Full Assault Mode (39 page)

General Allen didn’t have to tell the professionals from the 1/160th that this wasn’t the ideal time to be executing this kind of mission profile. They knew too well about the early birds in that area, the goons that kept rocket-propelled grenades on the roofs of their homes covered by blankets, ensuring they remained at the ready for coalition aircraft executing flybys in the middle of the night. But the risk was certainly mitigated by the type of aerial chariots pushing the border carrying twenty-two grizzled and seasoned special operators.

These were the same type of state-of-the-art helicopters with the outerspace-looking tail rotor that put the SEALs into Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011. They were outfitted with the latest avionics and positioning systems, refuel probes, and advanced engineering that made them the quietest, most stealthy assault helos in history.

“Captial Zero-Six, this is Comet Four-Seven, Green SAT. Over,” CW4 Bill “Smitty” Smith calmly said into his mouthpiece from under his night-vision goggles. He scanned the horizon through the cockpit’s bubble nose, turning his head slowly and deliberately. “Checkpoint seven, we are committed.”

“This is Capital Zero-Six. Roger, we copy checkpoint seven,” General Allen answered. He remained several hundred miles away at the JOC in J-bad, acknowledging the helos had reached the point of no return, where the only thing that would stop them from continuing to the target area was an act of God or an enemy vote.

After hearing the JOC’s confirmation, and without receiving the code word to abort the mission, Smitty turned the black knob on his communication suite above his head to the troop internal frequency the customers in the back were monitoring.

“One minute, one minute,” Smitty calmly transmitted.

“Roger, one minute. Any sign of the package?” the Delta troop sergeant major code-named Slapshot asked from the rear, feeling the helo slow down as it approached the distress signal. Slapshot, along with eleven other operators, were squeezed in tight in the back of the bird. On either side, three operators sat with their legs hanging out both sides of the helo’s open doors, the NVGs attached to their helmets allowing them to scan the ground below them for any threats.

“Negative on PID. Fire is out as well. We are going to do a wide flyby and circle back,” Smitty said.

“Roger,” Slapshot said.

Smitty adjusted his approach, moving slightly south but remaining at one hundred feet above the ground to lower their profile and allow him to sweep in quickly if necessary to pick up the package.

“Shit! Contact front, ten o’clock, heavy tracers,” Smitty transmitted.

“Put us down,” Slapshot said.

“Negative. I can’t do that just yet. Landing zone is too hot. I need to back off into orbit and gain some altitude until we figure this out.”

Slapshot didn’t blame Smitty. He knew he was calling the shots on this one, especially while they were still airborne. It would be stupid to set down in the middle of a shit storm not knowing who was fighting whom down there.

As the two helos banked off the approach and climbed, Slapshot and the others jockeyed for firing positions in the back of the helos. The ones in the center took knees facing out, while the ones in the doorways settled their arms on the safety straps and activated the infrared lasers on their HK416 rifles.

“I’ve got movement!” the operator name Shaft announced as he tried to hold his laser steady on the figure below.

“I’ve got him,” Slapshot said, confirming the mark by his mate Shaft. “Looks like one body. Weapons hold on that guy.”

Smitty understood the weapons-hold call from Slapshot and relayed it across his helo internal net to his door gunners to hold their fire on the single figure until they could PID that it was friendly or not.

“Whoever that guy is, he sure seems like he is on the wrong side of things,” Digger said over the troop net.

The single figure below was running at full sprint as he came over the small ridgeline from where they expected the distress signal to be. He stopped, took a tactical position behind a group of rocks, and shouldered his rifle, firing three rounds in the direction he had just come.

Slapshot studied his movements and took note of the clothing. “No military uniform, looks local dress,” Slapshot said. “Guy seems to know his shit, though.”

Smitty powered the helo into a tight circular orbit, forcing the operators in the back to scramble to the opposite door to observe the single figure on the ground.

The shooter again stood and moved backward, meticulously watching where he was stepping. But then he did something incredibly stupid that the operators on the port side of the helos had a first-class view of. It was hard to believe what they were seeing, but it was happening right in front of their eyes in full lime-green color.

“Is he flanking?” Digger asked.

