Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 Book 2) (8 page)

“Do us a favor and spare us the colorful commentary and drive, Russo,” Malcolm said, his tone devoid of any amusement. They were moving fast, but trailing the target vehicles by three car lengths.

“Does Hawk have any other information at all about these guys?” Jesse asked, breaking the silence that had infiltrated the cabin of the car.

“The only information that he has is about Abbas,” Malcolm answered succinctly. “The connection to Al-Jaazeez is becoming more and more unlikely, but he could possibly be working for AnSawar.”

“Yeah, but doing what?” Jesse asked. His question was left unanswered when he slid hard into the passenger door as Luke sped up, abruptly switching lanes.

“We have a tail?” Malcolm asked, cranking his neck around in the seat.

“Not sure, sir.”

The other four men in the car checked the clips on their weapons. If they were forced into engaging in a shootout while still seated in the vehicle, they would be prepared. A blue sports sedan sped past them, and Luke let out the breath he’d been holding.

“False alarm,” he announced to everyone’s relief, the earlier mirth that had infused his voice was long gone.

“Commander Dewitt, there has been a change of plans,” Malcolm spoke into his long-range satellite headset. “The terror suspects have left the linen factory and they are now on the move. We’re now in pursuit of the vehicles.”

“Whatever you do, do not get made,” their CO’s garbled warning came in over the speaker. “You are out there solo for this op. There are no air or land support teams available for extraction. You are essentially on your own. You have clearance to grab the courier but other than that, surveillance only.”

“One more thing, sir. They have a woman with them, she’s clearly been roughed up and is being held against her will. Do we grab her too?”

“Damn,” their CO’s muttered curse filtered in over the wire. “Yes, grab her too. Make sure not to get over extended out there, though. The closest extraction team that I would be able to call is on assignment in Burkina Faso.”

“Copy that, sir.”

Luke slowed the car down when the target vehicles veered off the main highway. Jesse and his team traveled in silence for another five minutes before the two target vehicles stopped in front of a small, dilapidated farmhouse.

Luke sped up and drove past the structure, parking the car a thousand yards up from the house. Vacating the vehicle, all of the men loaded up on ammunition and weapons. Even though they only had clearance to monitor and grab, they weren’t taking any chances if things went sideways in a hurry.

By now, the sun had fully set. Darkness crept up beside them as they moved soundlessly through the woods. The rundown, post and beam farmhouse sat in an unusually deep valley with trees bordering each side of the property. Even at its current derelict state, the house was a lot nicer than many of the other crudely built homes in the surrounding village. Jesse and his teammates hiked up the north side of the ridge, through a stand of tall trees before stopping at the edge.

“Fallback torque position,” Malcolm ordered, and the rest of the men obediently spread out to their practiced posts. Jesse dropped where he stood and set up his sniper rifle. This position on the ridge was at the highest spot looking down on the targets and would provide him with the best vantage point and cover. From this location, he also had a good view of the country road that they’d just exited.

Peering down into the night-vision scope, Jesse discerned that the men had moved their hostage from the interior of the structure back outside.

“Visuals, Spider?” Malcolm asked. Callum “The Spider” Kincaid was a senior member of Team Fourteen. He’d been recruited by the Navy straight out of Cal Tech, and had worked his way up to the SEALs. He was more than a little nerdy, but was also more than a little solid when it came to hand-to-hand combat. On the surface, his personality seemed to be entirely mild-mannered and Poindexterish, but that was just a veneer because Spider knew how to scrap. Basically, he was exactly the type of guy you would want covering your six if you ran across trouble in a dark alley sometime. Like the other men, Spider had disappeared somewhere into the night, but his voice came in crystal clear over the headset.

“Two guards on the east side of the building,” Spider replied back over the static in the line. “From this angle I have an obstructed view of the woman. I have a bad feeling about this, Lieutenant. Something isn’t right.”

“Join the club,” Malcolm said. The fact of the matter was that all of the SEALs were feeling a little hinky right about now. Whoever these clowns were, they surely hadn’t brought this woman to this remote house for polite conversation over a cup of tea and biscuits.

“Okay, here we go,” Luke announced. “Look alive, people.”

Refocusing his gaze, Jesse saw a flurry of movement around the front door of the shack.

Shifting his grip until the stock of the rifle rested comfortably against the pocket of his shoulder, Jesse looked down the valley below to the unfolding scene.

The woman had been transported from her position sitting on the front stoop of the house to a kneeling position in the backyard. Five of her captors formed a tight circle around her as one man broke formation in order to stand directly in front of her. He was saying something to the woman, who was still crying frantically, but from this distance it was impossible for Jesse to decipher the man’s words.

