by Dalton Fury
Abu Hamam sneered. “Do you not remember the faces of the men you kill? Do they not come to you in your dreams, Kolt Raynor?”
ELEVEN
Raynor’s reaction was automatic. He shoved Abu Haman into the wall, hard enough to crush the plaster behind him, and jammed the suppressor of his weapon up under the man’s jaw.
“Who told you that?”
The impact with the wall had stunned the prisoner, leaving him momentarily incapable of answering, but Kolt gave him another hard shove to underscore the question. “Who gave you that name?”
As his finger curled into the trigger guard, it occurred to Kolt Raynor that he wasn’t alone. Slapshot and JoJo were standing right beside him, and in some distant corner of his mind, he wondered why the sergeant major hadn’t already intervened, pulling Raynor off the prisoner before he did something that couldn’t be undone.
That thought was just enough to make him ease off the trigger. He glanced over at Slapshot, who was also staring intently at Abu Hamam. “The man asked you a question, shitpile.”
It was hard to imagine a scenario more unthinkable than an enemy fighter knowing the name of a Unit operator. The names of personnel and details about operations were highly classified, which meant the only way the Syrian could have known Raynor’s name was if someone leaked the information.
Abu Hamam had said something else, too. Your government has broken faith.
Your government.
Somebody gave us up, Kolt thought. Webber had told him that the order had come from POTUS himself, but that didn’t automatically mean POTUS was the leak. Someone else might have whispered in the president’s ear.
He slammed Abu Hamam into the wall again. “Who. Told. You?”
The captive’s head lolled. His eyes rolled back and forth, as if unable to focus. But after a moment, he bared his teeth in a show of defiance.
“I don’t think he’s gonna give it up, boss,” Slapshot said.
Kolt tried a different tack. “What makes you think I killed your son?”
“It is known. Reported in the news. American Delta Force commandos.”
It was a partial answer. Even though JSOC operations were classified, from time to time, POTUS and other elected officials would reveal certain details publicly, more to advance their own careers than because they felt the public had a right to know, so it was possible that the Syrian’s son might have been killed during an assault later attributed to Delta. But that didn’t explain how Abu Hamam knew that Kolt Raynor had been leading that mission. That information would not have been made public. Ever. Even when former operators went public, writing best-selling memoirs and ripped-from-the-headlines thriller novels, the one rule that remained sacrosanct was to never name names. That detail could only have come from someone on the inside—the same person who had insisted that Raynor lead this mission.
Kolt took a deep breath, then let it out. “I kill a lot of people,” he said, trying to sound callous and indifferent. “When and where?”
Abu Hamam was quick with the answer, the details evidently etched into his memory. “Ar-Raqqah. The base at the old prison. Two years ago, in the spring.”
Kolt searched his memory. Two years earlier, he had been involved in a hit in Syria, but it had been in Afrin, more than a hundred miles from Raqqah, and the target had been a Syrian army officer, not an ISIS fighter.
JoJo leaned close to Kolt, placing a hand on his arm. “Boss. A word.”
Kolt turned and stared at the comms specialist. JoJo glanced from Raynor to the prisoner, then back again.
“I remember that hit, boss. March of ’14. It was ours. The squadron, I mean. We were trying to rescue some hostages—journos and docs—but it was a dry hole. They had already been moved.”
Kolt shook his head. In March of 2014, he had been dunking his head in the chilly North Atlantic, part of a JRX—Joint Readiness Exercise—with his former troop in Newfoundland. “I didn’t get the squadron until April.”
“It was Gangster’s op. Right before you came aboard with us. Before we took out the Butcher.”
Gangster, aka Lieutenant Colonel Rick Mahoney, was Kolt’s predecessor—the former commander of Noble squadron—and his polar opposite in just about every way imaginable. He was also currently occupying a patch of ground at Arlington National Cemetery—killed in action during an op in North Korea, not long after losing command of the squadron to Raynor.
