Full Assault Mode
Authors: Dalton Fury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #War, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Military, #War & Military, #Terrorism
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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
Full 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
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.
