by Dalton Fury
Webber keyed his mic. “Racer, we’re not seeing any activity. What’s your concern? Over.”
“Not sure,” Raynor replied. “Everything looks a little too squared away down there.”
Webber nodded to himself. The house did appear unusually tidy, almost as if staged. The complete lack of activity was also worrisome. There were no thermal signatures at all. Despite the late hour, there should have been at least one man posted as a lookout.
Racer’s famous sixth sense, Webber thought.
He knew how a lot of the old guard Unit guys felt about Raynor. They had a saying: His sixth sense gives him wings.
It wasn’t meant as a compliment.
Raynor went with his gut. A lot. Which was not exactly the Army’s preferred method for making leadership decisions. That didn’t mean the Army way was better—it didn’t guarantee a successful mission or ensure that all the Eagles who left on an op would come back without a scratch—but it was a matter of covering ass. If an op went south, the first question in the hotwash would be, “Did you follow the SOP?” The answer, “No sir, I had a gut feeling,” was good for a one-way ride on the Black Chinook.
Racer’s gut had gotten him into more than his share of trouble, but as far as Webber was concerned, it was a more reliable decision-making tool than the standard West Point sync-matrix. Webber’s own sixth sense had been pinging like crazy for a while now.
One of the things that had bothered him from the outset was the reliability of the intelligence that put the HVI at the target location. Webber had given the green-light on less, but in each instance, he had known full well that the rumors and leaked intel might be bait for an ambush. That was clearly on Raynor’s mind as well.
“It’s your show, Racer,” Webber said, and meant it. Orders or not, if Raynor, or any of the operators, saw something he didn’t like, something that spooked him, Webber would support a decision to abort the mission.
“Roger.” There was a brief pause then Raynor spoke again. “There’s a big field . . . soccer field I think, about half a klick to the east. We’ll drop in there and push to the target on foot.”
At this slight adjustment of the battle plan, Webber instructed the Reaper crew to zoom out again. He quickly located the field Raynor had described. It was not as big as he might have hoped, and it was surrounded by residences, but Webber was not about to second-guess his operator, not after as much as telling him to trust his instincts.
Beside him, Allen dipped a hand into his pocket and took out his phone. Webber did his best to stay focused on what was happening in Syria, but in the relative quiet of the JOC, he could not help but hear Allen’s side of the conversation.
“No, sir . . . I’m sure he has his reasons . . . I’ll ask . . . Yes, sir.”
Allen put the phone away, then picked up a radio handset and squeezed the push-to-talk button. “Racer, are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Webber gaped in disbelief, momentarily dumbfounded. Before he could recover, he heard Raynor growl, “Who the fuck said that?”
Allen’s face darkened, but before he could respond, Webber spoke up. “Racer, disregard last and charlie mike. Wrangler out.”
He then spun on his heel to face the general. “Sir. Is there something you would like me to pass along to my squadron commander?”
He spoke slowly, enunciating the pronouns so that there would be no mistaking the subtext.
Allen’s nostrils were flaring, his breathing rapid, but after a moment he brought his ire under control and shook his head. “No, Colonel. As you were.”
Webber continued staring at him, daring him to justify his interference, but Allen had already turned his attention back to the wall monitor.
Webber took a deep breath, let it out, and brought his focus back to the mission, but his thoughts kept drifting back to the phone call Allen had received, right before jumping into the middle of Raynor’s op.
Someone had ordered the CG to interfere, someone who was also monitoring the feed from the Reaper.
It was a short list of people whom the three-star would call “Sir.”
* * *
Over Syria
Raynor waddled under the weight of his kit and HALO rig over to the starboard side of the plane. He grabbed the headset and put one of the ear pads to his left ear and rotated the mouthpiece in front of his mouth. “Wrangler Zero One, this is Noble Zero One, green SAT, over.”
