Trident's First Gleaming: A Special Operations Group Thriller (2 page)

The sound of men’s voices and footsteps came from the direction of the river. Maybe two squads. The insurgents were home now and obviously feeling relaxed and secure—talking loudly. As they neared the SEALs, their voices and footsteps became more and more careless. The insurgent point man came so close to Chris that he could have reached out and grabbed him. The insurgent passed.

As Chris lay flat on the ground holding his MP7 in both hands, he waited for the other insurgents to go by. Something rustled on the ground followed by a scream for help in Arabic. Before Chris could react, a shadow leaped onto his back, and something clamped down on his ear and caused a sharp pain, like a wild animal biting him—
Mordet
! Chris wanted to leap and cry out, but he gulped down his fear and pain. With his right hand still holding the MP7, he reached around with his left hand, found Mordet’s face, and drove his thumb between the man’s nose and eyeball, popping the eye out of its socket. Mordet wouldn’t let go as he chewed off half of Chris’s ear. White heat traveled from Chris’s ear, through his body, and to the tips of his right toes—sapping the strength out of him. Mordet had the strength of a mad goblin. Chris’s world became pale as he tried to stop his attacker. He was passing out.

A crack sounded, and Mordet’s head bumped against Chris’s. The goblin gave up gobbling. Chris turned his head to find Mordet unconscious and Little Doc pulling the butt of his MP7 away from Mordet’s noggin. Mordet was lucky. Little Doc had only struck him with the butt and hadn’t shot him—they still needed to interrogate the beast in order to find Young.

The duct tape and eye were hanging from Mordet’s face, and his black hood lay on the ground next to him. He’d probably fallen on his face multiple times to loosen the tape. The zip ties had proven to be tougher, though, and Mordet’s hands were still bound. Little Doc calmly put Mordet’s eye back in.

The other SEALs fired their sound-suppressed MP7s, which emitted no flash, at the two squads. Chris faced inland and saw enemy muzzles flashing from multiple directions. The insurgents could hear the SEALs but couldn’t see them. With the red dot in Chris’s sight, he traced one muzzle flash to the upper body of a long silhouette. Chris squeezed his trigger once. Then again. The long silhouette sank.

Although the insurgents fired their AKs on full auto, the SEAL squad’s precise shots severed the tangos’ numbers—until the fight became mano a mano. Untamed power surged through Chris’s veins, and he felt like a wolf with his wolf pack, dominating the night
.

The surviving tangos wised up—AK muzzle flashes focused on the SEALs’ direction, and mini sonic booms from passing bullets popped the air around him. He efficiently took the fear of the bullets and locked it into a tiny box. He had entered a zone, focusing even more on his next target. Chris eased his red dot on the nearest insurgent and downed him. The insurgent’s comrades fell, too—until none were left standing.

If the insurgents had been the target of this mission, Chris and his teammates would check to make sure they were all dead and search them for intel, but they weren’t the target, and a few hundred Syrian militiamen from Mordet’s village were probably en route to the frogmen’s position right now.

After making so much noise, there was no more need for stealth. Senior Chief barked, “Haul ass to the river!”

Chris picked the black hood off the ground and turned to make sure Beanpole and Psycho were following. Beanpole poked Mordet in the back, and he stumbled forward.

As they ran to the river, blood oozed from Chris’s bitten ear and down his neck. He didn’t know how much blood he’d lost, but there was no time to bandage himself now. When the SEALs reached the water, the SOC-R was waiting for them with its engines running. They boarded swiftly and took their designated positions. The pilot shoved the throttle forward, and the boat pulled away from the bank and accelerated to over forty knots, heading south.

“Status report,” Senior called to the SEALs.

Gorgeous sounded off first, reporting on any wounds and remaining ammo: “Gorgeous, okay, four magazines.” The others sounded off in succession. Then came Chris’s turn. “Reverend, got a nick on my right ear, three magazines.”
Reverend
was Chris’s call sign—given to him because when the guys went bar-hopping, despite relentless ribbing, Chris wouldn’t drink alcohol. Psycho gave the last report.