And then, the woman collapsed. Slumping to her side, the woman’s head—or at least what was left of it—fell to the ground. Motionless, her sightless eyes now stared unblinkingly at her killers.

Jesse reflexively winced. He hadn’t seen it coming. He should have been paying closer attention to the man standing directly in front of the woman. Instead, his concentration had been on the other assholes who’d had their guns drawn and pointed.

“Shit. Damn it to hell,” Malcolm’s voice echoed what they all were thinking. “Hold positions.”

“What about Abbas?” Spider asked from his hide.

“We wait.”

Twenty seconds later, they all realized that waiting was no longer going to be an option. The executioner grabbed the target courier around his throat, forcing the groveling man down to his knees. The power of the first blows to his face whipped Abbas’ head around.

“Shit, we need this guy,” Jesse muttered under his breath.

The tango continued to pummel the courier with his fists, a steady stream of blood sprayed from the beaten man’s nose.

“Move in, position four. Notify when in position,” Malcolm ordered. “Denison, hold your location and clear as many targets as you can.”

One by one, the contingent of team members confirmed that they were in place at their new locations.

“Hold your positions,” Malcolm commanded. Abbas was taking a hell of a beating at the hands of his former friends. The rapid blows were enough to fell even the toughest man, and the courier soon hit the ground, gasping for air. Abbas was mumbling something, probably pleas for the men to stop beating the living daylights out of him. It was a wonder if the man still had any teeth left in his mouth. Just when Jesse thought that the guy wouldn’t be able to take anymore, the ring leader halted the beating. Only to bring up his gun to the courier’s temple and then quickly remove it a few seconds later. Apparently, this guy enjoyed playing games.

“Denison, you have a clean shot?” Malcolm asked, the tension rising in his voice as the scene before them veered off from routine into FUBARville.

“Yes, sir.”

Jesse understood that Malcolm was in a tight spot. Their Commander had expressly told them that they were authorized for surveillance only. They were not supposed to engage the targets. Unless, of course, they were intervening in order to snatch Abbas and deliver him to the CIA for questioning. The problem was, of course, that the CIA actually had to have Abbas in a lucid condition for questioning. At the rate his ass whooping was going, he would be comatose in another five minutes that is if he wasn’t shot.

“Take the shot, Denison,” Malcolm ordered when the apparent ringleader of the group pulled out his weapon again, aiming it square at Abbas’ forehead.

Jesse did not hesitate. He did what was trained to do: he pulled the trigger.

The guy strongarming Abbas dropped like a stone right where he stood. A head shot had the tendency to do that to a person.

Due to the silencer on Jesse’s high-powered sniper rifle, the other tangos had not heard the shot, but they had all witnessed the aftermath of it. All hell broke loose, as the tangos scrambled for cover while simultaneously blasting out rounds. The hunted men tried to return fire, blindly shooting into the darkness at shadows.

Readjusting his scope, he quickly took out two more targets as other Team Fourteen members moved in to secure the courier. While the terrorists were generally shooting in Jesse’s direction, their weapons just did not have the range necessary to reach him.

Jesse watched from his perch as the rest of his team members moved in on the hapless group. The shootout was over in about ninety seconds.

“Outside area is clear. Report your status and location.” Everyone reported a cleared status, except for Spider.

“Kincaid, report your twenty,” Malcolm said.

Silence.

“Kincaid, report your twenty,” Malcolm repeated again.

Luke’s tension-filled voice came over the wire. “Shit, Spider’s down. He’s hit, it’s bad. Real bad. I need Avery here stat. Downstairs, second room on the left.” Avery was Kent Avery, a seasoned team member and a medic.

Sonofabitch
.

“Where was Kincaid hit?” Malcolm’s grim voice echoed in Jesse’s ear.

“He took one round in the neck… he’s not breathing. Avery needs to get his ass in here
now
.”

Four Days Later

Camp Harding

Djibouti, Africa

“m
ARK, THIS IS
the newest agent in our counterterrorism unit I told you about.” Glancing up from his desk, Mark found CIA Director Morgan Henson and a young woman blocking his doorway. “Sloane, I’d like you to meet the commanding officer of SEAL Team Fourteen, Mark Dewitt. Mark, Sloane Anderson.”

Standing behind his desk, Mark’s eyes collided with the exceedingly earnest, aquamarine eyes of the young CIA agent. She was tall, nearly as tall as Morgan was, and slender. She wore her drab brown hair in a short, efficient bob. Like her bob, the suit that she wore was equally efficient, nondescript, and distinctively masculine. Really, the only aspect of her appearance that seemed feminine was her skin, which was creamy and silky smooth.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Commander Dewitt,” she said, extending her hand out to Mark for a quick shake. From the square glasses on her face to the very practical penny loafers that she wore on her feet, she was no-nonsense from head to toe. Mark had the feeling that she was also probably a colossal pain in the ass.

