Tier One Wild (15 page)

“Authorities on the scene say the evidence indicates that, as we might all expect, this was one of the SA-24s missing from Libyan arms depots.”

Kolt asked, “So will the White House step up the hunt to get the rest of the MANPADs back?” To Kolt it was a no-brainer. They should have been working on this every waking moment.

The colonel said, “Not in time to help the ninety passengers and crew who died off Mykonos.”

“Is anyone taking credit?”

“Sure. AQ, Taliban spokespeople, Greek separatists, Turkish nationalists in Greece.”

“The usual suspects.”

“Yes.”

“Is the Agency leaning on anyone in particular?” Kolt asked.

“Not yet. They are digging through old message traffic. Looking into all the bad actors. But while that’s going on, you are going back to work.”

Kolt’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

Webber said, “Racer, I need you to lead an Advance Force Operations cell in Cairo. The CIA guy you helped out in Tripoli, Myron Curtis, is there, and he’s got a line on an organization of ex-JSO men who, he thinks, have been brokering the sale of the Libyan SA-24s.”

“Are we deploying with execute authority?”

Webber shook his head. “Negative. Not yet, anyway. You will help with determining atmospherics, building the target folder for a potential hit. He will likely want you to do some clandestine recce, but you’ll need to get approval for that from me. Curtis and his team have been in Cairo for a few days, and they’re having trouble getting the personnel from the local CIA station. They are pretty busy with political and social events in Egypt these days.”

Kolt had done this sort of thing before. Recce, surveillance, watching, and waiting. Using a high-powered telephoto lens instead of a high-powered rifle.

“This case officer, Curtis? I figured I’d be the last guy he would ask for.”

“He didn’t ask for you. He and others at CIA were pissed about how it went down in Tripoli. It’s gotten all the way up to the White House that the JSOC team that came to help with the evacuation of Tripwire had itchy trigger fingers, and only the deft work of CIA kept it from turning into an international incident between us and the new government in Libya.”

Kolt just gritted his teeth.
Assholes.
Then he asked, “Then why
are
you sending me to Cairo?”

“Because Curtis wants an AFO cell. You are on alert status, so you go. I am satisfied with the work you did in Tripoli, and am not about to change the batting order around here because some case officer thought you didn’t show enough restraint in dealing with a street full of assassins.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Webber remained stone-faced. “Thank me by not fucking up in Cairo. Curtis is running the show on this, and he doesn’t like you, so be on your best behavior and mind your manners. You remember the talk we had before you completed Relook?”

Kolt knew Webber was referring to the conversation in which Webber told Kolt that he would be judged twice as hard as he had during his first time in Delta.

“I think about it every day,” Kolt said softly. He didn’t like Curtis much, but he did not have to like him to work with him.

“Good. You leave tomorrow night on covered air.”

“Yes, sir. I’m taking Digger and Slapshot?”

“Yes. And one more. You know Hawk from training cell?”

“No, sir.” Kolt hated admitting he didn’t know someone in the Unit, but since his return he’d been all but overwhelmed with training and executing his ops. “Commo guy?”

“Hawk has some language and other assets that might be beneficial for the recce in Cairo. You could do worse.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Webber then moved on to other matters. There would be a full briefing later in the afternoon for Kolt and a couple of guys from Intel about the situation in Cairo, and then the four Unit members would assemble gear and fly out the next evening on a CIA Gulfstream.

*   *   *

That evening, after the briefing and a couple hours of assembling their gear for the Cairo operation, Kolt and Peter “Digger” Chambliss drove together off base for dinner at Huske Hardware House Brewery in downtown Fayetteville. It would be their last American meal for a while, which was not as much of an issue for Kolt as it was for Digger, who, at twenty-seven, was the youngest operator in the squadron. He bemoaned the fact that he wouldn’t get a decent burger and fries in Egypt.

Huske’s was all but packed. It was a favorite joint for both 82nd troopers and Green Berets from nearby Fort Bragg, so the century-old multifloor brick building wasn’t exactly known as the place to cradle a grudge. It was owned and operated by the Collinses, a husband-and-wife team who always met their patrons with a welcoming smile. Josh Collins was somewhat of a local celebrity himself. As a former Army boxer and Army Ranger who saw plenty of combat action in his day, he could tell by the looks on the faces of his patrons which guys had come back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And Collins was well read in to Kolt’s reputation.

