Trident's First Gleaming: A Special Operations Group Thriller (13 page)

_______

V
ehicles crept along Ataturk Boulevard, their headlights illuminating the trio as they walked down the street with their AKs. Chris could feel the rubberneckers’ eyes on him, and while he was used to working covertly, here he was out in the open on foreign soil. Although Turkey was an ally, the
polis
wouldn’t be too pleased about three Americans running around the streets carrying AK rifles. He gripped the rifle tighter in his sweat-dampened palms.

Sonny used the lull in traffic to cross the boulevard. Hannah and Chris followed. In spite of the slowdown, the cars in one lane sped along as if they were oblivious to the situation or just didn’t care. After the trio dodged vehicles from both directions, they reached the other side. They passed between what looked like a broadcast studio building and a concert hall. The parking lots were empty, and only faint moonlight illuminated the crepuscular interiors of the buildings. Nearby, they found refuge in a cluster of evergreens. There they lay prone in a tight triangular defensive position covering the 360 degrees around them.

Because most of his gear had been confiscated by the deputy ambassador and his boys, Chris felt impotent without it. He tried not to dwell on the seeming hopelessness of the situation. Instead, his brain simmered for solutions.

He ejected the magazine from his AK and pressed down with his thumb on the top bullet of the magazine. He knew from the magazine’s size and shape that it could hold thirty rounds. His thumb sank deep in the magazine before he felt strong resistance. “I’m not injured, but I’ve only got half a magazine,” he whispered.

“Same,” Sonny said.

“I’m fine,” Hannah reported, “less than a full magazine.”

“Reverend and Infidel,” Sonny said with a smile, guessing their identities. “Reverend’s shooting and his uncanny ability to find a way to win and Infidel’s rep as a top spook are legendary. Unit guys still talk about you two. In a good way.”

Chris tested Sonny to see if he was who he said he was. “Two-Face must trust you a lot to give you the keys to the embassy.” Two-Face was in the Unit’s Bravo Squadron, so Chris purposefully gave the wrong squadron to see if Sonny would correct him. “Were you with him in Charlie Squadron?”

“I served in Alpha Squadron, but Two-Face was in Bravo,” Sonny said. “They call me Mr. Sunshine.” He smiled in the moonlight. “Because of my cheerful disposition.”

“Now that’s a name I recognize,” Chris said. “Not from your cheerful disposition but from how you terrorize terrorists.”

“Two-Face and I were both Rangers,” Sonny said. “Finished Selection together and entered the Unit at the same time.”

“Okay, boys. Enough chitchat. We need a phone,” Hannah said. “There’s an Agency station less than a klick from here. If I can call them, maybe they can help.”

“The deputy ambassador confiscated my lock-picking tools,” Chris said, “but if you think it’s worth the risk of setting off an alarm, I can break a window to get us inside the concert hall to use a phone.”

“Hopefully the fracas across the street will be enough to keep the neighborhood distracted,” Sonny said, “but a silent alarm will make for a long evening.”

“It’s worth the risk to me,” Hannah said.

Chris took them out of the trees and to the concert hall building, where he thrust the muzzle of his rifle into the nearest window, breaking it. No alarm sounded, but it was still possible the building had a silent alarm. He poked out the larger shards of glass before running his muzzle along the inside edges of the frame, clearing much of the remaining pieces. Finally, he maneuvered through the opening, trying not to touch the inside edges of the frame. Hannah and Sonny brought up the rear.

No guards had arrived. Yet.

Chris traversed the hall quickly until he found an office area. He motioned to one of the phones. “Knock yourself out.”

Hannah laid her AK across the desk, sat down, and made a call while Chris and Sonny stood guard.

Within minutes, Hannah turned to Chris, covered the mouthpiece on the phone, and said, “I’m getting the chief on the line now.” She waited for a moment before she spoke into the receiver: “Yes, sir. Our embassy in Ankara has been overrun by Syrian terrorists.” Then she paused. “I don’t know if the ambassador was in the compound or not,” she said. “I don’t know if the deputy ambassador actually made it out alive or not. I don’t know if anyone made it out alive other than us.” After another pause she said, “Yes, I’m still with Chris, and we have another person with us who works for the government, but what does that have to do with the embassy being overrun? There is sensitive equipment in an SUV parked inside the embassy that the terrorists can use to launch cyber attacks against the US!”

A police siren sounded.

