Tier One (Tier One Series Book 1)

by Brian Andrews

  He started running. Running from the pulsing evil orange screens in the TOC. Running to escape the smell of this place. His stomach muscles cramped violently as he dry-heaved, and he began to stumble. The lurching caused his back to spasm and sent pain shooting down his left leg. He didn’t care. The pain was real, everything else a dream. He tripped and caught himself before crashing into a pair of skinny legs. Looking up, he saw an eerily familiar face staring down at him with wet eyes. Eyes full of pain. Beads of sweat ran down the boy’s forehead, and for a moment Kemper thought the young man was going to puke as well. This boy was one of them. Rage erupted inside him. He wanted to rip the kid’s Arab head off his stinking Arab body. His palm found the butt of the pistol in his drop holster, but he willed himself to push on before he did something he would regret later.

  “Open the fucking gate,” he said to the Army Ranger standing beside the padlocked gate.

  “You okay?” the soldier said as he spun the lock on the chain. “Dude, what’s wrong?” he asked, looking back at the TOC.

  Kemper shook his head and shoved his way past, slamming the heavy gate full open against the fence. He ran, just ran, down the dirt road toward the flight line, his path lit by anemic moonlight, and the ambient light of the compound fading into the distance behind him.

  Then, abruptly, he stopped.

  All the voices in his mind—screaming, sobbing, and begging—fell silent. The noise and pain were gone, replaced by a memory:

  You’re the ’terp from the intel shop, right?

  Yes. I’m called June.

  I remember you from last year.

  Yes, the problem in Somalia.

  You okay? You look green, son.

  Kemper turned around.

  In the haze, he saw the boy—still staring at him from the other side of the fence. Their eyes met. The boy called June fished something out of his bag. A grenade? No. A mobile phone. He pressed buttons on the phone, then raised a hand toward Kemper.

  Kemper took one step toward the JSOTF compound and screamed.

  June pressed another button with his thumb.

  The Army Ranger drew his weapon.

  Lightning struck.

  Then came the thunder.

  The shock wave sent Kemper flying. There was heat, a horrible smell, and pain.

  The docs will put me back together, he thought as the world went black.

  The docs always did.

  PART II

  In the dark, a man can hide his scars.

  CHAPTER 12

  He is jogging along the beach, shirtless and barefoot, trying to ignore the searing burn on his neck and shoulders. He’s stayed in the sun too long, and now he can almost hear the chiding he’ll get about not wearing sunscreen when he gets back to the beach house. The wagging finger, the pouty lips, the one fist pressed against a curvaceous hip . . .

  The thought of Kate scolding him makes him grin like a schoolboy.

  He picks up the pace in anticipation.

  His calves ache, especially his left calf. Actually, his entire left leg is killing him. The pain snakes all the way up to his ass and across his lower back. This should mean something, a voice in his head says, something more than the lactic burn from pushing his thirty-eight-year-old body too hard during a morning run on the beach. He shuns the idea as soon as he sees Kate waiting on the wooden steps of the beach house. God, he loves Nags Head in April—too early for the crowds, but just warm enough for a frogman to go swimming in the ocean. Kate waves at him, and he heads straight toward her. The burn along his neck and shoulders is starting to creep up the back of his head toward his scalp.

  He keeps his speed on all the way to the steps, where his wife is waiting with a coy smile and a cold beer. She opens her arms to him, and he sweeps her off her feet, spinning her in a circle like he used to do on homecomings after long deployments. She laughs, loud and unabashed—a little girl’s laugh—as she clutches him about the neck. The cold aluminum can is pressed against his skin, and for a moment it quenches the burn on his charred neck. When he sets her down, she looks up at him, wanting. He smiles at her, feeling a familiar stirring as she steps into him.

  “You’re sweaty,” she breathes, pressing her pelvis against him. “I love it when you’re sweaty.”

  He bows his head and brings his lips to her forehead. He buries his nose in her mane of chestnut hair, closes his eyes, and inhales. “I miss the smell of you,” he whispers, sliding his right hand over her skimpy bikini bottoms.