“Son of a bitch,” Kolt muttered, then turned back to Abu Hamam. “Looks like you’re too late with that whole revenge thing. The guy who capped your punk-ass kid died two years ago.”
“Of course, you would say this.”
“So let me see if I’m tracking,” Kolt said, wiggling the suppressed machine pistol under the prisoner’s jaw to shut him up. “You made a deal with somebody. Leaked some bogus intel about a high value target to get me here so you could get your revenge. What’s the other guy get? What did you promise in return?”
“An end to the war,” the Syrian replied, a hungry glint in his eyes. “I am weary of it. It has taken everything from me. My family. My home. It has perverted the teachings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and turned the faith of my fathers into an abomination.”
Then he spat out a bitter laugh. “But there will be no end. No peace. You will kill me and someone else will kill you, and the fight will never end.”
Kolt lowered his weapon, then reached up and yanked the sack-hood down over the prisoner’s face again. He turned to Slapshot.
“They set us up,” he said. “Offered me up . . . all of us . . . as a peace offering. This asshole agreed to put down his arms in exchange for a chance to kill the guy who killed his kid. But since Gangster was already dead, they needed a new scapegoat.”
“Who?” Slapshot said, anger edging his voice. “Who made that deal?”
Kolt shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure he does either.”
“What about the witch-queen? I’ll bet she knows.”
“Gellar?” Kolt considered that. The female spook had been on the spot with an ID. And she had been the first one to call for summary execution.
“Think about it,” Slapshot went on. “They were waiting for us. If we’d come in as planned, we would have gotten our asses handed to us. He gets his pound of flesh, turns on his ISIS buddies, and the war is that much closer to being over.”
Kolt shook his head in disgust. “Sacrifice a few guys to end the war without a full-scale military commitment. Cheap at the price.”
“And if by some miracle, we had dodged that bullet—which we did—we’d take out this POS, and that would have been the end of it. Delta pops another bad guy. A win, either way.”
“Only we didn’t kill him and that’s a problem for someone,” Kolt finished. “Not Gellar though. Whoever set this up has a lot more pull than that. And a lot more to lose.”
Slapshot nodded his head at the hooded Abu Hamam. “So what do we do about him?”
“Didn’t you get the message? I wasted him.” He grabbed the prisoner’s arm again and pulled away from the cratered wall. “Let’s get moving.”
TWELVE
QRF staging area, Al Hasakah Governorate, Syria
When she heard Raynor call for extraction, Cindy Bird immediately turned to the men waiting with her in the comm shack—the air mission commander from the 160th SOAR, and the Ranger platoon leader and platoon sergeant. “That’s it. Time to go!”
Outside, the three helicopters were loaded and ready for launch, rotors turning on APU mode, pilot and crew chief precheck flight lists complete. All they needed was a green light from the Delta LNO.
The Rangers turned and started for the door, eager to join their men on the waiting 60s, even more eager to put their deadly skills to use.
The AMC hesitated and before Hawk could insist, Gellar got in the way. “Stand down, Sergeant. We aren’t cleared to launch.”
Hawk gaped at the other woman in disbelief. “Racer just called it. Don’t pre
tend you didn’t hear that.”
“Racer called for a ride, not backup. And JSOC waved him off. That’s what I heard. As soon as JSOC gives the go-ahead, I’ll go with the Chinook to pick them up, but the Rangers and the Black Hawks are still on standby. And so are you.”
“We’re not doing them any good sitting on our asses here, half an hour away. If we leave now, we’ll actually be in a position to help them if they need it. We’re going.”
“No,” Gellar said, her voice sharp and insistent. “You aren’t, Sergeant. Those aren’t your orders.”
Hawk opened her mouth, fully intending to tell the other woman her true feelings about “orders,” but before she could, Gellar moved closer and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Be smart, Sergeant. Think about what’s at stake for you. You’re under the microscope here.”
Hawk shut her mouth, wondering what the hell the woman was trying to say. Gellar obliged her by adding, “They want you to fail. To do something rash and impulsive.”
“Who?”
