Full Assault Mode (35 page)

It was tight—Kolt could feel it—and he could feel the man tense up and struggle. Kolt felt the operator tap his hands frantically against Kolt’s leg, which, if they were simply rolling in the dojo, Kolt would release the hold . He was going to put him to sleep, no matter how many times he tapped. Kolt was pissed.

Thinking ahead, as soon as the operator went limp, Kolt would reach up and remove the rope from his neck and tear the hood off. But the surprise impact of a rifle butt on top of his head kept him on his back, causing him to release the triangle and open the man’s airway again. Kolt felt the hands of several operators pouncing on him before being rolled over to his stomach. He felt at least three knees in his back and a foot or two on his legs, pressing him to hard dirt road.

“Relax, man,” a deep authoritative voice whispered in his ear.

Kolt started to struggle again as soon as he felt the muzzle of a firearm against the fleshy part of his rear right hip. Unable to free himself to do a damn thing about it, Kolt heard the shot and felt the excruciating pain simultaneously.

Lying facedown, now under an operator’s dingy tennis shoe pressing on his upper back, he applied direct pressure with his right hand to his wounded hip. Kolt wanted to go ballistic, he wanted to roll over and snap the asshole’s leg in half, he wanted to get up and beat the shit out of every one of those jackasses. The knife wound was bad enough, but a bullet to the ass was way over the top.

He knew that would end the mission to locate Nadal the Romanian; find the terrorist cell before it attacked the United States; maybe locate Ayman al-Zawahiri; and, just as important as the first three combined, rescue Cindy Bird, or, find her body.

Kolt stopped resisting, letting the operators understand he probably had figured out on his own what he was up against and what he was about to blow.

His wounds, like Joma’s, were effective, not deadly. Kolt realized they were part of the plan all along to protect their true identities and provided legitimacy to the mock ambush. Nobody in the North-West Frontier Province would believe only an American and one Muslim would have miraculously survived a near ambush like that one. No, nobody would buy that. They’d be tagged as spies right away, beheaded in short order. The plan to wound them hadn’t been briefed back at Tungsten headquarters in Atlanta, but at least the wounds wouldn’t keep them from walking.

“God bless you, man,” the same voice whispered in Kolt’s ear as he maintained pressure on his hip wound.

“Allah u Akbar! Allah u Akbar!”
Kolt yelled, overtly signaling to the operators from the Department of Special Services that he was good to go and they could initiate their exfil plan.

Eight minutes later, the ambushers were lifting off in two black helicopters and heading west. The only witness to the anarchic carnage, Kolt Raynor—Embed 0706—was bleeding out all over his white Gitmo prison uniform from two flesh wounds among a dozen or so martyred brothers.

Kolt’s insertion operation had begun. He was pissed that, without warning or explanation, they wounded him and Joma on purpose. At least Joma was unconscious when he was shot. That certainly wasn’t briefed in any of the numerous mission briefs he attended. But, as he lay in the sand listening to the sound of whipping helo blades fade away, he realized that even though the wounds were painful, and a pain in the ass, they just might let him keep his head.

Kolt understood it wasn’t something that he could really plan for or rehearse. He figured Carlos, the Mercs, and everyone else in Tungsten read on to the operation knew that as well. And reading Kolt’s file, they knew there was high risk that Kolt would be pissed enough to abort the mission himself.

Fucking Carlos!

Besides the hip wound, Kolt reasoned the cut on the back of his head held merit. It was a real bleeder, but it didn’t affect his vision. Blood wouldn’t run into his eyes. Moreover, it kept his mind off the pain of his leg and required him to hold a dirty rag over the wound to control the bleeding. If there was early doubt about Kolt’s legitimacy by his finders, the blood might be necessary.