Beanpole made eye contact with Chris for a moment. Chris was pissed.

If you’d gagged Mordet properly, this wouldn’t have happened.

Beanpole looked away as if he could read his thoughts.

Little Doc came over to take a look at his ear while the guys with more ammo donated bullets to the guys with less. As Little Doc examined Chris, he calmly said, “Looks like they shot off half of your ear. Did you pick it up and bring it with you?”

Mordet had a grin on his face as he chewed on something.

Chris pointed to him and said, “He bit it off.”

“What?” Little Doc asked.

Mordet continued to chew.

Disgust and anger roiled in Chris’s stomach. “What the—damn, he’s eating it!”

“Eat this!” Little Doc slammed the butt of his rifle into Mordet’s face. The chewing motion stopped. Little Doc grabbed Mordet’s nose with one hand and his jaw with the other and opened Mordet’s mouth wide. “You sicko-freako-shit-sucking-no-life-mother—” He shook half of a chewed-up ear out of Mordet’s mouth. It was impractical for them to carry ice in the field, so Little Doc wrapped the piece of flesh in some gauze and put it in Chris’s shirt pocket.

They sat silently until Mordet regained consciousness. This time, Little Doc struck him so hard with the rifle butt that it probably knocked his IQ down twenty points. Little Doc gagged him again before Chris slammed the hood down around Mordet’s head.

As the SEALs continued their return trip, Little Doc disinfected and bandaged Chris’s ear.

Will my ear ever be the same again? I hope I don’t bleed to death.

His enlistment was near its end, and this wasn’t giving him warm, fuzzy feelings about re-upping. Then he realized that if he kept thinking about his ear and reenlistment, he might miss spotting an ambush and lose more than his ear. He focused his eyes and mind on the shore, scanning for threats.

The SEALs traveled unmolested to their base in Al Anbar Province, where they handed Mordet over to the civilian-clothed Agency interrogator and his assistants.

A hospital corpsman showed up soon after and escorted Chris away.

In sick bay, the surgeon greeted Chris, who took his piece of ear out of his pocket.

The surgeon didn’t have to examine it long to make a judgment: “This is too mangled. Even if I did sew it back on, it would remain deformed like this for the rest of your life.”

“Right now, all I want to do is find Young.”

“After I sew up your wound here, I can arrange to have you flown to the facial prosthetics lab at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Their 3-D camera can produce images for a mold of your ear. I can even arrange for you to have a summer ear and winter ear with appropriate skin tones and an ear in camouflage.”

“Thanks, Doc, but I don’t have time right now to fly back to the States. That’ll have to wait until after we find Young.”

“I’ll just sew it up for now.”

Chris nodded.

As the surgeon went to work, Chris noticed his Yale diploma on the wall and remembered his sophomore year at Harvard. At that time, part of Chris had wanted to become a preacher and part of him had wanted to become a SEAL, but when 9/11 happened, the choice had become clear: he’d left Harvard and joined the Navy. Now he hunted evil men through fire and brimstone, and although he repeatedly reminded himself that he wasn’t a part of the bad guys’ underworld, he bore the scars of their world on his body and soul. He longed for light. He longed for a place closer to Heaven.

After the surgeon finished suturing his wound, Chris departed and hurried to the gator pit, where he found Hannah watching a live video feed of the interrogation. She was a raven-haired chameleon who shape-shifted between geek, Sampson, and Delilah.

Hannah’s eyes didn’t leave the video feed as Chris stepped up beside her. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked with a sweetness in her husky voice.

He smiled. “Same thing a nice gal like you is doing.” He pointed to the monitor. “What is he doing?”

“Waterboarding Mordet,” she said.

“And?” Chris asked.

“Mordet hasn’t said a word.”

The interrogation booth was a small room made of plywood. A TV monitor on the wall was hooked up to a laptop on a table, so if Mordet began talking about Young’s location, the gator could have Mordet point it out on a high-tech map on the TV monitor. Mordet was tied on his back on a board the size of a door, with his feet elevated. A wet orange cloth was wrapped around his face.

