by Dalton Fury
Kolt placed the tip of his blade on an area atthe outskirts of town. “The source says al-Baghdadi is spending one night at this house. Your normal bodyguards are in play.”
“Who is the source, boss?”
Kolt looked up, it was his master breacher, Master Sergeant Pete “Digger” Chambliss, asking.
“0602.” Slapshot answered before Kolt could.
“That fucker?” Digger said locking eyes with Slapshot. “How many times has he been right in the past year?”
Apprehension about the accuracy of Source 0602’s information was understandable given his track record. Kolt realized he probably wasn’t the human intelligence asset Digger wanted to bet his only good leg on.
“That’s what we’ve been told, anyway,” Kolt added. “Our contact is a new player—new to me, anyway. Lauren Gellar.”
Slapshot let out an exaggerated wolf whistle, which Kolt ignored. “We have to grab Baghdadi tonight or he is off the radar.”
Killing Baghdadi—blowing up the house with a Hellfire missile launched from a Reaper drone—would accomplish little in the grand scheme of things. That wasn’t lost on Kolt’s men and he didn’t need to explain it. They knew damn well someone else would take his place and the modest monetary hit would be absorbed.
Kolt dragged the sharp point of his knife a foot to the right and very consciously with a straight face moved on to the next bullet point. “Gellar is at a Kurd compound with the QRF, sixty-five miles north, in Al Hasakah. We’ve got a pair of 60s full of First batt Rangers and a Dark Horse. That’s our ride home.”
As if it was an afterthought, he added, “Hawk is the LNO this time out.”
Kolt could not help but notice the general lack of enthusiasm among the team as he outlined the quick reaction force assets. They obviously weren’t impressed. He wondered if it was because the Quick Reaction Force was pretty weak, or because Cindy “Hawk” Bird was the liaison officer.
Hawk had recently become the first female to be knighted with full operational status in Delta. She knew her shit for sure, proven it many times, and deserved the job as much as any other operator, but there were still some growing pains to get over inside the building, even inside the squadron. “We’re lucky to get that. Short notice for everyone.”
And then he added in a voice that invited zero discussion. “Hawk can handle it.”
Nobody replied, not that Kolt could hear anyway, and he moved on.
“We take al-Baghdadi alive, we leverage his knowledge of ISIS finances, and—” Kolt stopped midsentence as a helmeted Air Force load master grabbed Slapshot’s shoulder and leaned close to shout into his ear. He couldn’t hear what was said but when Slapshot simply nodded and looked at his watch, Kolt continued. “We get in, dominate, eliminate the threats, grab the man of the hour, send him on his way, and then beat feet to the pick-up zone.”
The option of choppering in and touching down in the courtyard like Seal Team 6 had done to scratch bin Laden in Pakistan was shit-canned early. Unlike sleepy Abbottabad, Deir Ezzor was a free-fire zone, and even a low-noise modified MH-60 would be a shit magnet.
Neither the intel analysts nor 0602 could confirm specific outlying pockets of locals which killed an offset infil option—shuttling by helicopter to a spot a few miles out in the desert and walking in under cover of darkness. And getting in was always easier than getting out, particularly when the mission included dragging along an uncooperative asshole—one HVI, or High Value Individual with the potential to bring down ISIS. Al-Baghdadi wasn’t likely to submit meekly to an hour-long march out into the wilderness. They could drug him and drag him, but even with the ISIS moneyman out cold and submissive, every moment they spent in the open multiplied the risk, and if their precious cargo caught a stray round in an unexpected firefight, it would all be for nothing.
Kolt had decided to go with a less predictable option, something not so obvious to the bad guys, which was why the MC-130H turboprop’s mission to navigate precisely over the postage stamp–sized drop zone—center mass of the objective—and drop them from thirteen thousand feet, was only half their performance.
“Digger, you’re in charge of the STARS.”
“Oh, I see,” Digger shot back. “Make the guy with one leg hump two big-ass balloons.”
