Target Deck - 02

by Jack Murphy

  If there was anyone on the other side of the door they were in for a world of hurt from the steel bending and giving way under the explosive force of the detonation. The charge lived up to its name. The two assaulters stood on either side of the door as the plastic explosives blasted a shower of debris out between them, rattling windows for blocks in every direction.

  Inside, the cell blocks consisted of cinder block walls that were covered in peeling paint, the walls themselves seeming to stretch on forever. The black-clad interlopers cut right and sprinted down a side corridor, knowing exactly where they were headed. A scale mock up had been constructed with wooden planks and Hessian cloth where they familiarized themselves with the floor plan. Together they had run rehearsals through the improvised prison again and again until they knew the layout like the palm of their hands.

  Approaching the wing of the prison where the target was being held, they saw two guards as they rounded a juncture in the hallway. With AK-47 muzzles bearing down on them, one of the guards threw his hands in the air. The other reached for the revolver holstered on his hip just a second too late as one of the intruders butt stroked him across the cheek, drawing blood and knocking him to the concrete floor.

  “You,” the attacker said to the remaining guard who had prudently surrendered. “On the fucking ground!”

  The prison guard could see the edges of the man's lips and eyes under the balaclava he wore. He was the smaller of the two, also white, but his accent was not that of an Afrikaner. It was a strange voice like he had never heard before except maybe on television. American?

  In seconds the gunmen had handcuffed the prison guards to a pipe sticking out from one of the nearby walls and were hurrying down the hall to complete their mission.

  Turning another corner, their boots thudded down the corridor towards the entrance to the wing that housed solitary confinement, usually reserved for those deemed to be too dangerous to be left in general population. However, there was also another type of prisoner consigned to solitary confinement. Political prisoners.

  At the sliding barred metal gate that served as an entrance to solitary, a lone guard sat behind a desk half asleep. When he saw two men storming up to him with Kalashnikovs held at the ready he jolted fully awake, his heart rate suddenly skipping up well over a hundred beats a minute. Reaching for the pump-action shotgun lying across the desk, a spray of 7.62 bullets shredded the wooden desktop, sending the shotgun spinning to the floor. The guard retracted his hand as it was now bleeding from several shrapnel wounds.

  The larger assailant strode up to the guard and punched him in the face, toppling him over. No demands, just another obstacle to crush on the way to their objective.

  Reaching for a key ring in his pocket, the shooter with the American accent produced a key, jammed it into the lock on the gate and turned it open. The key, and others, had been given to the operators several days prior by a guard who was currently off duty. The American had used some key impressioning techniques to make copies before rushing the originals back to the prison before anyone noticed them missing. The door slid on its rollers until it came to a stop with a loud clang that resonated throughout the solitary confinement block.

  The jail breakers took off, jogging down the hall as prisoners reached through the bars of their cells attempting to catch hold of them. They screamed and shouted in a half dozen languages and dialects. Aside from the actual prisoners, the cells themselves were empty cement cubes with a lone slop bucket, the only amenity provided. It was no wonder that they begged to be released. Most of them looked malnourished; some looked positively sickly with boils across their skin and covered in feces.

  In cell Twelve-Alpha they found their target, Josef Menzi.

  Although it could be debated whether or not Josef was a psychopath, he was kept in solitary for purely political reasons. The ruling government, particularly the current president of the breakaway state of Ciskei, didn't want Josef spreading his political ideas among the other prisoners, afraid that it would lead to another coup attempt. It didn't help that the current President of Ciskei was also Josef's brother.

  One by one, the various black ethnic groups were granted strategically located black homelands, Ciskei being one of them. The idea was purely Machiavellian on the part of the South African government. With black homelands granted, the rest of South Africa was reserved as a white Volkstaat by a matter of deduction. Besides, with the various black tribes split up into separate provinces it was even easier for the Apartheid-state to play them all off against each other.

  With the fall of Rhodesia and the expansion of the communist menace, the South Africans weren't taking any chances. That was where Josef came in.

  Frail and underweight from years of captivity, Josef looked up at the two white men as he sat with his back against the wall. Were they liberators or murderers? Hard to tell.

  “Tell us your mother's name,” one of them demanded, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. This one's accent was Australian, he was sure of it.

  “Your mother's name dickhead!” The other sounded American.

  “Phelisa,” Josef croaked.

  “Where were you born?” the American asked.

  “Bisho.”

