Six

by Charles W. Sasser

  Books by Charles W. Sasser

  Nonfiction

  The Walking Dead (w/Craig Roberts)

  Homicide!

  Always a Warrior

  In Cold Blood: Oklahoma’s Most Notorious Murders

  First SEAL (w/Roy Boehm)

  Fire Cops (w/Michael Sasser)

  Doc: Platoon Medic (w/Daniel E. Evans)

  Raider

  Magic Steps to Writing Success

  Crosshairs on The Kill Zone (w/Craig Roberts)

  Going Bonkers: The Wacky World of Cultural Madness

  The Shoebox: Letters for The Seasons (w/Nancy Shoemaker)

  Devoted to Fishing: Devotionals for Fishermen

  The Sniper Anthology

  Back in The Fight (w/Joe Kapacziewski)

  The Night Fighter (w/Captain William Hamilton)

  One Shot/One Kill (w/Craig Roberts)

  Shoot to Kill

  Last American Heroes (w/Michael Sasser)

  Smoke Jumpers

  At Large

  Arctic Homestead (w/Norma Cobb)

  Taking Fire (w/Ron Alexander)

  Encyclopedia of Navy SEALs

  Hill 488 (w/Ray Hildreth)

  Patton’s Panthers

  God in the Foxhole

  None Left Behind

  Predator (w/Matt Martin)

  Two Fronts, One war

  Blood in The Hills (w/Bob Maras)

  Fiction

  No Gentle Streets

  Operation No Man’s Land (as Mike Martell)

  Detachment Delta: Punitive Strike

  Detachment Delta: Operation Iron Weed

  Detachment Delta: Operation Cold Dawn

  OSS Commando: Final Option

  No Longer Lost

  The Return

  Sanctuary

  Shadow Mountain

  The 100th Kill

  Liberty City

  Detachment Delta: Operation Deep Steel

  Detachment Delta: Operation Aces Wild

  Dark Planet

  OSS Commando: Hitler’s A-Bomb

  War Chaser

  A Thousand Years of Darkness

  The Foreworld Saga: Bloodaxe

  Six: Blood Brothers

  SIX: Blood Brothers (an A+E StudiosTM production) was adapted from the teleplays written by:

  Episode 101: David Broyles & William Broyles

  Episode 102: David Broyles

  Episode 103: Bruce C. McKenna

  Episode 104: Alfredo Barrios Jr.

  SIX: Blood Brothers © 2017 A&E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  HISTORY, the “H” logo, A+E Studios and SIX are trademarks of A&E Television, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

  Cover image courtesy of A&E Television Networks, LLC

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2208-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2209-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  To the brave men and women of US Special Operations

  Chapter One

  Jalalabad Military Airbase, Afghanistan

  Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Richard “Rip” Taggart had gone over the brink too many times—seven deployments, or was it eight? Into Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa … If you were at the Command—US Navy SEAL Team Six—there was always a war, and always a call for America’s elite counterterrorism unit in a world on its way to Hell.

  The red rim of the sun struggled to climb above the distant Hindu Kush and shine on Forward Operating Base Fenty at the military airport in Jalalabad. Down on the city’s outskirts, where the Kabul and Kunar rivers junctioned, harsh winds out of the fires of Hades hissed off the Laghman Valley, rattled old tin cans, and flapped laundry hung out on wash day. Winds that had blown on the camel caravans of the old Silk Road centuries ago tugged at Rip’s desert cammies and popped the flaps of military GP medium tents like distant rifle shots.

  Taggart’s eyes stood out in a sharp face parched by the desert sun. They were hard and faded to match the flint of the Afghan sand. He was a lean and wiry man, like a ferret or a bearcat, with the determined bearing of an epic hero. No expression crossed his face or entered eyes that reflected comets of white phosphorous and streams of fire from A-10 fast movers working out on some enemy target in the distant mountains near the Khost-Gardez Pass into Pakistan. The scene of chaos and violence was glorious in an all-too-tragic sort of way. It was a familiar sight when men were pissed off at each other and God was pissed off at everybody.

  Explosions rumbled like distant thunder. Smoke clouds, tinged pink by the new sun, capped the target area.

  Fuck ’em all and let God sort ’em out.

  Taggart sucked in a ragged breath, the palm of his hand resting on the butt of the H&K .45 holstered on his hip. Nobody at the airport went unarmed, no matter that several thousand US troops—Rangers, 10th Mountain, Army Special Forces, Air Force, Afghan soldiers, CIA, members of the International Security Assistance, a handful of Navy SEALs—operated against the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of Jalalabad. In Afghanistan, you were always behind enemy lines.

  A woman’s voice, incongruous above the muted din of distant battle, penetrated Taggart’s haze. He recognized it as that of Lena Graves coming from the nearest GP tent. When she and Joe “Bear” Graves weren’t talking on Skype, they were writing each other letters.

  “I told Bob—you know, the youth minister?” Lena was saying through the technological marvel of Skype. “I told him to have the kids’ choir sing in the fellowship hall. We sold a hundred and fifty cupcakes in an hour.”

  “That good?” Graves’s heavy voice responded.

  “It’s great. A hundred was the best we’ve ever done.”

