Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller

by Stephen Templin

  The waiter arrived, and Chris spoke fluent Arabic, ordering drinks while his party “waited for a friend.”

  Kapua looked at Hannah and quietly asked, “How sure are you that Najeeb is going to show?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” she said.

  Kapua gave Chris a look of concern as if to say, Fifty-fifty, what the hell? Kapua hadn’t worked with her before, but Chris had. “That’s what she always says,” Chris said, “but the assets show.”

  “Najeeb had a falling out with AQ, and they killed his wife and child to punish him,” she said, reinforcing what she’d said earlier at the mission brief. “Since then, he has been collecting intel for us, and now he’s ready to come over.”

  They drank and talked quietly for about an hour, then a man with a scraggly beard and dirty, wrinkled clothes walked into the restaurant and fidgeted as he glanced nervously around. During the brief, Hannah had shown a surveillance photo and reported that he was in his thirties, but now he looked older.

  “That’s him,” Hannah said.

  After the man spotted her, he rushed for her table, almost bumping into a waiter. When Najeeb sat, Chris’s senses rose to high alert, and he checked for anyone who might be following.

  “You ready to go?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t know,” Najeeb said in English.

  The waiter interrupted, handing them menus—everything was written in Arabic—then left to give them a moment to decide.

  Najeeb’s eyes darted around the restaurant before he gave his menu to Hannah. “Not hungry.”

  “Chris, can you order us something, so we can look like we’re enjoying a meal?” she asked sweetly.

  “Sure.” When the waiter returned, Chris ordered, and the waiter gathered up the menus.

  Najeeb leaned over the table and spoke quietly, “The man in charge is Professor Mordet. He supervise bomb cell that make IEDs in Syria. And he supervise other cell that smuggle bombs into Iraq. They plant on roadside and use cell phone to detonate.” He took out a flash drive and showed it to Hannah. “I put all information in here.”

  Hannah nodded. “We can protect you. You can live in the US like we talked about.” Of course, that all depended on his intel being as good as he claimed it was, but Hannah must’ve told Najeeb that before because she didn’t mention it now.

  “You not understand,” Najeeb said. “They will find me.”

  “They won’t find you,” Hannah said. “I’ll make sure.”

  “How can make sure?”

  Two stern-eyed burly men walked into the restaurant and studied the interior, and Chris reacted by discreetly separating the Velcro on his hip, drawing his pistol, and covertly wielding it under the table. Kapua’s slight movements indicated to Chris that his buddy was doing the same.

  Crack! Najeeb’s drinking glass erupted, one of the restaurant windows had shattered, and a shot sounded—for a split moment, space and time seemed jumbled. Without thinking, Chris crouched and brought his weapon up to search for targets. Najeeb fell out of his chair, and Hannah pulled him away from the line of fire. Kapua flipped over the table with a loud thud, creating a shield for them. One waiter froze and the other dove to the deck as two customers upped and dashed for the side door.

  The stern-eyed burly pair seemed to have spotted Najeeb, and they lifted their robes, exposing their AK-47 rifles, and then raised them in Najeeb’s direction. Chris still hadn’t figured out where the original shot had come from, but using the upturned table for cover, he popped the quickest-moving burly guy twice in the upper body before shifting to the slower guy and popping him once in the chest. Chris’s adrenaline pumped so madly, and his mind sped so quickly that the world around him decelerated. Chris’s shooting instructor Ron Hickok told him that body shots were effective for slowing a man down, but the only sure way of stopping a man was a head shot. The fear struck Chris that he wasn’t moving quickly enough, but he ignored it and took the time to adjust his own body position for a clearer line of sight and aimed at the slower man’s face. Chris squeezed the trigger, causing the man’s head to snap back. With the same efficiency, Chris dispatched the other man.

  Kapua blasted in the direction of the shattered window—he must’ve picked up the shooter who Chris hadn’t seen. Hannah and Najeeb crawled away, toward the kitchen, following the retreat of waiters. The remaining customers fled the restaurant through the side door.

  Outside, more men with AKs descended on the restaurant. Chris and Kapua didn’t have to kill them all, but they did have to protect Hannah and Najeeb. The enemy muzzles flashed. Inside, windows imploded, and a salvo of projectiles ripped into Chris and Kapua’s table. The wood wouldn’t hold much longer before the bullets broke through. Chris and Kapua scrambled to another table, and Chris flipped it to its side. He and Kapua used it as a shield while they busted caps in the direction of the muzzle flashes. Chris’s gun ran dry, and with a fluid motion, one hand ejected the empty magazine while the other brought up a fresh one. He inserted the full magazine and depressed the slide stop release. The slide sprang forward and a new cartridge loaded into the chamber.