  “Senior Chief Kemper,” a voice booms from above. A drunk voice. “Your presence is required at the barbeque.”

  He looks up the wooden steps and finds Thiel’s arms open expectantly—a bottle of beer in one hand and a spatula in the other.

  “I put my life in that man’s hands every day. But it appears I can’t trust him with a gas grill,” he says to Kate with a smirk. Then, he yells up the stairs, “Gimme the SITREP.”

  “There seems to be a problem with the fuel-to-air ratio, resulting in inadequate combustion,” Thiel calls back. “Translation: your fucking grill won’t light, and there are seven hungry SEALs up here about to gnaw their fingers off if we don’t get some dawgs cooking.”

  Kemper rolls his eyes and stops groping his wife.

  “Go save the day,” she says, and gives him a swat on the ass. “It’s what you do best.”

  “Yes ma’am.” With a wink, he swipes the beer from her outstretched hand.

  Up on the deck, Pablo is dancing while Gabe plays Jimmy Buffett on an old, beat-up Gibson. The entire squad is there—even Spaz with his busted leg healed up good as new. Kemper scans their faces, taking it all in. His friends, laughing and drinking. Lounging and bullshitting. He spies Kate, sitting next to Gabe. She looks so relaxed. So young. God, when did life get so good? Both his families together, at last.

  This is the way it’s supposed to be.

  This is the way it’s supposed to be.

  This is the way it’s supposed to be . . .

  “You just gonna stand there gawking, or are you gonna light this sonuvabitch?” Thiel’s voice says behind him, but when he turns, the man standing behind him is not his best friend of ten years. He is not even a man, but a boy wearing a dusty tunic, clutching his stomach.

  “Whatcha gonna do, Kemper?” the boy says, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Then the boy explodes.

  The explosion knocks him to the ground. His ears are ringing, and the light is too brilliant to open his eyes. When at last he forces his eyelids open, he finds himself on his hands and knees crawling through a puddle of blood. His fingers brush up against something wet. He looks—Thiel’s left hand, the team-issued Suunto watch still clasped to the severed wrist.

  He gags.

  Next he finds a boot.

  He begins to hyperventilate.

  Ten toes, perfectly pedicured, step into his field of vision.

  Kate?

  He’s afraid to look up, afraid to see what’s missing.

  “They’re all gone, Jack,” she says.

  He forces his gaze upward.

  Is she . . . ?

  Oh thank God.

  He begins to weep and extends a hand to her. “Help me.”

  “I can’t help you, Jack,” she says, her voice flat and cold. “No one can help you now.”

  She turns and begins walking away.

  He tries to crawl after her, but his arms and legs aren’t working properly. Suddenly, his right arm can no longer support his weight, and his forearm snaps above the wrist. He collapses into the puddle of blood and realizes he’s burning. The flesh on his neck and scalp is on fire.

  “Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me . . . not like this!” he screams as all the color bleaches from the world.

  CHAPTER 13

  Gulfstream G550

  Northeast Bound over Europe

  April 9, 1440 GMT

  “Is he all right?”

  “Dreaming, I think. I can give him some more Ketam
ine to keep him comfortable.”

  “Please.”

  “Are you sure he’s the right guy for this?”

  “It depends on what’s left of the man when he finally wakes up. What other option does he have? Where else can he go? Everyone is gone, but him . . .”

  Kemper didn’t wake up.

  He simply emerged, regaining awareness very slowly from a nightmare so raw it oozed. It felt like someone was dragging him out from beneath two tons of dirt—dragging him out of the grave.

  His head throbbed. His joints ached; his body was too heavy to move. He felt a searing pain across the back of his head and neck, and he tasted the copper tang of blood in the back of his throat. And his mouth—God, his mouth—was so dry his swollen tongue was stuck to the roof of it.

  He opened his eyes. The gray mist from his dreams was still there, but now was transformed into a thin veil of gauze over his face. Was he bandaged? He couldn’t tell. He wanted to rip the gauze away, but his arms were impossibly heavy. Where was he? Was he in a hospital? He stilled his breathing and listened.