  The American pulled out a key ring and quickly located the appropriate key while the larger Australian kept an eye out for armed guards. Swinging the barred door open, the paramilitary soldier reached in and helped Josef to his feet.

  “He sounds like a fair dinkum,” the Aussie said.

  “You stay with me, you do what I do,” the American told Josef. “If you so much as shit your pants without me giving you permission first and I will put a bullet in the back of your fucking head. Understand?”

  Josef nodded.

  What else could he do?

  The next few minutes were a blur as the two black-clad gunmen half dragged, half carried Josef through the prison, shooting their way out as several guards gave a half-hearted attempt to prevent them from escaping. After the quick exchange of gunfire, both guards threw down their weapons and made a run for it. Dying was simply outside their paygrade.

  Walking right out the front door of Middledrift Prison, the three of them stood silently as police sirens sounded in the distance. Headlights flashed and a white van ground to a halt in front of them. Flinging open the side door, the two commandos pushed Josef inside and piled in behind him. Before they had the door closed the driver stomped on the gas and accelerated down the street.

  Their driver made the first right hand turn they came to. A half dozen police cars missed them by a margin of several seconds as the police vehicles skidded to a halt in front of the prison.

  Josef was handcuffed, gagged, and blindfolded before being laid down on the floor of the van. The prisoner needed to safeguarded at all costs. A lot of people had a lot riding on him tonight.

  “Don't move,” Sean Deckard ordered the political dissident as he yanked off his balaclava.

  “Are we clear?” Robin asked from the driver's seat.

  “I think so,” James responded, tugging off his own mask to reveal a massive caterpillar of a mustache on his upper lip. “Looks like we lost them.”

  Sean dropped a half empty magazine from his AK, topping it off with a fresh one from his chest rig. Golden light flashed through the van as Robin gunned it down a labyrinth of side streets. They had a long drive to their destination, and he knew it was going to be an even longer night.

  For years he'd been fighting one war after another. From Vietnam, to Laos, to Cambodia, Rhodesia, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, and now in South Africa he plied the ancient trade of soldiering whenever and wherever he could, but tonight would be different.

  Tonight he was fighting to prevent a war.

  If he failed, the resulting genocide would make Mugabe's reign over Zimbabwe look like a walk in the park.

  Holding on tight, Robin nearly balanced the van on two wheels as he rounded a corner and sped off into the darkness.

  Als
o by Jack Murphy:

  The PROMIS series:

  PROMIS: Vietnam

  PROMIS: Rhodesia

  PROMIS: South Africa

  PROMIS: Lebanon (forthcoming)

  The Deckard series:

  Reflexive Fire

  Target Deck

  Direct Action (forthcoming)

  Non-Fiction

  US Special Forces: Weapons Report Card

  Acknowledgements:

  Where to even begin...

  You start off writing a novel thinking that it will be a solitary process, you sitting by yourself in a corner somewhere smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey while you pound out your manifesto on a laptop. The reality is that writing a book like this is much more collaborative than I ever would have thought.

  If I were to judge Target Deck by its cover I would give it an A+ and that is thanks to my awesome cover artist Marc Lee. He knocked it out of the park once again. Now if you didn't find the content of the book as inspiring as the cover, well, please don't blame Marc for the errors of my ways.

  I also want to thank Ted and Laura K. for putting eyeballs on the text of the book and slogging through my butchering of the English language. Thanks so much for your patience with me! I'd like to thank Uri for consulting on some of the technical aspects of the book. Brandon Webb gets a huge shout out for giving me a job at SOFREP.com and providing me with lots of great advice about publishing. I also want to thank Dan Tharp, Chris Martin, Iassen Donov, Federico, Rob, Peter Nealen, Hank Brown, Laura W., John Meyer, Jack Badelaire, Jack Silkstone, Blake Miles, and many others who cannot be mentioned here for your friendship and support.

  As always, I need to thank and apologize to my wife, Caterina. Sorry that this whole writing deal turns me into an anti-social hermit for long periods of time honey.

  Glossary

  .300 WinMag: Sniper rifle chambered for the .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge.

  .410 shotgun shell: Smallest size shotgun cartridge which is about the same width as a .45 caliber bullet

  160th Special Operations Aviation: Helicopter aviation unit composed of the world's most highly trained pilots and flight crews who fly Special Operations troops where they need to go on combat operations

  1911: .45 Caliber pistol

  40mm grenade: A grenade fired from a grenade launcher rather than thrown by hand. One type is fired from the M203 under-barrel grenade launcher and another type is fired by the MK-19.