Kolt sipped his beer and looked across the table at Sergeant Chambliss. Digger was six feet tall and had nearly shoulder-length wavy blond hair. He looked a bit like a California surfer, though he hailed from Ohio. Even though Digger was young, Kolt recognized the incredible hunger in the man that Raynor himself was known for when he joined the Unit.

Four years earlier, when Peter Chambliss had been a member of 5th Special Forces Group, his Humvee had detonated a land mine on a rocky Afghanistan road in Kunar Province. The vehicle flipped in the explosion, tossing Sergeant Chambliss like a rag doll inside. After the dust settled he checked his wounds, and the twenty-three-year-old Green Beret found his left leg below the knee held on only by the torn fabric of his BDUs.

He was medevaced out and shipped to Ramstein and then to D.C. and then home to Ohio for surgery and rehab. It was a life-threatening injury that he survived, and it was a life-changing injury that he was determined to overcome.

One year to the week after losing his leg in Afghanistan he was redeployed to Afghanistan, back with 5th Group and now the proud owner of a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb.

And two years after returning to 5th Group, he became a member of Delta, the first amputee ever assessed and selected.

Digger had stuck an
ARMY STRONG
bumper sticker on the poly-fiber shinbone of the device, and he never passed up an opportunity to make light of his situation.

Digger may have had some optional after-market parts installed on his body, but Kolt Raynor knew this kid had the heart of a lion and the never-surrender mind-set of a Delta operator.

Parachuting down toward the hijacked American Airlines flight in New Delhi, Kolt had momentarily questioned Digger’s capabilities, and then, in the next ten minutes, Digger had gone on to execute his role flawlessly during the interdiction.

Kolt would never question the man, or his artificial limb, again, although he would make Digger wear his “old-school” artificial leg in Cairo for OPSEC reasons. This second prosthetic had been purchased from a clinic in Iraq and it was made with the equipment and materials one would find in the Middle East, and Digger donned it from time to time when it fit his cover status.

In some locations where Delta operated in a clandestine fashion, the
ARMY STRONG
bumper sticker just wouldn’t do.

Between bites of his dinner Digger began telling Kolt a story about his first combat jump as a Ranger. Kolt had heard the tale four or five times in the two and a half months he’d known Sergeant Chambliss, so his eyes drifted off the sergeant and onto a young woman who came through the door. She was nice-looking, mid-twenties, with dark hair and eyes, and a body that made it clear she knew her way around the gym. She was also unescorted, though she appeared to be looking around the bar for a friend.

Although Kolt considered her more pretty than drop-dead gorgeous, the girl fascinated him. He thought he saw a hint of Asian ancestry in her dark shoulder-length hair and slight facial features, and he found her searching, intelligent eyes hard to look away from.

“Boss? You with me?”

“What?” Kolt looked back to Digger. “Sorry.”

“You gonna finish those fries?”

“Be my guest,” Raynor said, and he dumped them on Digger’s plate. He looked back toward the entrance for the girl, but instead he found her standing at his table, looking directly at him.

Kolt raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Hi.”

“Major Raynor?”

Any fleeting thoughts Kolt may have had that his rugged good looks had caused this attractive young lady to pick him out of the crowd evaporated in an instant.

“Never heard of him.”

The girl’s almond eyes widened now, and she turned her attention to Digger. It was clear she knew she had just committed a violation of operational security. Kolt was a major in the U.S. Army, but in Huske’s, or any other civilian establishment, he was anything but a soldier.

Digger took the edge off. “Boss, she’s with us.”

She put out a hand. “Cindy Bird.”

He shook it. “Hello, Cindy Bird.” He kept looking at her, careful to keep his eyes locked on her eyes, lest they wander south to her body. Even with Digger’s heads-up, he had no idea who this girl was or what she wanted with him. “This seat’s yours,” Digger said as he leaned over and pulled a stool back from the table.

“I look forward to working with you, sir,” she said as she sat down, still addressing Kolt.

“Working with me on what?”

