Rex Dalton Thrillers: Books 1-3 (The Rex Dalton Series Boxset Book 1)

by JC Ryan

  He was so absorbed in the history of Persia, modern-day Iran, that he didn’t hear the barracks door open and close. He didn’t even hear the precise steps of a pair of lieutenants approaching. But when two sets of olive-green uniformed legs appeared in his peripheral vision, he became alert. His eyes traveled up, noting obvious uniform jackets, a few ribbons over the pockets, and the epaulets with one gold bar on each man’s shoulders. The faces were carefully neutral, and the heads topped with green berets with red-bordered black shields and the rank badge in the shield.

  What the hell is the Army doing here?

  Deciding to bluff off the infraction, Rex put a smile on his face. “Can I help you, officers?” he said, swinging his legs over the opposite side of the bed from the lieutenants, who were too close for him to get up on the side where they were standing. When he’d achieved a semblance of attention, he snapped off a salute.

  “Lance Corporal Rex Dalton, I presume?” said one of the officers, after returning the salute.

  “Sir, yes sir!” he answered, wincing inside when it came out sounding sarcastic. He hadn’t meant it that way.

  “Cpl. Dalton, you are hereby ordered to report to Ft. Bragg, NC, for Delta Force selection testing. You may accompany us to your transport.”

  Forgetting himself in the shock of the moment, he stammered, “Wh…what?”

  “You will address us properly, Cpl. Dalton. And maybe we won’t gig you for finding you on your rack.”

  “Yes, sir! Excuse me, sir, but what the hell? I’m a Marine, sir.”

  “You were a Marine, Boot. And if you fail the selection process, you’ll be cannon fodder again. From this moment you’re Army, boy. We’re going to try and make a real soldier out of you.”

  Until he heard that, Rex had been thinking this was some kind of joke, maybe a prank played by DI Stringer, who would no longer have the power to torment him. Now, realizing the surreal had become his new norm, Rex said, “Yes, sir! Sorry, sir.” He bent to pick up his duffel and followed the Army officers out of the barracks. He hoped he’d get an explanation soon. A little over four hours later, he was dressed in the unfamiliar fatigues of an Army enlisted man, standing in front of the base commander. He’d been given to understand this was a rare privilege.

  “Cpl. Dalton, I understand you were resistant to the idea of joining Delta Force.” The colonel fell silent and let the weight of that silence force Rex to speak.

  “Not resistant, sir. Confused.”

  “In that case, perhaps we owe you an explanation. You may be aware that we consider applications from other branches of military service. Therefore, the fact that you were a Marine is immaterial. Any other questions?”

  “Sir, yes sir.”

  “Spit it out. I don’t have all night.”

  “Sir, while it is true I’ve had my eye on Special Forces, it’s my understanding that the minimum rank for consideration is E-4. I’m only E-3, and that’s only as of today, sir. It’s also my understanding that a candidate must have some experience under his belt. I believe it was three years for MARSOC. I’m not familiar with the requirements for Delta Force, sir. How is it that I’m qualified?”

  “Special circumstances. Any other questions?”

  “No, sir. Thank you, sir. Apologies, sir. One last thing, if I may. I understand the candidate must be a volunteer, sir.”

  “You’re here. That means you’ve volunteered, soldier. Now, if you’re through looking a gift horse in the mouth, you’re dismissed. Your tests begin tomorrow morning at o-six hundred.”

  Rex saluted and was about to make an about turn when the commander said. “Dalton, you’re here on my invitation. I had to kick down doors to get the rules bent for you. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “No sir. I won’t, sir.” He saluted again, made an about turn and marched out the office.

  Rex still didn’t understand what had happened, but he knew one thing. His entry to the mission he’d joined for – targeting terrorists – had just been given a three-year head start. He had no doubt he could pass the selection process. Someone, somewhere, had picked him, and he had a feeling it wasn’t base command. He didn’t know why, but what difference would it make which uniform he wore when he shot the bastards who killed his family?

