RW11 - Violence of Action (2 page)

“…Twenty-three…twenty-four…twenty-five.” Fuck!
With sweat flooding my eyes and my arms quivering in the throes of self-induced fatigue, I willed—more than pushed—the thick Olympic barbell and its 300 pounds of black plate steel back up onto the bench’s twin supports. Gasping for oxygen I swung myself around and sat up.
Cocksucker!
With a sidelong glance at my watch I saw I’d been in the Manor’s newly refurbished gym for a little over two hours. Pain coursed through my body in sharp electric jolts. I love pain. It reminds me I’m alive. If you can’t handle pain in training you’ll die from it in combat. I know. I’ve seen it happen.

Before hitting the gym, Trace Dahlgren, Paul Kossens, and I had hauled ass on a three-mile run around my property. By the time we’d sprinted the last 200 meters I felt like I was gonna puke my guts up right then and fucking there. Jogging is for namby-pamby wimp motherfuckers. You accomplish nothing by jogging. When I run I fucking
RUN
! Bent over and gagging, I tried to focus on my watch face. Twenty-four fucking fast minutes through open country! Damn good for an older but no less tough Rogue Warrior and his two new teammates.

Yes, dear reader, you heard right. My two new teammates. You see, I’d done what the Rogue does best and raised up a new generation of looters and shooters in my own image. Shit happens, and when it does he who is flexible wins.

A little history here.

Once upon a time, Yours Truly created from scratch the purest, most ass-kicking counterterrororist force in the world—SEAL Team SIX. I got to handpick my team from the best of the best and then put them through the most intense and ongoing training in war fighting I could beg, borrow, or steal for them. When I began recruiting shooters for SEAL Team SIX I knew exactly what kind of operator I was looking for. I didn’t give a rat’s ass in Hell what someone had accomplished in his career as a SEAL before he came to me. Yesterday’s successes are fond fucking memories. As soon as you start resting on your laurels, you begin cutting corners and taking shortcuts. You get fat. You get lazy. You want to play it safe. In my business—the business of killing people—the oxygen thieves, corner cutters, shortcut takers, and professional safety experts are the ones who will get you killed. If you’re dead you can’t accomplish your mission. And if the mission isn’t accomplished you have fucking
failed!

I chose men for SIX who weren’t satisfied with yesterday’s accomplishments. Operators who weren’t afraid to risk everything they had for the greater good. SEALs who weren’t afraid to try, come up short, try again, come up short, try again, and keep on trying until they got it right. Shooters who were willing to die if necessary rather than come in second place.

And I required men who were loyal. Not loyal to an abstract theory or philosophy, or to a faceless, soulless institution. I needed men who would jump out of airplanes from five miles above the earth scared to death—but more scared not to. Who would dive to depths the Navy’s dive tables say are
verboten
. Who would be willing to kick in a door or board a ship knowing their next step would probably bring a hail of gunfire their way. Such men don’t follow theories, philosophies, or cardboard commanders. They follow leaders. And I am a leader, the Wrathful God of War and Combat. My men knew they’d never find me
behind
them. They knew it was their job to keep up with me. And you can only keep up with someone when he’s out front running point, taking fire, kicking ass, and collecting enemy dog tags.

After giving painful birth to SIX, I went on to build and lead another team named Red Cell. My mission there was to evaluate Navy security around the world, finding weak spots that terrorists might exploit. To do this I mustered the best and brightest fence jumpers, lock pickers, electronic wizards, and shooters possible. Red Cell was so successful at finding problems with Navy security that the Navy killed it, then turned its sights on me. It took them 60 million of your tax dollars to railroad me into a federal playpen for a year’s worth of self-evaluation, color TV, and weight lifting. If they thought pumping iron every day at Club Fed was going to break me, turn me into some soft, apologetic former Navy SEAL officer who’d toe the company line, they were wrong as fucking rain.

Which brings us up to the here and now.