  Hannah and Najeeb had disappeared into the kitchen, and now it was time for Chris and Kapua to do their vanishing act, too. In training and in real firefights, Chris and Kapua had learned to read each other’s minds—words were unnecessary. They gave the enemy one last taste of lead, but just as they turned toward the kitchen to make their escape, a loud swoosh sounded behind the duo—the distinctive sound of a rocket-propelled grenade with their names on it. The RPG exploded. Its concussion caused Chris to stumble and nearly popped his eardrums. On either side of Chris and Kapua, chairs and tables scattered as if thrown by a typhoon, but Chris and Kapua remained on their feet.

  They tumbled into the kitchen and joined Hannah. Najeeb was under a nearby table, shaken, but he seemed unharmed. Waiters and kitchen staff were hunkered down for safety. Chris squatted as he threw open the back door and aimed his weapon outside. Bullets snapped the air where he would’ve been standing, and he spotted ruptures of light in the direction from where the shots had come from. Instinctively, he fired at the flickers, and the outline of a man dropped. Chris glanced down the opposite way of the shady alley where a frightened woman froze in fear. “Clear!”

  He glanced behind to find Hannah and Najeeb following while Kapua brought up rear security. Chris slipped into the alley and while headed in the direction of their vehicle, gave the fallen enemy a security round—a shot to the head to make sure he wasn’t playing possum. Gunshots sounded behind them, the smaller caliber of Kapua’s pistol, but Chris had his responsibility in front and couldn’t neglect it. He trusted Kapua to cover their six.

  Chris made his way around the block to the car, where the Agency guy was in the driver’s seat and had the engine running. Chris swung open the back door and covered for his crew as they piled in the back. Then Chris took his seat up front beside the driver. Before he could close the passenger door, the Agency driver burned rubber. Chris tried not to fall out as he snatched the door handle and slammed the door shut. He observed everything in front while Kapua kept a lookout behind. Chris’s nerves stretched taut. He’d taken a couple wood splinters in the leg, and now he pulled one out and flicked it on the floorboard. “Anyone wounded?” he asked.

  “Najeeb and I are okay,” Hannah said.

  Chris plucked out another splinter, but when his buddy didn’t reply, Chris took his eyes off the road ahead of them and checked the backseat. “Kap, you okay, buddy?”

  Kapua faced the rear window, but he wasn’t moving.

  “Kap?” Chris asked.

  “Did you see that RPG explode right around us?” Kapua asked. “Shit exploded on both sides of us, but we didn’t explode.”

  “We got lucky,” Chris said.

  “No, that wasn’t luck,” Kapua said.

  Chris turned around and returned his gaze to his area of responsibility in front of them. “We’ve always been lucky.”

  “That was a
miracle.”

  “You don’t believe in miracles.”

  “I do now. Don’t they have miracles in that Bible you’re always reading?”

  Chris pulled another splinter out of his leg. “Yeah, the Bible is full of divine intervention.”

  “Well, shit blew up on both sides of us, but we didn’t blow up. Doesn’t that qualify?”

  “It blew up in front of a pillar that split the force of the explosion.”

  “There was no pillar,” Kapua said matter-of-factly. “Did you see a pillar?”

  “So much shit was happening,” Chris said, “I don’t remember seeing one, but there had to be.”

  “Well, if you insist, that RPG hitting the pillar was a miracle. We should be dead right now.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “That wasn’t like ordinary shit happens kind of shit. That was more like an angel protecting us kind of shit.”

  “Are you watching the road?” Chris asked.

  “I know my job.” Kapua was always the most laid-back, but now there was irritation in his voice. “You of all people should understand that that was a miracle.”

  Chris gave in to calm him. “Okay, if you say so, it was a miracle.”

  “I say so,” Kapua said decisively.

  They rode south and switched vehicles in a small town before crossing the border back into Iraq. The sun set as the driver gunned the gas pedal. Kapua had become uncharacteristically quiet, so Chris attempted to engage him: “You remember in Ramadi when we raided that hut and that dude sprayed us with automatic AK fire?” Chris asked. “Not one shot hit us.”

  Kapua seemed less irritated now. “Maybe that was a miracle, too, and I just didn’t notice. You know what we say about complacency.”