“I’ve heard such great things about you and your team,” she continued. “Your takedown of the Al-Jaazeez network earlier this year was, well, brilliant, sir.”

Mark suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He definitely didn’t need some brown-noser fawning all over him or otherwise trying to kiss his ass in order to get ahead in her career.

“Sloane was one of our top recruits from the London School of Economics. We lured her away from Goldman Sachs,” Morgan interrupted. “She’s had experience in de-encryption, analysis of Terror Suspect Profiles, and data mining. She’s going to be aiding us in examining the financial information and other data we’ve received, which may be connected to AnSawar.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Mark said, letting go of her hand. For someone with such a slight build she had a surprisingly firm grip.

“Sloane will be reporting back to us within the next seventy-two hours, along with two other CIA analysts who are also working diligently on this matter. They’ll be presenting the associations that they’ve been able to discern from the financial documents. Hopefully, we’ll be able to isolate at least one courier to grab.”

“Great.”

The existing CIA agents had not made nearly as much progress as Mark had hoped they would have made by now. If they could just track down where AnSawar was obtaining their funding, the information would go a hell of a long way in isolating the financiers and cutting off vital sources of cash flow to the terrorist organization. Once their coffers were drained, the group’s effectiveness would rapidly diminish. Or so went the theory at least.

T
o Mark, it seemed very bizarre that AnSawar had suddenly switched course by not only upping the frequency of their attacks, but also by shifting their focus to large installations. Their former modus operandi was to strike small organizations in the heart of rural villages, not to take on facilities containing an extensive protection network. Although WG Oil didn’t have the defensive resources some of the larger industrial plants in the region were equipped with, it still was more guarded than other buildings the terror group had attacked previously.

The embassy bombings added another unusual layer to an already puzzling patchwork of events. It was one thing to attack an elementary school or a private company in central Somalia. It was another thing entirely to attack a U.S. embassy or consulate. While the Somalian government did not have even close to the amount of resources needed to strike back, all of the force and might of the United States would be brought to bear in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.

So why would this fledgling group risk that?

Mark wasn’t certain, but one thing was for sure though—he needed all the help he could get in order to figure this mess out before more innocent people were brutally murdered.

“
Bayla
was a complete fucking disaster.” Mark barked as soon as Sloane exited the room.

“Yeah, I am aware. But at least your team was able to grab Abbas.”

“Yeah, that was the only sliver of good news in a wretched turn of events. I lost one of my men. The kid wasn’t even thirty years old yet. I had to knock on his wife’s door and inform her that her husband of less than a year isn’t coming home to her. And that her infant daughter will never get to know her father. That she would have to raise her daughter by herself. This shit is fucking
personal
now. I am going to nail these cockroaches to the wall.”

Morgan grimaced. “I know, Mark. I’m sorry about Kincaid. He had an impeccable service record.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough, Morgan.
Where
were your operatives? Where was the intel my men needed?”

“Look, Mark you know with reduced funding to the Agency we are spread very thin at the moment. Your team had Hawk as a liaison.”

“A lot of good that did,” he said, his anger tinting his voice. Consciously, he tried to bring it down a notch. Being pissed off at Morgan and the CIA wasn’t helping anyone at this point. It wasn’t going to get them any closer to nailing AnSawar, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to bring Kincaid back.

Blowing out a tired breath, Mark asked, “What about the woman? Any identification on who she is and why she was killed?”

“Not yet, we are still scrambling to find out that information.”

“Is Abbas talking yet?”

“He’s been holding out for the past two days. But trust me Mark, he’ll break. We’ll break him. It is only a matter of time.”

“Yeah, well, time is a commodity we don’t have in excess supply right now.”

“I am well aware of that,” Morgan answered, the set to his jaw grim and somber.

“Have you had a chance to review the NIB report that was delivered this morning?” Mark inquired. National Intelligence Briefings—or NIBs as they colloquially referred to them—were daily reports compiled by the National Security Council that used information gathered from the major U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Yeah, NSA ghosts on the ground in Somalia are hearing whispers that a terrorist group, possibly AnSawar, is in the market for a dirty bomb. Not surprising.”

“Yeah.” Morgan was right, it wasn’t a big shock that a terrorist group would want as many weapons as they could get their hands on, particularly weapons of mass destruction. But…“Again, where is the money coming from?”

“That my friend, is the sixty-four-thousand dollar question.”