by Dalton Fury
HVIs, high-value individuals, was JSOC’s way of saying “most wanted.” In a way, Stitch was right. Delta was trained to go deep, go dark, and terminate the very baddest of the bad. But not to kill and tell. At the moment, the fact that Haji Mohammad Ghafour topped that list didn’t impress Stitch. Ghafour’s position there was remarkable, since he had been an unknown person to the CIA or even inside the SCIF at Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, just a few weeks before.
Along with roughly eight hundred other residents, Haji Ghafour called the deep Goshai Valley home. Located in the upper stretches of the North-West Frontier Province, almost eleven miles due east of the very northern tip of the notorious Konar Province in neighboring Afghanistan, it wasn’t exactly a hot vacation spot featured in the latest edition of National Geographic.
Transportation was limited. Locals rode donkeys or walked. American commandos might choose the same or take their chances inside a helicopter. But the vast rugged terrain, similar to that in the mountains of neighboring Afghanistan, offered few flat and level landing spots larger than the size of a living room rug. Naturally, nobody was pushing the idea of infiltrating by parachuting in.
It took a few days to flush out the tactical plan. Sure, Kolt and the boys could be wheels up on an air-assault raid within thirty minutes if the intelligence was good enough. But a mission to build that intelligence packet required covert reconnaissance and thus more delicate handling and a great deal of patience.
Shaft was the obvious choice. The color of his skin didn’t hurt either. Under the cover of darkness, a helicopter inserted the seasoned operator high in the snow-covered mountains roughly three miles northwest of that godforsaken and forgotten village known by mapmakers as Drosh, Pakistan. From the JOC back at J-bad, Kolt was following his progress as best he could on the terminating end of Shaft’s daily updates when they were available. Kolt was impressed that Shaft had successfully walked to Drosh and presented a letter signed four months earlier by Haji Ghafour himself. The meat of the letter was a request for humanitarian assistance for the villages up and down his valley. In a major coup, the CIA had intercepted the letter a week ago. It provided a solid cover for Shaft, and everyone back at the JOC, except Admiral Mason most definitely, knew he could pull it off successfully.
Traveling solo and masquerading as a non–government agency doctor, Shaft had packed accordingly. From his helicopter insertion point, Shaft humped a large civilian backpack filled with basic medical supplies, a wad of rupees, a small Glock 26 9mm, a single hand grenade, a small digital camera, an infrared pointer, a Thuraya cell phone with spare battery, and an iPad 4.
Now, three days into the operation, Shaft was making sufficient progress—just enough to keep everyone on their toes back at J-bad. From the JOC, the J-staff was able to monitor Shaft’s exact location via a satellite link to the iPad 4 in Shaft’s bag. The technology is similar to the conventional military’s Blue Force Tracking system, but the GPS module is embedded in a new highly secretive program known as Raptor X, the U.S. government’s version of GIS mapping capability with multilayer application capability. If Google Earth was classified and on steroids, it would be called Raptor X. And that logic module was fully embedded in Shaft’s iPad 4, allowing Kolt to at least track the iPad 4 down to ten meters’ accuracy, as long as it was powered on and registering, which would be enormously valuable if they had to launch an in extremis rescue of his man on the scene. If something got ugly for Shaft, as long as he kept the iPad 4 with him, Murphy’s Law could be managed.
Although unsuccessful in obtaining pack mules or porters to accompany him to the target valley, he linked up with a few armed locals who offered to escort him to Haji Ghafour. Allah may provide a cure for every disease, but everyone loves a medicine man.
Kolt’s cell phone rang. The ringtone was the theme to Shaft.
“Everyone shut up!” Kolt shouted, grabbing the Thuraya cell phone and pushing the little green button to answer. The team crowded around him.
“Hello?”
“Steak and lobster tonight, isn’t it?” Shaft asked with his typical ice-cold demeanor and quirky sense of humor.
Kolt smiled wide. “Ha! Not till the night after tomorrow, bro, but it’s good to hear you have things under control.” Kolt knew Shaft wouldn’t be wisecracking unless he did.
