Before Sunrise (3 page)

Captain Anthony Vasquez watched the progress
over a secure feed in the Forward Ops center. The moonless night
blanketed his mission in complete darkness, but through the
technological magic of his team’s helmet-mounted night-vision
systems, he could see exactly what they saw.

So far, they saw nothing.

Their orders were to find and eradicate any
trace of the enemy off the desert banks of the Pahkthi Peninsula.
They’d gotten false intelligence before. Possibly the unit had
received more of the same. Vasquez knew there would be only one
option: prosecute the information to the fullest. If it panned out,
they’d have the wild card in their terrorism deck, none other than
Taliban military strategist Amir Sarkhir. If Vasquez’s team brought
this prick down, many young lives, both American and Afghan, would
be saved.

“
Captain Vasquez, sir.”
Special Operator Jeffries, a man of barely twenty-four, short and
stocky with his cover always pulled down over his eyes, appeared
with a salute.

Vasquez lingered near the satellite
monitors, his eyes glued to the screens. He looked up once the
display returned to the start of the next cycle, and nodded at
Jeffries. Before the interruption, the tent had been filled with
tomblike silence. Every man on his squad knew Vasquez preferred no
idle chatter. Jeffries’ arrival meant news.

“
At ease.” Contrary to his
order, Jeffries stood upright, ramrod-straight.

“
Sir. We have word from team
two, sir.“

“
Go on.”

“
They have visual on the
target. Ready to move on your orders, sir.”

Vasquez needed Sarkhir alive. This enemy
behaved different. They lived by a code beyond his understanding.
It wouldn’t be beneath Sarkhir to use women and children as human
shields when they moved in. He’d seen it before. Better yet,
intelligence warned Sarkhir would torch the camp and everything in
it rather than surrender. He gave a perfunctory nod, knowing that
each member of the team, hand-selected by him and Liam years
before, understood the goal of this mission. “We need a total
sweep.” He turned for his gear. “Once it’s confirmed, I’ll be there
with team three.”

“
Yes, sir,” came the
response.

“
We have a standing order
from the top, Jeffries. Tell McKinley we are
go
.”

“
Yes, sir!”

The date was September
2
^nd
,
2006, and Vasquez had reached his twenty-two days target for a
return stateside to his pregnant wife and twin six-year-old sons.
His request to lead the primary team on this mission had been
flatly denied; he’d had to call in every favor owed to him just to
put in with the follow-on squad and get there thirty minutes after
all the action. But it was the best he could negotiate, and his
presence the past few days had brought a tense energy to the men.
They’d heard the tales of his tours after 9/11, and his unit’s
successes, though never publicly acknowledged, had become the stuff
of legends. Vasquez knew that some of the stories batted around
were exaggerations at this point, but many of them
weren’t.

Nonetheless, if the primary team succeeded,
Vasquez and team three would be inside the compound, in prime
position to see the capture of Amir Sarkhir. Over the monitors,
Vasquez heard the sharp crackle of the first shots of gunfire. He
turned and walked calmly toward the exit with his escort, Major
Anders, on his heels. Hell had opened its gates and the strike team
would be in full combat within seconds. Sarkhir’s men would
presumably fight to the death, which fit Vasquez’s plans perfectly.
Less shit for him to secure, after-the-fact.

Major Anders raced to keep up. “Sir, we can
move in with the all-clear. Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“
Go ahead,” Vasquez strode
to the helicopter, which was spun-up and waited only for him.
Anders hurried his steps to match, like some attention-starved
child.

“
Allow the men to confirm
capture first before we move in,” he shouted. “I suggest another
hour sweeping the outer sectors. Heat signatures indicate there are
some underground bunkers and tunnels that head west into the
mountains.”

Vasquez hopped into the bay door and found
the last jump-seat along the wall. The lieutenant had no choice but
to wait on the tarmac while the heavy bird lifted and held for an
overlong moment, before it rose and rocketed toward the target. For
the most part, Vasquez ignored the request. His heart beat madly in
his chest. He’d missed the days of shoulder-to-shoulder in combat
with men he respected, especially on a bitch of a mission like
this. It reminded him of when he’d first joined, when he’d been
part of the Wolf, a brotherhood of Marines, SEALs, and Delta Force
all baked together as one, with Liam Flanagan guarding his back.
Things had been different then.