Digger was currently one leg short of a pair, owing to a close encounter with a landmine in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. For most, an injury like that would have meant the end of an active duty military career, but like the hero of some inspirational made-for-TV movie, “Digger” Chambliss had overcome his disability. Equipped with a state-of-the-art titanium prosthesis below his left knee, he had not only rehabbed himself back to combat readiness, but also tried out for and survived Delta selection—the first, and as far as Kolt knew, only amputee ever to do so.
“I thought that bionic leg of yours gave you superpowers,” Slapshot put in.
Kolt knew Digger was more than capable of accomplishing the task, but he was also right to point out the potential problem with Kolt’s hastily improvised extraction plan, given that the method to quickly and safely render al-Baghdadi out of Syria was anything but normal shit.
“Good point, Digger,” Kolt said. “Cross load one of them to someone else.”
“Thirty minutes out,” Slapshot announced while giving the standard jumpmaster hand signal of rapidly flashing his ten fingers open and closed three times. “Comms checks in ten. Get kitted up and stand by.”
Probably good timing, Kolt thought, as he didn’t feel like defending the extraction method again or flowering this rosy mission with ridiculous claims about how al-Baghdadi’s capture might be the key to bringing the rogue nation down for good and permanently ending radical Islam.
Sure, all that crap made the mission important, but it did not explain the unprecedented level of executive micromanagement or the lack of answers to his basic questions. It just didn’t add up for Kolt.
Why the hell did the president want me specifically on this mission?
FOUR
Al Hasakah Governorate, Syria
A frustrated Cindy “Hawk” Bird watched as three shirtless Rangers and two skinny Kurdish fighters took turns flipping a tractor trailer tire covered in green and red ChemLights across the compound’s moonlit hard scrabble. Once her mates hit the X, the Rangers would load into the waiting MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, which would spin up and stand by, ready to depart at a moment’s notice, but until then, there wasn’t much for the tightly wound infantrymen to do except flex their muscles and stay loose.
Part of her wanted to get a workout in, too. Part of her knew better than to become the center of attention.
Burning some calories in the late night heat would certainly help alleviate her of her nervous energy about the mission, it might even reduce some of the anger she still harbored for being stuck with this gig.
Her squadron commander, Kolt Raynor, had tagged her to forward deploy to the staging area to coordinate with the QRF in the event they were needed.
Run interference. Keep things in order. It’s an important role, Kolt had said.
Stuck on the ground sixty miles away from the hit wasn’t the job she wanted, not after all she had gone through to become the first female JSOC operator. Staff Sergeant Cindy Bird had risen above, completing the Operator Training Course to become a full-fledged Unit operator—on paper the equal of any other male greenhorn fresh out of OTC. Hawk refused to believe Kolt had tagged her as the LNO because she was a woman. No way. She had saved Kolt’s life on target in Cairo and he had returned the favor at the Yellow Creek nuke plant. She reasoned, trying to squelch her personal pity party, that Kolt had tagged her because she was the newest member of the squadron. No special treatment. She needed to pay her dues.
Except she knew damn well that wasn’t completely true. Sure, she collected stylish high heels and frequented the makeup counter more often than the gun store, but her Mozambique Drill time rivaled most of the men’s in the squadron. She could
drop ballistic plates from the sniper condo at three hundred yards, fireman’s carry Mr. Heavy up three flights of stairs, and her Egyptian Arabic conversation skills were solid—a skill set that might have been of value on target.
No, Hawk’s ability as an operator wasn’t an issue for Raynor. There was another reason Hawk was Noble squadron’s liaison officer for this mission, and the bitch had just walked through the crooked doorway.
In a typically testosterone-heavy operation like this, there was one more non-male personage waiting with the QRF, and her name was Lauren Gellar.
Gellar wasn’t military, Hawk was pretty sure of that, but what she was remained a little harder to pin down. Even Raynor hadn’t been certain what her exact affiliation was, nor did he fully grasp what role she was supposed to play here at the staging area. He had been told only that she was at the compound as the White House’s special representative and would be riding along on the bus when the call for exfil came.