I still lead from the front. Times (and teams) change. I’ve taken my licks and my losses. Sure, there’s been pain but it’s the pain that drives me. My enemies—both foreign and domestic—haven’t rolled over and quit. Therefore, neither have I. The threat to your and my country is greater and more cunning than ever. This is no time and no place for spit-shined boots and fat stock portfolios, for old war game vets and their field training exercises where predetermined winners always wear white hats. No, this is the era of the Rogue Warrior. It’s a time for guys and gals who love to kick ass and take names to get busy. My new team and I don’t come bearing bouquets of pink roses. We come bearing black rubber body bags. One size fits all.

Who’s the solution? I am! Me—and those I’ve molded into mirror images of my Rogue Warrior self—are good for what ails this embattled world. As long as the future holds the potential for natural disasters, political collapse, social disruption and violence without end, it also means I’ve got fucking job security! Through judicious reasoning, careful planning, thorough preparation, and aimed fire, your world and mine is going to be a safer, saner place to live and raise our kids.

I cannot fail. I will not fail. They will not beat me. They will have to kill me to stop me. Thus saith the original 24K Rogue Warrior. But you know this already good and faithful reader. So who the fuck are Trace Dahlgren and Paul Kossens? Lemme tell you…

Trace joined the military after graduating from college in New Mexico. She killed her first man at the age of thirteen, when she found a drunken uncle in the process of raping her seven-year-old sister. No charges were filed. Indeed, the reservation police quietly and deeply buried both the rapist and the report to avoid public and governmental attention. Ms. Dahlgren inherited her toughness of spirit from her mother, a full-blooded Chihuahua Apache. At fifteen, Trace convinced one of her tribe’s “Old Ones” to teach her the ways of the Apache warrior. She learned how to fight with blade, spear, revolver, rifle, rope, and stones. At the conclusion of her training she traveled the ancient trails with the Old One and went on to learn the Art of the Apache Mystic.

Twice married and twice divorced, once in college and again after joining the Army, Dahlgren became an intelligence analyst assigned to SFOD-DELTA. In 1993, when DELTA began graduating female shooters, she volunteered for the DELTA selection program and passed with flying colors. As one of DELTA’s first female operators she took up weight lifting, running, and Bruce Lee’s famous martial art, Jeet Kune Do. At 5’8” and weighing in at 135 lean pounds of pure cougar, Trace is also one helluva beautiful woman. Full figured with shoulder-length reddish-gold hair and gray-green eyes, she turns heads wherever she goes. Just don’t tell her that.

She came to my current team after hearing through the DELTA grapevine that I was looking to recruit a female operator. Discharged from the Army, she nonetheless remains on Uncle Sugar’s payroll, retirement benefits and all.

Paul Kossens is German-American and looks it with his athletic build and thick blond hair. His father was with German Naval Intelligence in Spain during the Second World War. When the war ended, he was brought to the U.S. by German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen to help build the new and upcoming Central Intelligence Agency’s East European spy net. He met Paul’s mother when she was working for the OSS in Washington, D.C., as the executive assistant to Wild Bill Donovan. Paul came along late in his parents’ lives and because of this he was raised with the benefit of the maturity and wisdom of older parents. He inherited his father’s love for secrecy and special operations. From his mother he received his passionate zeal to serve a cause higher than himself—which is why he joined the Navy, his
vater
’s service during the war. Paul became a Navy corpsman and then a SEAL. He served at SEAL Team ONE on the West Coast, eventually becoming a dignitary and asset protection specialist. His talent and coolness under fire saw him selected as part of the team charged with locating and taking POW the rancid little pineapple-faced dictator of Panama, General “Manny” Noriega. Paul went on to participate in numerous special operations throughout Central and South America, including the 54-hour harbor-mining mission at Corinto, Nicaragua, courtesy of the CIA.

Like Trace, Kossens came to me after hearing I was looking for a few good SEALs who were interested in doing more than playing war games on their platoon’s laptop computer. With a B.A. in business administration from the University of San Diego, and a third language (Russian, as a useful balance to his German), I couldn’t pass up this eager 8492 Special Operations Technician from the Teams.