Vasquez had never met a more skilled
combatant. Liam’s temper had, at first, made Vasquez doubt him as a
soldier, much less a Special Forces operator. But his friend soon
proved him wrong. Vasquez knew few men who could take on the rigid
CT training with the fearlessness that Liam possessed. He’d been
top of his class, until his hair-trigger temper had nearly gotten
him kicked out of the covert Wind Scorpion program;. The
infraction? He’d choked an instructor who’d made the unfortunate
mistake of speaking ill of Liam’s young wife. Her name was Kennedy.
The sweetest kid and the only person Vasquez had actually seen Liam
soften with. A petite black girl with thick, curly hair she was
always pushing back from her face. She had been quite spunky, too.
The appeals board had taken into consideration that despite Liam
being an Irish boy from the mean streets of Chicago, he’d never had
a single reprimand. His interracial relationship had been the
target of mocking by a trainer determined to break him. The board
deemed the trainer’s action inappropriate and Liam’s unit learned
quickly nothing was off limits, except Kennedy.

Vasquez smiled, remembering how the services
found the perfect place for a soldier like Liam Flanagan: an
off-the-grid counter-terrorism unit they’d named ‘Wolfpack’. Liam’s
SEAL unit had met with the elite tactical force Vasquez led within
the Marines and he had seen fit to bring Vasquez with him as his
third-in-command. Thanks to the successful deployments of the
Wolfpack, Vasquez got his bars. He fully believed that if Liam had
lived, he’d have become even more of a legend.

As the bird traveled low and soundlessly
over the flat desert sands, Vasquez itched for the takedown.
Secretly he wished Sarkhir were out there in the desert cowering
against a sand dune like a little bitch. The bastard had taken so
many innocent lives. He wanted to drag him out like the mad dog he
was and show these people he was nothing more than a murdering
piece of shit, and not some messiah.

Now that the area had been secured, the bird
set down just outside the compound and Hicks, the ground chief, met
the team. Vasquez watched impassively as several of their men
dragged terrorists and dropped them face down in the sand. The
wounded were airlifted out. “How many of ours, Sergeant?” he called
back over his shoulder.

“
Six, sir.”

“
Fuck me,” mumbled Vasquez.
This had better bear fruit. He got out and marched over to where
the captured were held. One by one, Hicks lifted each man by his
shoulder and bound wrists so Vasquez could confirm their
identities. Vasquez pointed out the three he would want questioned
and immediately they were separated from the others.

“
Sarkhir?” Vasquez asked the
approaching Chief Operator.

“
Sir, we have men being
questioned now. They put up one bitch of a fight.”

Vasquez nodded to be shown. He promptly
followed his men into a two-story building the color of the sand it
had been erected upon. The windows were blown out. Vasquez’s lifted
his gaze to the roof. Several soldiers paced with their guns
pointed downward.

He entered a room that
reeked of gunpowder and shit. Pressed against the wall were two men
in turbans. One on his strike team yelled in Arabic at a
mean-looking bastard who shouted the same repeated prayer, over and
over. Vasquez scanned the weapons discharged and discarded. This
couldn’t be the cell he’d been searching for. These men didn’t look
to be held up with the same equipment as the other four. There were
no computers here. Hell, the electricity didn’t even work. Still,
something stuck in his craw.
Why would
they fight so hard if Sarkhir, or something of more value, wasn’t
nearby?

“
Sir!”

“
What is it?”

“
This one thinks we’re here
for the Americans. He wants to trade for his release,
sir.”

Vasquez’s throat went dry. “What Americans?
Civilians?”

“
I’m not sure, sir.” The
sergeant swallowed. “He keeps saying the words for ‘army man’, sir,
over and over, sir.”