“This is Wrangler Zero One, go ahead, over.” Webber said nothing about the earlier interruption and Raynor did not ask. The colonel had shut it down and that was good enough for Kolt. He had more important things to worry about.
“We are two minutes from TOT. Request execute authority, over.”
As Raynor listened for a reply he found himself uncharacteristically hoping that Webber would tell him to abort the mission. It was the first time he could recall that his gut swung that way. He had lost track of how many times the plug had been pulled at the last second, usually because someone high in the administration bowed to the wishes of a Hamid Karzai or an influential ambassador to one Middle Eastern cesspool nation after another. Usually it was a huge let down.
Tonight, it would have been a huge relief.
It wasn’t just the normal prejump butterflies. Everything had been too rushed. Too many RFIs—requests for information—unanswered. And that bullshit about POTUS personally asking him to lead the mission . . .
There was something else going on behind the scenes. He just hoped the missing piece of the puzzle was not mission critical.
Webber’s voice crackled in his ear. “Noble Zero One, you have execute authority at this time. How copy?”
This was the point of no return. Once the light flashed green and they stepped off, they would be in harm’s way. Kolt looked around the darkened cabin at his men standing in single file lines facing the rear of the plane, all with eyes peeled on their squadron commander and looking for the signal that the mission was a go. Kolt lifted his glove hand, gave the thumbs up, before turning back around to watch the load master lowering the tail ramp to horizontal.
“Shit,” Raynor breathed, then keyed the mic a last time. “Noble Zero One acknowledges, out.”
The jump lights in the hold of the MC-130H flashed from red to green.
“Shit,” he said again. He grabbed his goggles from the front of his ballistic helmet and yanked the elastic to position them over his face, then started down the ramp.
SIX
Deir Ezzor, Syria
Jumping out of airplanes had lost none of its thrill, but landing was another story. The ram-air canopy was a lot more effective at reducing the rate of descent than the old T-10 parachutes Kolt had first jumped with at Airborne school, but his body had taken a lot of punishment in the twenty-odd years since, including a severe spinal injury that had left him with two fused vertebrae and a persistent dull ache in his lower back. He had made hundreds of jumps since, both in training and operationally, but each time he stepped out, it felt a little like playing Russian roulette.
The ground was coming up fast. Several of his mates were already down, hastily stowing their chutes and fanning out to establish a secure perimeter. He chose his spot, goosed his left toggle a little and then pulled hard on both handles, flaring the chute and almost completely arresting all vertical and forward movement.
He felt solid ground under his boot soles, and relaxed the lines a little, jogging a few steps forward to keep his balance.
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, Kolt thought without a hint of irony.
He gathered up the chute and moved to the edge of the field, clearing the landing site for the last remaining members of the team, keeping one hand at all times on his primary weapon, an HK MP5SD.
Half the combined team carried the compact suppressed machine pistols. They were prepped for close-quarters assault and room clearing. The other half carried more versatile HK416 rifles, which required slightly more room when maneuvering, but were more
accurate for long-range shooting. All had a secondary weapon—either a Caspian M1911 or a Glock 23—holstered in front of their chest armor plate, along with a variety of grenades—frags, nine-bangers, and smoke—something for every occasion.
When the last man was down and ready to move, Raynor spoke softly, subvocalizing into the mic. “All elements check your cans, make sure they are secure, and white light discipline from here on in.”
After a few seconds, Slapshot called out, “All lines green, boss.”
Raynor shook his head. All lines green was the lazy soldier’s way of giving a standard LACE report. Following contact with the enemy, all the soldiers in an infantry fire team were required to check in with their immediate leader, advising them on their battle readiness. The four lines of the report referred to liquids, ammunition, casualties, and equipment.
It was Slapshot’s way of letting him know that they were all good to go.
Kolt heard JoJo send the OPSKED, or codeword, that they were 100 percent healthy on infil to Webber at Bragg. A few seconds later, JoJo began tearing down the portable satellite antenna, telling Kolt that Webber had received the message.
