Full Assault Mode (9 page)

Yes, Mason knew all about Kolt fucking Raynor. And nothing about the maverick Delta officer was to his liking. In fact, he wasn’t too comfortable in Kolt’s presence even now. Sure, Mason knew Kolt had a reputation for getting shit done, but it was Kolt’s colorful past that made it all the more difficult for him to approve the mission the Delta major was presently seeking his approval on. Cross-border raids into Pakistan require POTUS approval, and even though most of the J-staff knew the president had pushed the authority down to Mason for the time being, Mason always seemed to play it like the call was still way above his pay grade.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the incessant pestering from Washington, D.C. about the status of finding Haji Mohammad Ghafour, Admiral Mason would have never approved Delta’s plan to send Shaft into the Goshai Valley in the first place.

Kolt did a round of square breathing—fifteen seconds inhale, fifteen seconds hold, fifteen seconds exhale, fifteen seconds hold—before risking opening his mouth. He motioned a lazy circle with his knife. “Admiral, these five buildings are all within the length of a football field. We can land on both sides and clear each as we move to center.” He wanted to add, but didn’t, that it wasn’t that much bigger than Osama’s compound.

Almost as if he ignored Kolt’s reassuring comments, Admiral Mason nervously tugged at his belt line. He didn’t even bother to address Kolt by name.

“If we can’t get more clarity on Ghafour’s exact location, we’ll have to wait for another opportunity,” Mason said.

Kolt knew the admiral would be looking for an excuse not to approve the mission.

“Besides,” the admiral continued, “the helos can’t wait around that long. They will be out of gas before you ever get those five buildings cleared.”

And that’s based on your extensive ground combat experience.

Everyone froze. All eyes shifted toward Kolt. They knew Kolt was the assault force commander for this mission. They knew Shaft was his man. He had the most invested. None of his peers around the table dared say anything for fear of the admiral’s wrath. Kolt recognized this. He wisely remained laser-focused on the facts and shied away from making this a personal confrontation with Admiral Mason. He swallowed noticeably hard.

Playing it as if he hadn’t detected hesitation in the admiral’s voice, he said, “Sir, our contingencies are clear. You approved them the other day. If we can’t find Ghafour before the helos have to depart, then we’ll clear them out of the area and we’ll keep looking for Ghafour.”

“You’re suddenly very glib about the use of helos,” Mason said, finally giving vent to his anger over Kolt’s impromptu mission of Thunder Turtle.

Kolt didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s an acceptable risk, and it makes sense. The helo’s can”—

“I don’t want the helos having to make a second turn into that area,” Mason barked as he tapped his long narrow fingers on the deep Goshai Valley area of the map. “Twice is a pattern. They will be sitting ducks for enemy rockets or crew-served machine guns a second time in that valley.”

Kolt took a deep breath. “The plan, again, sir, is to walk back out the valley with Ghafour in tow.” Then he piled on a bit. He scanned men around the table, pausing to momentarily lock eyes with each of them. “We all agreed on this the other day.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the briefing room. Kolt felt this operation slipping away. He assumed attack formation.

Kolt looked up at the air mission commander, the same special ops pilot that dropped them into Thunder Turtle’s AO, helicopter pilot Bill Smith, a longtime friend of his. “Smitty, can you get us in there or not?”

Smitty was a professional and not easily intimidated. “I’m pretty sure we can,” Smitty said confidently. “At least the first time.”

Kolt looked back at the admiral. He tried to curb the admiral’s uneasiness a bit by pushing off his own assumptions and opinion as fact.

“Sir, we have a Delta operator alone in the Goshai Valley. He believes they may be on to him. Narrowing Ghafour’s location down to five buildings in that shithole village is already a major success.”

It was clear Admiral Mason wasn’t too keen on trading comments with the Delta troop commander. But the Delta commander, Colonel Webber, was back stateside with the unit command sergeant major to chair the commander’s board at Delta’s selection and assessment. To join the ranks, you had to get past these two guys first. Webber would be back in country in a few days, but the mission would be long decided by then, one way or another.

In these circles, which were night-and-day difference from the halls of the Pentagon, Mason knew Kolt had a lot more pad speed than he did. The Delta officer had been running with this crisis-planning tactical stuff for many years now, starting well before 9/11. Mason also realized he had next to zero ground combat experience, much less any commando work on his résumé.

