Ranger: Intrepid 4.5

by Chris Allen

  ABOUT RANGER: THE ALEX MORGAN INTERPOL SPY THRILLER SERIES (INTREPID 4.5)

  How far will Alex Morgan go to repay the man who saved his life?

  Friends are a luxury that agents of INTERPOL’s blacks ops division cannot afford, but Alex Morgan wasn’t always a spy.

  When a former US Army Ranger who saved Morgan’s life in Afghanistan reaches out, convinced that Morgan is the only person who can help him, Morgan springs into action.

  War hero John Nash has been off the grid for two years. Homeless and forsaken by the government that decorated him for valor, Nash believes he has discovered a trail of treachery and subterfuge that leads straight to the White House. And he might just be right. Hidden in plain sight behind a fortress of spin-doctored hype, the fate of humankind is being traded for votes.

  Unable to sanction the mission via INTREPID, Morgan sheds their protection and goes solo. But what chance do they stand, a rogue agent and a homeless veteran, against the might of the US establishment?

  This spy novella in the vein of Ian Fleming is perfect for readers of Frederick Forsyth and Clive Cussler.

  Contents

  ABOUT RANGER: INTREPID 4.5

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  DAY 1 – THURSDAY

  DAY 2 – FRIDAY

  DAY 3 – SATURDAY

  DAY 4 – SUNDAY

  DAY 5 – MONDAY

  DAY 6 – TUESDAY

  DAY 7 – WEDNESDAY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT CHRIS ALLEN

  ALSO BY CHRIS ALLEN

  COPYRIGHT

  To my Sarah and our boys,

  Morgan and Rhett

  We owe our Veterans our eternal gratitude for their service and sacrifice to this nation, and making sure they have a place to call home is a small but powerful way we can show our appreciation.

  New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu

  When a Veteran comes home kissing the ground, it is unacceptable that he should ever have to sleep on it.

  First Lady Michelle Obama

  DAY 1 – THURSDAY

  Upper Huallaga Valley, Amazon Basin

  Republic of Peru

  The jungle was almost awake now. The rain had started again and the legions of wildlife that had been dormant for the last twelve hours were breaking their silence. Soon, the darkness would completely withdraw its protection and the first grey light of a cloud filled sky would reach down through the canopy. This was the time soldiers called stand-to. The time when nature does its shift change. Every man is awake and a defensive posture assumed. Weapons face out and no one makes a sound above a whisper – and then, only if absolutely necessary. For the uninitiated it’s a time of uncertainty and vulnerability, when the senses struggle to adjust to the transition between darkness and light, silence and noise. For the expert, it represents the perfect moment to exploit weakness.

  In the midst of it all were eight men, all of them experts in jungle warfare, crouched in a tight defensive circle, weapons at the ready. Six of them were members of the US Army’s Special Operations Command South; specifically, Green Berets of the elite 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and one half of an Operational Detachment Alpha from Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, or ODA 751. With them were two other men. Not Green Berets, but agents of Interpol’s highly secret black-ops unit – the Intelligence, Recovery, Protection and Infiltration Division, otherwise known as Intrepid. Out here in the jungle there was no difference – Intrepid agent or Green Beret, everyone was a warrior. All of them wore Crye Precision combat uniforms in US MultiCam Tropic pattern, and were strapped from head to toe in exoskeletons of tactical equipment. They were armed with suppressed M4 carbines and 9 millimeter Berettas. In the center of the group, the Intrepid agents and the ODA commander sat in a huddle, whispering under the rain. Their features, etched by the glow of an infrared torch, reflected back at them from the folded section of map sheathed in a waterproof map case. They’d stopped to confirm their navigation before moving in, just fifty yards southwest of a clearing that opened onto their target. Around them, the rest of the team faced the jungle. No one made a sound above the hushed tones of the final planning.