“Yeah, well I’m sure the rest of the team is already standing in the chow line.”
Kolt smiled and nodded in agreement but ignored the comment. “Status?”
“My friends and I have reached the mouth of the valley,” Shaft said, passing the official word that all was well and on track.
Kolt figured he must have caught one of those overloaded but colorful Jenga trucks on the Chitral-Dir road. The ride would have been backbreaking, but it would deliver him to the mouth of the Goshai Valley. From there, however, the next five miles to Ghafour’s village was all on foot.
“Yeah, we have a positive track on you. That was quick!” Kolt stated, letting Shaft know that the iPad 4 location was pinging just fine.
“Saddle sore?” Kolt asked.
“Nope, the public transportation out here works smoother than New York City. You don’t even have to tip the driver.”
Kolt smiled. “Good to hear. Save your juice. Talk to you tomorrow at seventeen hundred hours,” Kolt answered as he made eye contact and bumped fists with the team members standing around him.
“Enjoy the steak!” Shaft shot back as Kolt removed the phone from his ear and mashed the red END CALL button.
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Sergeant Cindy “Hawk” Bird was becoming paranoid. So she thought, anyway. She was certain she had seen the black four-door Mercury Grand Marquis three times now while she had run some errands on the military base and hopscotched Fayetteville while shopping. The gorgeous day was much welcomed, one of her few days off over the last several months. After three weeks of mind-boggling TDY in Rockville, Maryland, home of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where she reviewed pressurized and boiling water reactors, the fission process, and what exactly were the key components that Delta would need to take out should POTUS order a covert attack on Iran’s nuclear program, she hoped for a long weekend to unwind and snuggle up with a good love story around the fire.
With the ongoing conflict in Syria escalating for Delta, she, along with a select team of fellow unit members, was swamped. This was exacerbated because of her formal military training as a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear specialist. The sarin-gas issue ensured she would be knee-deep in the mission analysis. She wasn’t bitching—she knew part of the deal with the unit was maintaining her quals in everything nuke or internationally banned chemical weapons. Truth be told, though, she yearned to be overseas in Afghanistan doing something to help with the war effort. She didn’t know what exactly that would be. There wasn’t a lot of operational or tactical necessity for someone with her skill set or looks, but she figured she’d learn something new just the same.
Thumbing her iPhone 5 as she passed through the food court before exiting the main entrance, she marveled at how glorious a day it had become. If the sun held, she thought she might take in an hour or so poolside to even out her farmer’s tan after hours of flat-range pistol work at the secret Delta compound located in the upper left quadrant of the sprawling nineteen square miles of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Nothing bugged her more than the distinct tan line separating her biceps from her wide, muscular shoulders. But that would have to wait for much warmer days because, even though the sun was strong enough to make her slide the white Costa Hammerhead sunglasses off her head to protect her eyes, February in Fayetteville usually floated between a frosty 33 to a cool 47 degrees.
The vehicle seemed a little out of place in the Bragg main-exchange parking lot, where she first noticed it. Late-morning Wednesdays weren’t a busy time for the exchange, which typically meant the parking lot was fairly empty. The vehicles usually seen there at that time
of the week were dated pickup trucks, complete with prominent black-and-white stickers of U.S. Army Airborne wings, or the red, white, and blue AA stickers showing they were a proud former member of the famed 82nd Airborne Division. Retired military personnel who chose to remain in the Fayetteville area liked to represent. Besides retirees, military spouses driving family-focused minivans, with some of the better-off spouses tooling around in a full-size Chevy Tahoe or GMC Yukon, populated the parking lot before the normal lunch crowd.
