Pushed to the Edge
A Novel (SEAL Team 14 #1)
by Loren Mathis
Pushed to the Edge © 2013 Loren Mathis
All Rights Reserved.
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With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author, Loren Mathis. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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This novel is dedicated to my wonderful family for their continual love and support
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter One
Karak, Pakistan
October 12, 2011, 0230 hours
L
ieutenant Junior Grade Joshua Laurent had a bad feeling that he just couldn’t shake. It wasn’t a feeling of fear. Joshua was a member of the U.S. Navy SEALs and his relentless training had managed to pound the fear out of him. Instead, what he felt was a cool apprehension. The type of sneaking feeling that made him even more aware of his surroundings.
Tonight, he and his team were about to embark upon the type of mission that they had completed multiple times before. However, as he double-checked the cartridge in his M60 machine gun, he couldn’t rid himself of his feeling of unease.
Joshua looked around the cabin of the plane and at the seventeen men surrounding him. Each one of them was dressed in black BDUs and had on black camouflage face paint for their mission. He had known each of these men for at least a year—some of them he’d known for almost a decade. Hell, these men were his family … his brothers.
As the highest-ranking SEAL Team Fourteen member, he was their de facto leader on this assignment, a job that he took very seriously. It was his objective to see to it that all seventeen men made it back home to their loved ones at the end of this mission—alive, breathing, and in one piece.
Joshua and his teammates were currently traveling to their drop site on a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey. The Osprey had been a popular military aircraft since its introduction in 2000. The Osprey was especially popular among the Special Forces because it was equipped with a tiltrotor. This mechanism allowed the aircraft to convert from plane functionality to helicopter functionality. This last capacity was essential to a SEAL team’s ability to extract itself from an operation while they were under fire.
“Do you think he’s still alive, sir?”
Joshua turned his head to his left to look at Ensign Jack “Jax” or “Jackbird” Manners, who was enthusiastically chomping down on an energy bar. He had managed to mumble out the question between bites. This behavior wasn’t out of the norm. Of all of Joshua’s teammates, Jax had the quick metabolism of a hummingbird.
If you closely observed him, at any given point in time, you were bound to find crumbs somewhere on his clothes. Jax was on the tall side at 6’3,” but he should have weighed at least 300 pounds considering all the food that he put away on a daily basis.
The young SEAL also had a deceptively laidback persona about him. He usually had a smile on his face, but when he got pissed off, everyone knew to steer clear until he cooled down. Having been born and raised in small coastal town in VA, he lived on the beach when he wasn’t on active duty.
Despite Jax’s surfer boy appearance, he was incredibly smart, and the Navy had snagged him right after his graduation from Virginia Tech. Unlike most the Team Fourteen members, who had majored in some type of liberal arts degree, Jax had majored in electrical engineering. That unique skill-set had made him an incredibly useful asset during many of their past missions.
“Hard to say at this point,” Joshua replied dryly, “the good news is that he hasn’t been held by them for a very long time.”
After news came in over the wire that an extremist group had kidnapped a former U.S. Congressman, Richard Henning, Joshua and his fellow team members had been pulled from their special training assignment in the Philippines. Joshua and some of the other members of SEAL Team Fourteen had been selected to perform the hostage rescue operation.
Team Fourteen was an elite group within the U.S. Navy SEALs that specialized in high stakes hostage rescue, counter-drug operations, and counterterrorism. Team Fourteen had performed dozens of rescue operations in the past, but none involving such a high profile U.S. citizen.
The Haqqai network had quickly taken responsibility for the kidnapping. The group had taken Henning, a former seven-term Congressman from Texas, during his “goodwill” tour of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The group abducted Henning after ambushing his motorcade that was en route to a meeting with a key Pakistani official.
Ironically, the meeting had been slated to discuss the continuing problem of extremist Islamic groups that maintained strongholds in North and South Waziristan, despite foreign diplomatic intervention. North Waziristan was a district in a very mountainous tribal region of northern Pakistan. South Waziristan was one of seven districts in southern Pakistan.
Twelve people had been killed in the brazen daytime attack, which had been carried out by two simultaneous missile strikes. The missile strikes had targeted the first and last cars in Henning’s motorcade. The attack ended with an assault rifle blitz that had killed the four remaining passengers in the vehicle that contained the former Congressman. The U.S. State Department, Pentagon, and the CIA had been quickly notified of the attack. All of the departments had made the concentrated effort to avoid leaking the events to national media outlets for the time being.
