by Dalton Fury
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To the 10,000-plus armed nuclear security officers throughout the homeland who strap it on every day to prevent radiological sabotage on their watch
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Jamiat-ul-ulema-i-Pakistan Identification Card and Document
We had just climbed the Madrassa’s high dirt wall on a moonless summer night. With my teammate, codenamed Happ, and our Air Force Combat Controller, we quietly but smoothly cleared the three upper floor rooms before we heard the tell-tale signature of three rapid-fired supersonic 5.56mm rounds from outside the compound.
They know we’re here now.
Thinking over the options, maneuvering to help or holding what we had, I thumb-pressed my hand mike.
“You good out there?”
“Roger, we’re good!” said another operator from outside the compound.
It was a suspected layover spot along a known al Qaeda rat line just a couple of miles from the Pakistan border in the lawless border town of Shkin. My boss, Colonel Gus Murdock, wasn’t too keen on green-lighting the hit that night, but he understood our concern and, like all good commanders, he always trusted the guys on the ground. And even though he yielded, giving us execute authority a half hour earlier, I think he knew we would have figured out a way to launch anyway.
From the second-story balcony, Happ and I spider-dropped into the compound and headed across the soft sand for the open door. We buddy-cleared several rooms before confirming the presence of al Qaeda fighters in the last one. We rat-fucked their sleeping bags, secured their left-behind hand-held radios, and easily noticed the wind-blown curtains half covering the window they squirted through. We back-cleared the rooms, taking opposite sides in each as we flowed back to the open-air compound.
At the still-locked front gate, Happ lifted the deadfall lock out of the wooden holder, allowing the large metal door to swing open.
“Eagle, Eagle,” Happ said as he led us outside, then hugging the outer wall as we moved north.
Now kneeling over a white-robed heavy-set body, I gently placed two fingers alongside his neck, level with his Adam’s apple and under his beard, to check for a pulse. I looked at the man’s white turban and followed his forehead down to his locked-open eyes. They were distant, pupils motionless, locked on paradise above. I reached up with my gloved hand, fingers extended and joined, and slid my palm from his turban down to close his eyes. I had never done that before; it’s the kind of thing that stamps your soul, never leaves you.
I looked up to see his opponent standing close by holding a foreign pistol. At the time of the radio call, I had no idea the operator on the other end was the shooter. Had he not been on his game, he could have been the one horizontal on the blood-puddled, sandy soil.
This head master made two bad decisions.
His first mistake was choosing to harbor al Qaeda fighters entering Afghanistan to kill Coalition troops. Our intercepts of enemy radio transmissions two hours earlier were spot-on, but we would have been happy enough to flex and fly the guy up to Bagram airfield.
His second mistake, the really dumb one, was he chose to pull a Makarov 9mm semi-auto from his leather shoulder holster after he jumped out the window. The radio intercepts drove the late-night visit, but it was the pistol draw that initiated the combat rules of engagement. For certain, the last thing he saw before being martyred was the fuzzy image of a combat-clad American Delta Operator under nods at roughly ten paces.
It was a high-noon showdown he was never trained to win.
Happ knelt next to me on the opposite side and pulled the AQ facilitator’s pocket litter from his left breast pocket. He was a card-carrying member of Jamiat-ul-elema-i-Pakistan, and his bloodstained ID card and half-folded papers bore the marks of the three-round shot group, the size of a half-dollar, we had heard earlier while on the wall.
I looked up at the shooter. “Good hit!”
“You’re a little rusty,” Happ said. “I’m used to seeing this the size of a dime.”
We could have left it alone that night. We could have stayed in our rat-infested quarters and minded our own business. Instead we kitted up, bumped knuckles, and turned the target.
It was more than simply the commando cocktail kicking in; a term coined by the über-talented former Delta commander Pete Blaber to describe the entirely intoxicating mixing of the thrill of the hunt with the thrill of the kill. No, it was much more than that. It was also about commitment to each other and to our countrymen, and sure, on the heels of 9/11, there was a little vigilante justice running through our blood.
And that, folks, after a dozen years of war on terror, and as our nation winds down our involvement in Afghanistan and moves to the Horn of Africa or Syria, is still the fundamental motive that drives the full assault mode mindset of one Delta Force Major Kolt “Racer” Raynor.
Back for the third time in this Delta Force series, Kolt Raynor still has not learned a single thing about listening to authority since he hung it out in Tier One Wild. But, hey, when you save POTUS’s ass, your pad speed sky-rockets in a second. This time, though, he should have let it go, he should have aborted the op.
But Racer has always marched to his own drummer with a wrecking-ball attitude, and when a mate is in the shit or a high-value individual is in his sites, the word abort isn’t in his vocabulary.
No, in times like that, Kolt Raynor defaults to execute, execute, execute. Besides, as you’ll see inside, some targeted tier one personalities are just more important than others.