  Taggart referred to the ready availability of communications with home as “domesticating the battlefield.” He turned suddenly and strode purposefully toward the cluster of tents forted behind a maze of concrete HESCO barriers and concertina wire. He went past the team tent, pushed aside the flaps of the joint operations center and entered.

  Inside the “team room” tent, the other members of what had been designated Foxtrot Team of White Squadron for tactical control purposes enjoyed downtime with a mixture of familiar banter, grabass, and scuttlebutt. Senior Chief Taggart was the leader, the “team daddy.” Their team had been together a long time and formed bonds closer than brothers. When your life depended on someone, you knew him to his core. You knew who he really was, warts and farts and bad breath, who his wife and kids were, the name of his first hometown love, the make of his car, the date of his birth …

  Four members of the team—Graves; Ricky “Buddha” O
rtiz; Alex Caulder; and Armin “Fishbait” Khan, all in their thirties—hung out in the tent in various stages of undress and bodily hygiene, a condition accepted in combat zones as “relaxed grooming standards.”

  These four along with Team Leader Taggart and Beauregard Jefferson Davis “Buck” Buckley, currently the FNG—fucking new guy—composed “the team.”

  Naval Special Warfare (NSW) was a remarkably small, elite force of less than 2,500 active duty shooters, along with about 600 SWCC (Special Warfare Combatant–Crew) whose purpose was to clandestinely deliver SEALs on-target into dangerous, denied areas and exfil them again. The force consisted of eight SEAL teams, not including SEAL Team Six. Odd-numbered teams worked on the West Coast out of Coronado, California, and were responsible for ops in that hemisphere; even numbers operated out of Little Creek, Virginia, and took missions in that respective hemisphere.

  A team commanded by a navy commander consisted of a headquarters element and eight operational sixteen-man platoons. Platoons further broke down into eight-man squads or four-man fire teams.

  SEAL Team Six, or Navy Special Warfare Development Group as it was officially known, was completely independent of the others and dedicated exclusively to counterterrorist activity. It functioned pretty much on its own in whatever configuration a mission demanded. SEALs were a “force multiplier” in Pentagon-ese. Insert a half-dozen SEAL Sixes into a clandestine environment and they brought down more fire and brimstone on the enemy than a full company of conventional regulars. Taliban hajjis swore the mountains of Afghanistan were alive with the sound of SEALs.

  While Taggart was the daddy who called the shots for Foxtrot, Bear Graves was his second. Two inches over six feet, lean and mean, he was the team’s responsible older brother, the core of implacability and inner quiet. When he moved, it was like he was coiling or uncoiling, a rattlesnake always ready for action.

  Now bare-chested and barefooted, Graves sat on a canvas camp stool pulled up in front of the computer Skyping Lena while he disassembled and cleaned his H&K416 carbine. Lena looked out at him from the screen. Ortiz, the team’s irrepressible younger brother thought she was one “beautiful mujer rubia.” She was lithe with bright blonde hair that gave her the air of a romantic heroine.

  “What was Pastor Adams’s sermon about?” Graves asked her.

  She seemed to peer into the tent, taking into account her husband’s other family, his brothers.

  “‘Greater love hath no man than this,’” she quoted from scripture, “‘that he lay down his life for his friends.’”

  Bear glanced up. “John, chapter 15, verse 13.”

  “Right.”

  She hesitated. A mysterious smile touched her lips, like a secret was trying to break free. Her blue eyes seemed to glow from some inner excitement. She stood up on her end of the camera. She wore jeans and a shirt. The camera went wide angle to reveal the Graves’s living room back in Virginia Beach, a look into “the world” and a universe away from Bear’s hot, Spartan surroundings.

  “Joe, those names we were talking about?”

  Graves nodded as he focused on his carbine, his hands moving automatically to reassemble it. He slid the bolt open, inspected with his thumb the chamber for excess oil, rammed the bolt back home, and released trigger tension. When he looked up again, Lena held up a sonogram that filled the screen.

  “Well,” she said, drawing out the moment. “Well, Joe, meet Sarah.”

  Caught by surprise, it took him a moment to make the connection. He stared at the embryo image of “Sarah.” A daughter! His swarthy face slowly cracked into a huge grin. He sprang to his feet, waving his rifle in his exuberance. This would be their first. They had been trying to get Lena pregnant for several years.

  “Hey, everybody! It’s a girl! We’re having a little girl!”

  Alex Caulder was kicked back in a ragged incliner playing Xbox on a huge, flat-screen TV while Khan, an Afghan American from New England stood over him, watching with mild interest. Both switched their eyes toward the screen and Bear’s prospective daughter.

  “Happy for you, Bear,” Caulder drawled. He was a sharp, angular eccentric with a sarcastic sense of humor. “Me, I’d give mine back if I could.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Buddha Ortiz scolded mildly. “Children. That’s what it’s all about.”

  “Oh, no?” Caulder shot back. “I mean it.” But he grinned and winked to show he might be bullshitting.