“Looks like it. Looks like he is tired of running,” Slapshot said.

The figure below jumped two large rocks, sliding down the opposite side of each, while holding on to his rifle. He stepped behind a third rock, appeared to lift up on the balls of his feet to fire over something, and unloaded with several bursts of his rifle.

“Green tracers!” Shaft said. He didn’t have to say it—they all could see it—but he was reminding everyone that enemy tracers are green, whereas coalition troops’ are red. It was a simple note to remain alert that the guy performing below them might not be friendly.

The figure moved farther from the helo, lower down the ridge, now out of sight of the operators in the helo.

Slapshot yanked the helo’s customer headset off the hook and put one earmuff to his right ear and pulled the voice piece in front of his mouth. “Comet Four-Seven, we’ve lost visibility of the guy we were scoping. Can you get closer?”

“Negative. I can’t risk that. The JOC has spun up a fresh drone from Kandahar. We need to sit down somewhere and give it time to get in the airspace,” Smitty said.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Slapshot said. “We’ve got him again. He is walking with his hands up. I think he is waving at us.”

*   *   *

The two-and-a-half-hour helo ride from the pickup point roughly two miles into Pakistan back to Jalalabad Airfield seemed more like ten minutes to Kolt. His heart raced as he shivered underneath the two green wool blankets the loadmaster had wrapped around his shoulders. It was uncomfortably cold at the altitude they burned through the sky at as they pushed 120 knots and skirted jagged mountain ranges by just a few yards. Kolt wondered why the hell they didn’t close the doors for the trip home.

Kolt was strapped into a jump seat near the cockpit. It was crowded, but the troop medic on board gave him a thorough check, hastily cleaning and dressing his wounds and inserting an IV in his arm to replenish his loss of fluids. Even if Kolt needed more advanced medical care, the Delta aid man could practically operate on him in the back of the helo.

But besides the cold, Kolt was fine. He was a little startled that the recovery force actually arrived. Amazed that a Predator drone actually picked up on his distress signal. He had only enough gasoline to set the distress signal once before he’d have had to take his chances moving toward the border and dodging Talban patrols, lookouts, or even goatherders and bedouins. After getting compromised by a small group of locals, most likely because he was forced to violate noise discipline to start the signal fire, continuing to run away was a nonstarter.

But what shocked Kolt the most was that someone had enough authority, or the balls, to order a Joint Task Force launch, an incredibly risky mission based on sketchy information. Cross-border ops, even in extremis, took SECDEF-level approval. Kolt shook his head, a little amazed, really.
Tungsten really does have some juice,
he thought.

“Dude, what the fuck is going on?”

Startled after having dozed off sitting, just barely hearing the question over the booming helo static, Kolt sat straight up. Wrapped tightly in the blankets, he looked up directly into the menacing eyes of a helmeted, short-bearded operator.

Kolt recognized him immediately but wasn’t really ready for any friendly interrogation. Who could blame the guy, though? Any Delta operator putting himself and his mates in harm’s way on a short-string mission would demand answers. Kolt was just happy his first interrogator was his old teammate Slapshot.

Kolt knew his cover was blown. At least the identity part. It would be ridiculous to act as if he didn’t know his rescuers or as if he was anyone other than Kolt Raynor. Sure, he may be able to preserve his true Tungsten mission for a while, and he wasn’t about to offer more than required, but for the immediate time being he was just another old teammate who was still contributing to the war on terror. Timothy wouldn’t work with this audience. It might be in an unconventional manner, which hadn’t been uncommon for former unit members in the past few years, but his identity had to revert back to his given name at birth.

“Good to see you, Slapshot,” Kolt yelled over the low roar of the helo’s Sikorsky engine. The helo was nicknamed the Silent Hawk, but it wasn’t entirely silent.

Slapshot wasn’t about to settle for small talk. He took the customer headset by both earmuffs and placed it on Kolt’s head, moving the voice piece in front of his mouth and handing Kolt the push-to-talk.

Slapshot keyed the mike, sending his comments across the troop internal net for all the operators to hear. “Kolt, first, you look like shit. Second, why are we even on the same helicopter again flying over this shithole country?”

Kolt smiled and reached up to shake his hand like two very close old buddies.

