Chapter One

February 1976

Most days, Cadman Benson was in a good mood.

 

Today was not one of them.

 

As he climbed into his 1975 Black Pontiac Firebird, he considered telling the President of the United States to take the job and shove it up his ass. It would not have been the first time he had had the same thought in his eleven-year career.

 

Had the task force not recently completed a successful hostage-rescue mission in Israel?

 

Yes, they had.

 

Did the American people know this had happened?

 

No, they did not. Why? Because according to the government, the team did not exist. It was part of a confidential organization that only a few select officials knew about. The fewer people involved, the easier the secret was to keep, which was key to the team’s success and of course, deny ability.

 

But it sure would be nice if the president would thank the team occasionally instead of reprimanding him when things went wrong. Like the incident involving the helicopter and the power lines in Eilat. They had no choice but to engage the kidnappers when they tried to fight back.

 

Sure, the team lost a helicopter, but more importantly, the team was successfully able to extract all the hostages, including that goddamn Senator, who now claimed he suffered trauma during the extraction and was demanding someone pay.

 

Pay for what? Saving his dumbass?

 

Stupid shit.

 

The man shouldn’t have been in Israel in the first place, knowing it was never stable enough for anyone to be there.

 

Cadman started the engine as he contemplated kidnapping the Senator in question and delivering him back into the hands of the ones who had abducted him in the first place. Perhaps the man would rather be “traumatized” by them.

 

Those people wouldn’t handle the pussy with gentle hands.

 

Shit head.

 

Placing the car in reverse, Cadman jettisoned out from the parking space. Knowing he should have looked first, before hearing, “Fucking A! Watch where you’re going!” being screamed at him.

 

Cadman did not care. He didn’t bother to stop the vehicle or apologize. He slammed the gear shift into drive and shot forward out of the White House parking lot.

 

“Your team should have been more careful,” President Ford said. “The Senator wants heads to roll.”

 

Whatever.

 

Ford could soothe the Senator’s ruffled feathers, and this would all wash under the bridge, but damn it, men had risked their lives for that whinny son-of-a-bitch!

 

Perhaps the fact this was an election year had something to do with Cadman’s added frustration. Not knowing who would be elected and then ultimately become the new leader of Task Force Ghost always put him in a foul mood.

 

Ford was the third president to have the responsibility to give directives to the task force since it first formed in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson.

 

Johnson had put this group of elite commandos together after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. It granted Johnson the power to use military force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war.

 

Officially Cadman had handpicked the members. President Johnson had handpicked him to lead the best of the best men that would become Task Force Ghost.

 

Cadman had been a Secret Service agent for eight years before Johnson offered him the position to head up the special op. Before that, he had been a twelve-year Marine. With thirty-one years of service to the United States under his belt, he was not worried about a Senator who had been ‘traumatized.

 

But it pissed him off to have the president bitch about it instead of thanking the team for getting all the hostages back safe and sound.

 

Cadman pointed his car in the direction of the mall, intending to pick up a new down-filled vest. There was a sale on today at one of the department stores, and he needed a new one since his one-year-old German shepherd had taken it upon himself to use his last one as a chew toy. Besides, maybe taking some time to look through the clearance racks would help him put this whole thing from his mind and calm him down.

 

Perhaps Ford would lose the election, and the next president would be more appreciative of the men’s efforts.

 

Thinking about who the potential candidates were would only give him indigestion if he were to dwell on it.

 

He figured Ford would probably get the Republican endorsement.

 

However, if that happened, Cadman would not be happy with the choice.

 

Perhaps it was wrong to hope your current boss would be out of a job. Still, Cadman had never been a fan of Ford.

 

However, out of respect for the office of the Presidency, Cadman didn’t question the orders from the person holding the position. Besides, if he was re-elected, there was much to be said for the expression, Better The Devil, you know, then the one you do not. Whenever a new President took over the White House, there was always an adjustment period.

 

As far as Cadman was concerned, the democrats running for their party’s nomination weren’t much better than Ford.

 

The mall came into view, and Cadman pushed thoughts of the election from his mind.

 

No point thinking about something he couldn’t control.

 

He found a parking space opening that was close to the main entrance of the shopping center. At least something was going right for him today.

 

With any luck, he’d find a vest in no time and be on his way home…

 

Damn it.

 

As he was exiting his car, he remembered he promised his mother he would stop by her house today and put up the shelves in her bedroom, he had been putting off for the last three months.

 

He could not have remembered that before leaving his house this morning so he could have grabbed some of his tools he needed on his way out.

 

Knowing his mother would probably disown him if he called and told her he would not come over, again, he vowed he’d rather stop at the hardware store on the way to her place and purchase the items.

 

He was in no mood to drive to his place across town to gather the items first, then backtrack to her house. At least then he could leave the new tools at his mother’s place, just in case some unexpected ‘Honeyboy’ projects pop up down the road.

 

With a resigned sigh, he walked into the mall, hoping to find a down vest on sale that fit his 6 foot, two-hundred-pound frame. It didn’t really have to be a bargain price. He had funds.

 

The government paid him well, but he enjoyed finding good deals.

 

As he was looking through the racks of vests, pulling one out to try on, he heard a voice from behind him say, “Good god, Benson. I thought for sure you never ventured beyond your office or otherworldly activities.”

 

Cadman turned and grinned at the man standing on the other side of the clothing rack.

 

Gary Davidson was one member of the force. Cadman had operatives in several states because it was better to have his men spread out rather than clustered together. Gary was one of the local guys and, when the man was not needed for a mission, he worked as a mechanic at the Last Stop Garage.

 

All the men in the unit had civilian jobs, except Cadman.

 

They kept a low profile and blended with the public.

 

Cadman, when not organizing a mission, spent his weekdays in an office building close to the White house. There was always something illegal going on in the world. It was his job to monitor the situations in case his team needed to step in when the regular military couldn’t.

 

Taking the vest, he’d tried on off, he grabbed another one from the rack and slipping it on, as he told Gary, “I get out of my hole once in a while. Sometimes I frequent a grocery store too.”

 

Laughing, Gary put a hand over his heart and said, “Be still my heart! You mean, you eat?”

 

They bantered back and forth for a few minutes.

 

Cadman found a vest he liked and told Gary, “Nice chatting with you. “I have an appointment.” No need to say the appointment was with his mother.

 

“Sure,” Gary said, and fell into step with him as he began making his way toward the front of the store where the checkout counter was.

 

“By the way, what did your boss say about that job we did for him?”

 

Cadman stopped, turned toward him, and refused to make this guy’s day into a downer.

 

“He was happy as a clam.”

 

Gary grinned ear-to-ear. “That’s great! What did he say about the bird?”

 

“That part he wasn’t pleased about, but those things happen.”

 

No point mentioning Ford was thinking about having the Ghost Team pay for its replacement out of their paychecks over the next ten years.

 

It was difficult to find money to replace something that had been destroyed during a mission by a team that didn’t exist.

 

They were not listed in any government budget under anything relating to the military. Those in charge hid the needed budget for their team under a bill for something marked for some other cause for who knows what.

 

The government loved hiding budgets in legislative bills Congress would pass without batting an eye. No one ever read those bills thoroughly.

 

The men began walking again. As they neared the checkout, Gary grabbed a magazine from the rack and showed it to Benson.

 

“Now, she could take a man’s mind off of his troubles!”

 

Half expecting the person Gary was referring to would be Farrah Fawcett, the woman staring on the new television series Charlie’s Angels as she was pretty and had men throughout the United States lusting over her every time they saw her; it was a shock to see it was not who he had expected.

​

​

End of Excerpt

​

​

​

​

​