Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  Doubtful.

  Shane was a member of Echo Platoon, which consisted of two officers and fourteen enlisted, attached to the SEAL Team Three “Punishers” out of Coronado, California. Echo Platoon had been on standby for ten long, boring days, waiting for some LA Times newspaper reporter to get in close enough to four American hostages being held in Pakistan—the ones who were supposed to be rescued by Shane’s team—in order to plant a GPS tracking device on one of them. Once that happened, the SEALs would have their strike zone, and the mission would be green-lighted. Be nice if the dude got around to doing his job already.

  Slack-jaw civilians.

  Yeah, tonight would probably end up dragging out like all the rest, with him pumping iron in the weight room, then killing time sitting around the fire pit, chowing down on barbeque and shooting the shit with his buddies. Maybe he’d make up a time-travel sci-fi movie, Voyage to the Interwarp Fifth Dimension or something.

  He was just finishing tying off his boots when Chief Isaac “Aloha” Gagailoa stepped inside the barracks. Civilians thought all SEALs were big. A total myth. Most of them were, yeah, well-cut and muscular, but overall they were built wiry for speed and weren’t very tall. Chief Gagailoa was the exception. The Samoan was big as an armored Bradley and as tough to take down.

  Hands planted on his hips, Aloha surveyed the bunks, all hung with ponchos to enclose the sleeping men in darkness, same as Shane’s. Muffled snores broke up the quiet, along with the occasional raised voice drifting over from the other side of the base, where the regular military used daylight hours to work, instead of sleep like the SEALs did while on deployment, when they only worked vampire hours. Here at J-bad, the SEALs had a private, cordoned-off part of the base, where accommodations were simple. A low, rectangular building housed a barracks with bunks, a living area with kitchen, and a small gym. Bare walls inside. No frills. Outside was a fire pit surrounded by mismatched, throwaway couches and chairs. Beyond the fence line was the dusty shithole of Afghanistan, lots of squat buildings, and loose trash.

  Aloha stuck two fingers in his mouth and shrieked out a piercing whistle.

  Heads poked around ponchos, eyes foggy with sleep.

  “Echo Platoon!” the chief yelled. “OPERATION PRIDE is a go. Kit up and double-time it to the pit for an operational briefing.”

  Shane’s immediate neighbor, Sam Tyson, call sign Munster, rolled out of his bunk and sprang to his feet in an effective demo of the serious operator’s ability to wake up in an instant and be ready to go without benefit of caffeine or cold shower.

  “Well, whaddya know,” Munster drawled, “I get to waste bad guys tonight. ’Bout fucking time. I was getting the DTs.” Standing not much more than seven inches over five feet tall, Munster was one of the smallest SEALs…all except for his gargantuan, square-shaped skull.

  One time Shane had been wrestling with Munster, screwing off, and caught a head-butt to the gut. It took about everything Shane had not to show how much it’d fucking hurt. Guy with a head like Sam Tyson’s should’ve been given the call sign “Battering Ram” instead of Munster.

  Shane hoisted on his plated vest. “Guess this means you’re going to have to skip a day of chokin’ the chicken.” One of the drawbacks of being Munster’s direct neighbor was listening to that shit.

  “No way, man.” Munster showed all his teeth in a smile. “I plan a full chrome-dome polish after the op. Killing squirters6 always gives me off-the-chain wood.”

  Shane wrapped a utility belt around his waist and began packing it with ammo and grenades. “Main reason I never sit next to you on an op, Munster.”

  Munster laughed. “I have been known to scare people, my man.” A smirk remained as he jammed a blowout kit in the right thigh pocket of his cargo pants.

  The small medical pouch went in the right thigh pocket of every SEAL, making it easy to find in case of a medical emergency. It contained the basics for treating gunshot trauma: a 4”x4” gauze square with tie straps, a couple of rectangular adhesive bandages, a Vaseline-coated dressing for sucking chest wounds, etcetera, all sealed in waterproof plastic.

  Shane put his own blowout kit into his right thigh pocket, then loaded up his left pocket with an E&E7 kit: pencil flare, waterproof matches, compass, map, and a red-lens flashlight.