Before releasing the abduction information to the news, U.S. officials preferred to come up with the answers for the who and the why questions surrounding the attack. Although government officials were aware of the name of the group that had copped to the kidnapping, they still knew very little about the group’s individual members.
From the information that intelligence agents had gathered, the Haqqai network was relatively unknown in the region. As far as Joshua knew, it hadn’t even been on the CIA’s radar screen as a potential threat to the United States. Within hours of the incident, U.S. government officials had received an official ransom demand of ten million dollars
—apparently the going rate for a former U.S. Congressman these days. However, it was unlikely that the terrorist group would release Henning, even if his family paid the ransom. Executing a senior U.S. official would be a bigger statement for a new terrorist group that was trying to prove its toughness in the region.
CIA operatives located in North Waziristan had supplied the United States Special Operations Command with reliable intelligence information that Henning had been relocated from Miranshah to the neighboring town of Karak. Karak was located only a hundred miles from Peshawar and it was a more ethnically diverse seat of Pakistan that had been known as one of the more peaceful areas in the region until recent months.
During the past few weeks, at least one extremist cell had started to infiltrate the region.
According to this same operative, a HVT (high-value target) was being held in a heavily guarded rural compound. Even though the United States refused to negotiate with terrorists, a covert raid by SEAL Team Fourteen was a viable course of action. After all, Uncle Sam was not just going to twiddle his thumbs and sit idly by, hoping that the bad guys would realize the error of their ways.
Their current plan was to deplane (otherwise known as parachuting down) about one and half miles from the compound. The eighteen members of the strike team would then travel the rest of the way to the compound on foot.
Based upon intel they’d received, the compound was being guarded by at least twenty tangos, also known as enemy combatants, at any given time. Satellite photos of the compound showed that there were four feasible points of ingress and egress to the main portion of the building where they believed that the terrorists were holding Henning captive.
“Hey Pope, look alive.”
Joshua shifted in his seat on the plane and glanced at his fellow comrade, Will Castle, who sat across from him in the pitch-black cabin. Joshua’s team members had given him nickname “Pope” because of his ardent Catholic upbringing. The nickname was something of a misnomer now. Joshua hadn’t been to church in years.
Will was one of Joshua’s best friends. His other best friend, Malcolm Clarke, was also a member of SEAL Team Fourteen. Joshua and Malcolm had decided to try out for the SEALs teams together after becoming friends at the Naval Base at Coronado in California. They had both made it through the rigorous six-month BUD/s training course and helped each other to resist “ringing the bell” during Hell Week. Once Will joined Team Fourteen two years later, all three had become fast friends and they were now as thick as thieves.
“What man?” Joshua asked, pulling himself away from his thoughts. In reply, Will raised his right index finger toward the back of the plane as the rear hatch began to open. It was as they say, “Go time.”
****
Maybe his “Spidey sense” was off. Despite his earlier sense of unease, Joshua and his fellow team members had successfully picked up Richard Henning who was, more or less, in one piece.
After deplaning, the group had silently trekked the distance from the drop site to the compound. The compound itself consisted of three structures. The central building was fortunately all one level, but it was still rather large, covering an area of roughly 2000 square feet. Two small buildings flanked either side of the main structure, both of which were equidistant from each other.
The surrounding buildings were approximately fifty feet from the central structure. Relying on their night vision equipment, Joshua and his team had been able to identify ten security guards patrolling outside of the main building and six additional guards patrolling the surrounding buildings.
The high guard presence meant it was likely that the terrorists were holding Henning hostage inside of one of the rooms in the central structure. Fanning into the yard in a triangular formation, the team had easily taken out the guards that flanked the smaller edifices.
Once inside the main structure, they had methodically swept through all of the rooms, killing or disabling six more guards. Henning had been found tied to a wooden chair in the back room off the kitchen. His legs and hands had been shackled with thick metal chains. Even in the dimly lit room, it was easy to see that both of Henning’s eyes were swollen shut, and that he had an assortment of cuts and bruises on his face. Duck tape and what looked like a scarf had been place over the man’s mouth, crudely gagging him.
Now under the dire circumstances, Richard Henning looked a lot different from the photograph the soldiers had been shown of a slightly plump, older white male, in a nicely tailored business suit. The last thirty-six hours had obviously taken a great toll on the man’s appearance to say the least.
Henning had been guarded by two tangos of average height, whom Will and Josh had easily taken out upon entering the room. Henning had been nonresponsive, but breathing. Two of the team members had carried him out of the room and rushed him to the awaiting pickup plane.
Pop!
“Shit!”