Alone with the dead, Kolt caught himself cussing not only Carlos but also Colonel Webber a little. Moreover, he realized that he was in a strange situation. He had been on dozens of raids where the blood and guts and aroma of death were part of the landscape. This time was different. He wasn’t accustomed to being left behind in rubble. That part of the raid was usually passed to the conventional army unit that owned the battle space. Those guys usually showed up an hour or two after Delta had serviced the target to conduct what some referred to as “sloppy seconds.” The military, though, in its typical acronym-rigid fashion, prefers the term SSE—sensitive-site exploitation. Essentially, anything of potential intelligence value was rounded up and bagged, itemized, and photographed. Large caches of money, pictures, cell phones, computer hard drives, weapons, ammunition, explosives, and various IED-producing parts like boxes of old wind-up clocks, key fobs, garage door openers, and toy-car remote controls topped the list. The SSE force would question the family members left behind, women and children really. All fighting-age males were either smoked immediately or, if of potential intelligence value, marked as PUCs—person under custody—ostensibly to appease the political winds and the picky lawyers. PUCs would have been removed already by Delta and delivered elsewhere for questioning.

Kolt’s thoughts wandered back to the guys responsible for all the destruction. Who were those guys? The tan masks didn’t hide all the gray hair and salt-and-pepper goatees. Besides the leader giving the commands on the hilltop and the whisperer behind the truck, they didn’t talk at all. They were synchronized, efficient, focused, and certainly moved with the purpose and precision characteristic of America’s most elite Tier One commandos.

They weren’t Delta, though, since he didn’t recognize any of their body styles or their movements in the darkness. Delta operators move on target in a very distinct way, and these weren’t Unit guys. He also wondered how in the world a guy comes by a slot on their team. He also figured they wondered who in the hell Kolt was and how he worked himself into such a unique gig. A gig they most likely weren’t too jealous of after seeing him wounded and left behind as they flew away. To Kolt, though, whether they knew the details about Embed 0706’s mission wasn’t anything to waste time worrying about now. What was important was that the mysterious operators were willing to kill men in cold blood and face the demons later. Just like Carlos said they would.

Operation Shadow Blink had survived the first phase.

TWENTY-THREE

Tungsten headquarters, Underground, Atlanta, Georgia

Several thousand miles away in the Atlanta underground headquarters of Tungsten, a half-dozen eyes were glued to the plasma screen. The persistent eye in the sky turning circles at twenty-five thousand feet above ground level, the Predator RQ-1 reconnaissance drone, provided real-time video downlink to Carlos and the other senior leaders of Tungsten. Even during inclement weather, or haze, clouds, or smoke, its onboard synthetic-aperture radar still communicated via satellite thousands of miles away.

“Three hours and counting,” Carlos said to the group seated around the large oval mahogany table. “Forty-six minutes and negative movement.”

“Are you sure he isn’t dead?” the attractive female intel analyst who had accompanied Carlos and Kolt to Gitmo asked the group. “Could his wounds be so bad that he would have bled out?”

The ones who remained seated and standing nearby and who were still focused on the three large plasma screens secured to the wall wondered how long it can take to respond to a torrent of gunfire and a dozen dead guys. Surely someone heard something. The locals always did.

The others, busy working other future or ongoing Tungsten ops in other parts of the world, had migrated back to their cubicles.

“Wait a second. One of them is moving,” Carlos stated excitedly before turning around to one of the analysts working the current operation. “Chat the drone operator and direct them to zoom in.”

“That’s gotta be 0706 or Joma; everyone else is confirmed dead by the insert force.”

Western Pakistan

Kolt startled awake to complete silence, his body responding to the trauma and loss of blood. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. An hour? Maybe two? After at least a couple of hours waiting for a passing vehicle to discover the ambush and having gone through his story a hundred times in his head, Kolt had fallen into deep sleep.

Now awake, he pushed to a knee, gained his balance, and stood up straight. He repositioned the makeshift tan head bandage he had stripped from one of the dead terrorist’s clothing and positioned it correctly. A second bandage, taken from a pant leg of the same terrorist and torn in two using the sharp edge of some broken glass still in the window, was tied around his right leg, deep in his crotch and routed around his lower right buttocks.

Walking with a limp, he did a complete 360 around the ambush site. Nothing looked different or combed over from earlier. There was nothing that the Mercs might have overlooked earlier that might compromise him or raise undue suspicions by the Taliban once they arrived.

A stream of warm blood ran down Kolt’s neck just as he heard a blood-curdling gargling sound. He quickly dropped to a knee, assessing whether an animal or human was responsible for the noise, and tied a second knot on the head bandage to help stop the bleeding.

“Shit!”