Naturally, they all assumed that meant she was really CIA, or from one of the other alphabet soup intelligence agencies, but no one inside the building had worked with her down range yet, and that was unusual to say the least. She didn’t present like a rookie, and she seemed completely at ease with the little SIG 228 holstered at the small of her back.
Ostensibly, she was the conduit for information about the target, in direct contact with Source 0602, but she had supplied little that they hadn’t already learned from Colonel Webber. When pressed by Webber, Kolt, and even Slapshot, the unvetted Lauren Gellar had been unable, or unwilling, to explain exactly why POTUS had specifically asked for Raynor to lead the mission, or to provide a logical reason why she needed to deploy to Syria. The fact that Kolt had given up so easily, deciding quickly to cut the female . . . whatever she was . . . some slack and not to press the point, really irked Hawk.
One thing that had become apparent at Bragg, at least to Cindy Bird, was that the attractive spook had more than just a professional interest in Raynor. Hawk knew it wasn’t just her. Even Slapshot had noticed, cracking a joke after the mission briefing, about how the woman was looking at Kolt like he was a big juicy steak.
Out in the Spine of the building Hawk heard Kolt’s reaction to the ribbing by Slapshot. He called bullshit and had asked them both, in sarcastic but not uncertain terms, “What is this, high school? Grow the fuck up and stop acting like jealous teenagers.”
Hawk knew Kolt had meant it, too. Mostly. But despite all appearances of being a bad ass single-minded killer of an operator, Kolt Raynor wasn’t a monk. Any man, even Racer, would have felt a little thrill at being the object of so much attention.
Part of it was probably the fact that Gellar was a very attractive woman, slender, with long, dark, straight hair, which she wore pulled back in a severe ponytail, full lips, and high, sharp cheekbones. Hawk had tagged her with the nickname “Maleficent,” which Kolt had immediately vetoed. Hawk had decided to keep using it anyway, if only to herself.
Part of it though, Cindy Birds’s female instincts told her, was that Raynor enjoyed Hawk’s jealous reaction.
“Anything new?” Gellar asked as she uncapped a warm bottle of water and tipped it up to her plump, bee-stung lips.
“Nothing that would interest you,” Hawk said, barely hiding her sarcasm.
“How would you know?” Gellar asked.
“Well, uh, we are monitoring like three different nets and have live chat up with Creech.”
Gellar leaned against the table. “What I meant, Sergeant, is how would you know what I might consider interesting?”
Hawk faced her, hands on her hips. “Honestly, I have no clue. I’m not even sure what you’re doing here.”
Gellar returned a cool smile. “I could say the same to you, Sergeant. What’s your job, anyway? Radio operator? Analyst?”
“Actually, I’m an operator.” As soon as the words passed her lips, Hawk looked nervously around to see who else might have heard. She had never actually said it aloud—there weren’t many people outside the Unit she could tell, not even Troy, her snake-eater Green Beret boyfriend—and it felt odd.
Gellar shrugged as if she didn’t quite believe it, and changed the subject. “Your ground force commander. Racer. What’s going on with him?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Raynor?” Hawk asked.
I knew it. This bitch has it for Kolt.
“He seemed uneasy about this mission back at Bragg,” Gellar said. “That’s not his reputation.”
“His reputation? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Gellar didn’t blink. “He’s a killer.” She said it matter-of-factly, without a hint of judgment. “Kicked out of JSOC for being reckless and getting his team killed, but refused to stay out of the fight. I hear he did some kind of crazy off-the-books op to get back in. I would have thought he’d jump at the chance to strap on his guns and go to war again. Is he afraid or something?”
Hawk stared at the other woman, struggling to keep her anger in check. “You don’t know what you’re taking about.” Except Gellar did seem to know an awful lot. She was connected, no doubt about that. “Racer isn’t afraid of anything. Been at this too long.”
“Nothing?” There was an odd gleam in Gellar’s eye, and Hawk wondered if the other woman was reading something into her defense of Raynor.
“There might be one thing he’s afraid of,” Hawk said. “Failing.”
