“Fast paced thriller in keeping with Vince Flynn and Brad Thor.”
Captain Mike Penn
Chief Pilot Southwest Airlines
Decorated Navy Fighter Pilot and POW
“A spider web of plots, covert action, and dead bad guys!”
Ryan “Birdman” Parrott
Exec. Dir., Sons of the Flag, Burn Foundation
Former US Navy SEAL, SEAL Team 7
“A compelling story of intrigue. In sync with current world events.”
Monte Mercer
Deputy Exec. Dir. of the N. Central Texas Council of Governments
“Heart pounding action with believable characters.”
J. Charles Powell
President, Bank of Texas
OPERATIONS
COMPROMISED
Warren Conrad
Copyright © 2014 by Warren Conrad
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Operations Compromised
Vinewood Publishing Group
P. O. Box 151693
Fort Worth, Texas 76108-5693
Cover design by George Foster, www.fostercovers.com
eBook editions by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz
Font Carrois Gothic by Ralph Oliver du Carrois
ISBN: 978-09904009-0-5
ISBN: 978-0-9904009-1-2 (e book)
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For more information or to contact the author, please go to
www.WarrenConrad.com
Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter 1 • Chapter 2
Chapter 3 • Chapter 4
Chapter 5 • Chapter 6
Chapter 7 • Chapter 8
Chapter 9 • Chapter 10
Chapter 11 • Chapter 12
Chapter 13 • Chapter 14
Chapter 15 • Chapter 16
Chapter 17 • Chapter 18
Chapter 19 • Chapter 20
Chapter 21 • Chapter 22
Chapter 23 • Chapter 24
Chapter 25 • Chapter 26
Chapter 27 • Chapter 28
Chapter 29 • Chapter 30
Chapter 31 • Chapter 32
Chapter 33 • Chapter 34
Chapter 35 • Chapter 36
Chapter 37 • Chapter 38
Chapter 39 • Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
To my wife and partner, Kathy, who helped me through the trials and tribulations of writing a first book. You always came through. To my brothers, Patrick and Richard, for patience in reading various drafts. To my daughter, Lori, for her continued encouragement.
To my editor, Dr. Tim Boswell, who worked diligently with me to fine tune the story. I will be forever grateful to Lindsey Anderle for copy and proof editing. Thank you to award winning cover designer, George Foster, for creating another outstanding design. To Charles Andrews for the beautiful website and his wife, Donna.
To my good friends, Michael Penn, Ryan Parrott, Monte Mercer, and Charles Powell. Your continued support is greatly appreciated.
And, most importantly, to all the men and women in uniform now and in the past, which allow us the freedom to write and enjoy our lives.
To My Dad
A Real Hero
Major, Warren P. Conrad
January 2, 1923 to February 6, 2000
EIGHTH AIR FORCE
B-24 Command Pilot
489th Bomb Group, 847th Squadron
Distinguished Flying Cross
Air Medal, Three Oak Leaf Clusters
Chapter 1
Afghanistan
November 2008
The sound of the rotors overhead and the constant thrumming of the Black Hawk’s frame were like white noise that Stryker did not even notice anymore. The other men talked, some laughed, and one even dozed, slumped against his harness. No one was expecting them until they reached the village, and this route had been cleared. All intel indicated an uneventful trip.
Outside a snow-swept mountain range slid by beneath them, its jutting peaks broken by valleys lost in shadow.
“See my best four-legged friend,” a hefty man down the row said. “Sleep for a week,” said another.
Stryker listened but did not join in. Methodically his fingers double checked his sidearm, although it had been spotless to begin with. He did not even have to look; his hands could feel without seeing.
“Take my son to the zoo.” Tait, who was young and sandy-haired and smiled too often, pulled out a photo and unfolded it. Stryker glimpsed a small boy waving from a blue bicycle. He remembered when Tait was passing around newborn photos and cigars to these same men. They had been in Fallujah then, and the new father hadn’t known if he would ever hold his son.
“How about you, Jake? What’s the first thing you’ll do when your tour is up?” Tait tucked the photo into a pocket.
He couldn’t answer at first. There was no one waiting for him, no family left at his parents’ farm. What would he do? He felt the weight of the gun in his hands, the gentle shudder of the chopper as it sliced through wind shears. What else was there, really, but this?
“Stryker is Delta,” the hefty man, Markowitz, said into the silence. It wasn’t a secret; many of the men aboard had gone through Ranger and Special Forces training together. “Delta Operators think about only one thing.”
“It’s a snatch and grab,” Stryker said. “Simple.”
“Nothing is ever—”
An explosion in the tail section hurled them against their harnesses. Through the windows, the horizon spun in tilt-a-whirl circles as the helicopter plummeted toward the lower slopes of the nearest mountain. Alarms sounded from the cockpit, and a frigid rush of air blasted at them from the jagged, gaping hole in the tail. Smoke and gusts of snow filled the cabin. The pilot shouted to brace for impact. Stryker caught a glimpse of the snowy rock face rushing up at them and felt a jolt that seemed to shatter his whole body as everything went black.