“What does my location have to do with the embassy?” Hannah asked.

The siren became louder.

“No, I will not be put on hold!” Hannah slammed down the phone.

The sound of the siren became stationary in the direction of the embassy. From the same direction, someone shouted in Turkish over a PA speaker—probably a Turkish cop. An AK rattled, and the shouting stopped. Then the siren ceased. Engines started and vehicles seemed to be rolling away.

“Maybe the tangos are moving out,” Chris said.

Sonny held out his ring of keys. “Good. Because I’m guessing we’re not getting any Agency help on this one.” He turned to Hannah, and she shook her head. “So if the ragheads bug out, the compound will be clear for us to access the TOC. One of these keys should let us inside.” The TOC building was the Tactical Operating Center for the embassy compound. “We might find your weapons, ammo, and GPS tracker there. Hopefully some goodies for me, too.”

“We’d better hurry,” Hannah said. “Police will be swarming the embassy any minute, and we can’t let the tangos get away with the Switchblade Whisper.”

Chris opened the nearest window and climbed out. It was standard operating procedure not to travel the same path twice. No point in giving the enemy a chance to lay a booby trap or ambush, waiting for a SEAL’s return. “It’ll take time if we travel south around the German embassy,” Chris said. “After the attack on the US Embassy, all the embassies in the area are probably on alert, and the Germans won’t be pleased to see us armed with AKs near their compound.”

“But if we enter from the north, we risk bumping into the main force of the tangos or arriving police,” Hannah said.

“We’ll just have to take the same route back,” Sonny said.

Chris and Hannah nodded in agreement.
So much for SOP.

After crossing the boulevard, Chris climbed over the same spiked fence.
I hope we’re not walking into an ambush.
When his feet touched the ground inside the embassy and no booby traps went
boom
, he thanked God. He probably should’ve felt the danger of their situation more, but his body was weary, and his nerves were numb. He covered the area with his AK while Hannah and Sonny climbed over. Maybe his opponents were waiting for them to join him in their kill zone before they launched their ambush. Hannah and Sonny arrived, but there was no ambush.

_______

A
ll over the fence now, Chris led them across the compound in search of the TOC. Car tires burned like misshapen donuts from Hell, long, flaming tongues tasting the paint of the vehicles as smoky flames gutted the interiors, casting impish shadows in the parking lot. Beyond the broken windows of the main building, the flaming interior raged from hot white in the center to burning yellow, fiery orange, and caldron red before fading into the black abyss of night. Except for the fires, the compound was eerily quiet. Chris led them across the compound in search of the TOC.

He stopped in front of the steel door of a small building that was separated from the others and hadn’t been burned—most likely the TOC. Sonny tried his master key, but it didn’t work. He kicked the door under the doorknob and reinforced lock. The door opened a crack. Sonny stepped to the side, and Chris took a kick at it. With a loud thud, the door budged open more, but it was still locked. “My turn,” Hannah said. When her kick struck the steel, it sounded like thunder. The door flew open, taking it off one of the hinges. It dangled on the remaining hinge like scrap metal. Chris had known she had it in her; even so, it was heart-juddering to behold. He held back a chuckle as Sonny stood slack-jawed, staring at her. Hannah walked through the door as if she’d done nothing special.

“United States Government!” she shouted when inside. “We’re here to help!”

“Damn, she’s hot,” Sonny said.

The trio proceeded through the building methodically clearing their way with their AKs. In one room, video of the compound streamed live on a panel of monitors. Beyond the surveillance room, they reached the armory, where Chris and Hannah found their weapons and ammo.

Chris was infectiously upbeat to reunite with his old friends: HK416 and Glock 19. Feelings of power and safety rushed through him once again, that spiritual connection energizing him. He took care of his weapons, and they took care of him. His firearms instructor, Ron Hickok, had once confided that he had a similar feeling for his firearms, and he’d said it was a necessary bond to achieve a level of shooting that transcended the capability of the individual and the weapon as separate entities.

Next to his weapon, he found his lighter among other items. He didn’t smoke, but he carried the lighter as a memento from darker days and a survival tool.

Chris liberated his ammo along with extra from the diplomatic security’s cache. Hannah did likewise. Sonny inspected an M4 rifle and compact .45 pistol. He took them and laid down his AK with a look of scorn.

“Commie piece of shit, anyway,” he grumbled.

