Sons of Valor Read online

  If, if, if . . .

  “Whaddya think, Spence?” Chunk asked.

  Spence flipped up his NVGs. “I say we still go for it, boss. If these assholes have a command-and-control compound in these caves for drone ops, God knows what they could hit next. They could launch those Chinese Hellfires into the compound at A-bad or J-bad. Hell, even Kabul is potentially within their operating range. We gotta shut this site down.”

  Chunk nodded and gave Spence a thumbs-up, then watched him disappear to his right on the other side of the path. Chunk made the call. “Mother—Jackal One. Jackal is inbound to Dewar’s.”

  “Roger that, Jackal One,” came Yi’s tense voice.

  They fanned out and moved silently, Spence driving his team forward with urgency. Chunk scanned his sector in the modified V formation he led with Riker, Georgie, Morales, and Trip. The minutes ticked by, the only sound: his heavy breathing amplified through the mike into his Peltor headset.

  “Jackal, this is Mother. The second truck is making better time than we thought. They’ve closed a third of the distance up the mountain.”

  Chunk didn’t reply immediately. The second truck was the one with more fighters and the heavy weapons.

  Shit . . .

  “Jackal, we recommend you abort and proceed directly to Maker’s Mark. We can have exfil there in eight mikes.” It was Watts’s voice now. He wondered where Bowman fell on the question. In general, the skipper would defer to the team for a final decision, unless he had a strong opinion.

  “Mother—Jackal One. Negative. We are one minute from Dewar’s. We will proceed as briefed and exfil at Maker’s Mark in fifteen to twenty mikes. Have Stalker flight move to a standby position north of Dewar’s and close in.”

  Stalker flight was three MH-60s for exfil, supported by two “little birds” or MH-6 light attack helicopters. Just like during the training op, these little birds had FRIES rope systems and could be used for rapid extraction if Chunk and his guys were really in the shit. Though small, the MH-6s were the Special Operations’ variant of the MD 500E with FLIR capability, two .50-caliber guns, two 7.62 Miniguns, two 70-mm rocket pods, and two Hellfire missiles. With all that firepower, they could rain down hell on earth if need be, and he felt a helluva lot more comfortable knowing he’d have them just minutes off station if needed.

  “Roger, Jackal,” came the belated reply from Watts.

  She sounded nervous, but that was to be expected. Yi was a proficient radio talker and had supported ops from a TOC during her time at the white side Teams. Watts, however, had no previous significant experience in the field or running things from a TOC. She’d studied the after actions from some of the old Tier One missions, but that was a far cry from being in the hot seat and coordinating in real time. Nonetheless, she’d taken the initiative and told him she wanted to learn. So he’d instructed Yi to take her underwing and share the comms tonight. Watts’s brief with the Vice President showed she was good under pressure, but this would be a different kind of pressure test.

  Chunk personally found sitting inside the TOC, watching brothers that he knew and cared about, a thousand times more stressful than fast roping into a hot LZ. For a SEAL, being powerless to pick up a rifle and join the fight created a special kind of angst . . . and that angst was amplified in the TOC.

  “Jackal Two—position?” he said.

  Spence had his team offset forty-five degrees from where Chunk’s team would be in moments. Chunk could feel his men pulling in tight again as they approached the edge of the woods just above the mouth to the cave. The opening was larger than he expected. Anecdotal intelligence held that this cave was mammoth, extending deep into the mountain, with multiple antechambers linked by interconnecting passages. Watts had not specified the source of the information, but Chunk assumed it was from OGA assets who lived in the village below.

  “Jackal Two—in position,” Spence reported.

  “Five is moving to overwatch,” Saw added immediately after.

  Hearing that Saw was getting into position as their sniper eased Chunk’s nerves as he scanned through the trees, assessing his approach to the cave entrance. From his current angle, he decided that Spence’s element would have a slightly better approach, being below him and another twenty yards east.

  “Two, One—we’ll execute Bravo,” he said, announcing to everyone which assault plan he wanted to use.