She leaned forward toward Kolt now to speak in a softer, more secure tone. “I’m very sorry. Colonel Webber didn’t tell you?”

Kolt figured it out, but more slowly than he would have liked. His mouth curved into a slight smile before he said, “
You
must be Hawk.”

“Yes, sir. Is there a problem?”

“None at all, Sergeant. I’m just surprised.”

“Surprised at what, sir?”

Kolt did not want to say he was surprised that the training cell sergeant he was taking to Cairo in his AFO cell was female, and a good-looking female, at that.

So he just said, “I’m surprised Colonel Webber has a sense of humor.”

Bird got it. “He didn’t tell you that your cover in Cairo included a wife, did he?”

“That must have slipped his mind.” He looked at Digger now as if to say,
You son of a bitch … you knew all along.

“Swear to God, boss. I had no idea you didn’t know her already.”

Kolt noticed now, by the way she plopped down in the booth next to Digger, that she was not quite as ladylike as he had first imagined. He could see the tomboy and the youth in her actions.

“How old are you, Hawk?”

“I’ll be twenty-five in September, sir.”

“And what month is it now?”

“Umm … July.”

“So then that makes you twenty-four.”

“Yes.”

Kolt smiled, shook his head. “Sorry about my initial reaction. I don’t want you to get the impression that I don’t respect the program. We should have seen the potential a long time ago. We’re lucky to have the few of you that make it. On top of that, Colonel Webber speaks highly of your talents.”

Cindy Bird smiled broadly. Kolt thought back to what Webber had said about Hawk’s assets. He tried not to roll his eyes, and he also had to force himself not to look at some of those assets now.

He then remembered something else Webber had said. “You have some language?”

“Yes. Egyptian Arabic. Not fluent yet, but I’m taking night classes at Methodist. I’m somewhat conversational. Not sure if that will help.”

“It sure as hell won’t hurt,” Kolt said. “Okay, Hawk. I have somewhere to be first thing in the morning, but we’ll dig into this at 0900. Meet us in the SCIF.”

“Looking forward to it, sir.”

Kolt reached for his wallet to pay the check. “First thing, stop calling me ‘sir.’ It’s Racer, or boss. Second, why did you feel the need to come find me off post?”

“Oh, sorry, sir. I mean boss. I’m here to meet my boyfriend. He’s in Fifth Group. Apparently he’s running late. SOP for most Green Berets.” She winked at Digger, who was an ex–Green Beret. To Kolt she said, “I just recognized your face from pictures I’ve seen around the squadron lounge. Those are some great shots from the old days. Spear Runner and Gauge Front must have been incredible experiences. I love checking out the history of the Unit.”

Digger laughed. “The old days.”

Kolt groaned. “Hope you didn’t miss the one of me and Teddy when we took San Juan Hill?”

Hawk looked confused for a moment. “I don’t think I saw that. San Juan Hill? I’m not familiar with that…”

Then it dawned on her, and she smiled. “Teddy Roosevelt, sir?”

Kolt nodded.

“So that makes you, what, about a hundred and thirty-five? You don’t look it.”

“Not a day over one-twenty,” Digger said as he finished his beer.

TWELVE

Immediately after returning to the Middle East on the heels of their successful test-fire in Greece, al-Amriki and Miguel went to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Here they lay low in a safe house belonging to a local cell of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They remained inside the walled building, behind closed doors and shuttered windows, and they hunkered down in case any track-backs from the Greek shoot-down led investigators in their direction.

They stayed in communication with their confederates and associates by using a runner from the local cell, sending the man out to various Internet café’s throughout the city with messages to pass on to other cutouts who, in turn, communicated with members of Aref Saleh’s trading network in Cairo and AQ banks in Dubai, ensuring that the money was received by the smugglers and the “product” was on its way and well cared for while under sail.

The SAMs would travel to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and there an agent would divide them into four shipments of fifteen crates each. They would then travel independently via air cargo to Paris, where an agent would arrange for them to continue on to their final destination.

The man in Dubai and the man in Paris were agents of al Qaeda, but the receiving agent at the final destination was a member of another organization. He was the weak link in the chain, but he had been tested with some dummy cargos and had handled everything in an acceptable fashion.