Danger Close
A Breed Thriller
Cameron Curtis
To Abby, who inspired me to return to writing.
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Contents
1. Fayetteville, 2000 Hrs Thursday
2. El Paso, 1300 Hrs Friday
3. Salem, 1430 Hrs Friday
4. Salem, 1500 Hrs Friday
5. Salem, 2100 Hrs Friday
6. Salem, 0900 Hrs Saturday
7. Lazy K, 1000 Hrs Saturday
8. Salem, 1130 Hrs Saturday
9. Salem, 1230 Hrs Saturday
10. Fort Bliss, 1100 Hrs Sunday
11. Lazy K, 0900 Hrs Monday
12. Lazy K, 1000 Hrs Monday
13. Bledsoe, 1300 Hrs Tuesday
14. Salem, 1500 Hrs Tuesday
15. Bledsoe, 1800 Hrs Tuesday
16. Salem, 2000 Hrs Tuesday
17. Bledsoe, 2300 Hrs Tuesday
18. Salem, 0400 Hrs Wednesday
19. Salem, 0800 Hrs Wednesday
20. Salem, 0830 Hrs Wednesday
21. Salem, 1030 Hrs Wednesday
22. Bledsoe, 1300 Hrs Wednesday
23. Bledsoe, 1500 Hrs Wednesday
24. Chihuahua Desert, 1600 Hrs Wednesday
25. Salem, 1800 Hrs Wednesday
26. Salem, 2000 Hrs Wednesday
27. Salem, 2130 Hrs Wednesday
28. Juarez, 2230 Hrs Wednesday
29. Juarez, 2300 Hrs Wednesday
30. Juarez, 2330 Hrs Wednesday
31. Juarez, 0015 Hrs Thursday
32. Juarez, 0100 Hrs Thursday
33. Juarez, 0200 Hrs Thursday
34. El Paso, 0300 Hrs Thursday
35. El Paso, 0320 Hrs Thursday
36. Lazy K, 0340 Hrs Thursday
37. Lazy K, 0400 Hrs Thursday
38. Lazy K, 0415 Hrs Thursday
39. Lazy K, 0500 Hrs Thursday
40. Salem, 0600 Hrs Thursday
41. Salem, 1015 Hrs Thursday
42. Salem, 1145 Hrs Thursday
43. Socorro, 1400 Hrs Thursday
44. Socorro, 1700 Hrs Thursday
45. Juarez, 2200 Hrs Thursday
46. Juarez, 0300 Hrs Friday
47. Juarez, 0335 Hrs Friday
48. El Paso, Six Weeks After
Inkubator Newsletter
Acknowledgements
Rights Info
1
Fayetteville, 2000 Hrs Thursday
I’m superstitious.
Anyone who spends most of his career getting in the way of bombs and bullets learns. It’s better to be lucky than good.
Best to be both, but no one survives without luck.
My best friend once told me, “Dumb luck can kill you.”
I didn’t argue, because he was right.
Kettle Creek Apartments, Fayetteville, is occupied by middle class folk from the city. Civilian employees, and military families from Fort Bragg. My place is one bedroom, seven hundred square feet. Big enough to be comfortable, not big enough to own me.
Perfect for a man trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.
I sit in the living room, sipping a beer. Watching the news. Every station is showing live footage of a New York City street. Jammed with emergency vehicles. Police cars, fire trucks, ambulances. The firemen wear oxygen bottles and breathing masks. They carry injured civilians from a subway. Dozens of injured people, a constant stream.
Paramedics give the casualties oxygen and first aid. There aren’t enough gurneys. The injured are laid on the sidewalk and treated. The police stand behind wooden traffic barricades, blocking the street on either side of the subway exit.
Ominously, many bodies have been covered.
A reporter steps in front of the camera and speaks into a microphone.
“We’re still learning what happened in the New York City subway around 6 pm today. Police have cordoned off an area two blocks square around 28th Street and Broadway. Witnesses on the scene have told us about an explosion on a subway train. There have been fatalities, but authorities haven’t been able to tell us yet how many. We’re hearing that numerous injuries resulted from the crash and derailment, and there are casualties from smoke inhalation. Firemen are working to extract the injured from the tunnel. This is proving extremely difficult in the smoke and darkness.
“The police commissioner will make a statement later this evening; we’ll wait to see if he can comment on whether this incident was an accident, or the result of terrorism. All we can say is the city is paralyzed, worse than it’s been since the events of September 11, 2001.”
The situation looks bad. For the moment, nothing is clear. This could be an accident caused by a derailed train. It could also be a terror attack. Worse than the Boston Bombing, not as bad as 9/11.
Police wearing breathing apparatus pile out of a large black van. It’s parked behind delivery trucks and cars lining 28th Street. Beat cops are trying to get drivers to move the vehicles out of the way. An impossible task. This is the Flatiron District. Tourist hotels, beauty shops, ethnic restaurants.
The police look like hazmat and forensic teams. They are carrying metal cases and heavy-duty flashlights. Single file, they enter the subway. You’d think they’d wait for the emergency crews to clear casualties. The investigators must be in a hurry to examine the wreckage for evidence. Before the firemen and stampeding civilians ruin it.
