The Grand Prix Affair (Martini Squad Adventures Book 1)

Book summary

The Martini Squad—led by Bryce, a Gentleman Spy, and joined by a diverse team of elite operatives—unravel a complex web of political turmoil and violence. From high-profile attacks to global riots, their mission spans the world, from Lisbon to Monaco, uncovering ties to a tech billionaire with a sinister agenda.

Excerpt from The Grand Prix Affair (Martini Squad Adventures Book 1)

Chapter One

British Embassy

3100 Massachusetts Avenue, North West,

Washington, D.C.

2100 Hours

Catherine Sarah Morgan, Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, or CMG, hated being late, and she was very late. An unexpected meeting with Ambassador Pierce lasted well after she told her husband, James, that she’d be leaving for their home in The Plains, Virginia. Their home was an hour outside of D.C., and the farmhouse-style dwelling, with its surrounding 100 acres, suited the highly introverted couple well as it was away from teeming masses who resided inside the Washington Beltway, and there were no neighbors nearby to bother them.

Her official title at the embassy was Assistant Deputy Head of Mission, effectively the number three British diplomat in the United States. In reality, she was Head of Station for Station ‘A,’ America, for His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, more popularly known as MI-6. Under a diplomatic cover, she was a spy in the service of the British government, and the meeting she had attended was a briefing for the Ambassador regarding the Secret Intelligence Service’s battle against Russian oligarchs operating in the U.S. who supported Russia’s war in the Ukraine along with some other, lower level cases she was working on, one of which surprised Catherine with the amount of resistance she received from the ambassador.

With the briefing finally over, Catherine, known as Cat to her friends, reached her office. She placed her briefcase on the chair in front of her desk and sat down hard in her desk chair. She took a quick, calming breath and picked up her desk phone. She pressed the number one button on her speed dialer. The call connected after a couple of rings.

“Morgan,” a male voice answered.

“Hello, James,” Cat said.

“Hey, sweetie! Are you on the way home?”

“I’m leaving as soon as my driver arrives.”

“Outstanding! Dinner and ‘80s night await.”

“What’s the movie?”

“Beverly Hills Cop.”

“I haven’t seen that one.”

“I know. See you in a few.”

“Love you!”

“Love you, too, sweetie! Careful.”

“Will do,” Cat said as she ended the call.

She smiled as she ended the call, thanking her lucky stars that she found her James. Only someone like him, someone who once served in the intelligence community, could understand the stresses she was under. Between the oligarchs and her other cases, she hasn’t spent much time at home with him or their five ‘fur kids,’ Rusty the dog, and their four kitties Moneypenny, Miso, Opal, and Nebula. James, however, never complained and always gave her a warm welcome home no matter what time she finally arrived.

Cat looked up and saw a tall, broad young man with short, black hair and wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and black tie standing patiently outside her office door.

“Ready, ma’am?” the young man said in a Yorkshire accent.

“Ready to go, Alex!”

Alex Davies moved to one side as Cat left her office, closing the door behind her. She began walking down the hallway and towards the embassy’s front door with Alex walking a deferential step behind her. A former Royal Marine, Alex Davies was a member of Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Service, the largest armed ranch of the Metropolitan Police charged with the protection of diplomatic personnel, both in the U.K. and abroad. Reaching the door, Alex motioned Cat to stop.

“Please stay here, ma’am, and I’ll bring the car around,” Alex said.

He opened the door and headed to the parking lot. A few moments later, the guttural growl of a supercharged V-8 engine reached Cat’s ears. She opened the door and saw her ride back to her home waiting for her, an Amethyst Grey-Purple Jaguar F-Pace SVR Sport Utility Vehicle with U.S. State Department-issued diplomatic license plates. Cat watched as Alex exited the driver’s seat and opened the back door for her. She walked out of the embassy’s portico and climbed on board. As Cat strapped herself in, Alex went around the back of the SUV and climbed in the driver’s seat. He placed the Jaguar in gear and drove out the embassy gates. He turned right onto Massachusetts Avenue and headed for the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. Once over Rock Creek, he turned left at the Spanish Mission to the Organization of American States and proceeded down Waterside Drive towards the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway towards Interstate 66.

Cat and Alex drove in silence as she worked on her laptop, Alex, who worked as Cat’s driver and personal security since she started her embassy posting three years earlier, knew that Cat was not one for idle chit-chat. It was not anything personal or unfriendly, it was just the way his charge was. When they drove the bridge that crossed Virginia State Route 120 in Arlington, Alex noticed three black motorcycles approaching quickly from behind.

“Ma’am, looks like we’re being followed.”

Cat turned around and looked out the rear window.

“Not very subtle, are they? You know what to do, Alex,” Cat said before returning to her work.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Alex pressed his foot on the accelerator and the SVR’s five-liter, 542-horsepower engine came to life, and the distance between them and the motorcycles opened considerably. He also opened a section of the center console that revealed the Jaguar’s defensive systems, provided by Cat’s Uncle Freddy, the head of the SIS’s Science and Technology branch, before the F-Pace was shipped from the U.K.