*****
Stryker awoke to the coppery taste of blood. Everything hurt. For a moment he thought he had been thrown clear of the crash site, for snow drifted around his boots, but he was still restrained by his harness. The sides of the helicopter had cracked open in the crash. He reached the tactical knife on his belt and sawed through the webbing until he fell to his knees. None of the others were moving, all of them hanging from their harnesses, contorted and broken. He recognized the permanent stillness that comes with death—he had caused it himself enough times—but he crawled to each of these men who were like brothers and felt for a pulse.
Markowitz had been impaled on a twisted piece of metal blown in from the hole in the tail. Tait’s head was gashed open and dented. They all stared back at him, unseeing.
He allowed himself but a moment to close his eyes and breathe through his mouth, filling his lungs with the cold, thin air. Then he moved through the wreckage until he located his pack, rifle, food, and water. He took his rifle out of its hard case and put it into a soft carry bag. No damage was visible on the gun or the satellite phone attached to his tactical vest. He pulled a small camera from his pack and forced himself to snap pictures of the scene. Crouching near the hole blown in the tail section, he found a curved piece of metal t
hat he recognized as part of a rocket-propelled grenade. The sick feeling of despair in his gut clenched tighter into rage. The helicopter had been shot down. Someone had known they were coming.
After removing his harness, the last evidence of his presence, Stryker made his way around to the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot were dead, blood smeared across the controls. Stryker took the flight log and climbed out into the driving snow.
A ferocious wind whipped down the valley floor and scoured the exposed rock face. The snow swirled, blanketing everything in a surreal landscape of white. Stryker balanced his pack and rifle and searched for several minutes before he located a trail, no wider than needed for men and horses. It traversed the mountain at awkward angles, cutting up toward the peak. As he climbed higher into the darkness, time seemed measured not in minutes but in linear feet. From topographical maps he had studied, he believed this particular trail led to a mountain pass approximately five miles from the crash site. Over the pass, a number of caves were scattered like a honeycomb in the unforgiving rock. Local tribes had used them since the time of Alexander the Great. He needed to find them soon, for he knew he would die without shelter.
The next five miles were hard fought. He forced himself to focus on each step, to lean into the wind and see only the path, not the lifeless, staring faces of the men he was leaving behind. He thought of Tait’s boy on the bicycle. His father had only a month left of his tour. When he crested the pass, Stryker looked back once and waited for the swirling clouds of white to clear. The Black Hawk lay broken in the blinding snow as if some giant hand had reached out from the mist and smashed it into the mountainside. Bits of black debris darkened the mountain’s flank for half a mile. He turned away and kept climbing.
The storm intensified as he scaled higher, driving snow mixed with freezing sleet and lightning, until he could hardly see his feet and the path was all but invisible. He nearly passed right by the first cave opening. It was above his head, little more than three feet across, and hidden behind a large boulder. He climbed up, dropped his rifle and pack, and fell knees first onto the floor. He lay on his side, curling for warmth, and forced himself to rest—and to think. With the wind and snow obliterating his tracks, he was safe for a while.
They had been on their way to meet with informants in a village across the mountain. Their eventual target was a local Taliban leader, and they were additionally tasked to locate weapons and drug supply routes. Only friendlies should have known their flight plan, and precious few of those. It didn’t make any sense. For a long time, he sat awake in the pitch black of the cave, listening to the crackle of lightning outside and running through scenarios in his mind. Eventually his body adjusted from high adrenaline to sheer exhaustion, and he fell asleep.
He awakened at 5:30 a.m. and ate cold food from cans as the storm raged outside. When the storm let up, he could move over the pass and signal for an extraction on the far side. Rescue helicopters would come to the crash site when the weather cleared, and whoever had downed the first helicopter might use it as bait. Stryker did not give his decision much thought.
On the second day, he gathered and checked his gear as the storm began to weaken. As dusk settled into the valley below, the storm abated, and Stryker left the cave. The trail was dark, cold, and windy, and it swallowed him up in a tight vortex of ice and rock. The pack, rifle, and ammunition weighed over seventy pounds, and he moved slowly to keep his footing. The closer he drew to the crash site, the harder it was to put the men’s faces out of his mind. Stryker reached the valley floor while it was still dark and moved up the mountain to a firing position. He found a place to hide above the crash site where he could cover the entire valley. At first light, he laser distanced landmarks for his M-24 rifle, which sent a 175-grain Sierra boat tail bullet down range at 2,580 feet per second. It was deadly out to 1,000 meters, and as he set it up, he felt the companionship of an old friend.
By mid-morning, patches of sun beamed through the clouds, and around 2:00 p.m. Stryker glimpsed movement along the hillside closest to the village. More than twenty Taliban moved down the valley floor and up the hillside toward his location. Stryker lay prone and invisible as they spread out below him and hid behind rocks and trees. He next spotted a force of thirty who spread along a ridge directly across the valley, three of them carrying RPGs. He marked each location and distance.