The gator’s head looked like a lemon—it had more width than height, and his skin color was jaundiced. He also had the muscle mass of a bodybuilder. Gator nodded to his assistant, who poured a gallon water jug from two feet above Mordet’s nose and mouth. Immediately, Mordet gagged. Seconds later, his body went limp. Either he was too tired to fight or he was purposely allowing his nose and mouth to fill up with water and causing himself to asphyxiate. The average person would begin talking by fifteen seconds—saying anything, truth or lies, to make the waterboarding stop. Each session would last no longer than forty seconds but could be repeated for up to twelve minutes in a day. “How long have they been doing this?” Chris asked.

“About half an hour,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I’m not complaining, but does Lemon Head know what he’s doing?”

Hannah shrugged. “He’s a contractor.”

“We really don’t have time for amateur hour. Young doesn’t have time.” Chris left the gator pit and rushed to the interrogation booth, where he burst inside the cramped room.

Gator turned around, and his brow furrowed. “What the hell?”

Mordet stirred as if from a sleep. Water trickled from his nose and mouth.

Chris motioned for Gator to step out of the room with him. The man gestured to his assistant to watch their prisoner.

They exited the booth and walked down the hall. “I was in the middle of an interrogation,” Gator said.

“The middle?” Chris asked.

Gator puffed out his chest. “I’ll break him,” he said proudly.

“I can see that.” Chris was unable to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

“Who are you?”

“We can’t launch a rescue until we know where Young is.”

Gator came to a stop in the pit near where Hannah sat. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Young is running out of time and—”

“You can’t rush progress,” Gator interrupted.

Chris stared hard at him, and tension filled his voice. “We’re out of time.”

Gator leaned forward. “My interrogation was working until you interrupted.”

Chris stood his ground. “Maybe you can update me on the intel you already extracted.”

With his index finger, Gator poked Chris in the chest. “You need to chill.”

“I am chill.” Chris pushed the finger away from his chest.

“You don’t seem chill to me.”

“Maybe I can persuade Mordet to talk.”

Gator leaned in even closer so Chris could feel the heat and smell the bunghole-stink of his breath. “Maybe you don’t understand who’s in charge here.”

“I’m not asking to take over,” Chris said. “You can take credit for any intel I acquire. I’m just asking for a shot at Mordet.”

“You hot-shits think you can do anything you want because everyone’s scared of you. Well, I’m not scared of you.”

“I’m not trying to scare you. I just want to find Young.”

“So does everyone else, but I’m the one who knows about interrogation, and you need to get authorization before you interrogate the prisoner!”

“Are you saying you have no authority here?”

“I have authority!”

Chris tried to remain calm. “I only know that I was waterboarded in SERE school. And I’ve worked with some of the best gators in the business. And you’re not one of them.”

Hannah, still sitting in her chair in front of the live video monitor, chuckled.

Chris turned to her and said, “Tell those guys in the booth to stop screwing around and prepare the prisoner for interrogation.”

She left the pit and headed to the booth.

“You can’t do this,” Gator said.

Chris moved in so close that he was toe-to-toe with Gator. “Saving Young is
deadly
important to me,” Chris said quietly. “How important is it to you?”

The veins in Gator’s neck bulged as if they were about to pop.

Chris prepared to flip his inner switch from chill to bone-burning conflagration.

“Your commanding officer will hear about this!”

Chris didn’t know whether Gator was smart for not fighting or cowardly for backing off. Maybe he was both. “I’m sure he will.”

Gator kicked a trash bucket across the room on his way out.

“Does anyone know where I can get a good bottle of wine ASAP?” Chris shouted out to the others in the gator pit.

A man in civilian clothes hesitantly raised his hand.

“I need it for the interrogation. How fast can you get it here?” Chris asked.

“Right away.” The man left his desk and rushed out of the room.

“If Mordet likes wine and my ear, I’ll give him what he wants.” Chris borrowed Hannah’s phone, called the surgeon, and asked for his ear in a small cooler.