  The Intrepid agents Alex Morgan and Hermann “the Key” Braunschweiger, having served in the British Parachute Regiment and Germany’s GSG-9 respectively, were completely at home on combat operations. With the support of the 7th Special Forces Group – a favor called in by Intrepid’s new Chief of Staff, ex-Green Beret Mickey Sheridan – they were moving in to extract a colleague, Intrepid agent Ricardo Pedrosa. Formerly a lieutenant of the Brigata Paracadutisti Folgore, Italia – the Italian Paratrooper Brigade Folgore, Pedrosa had been teamed with special operations officers of the Policía Nacional del Perú – the Peruvian National Police – to bring down an illegal narcotics operation run by former members of the Shining Path group who had, according to the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, struck an alliance with Daesh.

  Shining Path was formerly a Maoist insurgent organization that emerged in the ’80s, driven to deliver Peru to a Communist dictatorship. After the arrest of its founder, Abimael Guzman, in 1992, Shining Path lost some of its ideological steam and instead evolved into a criminal narco-terrorist group responsible for trafficking cocaine throughout North and South America, running its operations largely via a slave trade, most of whom were the children of Shining Path members. Recent intelligence identified links to Daesh, specifically a money trail from the illegal narcotics operations leading to Daesh cells operating in South and Central America. This arrangement was reciprocated by Daesh advisors providing training, which in turn had facilitated a revival of Shining Path’s traditional subversive influence in Peru, albeit without the original Communist philosophy.

  Pedrosa had been dispatched to infiltrate the organization, establish the connection to the Islamic extremists and, if possible, follow the links and the money back to the Daesh cells. But just a few weeks into the mission, he’d disappeared. Soon after, one of the Peruvian National Police narcotics agents who’d been working with Pedrosa reached out to her contact at the US Drug Enforcement Administration office in Lima, citing that Pedrosa had been sold out by a corrupt cop and had been redeployed to a Shining Path outpost farther up in the Amazonian high country to be killed. Word filtered back via the DEA to Interpol, whereupon the information reached the desk of Intrepid’s chief, General Davenport. Morgan and Braunschweiger were immediately dispatched to extract their agent.

  Peru is the largest producer of cocaine in the world. On any given day, thousands of Peruvian teenagers negotiate their way on foot through some of the most hazardous regions of the country, carrying an average of thirty pounds of cocaine on their backs through dense jungle and mountainous terrain to covert airstrips where their cargo is stashed until eventually retrieved and loaded onto an aircraft for transport further along the chain. In Peru, two pounds of cocaine is worth around $1200. Street value in the major capitals of the world, mostly the United States and Europe, can be anywhere from twenty to sixty times that amount.

  According to the Peruvian narc, Pedrosa had been tasked to lead a team of these mochilero – backpackers – and would be killed once he’d delivered his team and their cargo to a destination located in the high country of the Upper Huallaga Valley. The trek would take two weeks. What Intrepid knew so far was that Pedrosa had reached his objective less than twenty-four hours earlier, and was now in a house believed to be the home of the local Shining Path commander – a routine turnaround point for teams of mochilero, and a base camp from which slave labor would be deployed to various plantations and labs throughout the surrounding area. It was also the location that Morgan, Braunschweiger and the Special Forces ODA were closing in on
.

  Over the past forty-eight hours, a series of covert aerial surveillance runs were conducted utilizing MQ-9 Reaper, a hunter-killer UAV capable of sustained, high-altitude surveillance tasks and, able to deploy with a significantly greater ordnance payload than its predecessor, Predator. Controlled via a ground control station crew back in Lima who fed the information back to the ODA, the Reaper had confirmed the location and layout of the house, approximate numbers of Shining Path members – who the Green Berets referred to exclusively as Bandits – and their slave laborers. And, as at 1700 hours last night, Reaper had also confirmed that Pedrosa was definitely there and staying in the main house. The house was located on a hill bordered to the north by a creek line, steep and dense with an almost impenetrable barrier of secondary jungle undergrowth. The slave laborers – there were about thirty of them: men, women and some children and, since yesterday, a dozen or so mochilero – were housed in a long, open-sided building with a thatched roof, which sat above the ground and was accessed by ladders at either end. It was on the edge of the jungle on the north-western side of the compound and enclosed by a high cyclone-mesh fence. By night the one gate that provided access and egress was padlocked.