  ***

  THE INITIAL, PHYSICAL fitness evaluations of the selection process started out as a piece of cake. Marine basic had been harder. But it soon escalated way beyond that. Over the first couple of weeks of testing, the rucksacks grew heavier, the hikes grew longer and had to be navigated over rough terrain. By the end of the second week, half the candidates had dropped out, unable to complete the tests in the allotted time, unable to do it with the weight they were required to carry in the muggy heat.

  There was no shame in it. The tests were designed to narrow the field to those with almost super-human strength. On average, only about ten percent made it through the selection process. Rex reveled in the challenge. He’d been honed by his boot camp experience into a lean, strong, mentally tough Marine. Now he was a leaner, tougher, Delta Force candidate.

  He learned to take as much pride in serving the Army as he had in serving the Marines. Gradually, he made the mental switch that some former Marines couldn’t make ten, twenty, even thirty years after their service was done. After all, their creed was, once a Marine always a Marine. Rex had a different view. He would wear a pink uniform and florescent yellow beret with polka dots on it, as long as it allowed him to shoot the shit out of terrorists.

  The culmination of the physical tests was a forty-mile march over the roughest terrain yet with a forty-five-pound rucksack. The candidates knew it was timed, but they didn’t know how much time they had. They just knew to get to the destination by the fastest route and best effort possible. Another half of the candidates would probably fail this test. Rex and the others were lined up as if for a one-mile race when the instructor yelled Go! The others took off. Rex didn’t.

  He studied the map and had calculated the best combination of terrain and speed he could discern when the instructor came over and asked sarcastically if he planned to participate. Rex had just marked his topographical map. He looked up. “Absolutely,” he said, grinning. He stood and swung the rucksack to his back, adjusted it, then took off like a shot at an oblique angle to the route most of the others had taken.

  If he’d looked back, he would have seen the instructor grinning, and if he could have heard him, he would have heard him saying to one of the others, “At least one of them has more brains than brawn.”

  The destination was not in the direction Rex had taken, but he was confident he’d reach it first. The top reasons for failing at this point would be lack of stamina or endurance, failure to navigate efficiently, failure to pace oneself, and injury. The latter might come as often from improper preparation as from falls or other accidents. Mental toughness was as important as physical.

  Rex had traced a route through the hills and valleys of North Carolina that he reckoned would be about fifty-five miles, rather than the forty-five prescribed. However, he would be able to maintain a steadier pace because the gains in altitude would be less steep. He’d also avoid injury by not having to rush down steep areas. If he’d miscalculated, he’d come in dead last. But he was confident he hadn’t miscalculated. He intended to be at the destination in just over eight hours. It gave him no time to stop and eat, but he’d prepared for that as well, by packing foods he could eat as he jogged at an easy six-mile per hour pace for most of his route.

  At the nine-hour mark, the instructor showed up in a Humvee at the destination. He found Rex at the checkpoint, waiting for him. “What did you do, Dalton, charter a chopper?”

  “No, Sergeant, I just found a quicker, more efficient, route.” At the sergeant’s insistence, Rex showed him the route he’d taken. Half an hour later, the first two of the remaining men staggered into the clearing, more than an hour after Rex had arrived. Their faces clearly showed their astonishment at finding Rex there with
the instructor. Fifteen minutes after that, time was up. Twenty-five men had made it, leaving eighteen to go home at the halfway point.

  Next came the psychological evaluations. The standardized tests weeded out a few more candidates but were mostly obvious. Anyone who’d ever applied to a college or for a job would have recognized the Briggs-Myers personality test, and maybe a few others. A clever person who was determined enough could ace whatever he wanted the test to reveal.

  After that, however, each candidate faced an interview board consisting of Delta Force instructors, unit psychologists, and the Delta Force Commander. The interview began with standard questions for everyone, but as the answers revealed more about each candidate, they became more personal, designed to mentally exhaust the candidate. Mental exhaustion brought their guards down and worked as well as any so-called truth serum to get at the true state of a candidate’s mental health. It cut even more candidates.