She hadn’t been able to get a look at the occupants, though, since the Mercury’s windows were tinted, but the not-so-discrete government license plate gave her pause. When she first saw the Mercury, she had been more concerned with finding her keys in her loaded purse and with checking for a text message about lunch from her Green Beret boyfriend. But it was only about five minutes until she had spotted the same black Marquis a second time. Heading south along Bragg Boulevard, she slowed her vehicle to let the Marquis pass. Hawk watched in her rearview mirror as it slowed its pace as well, maintaining four to five car lengths behind but in the fast center lane. She checked her speedometer, making sure she wasn’t getting too crazy and offering an easy speeding ticket to a bored Fayetteville police officer. Her gas gauge was showing just over a quarter tank, so she gunned it through the yellow caution light to cross two lanes of traffic and took a hard right into the Citco station on Shaw Road. She looked back toward Bragg Boulevard and watched the black Marquis continue south and out of view.
As she squeezed the pump handle and filled her tank, she zipped up the front of her pink sport fleece to take the chill off her neck. She brought her shoulders up toward her ears to further protect her from the strong winds coming from the east over Bragg Boulevard. Settling the gas pump back in its cradle, she realized she was missing something important.
“Shit! The damn bracelet,” she said, not caring if anyone heard her. “Troy’s gonna freak!”
Her 5th Special Forces boyfriend Troy was a gear Nazi and dedicated prepper, always good for a story of how the world is coming to an end and how it’s important to be ready. Sure, the end of the world one day is a possibility, she reasoned, but she figured worrying more about her obstacle-course times and getting her Mozambique drill time under a respectable eight seconds were more pressing and realistic problems.
Troy had hand woven a bracelet out of pink and lime-green parachute cord, complete with an integrated whistle and flint fire sparker. Cindy wasn’t all that impressed with it, but the colors weren’t bad, so she vowed to wear it for Troy. She had no idea why or when she would ever need it. If the world came to an end, she was thinking she’d need more than a pretty bracelet to survive, but it’s the thought that counts.
As Hawk turned from the pump and her attention back on her shopping day, she looked over the hood of her Beetle and watched the Marquis slowly drive past again, this time heading back north toward Fort Bragg and the main exchange.
Sure, Hawk had the advanced countersurveillance training under her belt. And she knew, simply given her sensitive position as a female unit member, that she was special. But out and about, away from the unit compound, she was just another hot brunette with olive skin and a tight ass. Out in the real world, she was simply Cindy Bird, not a commando code-named Hawk.
Even so, she vividly recalled Major Kolt Raynor hammering her on the finer points of countersurveillance shit as she rode shotgun with him in the narrow streets of Cairo last year, yet another Middle Eastern hotbed demanding attention. Kolt’s incessant lecturing on the importance of looking for patterns, erratic driving maneuvers, U-turns or odd lane changes and the like annoyed her just as much as she knew it educated her. And now with the black Marquis six car lengths behind her again, she rapidly moved her eyes from the roadway to her rearview mirror at a speed-zone-respectable 62 miles per hour down Skibo Road and whispered Kolt’s exact cautions.
“Same face and ride twice was a coincidence. Three times and it was a pattern, and patterns ain’t coincidence.”
But she chided herself for even worrying about it, shaking her head as much to break her paranoia as to move the side-swept bangs out of her eyes. And it was kind of annoying that she was thinking about Kolt when she was off duty. Get it together, Hawk. This ain’t Cairo.
Hawk looked up again and saw the Marquis slow, then turn north off Skibo and into a neighborhood side road. She would have been happy to leave it alone and refocus on her search for wicked pumps that would make Lady Gaga jealous if not for the light blue Ford Focus she was now observing through her rearview mirror. That car, with two clean-cut-looking gentlemen wearing dark sunglasses in the front seats, seemed to swap out with the black Marquis. The Focus followed her south, pretty much tailgating her, as she left Skibo, and it eased off her as she passed behind Luigi’s restaurant on North McPherson Church Road. She watched the Focus close the distance again, practically rear-ending her as she turned west on congested two-lane Morgantown Road before passing Carrabba’s Italian Grill on the right. Hawk drove underneath the uber-busy All American Freeway, then north into the Cross Creek Mall entrance, and finally clockwise around the perimeter mall road. By the time she pulled her metallic-gray 2013 Volkswagen Beetle into a lucky vacant spot up front inside the crowded Macy’s parking lot, her spider senses were at full ping.