  He surveyed the mini armory on his top bunk. Decision time. He had two pistols, the standard-issue Navy SEAL Sig Sauer P226 and the H&K 45C. He grabbed the H&K and holstered it on his utility belt. He’d had the grip shortened so he could draw it quicker. All SEALs owned custom-built weapons. Their in-house gunsmith made modifications to the triggers and grips according to what each individual SEAL wanted, which rocked.

  For rifles, he had four: two M4 assault rifles, one with a 14–inch barrel and one with a 10-inch barrel, and two Heckler & Koch 416s with the same barrel lengths. He chose the 14-inch H&K 416. It had an infrared laser and a removable thermal sight that allowed for more accurate nighttime shooting. Plus, pound for pound, the 416 had the most knockdown power, and when it came to saving four helpless American civilian hostages, he didn’t mess around. Shane, like Munster, was at his best when he was snuffing bad guys.

  What that said about him as a man, he didn’t know, and didn’t give a flying effer.

  Tucking a ballistic helmet with four NVG tubes and an IR strobe under his arm, he tramped out of the bunkhouse with the rest of the enlisted men on his team.

  Lieutenant Gary “X-Ray” Hoffman—best officer Shane had ever worked with; the man knew and saw everything—was already at the rendezvous spot. The pit was not blazing with a fire for the first time in ten days. X-ray was standing with four men dressed in desert-colored flight suits. These were the Special Operations Warfare helicopter pilots who would be transporting—

  Shane slammed his next step down extra hard, his combat boot pumping out sand from around the edges of the sole. What the—? His next step came down even harder, like a car crusher. He hiked his upper lip into a sneer. Well, well…

  When what to my wondering eyes should appear… But an asshole ex-best friend in all his combat gear.

  Chapter Six

  Jaw squared, Shane plowed toward the team’s barbecue pit. He hadn’t seen Jason Vanderby in almost a decade, not since SEAL graduation day, when Jace pulled Shane aside to tell him some convoluted wank about how the Navy was starting a new program where they wanted to man their SPECOPS helicopter squadrons with aviators who’d gone through SOF8 training. And since Jason just pinned on his trident, plus scored off the charts on the pilot entrance exam, the Navy wanted him for the program.

  Whatever. It’d all been a bunch of mouth sewage that amounted to Jason breaking their pact never to bail on each other.

  Shane didn’t give a rat’s ass that Jason had always wanted to be a pilot, but missed his chance back when he applied because there weren’t enough spots in flight school. He and Jason were supposed to be SEALs together.

  We’ll stay in touch, Jason had the balls to say. We don’t have to let things change between us.

  Not according to Shane’s rule book. You walk, you’re out. Not up for debate.

  His ex-girlfriend, Kitty, got the same treatment when Shane returned to their apartment after a training exercise to find her and her shit gone. ’Course by then their relationship was in the crapper, but that didn’t mean he could forgive her for bailing. After she left, he never called, wrote, or texted. Never planned to. He’d deleted her from his mind, too, and never thought about…

  Pisser.

  He wished it. But no.

  Not even.

  He would shove his own balls up his ass before admitting it to anyone, but not a day went by that another piece of his insides didn’t snap off, brittle and broken, over losing Kitty.

  He scowled. Last thing he needed before an op was an emo pity party. Thanks for the memories, Jace.

  Arriving at the pit, Shane propped his hand on the butt of his pistol and aimed an eat-my-sphincter-mucous glare at his former
childhood friend.

  Zero reaction.

  He snorted. Looked like Pretty Boy’s ability to peace out on command was still world class. And, yeah, “pretty” was the right term for Mister Beacon Hill. Jason had ended up with the royal face Shane knew he would, and the years had only boosted it.