He observed the monitor of the interrogation booth. Gator’s henchman cleared out the waterboarding equipment, handcuffed Mordet’s hands behind his back, chained his feet together, and sat him in a chair.

Minutes later, when the cooler and wine arrived, Chris left the gator pit. After the henchman stepped out of the booth, Chris stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and set his cooler down beside the door. Then he took a seat on the plastic chair in front of a table between himself and Mordet.

It’s time we have a little chat, my friend.

_______

T
he booth, like other interrogation rooms, was kept cold to make the prisoner uncomfortable. Chris exhaled, purging any anger or anxiety from his system—neither would help him succeed in the interrogation.

Mordet gazed at the bandage on Chris’s ear. “I gather that we have already made each other’s acquaintance, but my doctorate is in philosophy, not medicine.”

Chris felt the same giant, dark hand pressing down on him that he’d experienced at Mordet’s estate. “You gather correctly, Professor.” Chris poured a glass of wine and gave him a sip.

After Mordet finished the sip, he licked his lips. “It seems that you know about me, but I do not know about you, other than the fact that you and your comrades were highly professional, and we left via the Euphrates River. No conventional military units would operate inside Syria. I can only guess that you are a Navy SEAL—probably from SEAL Team Six.” Mordet stared into Chris’s eyes as if he were probing Chris’s brain.

Chris showed no expression in his face or voice. “I can neither confirm nor deny—”

Mordet was equally cool. “No need—I have already confirmed it. Even so, I still do not know your name.”

Chris didn’t know how the interrogation would play out, but if he was patient, he might spot an opening and exploit it. “My name is Chris.”

Mordet’s eyes sparkled. “Do you have a last name, Chris?”

Chris continued without showing emotion. “Yes.”

Mordet took another drink. “Will you give it to me?”

“No.”

The sparkle in Mordet’s eyes faded. “That is not very sporting. You have come here to ask me where Young Park is, but you will not even tell me your last name.”

“Yes, I came here to ask where he is.” Chris gave him the rest of the drink.

He seemed pleased. “Why is he so important to you?”

Chris refilled Mordet’s glass. He had thought he was in control of the interrogation, but now he wasn’t sure. He gave Mordet a long drink.

“Is Park related to you?”

Chris said nothing.

“A friend?”

“Yes.”

Mordet stared at Chris’s eyes. “This rescue has more meaning to you than mere friendship. Maybe this is more about the rescue than about Young Park.”

The remarks caught Chris off guard, as if Mordet had a sixth sense for digging into his soul. Every rescue was deeply personal, but the purpose of the interrogation was Young, not Chris. He surveyed for a warm spot in Mordet’s cool veneer. “You bit off my ear and tried to eat it. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?”

Mordet gazed at the ceiling. “Is it? During the Vietnam War, a CIA SOG officer killed enemy combatants and cut off their ears. And made necklaces out of them.” Mordet sniffed the air as if he smelled a meal, and then his eyes lowered to his interrogator.

Mordet had an aura about him that made Chris’s skin prickle, but he didn’t show it. “I’ve heard the stories. I’ve heard a lot of stories and seen a lot of things, but you weren’t making a necklace.”

Mordet frowned like a lecturer disappointed with a student. “What would be the point—a trophy? How droll. And wasteful.”

“I don’t know anyone who eats the body parts of humans.”

There was a shadowy stillness in Mordet’s eyes, and wine stained the corner of his lips like blood. “In western New Guinea, when the Korowai tribe finds that someone is a
khakhua
, a witch doctor, they eat that person’s brain while it is still warm.”

Chris saw the source of the giant, dark hand that pressed on him, and the more he saw, the less he wanted to see, but he didn’t show his aversion to the blackness emanating from Mordet. “I didn’t know that,” he said matter-of-factly.

Mordet smiled, but the corners of his smile were closer to a sneer. “In America, when the Donner Party became trapped in the snowy Sierra Nevada, the survivors ate the dead.”

“That remains unconfirmed.”

“In the 1972 Andes flight disaster, the survivors ate the dead bodies of their classmates and friends.”