The motorcycles accelerated in an attempt to catch up, but Alex was ready for them. He pressed a button, and a cloud of smoke came out from the SUV’s tailpipes. When the three riders disappeared from view, Alex pressed a second button and deployed several tire-shredding spikes, better known as caltrops. The lead motorcyclist failed to see the caltrops on the road through the smokescreen and ended up with a set of shredded tires for his troubles. The rider’s bike laid down and skidded into the highway’s middle lane where both the bike and rider were crushed by an oncoming semi-truck. The other two riders saw the caltrops and managed to avoid them despite the smoke, continuing the chase.

Alex began to weave his way through the late evening traffic to shake his pursuers, but the two motorcycles closed the distance and bracketed the SVR. The rider on his right drew a silenced handgun and began to fire, but the Jaguar’s armored glass kept the rounds from penetrating the vehicle. Alex made a quick movement of the F-Pace’s steering wheel that sent the front fender into the rider, knocking him off the motorcycle.

However, as Alex was distracted by the threat on his right, the rider on his left approached the SUV and attached something to its driver’s side rear tire. The rider slowed down slightly and pressed a button on his handlebars. The device exploded, tearing off the tire and wheel as it did so. The Jaguar began to roll over side-to-side several times before ending up on its wheels in a grove of trees off the side of the highway near Haycock Road.

The rider stopped his bike just in front of the crash scene and got off to admire his handy work. He first stopped at the front of the SUV and saw that the driver was still moving. The rider opened the door, drew a silenced handgun, and shot Alex in the head. He then went to the back door, opened it, and climbed inside. He moved his weapon to his off hand and reached out to brush Cat’s hair out of the way and verify the kill. This was the last mistake he ever made.

Using her last bit of strength, Cat stabbed the rider with her favorite edged weapon, a concealed Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger, in the first place she could reach, the man’s crotch. The blade sliced through his genitals and up into his abdominal cavity, its tip ending up in the large intestine. The rider screamed in ultimate pain and rolled out of the F-Pace and collapsed onto the ground, bleeding out in the grass alongside the highway in the process. Cat smiled as one thought crossed her mind before losing consciousness.

Got you, fucking wanker!

Chapter Two

7160 Fallen Oak Trail,

The Plains, VA

2200 Hours

So, in the overall scheme of things, it can be argued that the Falklands War of 1982 was the first true modern naval conflict. Jet aircraft, anti-ship cruise missiles, nuclear-powered submarines, satellite communications, things that we take for granted today in the 21st century, saw their first use in combat in the South Atlantic. Prime Minister Thatcher and her war cabinet exercised overall command and control over Royal Navy, Royal Marine, and British Army units from a distance of 6,000 nautical miles, a precedence-setting use of sea power to influence world events.

Professor James Robert “Bob” Morgan, PhD, and Commander, U.S. Navy (retired), stared at the speaker’s notes portion of his latest PowerPoint presentation he was creating on his laptop computer for the Maritime History class he taught at James Madison University. This semester he had students from both the U.K. and Argentina in his class, so this lecture on the Falklands War should produce some rather lively discussions. It was those moments, watching his students learn, grow, and participate in civil debates, that eased the disappointment of no longer being an active United States Navy officer nor an operations officer and analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. A helicopter explosion three years ago during the fight with the criminal organization known as Hantu in Singapore shattered the bones in his left leg, forcing him to walk with a cane, and led eventually to his medical retirement from both the Navy and the Agency.

Morgan looked up from his screen and around his study. Around him were the mementos of those two previous careers, an enlisted sailor and later an officer in the Navy, and as an operations officer and analyst in ‘The Company.’ A shadow box with his many medals and warfare pins, Blue Nose and Shellback certificates, ship’s ball caps, challenge coins, and framed ship’s pictures with autographed mattes, marked his Navy career while items like an expandable assault baton, a wristband from the Nimb Hotel in Copenhagen, and one of his prosthetic eyes, reminded him of his time with CIA. Finally, his one good eye wandered over to the last of those mementos, a set of antique flintlock pistols, once owned by Royal Navy Captain Sir Thomas Hardy and worn by him at the Battle of Trafalgar, sitting in a purple velvet-lined wooden box. They were presented to him by His Majesty, King Charles III in recognition of his service to his wife’s native country.

He looked across the study at the large, oval-shaped dog bed laying by the door and smirked to himself. In the bed, Rusty, the Morgans’ golden retriever mix that he and Cat rescued a year ago, snored away without a care in the world. Morgan let out a chuckle as a thought crossed his mind.

Hey! Maybe you’re the source of the snoring that earns me Cat’s elbow from time to time. Going to have to ask her about that when she gets home.

The thought of his wife made Morgan look at the clock.

Ten o’clock? Lost track of time as I was working. She should be home by now…

Morgan’s thought was interrupted when Rusty sat up suddenly and let out a growl. This was not normal behavior for the normally mellow, ‘I just met you, and I love you,’ retriever mix.

“What’s wrong, boy?”

Rusty ran out of the study, continuing to growl. Before Morgan could get out of his desk chair to chase after the dog, the power went out all over the house.