They grabbed assorted grenades, breaching explosives, holsters, rifle slings, backpacks, energy gels, and more. Hannah found the most important pieces of gear—the two GPS trackers. She kept hers and tossed Chris the one he’d taken from Jim Bob and Victor. On a nearby table, they also located Jim Bob’s laptop and Victor’s cell phone.

“I’ll take you two as far as the gate,” Sonny said.

“You’re not coming with us?” Chris asked.

“Your mission isn’t my mission, and I need to get back to the Unit.”

Chris tried to enlist his aid. “You saw what Hannah and I are up against. That same threat is on its way to America.”

“Wish I could help. I’ll tell JSOC what you’re doing and see if they can provide assistance.”

Chris didn’t expect to be able to change Sonny’s mind. If the roles were reversed, Chris would do the same. “Okay.”

They finished gearing up, and true to his word, Sonny walked with them to the gate. In front of it, there were two bloody bodies—Salt-n-Pepper and Two-Face. Chris crouched down to check their vital signs: “They’re dead.” Chris looked up at Sonny, but his eyes remained on Two-Face, his expression unreadable.

Wailing sirens from a fleet of police cars sounded in the distance.

“Hannah and I can’t stick around here any longer,” Chris said. “I’m sorry about Two-Face.”

Sonny didn’t flinch.

“Sonny, you going to be okay?” Hannah asked.

“Do I look like I’m eating an ice cream sandwich?”

Hannah hushed; the sirens became louder.

“The three of us are going to find the pieces of shit who did this,” Sonny said. His voice was calm. “And I’ll go Guantanamo on them with a butcher knife and a brown rat.”

Chris knew the pain of losing friends in combat, but everyone grieved differently, and they grieved differently for different comrades. Some looked to Heaven for help, some drank, some immersed themselves deeper in their work, and some vowed revenge. For the loss of Two-Face, Sonny’s way of grieving was clear.

_______

A
ssuming the point position, Chris jogged north through the city on foot, trying to create distance between his team and the embassy before the police arrived. He ran through a stretch of trees off Balli, the one-way road that ran south, to conceal their movement. Soon sirens came their way. The flashing lights of patrol cars lit up an area seventy-five meters ahead of Chris’s position. Before the patrol cars turned the corner, Chris dropped to the ground behind a tree. He looked back at Hannah and Sonny. They shadowed his movements, hiding on the ground behind trees. During the day, it would be easier for the police to spot their hasty attempt at concealment. Chris hoped the night would hide their sins.

Some people had better senses than others: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Similarly, Ron Hickok said that some people had a better sixth sense than others. On a number of occasions since childhood, when Chris sensed someone was watching him, he turned around to check, discovering his sense to be accurate. On occasion, he looked at someone who turned around to catch his gaze. If a Turkish cop was one of those with a heightened sixth sense, he wouldn’t have to see Chris and his teammates to sense they were there. Chris flushed all thoughts from his mind except for one:
I am tree roots
. He imagined the stillness of wood and felt the richness of the soil against his bark as he became one with the earth. He became so engrossed in his transformation that the growing intensity of the police lights and sirens disconnected from him. The lights flashed brighter, and the sirens blared louder—wrestling with his concentration and threatening to expose him. Chris clung to his metamorphosis. The patrol cars passed.

Hannah whispered the obvious. “We need a car.”

Chris opened his mind again, and the human thoughts returned.
Move.
They reached a gaggle of cars, many of them white Fords, perched alongside the road. The Turks bought more Fords than Americans did. He scanned for older models, easier to hotwire, but many were newer, equipped with modern anti-theft devices—and the windows were rolled up tight. Chris finally spotted an older model white Ford sedan. He tried the door handle. Locked. Next, he punched out a rear passenger window with his rifle muzzle and reached through to unlock the driver’s door.

Without missing a beat, Sonny opened the driver’s door, got in, reached over, and opened the front passenger door. Chris took his place beside him in the passenger seat, and Hannah sat in the back next to the seat with glass in it.

Sonny used his pocketknife blade to turn the ignition, but the car didn’t start. He unscrewed the cover over the steering wheel column. After tinkering around inside, the vehicle started. He revved the engine, but he couldn’t turn the steering wheel.

Chris opened his knife, leaned over and stuck it between the steering wheel and the top of the steering column. He snapped the steering lock, freeing the steering wheel.

Sonny frowned.

Chris and Hannah checked the screens on their GPS trackers again.