Pop! Pop!
Joshua pivoted around with his rifle in his hand, just in time to see Jax stumble forward. Jax was gripping his right thigh. Will adroitly transferred his Glock 37 to his right hand as he moved backwards to help Jax. About ten feet behind Jax, a lone militant crumpled to the ground. Two nickel-sized bullet holes were in the center of the man’s forehead. Will had double tapped him.
Joshua knew from his experience with large caliber bullets that the back view of the man’s head was a tangled mess of broken bits of skull, hair, and seeping brain matter. The militant was dead before he hit the ground.
“Hey Lt. Laurent we have got some company,” Ensign Luke Russo yelled, pointing to the right of the plane. Joshua saw two black four door SUVs about 150 yards away hauling ass toward the plane.
Damnit. Apparently, the terrorist whom Will had just taken out had managed to call in the cavalry before he took two to the dome.
Bratatatat. Joshua fired an almost musical spray of bullets from his automatic rifle, covering the way for Jax and Will. Both men were running for the pickup plane as hard as they could, considering Jax’s injury. An alarming amount of blood spurted from the bullet hole that Jax tried to cover with his right hand as he lurched forward.
Shit. With that amount blood squirting out of Jax’s thigh, it could only mean one thing: he had an arterial bleed. Arterial bleeds were particularly dangerous because arterial wounds were not self-clotting. This meant that the injured person could bleed out in a matter of seconds.
“Move it! Hustle! Hustle!” Joshua yelled as Will and Jax raced toward the plane that was beginning to lift off. Joshua and Luke hung out of the door of the aircraft, laying out another covering spray of bullets aimed at the approaching vehicles.
Joshua emptied his cartridge, reloaded, and continued the rapid fire of the automatic assault weapon, which was locked on the approaching vehicles.
Both Joshua and Luke took hold of Jax as Will thrust both himself and the injured soldier inside of the plane.
“Power up! Let’s get the hell out of here, Griffin,” Joshua shouted. He didn’t have to say it twice. U.S. Air Force pilot, Petty Officer Second Class Reginald Griffin had already started the plane; the propellers were whirring loudly overhead as they took off.
Up, up, up the plane catapulted into the dark night. Lucky for them, the tangos’ cavalry hadn’t had the forethought to bring a grenade launcher.
“How is he holding up, Steel?” Joshua asked Chief Petty Officer Malik “Steel” Ellis who was the unit’s medic. Steel was a former Morehouse Man and college football cornerback who had received his nickname early on because he remained calm in virtually any situation. And because he could bench press twice his body weight.
“I’m doing just fine, sir,” Jax wheezed, looking a slightly paler shade of gray than death warmed over.
Jax was lying flat on the cargo floor of the Osprey. Someone had removed his skullcap, and his jet-black hair was slicked back from his face with sweat. Jax was taking shallow gasps of breath, clearly in pain.
Looking down at Steel, Joshua saw that the
medic was doing all he could to stop the flow of the blood pumping out of Jax’s wound. Joshua watched him wrap a tourniquet around Jax’s upper right thigh.
Steel glanced up, quickly acknowledging Joshua, and then he continued with his ministrations. Steel’s hands moved quickly. He was swiftly bandaging and dressing the Jax’s injury with items from the medical kit that they always had on board for missions. He had already cut away Jax’s pants right above the entry wound.
Steel ripped open a white and gray packet, while another team member assisted him with applying pressure on Jax’s gaping injury. Blood saturated the cargo floor underneath the injured soldier. The sickly sweet smell of it filled the cabin.
“He’s hanging in there, sir. He got hit with a large caliber bullet. Probably a .38. His vitals are stable for right now, but he’s going to need surgery—and soon. The good news is that the bullet went through-and-through. Now for the bad news. Upon passing through, the bullet nicked his femoral artery and cracked his thighbone. I’m using ActCel, to stop the arterial bleeding.”
ActCel was a new emergency hemostatic that was popular among military medics because it was designed to stop potentially lethal, large-volume arterial bleeding. Hemostatics worked by creating a blood clot at the site of the damaged blood vessel.
So far, the use of ActCel and other emergency clotting agents coupled with temporary placement of tourniquets had undoubtedly saved many wounded soldiers’ lives. These critically injured soldiers would most likely have bled out before reaching a medical facility, without the quick application of a clotting complex.
“Okay, we’re heading to the nearest military hospital at the Landstuhl Medical Center near the Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany,” Joshua replied. “What’s the ETA, Griffin?” he called out to the pilot.
Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14) Page 1
