Black Site (10 page)

“And you mentioned he was a washout,” Kolt answered back.

“
You’re
a washout too, Kolt. We’re going to do this with what we have available to us.”

Raynor nodded with a shrug.

Grauer added, “Kopelman is low pro there, operating for Radiance while holding down cover employment. He’s a bit of a rogue, but he’s a good man. He’ll get you back home.”

Kolt nodded. “Sounds good.”

Webber stood. “Kolt, regardless of what happens, you and I won’t be speaking again. Good luck. Go get eyes on our men, so we can get the go-ahead to pull them out of there.”

Raynor stood and the two men shook hands. It wasn’t particularly warm, and Webber looked like he had more reservations than resolve regarding the entire scenario. He turned to Grauer. “Colonel, he’s all yours.” Without another glance at Kolt, Colonel Jeremy Webber left via the access door to the next room.

Grauer said, “Monk and Benji will handle your day-to-day training. I’ll have a language instructor work with you on your Pashto.”

“Yes, sir.”

Monk stepped forward reluctantly. “Don’t suppose you’ve been in any altitude recently?”

Kolt just shook his head.

Monk sighed. “We’ll need to get you up to about eight thousand feet, get your body used to it. Send you up higher after a few days. We’ll do your training at that altitude, make you ready for Pakistan.”

“So we’re going over immediately then? To Afghanistan, I mean?”

“Nope. We’ll train in Wyoming.”

“The Hole?” Kolt had done his high-altitude training with the Unit in Jackson Hole.

“No. We’ll take you to a place about fifty miles southeast. The Wind River Range. Know it?”

Kolt shook his head. He’d done a ton of camping, climbing, and backpacking in his life but had never made it to that part of the Rockies.

“Rough country. Khyber without the hajjis. There’s a boarded-up dude ranch in a valley at eight thousand feet. The peaks all around are between eleven and fourteen thousand. We have a relationship with the owner. Three weeks running your fat ass up and down those mountains will get you back in shape.” Monk paused. “If it doesn’t kill you, I mean.”

Master Sergeant David “Monk” Kraus had a hopeful glint in his eye that filled Raynor with unease.

TWELVE

Five hours later Kolt was at thirty-five thousand feet over Tennessee, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Benji in the back of a Maverick Cruiser, a five-seat VLJ, or very light jet. The diminutive aircraft was flown by a civilian pilot, and Monk sat in the copilot position. The plane was owned by Grauer, and it wore the Radiance Security logo on its tail.

The emotions going through Kolt’s mind during the day had kept him from thinking about himself and his own needs. But as he sat in the leather cabin chair, his head back on the rest and the humming of the engines relaxing him for the first time since he’d been rudely awakened that morning, his thoughts turned inward. He worried about how he’d be able to handle the training, the mountains, the lack of cheap bourbon. Any sacrifice would be a small price to pay for helping to get T.J. and the boys home—it was not a risk-versus-reward conversation going on inside him. No, it was a true question of his own capabilities, now, after so much time had passed since he’d been at his best.

And he wanted a drink.

A touch on his right shoulder caused him to open his eyes. Benji leaned in close, a toothpick hanging from his mouth, and a serious look on his boyish face.

“Hey, Racer. You ready for lunch?”

“Are you the stewardess?”

Benji grinned. “Well, Monk thinks he’s a copilot, so yeah, guess so.” The master sergeant shrugged. “Nah, I just want to make sure you got some food in you before we touch down. It’s a couple hours’ ride in a 4×4 from the airfield. Ain’t gonna be no Mickey D’s along the way.”

“Is this good cop, bad cop?”

“What do you mean?”

“Monk wants to rip my throat out, and you want to make sure I’m eating right.”

Benji nodded thoughtfully. “I like you okay. Monk doesn’t. That’s real. We ain’t paid enough to do no acting.”

Benji turned in his seat to face Raynor in the tiny cabin. Then he looked over his shoulder at Monk to make sure he had his headset on and could not hear. “Look, man. Kraus hates your ass.”

Kolt stared at Benji with feigned shock. “Really? He hides it pretty well.”

“I’m serious. Mike Overstreet and him were as tight as they come. ’Bout like you and T.J.”

“I know.”

“I figure it sticks in Monk’s craw that his job is to get you prepped to go help rescue T.J., when Musket’s pushing daisies up at Arlington.”

Raynor just nodded.