  “It’s a killer.”

  “The thrill is gone,” he said in a deep, bluesy sing-song voice that he used when trying to make a disappointment seem less disappointing. “The thrill is gone, baby.”

  Chris was saddened. “We were going to reenlist together.”

  “Sorry, brah,” Kapua said with sincerity in his voice.

  “What’re you going to tell the skipper?”

  “I’ll tell him what happened.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Chris said.

  “Serious as a heart attack.”

  “What’ll you do out in the world?”

  Kapua appeared to think for a moment. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Operating in separate platoons and with the high operational tempo, Chris already saw less of Kapua, and if Kap left the Teams and went home to Hawaii, Chris would see much less of the jolly giant.

  “I’m still committed to the Teams a hundred and ten percent. Until my contract runs out. I know I’ll never find a brotherhood like this again, but when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”

  Chris wanted to tell him to stay, but if that resulted in Kapua’s death, Chris didn’t know how he could live with himself. On the other hand, he didn’t want to encourage Kapua to leave, either.

  Chris just sat there in silence. He still wasn’t convinced that surviving the explosion was a miracle, but it did give him pause to think that he’d shrugged off their survival too easily. He was in danger of becoming complacent, and in his line of work that often led to a tactical arrogance which resulted in death, and maybe his spiritual well-being was in danger, too. Even so, Najeeb was providing them with a flash drive full of intel, and Chris and his Teammates would likely be asked to act on the information before it expired.

  The driver took them southeast into the desert before circling around in a nebula of sand floating in the air. As the taxi accelerated, the nebula faded and the base lights came into view.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STEPHEN TEMPLIN is a New York Times and international bestselling author, with the movie rights to one of his books purchased by Vin Diesel. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. He publishes with three of the Big Five publishers: Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette UK.

  He wasn’t a SEAL, but he completed Hell Week, qualified as a pistol and rifle expert, blew up things, and practiced small unit tactics during Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. Then for fourteen years he lectured as a tenured professor at Meio University in Japan, where he also trained in the martial art aikido. His PhD is in education, and he lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Secretly, he’s a dark chocolate thief.

  To connect with Steve and for updates about new releases, visit his website at http://www.stephentemplin.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As I began writing this book, my friend Dalton Fury passed away. Some of you know him by his real name, Tom Greer. He was an Army Ranger and Delta Force commander who hunted the world’s most wanted man, which Tom wrote about in his autobiographical account, Kill bin Laden. Tom also penned the Delta Force series—Tier One Wild is my favorite. We shared the same publisher and agent. I first met Tom when he gave Howard Wasdin and me some advice and praised an early draft of our book, SEAL Team Six. Since then, Tom was supportive of my fiction writing, too. He was an officer and a gentleman, thoughtful, and he made me laugh. I’ll miss him. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

  I’d like to thank SEAL sniper veteran Kyle Defoor for training me in pistol and assault rifle to further my knowledge. His efficiency in shooting and no-nonsense teaching style remind me of John Koenig. In Afghanistan, Kyle was part of Operation Anaconda, where he fought in the Battle of Takur Ghar and was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. The operation succeeded in killing hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists, taking away their control of the Shah-i-Kot Valley.

  Larry Vickers also instructed me in handgun and assault rifle shooting. Larry served as a Special Forces and Delta Force operator in many classified operations, including in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia. Most notable among these operations was the rescue of CIA agent Kurt Muse from imprisonment by forces under the command of dictator Manuel Noriega.

  John Koenig taught me marksmanship, demolitions, and small-unit tactics during the land warfare phase of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. Commander Koenig served in many classified operations, including as a SEAL in Vietnam, MILGRU advisor in El Salvador, and SEAL Team Six operator in Grenada and Panama. In Grenada, his team rescued Governor General Paul Scoon’s family from house arrest. Commander Koenig’s leadership and instruction were straightforward, his dark sense of humor brought high points during many long hours of training, and his experiences were invaluable. I will always be grateful.

  While I lived in Japan, aikido seventh-and fourth-degree black belt masters Kabayama Sensei and Yamaguchi Sensei trained me to redirect the momentum of an opponent’s attack. Although commonly used for nonlethal purposes, such close-quarters battle (CQB) can also be used to follow up with lethal force.

  Next, I’d like to thank my longtime editor Carol Scarr at Pharos Editing for helping me achieve my vision with each new book and hone my craft.

  Most importantly, I thank my wife and children for the joy and inspiration they give me.