“Are you with the agency?” Slapshot said.

Kolt noticed every operator’s helmeted head swivel toward the cockpit, probably amazed at what they had just heard over the troop net. Kolt keyed the mike. “No, no, I’m not, Slap,” he said as he shook his head side to side quickly.

“State Department shit? Contractor? Pissed-off private citizen?” Slapshot asked, still confused and somewhat in shock to see his old troop commander under these circumstances.

“Look, Slap, I know you can appreciate that it’s best for both of us if don’t say anything just yet. All I can tell you is, I’m not a shit bag; I’m not a traitor to my country or anything crazy like that.”

Kolt had no idea what may have been said of Kolt around the building after he left for the Tungsten program, but after the Cherokee attack, it was certainly plausible that in certain circles, Kolt Raynor might be considered a damn traitor.

“Dude, I know you aren’t a traitor,” Slapshot came back quickly as he grabbed Kolt’s shoulder and shook him as if he was ecstatic to see him again. “But you are one crazy bastard.”

Kolt chuckled.

“We’ll catch up on the ground,” Kolt said, nodding up and down.

Slapshot just looked at Kolt. He knew very well the guy sitting in front of him. At least he used to. Only a few months or so had passed since they had seen each other, and every operator would tell you that Kolt Raynor seemed to fall off the face of the earth. That wasn’t entirely odd—most guys moved on without much fanfare, especially if an officer was heading to school for a year before coming back. Webber had told the command that very cover story to explain Kolt’s absence. The fact that Kolt had vanished without even saying goodbye was a bit hurtful, but then officers did what officers did. But what Slapshot did know was obvious.

He knew Kolt’s every habit, good and bad. He knew his character, good and bad. He knew his commitment to his nation. And most important, he knew, as he pondered Kolt’s last comments, that if Kolt needed help, he would move mountains, ignore regulations, and risk it all to help him. After all, Slapshot knew damn well Kolt would do the same.

“OK, Kolt,” Slapshot said. “I’ll find you at J-bad.” He removed the customer headset from Kolt’s head and hooked it back to the communications suite behind the jump seat.

Almost having forgotten about the cold, the starboard-side-door gunner shifted in his seat and moved his machine gun slightly aft. The blistering wind blast smacked Kolt dead in the face.

“Thanks, Slap,” Kolt yelled as he pulled the blankets up to his chin. “And thanks for understanding.”

Slapshot turned and scooted on his kneepads back into the darkness, toward the aft of the helicopter, eased his ass down on the cold metal floor between several other jam-packed operators, and hooked his safety line back into the floor.

Having landed at J-bad only an hour earlier, Kolt now felt like a caged animal. Even worse, he felt like any other prisoner scarfed up on the battlefield. He wondered who was behind his status of PUC—person under custody. Kolt found himself in some type of isolation. Most likely while the new Joint Special Operations commanding general was trying to wrap his hands around just what the hell was going on.

Obviously, someone had gone to great lengths to preserve his status and his identity. It was no secret, though, and Kolt knew it. Half the guys on the helo that picked him up in Pakistan recognized him before he was helped onto the Black Hawk, as soon as the red light was flashed in his face. Now, sitting in the small and slightly damp room, he wondered how long his cover status would hold up.

Kolt knew people wanted answers. Phone calls would be made. Folks would be whispering among themselves around the camp about the mysterious guy the world stopped for last night to fly into Pakistan and recover.
Things are about to get interesting,
he thought. But at least he was warm. Interesting or not, Kolt’s most pressing matter now was getting back to the States to stop Nadal the Romanian.

Tungsten headquarters—Atlanta, Georgia

Carlos could tell right away Admiral Mason was in no mood for any grab-assing inside the situation room of the secret Tungsten headquarters. Everyone else in the secure room sized up the situation pretty much the same way. Nobody dared open the discussion before the director.

“Alright, listen up, all of you,” Mason barked, as if he was still in the military talking to a formation of young privates and sergeants. “As you know, this Raynor fella, I mean embed asset zero-seven-zero-six, set a top-secret distress signal in Pakistan. I just got off the phone with the special ops commander in Afghanistan, who has him in custody.”