Tier One Wild (5 page)

The shrink turned the laptop away from Kolt. “Thank you, Kelly, we have to go now.”

And with that, the psych closed the connection and Kelly Lee was gone.

Kolt sat in the chair, his shoulders slumped forward and his head hanging from exhaustion and despair. Behind him he heard the shrink leave the trailer, and another man entered.

Colonel Jeremy Webber, commander of Delta Force, sat down on the sofa across the table from Kolt.

Kolt quickly wiped tears from his tired eyes. He did not speak to his unit commander, knowing enough to give way to his superior.

Webber looked Kolt in the eye. “Our combat rules of engagement have changed somewhat since you were in. I need to know you are good to go with the new regs.”

This was a surprise. There was no mention of Raynor’s conversation with Jet’s daughter.

Kolt composed himself and asked, “What’s the change to the ROE, sir?”

“I need to know if you can drop the hammer on a man who possesses no imminent threat.”

Kolt blinked in astonishment. He was being asked if he could, in effect, execute someone.

“Sir? Even if he isn’t displaying hostile intent?”

“No threat, but someone who has been designated by presidential order as an enemy of the state.”

Kolt responded quickly. “That is a significant change, sir. But if those are clear orders, then I’m in.”

“They aren’t at all clear, son, but those are the rules, and it is our job to follow those rules, murky though they may be.”

Kolt hesitated. “‘Capture or kill’ has turned into … ‘kill’?”

Webber nodded in the dim light of the trailer. “There are scenarios where that is the case. Can you do it? Can you order your men to do it?”

Raynor thought of the bad guys he’d been up against in his time. He thought about the mission in Pakistan that went bad, and he thought of the mission in Pakistan where he’d managed to redeem himself in the eyes of many.

But not in the eyes of Kelly Lee, Jet’s daughter.

Kolt Raynor nodded. With a voice stronger than his body should have allowed, he said, “Yes, sir. I can do it. I will do it.”

“You know you fucked up in Pakistan four years ago.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know there will be people at JSOC who will never forgive you for that. Nothing you can do to change that, but you will have to work twice as hard as anyone else just to be seen as competent in the eyes of many.”

“I’ll work three times as hard. Just give me the opportunity to prove it to you.”

Webber nodded thoughtfully. Then he extended a hand. “Welcome back to Delta, Kolt.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kolt reached out with a hand that was cracked and scratched and blackened with thick Appalachian soil.

Webber smiled. “Don’t thank me. Be careful what you wish for, Racer. You’ve impressed me out here, but I’m easy. The boys will decide for themselves, and so will Kelly and the other orphaned kids from that fucked-up op in Pakistan. Besides, you’ll be back in the shit before the scars from the black-site op heal.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Colonel.”

FOUR

The images from the last night of Relook melted away, and Kolt Raynor found himself once again on the floor of the galley of the 767 over New Delhi. Above him Slapshot’s HK416 fired a burst into the rear cabin; hot brass ejected from it and bounced off of Kolt’s face.

He felt blood running out of his nose, a burning sting high on his left thigh, and a dull ache in his back.

“Five crows down!” Slapshot shouted, then the sergeant reached a gloved hand down and grabbed Kolt by the shoulder strap of his chest rig. “You still with us, Racer?” he asked while scanning ahead for threats in the rear cabin.

A pair of double-taps from a Glock handgun cracked off to Raynor’s right.

“One crow still up in the rear galley,” Digger announced. He crouched on the other side of the center galley and fired his Glock again.

Kolt closed his hands on his pistol and climbed back to his feet on unsteady legs that were not ready for the weight. They wobbled a moment, but he continued forward on them, blood dripping off his chin now and his thigh burning with each movement of his body. He stepped over the terrorist who had taken four gunshot wounds to the chest and enough grenade shrapnel in the face and neck to make him all but unrecognizable as human. Kolt also stepped around the elderly passenger; she was facedown in the galley, lying still in blood and vomit.

Kolt pushed her out of his mind as he entered the rear coach cabin, firmly back in the fight now.

“Everybody down!” he shouted as he brought his pistol to eye level at the seated crowd before him.

The oxygen masks had dropped, and this, as well as smoke from the grenade’s detonation, obscured the Delta men’s view of the passengers and, more important, any terrorists back there with them.