  They’d briefed two plans to hit the cave. Plan Alpha involved moving into position on either side of the cave mouth and breaching as they would a building, with two fire teams rushing in and sweeping the cave. Alpha used the element of surprise to increase the likelihood of taking crows off the target alive for interrogation and to reduce the time the Taliban had to wipe valuable information off phones and computers. But he now had to assume that the element of surprise had already been lost. No way would he risk rushing his guys into a death trap to be mowed down by a half dozen waiting machine guns. So he went with the backup plan—Bravo—which was to fire rocket-

  propelled grenades, then CS gas, into the cave. The riot gas would flush the surviving Taliban outside and into the rifle sights of the waiting SEALs. It would be a turkey shoot. After that they could enter the cave with NVGs and gas masks to sweep for salvageable electronics.

  “Jackal Two, roger,” Spence said, acknowledging for his squad.

  A moment later Saw checked in. “Jackal Five is now God.”

  They had briefed a position on a slight rise east of the target, where Saw could have cover in a garden of boulders and only light vegetation interfered with his line to the entrance of the cave. He wouldn’t have the height advantage he liked, but he would have a nice line on fighters exiting the cave. And a short move south put him in position to have the high ground on any fighters climbing from below, should that become an issue.

  “Mother, SITREP on Stalker?” Chunk asked.

  “Stalker is on station. Available in less than two minutes. Tangos ascending from the valley are still pressing, but forty-five minutes away. We have no thermals except Jackal outside the cave, but no eyes inside the cave,” Yi said.

  This, of course, made sense as their overflight Predator drone’s thermal imager would be unable to penetrate hundreds of feet of rock to see thermals inside the cave. The Taliban knew this, which was one of the reasons they continued to use the caves.

  That’s what a thousand years of adapting to enemy after enemy does, I suppose.

  Chunk pulled out a compact mask to protect his face from the CS gas, hung it from his neck, then said a simple prayer—the same words he’d prayed before every mission since he’d become a SEAL.

  Lord, protect my guys. And by your grace, let us win.

  “Jackal Two—go.”

  Chunk heard a whump whump, then saw the smoke trail of the grenades disappearing into the cave entrance. He closed his eyes as twin explosions belched light, heat, and sulfur gas from the cave’s maw, and the air reverberated with a horrific echo. A moment later he heard two more whumps as Spence’s guys fired riot gas into the hole. Through his NVGs, he saw three green targeting dots crisscross over the entrance, hunting for targets as smoke billowed out and rolled upward into the night.

  He tightened his grip on his MK18 assault rifle, blinked hard, and steadied his green dot, ready to put it onto the forehead of the first asshole fleeing the cave. Any second, Taliban fighters would come pouring out, driven by the intolerable CS gas.

  Any second . . .

  The silent counter in his head kept clicking.

  Fifteen seconds passed.

  Then thirty.

  “One, Two—might be a dry hole. Should we move in on masks?” Spence called.

  But Chunk’s spidey sense told him it wasn’t a dry hole. Something isn’t right.

  “Give it thirty more seconds. If nothing, we breach,” he said.

  A double click in his ear was Spence’s acknowledgment.

  Chunk felt Riker’s questioning gaze on him, but he didn’t look over, concentrating instead on keeping his green dot at the floating ready.

  CHAPTER 18

  tactical operations center

  joint special operations task force compound

  joint base jalalabad

  afghanistan

  0420 local time

  Whitney paced back and forth behind Yi, who was sitting at the primary workstation.

  Like Yi, she was dressed in coyote-colored tactical cargo pants, a slim-fitting button-front shirt, and Oakley boots. Unlike the operators that rocked this look, she felt like a military wife who’d reluctantly been dragged by her husband to the 5.11 store and walked out looking like Three-Gun Katie and sporting a frown of regret. On the plus side, at least nobody would call her “Heels” dressed like this.