Lengthening shadows enveloped outcroppings of rock and brush. Everything was deathly quiet—no birds flying, no animals moving. The wind had ceased. A pulsing sensation in the air became stronger and then a clear thump, thump, thump sounded from the valley entrance. The rescue teams had arrived.
“Here we go,” he murmured. He switched to night vision and targeted the three men with RPGs.
Three helicopters came into view, flying in a straight line down the valley toward the site.
The Taliban held fire. The third helicopter circled above the site, but as soon as the other two landed, the Taliban began cross firing on all three. One of the RPG gunners raised the weapon to his shoulder, and Stryker shifted to target him, but the RPG soared up and away before he could fire. Stryker squeezed the trigger and the gunner’s head exploded into a fine mist, shining phosphorescent green through his night vision. The RPG rose over the ridge, trailing smoke, and smashed into the circling helicopter. The helicopter lurched to one side and then spiraled back the way it had come, losing altitude fast.
The two helicopters on the ground were now taking fire from the ridge as soldiers poured out of them to find cover. They spread into defensive positions but found themselves pinned down by heavy fire from front and rear.
Stryker methodically switched to the second RPG gunner and fired again. The man rolled down the hill like a rag doll. The third RPG gunner aimed at one of the helicopters on the ground and moved to fire when Stryker’s bullet severed his hand. The RPG fired wildly, exploding into a rocky outcropping. The wounded Taliban ducked behind a boulder, and Stryker waited. In a matter of seconds, the man peeked around the side of the rock, and Stryker fired, taking off most of the gunner’s head.
Some of the other Taliban were trying to determine Stryker’s position, and several bullets struck the ground below him. He started firing on those closest, each shot another kill. As usual, the rifle seemed an extension of his arm. After eliminating the close targets, Stryker moved to others farther away. They could not see or hear him, and he killed all of them on his side of the valley in less than ten minutes.
The Americans fanning out around the crash site realized the cross fire had stopped and took up offensive positions to fire on the Taliban directly in front of them. Stryker adjusted his scope for shots out to 1,000 meters and began firing on Taliban positions across the valley. As shots came from behind them, the soldiers at the crash site saw their enemies taken out with steady, precise rhythm. They knew they were not alone in the fight.
Stryker fired until he ran out of ammunition and then started down the hillside. He pulled the satellite phone from his vest, dialed, and a moment later raised one of the rescuers. He could see the soldier, hunkered down behind a boulder, phone to his ear.
“Friendly coming down behind you,” Stryker said. “Look for me soon.”
“We’ll cover you,” the man said. “Watch your step.”
Procedure required placement of explosives in the downed helicopter and a quick departure before Taliban reinforcements arrived. When Stryker reached the crash site, a Special Forces team met him. They set the explosives, hurriedly loaded the bodies of the men, and boarded the rescue helicopters as bullets continued to whine past and sink into the ground around them.
As they rose into the sky, Stryker looked back and saw the explosives detonate. A fireball burst up from the crash site, obliterating the remains of the helicopter. He glanced at the pilots in front.
“The other chopper reported in. They landed without injuries. Thanks to you, we managed to survive an ambush with no casualties.” The pilot smiled at Stryker before a
ngling the helicopter back toward base. “Not a bad day for the good guys.”
Stryker couldn’t help thinking of the men who would not be returning to their homes and families, the team he had served with, fought with, bled with. They would be going home to flag-draped caskets.
“You must have taken out thirty of those guys,” the pilot said. “Also not a good day to be with the Taliban.”
“No, it’s not,” Stryker said, watching the thin spire of smoke grow smaller in the distance. “And it’s about to get a lot worse.”
Chapter 2
Afghanistan
December 2008
As usual, the children came running. Stryker had visited most corners of the globe, and he would be hard pressed to name a place where the local kids had not learned the English words “please” and “candy.” This sunbaked village in the Helmand province was no exception. They crowded around the soldiers like a mob of paparazzi, hands outstretched, calling for sweets. After several weeks of ordered rest and recovery at the base, he had been assigned to another team. His tour of duty was nearly up, but he knew everyone assumed he would start another. Their orders were to join up with an Army unit that regularly patrolled the region and obtain intelligence from two sources willing to speak with Americans.
Stryker stood to the side and monitored the area, his M4 carbine cradled casually. One of his new squad, a freckle-faced Midwesterner, had come prepared and tossed out Life-Savers, Ring Pops, and half-melted Hershey bars as the children squealed in delight. Local residents watched from across the street, their expressions a mix of amusement and concern. A little boy kept trying to hold the soldier’s gun, as the soldier laughed and swatted at the boy’s hands, offering him chocolate instead.
Stryker scanned rooftops and doorways. He took note of which of the locals met his gaze, which returned his nod of greeting, which stared darkly or slipped back inside. Some of the Army unit were patrolling while others were meeting nearby with the informants.
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