“The tangos have probably already removed whatever tracking devices either of you have on them,” Sonny said.

“And maybe they haven’t yet,” Chris said. “Drive us north until we can make a U-turn south.”

“You know this is a one-way street,” Sonny said, “and we’ll be going the wrong way.”

“Humor me,” he said. “We’ll be off the one-way in a flash.”

Sonny did as he was told.

Chris gave more directions.

Sonny made a U-turn and drove southeast on Ataturk Boulevard. “We’re going to pass by the embassy,” he grumbled. The police had swarmed around the embassy gates but still hadn’t entered. Maybe they knew what had happened to the first guy to arrive on the scene and were trying to figure out whether the terrorists were still inside or not. Sonny continued driving south.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived in the town of Golbasi, east of Mogan Lake. “My GPS shows the Switchblade Whisper stopping here in Golbasi,” Hannah said.

“Mine shows they continued south toward Syria,” Chris said.

“Just great,” Sonny interjected.

Chris showed his GPS tracker monitor. “Either they found one of the devices or both.”

“While we’re in Golbasi, I’d like to check it out,” Hannah said. “Turn left up here.”

Sonny turned off the main road and went east. He passed houses topped with clay, red-tiled roofs.

“This is a residential area,” Chris said.

“Maybe it’s an ambush,” Sonny said.

“Stop here,” Hannah warned. “We’re getting too close. We’re almost a hundred meters away.”

Chris pulled out the lighter he’d been carrying since his childhood abduction and flicked the lid anxiously.

Hannah read the distance on her GPS: “Fifty meters. Forty.”

They passed more houses.

“Thirty meters,” she said

“If this is an ambush,” Sonny said, “I won’t be pleased.”

“Twenty meters.”

Chris put away his lighter. “Only one way to find out.”

“Ten,” she said.

Sonny slowly applied the brakes. “Where is it?”

Hannah pointed to a white Renault parked in the driveway of a house. “The GPS tracker reads that it’s right there.” The lights in the home were on. Hannah stepped out of the car, strolled over to the vehicle, and laid down next to it. She tinkered underneath the vehicle before returning with an object in her hands. She got into her seat in the back and said, “Let’s go.”

Sonny released his foot from the brake and eased away from the curb.

Hannah looked at the tracking device in her hand. “I guess Syria is next.”

Sonny drove past the house with the Renault, made a couple turns, and returned to the main road. “Chris and I were lucky to blast through the border checkpoint terminals the first time,” he said.

“We might not be so lucky if we try that a second time,” Chris said.

“I know where the gaps are in Turkey’s border security,” Sonny said.

“Outstanding,” Chris said.

Hannah nodded.

Sonny made a pit stop in Golbasi to stock up on water before driving south. They drove straight through the night taking turns: one driving, one sitting as lookout/navigator, and one sleeping. In the early morning, Sonny came to a stop on the side of the road within sight of the Kasab Border Crossing Terminal. Turkey had beefed up security with barricades, canines, and extra guards. It seemed that the Turkish border patrol were doing thorough searches of each car leaving the country.

“There are more border patrol here on the main road than on the mountain,” Sonny said, “so our odds of sneaking around them are better if we hump over the mountain.” He turned around and backtracked away from the border patrol and further inland. Then he found a small road that led up a mountain on the border. “With all the recent shootings, the Turkish border patrol will have itchy trigger fingers, but they can’t shoot what they can’t see.”

“Turkish border patrol can shoot us for breaking the law, but we can’t shoot a NATO ally for upholding the law,” Hannah said.

Sonny flicked off the car lights. “That’s part of the challenge.”

“What’s the other part?” Hannah asked.

“In Syria, their border patrol shoots anything that moves,” Chris said. “If the shooting starts now, we may never reach Mordet in one piece, let alone with enough ammo to stop him.”

“I can get us past Turkish border patrol,” Sonny said with a serious face full of confidence.

“I’ll get us past Syrian border patrol,” Chris said.

Hannah nodded her head in agreement.

Sonny seemed to hesitate for a moment. Allowing Chris to lead them on the Syrian side was trusting Chris with his life. Sonny nodded in agreement, too.

The snaking paved road became a dirt road. Five klicks south of Yayladagi, on the Turkish border, Sonny drove the car off the road and into a grove, where he parked the vehicle. “We’re going to have to hoof it from here.”