  Yi sat rigid at her terminal, swiping between views from the drone and the satellite feeds, seemingly unsatisfied with both. Whitney looked at the monitor mounted on the plywood wall, streaming the same imagery in split-view simulcast. Three feet away Bowman stood like a sentinel, his muscular forearms crossing his chest, his right foot tapping a battle march cadence on the cement floor of the converted hangar.

  She’d watched videos of Special Forces hits just like this dozens of times—glowing, ghostlike silhouettes creeping over otherworldly terrain, white muzzle flares creating a strobe-effect while gunfire was exchanged, and bright green spray as falling bodies gave up their warm contents to the earth. It was chilling to watch.

  But not like this.

  Because tonight it was personal. Her convoy-drone-strike theory was the reason they were here. She had brazenly recommended this op to Vice Pre
sident Jarvis, and he’d taken her assessment to President Warner and lobbied personally to make this hit in the Hindu Kush happen. Just thinking about that made her head spin. In just one month, she’d gone from being a rank-and-file NCTC analyst whose insights and recommendations were simply fed into the machine and digested without noticeable effect, to someone whose opinion single-handedly impacted policy. She felt the weight of that squarely on her shoulders.

  She’d studied Operation Crusader ad nauseam. She’d watched the classified satellite video of the explosion that wiped out two platoons of SEALs as they hit a compound they believed to be hosting what amounted to a jihadi VIP summit. The analysts had gotten the summit part right; they’d missed the part about the suicide pact and the trap. Gooseflesh rose on the back of her neck. This op had the same sort of vibe. Something wasn’t right . . . Had she led the new Tier One into trap of the same design that had wiped out its predecessor? Was Operation Jackal going to be her Operation Crusader?

  Did I miss something, and if so, what?

  Every one of those ghosts creeping over the rocks was a colleague. And despite not knowing these men well, she was shocked to realize that she could already recognize most of them by their roles and silhouettes. The thick, stout one just west and above the cave entrance, that was Chunk. The figure beside him was Riker, because Riker was always right beside his friend and boss. Saw was the one to the east by sixty or seventy yards, because he was the sniper. The lean silhouette at the north edge of the cluster of three SEALs, that was Spence. And the SEAL on his left, who was constantly tweaking his position, was Georgie. Jamey Edwards was on Spence’s right shoulder, probably cracking jokes despite the danger of the situation.

  “What the hell is going on?” Yi asked, irritated. “Why is no one coming out of the cave?”

  “Dry hole,” Bowman grumbled.

  “Hold on,” Whitney said, new movement catching her eye on the zoomed-out satellite feed. “We’ve got activity to the north.”

  One hundred yards northwest of the cave mouth, yellow-

  orange silhouettes began materializing out of thin air, like enemy avatars generated from the mist to join the melee on a video game. She counted twelve—make that fifteen—men streaming out of the mountainside, moving in a line to the south. It was definitely not a dry hole. A Taliban presence like this could only mean one thing—she’d been right.

  “And movement south,” Yi gasped as the same thing began to happen seventy yards southwest of where Chunk’s team was dug in.

  “Oh, shit,” Watts cried and ripped Yi’s headset right off the other woman’s head.

  “It’s a trap. It’s an ambush. You have enemy fighters!” Whitney said in a panic, her voice cracking. “Fifteen shooters north of you and twelve more seventy yards southwest. They’re converging on your position. Get the hell out of there, Chunk.”

  “Shit! That cave has multiple entrances,” Bowman hollered. “Yi, get me the team leader for the Ranger QRF right fucking now. And get those little birds moving in to provide fire support.”

  “Yes, sir,” Yi said, flipping open her satellite phone.

  “Jackal One, Mother—do you copy?” Whitney said, this time remembering her call sign.

  “Mother, Jack—” came Chunk’s reply, but the rest was drowned out by an explosion and the sound of gunfire.

  She looked up at the big screen where streaks of white fire zigzagged in all directions across the green-gray background. Silhouettes of SEALs and Taliban moved in complex vectors as each repositioned to engage the other. A cold bead of sweat trickled down from her armpit and ran over her ribs as she handed the headset back to Yi.