  Rex was reminded of his psych evaluation prior to enlisting in the Marines when the questions turned to his feelings about the events of March 11th, 2004. His mental state had undergone a lot of change by then, but he had never let go of the strong desire to find and punish those responsible. He was frank about it, and about the fact that it had led to his enlistment.

  “Cpl. Dalton, do you have any doubt about your ability to follow command should you encounter the person ultimately responsible for your parents’ deaths?”

  “Sir?”

  “In a word, would you be able to bring this person to your superiors if commanded to do so, or would you take your revenge?”

  “Permission to ask a question, sir?” Rex answered.

  “Granted.”

  “What would happen to such a terrorist, if I brought him in unharmed?”

  The Commander answered. “He would probably be taken to Gitmo for questioning.”

  “Then I would be able to bring him in unharmed, yes, sir. Subject, of course, to any injury he incurred while I captured him.” Rex kept his eyes on the Commander and his expression neutral.

  “And what makes you believe that, Corporal?”

  “From what I’ve heard, sir, Gitmo would make a more lasting impression on him than a quick and easy death. I would want that for him. A lasting impression.” Rex wasn’t aware that his face showed a feral delight in whatever torture the terrorist would receive at Guantanamo.

  “Would you be willing to inflict that lasting impression on him yourself?” the Commander asked.

  “If so ordered, sir, yes sir.”

  Rex was dismissed after that session, but there were others to come. He was questioned as to his language talent, his grasp of Middle Eastern history, his understanding of world religion, and more. He had no idea whether his answers were correct, or if there were any correct answers. He didn’t try to hide anything. If they didn’t want a dedicated hunter of terrorists, then he’d find an outfit that did. But in the end, he was informed he’d been selected along with nine others, and six months of intensive training – the Operator Training Course (OTC) would be his next assignment.

  Chapter Ten

  Ft. Bragg, NC June – November 2006

  DELTA FORCE TRAINING was both more of the same and a whole new world. Rex expected to be singled out, since he was the only recruit, as far as he knew, who didn’t have years of combat experience and other special training. The members of his squadron and team accepted him without question, however. Other than the usual smack-talk and good-natured jostling that had bound men together in tough and dangerous jobs since time immemorial, there was no apparent resentment.

  Nevertheless, he did have some gaps in his training, and for these, he was fast-tracked to fill them. Each day started with PT, with which he was familiar, but in Delta Force it was a much more intense version of it. Push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, inverted crawling, a two-mile run, a swim, wall climbing, weightlifting, and MMA-style sparring. At the latter, of course, he earned the respect, and of course, more smack-talk from his fellow trainees.

  After PT, many of the trainees went to language classes before lunch and advanced physical training in conditions that they’d encounter during deployment. Survival in a hostile country often involved the ability to blend with the native population. Rex improved his Standard Arabic and began learning Farsi. His peculiar linguistic talent made it clear that his time would be better spent learning to operate communications equipment, prepare fighting positions, and constructing barriers.

  After mastering those, he was sent to Ft. Benning for airborne training. It was here he discovered he still had the capacity to experience sheer joy. Diving headfirst out of a helicopter, or airplane, all in perfectly flying condition, they often joked, the rush of that split-second of terror, second-guessing whether he’d packed his parachute correctly before it opened, and floating with a birds-eye view of the land below made him laugh out loud. He’d land with an ear-to-ear grin and run to do it all again. For the first time since that fateful day in March 2004, he regained a semblance of the sense of humor he’d been famous for as a kid.

  Four weeks later, he returned to Ft. Bragg a changed man. His dedication to hunting down and killing those responsible for his parents’ and siblings’ deaths had not waned. But in the meanwhile, he was having the time of his life. By then, however, the trainees he’d started with had either washed out or completed training. A new batch had rotated in, and he started with them on the individual skills phase.