  The main house was currently occupied by the local Shining Path commander and approximately ten or twelve of his people – including Ricardo Pedrosa. It was located on half an acre of cleared land providing 270-degree views to the east, south and west but only over limited distance, no more than twenty or thirty yards at most, giving the occupants just seconds of warning in the event of an attack from the edge of the jungle. The only road to the house ran in from the east along a narrow, meandering ridge line that widened slightly about a hundred yards away to double as a clandestine airstrip; cleared to allow for the short touch-down and take-off of the irregular but regular enough light aircraft that delivered money and collected coca for shipment to Colombia and then, as cocaine, distribution into North America. Hence the cooperation between the US and Peruvian governments that had facilitated a large US military contingent to be semi-permanently based in Peru, and hence the ease with which the assistance of the US Special Forces had been secured.

  Preparing to assault the house, Alex Morgan knew there was no guarantee that Pedrosa would even be alive when they found him – if they found him. But they had to try. At least time was on their side, because according to the whistleblower’s statement, Pedrosa’s murder was planned to coincide with the arrival of an aircraft at midday. So, they still had about six hours left.

  “The lead Blackhawk pilot says they’re on schedule for the extraction,” said the detachment commander, Captain Kirby, his voice barely audible above the building rumble of the early morning rain. The dense foliage that cocooned the soldiers and their equipment was humming under the growing onslaught of what would soon be a downpour.

  “Given the amount of time they’ve been in the air, that’ll put ’em due east of us, about here,” replied Morgan, indicating a point on the map with the tip of a SOG Force SE38 knife, the same knife he’d used to kill Zupan, the big Serb who’d almost killed him on Corfu a few missions ago. Morgan checked his TAG Heuer. “It’s almost zero-five-hundred.” He produced a sketch plan of the compound also sheathed in a plastic case, which included the main house, laborers’ accommodation and the sentry post.

  “My second team with Master Sergeant Muldoon will be in position by zero-five-thirty,” said Kirby. “They’ll sit tight until we’re ready. Once we give them the green light, they’ll take out the sentry post and then they’ll cover the airstrip.”

  “We’ve made good time getting here, but it will be slower going between here and the back of the house,” said Braunschweiger, indicating on the sketch. “You should get moving.”

  “HUA,” replied Kirby, using the well-known US Army acronym for “Heard. Understood. Acknowledged”. “Coming up out of that creek line on the north side will be steep and the undergrowth much thicker. We’d better haul ass.”

  “As soon as you and Muldoon’s guys are in position,” said Morgan, “let us know. We’ll set off in ten minutes and will prop here, west of the house.” The tip of the blade indicated a point on the map. “It’ll be sunlight at zero-six-ten; we all need to be in position by zero-six-zero-five, latest.”

  “Affirmative,” Braunschweiger replied.

  “You got it,” said Kirby. “Let’s go get your boy.”

  Kirby and three Green Berets moved off without a sound, melting away into the jungle. Braunschweiger and the two remaining Green Berets, Spring and Devereux, immediately closed in around Morgan. Every man knew what his responsibilities were. There wasn’t anything to risk unnecessary conversation about. The four of them sat in silence and when ten minutes had passed, they set off.

  Pushing through the last fifty yards of heavy jungle, moving closer toward their objective with every step, Morgan began mentally preparing for whatever would be thrown at them once they launched the assault. Alone with his thoughts, the jungle closed in around him as he and his team advanced with agonizing slowness through the secondary re-growth. Every sense was alive, processing, prioritizing and deciphering the constant stream of environmental data that changed with every step forward. With his right hand locked onto the M4 and his left reaching ahead, making slow progress through layer after layer of vines and debris, Morgan’s eyes searched through the vegetation for anything out of the ordinary, anything that wasn’t meant to be there – the straight edge of a rifle barrel, the shine of a metallic surface, or the whites of a man’s eyes. He laughed to himself, he’d be lucky to see a tank in these conditions. The now hammering rain made it almost impossible to hear anything above its roar, but every man in the team was trained and experienced in doing just that, listening for the mumble of a voice or the cocking of weapon. There wasn’t much chance of smelling anything in a downpour, but never say never, he thought.

