Copyright © 2010 by Jeff Struecker
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
978-0-8054-4854-2
Published by B&H Publishing Group,
Nashville, Tennessee
Dewey Decimal Classification: F
Subject Heading: ADVENTURE FICTION TERRORISM—FICTION POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER—FICTION
Jeff Struecker is represented by Wheelhouse Literary Group, 1007 Loxley Drive, Nashville, TN 37211.
www.WheelhouseLiteraryGroup.com
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
“DOD Disclaimer”—The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or its components.
To Jacob,
I hope you will live your life in a blaze for His glory.
Table of Contents
The Team
Prologue
Book I
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 Twenty-Eight
Book II
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Epilogue
THE TEAM
Sergeant Major Eric “Boss” Moyer, team leader.
Master Sergeant Rich “Shaq” Harbison, assistant team leader.
Staff Sergeant Pete “Junior” Rasor, communications.
Sergeant First Class J. J. “Colt” Bartley, weapons and explosives.
Sergeant First Class Jose “Doc” Medina, team medic.
Sergeant First Class Jerry “Data” Zinsser, surveillance and communications.
PROLOGUE
Spring, present day, near Fort Jackson, South Carolina
IT FELT HOT IN his hand. Not possible. Bronze should not feel warm, not after it had been sitting on a bathroom sink for the last two weeks, untouched, away from sunlight.
Still . . .
Jerry Zinsser closed his hand on the metal and ribbon. He knew everything about the object he held: bronze, cross-shaped, two inches high, one-and-thirteen-sixteenths inches wide.
His hand shook. He tightened his grip. The points of the cross and tips of the eagle’s wings bored into his sweaty palm. A forty-watt bulb in the bathroom’s ceiling fixture struggled to push back the predawn darkness.
Distant sounds entered his ears. Pop . . . pop . . . tat . . . tat . . . tat. A thousand tiny explosions pounded his eardrums. Familiar sounds. Terrifying noises. Sounds of 5.56 mm rounds blazing from the barrel of an M4A1 weapon.
“No . . .”
He raised his hands to his ears.
The gunfire disappeared.
He lowered his arms and opened his hand. The pointed bronze medal left four bleeding punctures in his palm. Gently he returned it to the cold tile of the sink and smoothed the red, white, and blue ribbon.
Something exploded behind him. Zinsser spun with raised hands to deflect any shrapnel coming his way. No shrapnel came. He saw no smoke, no damage to his wall. He saw only the empty, dry shower.
The sound of gunfire returned: staccato blasts pierced the air. AK47s have their own haunting sound.
Zinsser pressed his eyes closed and tried to protect his ears from the noise: an impossible task. The sounds were coming from inside his head.
“No . . . no more.”
He knew what was coming. Knew it was more frightening than the sound of automatic gunfire.
“Data, it’s Echo. I’m down. Repeat . . . I’m hit.”
Zinsser pressed a finger in each ear, deeper and deeper, hoping the pain would drive the voices away.
“We need support. Data, where is our support?” A scream of pain. “Oh dear, God. Don’t let me die in this dump.”
Zinsser dropped to his knees, the hard tile offering only a cold, unforgiving surface.
“Chief is gone! Data, get us that support!”
Something hammered his sternum from the inside, like a prisoner using a mallet to break down the wall that kept him confined.
“Data, do you read me?”
“I read you, Boss . . . I’m . . .” Zinsser rolled onto his naked back and began to weep.
Winter, four months earlier, Kismayo, Somalia
JERRY “DATA” ZINSSER SPRINTED from behind the stucco building and hunkered behind an old car. Three Somali militia moved to the entrance of a rug factory. The hand-applied plaster bore pockmarks of bullets fired over the years. Zinsser hid behind a car in one of the world’s most dangerous cities: Kismayo. Slowly he peered over the vehicle’s hood. The three militia men split up, moving to the windows that framed the door.
A glance up and down the street revealed a dozen or more men moving in on the position. They shouted in Somali and Arabic. He turned his attention to the three men again: two stood by one window; one by the other. He knew what they were about to do—and what they’d leave behind when they finished.
Inside the old building were fifteen crewmen of the Burltown, a South African cargo ship that floated less than a mile off the coast. The Navy was responsible to take the Burltown and rescue what crew remained. His team was to secure the safe extraction of the crew sequestered here by Somali pirates.
He had done all he could. He remained hidden to keep radio contact with Ops while his team went in. Clockwork. It had all gone like clockwork. Boss, Chief, and Echo made entry and dispatched the guards in short order. Then . . . the clock broke.
The best Zinsser could tell, the pirates had hidden guards among the crew. After the initial assault, more gunfire erupted. Ten seconds later it stopped.