Most important, though, Kolt knew guys like Mason tended to be severely risk averse, and their personal indecision and discomfort with risky commando tactics took the wind out of a lot of sound missions before they were ever launched. Mason had only been in command of JSOC for about five months, but he already had the rep among the Special Missions Units and the Army Rangers.

In contrast, Kolt thrived off the challenge, but hated guys with the rep, realizing more often than not that the key to success was not the obvious actionable intel presented but rather stroking the ego.

Admiral Mason suddenly changed tactics by changing the subject.

“We are late for the twenty-hundred daily battlefield update brief. We’ll take another look after tomorrow evening’s phone call. Your man is prepared to walk back out of the valley the way he came, isn’t he, Major Raynor?” Mason said before turning toward the tent flap and walking out of his makeshift office. It was the admiral’s way of reminding everyone who was in charge.

No shit, sir!
Kolt thought.
Shaft ain’t hanging out for shits and grins.

SIX

Nearly twenty-four hours later, Kolt was rapidly losing that warm and fuzzy feeling. Shaft had missed the commo window. More worrisome for Kolt and his mates was that the iPad 4 was tracked moving northeast up the Goshai Valley floor earlier in the day. The blue icon hugged the east of the river for several miles, jumped to the west side for a half mile or so, then back over to the east side for another eight miles before stopping for most of the day in a smaller village.

Shaft was three hours late by the time the key leaders met again in Admiral Mason’s makeshift office. Again, they huddled over the map Kolt had brought with him.

“Anything new, Major?” Admiral Mason asked.

Kolt shook his head. “He missed his commo check tonight, sir. I’m not sure what’s going on,” Kolt answered, trying to maintain confidence. “Raptor X has his beacon strong, but it moved about fourteen miles down the valley.”

“Hmmm,” Mason mumbled. “Do you think he already initiated the exfil plan and is heading back out of the valley?”

Don’t tell me he is actually holding in a grin about this.

“No chance of that, sir. His exfil route should take him west, not east, and he would have called first. He has at least twenty-four more hours of battery life,” Kolt answered. “Something unexpected must have come up.”

Admiral Mason traced his finger over the map as if in deep thought. Kolt looked at where his finger was pointing, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the valley.

Mason looked up at the group. “Well, let us know the minute you hear anything. I suspect this one is in the bag.”

Kolt could feel the mission slipping away. He wanted Ghafour bad. Ghafour was the key to potential strikes on U.S. soil. It was also the task force’s best chance since Tora Bora of locating Z-man. Everyone turned and left the room without another word, leaving Kolt staring distantly at the map in front of him.

*   *   *

Life in Jalalabad continued at a maddening pace while Shaft risked his life on a solo mission in Pakistan. It wore on Kolt, but he had to keep up appearances for the troop. If he was antsy, that would only amp them up. Most of the operators hit the gym after breakfast. They waited for the weather to warm a bit before taking in some marksmanship practice on the flat ranges not too far from the tents in the afternoon. But Kolt had been on edge ever since Shaft inserted. He had spent the entire day inside the Joint Operations Center staring at either the Raptor X blue icon denoting Shaft’s iPad 4 or the dedicated Predator B and MQ-9 Reaper feeds on two of the half-dozen flat plasma screens that lined the wall of one side of the JOC. If nothing else, Kolt was relieved that the iPad 4 had returned to Ghafour’s village and was pinging almost equidistant between buildings 2 and 3.

Kolt noticed a lot of movement in the village. Nothing looked out of the ordinary for a Friday. Locals tended to their livestock, chopped the spindly sticks they used for firewood, and appeared to meander back and forth from one cluster of houses to the next or to and from the local mosque. Kolt assumed the lack of enemy activity was a result of the cold and snow.

Shaft’s exact location was anyone’s guess, but Kolt hoped to get lucky. Maybe he would pick up on a sign of the Delta operator if he just concentrated harder. Kolt didn’t dare leave the screen. He even enlisted the imagery analysts to keep him stocked with hot coffee and spit cups.