  “Oh my God, they’re going to die,” someone said, then she realized it had been her.

  CHAPTER 19

  checkpoint dewar’s

  hindu kush mountain range

  afghanistan

  And just like that, with one cosmic flip of the coin, everything went to shit.

  Chunk had been here before. Times like this were what separated a leader from a shooter. In the chaos, the team would cue off his response. If he kept a cool head, so would they. If he didn’t let the chaos of battle distract him, neither would they. If he ate the shit biscuit the universe had just served them and kept on going, so would they. The only way to turn the tables and regain control was through sheer force of will and Tier One–level determination.

  “Contact, right! Contact, right!” Riker shouted in Chunk’s ear.

  This was followed by two three-round bursts of rifle fire. Chunk spun left and pedaled backward, following his Senior Chief as they descended off the rocky rise, toward the “courtyard” by the cave entrance.

  “Twelve fighters south and spreading out west,” came Yi’s voice. “Less than sixty yards. You have fifteen more moving quickly from the north. They shifted east and will come down the hill right on top of you.”

  Enemy rounds exploded the boulder beside Chunk’s head. Rock shards peppered his right cheek as he sighted and returned fire on the muzzle flash across the way. After squeezing off a three-round burst, he ducked low and found barely functional cover behind a rocky rise, his back now to the cave mouth.

  If fighters come out of that cave mouth, we’re fucked, he realized.

  “God, One—how are your lines?” Chunk asked, working the problem.

  “One, God—I got no line yet on the southern assaulters pressing you.”

  “How about the cave mouth?”

  “Good lines.”

  “Put a few rounds to keep heads down and make them think twice,” Chunk answered. “Just in case.”

  Because the Tali were pouring out the other exits to escape the CS gas, odds were the cave was empty, but a little insurance would be nice so his guys could focus on the enemy in front of them. He heard three throaty pops from Saw’s sniper rifle, firing deadly 7.62 rounds into the cave.

  “Three rounds down the throat,” Saw came back. “No movement.”

  “Check,” Chunk said and turned to Riker, who was firing his assault rifle, the Mk 48 machine gun still strapped to his back. “Let’s put the heavy gun to work. I’ll cover you.”

  “Roger,” Riker called to him, firing from a crouch. “Cover.”

  Chunk popped up and fired several blind bursts into the woods, then targeted the area where he’d last seen enemy muzzle flashes, aware that Georgie was firing from beside him and Trip was still in the fight at the overhang above the cave. He felt, rather than saw, Riker sprint across the courtyard, unstrapping the Mk 48 as he ran.

  “Shit,” Yi said. “Looks like three more fighters emerging from the south. That’s fifteen south, and the fifteen north will be on you in seconds.”

  “Hang in there, Jackal,” came the cool baritone voice of Captain Bowman. “Stalker is inbound to clear the woods in less than two mikes.”

  “Roger, Mother. Jackal, pop IR now. Pop lights for Stalker,” Chunk ordered his team.

  Chunk fired again, reached up and snapped on the IR strobe on top of his helmet, then clicked the MBITR radio on his chest two clicks left and switched to vox, letting his voice now activate the boom mike.

  “Stalker flight—Jackal One.”

  “Jackal, Stalker Three—we’re on target in forty seconds. Stalker Four in trail,” the helo pilot answered, rotors thrumming the air in the background.

  “Roger, Stalker. We’re being overrun. Popping lights. Anything without a strobe is a shithead. We have fifteen tangos between us and Maker’s Mark, and another fifteen engaging us from the south.”

  “Hurrying,” came Stalker’s deadly serious voice in his ear.

  “Contact left!” someone called.

  A fresh burst of enemy fire ricocheted all around him as Taliban fighters from the north came into range and joined the fight. The controlled staccato cracks of the SEALs’ 5.56 rounds were drowned out by a wave of throatier, chaotic AK-47 fire from the new arrivals.