I sip my beer. The windows are open. A gentle breeze fills the apartment with fresh suburban air. The smell of grass and trees.
The camera switches to an aerial view of the city. A wide shot from a news helicopter. Throngs of people spilling from the subways. Snarled traffic. A total mess.
My phone buzzes. I lift it to my ear. “Breed,” I say.
The voice on the other end is curt, economical. “It’s Lenson.”
Mark Lenson, one of my best friends. He owns a sporting goods and gun shop in El Paso.
I mute the television. “What’s up? You see this mess in New York?”
“What mess?”
“Subway. An accident or an attack. Cops aren’t saying which. I make heavy casualties. Hazmat and forensics teams on-site. They are not waiting for the dust to settle.”
“Sounds like they have good reason to be worried.” Lenson sounds distracted. He has more important things on his mind. “Breed, there’s bad news.”
“What is it?”
Lenson sucks a breath. “Keller’s dead.”
I sit bolt upright. “No.”
“Murdered on his ranch.”
“Mary and Donnie?”
“They’re okay. Hancock and I are with them. We’re staying at the hotel while the sheriff sorts things out.”
“When did it happen? Who did it?”
“Keller was found yesterday. The sheriff doesn’t know who did it. Could have been illegals or coyotes, but right now it’s a guess.” Lenson hesitates. “Breed.”
“Yes?”
“Breed—they cut his head off.”
My stomach hollows. “They what?”
“They cut his head off. With a big knife, or a machete.”
I get to my feet. Pace. “I’m coming down. First flight I can get in the morning.”
“I have to go. Message me your flight and arrival. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Roger that.”
“Lenson out.”
Images of chaos and suffering continue to stream from the widescreen. What is more tragic. A mass casualty attack or the murder of a f
riend. The personal nature of Keller’s death shakes me to the core.
The reporter’s lips are moving. The television is still on mute, there is no sound. More bodies are laid on the sidewalk behind him.
There is a flash of light on the street, and the widescreen picture dissolves into a mass of jagged diagonal lines. When the picture resolves itself, the image is canted sharply to one side. An ant’s-eye view of the street. The camera has fallen to the ground.
I switch the sound back on.
The street is an image from hell. Men and women scream and plead for help. Black smoke and dust fill the air. The pavement is a carpet of shattered glass, blown from shop windows and tall buildings on either side. Police and firemen—those who are able—stagger to their feet. Ghosts in the half-light, their clothing hangs in bloody tatters.
A woman’s voice, a studio reporter, cuts in.
“There’s been an explosion. We can’t reach our reporter at the scene. We’re switching to aerial coverage. I think we have footage of the blast.”
The image flicks to an aerial shot of the street before the explosion. The news helicopter is hovering, the cameraman holding the lens steady. There are four wooden barriers, two on each of 28th Street and Broadway. Each a block from the intersection. I can see police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances parked on the street. There is enough detail to identify first responders by their uniforms.
My eyes are drawn to movement. A man in civilian clothes emerges from one of the shops. A heavy backpack is strapped to his shoulders. With an air of purpose, he steps onto the street. The police are too preoccupied to notice him.
In slow motion, a flash of light consumes the man. The flare expands with the explosion and human figures are blown this way and that. The air seems to shiver as shock waves bounce from the buildings. The disturbance ripples sideways along the street. Silver shards of glass shower the pavement.
A second bomb. There must have been eighty pounds of explosives and shrapnel in that backpack. That bomb was not homemade. The flash, the black smoke, the terrific blast effect—all characteristic of a military-grade weapon.
The first bomber drew first responders to the 28th Street Station. Exposed, where the second suicide bomber could kill them.
Sophisticated terror tactics.
Elbows on my knees, I sit on the sofa. This is the United States. I am staring at an image of midtown Manhattan.
America under siege.
2
El Paso, 1300 Hrs Friday
Duffel and garment bag in hand, I step into the arrivals hall of El Paso International Airport. A message stares at me from my phone. It’s Lenson.
Traffic. ETA 1400.
Lenson’s characteristic economy. I look for a place to while away an hour. Starbucks isn’t crowded. The coffee shop has comfortable armchairs. Leather the texture of butter.
I was the last of the team to retire. Dan Keller, Mark Lenson, Bill Hancock. One by one, the others said goodbye to the army and the unit we called Delta.
1st Special Forces Operations Detachment - D. The army’s elite counter-terror and direct action force. Created in the seventies as a response to high-profile terrorist attacks.
Keller had been the first to leave. Early. Sixteen years in the bank, and not a scratch on him. He said he wanted to watch his boy grow up. Hancock and Lenson left next, nursing their wounds.
The coffee shop’s widescreen is tuned to the news.
Late last night, the police commissioner issued a statement. In a New York City subway car, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest. Just before the train arrived at the 28th Street platform. Killed sixty people. Injured hundreds of others when the train crashed deep beneath the city’s streets. Many of the fatalities were from smoke inhalation. Survivors panicked, stampeded in the black, smoke-filled tunnel.