  550 chord: Parachute line, also used by soldiers to tie down equipment and just about everything else you can think of

  AC-130: Aerial gunship

  AG: Assistant Gunner, carries ammunition, spare barrels, and tripod for a machine gunner or extra ammunition for a recoiless rifle gunner. Also preforms reloading duties.

  AK: See AK-47

  AK-103: An updated form of the AK-47 rifle that can be fitted with a variety of different optics.

  AK-47: Avtomat Kalashnikova-1947, following the standard Soviet weapons naming convention. Avtomat meaning the type of rifle: automatic. Kalashnikov comes from the last name of the inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov and the year 1947 is when the rifle went into production. The AK-47 is the world's most ubiquitous battle rifle, having been used in virtually every conflict since the Cold War.

  AMIZ: Academia Militarizada Ignacio Zaragoza, Mexican police academy

  An-124: Large Russian-made cargo airplane

  API: Armor Piercing Incendiary ammunition

  Arystan: Kazakh Anti-Terror unit

  AT4: US military single shot anti-tank rocket

  Barret: .50 caliber anti-material rifle

  BMP: Russian tracked armored vehicle

  BRDM: Russian made four or eight wheeled armored vehicle

  C4: Composition Four, military grade plastic explosives

  Camelbak: Plastic bladder used to carry water in, commonly carried on a soldiers back and drank through a long tube that acts as a straw

  Carl Gustav: 84mm Recoiless rifle that can fire HE, HEDP, and HEAT among other types of rounds.

  CDMA: Code Division Multiple Access, a way to access channels utilized by various radios

  Celox: A hemostatic agent which quickly clots bleeding injuries

  CHU: Compartmentalized Housing Unit

  CIA: Central Intelligence Agency

  CISEN: Mexican intelligence service

  Comms: Communications

  COMSEC: Communications Security

  CP: Control Point

  Crypto: Cryptography

  DEA: Drug Enforcement Agency

  Delta Force: US Army counter-terrorist unit

  Det-Chord: Detonation Chord, used to sympathetically detonate larger explosive charges

  Dev: (see SEAL Team Six)

  Direct Action: A mission tasked to kill enemy soldiers or terrorists

  DLI: Defense Language Institute

  DOE: Department of Energy

  F-5: Fighter Jet

  FARC: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Colombian guerrilla group

  FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation

  FES: Mexican maritime commandos

  FID: Foreign Internal Defense

  Flashbang: A distraction device which can be thrown into a room and creates a flash and a bang

  Flexcuff: Disposable plastic handcuffs

  FOB: Forward Operating Base

  GAFE: Mexican Counter-Terrorist unit

  Glock: Austrian made brand of pistols

  GPS: Global Positioning System

  GSG-9: German Counter-Terrorist unit

  GUARD: Global Unconventional Aid, Rescue, and Defense, a US-based Private Military Company

  HE: High Explosive

  HEAT: High Explosive Anti-Tank

  HEDP: High Explosive Dual Purpose

  Hextend: A blood plasma extender

  HF: High Frequency

  HK 416: German made carbine rifle with a gas-piston upper receiver chambered in 5.56

  HK 417: German made big brother to the 416 but chambered for the 7.62 bullet

  HMMWV: High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle

  Hoolie tool: Also known as a Hooligan tool, this metal pry bar is used for mechanically breaching doors

  HUMINT: Human Intelligence

  HVT: High Value Target

  IED: Improvised Explosive Device

  IR: Infrared

  Iridium phone: Mobile satellite telephone

  ISA: Intelligence Support Activity. Unit that conducts intelligence gathering operations for Special Operations.

  ISR: Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

  Iveco: Truck manufacturer

  JDAM: Joint Direct Attack Munition

  Ka-bar: Military fighting knife.

  Kaibiles: Guatemalan Special Forces

  Kalashnikov: See AK-47

  KIA: Killed In Action

  LAW: Light Anti-Tank rocket launcher

  LOA: Limit Of Advance

  M-10: Scope used to sight in a Carl Gustav recoiless rifle

  M-1950: Green canvas bag used to hold and protect a para-trooper's rifle during a parachute jump

  M16: Standard issue American combat rifle

  M203: Under barrel, breach loaded, 40mm grenade launcher

  M240B: 7.62 belt fed General Purpose Machine Gun

  M249 SAW: Squad Automatic Weapon, belt fed and chambered for 5.56

  M2HB: .50 caliber machine gun

  M4: Shortened M16 carbine, commonly carried by US forces