Mordet disgusted Chris, and the conversation made him weary, much like the war did, but Mordet gave off an aura of evil unlike any Chris had ever encountered. In spite of his weariness and his need to end the conversation, his need to rescue Young was greater.

What makes you tick, Mordet?

“But I don’t guess you belong to a tribe in New Guinea nor were you in the Andes flight disaster.”

“Not the Andes flight disaster, but when I was a teenager, my mother, younger sister, and I flew to Turkey for a winter vacation. We crashed in the Taurus Mountains. Only my sister and I survived. After we ran out of food, I suggested we eat the bodies. My sister refused and insisted we try to climb off the mountain. I told her the weather was too severe and it would be easier for a search party to find a wrecked plane than two people wandering through the snow. So I did what was necessary to survive, but I will never forget the way she looked at me, like I was … such a monster. Two days later, I woke up and she was gone. One month after the crash, they rescued me and found my sister’s body. She’d frozen to death.” He finished his drink.

“You ate human flesh for nourishment.” Chris refilled his glass and gave him a drink.

“Yes, of course. When I returned home, news traveled about how I’d survived, and my classmates and their parents ostracized me. Sometimes I fantasized about eating them. I read about the Korowai tribe and was fascinated. Of course eating another human is part of their culture, but more important, eating another human gives them spiritual power to destroy forces greater than mortality.”

“But eating my ear didn’t give you the power to escape. You’re still imprisoned here.”

“Ah, but I did not finish the whole ear, you see.”

Chris wanted to put a bullet through him, but he exercised patience instead. “I’m not here to judge you. I just want to know where Young is.”

“Why should I help you?” Mordet looked at the cooler and bottle of wine near the doorway. “If you give me a bottle of wine and what is left of your ear in that cooler, you think I’ll tell you where Young is?”

Mordet’s weakness seemed to be his pride in his intellect and his eagerness to rationalize his cannibalism as some mystic gift. “You suggested that if you could finish the ear, your spiritual power would increase, enabling you to escape this situation.” Chris moved his chair closer to Mordet. “Jeffrey Dahmer ate people because his brain was a couple bullets short of a full magazine. I’m just trying to confirm how I should classify our conversation in the report I send to my superiors and our allies.”

Chris gave him the rest of the glass, but he didn’t pour a refill. “
Très bien
. I am not so strange. If you had walked in my shoes, you would have done the same.” Mordet whispered: “During my senior year of high school—”

“If you’re not interested, I understand.” Chris stood up, turned around, and walked to the door. He picked up his cooler. “I think I know how to write my report.”

“Wait,” Mordet said.

Chris stopped and turned to face him.

“Give me the wine and cooler, and I will tell you where Young is.”

“It doesn’t work that way. After we find Young, you get what’s left of the wine and my ear. I’ll write a report about your belief in your mystic power. Then it’s up to you to prove to everyone that your power is real. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Chris reached for the door.

“Patience, patience. I will tell you where he is.”

Chris anxiously fingered the lighter in his pocket. “You can tell the interrogator. If your information helps us rescue Young, you get the wine and my ear. And I’ll update my report. Until then, talk is cheap.”

“This rescue means more to you than Young himself. Why is the rescue so important to you?”

His own kidnapping flashed back to him. The feelings of despair, of terror. The darkness of the pit he’d been kept in. The aftermath.

“Good-bye, professor.”

“Will you leave me your email address in case I think of something more?”

Chris walked out the door without turning back. He wanted to run, putting as much distance between himself and Mordet as he could, but he denied Mordet his influence and walked at a normal pace. He wanted to teleport himself out of this hell—far from the despots and devils. Events after that were a spinning blur to him. He didn’t know if it was the exhaustion of the op, blood loss from his ear, or the soul-sucking interrogation that drained him, but somehow he found his way to his rack and lay down.

Just over an hour later, Little Doc came to Chris’s rack. “Come on! We’re going to get Young!”