Thirty-seven more were killed on the street when the backpack bomb exploded. Eighty-six were maimed by shrapnel and falling glass. Most were police, firemen, and paramedics. They were cut to ribbons.
Smoke inhalation killed as many people as the blast on the street. I haven’t seen such a diabolical attack since 9/11.
I sip my coffee.
The world expects the President of the United States to kill the Iran Nuclear Agreement. A deal negotiated by his predecessor to delay Iran’s bomb program.
Delay. Not eliminate.
The talking heads speculate that the two events might be related. They might be, but the Iranians have never struck in the continental United States.
My entire career, I’ve fought jihadists. They are the most professional, committed enemies a soldier can face. Their religion and ideology are completely consistent with their warfighting. I’ve seen and done things no one should have to see or do. Understand this—if I didn’t, your son or husband would have to.
I wake up most nights, sweating. Find myself standing bare-chested on my apartment’s balcony, clutching a pistol. Not knowing how I got there.
Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind.
Five years ago, Keller and I conducted our last operation together.
The disaster was born in an air-conditioned Quonset hut in KAF—Kandahar Air Field. A briefing room insulated from the stinking heat of Afghanistan. Insulated from the heat, but not the mix of dust and dung that choked the air and settled over everything.
Orin Scott, the CIA section chief, was fresh from Langley. He had arranged to meet Abu Massoud, a local Taliban leader. The Harvard boy wanted to make a name for himself with overtures of peace. The RV—rendezvous—was to occur a hundred miles north of Kandahar. A valley surrounded by low foothills. My Delta section and a platoon of Rangers were to provide security.
A Ranger captain and lieutenant had built a sand-table replica of the RV. The valley was as flat as a parking lot. The hills were arranged around it like a horseshoe open to the south. A click—one thousand meters—to the north, lay a whaleback ridge. A quarter click to the east, a low mesa scowled upon the crossroads. To the west, a saddle joined two peaks. There were gaps in the range of hills. Long roads stretched through the openings and into the distance.
Keller stood next to me. “You’re not going in there,” he whispered.
I gave Keller a faint shake of my head. Turned to Scott. “Sir, we should reconsider this RV.”
Hands on hips, the Ranger captain stared at me. “What’s wrong with it, Warrant?”
The sonofabitch knew damn well what was wrong with it. But then, he wasn’t going. He wanted to make Orin Scott happy. I forced myself to hold a professional tone. “I can’t protect Mr Scott in there. We should arrange an RV with more cover.”
The section chief gave me a warm smile. “Thirty Rangers and Deltas can’t protect me?”
Scott meant well, but he hadn’t been in-country a year. White dress shirt, fraternity tie, glasses. He didn’t know his ass from his elbow.
“Not in there, sir. It’s a shooting gallery.”
The Harvard man tried to sound confident. “There’s no time to rearrange the RV, Breed. You’ll have to make do.”
The Ranger captain thrust out his jaw. “Mr Scott, the security force is adequate.”
“I agree, Captain.” Scott folded his arms. “Massoud is coming to talk, not fight.”
I stepped away from the sand table. Keller, Lenson, and Hancock gathered around me.
“Hancock and I will go with the VIP,” I told them. I half-turned and pointed to the sand table. “Keller, I want you and Lenson on that saddle by dawn. Set up a firing position on the north hill.”
Keller didn’t like it, but he was a good soldier. “Roger that.” He looked at Lenson. “If we hit the road now, we’ll get there by midnight.”
I watched Lenson shoulder his M24 sniper rifle. The two men took their rucksacks and walked out of the air-conditioned Quonset hut. They would drive to within fifteen miles of the RV and hide their vehicle. Cover the remainder of the distance on foot.
Getting the two snipers situated fo
r overwatch was dangerous. If I was right, there was a good chance the Taliban would occupy the hills. If Keller and Lenson ran into trouble, Scott would have to abort the meeting. If they didn’t, Hancock and I would have two elite marksmen watching our backs.
At midnight, my radio crackled. It was Keller. “Seven-five Savoy, this is eight-eight. We are on the saddle, north peak.”
“Seven-five copy. See you in the morning.”
“Eight-eight out.”
I closed my eyes, but didn’t sleep.
Our convoy headed out of KAF at 0330 hours. A moonless night. We filled five Humvees. The drivers wore helmets fitted with Night Optical Devices—NODS. I didn’t like riding in Humvees. There was no protection from IEDs. Driving at night was safer. The bombs couldn’t be armed all the time, or the batteries would run out. They were usually armed at first light.
With the restricted vision afforded by the NODs, we swapped the risk of a car crash for the risk of getting blown up.
A blood red sun rose over the mountains of the Hindu Kush and cast an angry glow over the barren terrain. We raced on flat ground toward the distant foothills. On either side of the road, endless grape fields stretched into the distance. Desiccated, many hid Afghanistan’s main crop, poppies. The Taliban were awash in cash, all from the heroin they trafficked west.
Danger Close (A Breed Thriller Book 1) Page 1