“Data, it’s Echo. I’m down. Repeat . . . I’m hit. Chief is gone. Boss is dead.”
Zinsser did his job and reported the situation. The approaching horde of men from the north and the south would arrive in two minutes or less. There was nothing Zinsser could do. His training told him to retreat and wait for air cover, to hide and report until he could be extracted. Echo would have to wait for reinforcements.
Zinsser started to move back when he saw one of the men at the window raise his AK47 and aim. He could only be aiming at Echo. Zinsser hesitated. He had his orders—
Zinsser rose, shouldered his M4, and then ticked the trigger and sent two copper-clad rounds into a spot just behind the man’s right ear
. He fingered the weapon to automatic and pressed the trigger to the stops. A long burst of bullets cut the other two men down.
“I’m coming in, Echo. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me.”
Echo didn’t reply.
Zinsser rounded the car, jogged across the road, kicked open the door, and waited to be gunned down. Nothing struck his body armor. With weapon raised, he entered the large room.
Echo lay against the south wall. Boss, the team leader, stared around the hole between his eyes at a ceiling of peeling plaster. Chief, second in command, lay face down in a growing pool of thick blood.
A sound to his right made Zinsser spin, his weapon leading his eyes. Three men with AK47s by their side lay dead on the concrete floor. Six other men knelt or stood next to the north wall, their legs shackled to metal cleats in the floor.
“We . . . we got them all,” Echo said. “I think.”
Zinsser studied the men, waiting for one to draw a weapon. The six raised their hands. “Sailors,” one said. “Don’t shoot us.”
Without a word, Zinsser picked up the AK47s and moved them out of reach of the prisoners. He wasn’t taking chances and didn’t have time to think of a new plan. He moved to Echo.
“How bad is it, Brian?”
“Took one in the hip, just below my armor. Wouldn’t you know it—ahhh!” He took two deep breaths. “Took another in the shoulder. I’m bleeding out.”
“No you’re not.”
“I’m the medic. I should know.”
“Well, I say you’re not dying. If you do, then I die alone, and I’m far too admired to go that way. Can you hold a weapon?”
“Maybe a nine.”
Jerry pulled his 9mm pistol from its holster and set it on Echo’s lap. He then pulled Echo’s from its place and set it on the ground by his working arm.
“We got company, pal. It’s about to get noisy. You see that window there?” Zinsser pointed at the southernmost window. “Shoot anything with a face. Got it?”
“Yeah, got it.” Echo paused. “Is help coming?”
“As we speak.”
Echo nodded. “You know we’re going down, don’t you?”
“Maybe, but if we do, we’re going down in a blaze of glory.”
The shouts grew louder. Zinsser stepped to the room with the captives. “Get down. On the floor. Now!” A moment later he stood in the middle of the room, his M4 aimed at the door.
BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
Present day, Fort Jackson
“MARRIED? WHO?” RICH HARBISON rose from his seat in the Special Ops briefing room in the Concrete Palace of Fort Jackson. The master sergeant ran a hand over his black, bald head. “I don’t think I heard you right.”
“Come on, Shaq, you heard me.” J. J. “Colt” Bartley expected to be razzed by his team, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. Or tolerate it.
Rich turned to the others in the small group. He was a tall man with the build of a Dodge pickup truck, hence his mission nickname, Shaq. “Did anyone else hear this, or am I the only one hallucinating?”
“I heard it,” Eric Moyer, team leader, said. “But I don’t believe it. Our baby seems so grown up.”
The others who rounded out the five-man team laughed.
“I’m twenty-seven, Boss. I’m nobody’s baby.”
“So if I’m hearing you right, Colt, you’re going to tie the knot.” Shaq furrowed his brow.
“That’s right.”
“Usually marriage means a man weds a woman.”
“That’s what’s happening here.”
“You see,” Rich said, “that’s where I’m having trouble following you. You’re telling me that there is a woman out there who will marry you?”
“Of course there is.”
“Tell me the truth. Have you ever been on a real date? You know, where you pick up the girl, do a movie and dinner, kiss on the doorstep, and all that.”
“Of course.”
Moyer grinned. “Of course he has, Shaq. The question is: Has he ever had a second date?”
“Come on, Boss. I expected a little support from you.” Despite his protestations, J. J. had to laugh. Moyer, a stout man of thirty-eight years and the most courageous man J. J. had ever met, could be the poster boy for Army leadership.
“You’re right,” Moyer said. “I feel horrible.”
“Thanks.”
“For the girl.”