In the gym, the three of us were sweating through the exercise and weight-training routine two young studs from SEAL Team SIX had custom-designed for me eight months earlier. It was a ball-buster. I couldn’t care less. Like I said, life is not fucking easy and neither is staying in SEAL Team shape. I saved the bench press for last knowing it was the meanest bitch in the program. Twenty-five joint-creaking, muscle-wrenching reps at 300 motherfucking pounds of unforgiving steel plate—I love the challenge! Sheer pain lightly wrapped in animal willpower. Give me an impossible task any day of the week. As I pushed through the routine, Trace and Paul each worked out at their own pace. We left each other alone, except for the occasional wisecrack now and then as we taunted and pushed each other to do one more rep or add an extra twenty pounds to the stack.

Finished on the bench, I grabbed a towel from the black rubber gym floor and sopped rivers of sweat from my face and neck. Then I grabbed a basketball and sank a nice three-pointer from mid-court. Yeah, the Rogue was physically feeling damned good these days, fuck you very much.

Which is as it should be.

I’m 240 pounds of muscle strapped to a stainless steel frame. I’m running eight-minute miles and every other day I swim 2000 meters at a nearby pool. Besides helping me set up a new gym full of the best workout equipment and designing a twenty-first-century fitness routine, the shooters—MY shooters—from SIX spent a weekend at the Manor doing their best to educate me and
the girls
about nutrition and the fucking evils of alcohol (as if I couldn’t have educated
everyone present
on
that
subject!). When we said our good-byes on Monday morning and the boys from SIX hit the road back to Virginia Beach, I had to admit one thing: the new kids now running with the Devil at SEAL Team SIX are all right.

Wait a minute, you may well ask. How is it the Rogue Warrior, bane of the United States Navy and scourge of its elite SEAL Teams since being railroaded through not one but
two
show trials at the American taxpayers’ expense, can now freely hang out with the ultimate in counterterrorist units, SEAL Team SIX?

Good question, grasshopper. Sit and let an older and wiser Rogue explain it to you. You may recall that the government had last required my unique brand of service in the pursuit of two darling Irish terrorists, William and Gerry Kelley. They went to their watery graves, courtesy of Yours Truly, during my tour with
Detachment Bravo
in jolly old England.

After submitting my carefully sanitized after-action report pro forma I found myself under furious attack from every direction. My unilateral decision to play the adult version of Sink or Swim with Mrs. Kelley’s murderous sons hadn’t gone over (under?) too well with the gutless wonders at our State Department. Their whining alerted some of my still-powerful enemies at the Pentagon and Navy, enemies who orchestrated a call for my head to be put on a spike. It seems there are
rules
governing the care and feeding of those who make careers out of murdering the innocent among us, and drowning them is not found in the State Department’s official handbook. I’d played by
my
rules and the Irish bastards had gone down to Davy Jones’ locker—hook, line, and fucking sinker. No loss to the world and certainly no loss to
moi
. Trials are too expensive these days. When you send me out to kill Tangos, then that is what the fuck I do. You’d best expect the mother-raping bastards to die and die damned hard where I find them. I—pay close attention here—
will not
bring a terrorist back alive. My version of the old Wild West wanted poster reads W
ANTED
: D
EAD OR
M
OTHERFUCKING
D
EADER
!

Make a fucking note here.

You’ll find this in the Rogue Warrior’s updated and abridged rulebook on whacking Tangos. The Rogue says drowning terrorists is perfectly fine and dandy. Gutting the bastards and using their innards for chum is okay, too. Although I hate punishing a good shark by feeding it trash like the Kelley boyz. I have an affinity for sharks.

Within a week of my return from England I began hearing nasty rumors about congressional hearings and criminal charges with me in the bull’s eye. Been there, done that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s when to fight Stupidity with Fire. With all the lovely money I’ve made from my best-selling books I no longer have to rely on limp-dicked, court-appointed Navy JAG lawyers whose careers are at the mercy of the very judges who hear their cases. I called my outrageously expensive civilian junkyard dog attorney, a former SEAL teammate who’d decided it was more fun to make big money and fuck with people using the law than it was to kill them, and explained my plight. Within days a flurry of extremely hard-assed letters were sent out to All Concerned. They basically said I wasn’t talking to anyone and no one was going to talk to me unless it was through my lawyer. In other words, BLOW ME!