  The operational briefing lasted about an hour. Gist was that X-ray and Echo Platoon’s other lieutenant, Carl “Baggie” Bagley, would stay in J-bad to manage the big picture via a shit-ton of technology, while the rest of Echo Platoon flew to an aid station run by an international humanitarian group in northern Pakistan near the Indian border. Two Sierra-class Navy helicopters would each transport a seven-man Chalk of SEALs: one sniper—who would stay on board—and six ground-pounders. The Sierra had a fourteen-man capacity, but two auxiliary fuel tanks would be needed to make the two-and-a-half-hour flight, and the tanks took up the extra space, in addition to hogging the space meant for all but three jump seats. At the aid station, they would meet up with the Navy lieutenant who’d been working with the LA Times reporter to get the GPS tracker planted on one of the hostages. The LT would hand over the strike zone coordinates to the rescue team, plus any additional last-minute intel, then they’d take off again, this time with two Army H-6 Little Birds along as additional covering firepower.

  Wrapping up the brief, X-Ray went over various infil logistics, then assigned the men to their Chalks, putting Aloha in charge of Chalk Two, and Shane in command of Chalk One. Which meant Shane was hitching a ride on Jason’s bird.

  Whatever. He tromped off toward his assigned helicopter. Just do the job and ignore the fucker.

  The steady whomp-whomp of the spinning rotor blades had lulled Shane to sleep. He’d been slouched on the floor of the helo, half dozing during the long ride to Pakistan…but he was wide awake now, his eyelids open to full capacity and staying there, as if they were sewn to his eyebrows. Getting shot at had a way of rousing a man like nothing else could, and he’d almost got his nuts filled with lead at the humanitarian aid station where they’d landed a short time ago.

  The LT had just been giving the rescue team the unhappy intel that more terrorists than expected might be at the enemy compound where the hostages were being held when a Pakistani-Indian TIC9 drew too close to the aid station. As the two enemies shot at each other, bullets flew in. No one on the rescue team got hurt—except for a minor injury to Jason’s copilot—but everyone did get jacked up on adrenaline.

  They were now back in the air, pumped up like they’d all downed a fistful of Benzies, and flying to the strike zone with a different copilot subbing in for Jason’s original. Pus the LT—Kyle “Mikey” Hammond—was along with their group in a Romeo bird, flying ahead to recon the target.

  “One minute,” crackled into Shane’s earpiece.

  Munster, who was stationed at the front of the aircraft near the cockpit, held up a single finger to make sure everyone got the call.

  A focused calm settled over Shane. Intensity radiated off the other men. All of them were experienced operators who’d heard a one-minute call many times before.

  Shane adjusted the sling on his assault rifle and double-confirmed the safety was on. He moved to step forward like the others were doing, but a strap on the back of his plated vest snagged on something behind him.

  “Hey, Farm Boy,” he said to the SEAL on his right, whose freckles and back-of-the-head cowlick earned him relentless ribbing about how he looked like a hayseed. “Unhook me from—”

  Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

  Shane snapped his head toward the shriek coming from the cockpit. Fuck! A missile lock-on alarm!

  The helicopter roller-coastered down into a heavy dip. Shane grappled for a hand-hold. Jason was probably trying to outrun the—

  WHAM!

  The bird did a weird, sideways skid-out, then plummeted like an elevator with its cables cut.

  Shane’s booted feet flew up toward the ceiling, his body slamming into a diver’s half-pike. His knee punched him in the jaw. “Aaar,” he shouted as he flopped around on his hook while around him his buddies were thrown into a paint mixer. Their bodies hit the roof of the helo, then thumped back down to the floor, then whammed up again when the aircraft crash-landed with a metallic CRUNCH that would’ve made a sixteen-wheeler rolling over a VW Beetle sound like no more than a square of tinfoil being fisted into a ball. His buddies fell back down, this time staying…unmoving.

  Eye sockets pulsing, Shane sagged on his hook with his mouth hanging open. Air was making itself scarce in his lungs. He wanted to fall unconscious… Not him—his brain wanted to. There was a dark mudslide half-covering his vision. He blinked hard.

  Steam hissed.

  The cockpit radio wheezed out a few spastic crackles then fizzled into silence.

  Shouting drifted in from outside in a strange, warbled echo. Or maybe his hearing was all hosed up.