Benji continued. “Don’t get me wrong. He wants those guys back … just doesn’t like the fact that they are using you. He’s going to push you past what’s necessary.” Benji hesitated. Then said, “He wants to hurt you, bro.”

Kolt looked out the tiny portal; clouds below obstructed his view of the land. “Well, I guess the next three weeks are the perfect opportunity for him to do just that.” He smiled ruefully to himself. “My ass is his.”

*   *   *

They landed in Dubois, Wyoming, a little before two in the afternoon. A muddy white four-wheel-drive Ford Expedition was waiting for them in the small parking lot. A fit-looking young man stood at the open tailgate. He shook hands with Benji and Monk, handed them heavy winter coats though the temperature hovered in the high forties. He was introduced to Raynor as Tim, but they did not shake hands. Tim turned to shut the hatch, then climbed back behind the wheel. Kolt took a moment before getting into the car. To the east he could see the incredible mountain range reaching with its sheer peaks into the expansive gray sky. It looked like Afghanistan. Like Spin Ghar, like the Khyber Pass. Kolt had been to the Rockies numerous times, and he practically lived in the Smokies. This range before him hit the nail on the head as a stand-in for Pakistan in a way the others did not.

It looked like danger.

*   *   *

They drove for nearly two hours, first on a highway, but that soon gave way to a paved road with switchbacks like ribbon candy as it ascended into the foothills. Wet pines and firs and steep gray rock cliffs took over the view out the back window next to Kolt as they entered the Wind River Range. He was offered a package of Mexican rice from a standard MRE and he took it. His body began to tighten in anticipation of the beginning of his training, which he assumed would get under way the following morning. Already he could feel the altitude in his chest, knew he would be weaker for the first few days, and hoped he’d be given a reasonable amount of understanding from the cadre of trainers in charge of prepping him for his mission.

The fatigue set in quickly, nearly lulling Kolt to sleep in the back of the warm truck as it bounced and splashed on rocky off-road trails that had clearly seen better days. It was no wonder to Raynor that the hotel/dude ranch that would be his home had ceased operations. It was no easy feat just to get to the place.

Finally the ranch appeared off the nose of the truck, lower in a wide valley of brown grass and long, wide swampy lowlands. It was a large complex, built log-cabin style but sprawled across a gentle rise. It was still a half mile off, but Monk told the driver to stop in the road. To the left of the truck was a relatively steep earthen incline dotted with pine trees that went up a hundred yards before the gradient lessened. Beyond that a thirteen-thousand-foot snowcapped mountain disappeared into the mist. To the right of the truck was a thick pine forest; the clearing with the ranch began just ahead.

Monk opened his door and slid out. Looked into the tinted window at Raynor without speaking, until finally Kolt popped his door latch and climbed out himself. He stood with his hands on his hips in front of the master sergeant on the muddy road.

“We aren’t going to the ranch?” Raynor asked, confused.

“The truck is. You aren’t,” declared Monk. “The cadre training you for the next three weeks will be staying there. You will have language study and a three-hour class there each day related to the mission. But no, you won’t be bedding down in a hotel. You think you’re heading to a B and B in Pakistan?”

Kolt did not answer.

The master sergeant stepped to the back of the Expedition, dropped the tailgate, and rolled a huge rucksack out of the back. He let it fall into the pooled rainwater and icy mud in the road. “Here’s your shit, Raynor. Same shit, more or less, that you’ll have in Khyber.”

Kolt looked at the pack but made no move toward it. Monk continued. “I want to find your camp up above the snow line tomorrow morning. Have some coffee ready for me and Benji at 0600.”

Raynor had no idea what was in the rucksack, but he hoped like hell there was some sort of a coat. It was down into the thirties already, and his jeans and fleece sweatshirt would not keep him alive overnight.

Kraus climbed back into the front passenger seat, but rolled down the window. “By the by, there’s an AK and a Glock in the bag. Mags loaded with Simunition ammo. I suggest you arm yourself ASAP and get some eye-pro on. You could be hit by opfor at any time.” The window rose and the muddy white truck began rolling forward toward the ranch.

Huh?