Kolt also stared at the clock. Even more frequently as 1700 hours—the opening of Shaft’s daily commo window—neared. He nervously checked the Thuraya’s battery, resting quietly on the desk in front of him a dozen times.
Ring damn it!

It had been almost thirty hours since he had spoken to Shaft. If he missed another commo window, Kolt feared the mission would certainly be aborted. Admiral Mason would demand it. More so than losing the chance to nab Haji Ghafour, Kolt worried about Shaft. Why hasn’t he called?
C’mon, Shaft, help us help you, will ya?

The
Shaft
ringtone startled a dozing Kolt. He knocked over an old spit cup reaching for his phone. “It’s him,” he said as the intel analysts came running over.

“Shaft.” Kolt spoke first. “Are you OK?’

“My last battery is about out of juice,” Shaft quickly but softly said. “I got tied up with a pregnant woman.”

Kolt’s shoulders slumped with relief. “That’s gr”—

“Listen,” Shaft said, cutting Kolt off. “The PC”—precious cargo—“sleeps in building five. He is tired and there now. There are a lot of guns here. I’ll mark the helicopter landing zone with my infrared pointer.” Shaft was calm and deliberate, but obviously hurried. “How soon until you guys can get here?”

“We’re working on getting launch authority now,” Kolt said, cringing at how pathetic that would sound to Shaft. “I’ll check again as soon as we hang up.”

“What?” Shaft was obviously shocked by Kolt’s last comment. “Don’t tell me I came all the way over here and…” The connection died.

“Shit!” Kolt looked at the LED screen on the phone, then quickly back to his ear.

“Shaft?”

“Hello, hello?” Nothing.

“We’re coming, Shaft. We’re coming,” Kolt said into the phone, as if the line had not gone dead, staring intently at the static blue icon on the computer screen to his front.

*   *   *

It took fifteen minutes for the key leaders to gather in the admiral’s sleeping area. Kolt paced the room looking for something to punch. The lack of urgency was killing him. He resisted the urge to remind folks about the single Delta operator risking his ass while they enjoyed steak and shrimp night at the chow tent.

Not everyone had arrived yet, but Kolt couldn’t wait another second. The others would have to catch up.

He leaned over the large satellite photo. Remembering he left his knife back in the JOC, he reached for a mechanical pencil and turned his head to Admiral Mason. Before he spoke, he detected a little steak sauce on the admiral’s fatigue top and around his bottom lip.

“Admiral, Shaft missed tonight’s commo window by a couple of hours,” he stated with a slight pause. “But he did make it. Seems he had some trouble with a pregnant woman. Not sure what.” Kolt could already see Admiral Mason wasn’t impressed.

Kolt pointed to the satellite photo with the eraser end of the pencil. “Ghafour is in building five tonight. I request authority to launch immediately.”

This caught everyone’s attention in the room. All eyes shifted from Kolt to the admiral.

“How can he be sure of that out of all the buildings out there?” Admiral Mason asked in a condescending tone.

Kolt’s blood started to slowly boil, and it had nothing to do with the admiral’s personal space heater keeping his quarters uncomfortably warm. “It’s why he’s there, sir. He was tasked to find out where HVI number two was located and give us the building number. He’s done that. It’s time to act.”

“Get him on the horn again,” Admiral Mason ordered. “I need him to confirm the location before we execute this thing. We are pushing the envelope on this already. I must be sure before entering Pakistan.”

Kolt’s restraint snapped. “We can’t, sir! His phone battery died while we were talking. This is our shot, right here, right now.”

“I’m not comfortable with what little we have here, Major.”

Kolt knew his mouth was wide open, but he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Sir, are you serious? You have a Delta operator in harm’s way that completed his end of the bargain. He successfully located the targeted personality. He successfully pinpointed his sleeping quarters. He has confirmed he is asleep in building five right now, tonight.” Kolt paused for effect and to mentally gauge how many of Admiral Mason’s buttons he could push before it all blew up in his face.

Mason locked eyes with Kolt. “Major, I hear you, but it’s not actionable enough.”

“Sir, this is probably more actionable than the bin Laden hit was, and the
empty sack
files pulled from Abottabad are pretty clear that Ghafour is more of a threat to the homeland than bin Laden was since September eleventh,” Kolt said, trying to reason with the admiral and subtly remind him of how high the stakes were.