Most black specops outfits, like Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, or even the British 22 SAS, can afford maybe one or two maverick operators through the life of the organization. More than that, and they are likely to have their operators dispersed into the conventional ranks and the headquarters shuttered, like Dick Marcinko’s Red Cell or the Canadian Airborne Regiment.
But rest assured, the ones that can keep it together long enough to turn target after target, zig and zag intuitively, and consistently get the drop on the skinny in the shadows tag themselves as action hero operators. The kind of guys you want in your foxhole or clearing corners with you. You can’t ask for the moniker, it just happens. Sure, running with men like Kolt Raynor is scary shit at times, more often than not resulting in someone shoving Kerlix to the bone in your bleeder or even pulling your dog tags and zipping up your body bag. And yes, sometimes pinning another worthless medal on your chest.
Why do men and women do it? Why do some American men and women aspire to serve the ranks of the most elite top-secret organizations where your every move is analyzed, every shot counted, and every hit a pressure cooker?
Why would a small team of Delta operators conduct a high-risk daytime hit in the middle of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, to roll up Abu Anas al-Libi in October 2013? Sure, the scumbag was a senior al Qaeda member and was wanted by the United States in connection to the bombing of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, with at least a $5 million bounty on his head, but was it the cocktail talking again, or something else?
More so than ever, the Full Assault Mode mission is filled with subtle first-hand experiences, both from my military service as well as my post-retirement career. Things I’ve witnessed a small band of unsung men and women voluntarily do again and again, from one battlefield or protected area to another, and done sans fanfare.
* * *
In Fu
ll Assault Mode, I try to shed light on the why, while continuing to protect the how. This issue, naturally, remains extraordinarily important to me.
Commercial nuclear security is a big deal in this post-9/11 era we live in, which is why I enlisted two trusted subject matter experts in identifying and protecting Safeguards Information—the government-protected, highly sensitive details on what is vulnerable and what is not that is protected by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. To Richard H. and Allen Fulmer, two of the best, your enthusiasm, knowledge, and attention to detail are very much appreciated.
Most writers will tell you that to craft an edge-of-the-seat thriller in today’s ever-changing technological era, it takes a team of experts behind the scenes. The people who understand the unique details of how a droid functions, what’s deep in the bowels of a nuclear reactor, or how the best helicopter pilots find their target in a tsunami-induced blackout. I’m deeply grateful to the handful of friends who set my left and right limits, and then adjusted my azimuth to keep me true. Most important to me was the insight that Chris Evans brought to the table. A super-talented and accomplished writer, Chris’s uncanny ability to gently massage chapter after chapter, adjusting my shot group from time to time, was extraordinary, timely, and entirely cherished.
Fans of Racer will recall that he is a recovering alcoholic, having fallen off the wagon in his debut novel, Black Site. Now back in the Unit, and back for the hat trick, most would agree that it’s wise to keep his old buddy Jack Daniels out of the single-wide. But if Kolt was to belly up to the bar again, maybe after coming down from the commando cocktail high, he’d certainly buy the rounds for my editor, Marc Resnick, from St. Martin’s Press and my agent, Scott Miller, of Trident Media Group. Even though Kolt might consider them SEAL Team Six groupies at times, he would learn very quickly how savvy, supportive, and aggressive they are in the publishing biz, and how the thrill of the find is just as exciting as the thrill of the sell.
So here’s to Rich, Allen, Chris, Marc, and Scott! Five world-class guys on top of their game and, very fortunate for me, in my corner. But, as usual, Kolt’s longevity really rests not only with the readers, but also with the three ladies in my home. Always supportive but lurking just outside the squared circle for signs that Kolt Raynor might be taking center stage, or believing his own press, I’m very grateful they allowed Kolt to stave off enough arm bars and dirty leg sweeps to get through round three.
Ding, ding, ding.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Also by Dalton Fury
About the Author
Copyright
I’m not the killer man, I’m the killer man’s son. But I’ll do the killing ’til the killer man comes.
—Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States
ONE
Eastern Afghanistan, early February 2013
A menagerie of animal-named armored vehicles trundled along a rutted dirt road deep in Taliban territory near the Pakistan border. The temperature hovered around freezing, not bad for early February, and dusk was only two hours away.
The mission was simple enough—clear ten klicks of heavily mined road leading to a Taliban-controlled village that was acting as a hub for three rat lines funneling Taliban and Haqqani fighters infiltrating into Afghanistan. It was an important mission, and its success would severely hamper the Taliban’s spring offensive, but there was zero chance it would make the six o’clock news back home. This was no Thunder Run, the rumbling charge of M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles that blew through Baghdad like metal hail through lace during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It couldn’t even compare with the Syrian armored runs of T-72s and BMP armored fighting vehicles through the Damascus suburb of Daraya. No, this was an excruciating crawl, where progress was measured in feet, sometimes inches.