Kolt knew Simunitions were training rounds that fired from real converted weapons but left only a nasty and painful blister and a big splotch of paint on their target. He didn’t know what Monk meant by an opposition force, but assumed his training would include force-on-force encounters with some sort of simulated enemy. As the truck disappeared around a bend down the hill he knelt over the big brown bag and unzipped the main compartment. Inside were basic camping and cold-weather gear and, as promised, two converted weapons, both stripped down to their component parts. Raynor dragged the big ruck of gear off the side of the road to a flat rock and began laying it out, hoping to find bulky things that he could discard before heading up the mountain. He’d just slipped a thin but warm wool base layer thermal over his head when he heard a noise a few yards behind him. Like metal scuffing against rock.

Then the pop of a small explosion. White smoke billowed into the air on the road.

A smoke grenade.

What the hell?

He turned and saw, maybe fifty yards back up the road toward Dubois, four men moving toward his position. They wore the black garb of the Taliban, and they carried Kalashnikovs.

A wave of panic swept over his body. In an instant he was back in Pakistan, facing the enemy that had nearly killed him.

Quickly Kolt slipped polycarbonate glasses over his eyes. Being shot in the eye with a simulated round would cause almost as much damage as a real bullet. A second later he focused on the pieces of the Glock pistol, not because it was the best weapon with which to engage four men with rifles, but because it had fewer parts and he could assemble it quickly. He grabbed the frame, the slide, the barrel, and the slide spring and forced his numbing fingers to pinch and slide and snap the weapon together. He noticed a tremor in his hands as the men came closer.

The crack of a rifle, his pack on the rock shuddered, a three-inch splotch of red dye appeared as a simulated round slammed into it.

Kolt dropped to the ground, crawled behind the stone, and finished assembling his Glock.

He found himself terrified.

Shit. Shit. Shit!

Kolt retrieved a loaded magazine from the top of the rock and charged the pistol, rose, and fired several rounds, hitting one of the men in the road with a gut shot as the others scrambled for cover, not thirty yards away. The “hit” man lowered his gun to the ground and slowly lay down next to it.

Kolt used the pistol to keep the three remaining men’s heads down while he worked on putting the AK together behind the low stone. His pants were soaked with the wet mud all around him. He worried now about getting away from these faux Taliban, getting to a campsite, and starting a fire before the cold in his extremities sent his body into hypothermia.

This “training” was life-and-death.

He heard a noise off to his left, on the far side of the muddy dirt road. An attempt to flank by the three men to the east? No. They were all still there, firing sporadically. It was another unit of opfor, and they opened up on him from close range, long AK volleys raking his position as he loaded a magazine into his rifle.

Within seconds Kolt went down hard with the impact of four paint rounds slamming into his chest. They stung and throbbed instantly.

Damn it.

He tossed his rifle to his side and lay in the mud. Above him the gray sky was darkening with the onset of dusk. He was sore and dejected and embarrassed by his performance. And he was cold, and already the altitude was affecting his joints as well as his energy.

He heard men approaching. Within seconds they were above him. Their Taliban dress was realistic, almost certainly because it
was
Taliban dress, gleaned from prisoners or the dead back in Afghanistan. Having seven Taliban standing around his prostrate form was horrifying. Fear was added to his long list of uncomfortable sensations.

He focused on one of the men. The man was, without doubt, Middle Eastern. He shouted at Kolt in Pashto, and though Kolt could barely understand him, the tenor of the language brought him closer still to that event in his past that had so changed his life.

A crunch of boots on gravel to his right, and then seconds later Monk stood above him with a rifle hanging off his chest. Raynor blinked hard behind his eye protection. Sergeant Kraus had obviously climbed out of the truck at the first turn and dressed himself in the traditional Pashtun salwar kameez clothing and a pakol cap. Monk looked at him with complete derision. “You managed one kill, Kolt.
One
kill.” It was unquestionably an admonition. “You’re going to have to do a lot better than one damn kill.”

Kolt sat up in the mud. “I know.”

“Now get the hell out of here. You can expect to get hit a minimum of twice a day, every day, for the next three weeks.”

Damn, thought Raynor. The pain from the Simunitons hurt, but he could tell they’d left nothing more than bruising and shallow cuts across his chest. But a round in the right place could break a nose or a rib, no question. He needed to get a hell of a lot better very, very quickly just to
survive
forty more enemy engagements like this. He climbed to his feet, shook mud from his cold, red hands. Silently he began putting items carefully back into his rucksack, but after no more than five seconds Kraus raised the barrel of his AK slightly and fired a burst into the mud at Kolt’s feet. The gunfire was painfully loud in Kolt’s unprotected ears. “Move!”