Kolt couldn’t tell if the ambush had been discovered by a local or if one of the terrorists from Gitmo wasn’t actually dead yet. Anyone alive certainly risked compromising the mission. He figured the operators responsible for the bloody mess would have ensured everyone was dead before they hastily departed. Had something gone terribly wrong? Only Kolt and Joma were to
survive
the ambush. Joma was still out of it, the drugs not having worn off yet.

Allah was expecting everyone else.

Staying on his knees, Kolt crawled closer to the white pickup. Who knows what the mysterious operators of the insert force might have left behind. Kolt vectored in on the stifled gurgling. Only a few shards of glass were still present in the back window. The claymore mine and subsequent gunfire had taken care of the rest.

Kolt tried to peak over the two dead terrorists from driver’s seat. He didn’t want to be seen first by whomever it was that was still alive. It was tomblike dark. Too dark to actually make out with any certainty what he was seeing. He eased closer to the window.

“Brother,” the stranger laying back in the passenger seat said with labored breath.

“What the fuck?” Kolt whispered.

“Brother, please, please help me.”

Kolt moved closer. He opened the driver’s-side door, yanking several times to free it, and leaned into the cab. As he closed the distance, the image of the third survivor became clear.

“Help me!” the dying brother pleaded.

Kolt snapped out of his trance.
Help you?
Kolt asked himself.
That will be impossible. You are the enemy. I know this seems a little strange to you, but we are not brothers. I am an American. You are a terrorist.
Reality hit Kolt like a freight train. He knew he couldn’t allow this man to survive. But, without knowing his exact injuries, who could say if he would expire soon or not? Hell, he might still be alive when whoever it is that is going to discover this goat fuck gets around to it. That is unacceptable. Kolt knew what had to be done. And it had to be done fast.

Kolt slid into the driver’s seat and up close to the dying man. He studied him for a few long seconds, sizing him up.

“Please, help me,” the man pleaded again, barely audible.

Speaking in English, Kolt whispered back. “I don’t fucking know you pal.” The dying man’s eyes widened in amazement at Kolt’s English tongue. He shook his head slightly, signaling his inability to understand English slang.

Kolt hadn’t expected an answer. He was focused on his own actions. The man was obviously in a great deal of pain.
Heck, he might not survive another minute in this condition, Kolt thought. Maybe I can just let this guy expire on his own? Let God’s will take over from here.

Underground in Atlanta, Georgia—Tungsten ops center

“Good to meet you, sir,” Carlos commented while delicately switching his coffee from his right to left hand. Carlos thought the man’s grip was surprisingly limp for such a large man with a long military service record.

“Likewise, young man!” Bill Mason responded louder than necessary. “But cut the ‘sir’ crap. It’s been Bill for fifty-two years, admiral for the last eight, and now ambassador. Take your choice.”

Carlos hesitated for a moment. He certainly didn’t like the patronizing “young man” comment, considering he was at least ten years Mason’s senior, and he felt himself resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He had first heard the rumors weeks ago about tapping a retired military man as the new director of Tungsten but hadn’t met him since his presidential appointment a week or so earlier. And even though Bill Mason was a stranger to him, the admiral’s reputation had preceded him. Carlos specifically recalled that Admiral Bill Mason was referenced exactly forty-seven times in Kolt’s secret file. It wasn’t all flattering, confirming Carlos’s first impression of Ambassador Mason.

The retired three-star vice admiral Bill Mason never imagined his postmilitary career would bring him to Atlanta, Georgia. He had hoped for, even politicked for, a cushy, high-paying, high-visibility job inside an influential Washington, D.C., think tank. Or maybe he would land an ambassadorial appointment to some stress-free overseas post like Switzerland or Amsterdam. The president granted half his wish, but the post location was a little less spectacular than he had hoped for.

Before retiring, as the Joint Special Operations commanding general, he was one of the select few military men to be read on to Tungsten. But that’s where it ended. Basically, he knew of its existence but nothing more. He knew of the program’s ultra-top-secret classification. He knew its status within the highest chambers of the United States government. Tungsten was a top priority. No other
black
unit came close, not even Mason’s Delta Force or SEAL Team Six. And that fact really crawled under his skin. Worst of all, the Tungsten director’s post was the nation’s most covert appointment. The White House didn’t share the name of the program’s boss. For a flashy guy like Bill Mason, the idea of plugging away day to day without fanfare or public recognition ate at him tremendously.