On the other side of the aircraft Digger and Stitch made their way down the aisle, almost falling forward, as the plane was still in a steep climb attitude. They literally ran over a woman who had left her seat in panic after brain matter from one of the terrorists had splattered her shirt and neck. They stepped on her legs and back to get by, not worried in the least if they were hurting her.

“Stay down!”

Seconds later, at the rear of the plane, Stitch spun around into the galley. As the others approached, he spoke into his mic softly. “Galley clear, but I’ve got two closed lav doors.”

“Wait one,” said Raynor, then he instructed Slapshot and Digger to turn back around, climb back up the aisles, and cover the passengers.

Racer shouldered up to Stitch and each man fired several rounds into the two closed lavatory doors, both at chest height and at knee level. They opened their doors immediately after.

Stitch’s lav was empty, but a Pakistani armed with a Skorpion machine pistol tumbled out at Kolt’s feet. No need for an eye thump on this one, both men knew the man was dead.

Kolt pulled his radio from his vest and keyed the mic. “Five crows down. Safe the weapons and secure the pocket litter. Try to keep the rest of the passengers in their seats.”

Kolt noticed the wound to Stitch’s left hand as he turned to head back up the aisle.

*   *   *

By now the aircraft had leveled out, though Raynor was certain they were nowhere near a normal cruising altitude. He made his way alone back up the length of the airplane, passing Digger, who, as the medic, was checking the elderly woman who had walked into the grenade blast. She was gone, Kolt had no doubt, but it was Digger’s job to be sure.

Raynor continued up through first class, passing the bodies of the men and women who had been dumped there by the terrorists long before his team’s attack.

These were the men and women Kolt and his men had not been in time to save.

It wasn’t his fault, he knew this. But they were just as dead, and as with the elderly woman by the center exits, he felt like shit about it.

Kolt lifted the flight attendant’s phone, which would connect him to the cockpit. Soon an American voice answered.

“First Officer Freely here.” The FO had to yell over the sound of air rushing at over two hundred miles an hour across the partially open escape hatch.

Kolt said, “Sir, we think we got them all. How many bad guys were there?”

“The flight attendants told us there were six terrorists.”

“Then the cabin is secure. You do have some small fuselage breaches due to rifle fire.”

There was a slight pause. Then the cabin door opened. Kolt stepped halfway into the cockpit.

The men wore sweat-soaked short-sleeved uniform shirts, open down to their waists to expose wet undershirts. Although only one of them was wounded, both men looked like shit. Raynor noticed they had managed to all but reseal the overhead hatch, though the breach still allowed some cold air and wind noise into the cockpit.

“Is she still airworthy?” Raynor asked.

It was the pilot who answered now. “If we keep her low and slow we should be okay. We need to put her down as soon as possible. Where to?”

“Back to New Delhi. There are friendlies there who will be ready for us.” Then Kolt pointed to the blood and bandaging on the pilot’s shoulder. “I’ll get someone up here to check that out.”

The pilot nodded. “We’ll be on the ground in fifteen minutes. How are the passengers?”

“We lost one in the assault. Might be others injured.”

That sank in a moment.

Kolt turned to leave, but the copilot called out to him. “Hey, buddy. Who
are
you guys?”

Raynor wiped his bloody nose with the back of his arm, then looked back up to the copilot. With a straight face he said, “New Delhi Airport Security.”

The copilot just shrugged with a sly smile. “Well then … Namaste.”

Kolt allowed himself a quick smile before heading back to the coach cabin to check with his men.

*   *   *

Raynor was surprised to see that the man Digger had shot in the rear cabin was not dead—not yet, anyway. There were two holes in his chest that Kolt could see. Digger knelt over him now, his right knee jammed in the terrorist’s belly, checking him for any other weapons.

“How is this guy still alive?” Kolt asked in surprise.

“He had a shitty Paki-made soft armor vest on his chest. It slowed down the rounds, but didn’t stop them.”

“We land in ten to fifteen mikes,” Raynor said to his mate as he looked down at the sucking chest wounds opening and closing on the terrorist’s soiled white button-down shirt.

The Pakistani’s eyes opened upon hearing Kolt’s voice. “American, yes?”