  Buddha was tall and lanky, dark-haired, with a long handsome nose and the brooding good looks of a Latin Jimmy Dean from the old Turner Classic Movies. While he in no way resembled his namesake, he had the Buddha’s patience as he sat cross-legged on the tent’s plywood floor brewing yerba maté, a long, involved process involving gourds and a pestle. His bunk area displayed photos of his wife Jackie and their two kids, Anabel and Ricky Jr.

  Bear Graves touched the screen with his fingertips. Lena touched it back from halfway around the globe.

  “I’ve got to go. I—” he said, choking up with wonder and love.

  The sonogram came up once more before the screen went black.

  “Wait a sec, Bear,” Caulder said with pretend seriousness, playing his unruly Dennis the Menace role. “How long you been over here? You sure that kid’s yours?”

  Graves ignored him, not willing to give up the moment. “We’re naming her Sarah,” he said.

  “From the Bible. Abraham’s wife.”

  Bear rolled his eyes. “Here it comes—”

  “Yeah. Abraham was a player, man. Dude had like five wives. My man Abe was all about hitting it.”

  “You’re going to Hell, you know that?”

  Caulder shrugged and grinned. “Metaphorically, right? Because we know that down below us is just a ball of spinning rock and hot magma. And, anyway, with all we’ve seen go down over here, hard to imagine your God coming up with anything worse.”

  Bear continued to stare at the black screen, fascinated by the news he had just received. “God made children and wives,” he said. “That’s good enough for me.”

  He shook his head in wonder, letting the sweet name play off his tongue. “Sarah. Sarah. My daughter!”

  “Sarah’s a fine name,” Buddha agreed. “Sarita. Sounds good in Spanish too. You’ll like being a father, Bear. Gives you ballast. Keeps you upright through the storm.”

  Caulder wasn’t ready to give up poking. “Says the dude who takes two days to make tea out of dried grass… .”

  “It’s not tea, pendejo. It’s maté, and it’s got twenty-four vitamins and minerals, fifteen amino acids, and a shitload of antioxidants.”

  “Yeah. Red Bull for taco heads.”

  “It’s South American. You don’t know shit.”

  Caulder returned to his Xbox, musing, “I did know a Sarah back in Coronado. Best pole dancer I ever saw.”

  Ortiz and Fishbait both shot him a What the fuck’s wrong with you? look.

  “What?” Caulder mimed, feigning innocence.

  The tent flap suddenly blew open to reveal Buck Buckley. Dark wavy hair and the cynical twist of his lips gave him the appearance of some hipster Miami Vice undercover cop.

  “Rip wants us,” he announced. “In the JOC. Now.”

  That ended the banter. Bear slung his rifle across his back, Buddha doused his maté flame, Fishbait looked around for his weapon, and Caulder shrugged indifferently. Buck turned and they followed him out of the tent. This could mean only one thing. Back into the breach, Horatio.

  Barry Sloane as Joe “Bear” Graves

  Juan Pablo Raba as Ricky “Buddha” Ortiz

  Kyle Schmid as Alex Caulder

  Jaylen Moore as Armin “Fishbait” Khan

  Donny Boaz as Beauregard “Buck” Buckley

  Edwin Hodge as Robert Chase

  Walton Goggins as Richard “Rip” Taggart

  Dominic Adams as Michael Nasry

  Chapter Two

  Jalalabad Military Airbase, Afghanistan

  A n
umber of tent cities dotted the airfield. With impromptu names like Snake Town or Sandy City, they quartered the various military units in wooden barracks and a few modern buildings mostly constructed of mud or concrete. SEALs, though, homesteaded in their own little corner of the airfield due to the secrecy of their missions. Civil Air had been driven completely off the airport to allow the military to move in shortly after 9/11 when President George W. Bush sent over Special Operations Forces to chase down Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

  Only a few steps separated the team tent from the JOC. Bear Graves paused between the two in the gentle morning sunlight while the others continued. His mind remained on Lena and the news about Sarah. He couldn’t get over it—a daughter, his daughter.

  He gazed out over the city that sat about five klicks away. It was modern in some ways, ancient in others, as brown and gray and tan as the rest of this country. A lungful of hot air brought with it the distinctive smells of sand and hot tarmac, of wind off the mountains and the fragrance of distant barnyards. Air assets working over the target in the mountains earlier had pulled out, leaving only an oily cloud hovering on the horizon.

  Afghanistan had been crossed, captured, destroyed, and rebuilt numerous times in its long brutal history, situated as it was at the crossroads of conflict. One of the world’s least-developed countries and completely landlocked, it shares borders with Pakistan on the east and north, with Iran on the west, three former Soviet republics on the north, and China off a little gooseneck in the far northeast.

  The Soviets in 1979 had been the country’s most recent invader. After they withdrew with their tails tucked between their legs, and after 9/11, the United States moved in to chase al-Qaeda terrorists and support the Mujahideen of the Northern Alliance in their civil war against the Taliban.

  The basic way of life in Afghanistan had changed little in hundreds of years. Bear hadn’t known many really poor people back home, at least not like this. Everywhere were little dark-skinned kids in baggy cotton pants, men and women wearing dirty robes, men clad in turbans and women in short shawls. Many of them looked sullen and resentful at being forced to accept war and soldiers as the way life was.