“The men who think a woman can’t cut it in Spec Ops.” Gellar nodded earnestly, as if commiserating. “No matter how many times you prove them wrong, they’ll never stop trying to sideline you. Jump the gun like this, and they’ll squash you. Don’t give them the ammo. Don’t throw your career away.”
Hawk stared at her. Maleficent’s sudden interest in advancing the cause of sisterhood seemed completely out of character, but she wasn’t wrong. There were a lot of men, a few of them Hawk’s own teammates in the Unit, but many more in the halls of power—from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill—who were betting on her to fail. Maybe Kolt Raynor could get away with flouting the chain of command when his gut instincts told him there was a better way to get the job done, but she wasn’t him. She didn’t have his experience or his safety net. And no matter how hard she worked to prove herself, she would never, ever have the right plumbing to be one of “the Hardy Boys,” and no one would ever let her forget it.
She did, however, share one trait with Raynor. “We’ve got troops in contact. You think I give a sweet fuck about my career?”
A frown creased Gellar’s forehead, but then she turned away from Hawk, looking instead to the men who were watching the exchange. The AMC hadn’t moved. The young platoon leader and the crusty-looking Ranger SFC had stopped in the doorway, and were waiting to see how things would shake out. They looked like they expected a fight to break out at any moment. Gellar returned her gaze to Hawk, but raised her voice so that everyone present would hear. “At least check with your headquarters before you do something rash. Confirm that they want you to launch.”
Hawk glanced at the men. She guessed the Rangers would, in true Ranger fashion, jump at the chance to charge into battle, but the AMC was another matter entirely. He had about eighty-million-dollars’ worth of air assets to think about and would have been well within his rights to demand that she do as Gellar had suggested.
And if she did, what would the answer be? The CG had rejected Racer’s request for immediate exfil. It almost felt as if someone thought it might be better if Kolt and his team didn’t come back from this mission. . . .
No, that’s stupid, she told herself, trying to dismiss the thought.
Yet, if she did call for explicit permission to launch the QRF and the answer was an equally explicit “no,” then she would be out of options. And Racer and the team would be shit out of luck.
She took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. If she showed even a glimmer of uncertainty, Gellar would seize on it to convince the air mission commander to go around her and call for higher approval anyway.
“We’re not going to do that,” she said, hoping that her voice didn’t betray how terrified she was. “What we’re going to do is get on those helicopters and get our asses in the air right fucking now. Our guys are fighting for their lives and we’re not going to leave them hanging.”
The men all looked back at her for a few seconds, and then started looking at one another. Hawk wished that she could have punctuated her demand by turning and storming off dramatically, but they were between her and the exit, so instead she locked stares with the AMC. After a few seconds, he cocked his head sideways and then turned for the door.
“You ladies coming?” he shouted, without looking back.
The Rangers grinned and headed out as well, leaving Hawk and Gellar alone. The latter shook her head angrily and dipped a hand into the pocket where she kept her satellite phone.
Hawk shot a hand out and grabbed Gellar’s wrist. “Do it, and swear to God, I will ram that phone through your teeth and shove it down your throat.”
She felt Gellar’s arm go limp, but the icy stare did not soften. “You will regret this, Sergeant. I promise you that.”
“I promise you, I won’t.”
THIRTEEN
Deir Ezzor, Syria
Five minutes and thirty seconds later, Raynor’s team was on the move. Webber had come through for them, and on Kolt’s signal, the circling MQ-9 Reaper drone fired one of its AGM-114 Hellfire missiles into the massed group outside the gates.
The Hellfire was designed for precision and armor penetration, which in tandem with a low-profile launch platform like the Predator-class UAVs, made it the perfect weapon for the kind of surgical strikes that had come to define the latest evolution of the War on Terror. A drone-fired laser-guided 114 could take out a terrorist leader in his up-armored vehicle in the middle of a convoy, with almost no collateral damage from the primary explosion. The two-stage antitank warhead was designed to burn through armor before detonating inside a vehicle, which was good against armor and hardened targets but less effective as an antipersonnel weapon. Despite the danger close designation, there was little risk to the assault team because the kill radius of the weapon was comparatively small. From his position on the far side of the house, Kolt saw no flash, felt no shockwave. He barely heard the boom of the explosion. That had been the cue for Digger to blow the wall at the southwest corner of the compound.