From the ground, Deir Ezzor—at least this little corner of it—did not look much different from many of the other places Raynor had visited in the line of duty—from the Balkans to Afghanistan. There were still a few traces of the modern city it had once been, but war and chaos had done some serious redecorating. Burned-out vehicles lined streets that were littered with rubble and pockmarked with mortar impact craters. Some of the buildings—many were row houses—were gutted or completely razed, while others, inexplicably, appeared fully intact. It was hard to say which, if any, were still inhabited, but Kolt knew that at least a few of the ten million refugees who had fled the country—roughly half the Syrian population—had once called this place home.
As they moved toward the objective, the uneasy feeling that had prompted him to deviate from the original infil plan returned. He was having trouble putting his finger on what was wrong. It was quiet, but at 0300 that really wasn’t out of the ordinary. Even insomniac dogs and goats had to sleep sometime. No, the truth was, he felt like he was being pushed—pressured to take the shot before he could get a good sight picture—and his instinctive response was to push back, or at the very least, tap the brakes.
And the courtyard had looked a little too squared away. Open and inviting, like the leaves of a Venus flytrap.
The objective was located at the west end of a city block at the edge of the neighborhood. There was a solid iron gate across the opening in the north-facing wall—the short side of the rectangle. The long walls, one of them shared with the neighbor to the east, were unbroken, as was the short wall to the south. The house, a two-story structure shaped a like a squat letter J, occupied the southern end of the compound, leaving an open space of about fifty meters between the gate and the front of the building. Kolt recalled a small structure—like a utility shed—in the corner to one side of the gate, and two parked cars on the other.
The forward team, led by Master Sergeant Trip Griffin—one of the few Delta operators Kolt knew whose given name was unique enough to be utilized as his code name—pushed past the gate, posting at the northwest corner. Kolt, accompanying the trailing team, took cover across the street from the gate.
After a final check with the JOC to verify that nothing had changed inside the compound, Kolt switched his PRC-148 enhanced MBITR to the team freq. “Anyone got a better plan than going full frontal?”
Slapshot snorted. “You mean aside from dropping in by parachute?”
“Yes, actually,” Kolt fired back. He knew it was Slapshot’s idea of a joke, and that humor was his sergeant major’s preferred coping mechanism for stressful situations, but as was often the case, his timing sucked.
“It was a good call, boss,” Digger opined. “That courtyard is a kill box. Great place for an ambush whether we had dropped in, or go in through the front.”
Raynor was in complete agreement. “What does that leave?”
“Go through the wall itself. Multiple points of entry, everywhere but where they think we’ll be.”
Kolt surveyed the wall. It looked like typical cinder block masonry, probably unreinforced. A privacy screen, nothing more. Digger, the master breacher, had already calculated the exact amount of explosives and built the charges required to open doors where there were none, with a bare minimum of safe standoff.
But there would be a shit ton of noise, both inside and outside the compound.
“Not through,” Raynor countered. “Over. That will give us a chance to get eyes on before we go in, and it will be a lot quieter.”
“Good thing I brought my pocket ladder,” Slapshot remarked. “Oh, wait . . . I didn’t.”
“Teamwork is our ladder,” Kolt said, then frowned when he realized he sounded like a damned motivational poster. “There’s a reason we have high walls on the O-course.”
“Yeah,” the sergeant major grumbled. “You’re probably right.”
When nobody else registered an objection, Raynor quickly outlined his modified assault plan and then he and the team were on the move again, skirting the long wall to reach the southwest corner of the compound. Ten meters past the corner, the short wall intersected a neighboring wall at a right angle, blocking their way, but Kolt recalled from the satellite photos that the shared wall continued unbroken for most of the block.
Without waiting for a prompt from Raynor, the four biggest men in the combined team moved forward and braced their backs against the wall, creating a human stepladder to boost their mates up. Even that was not enough to reach the top of the wall, so two more came forward, climbed up, planting their boots on the shoulders of the first four, and likewise braced themselves against the wall, staying slightly hunched over for stability and to keep their heads down.