  The operation to extract Pedrosa would be conducted in three phases.

  Phase one would commence with an assault by Master Sergeant Muldoon, callsign One-Eight-Zero-Alpha, and his team on the Bandits’ sentry post a hundred yards to the east of the house, which covered the covert airstrip and the approach road. Muldoon’s assault would have two objectives: firstly, to neutralize the three sentries located at the outpost and, secondly, to deliberately draw as many Bandits as possible to respond to the assault on the sentry post, thereby reducing opposition to the rescue of Pedrosa back at the main house.

  Phase two involved Morgan and Braunschweiger clearing the house and, ultimately, recovering Pedrosa. Kirby, callsign One-Eight-Alpha, and his team, would split into two to cover the northern side between the jungle and the house, and the southern side, specifically, the open ground between the house and the edge of the jungle, thereby creating an impenetrable channel down either flank of the building while Morgan and Braunschweiger, with Spring and Devereux, would enter the house in pairs from the south-western end, clearing room by room.

  Phase three would be the extraction by helicopter of Morgan, Braunschweiger, Pedrosa and any Special Forces casualties requiring evac. Meanwhile, in a follow-up operation, Kirby, Muldoon and the regrouped ODA 751 would remain in place for the separate task of taking control of the drug courier aircraft that was due at midday.

  Just like that. Yeah, right, thought Morgan. Just like that.

  The rain eased then stopped suddenly, and an all-consuming silence fell upon them.

  Morgan reached the clearing, spotted the house and slowly went to ground, still shielded by the embrace of the heavy undergrowth. The rest of the team followed suit. Inch by inch, Morgan, Braunschweiger, Spring and Devereux each crawled to the edge of the jungle and watched intently for a full five minutes allowing their eyes to adjust, taking in the layout of the compound. There were plumes of smoke tentatively emerging from smoke stacks in the main house and the slave quarters. The breakfast fires were going. With the rain gone, the smell of strong coffee and cigarettes wafted across to them, yet there was no
obvious movement. There was no one outside and no activity within the buildings. Was it too quiet? As if reacting to his uneasiness, the crack-crack of a lone assault rifle followed by the immediate and unmistakable roar of responding heavy-caliber ammunition sliced through the jungle from the direction of the sentry post. Morgan’s eyes snapped at his watch. Zero-five-five-seven – too early. Fuck! Nothing ever goes according to plan.

  “Let’s move,” said Morgan. But he didn’t have to say it. Instinctively, all four of them were already moving, fast, breaking cover through the dense undergrowth at the edge of the jungle and running toward the south-western end of the main house.

  “Muldoon’s team,” said Devereux. “They’ve been sprung at the sentry post.”

  Morgan hoped that Captain Kirby and his guys were in position. If they weren’t, things could get tricky. It was almost daylight now, just enough to see by, but up ahead the house lights were finally coming on. Breaking away from the protection of the jungle, they sprinted across fifteen yards of open ground. By now, the gunfire down at the sentry post had evolved into a full-scale firefight. Morgan and Braunschweiger headed straight for the door at the closest end of the main house. Spring and Devereux followed. They had to find Pedrosa, fast. But no sooner had they covered the open expanse of the clearing than they were engaged by a Bandit with an AKM crouching behind the far corner of the house. Down here they called AKMs cuerno de chivo, which in Spanish means “goat horn,” because of the curved shape of the infamous weapon’s magazine. Whatever they called them, the guy pulling the trigger on this one wasn’t the best shot in the world, but his rounds were striking the ground close enough for the odds to favor him sooner rather than later.

  Still on the move, their pace unchecked, Morgan and Braunschweiger fired in unison at the Bandit's muzzle flash. Their rounds easily tore through the wooden sheeting of the building, splintering it and silencing the gunman. He fell into view, the weapon falling from his hands, and both Intrepid agents fired another short burst into the body. To be sure, to be sure, as Tom Rodgers, Intrepid’s chief combat instructor would say, complete with dodgy Irish accent. One down.