The shaped breaching charges were a lot louder, but coming as they did on the heels of the Hellfire explosion, there was little chance of attracting unwanted attention. Even if a few of the crows outside survived the missile strike, they would be too disoriented to even notice a blast from inside the walls.
The lead team did not wait for the dust to settle. Slapshot moved out immediately, along with Digger and two others, blazing the trail. The hole in the wall dumped out onto the margin of what had been, in better times, a major highway running along the edge of the city. Battle damage and the encroaching desert now covered the asphalt, but it remained a mostly flat, open surface, which for the Delta operators, translated into a great big danger area they would have to cross. Beyond that lay a scrub-covered slope—the wall of a river canyon carved out by the Euphrates at some point in the ancient history of the region—which rose about twenty-five meters in just over a hundred and fifty. The naturally terraced slope was more exposed than Kolt would have liked, but would at least give them the high ground if they got into contact.
The four-man lead element bounded across the highway and started up the hill before the others had even cleared the hole in the wall. The wounded and those tasked with helping move them, went next. Shaft, able to shoot if not quite to scoot, was leaning on JoJo for support, while two other operators had Crawler suspended between then in a poleless litter. Raynor fell in behind them dragging his hooded prisoner, who had defiantly curled up like a hedgehog, refusing to take a single step.
By the time they reached the edge of the road, Kolt had had enough. He slammed Abu Hamam to the ground hard enough to stun him, zip-tied his ankles together so he wouldn’t be able to kick, and then heaved the man onto his shoulders in a rough approximation of a fireman’s carry. The Syrian was lean and scrawny, maybe a buck twenty-five soaking wet, but Kolt could feel every ounce of the man pressing down on his already aching spine. He knew he should have wrapped the man up in a second litter�
��in fact, he would probably have to do exactly that, and sooner rather than later—but he alone had made the decision to keep the Syrian alive, so for the time being at least, he alone would shoulder that burden. Literally.
“This is gonna suck,” he muttered.
Still, there were varying degrees of suck. Grinding across the desert—the extraction point was five klicks to the west in a dry riverbed—was eminently preferable to running that distance under fire. Once they crested the rise, it would suck a little bit less, or so he kept telling himself.
But before Kolt could even make it across the highway, Slapshot’s frantic voice sounded in his earpiece. “Contact, front.”
There was more to the transmission, but the only thing Kolt heard clearly was the rapid popcorn report of at least two different machine guns, firing down at them.
He flung Abu Hamam off his shoulders, hit the deck and immediately began scanning for targets. There was no mistaking the bright flashes of the machine guns—a pair of PKMs, he guessed—about fifty meters apart, positioned halfway up the hill, but he also picked out several more muzzle flashes from riflemen scattered at random intervals between. Kolt’s mates were already returning fire, but even with NODs and laser-aiming devices, the angle was working against them.
Slapshot called out again. “Where’s our fucking eye in the sky?”
Kolt had wondered that as well, but he had a pretty good idea why the Reaper had failed to spot the ambush. Abu Hamam’s promise that they would never make it out alive had not been just the bluster of a defeated enemy. He had pulled out all the stops, placing camouflaged fighters along all possible routes of escape, to ensure that, whether or not he survived, the Delta commandos who had killed his son would not live to see the dawn.
A burst of 7.62 mm rounds stitched the pavement a few meters to the left of Kolt’s position. The barrage ended as quickly as it had begun, the gunner evidently not realizing how close he had come to scoring a hit. They were firing blind, Kolt realized, the typical undisciplined spray and pray method favored by so many of the enemies he had gone up against. Unfortunately, particularly in a scenario like this, where the bad guys had a superior position, it was an effective tactic.