“Friggin’ amazing,” Slapshot remarked, unable to resist the impulse to crack wise. “When we get back, we’re all trying out for the Army cheerleading squad.”
Kolt ignored his friend, and advanced, quickly but carefully scaling the pyramid of Delta operators. Before mounting the wall, he cautiously peeked over the top.
The house, less than five meters away, and the courtyard beyond were still as quiet as a cemetery.
He hoisted himself up onto the narrow barrier, swinging one leg over so that he was straddling the top. In some places he’d spent time in, these walls would have been topped with razor wire or jagged shards of glass to discourage intruders; thankfully, no such precautions had been taken here. Raynor used his left hand to raise his body so he could scoot himself along to make room on the wall for his teammates. His right hand remained tight on the pistol grip of his HK, finger poised beside the trigger guard.
Slapshot came up behind him, likewise scooting down to make room. Soon, half the assault force was perched on the wall, reaching down to help pull the others up.
Kolt peered down into the narrow space between the house and the wall. The bare earth looked relatively flat, with no rocks or other detritus that might cause a stumble or a turned ankle. If they lowered themselves down, it would be only a three- or four-foot drop, but doing so would require both hands and render them completely defenseless for a few seconds.
“All right,” he whispered into his mic. “We’ll go down by teams. Trip, you guys cover us. Golf, on my mark. Ready . . .”
He let his MP5SD hang from its sling and swung his other leg over the wall, rolled onto his hip, twisted his torso around and gripped the top of the wall with both hands.
“Go.” He whispered it, but it felt like a shout.
He rolled the rest of the way over and simultaneously pushed off from and gripped the edge atop the wall. His Mechanix tactical gloves protected his fingers from the abrasive surface, but that protection came at a cost. Despite the Velcro wrist cuffs, when his full weight came down on his hands, he could feel his fingers slipping out of the gloves.
He let go, droppi
ng the remaining distance, flexing his knees to absorb the impact of landing, which he expected to be only slightly more jarring than the earlier parachute drop, but when his boot soles made contact, the ground heaved up beneath him, and Kolt went flying backward.
SEVEN
As he fell, Kolt saw a lump rising up where his feet had been just a moment before. A cascade of dirt sloughed away, like water shaken from a dog’s back, revealing a heavy blanket, and peeking out from beneath it, the muzzle of a rifle.
Then he slammed down on his backside.
The impact felt like a one-two punch. First his ass hit the ground, and then the full weight of his kit—armor, helmet, combat loadout, radio . . . forty-odd pounds of gear—slammed down like a hammer on an anvil, with him in between. A spike of pain stabbed up through his back, but through the red haze, his eyes remained fixed on the gun protruding out from under the blanket.
Kolt’s own weapon was . . . Where the hell is it?
He had instinctively flung his arms out in a futile attempt to arrest his fall and now his empty hands were palms down on the ground, holding himself in a seated upright position. His MP5SD had just rebounded off his chest plate and now rested across his thighs. He started to reach for it, but then the rifle barrel swung toward him, more of the blanket falling away to reveal the bearded young man who held it, and Raynor knew going for his own weapon would probably be a fatal mistake. He decided to go for the enemy’s weapon instead.
He threw both hands out, wrapping his gloved fingers around the barrel, and thrust it upward, aiming it over his shoulder even as he pulled it toward him. There was a flash, a blast of hot gas that hit him full in the face, and something that felt like a kick from a mule in the side of his head.
It hurt like a son of a bitch, which Kolt took as a good sign. His bell was still ringing and his eyes weren’t quite looking in the same direction anymore, but he had not lost consciousness. He knew this because even though his fingers felt a little numb—though not so much that he didn’t feel heat through the reinforced palms of his gloves—he still had ahold of the rifle.