Free The Fourth War by Chris Stewart Page A

Washington, a black man from the inner city, Bradley, a white kid from the upper middle class. Dr. Thomas B. Washington, Ph.D., was a self-made intellectual raised in the ghettos of Detroit: slumlords and slum schools—he had seen nothing but crap since the day he was born. Indeed, he was one of the very few children in the United States who actually grew up hungry, sucking on dirty bottles filled with sugar water and playing among discarded beer bottles thrown in the corners of his mother’s drug-infested bedroom. He was barely more than eight when he saw his first murder, by ten he was running acid and heroin, slipping tiny plastic bags under neighborhood doors. But, through it all, there was something inside him, something hot, rich, and angry, something that sensed the great waste that he had become, something that screamed with a fury, “you are better than this!” Sometime during his fourteenth year he made a decision. He was getting out. He would not die this way, twenty years old and destroyed by life. Guts and grit (he had not yet discovered his brains) were all that he had, and all he could hope was that it was enough, but he swore that one way or another he would scratch his way out of this dead, lethal world. When he started high school, Washington moved in with an aunt who, if she didn’t quite live on the good side of the tracks, at least didn’t reside in the human garbage dump either. He worked hard, driven by the hunger inside, and after teaching himself to read, graduated near the top of his high school class, not enough to get a scholarship, but enough to get admitted to NYU. Government grants and odd jobs kept him flush through his years of earning an undergraduate degree. From there, he worked days while going to school at night, earning his doctorate in International Studies. He spent a few years as a consultant to the Department of Defense before being recruited by the CIA, where he found his home, and he had been there ever since.
    Bradley, on the other hand, grew up in the upper middle class, his father a well-known and hard-core army general. The old man, one of McNamara’s masterminds, raised his sons tight and straight—tight like his crew cut, straight as the crease in his pants. To this day, if Bradley closed his eyes, he could still hear his old man’s voice. “Army! You hear me! Boys, there is nothing else! Not air force, not navy! They’re nothing but spit in the wind! You walk the gray line and you sweat army green!”
    No, Washington and Bradley couldn’t have come from more opposite worlds; but the result was the same: they were both determined men. But ambition and clandestine operations were a volatile mix. And through the years that they had worked together (years during which Bradley resented being called away from the cockpit and the flying he loved), they had butted heads more than once. But still there was enough respect that they enjoyed working together; and truth was, each considered the other a good friend.
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    After cursing and ranting about the situation in general, venting an anger that was born of frustration and gut-wrenching fear, all the time knowing it was ultimately his fault, Dr. Washington settled down and finally got to the point. “The risk is too great to not take action,” he said. “The NSA staff is on board. We’re calling POTUS now.”
    â€œWhere is he?” Bradley asked.
    â€œUp in New York. About to have dinner with the delegation from Oman.”
    Bradley thought a moment, then questioned hesitatingly. “Are you certain we have enough evidence to request a DARKHORSE operation?”
    Washington only scoffed. “You’re kidding me, right!?”
    â€œNo sir, I’m not. I think we need to ask the question before we jump off this cliff. Do we understand the situation enough to—”
    â€œNo, Shane, we don’t understand! We don’t understand anything,