wasn’t up to the task. And Dwayne Myers had even been willing to nuke Alabama to stop the Old Ones. Stricken considered that a nice start.
    “We’re launching our contingency plan immediately.” The STFU bunker was so big that the distance between his office and the control center was significant, so he used the time to give a series of rapid-fire orders to his subordinates that fell in behind him. “Foster, you’re running this op. Call up Renfroe. Pull the spider out of the tank. I want it wired with explosives so it doesn’t get any funny ideas about running off on the job.”
    “This is Franks we’re talking about,” said one of his men. And these were all men. His inner circle would never contain any supernatural members again. Adam Conover had taught him a valuable lesson about the trustworthiness of monsters. “Our most reliable team was lost. Want me to call up some extra muscle?”
    “Not yet.” It was too bad about his first string. Those monsters had shown real potential, but Kerkonen had been the only one to get out of the nightmare realm alive. “Red isn’t right for this job. Sending her against foreign terrorists is one thing, but Americans? And MCB at that? She’s got a soft spot for cops. PUFF exemption on the line or not, she’d balk and screw this up.” Managing monsters and black ops teams was a real challenge; he had to sort them not just by capabilities, but by which ones had functioning moral compasses. “Send her to the Flierls’ team. They’re a bunch of goody-goodies too. We’ll hold them in reserve in case this goes sideways.”
    “If the Flierls find out we’re operating outside the law, they’ll flip out . . . Hell, Renfroe won’t like this assignment much either.”
    “His employment isn’t exactly voluntary, now is it?”
    The men laughed, because when Stricken made a joke, you’d damn well better believe they laughed like it was the funniest damned thing ever. Intimidating subordinates was a guilty pleasure of his. One of them held open the door to the command center for him.
    The name was kind of a misnomer. When he’d first heard command center he’d pictured something like NASA mission control. This was more like an office overlooking the laboratory floor, populated by a handful of nerds armed with computers and some big screens on the walls. It wasn’t impressive because of how it looked, but rather, what he could screw with from here. The nerds looked at him fearfully as he entered and then furtively went back to their work. They reminded him of a bunch of ground squirrels.
    “I don’t know who you intend to use for this mission then, sir, because we’ll need time to get other assets together. You don’t intend to send only our regular forces, do you?”
    It had been Foster who had asked that question. It was a reasonable question, since the former CIA man had just been put in charge of a hit against the biggest badass in the federal government, but Stricken figured the hesitancy was because Foster was still a little squeamish from his encounter with Franks in Vegas. No STFU man wanted to go up against a monster without monsters of his own.
    “Of course not, Foster. I’m a firm believer in