  A whining drone . . . vibration . . . feels like an airplane. A mobile hospital in the belly of a C-17 Globemaster or C-5 Galaxy.

  He knew the rumbling hum of those planes from countless trips back and forth between Europe and Iraq. They had been “Lifts of Opportunity” for the men who moved in the shadows and blind spots of the conventional military. Men like him—undocumented passengers, hitching a ride with the Military Airlift Command to their next assignment or a safe place to recuperate. Thankfully, he had never been a MEDEVAC patient on any of those flights. Was he now?

  The world around him jostled—abruptly and violently—then went still.

  Turbulence. I’m definitely on an airplane.

  He listened intently, and heard a muffled conversation—like the ones that had intruded on his nightmares, but farther away. If he called out, maybe someone would help him. He tried to speak, but only succeeded in croaking out a dry burp.

  Water. Need water. He mouthed the words, which at the moment was all he could manage.

  He waited.

  No one came.

  Where am I? What happened to me?

  He closed his eyes. To find his way to the here and now, he would have to retrace his steps, back through the nightmares. He winced at the prospect, but he had no choice. He forced himself back into the dark places.

  I remember the beach, and Kate and everyone together in Djibouti. No, no, it was North Carolina . . . there was an explosion and Thiel’s boot. And a boy name June, who conned me with a joke. Oh God . . . But did he? Everything was all jumbled. He felt his pulse picking up—a war drum pounding in his ears. The imagery was too raw. Too painful. He was panting now, and with the oxygen rush came clarity. Then it all came back, like a dam break flooding his mind with too much information.

  Both Tier One squadrons had been on a mission in Yemen. He had been watching from the TOC in Djibouti. A flash of light on the flat-screens, and then everyone was gone. He had vomited on the steps outside the TOC, and then he had run with rage and grief he had never felt before. There was that Muslim boy with the strangest look on his face. Pain and redemption and satisfaction. The boy’s plan had come to him, like a slap in the face, but a few seconds too goddamn late.

  Tears pooled in Kemper’s eyes, unable to run off because of some slime on his face. He tried again to call out, this time loud enough to be heard over the jet engines, but his voice failed him a second time. He focused all his energy on raising his arms. Maybe if he waved, he could get someone’s attention. But his left arm wouldn’t budge. It felt bound: his left wrist was secured to whatever it was he was lying on. His right arm simply didn’t work at all.

  Was he a prisoner?

  A surge of fear electrified him. Had he been left behind? Had he been taken? His mind flashed to a memory as gruesome as his dreams—the video of American journalist Daniel Pearl being decapitated. Dying in combat was easy, but to go like that . . . He shuddered as his imagination presented him a vision of his own head being sawed off with a butcher’s knife by a hooded jihadist. This was every SEAL’s nightmare.

  “I think he’s waking up,” said a woman’s voice. In English, not Arabic, thank God. It was a soft voice, tinged with compassion. Or was it pity?

  He felt a comforting squeeze on his shoulder, and immediately his raspy breathing slowed. He felt the muscles in his neck and arms relax. He was with the good guys. He was safe.

  “Hey, Jack,” said a man’s voice. The timbre was familiar, but he could not conjure the face. “You’re okay, bro. You got pretty banged up, but you’re gonna be fine.”

  “Wrrwrr,” he wheezed, his bone-dry vocal cords unable to articulate the word.

  “Yeah, yeah, of course. Can he get some water?” said the man.

  There was rustling, and then he felt a tube press against his lower lip, which hurt more than it should have.

  “It’s a straw,” the woman’s voice said. “Drink slowly.”

  Kemper tried to comply, but that was impossible. He sucked eagerly, flooding his mouth and throat. The first few swallows burned like grain alcohol, but the coolness and the moisture soothed the pain and quickly put the fire out. The next long pulls on the straw were sweet ecstasy. He swirled the water around his mouth with his tongue and felt a nasty layer of paste dislodge and slide down his throat with the water. It reminded him of the crap leftover in the bottom of the pot after cooking oatmeal. The thought made him shudder.