J. J. did his best to look angry. “Great. Just great. I’ve traveled to half a dozen countries with you guys; been shot at; held prisoner; and done my best to lend a little class to this group, and what do I get? Snide remarks that pass for jokes.”
“Marriage is a big step, son,” Moyer said. “Think you can handle it?”
“After all the danger we’ve faced together, you have to ask?”
Shaq put his big hand on J. J.’s shoulder. “Listen to me. Do you remember that firefight in Afghanistan where the Taliban had us pinned down, outnumbered ten-to-one, and it looked like we were all dead? Do you remember that we had to call for close cover air support to drop bombs all around us?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Marriage is worse.”
The men guffawed.
“So if I repeated that to your wife—”
“I would hunt you down and gut you like a fish.”
J. J. smiled. “Still afraid of the wife, eh?”
Shaq’s faced hardened. “Maybe.”
The door to the briefing room swung open, and Colonel MacGregor swept in, followed by a tall man with Master Sergeant stripes on his uniform. “As you were,” he said before anyone had time to come to attention. “Take your places.”
J. J. and Rich took two of the ten seats available to them. The room was familiar territory. Every mission began here with a briefing from the brass and research conducted on the several computers that lined the back wall. Just to get in the room, J. J. had entered a code on a keypad by the only entrance door in the large, plain, ugly concrete building. Once in the lobby, a sergeant with the military police electronically scanned his fingerprints, relieved him of his cell phone, and checked for any other electronics he might have on his person.
Once the MP was satisfied, J. J. approached a second door, entered another code that granted him entrance to the office corridor, a long hallway bordered by closed doors. In this building, doors always remained closed.
Just like every other time he had entered this building, he made his way to the last room off the corridor. The mission briefing room had no windows and had been designed to keep every word spoken confined to that space.
Colonel “Mac” MacGregor’s expression seldom changed. He looked today as he had since J. J. first met him: constipated.
“Before we begin, Colonel,” Shaq said, “we think you should know our dear J. J. proposed to his girl last night.”
“Don’t tell me she said yes.”
“Roger that, Colonel. We’re thinking of throwing him a bridal shower.”
“Isn’t that usually done for the bride?”
“No one will know the difference.”
The men laughed. Even Mac risked a smile.
“You know,” J. J. said, “someday you’re going to need me to back you up. Don’t be surprised if I hesitate.”
“All right, ladies, can it. We got business to do.” Mac turned to the tall man who entered with him. “Since you guys drove off the last two men I gave you to replace Caraway, I’m going to try one more time, and you are going to like it. Is that clear?”
The answer came in a chorus of “Hooah.”
“Good. This is Sergeant First Class Jerry Zinsser. He’s your new surveillance man. He’s also skilled in communications and will help Pete out should he decide to sleep in late.”
“Zinsser?” Moyer’s forehead creased. “Jerry Zinsser. That name rings a bell—” Moyer straightened. “Kismayo? The Burltown mission?”
Mac nodded. “I see you’ve heard of him.”
>
“Who hasn’t.”
“Um, I haven’t,” J. J. said.
“We have a hero on deck,” Moyer explained.
Mac raised a hand. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to run my own meeting.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Zinsser gazed at the beige vinyl floor, clearly uncomfortable with talk of heroism.
“As you know”—Mac cast a hard look at J. J., and he felt it pierce his heart—“or, as you should know, Sergeant Zinsser was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for heroic actions against superior forces and for saving a wounded team member despite receiving several wounds. He’s fully rehabilitated and your new team member.”
J. J. joined the others in a short round of applause. The Distinguished Service Cross was the second highest medal awarded for bravery; second only to the Medal of Honor. J. J. was impressed.
Mac continued. “Moyer, introduce your men. You can leave out their favorite things, like walking in the park and picking flowers.”
Moyer rose. “Yes, sir.” He faced Zinsser. “I’m Eric Moyer, team leader. Like most team leaders, they call me Boss.” He pointed to Rich, who stood. “Rich Harbison, assistant team leader. Goes by Shaq. I’ll let you guess why.”
Zinsser’s eyes widened at Shaq’s size. “I think I can figure that out.”
“Don’t let his size fool you. He hates sports and loves Broadway musicals.”
“What can I say,” Rich retorted. “I’m a Renaissance man.”
Moyer ignored him. “This is Pete Rasor—Junior. As the colonel said, he’s the team’s communication specialists. Next to him is Jose Medina, team medic. He goes by Doc.”
“Not very creative,” Pete said, “but it beats other nicks I’ve heard.”
“On your feet, Colt,” Moyer snapped.
J. J. bolted to his feet.
“Meet J. J. Bartley. Weapons and explosives. Those who like him call him Colt.”
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