  Forty days of land navigation, cross-country map exercises, and small unit tactics honed those skills. After that, individuals in the squadron were separated for Military Operational Specialty training. Rex felt as if he’d come full circle. This was where he’d been plucked out of the Marines, but Special Forces MOS training was different – advanced. Rex had known as soon as Delta Force tapped him that his language skills would dictate his MOS. His language classes accelerated, and he was trained in intelligence gathering, hacking and disrupting unfriendly signals traffic, and missions planning where intelligence was a precondition to going after a human target.

  After the sixty-five days of specialist training, he and his fellow trainees were gathered together again for thirty-eight days of special operations, direct action, isolations, air operations, and unconventional warfare classes. For Rex, though it was the most strenuous physical training he’d received since joining the military, requiring the greatest mental toughness he’d had to muster, it was all great fun.

  Even the live-fire hostage rescue drills, where he and the members of his troop took turns being the hostage, provided a rush. In part, it was a test of their mental toughness, a sphincter-tightening version of a trust exercise. In this version, you could actually be killed. There was no comfort in the assurance that if they were killed by a friend, the friend would scrub out of the program.

  The entire time, recruits scrubbed out at regular intervals during each phase of the program. Mostly because of the inability to motivate themselves. Rex didn’t have that problem at all. He had enough confidence in his abilities to know when he’d done well. He didn’t need feedback to tell him, and he didn’t need praise or abuse to motivate him. His inspiration was a shining light in his mind whenever he closed his eyes, except when it was the horribly burned visage of his baby sister. That was an entirely different kind of motivation. Every phase of training, every skill he learned, every day of misery and exhilaration, got him one day closer to his goal: to kill the bastards who’d done it.

  Rex completed his Delta Force training and his squadron was ‘on deck’, meaning they’d be the next to deploy on a new mission. He was ready to kick some bad guy’s asses and hoping his troop would be the one to get the call up.

  Then disaster struck.

  Once again, he found himself in the colonel’s office, accompanied by his squadron’s CO. This time, the faces were grim. The colonel said, “Dalton, you’re finished. You aren’t the type of person we want in the Unit. You’ve got thirty minutes to pack and get off the base.”
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  Stunned, Rex stammered, “S...sir? I don’t understand. Where did I fail, sir?” Instead of an answer, he got stony gazes from his CO and the colonel. He tried again. “May I apply again, after I’ve had some combat experience?”

  The colonel remained stony. His CO looked at his watch and said, “You’ve now got twenty-nine minutes before your presence on this base will be illegal. The MPs will be here to escort you off the base or put your ass in the stockade. The choice is yours. And you won’t be getting any combat experience. The Marines don’t want you back.”

  Rex had turned twenty-five the week before.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fayetteville, NC, December 7, 2006

  REX SAT MOROSELY nursing a beer at the Hideaway Lounge, five miles outside the gates to Ft. Bragg. The change in his circumstances was both stunning and brutal. Given a ride to the gates by the MPs, after being kicked off base, he’d been forced to hike the five miles to town, where he got a seedy motel room with the cash in his pocket, his final pay. The money, or lack thereof didn’t bother him. He had plenty in the bank, and that didn’t bother him either. The bother was the emptiness which besieged his soul.

  For months after his family died he was a directionless, self-pitying drunkard. Then he got a purpose, the Marines, revenge. Then it got even better. Delta Force - he was going to be a specialist avenger. And now, suddenly, there was nothing. No gun, no revenge, no honor, only disgrace. He was back on his way to become a directionless, self-pitying drunkard again.

  Yet, this time, deep inside him there was something urging him to look for an answer.

  The name of the bar was what had attracted him to it. It was exactly what he wanted to do – hide away. If he saw one of his former teammates, he didn’t know what he’d do. Slink away in shame? He didn’t even know what he’d done to get kicked out. Tough it out? He was no longer the only guy in the room with close-combat skills. In his inebriated state, some of his teammates could kick his ass. So, the Hideaway it was.