Kolt knelt down next to Digger and looked at the man. “Yes.”

The terrorist laughed through bloodstained lips. “You are
here
? You should be in your country. Soon we will strike at your heart.”

Kolt knelt in closer, put his hand on Digger’s shoulder. “What did that asshole just say?”

“Sounds like this crow might have some intel.”

“Can you keep him alive?”

Digger shook his head. “Walter Reed himself couldn’t keep this dude alive. He’s got less than a minute. Sorry.”

“I’m not,” Kolt muttered cruelly. “Fuck him.”

The man coughed. His fading voice was barely a whisper now. “Americans die. Many Americans die soon.” The young man’s eyelids softened but did not close. His pupils rose under them as his chest stopped moving.

Kolt wondered what he meant by that.

“Let me take a look at your thigh, boss,” Digger said.

“It’s fine. One of the flight crew took one to the shoulder. Check him out first.”

Digger nodded, then headed to the cockpit to see to the wounded pilot.

Slapshot came over the MBITR radio a moment later. Kolt had turned the speaker on the radio up, since he’d lost his Peltors while surfing on the roof of the jet. Slapshot’s voice was almost drowned out by the passengers on the flight, who, with heads still down, had begun clapping and cheering. “Has anybody seen Stitch’s finger lying around?”

The wounded operator, at the rear of the plane now, spoke up next. “Forget it. Happened before we breached. It’s probably still on airport grounds. Guess my second career as a piano teacher is out.” He finished with a laugh.

Kolt doubted Stitch had ever sat in front of a piano in his life. It was gallows humor, and it helped for now, but Raynor knew that his teammate’s wound was going to hurt like a bitch for a lot longer than the chuckles from the jokes about it would linger.

“Is that your third Purple Heart, Sergeant?”

“This is my fourth bleeder, actually, but whose counting?”

“You did good work today.”

“Thanks, Racer. You, too. Nothing you could have done for that lady in the galley. She walked right into it.”

Kolt just nodded. He wasn’t so sure he hadn’t fucked up that part of the op, but he would have a chance to make a full confession later during the after-action hot wash.

*   *   *

Kolt felt his satellite phone vibrate, and he knew it was the JOC calling. “Yeah?”

“It’s Webber. Sitrep, over.”

“Five crows KIA. One hostage dead in the assault. A couple of civilians wounded. Two eagles WIA.”

“Their status?”

“I took some ball bearings in my leg from a booby-trapped grenade. And Stitch lost a finger.”

“That’s gonna keep you both up tonight, but that’s a damn small price to pay for what you men just accomplished.” A short pause from the colonel. “I was ready to roast your ass on an open fire as soon as this was over…” He paused. “But you made the right call, son. Fine job.”

“Thank you, sir. Could have gone either way.”

“Always the case in our line of work.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another pause. “Racer, we’ll bring Stitch back home for treatment, but I need the rest of you to hang out back here at Bagram for a bit. That is, if your leg is okay.”

Kolt was still on alert status. If Webber wanted him to stay put, then some other situation was imminent. “Roger. Negligible wound, treat-and-release. What’s up?”

“Might need you to head over to Libya in a day or two. Something’s brewing and we’ve been asked to stand by.”

Kolt cocked his head. “Libya, sir?”

FIVE

Cairo, Egypt

One could reasonably argue that Maadi is the greenest, quietest, and therefore most tranquil neighborhood of the otherwise loud and chaotic metropolis of Cairo, Egypt. It straddles the eastern bank of the Nile River, hence the lush vegetation, and it lies in the suburbs a dozen kilometers south of the city center, hence the relative serenity. The streets here are lined with trees and the high-rise apartment buildings, private homes, and commercial properties are surrounded by narrow lawns and trimmed shrubbery, a far cry from the gray-brown urban sprawl to the north and east.

Maadi is a first-class neighborhood, with real estate prices to match. The Maadi Yacht and Sports Club is the center of local culture and activity, and the neighborhood’s streets are friendly and peaceful. This sense of serenity, however, helps hide the activity that had been going on for the past year within the walls of a large cargo transportation firm near the river. The company, Maadi Land and Sea Freight, Ltd., was occupied by men who were neither locals from Maadi nor Egyptians.