They geared up with their teammates and rushed across the grey tarmac to where two Black Hawks and a smaller Little Bird MH-6 helicopter were already spinning up. His adrenaline beat with the
thwop-thwop
of the choppers’ blades. The helos were waiting for Chris, LT, and his seven men.

Hannah met Chris part-way and shouted above the noise. “The gator took the credit, but it was because of you that Mordet gave us Young’s location!” There was a twinkle in her eyes that he’d only seen when they’d first met, and it made his soul soar.

“No, we found Mordet because of you and your asset!” He wanted to hug her—and he wanted to be finished with the war on terror—but now he had to find Young. Everything else would just have to wait.

“We’ll play pool when you get back!” she said.

He nodded. Hannah was a talented colleague and a good friend, and in moments like this, he wanted to get to know her better. It seemed like the time to say something epic, but all that came out of his mouth were two words: “Thank you!” He turned and sprinted to the chopper without looking back.

The helos were painted a dark green, but in the night, they loomed black. Their blades beat the air with a
thwop, thwop, thwop
, making the earth quiver beneath Chris’s feet as he neared his Black Hawk. Their rhythm continued to pulse in his blood. He took a seat inside with Senior Chief and their squad. LT and his squad of seven SEALs boarded the other Black Hawk. Two snipers, one starboard and one port, sat on the Little Bird with their legs dangling outside the helo. Diesel fumes struck Chris’s sinuses like holy incense.

This time, instead of carrying the smaller sound-suppressed MP7 9mm submachine guns, Chris and his mates carried the more powerful HK416 5.56 assault rifles, wore bullet-resistant vests, and carried a deadly assortment of grenades. Every available pocket bulged with extra ammo. This was not a stealth mission.

The helos slowly lifted off the tarmac. Clouds blanketed the sky and the world shone green and 2-D from underneath his night vision goggles. One of the snipers flipped his middle finger at Chris’s helo. Chris grinned and returned the greeting.

Soon they picked up speed, and the blades’
thwop, thwop, thwop
was drowned out by the roaring wind. The three helos hugged the earth so close and traveled so fast that it looked like the ground would tear off the Black Hawks’ skids. The choppers raced northwest along a dry river bed before speeding north through a valley. They dodged and hurdled sand dunes, houses, power lines, and palm trees before crossing the Syrian border.

Mordet’s men were keeping Young in a dried-up well. Chris knew the tactic all too well. While his parents worked at the US embassy in Syria, he had been kidnapped and held for four days in a dried-up well outside of town, eventually rescued by SEALs. A shiver ran through him, and he tried to push the memory away.

The helos continued forward then flew up at a steep angle, clearing a cluster of two-story buildings. Then the birds dived at the earth like kamikaze planes. At the last moment, their beaks flared up, halting the birds before leveling above an empty field near Mordet’s plantation. Chris and his teammates quickly stepped onto the skids, then hopped down into a field surrounded by a cloud of dust kicked up by the helos.

The two squads moved at double time. The fourteen SEALs swiftly reached their objective, the well. Two armed Syrians emerged from a lopsided farmhouse—only to be picked off by the snipers hovering in the Little Bird above.

Chris looked down into the well with an overwhelming sense of dèjá vu. Suddenly he was a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in that well, again. He struggled to breathe. His chest tightened.

Breathe, Chris. Breathe
.

But he still wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He had to pull himself together. He was going down there.

“Young Park,” he forced out. “United States Navy SEALs. We’re here to rescue you!”

Young looked up from the bottom of the pit. “Help me,” he said weakly.

Beanpole and Psycho attached two rappelling ropes to the well, and Chris checked Beanpole’s before hooking in. Meanwhile, the other SEALs lay in a perimeter around them, taking cover in a ditch, behind a tractor and whatever else was available. They created the blocking force for anyone who might disturb the rescue.

“Stand against the wall, Young,” Chris said. “I’m coming down.” The SEALs’ powerful HK416 5.56 caliber rounds cracked the night. Enemy AK-47s staccatoed the air, but the noise became muffled as Chris rappelled into the well—his teammates would take care of the insurgents.