* * *
There was nothing going on between Kolt Raynor and Cindy Bird and there never would be. She was his immediate subordinate, and she was enlisted and he was an officer, and even if fraternization were not strictly prohibited by Army regs, Raynor was smart enough to know that you didn’t date coworkers. In their line of work, that could be a fatal mistake. Nevertheless, Cindy knew Kolt felt a secret attraction to her. They had gone undercover together as husband and wife in Cairo, and the heat between them had been all too real. She also knew her barely restrained jealousy betrayed exactly how she felt about him.
And that was why she absolutely couldn’t accompany the team on the mission. There was some kind of screwed-up sexual tension between them, and it was definitely spiking thanks to Lauren Gellar’s presence. Hawk knew the last thing either of them needed right now was to be thinking about anything but the mission.
Hawk figured she was also the best person for the job of babysitting Gellar. Who but her, would be completely immune to Maleficent’s sorcerous wiles?
FIVE
Joint Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg
Colonel Jeremy Webber looked down on the objective with the practiced eye of a career soldier. The house, the ten-foot-high walls, the surrounding neighborhood—all of it displayed in the dull monochrome of an infrared video feed on the large plasma screen monitor—were fixed points on a game board. His gaze flitted from one rectangular shape to the next, watching for any hint of movement or activity, anything that was not a fixed point on the board.
The metaphor was imprecise. It wasn’t a game to Webber, not in the least, and the men about to drop from the sky above the objective six thousand miles away were not pawns to be maneuvered or sacrificed indifferently. Quite the opposite, at a moment like this, he felt their true worth more than ever. He had lost men before, and knew that, while he could fill their slots, he could never truly replace any of them. And the ghosts never went away.
There was a crackle of static as, on the other side of the world, Kolt Raynor broke squelch. “Wrangler Zero One, I don’t like what I’m seeing at the DZ. Over.”
Webber’s eyes went to the square in the center of the screen. The 1.8-gigapixel ARGUS-IS video surveillance package on the General Atomics MQ-9 “Reaper” unmanned aerial vehicle gave Webber and the rest of the team working the JOC—Joint Operations Center—a startlingly clear picture of what was happening on the ground, which at this moment, appeared to be a whole lot of nothing.
Webber passed the message along to the Reaper crew, who were currently sitting in an air-condi
tioned room at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The video feed zoomed in closer until the target building almost completely filled the screen on the wall. Webber squinted at the image, as if by so doing he might see something otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
It didn’t work.
The monitor showed the flat roof of the house and around it, an empty yard, relatively free of clutter, framed by ten-foot-high walls. There were two vehicles—probably Toyota Corollas—parked near the house, and in one corner of the yard, something that might have been a utility shed.
“What’s got him spooked?” asked Lieutenant General Seth Allen, standing to Webber’s left.
Allen was the commanding general of JSOC, Webber’s immediate superior in the chain of command, and as such had every right to look over the Delta commander’s shoulder, but Webber was nonetheless discomfited by the three-star general’s presence. It was Allen who had handed him the mission “straight from POTUS,” along with the attached order to “send Kolt Raynor.”
And now, Allen was here monitoring the operation, as if he had a personal stake in the outcome.
The unusually high degree of interest from higher up the food chain raised Webber’s hackles. Worse, it put him in the position of having to tell his operators to, in essence, shut up and do as ordered. While that was the obligation of every soldier, it wasn’t how Delta typically worked. If Webber was going to send men into danger, he was damn sure going to make certain they had a clear picture of what was going on. The fact that he couldn’t tell them, because he didn’t know, very nearly terrified him.
Abu Sayyaf al-Baghdadi was a priority target, but not in the league of Osama bin Laden or the ever-elusive Ayman al-Zawahiri. Delta had gone after a lot of HVIs during Webber’s long tenure as commander, and while the top brass and politicians sometimes liked to sit in on the big scores, he had never been micromanaged like this.
Raynor was looking at the same feed, albeit on the much smaller screen of a ruggedized laptop in the hold of the MC-130, and had evidently seen something Webber and everyone else had missed.