They exited the sedan, gathered branches of evergreen needles, and camouflaged the car—not enough to conceal it from close, prying eyes but enough to conceal it from someone at a distance.

Sonny took the point. After him came Hannah then Chris. At a moderate pace, they hiked four klicks up the mountain, heading south toward Syria, until Sonny slowed.

If he saw something, he would’ve signaled, so we must be approaching a danger area.

Insects and occasional birds chirped but not nearly as loud as Chris’s heartbeat.

The trio slipped into a gully and continued slowly, lowering to a crouch. After fifty meters, Sonny quickly dropped to the earth. Hannah and Chris followed suit. Chris looked around, narrowing his gaze to try to spot the source of what spooked Sonny. There was no sound of rustling in the bushes or on the ground. A small, dark figure, an animal, swiftly waddled toward Sonny, who rose to his feet. The animal didn’t stop. Sonny spread his legs, and the animal passed under them. Hannah also rose to her feet and spread her legs. The dark little beast stood about one foot high and one foot across. Chris had already risen to his feet. He spread his legs apart to allow the animal passage
.
He turned to see if it would come back and harass them, but the creature disappeared around a bend in the gully.

Sonny resumed their journey at a crouch. Twenty-five meters later, he gradually lowered onto his hands and knees and signaled that there was a person ahead. Sonny led them in a crawl.

On top of the mountain, a few hundred meters above Chris and his teammates, a guard stood with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Although the sky was dark, the guard’s silhouette was darker, causing him to stick out. It wasn’t clear if the guard was facing toward the three or away from them. If the guard had chosen a spot ten feet down the mountain from his current position to stand, his silhouette would’ve been hidden by the darkness of the mountain. The pounding in Chris’s chest shot up his neck until it throbbed in his ears, hammering his skull.

The three followed the slanting gully to the right until Sonny low-crawled through a dip in the right bank, taking them out of the gully. Rather than go up the mountain and pass near the guard, they travelled a horizontal path on the mountain, creating distance between themselves and the guard. Tall, grassy weeds helped conceal their movement. After a hundred meters, the guard was no longer in sight, and Sonny eased into a ravine. The trio rose to a crouch, moving faster but still slowly, and followed the bottom of the ravine up the mountain. As they neared the top where two ridges dipped like a saddle, they dropped down on their bellies and crawled over the saddle, careful not to silhouette themselves against the sky. On the other side of the mountain, they slithered on their stomachs down into another ravine.

In the ravine, they patrolled at a crouch until they reached the bottom of the mountain, where they could walk upright. Finally, they crossed into Syria. Chris assumed the point and avoided the danger areas while finding safer routes.

The sun still lay hidden, but it changed the dark sky to grey as Chris and his team patrolled west until they arrived south of a Syrian town named Duz Aghaj. They stole another vehicle and headed south. Hannah drove the first leg with Sonny riding shotgun and Chris in the back.

Chris sucked on an energy gel pack and checked his GPS: seven and a half hours to Al-Bukamal. Located near the southeast end of the Euphrates River in Syria, near the Iraq border, Al-Bukamal was where Professor Mordet’s French plantation stood. He remembered the night he and his teammates had hidden in a field of wheat and first seen the back of that two-story building and its expansive roof. Each floor had those thin, white wooden columns, wide porches, and French doors. Still in Chris’s memory, the French colonial plantation house seemed so eerily out of place near the humble farmhouses that sat on small plots of land to the south. He had an uneasy feeling, but he tried to put it out of his mind and catch some sleep while it was his turn to rest. They still had a seven-and-a-half-hour drive, and there was no point to wearing himself out before they arrived. He was going to need every ounce of strength to stop Mordet from hacking into the Switchblade Whisper’s secrets and attacking America.

For thirty minutes, Hannah drove down Syria’s west coast until they passed Latakia.

Sonny made conversation, but the macho tone of his voice suggested that he was enamored with her.

“Where you from?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“I’m from New York,” he said with his chest sticking out.

“I figured that,” she said.

“Queens,” he offered up more.

She was the ultimate spook, pulling information out of people without even trying. “I grew up in Hawaii,” she said.

“Were you born there?”

“Born and raised,” she said.

Hannah had told Chris that she was from East LA, but now she was telling Sonny that she was from Hawaii. Question marks popped up in Chris’s mind, but only Hannah could answer them, so he ignored them and drifted to sleep.