  Something stank. A lot of things reeked, actually: gasoline, hydraulic fluid, blood, and…there was a shit-stink. His nostrils pinched. If one of his SEAL buddies Hershey-squirted his pants in the face of death, he was going to forget that forever, and… No. Okay. The sewage odor was coming from the town they’d crashed into.

  He worked saliva back into his mouth while he surveyed the mound of his teammates. He turned his head in a deliberate motion toward the cockpit. Jason was slumped forward in his seat. Shane pressed his lips together. The other pilot was hunched over, too, but all the way over, as if he was napping with his forehead on his knees. Shane didn’t move anymore, but there was a vague urging behind his sternum telling him he should. What did shock feel like? This?

  Fuck this. With a hard lurch forward, he tore the strap on his plated vest free from the snag behind him. The abrupt movement made his temples press in on each other and his knee-punched cheek throb harder. Repositioning his H&K 416, which had flailed into a weird angle across his shoulder during the crash, he stole forward in a crouch to check on the mound of men: Munster, Farm Boy, Moose, Wolverine, Six Pack, Mac, two helo gunners. He took all of their pulses, one by one.

  He sat back on his heels and stared at a bunch of nothing straight ahead. Everyone was dead. Eight good men, all neck-broke.

  His feet slap the city street so hard his thighs shake. His breathing is coming out of him in short, chugging coughs, making him sound like an engine with a clogged fuel injector. He’s torn out of his house and is running through the streets of Boston. For Jason’s. His best friend is the one person in the world who will know what to think and do about this…

  But there hadn’t been anyone in Shane’s life to tell him how to deal in a long time. No one. Not a single fucking soul. He lowered his gaze. Mac was sprawled at his feet, glassy eyes narrowed, as if the last thought to go through his mind had been, Fuck you, Death. Be helpful if Shane knew what to think about that.

  Running footsteps.

  He bolted his head around. Pisser! Incoming. And not nice guys here to help—not this early in the action.

  Lifting off the strap of his H&K 416, he dove belly-down next to the pile of his dead friends, hiding the rifle under his body. He waited, the veins under his left ear pulsing, then through the bare slit of his eyelids, he saw a bearded terrorist appear in the door next to Jace. The T-man10 started rummaging through Jason’s pockets, the whole time yakking to a group of bad guys behind him.

  Four men total in Shane’s line of sight. How many more beyond?

  Did hundreds of extra terrorists get called in, or twenty? That’s what the Navy LT had asked at the aid station briefing…and hadn’t known the answer. Guessing, Shane would say a fuck-ton of squirters were in the compound. Because it sounded like a sold-out crowd of Pats fans at Gillette Stadium out there.

  He tightened his grip on his H&K, one heartbeat coming right on top of another. He was trained from the balls up to be a killing machine, but a hundred terrorists were a hundred terrorists. And he was one man.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  Shane flashed his eyes all the
way open.

  Holy Jesus!

  Jason had just killed all the bad guys fucking with him. He was sitting upright now, a Sig Sauer in his hand, wisps of smoke threading from the snout like gray shoestrings. No more squirters standing in the doorway.

  Shane rocked onto his knees and kept going, all the way up to a jump seat, where he ass-planted himself down hard, jolting his body. What surprised him more? That Jace was alive, or that the Beacon Hill aristocrat just aced three men?

  Up ahead in the cockpit, Jason put his hand on the shoulder of his substitute copilot. He tugged on the guy. Nothing happened. No movement.

  Shane gripped his assault rifle between his thighs. That makes nine good men dead.

  With a weary motion, Jace shoved his flight helmet off, then sat in place for a long moment—too long, considering how screwed to the hilt they were right now. He got his shit in a sock at last and turned to glance back into the cabin.

  Shane went rigid as their eyes met.

  Chapter Seven

  Shane couldn’t bring himself to glare at Jason, not with an annoying—and astonishing—goose-spray of relief running along his flesh over Jason not being a smoking hole: today’s traitor, yesterday’s best friend. He blank-stared him instead.

  As expected, Jason didn’t rile over Shane’s lack of fraternity-brah welcome-back-from-the-dead-’n-shit handshake.