Vasquez narrowed his eyes. The report made
no sense. There were no missing units in this region, Army or
Marine, and if there were some other CT force in theater, they’d
have told him when he requested authorization for the op. Every man
in the room vibrated with tension. The idea that there were fallen
comrades in this compound had them itching to rip loose on the few
surviving captives.

“
Where? Where are they?”
Vasquez asked in disbelief. He watched as the soldier pressed the
deadly end of his assault rifle to the center of the man’s brow. He
said a few words in Arabic. Vasquez’s hands clenched. He held his
breath and waited. This could be bullshit, a diversion to get him
off Sarkhir’s scent. POWs in his region? No fucking way. That lame
lie had been the first thing they always threw at him, and Vasquez
had learned not to chase those rumors. Not a single one had ever
been true.

The man nodded and raised his hands, giving
the universal sign of compliance. Vasquez ordered Hicks to ensure
the place had been rigged with explosives. They walked out of the
building with the prisoner leading the way. Several yards to the
south of the building he stopped before a patch of sand, thinly
covered with straw-like weeds. The man brushed the debris away with
his hands to reveal a door. Flinging it open, he stepped back.

“
It’s gotta be
booby-trapped, sir,” shouted Hicks, who stepped bodily between
Vasquez and the hole.

“
Move.”

“
Sir, let the men go
in.”

“
Move!”

Hicks shifted aside, then immediately
followed Vasquez down the sand-covered steps into a dank, dark,
cramped hole. The stench was so strong Vasquez fought back his gag
reflex. Maybe Sarkhir was cowering in the corner with a grenade.
He’d promised Angelina that he would return to her. That he would
take no risks. But it was Sarkhir who’d sent a hand-launched
missile into Liam’s airlift, killing Vasquez’s best friend and
several others on their team. At the time, Vasquez had been
stateside for the birth of his twins. Payback’s a bitch, and he’d
go out firing his last round into the shitface scumbag before he
let the bastard commit a suicide drop on him.

Hunkering down, he flipped on his
night-vision unit, and then, in disbelief, the light attached to
the scope of his weapon. Vasquez froze. To his horror, he saw three
emaciated men chained to the walls. Two were white-skinned and very
pale, the other probably Hispanic, or maybe Filipino, but in any
case, these men were not locals. This tomb had been some kind of
bunker five feet high and maybe eight feet wide. Piping dropped in
to give minimal ventilation. The men appeared dead. But as he drew
closer, one lifted his gaunt face. His hair, long and matted,
covered most of it.

“
It’s gonna be okay,
soldier. We’re here.” Vasquez choked back the emotion that made his
words come out in a low rumble. He approached the skeletal man,
whose blue, unseeing eyes were bright even in the hellish
conditions. Those eyes, piercing as they were, weren’t what shocked
the captain to his core. The tattoo on the man’s dirty, scarred
chest set Vasquez utterly on edge. It was the head of a wolf, a
howling wolf, with a turquoise, five-pointed star in the center of
one of its eyes.

Vasquez reached for the man, holding his
face up and into the light.

“
Sweet
Jesus
. Liam? Is it you? Sweet Jesus! Holy
Fuck! Get him down! Get him down now!”

Chapter Three

One Month Later

Spring Lake, North Carolina

“
Mommy.”

Kennedy moaned. Fatigue had settled in the
pockets under her eyes. She managed to open one lid a fraction. A
pair of hazel-browns, bright and wide in her four-year-old
daughter’s cherubic face, hovered in close. Even now, Kennedy found
her daughter’s irises to be a lovely contrast against her creamy
mocha-brown skin. Even more special was the fact that Mackenzie’s
intense stare mirrored the look Liam gave when he wanted
something.

“
What is it, baby?” she
swept Mackenzie’s long, dark locks back over her head so she could
see her daughter’s face clearly. Phil turned to the sound of his
stepdaughter’s voice. Mackenzie had crawled over him to get to her
mother. Kennedy heard her husband groan, then sigh. Mackenzie did
no wrong in his eyes.

“
I can’t sweep,” Mackenzie
pouted. “There’s a monster in my bed waiting for me.”

Kennedy sat up. “Come here.” She caught Mac
by her arms and pulled her to her lap.