  “Dan?” he mumbled, hopeful that his old friend Commander Munn had flown to his rescue once again. “Is that you?”

  “’Fraid not,” said the man.

  “I can’t see,” Kemper whispered, deflating.

  “You have bandages over your eyes,” said a new voice, not Munn’s, but one equally galvanizing. Captain Jarvis. “You suffered some corneal abrasions. Nothing serious, but the doc put antibiotic ointment on your eyes. They’re probably healed by now. You also have burns and lacerations on your face, neck, and head.”

  “How bad?” he croaked.

  “You weren’t so pretty to begin with, Jack, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Kemper grinned despite himself, and felt his dry lips crack open. He licked them, tasting fresh blood. God, he was a mess. He cleared his throat and swallowed. “How long have I been out?”

  “Five days,” said the other male voice, which he now recognized as belonging to the spook who called himself Shane Smith.

  “Take this shit off my face,” Kemper demanded, jerking his left hand against its binding. “And untie my fucking hands.”

  Soft hands—hands that could not possibly belong to Jarvis or Smith—loosened the strap on his left wrist. Then, someone removed the shroud of gauze from his face.

  “Fuck,” he grumbled, raising his left hand to block the light now blazing above him like a thousand suns. Reluctantly, his pupils remembered what they were supposed to do, and the light began to pale. He squinted, but the world stayed blurry.

  “That’s the antibiotic,” said an angelic face hovering above him. She was lit from behind, and for a moment he swore she wore an angel’s halo. “Blink hard to clear it.”

  He did as instructed, squeezing the goo out the corners of his eyes. When he opened his eyes, the halo was gone. Not an angel . . . just a smoking-hot brunette in a green-bag flight suit. “Thank you, Nurse,” he said and tried to smile.

  “Doctor,” she corrected. “I’m the surgeon who packed off the bleeding in your liver while the bone guys plated your arm and set your ankle.”

  “Thanks,” Kemper said, embarrassed.

  “You’re welcome, Soldier,” she replied without smiling. “I’ve got to be honest with you. You’re a train wreck. Besides the broken bones and internal bleeding you suffered, you’ve got a bunch of partial thickness burns, you’re bruised head to toe, and we had to sew up at least two dozen deep lacerations. What I’m saying is, you’re going to have a lot of pain.”


  “Where?” he asked and tried to sit up.

  Pain erupted everywhere.

  “Everywhere,” she confirmed.

  He gave up and collapsed back onto the thin mattress. After a moment, Smith pressed a lever and raised the back of the trauma bed. Being up thirty degrees felt so much better—that is, until a familiar ache crept along his spine.

  “Can we have a few minutes with him alone, please?” Jarvis asked.

  “Of course,” the doctor answered, and rose from her seat beside Kemper. She handed him a cord that ended in a white plastic bullet with a red button on the end. “This is a PCA,” she said. “If you have a lot of pain, push the button and it’ll give you some morphine. It has a lockout so you can’t accidentally OD yourself. Press it enough and you’ll drift off to sleep.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  He watched her walk away. When she was gone, he turned to his old CSO. “Where am I?”

  Jarvis took the seat beside him where the doctor had been. “Dead,” he said. “But we’ll come back to that. Is your head clear enough to talk?”

  Kemper nodded. The fog in his mind was burning off, but the pain was creeping in to take its place. He looked at the PCA button for a moment and considered. He dropped it on the mattress next to his leg. “Talk to me.”

  “What do you remember?” Jarvis asked.

  Kemper swallowed hard and felt tears fill his eyes again. “Everything,” he mumbled. “They’re all dead, aren’t they? The whole unit?”

  “Yes,” Jarvis said flatly. “Everyone on the ground and both aircrews from the 160th were lost.”

  “It was a trap?”

  “Yes.”

  Kemper closed his eyes, and his mind filled with memories from the TOC: thermal imagery of jihadists kneeling en masse, a flash of white, then the heat signature of glowing carnage after. Then, he thought of body bags, and folded American flags, and closed coffins with gleaming tridents hammered by hand into the wood. He watched the parade of faces on the backs of his eyelids of his friends who would be laid to rest.