It was day 5, and the column was still a klick out. Leading the way on this godforsaken goat path were a pair of ten-ton, two-man Husky 2G armored vehicles equipped with four large electronics-bay panels affixed to their fronts. Each vehicle swept one side of the road using the Niitek Visor 2500 ground-penetrating radar set housed within the panels. They were looking for IEDs. They’d already found three today, for a total of twelve since the mission began. Seven of the IEDs had had enough explosive power to easily kill the heaviest vehicle in the column. Finding them before they could be detonated had been a major success, but as the saying went, you only needed to miss one IED to have a very bad day.
It was an arms race, pitting sophisticated electronics and up-armored vehicles against guile and ever-increasing explosive power. It seemed criminal now to think troops had once traversed these roads in nothing more than standard Toyota pickup, but then you went to war with what you had, and back in 2001, IEDs weren’t an issue.
As the armored vehicles slowly rolled forward, a herd of seven Buffalo armored vehicles followed. Tipping the scales at over twenty-three tons apiece, the six-wheeled Buffalos looked and sounded like growling metal monsters. Their sheer size and power were so ferocious that one even made an appearance in a blockbuster movie as a shape-shifting warrior-robot.
Fearsome or not, a bundle of four 155mm artillery shells left over from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and buried two feet below the ground could turn fierce, blowing up and scattering bits of metal … and flesh. And so the column inched forward, the Huskies scanning the dirt for hidden death while, following from a safe distance, were the Buffalos, each carrying a complement of four dismounts—a cold term for the soldiers that would, if necessary, leave the protection of the Buffalo’s heavily armored V-shaped hull and patrol on foot.
Forty klicks away at Jalalabad Airfield, Kolt “Racer” Raynor sat perched uncomfortably on a cardboard box full of MREs in his Bravo Assault Team’s lounge area and watched the progress of the armored column on a fifty-inch flat screen. The feed came live from a UAV loitering some fifteen thousand feet above the column. A small box on the upper left of the screen showed an infrared view of the same area. So far, the only hot spots were the column’s vehicles and a trio of donkeys huddled on the leeward side of a rocky hill a hundred yards in front of the Huskies. It wasn’t as sexy as a Tier One high-value individual, but the hot spots would get Kolt and his men out the door. Tonight, they were on tap working a TST—time-sensitive target. Specifically, they were focused on the triggermen. While some IEDs were rigged to detonate on contact via a simple pressure plate, others were remote-detonated, the explosion set off by the thumb of a triggerman. For that to work, the terrorists would need to be within a couple hundred meters, hidden from the naked eye somewhere in the rocky outcrop. Kolt could have contacted the gunners in the Buffalos to tell them to forget the damn donkeys and sweep for two-legged asses, but the young army officer on target didn’t need white noise from someone back in the rear, even if it was Kolt Raynor. Besides, Kolt stiff-armed micromanaging as a practice himself.
“We should be out there, not here,” Kolt said under his breath. Forty klicks, even by helo, was far too long for a so-called rapid response. Kolt looked arou
nd the room. He was an invited guest here, and so he kept his thoughts to himself. Yes, he was their commander, but sometimes the smartest thing you did in command was to do nothing at all. Besides, he wasn’t going to gripe to the men about how it should be. It was important to keep that subtle separation between the commander and the commanded. After a decade plus of war, everyone in the room was war weary, and the hunger to mix it up with the bad guys had abated years ago, something certainly not lost on Kolt.
Kolt accepted his fate, for the moment, and turned away from “Thunder Turtle’s” agonizing progress to look around the tent. All four of Kolt’s assault teams lived in tents that had once been green. They were now covered by a half inch of brown dust, which clung to everything, even the interior. Between the dust and the clutter, it could have been a cave.
The operators chilled out on green nylon, squeaky, foldout army cots, whose aluminum legs never seemed to balance correctly on the plywood floors. Individual shelves were fashioned out of half-inch plywood and two-by-fours with small head-high walls placed between each bunk to give an impression of privacy. There wasn’t any really, unless they considered their five-by-six-foot space an island.
Kolt stood up and walked over to the door and cracked it open. He reached into the cargo pocket of his Crye Precision G3 combat pants and yanked out a half-empty pouch of Red Man. It’s going to be dark soon, he thought as he pulled three fingers of leaf and slipped it between his cheek and gum. Another day come and gone with little to show for it. Too many days had gone like this for the thirty bearded Delta operators. Sequestered in relative secrecy inside a small area of Jalalabad Airfield, it was easy to imagine being stranded on a very desolate island. Worse, rescue did not loom on the horizon. With the United States and Afghanistan signing a security agreement years earlier, control of military operations was moving over to Afghan forces. American troops and equipment were departing the war zone at a rapid rate. But not for the EOD troops out on Thunder Turtle, and definitely not for spec-ops troops like Delta. Like it or not, they were here to stay. And as long as al Qaeda still threatened either the fragile Afghan government or, more importantly, the security of the United States, operators would be sticking around.