Assholes!
Hawk knew one of two things. Either they were tailing her for unknown shady reasons or they wanted a piece of her tail. Either way, it ain’t happening, she thought. She shook her head. She was being crazy.
If I’m about to get rolled up on one of those Delta training exercises, they could at least wait until I’m on government time.
The fact of the matter was, none of the males in Delta questioned Hawk’s ability to take care of herself or even to take a punch. No, not after she breezed through female selection and assessment for the pilot program two years earlier. She was a quick study back then and since then had proved herself in hot spots like Libya and on target. This was put to the ultimate test when Major Raynor pulled a wild stunt during an AFO stint that quickly went from a simple mission to collect intelligence and atmospherics to a hastily planned low-visibility hit in the heart of Cairo. She had been tested. She had taken a man’s life, two probably. Her classified personnel records even included a Defense Meritorious Service Medal with a citation mentioning the fact that she had saved the life of a fellow soldier—Major Kolt Raynor. Some of the die-hard graybeards weren’t convinced she should be knighted as an operator, so the jury was still out. But, so far, she had been found not wanting by most of her male mates.
Hawk stepped her white sport heels down on the asphalt and lifted herself out of her Beetle. Out of habit, she checked her text messages again, kind of wishing Troy would have given her a nice set of fur-lined leather gloves instead of the prepper bracelet she’d left in her apartment, before slinging her patch-knit purse over her right shoulder and thumbing the wireless key fob. The reassuring audible double horn sounded behind her as she turned away and dropped her keys in her purse. She threw her shoulders back and tossed her bangs out of her eyes, wrapped the long scarf around her neck, and stepped off at a determined pace for the certain warmth of the women’s department and the sale racks.
Jalalabad Airfield, Afghanistan
The members of the task force knew there wasn’t much they could do for Shaft if things went to shit in the Goshai Valley. Kolt figured Shaft had enough battery power to last about three days or so; a few seconds daily to check in with enough juice to make the final Hail Mary call to get Kolt and the others on the helos and in the air to finally capture a key link to Ayman al-Zawahiri.
It suddenly occurred to Kolt why Admiral Mason might want to string him up by the ears. By charging off to rescue Thunder Turtle, Kolt had essentially removed himself from the operation to retrieve Shaft. Sure, other operators were briefed and equally capable of pulling Shaft out, but it was Kolt’s op and Kolt’s responsibility. And, true to his maverick nature, Kolt
hadn’t bothered to inform Mason beforehand.
Fuck.
The shit would have really hit the fan if things had taken a turn for the worse while Kolt was unavailable. Any unplanned calls could generate a lot of attention back at J-bad and would have the helicopter blades spinning in short order on an in extremis recovery of Shaft. Kolt had actually strong-armed those birds for the rescue mission last night.
The dark possibilities were starting to make him sick to his stomach, but Kolt had faith that Shaft could live his cover as a medical contractor and be anything but a seasoned Delta operator. As long as he remembered that his cover was the truth, and the truth was his cover, he would be OK. So far, so good. Things were clicking along as planned.
The following evening, Kolt was still sweating it out waiting for a summons from Admiral Mason when the Shaft ringtone lit up his Thuraya. He grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and sat down on one of the chairs in Bravo’s lounge, which had become his new home. Shaft’s voice was hurried. It was obvious to Kolt that the extreme cold was kicking Shaft’s butt.
Shaft was all business. “Jackpot!” he said, passing the standard Delta code word signaling the targeted personality had been located, “with a nice family photo.”
Kolt scribbled the letters quickly on the paper, raised it in the air, and showed it to the others standing nearby. “Got it! All OK?”
“Nothing big. I have a new roommate. Uh, er, more like shadow.”
Kolt practically felt Shaft’s violent shivering. He could hear teeth chattering through the Thuraya.
“Compromised?” Kolt asked. He felt more than saw the other operators tense up when he asked. To a man, they all preferred a straight-up firefight to all this cloak-and-dagger shit.