Tier One (Tier One Series Book 1) Read online

  Kemper exhaled through pursed lips as ocean water flooded his BDUs, whisking the heat of battle away from his overtaxed muscles. But that old familiar chill—a sensation he’d come to associate with victory and going home—was off-kilter. It took him a second to identify what was missing.

  His damn left leg was missing.

  Beginning with his left hip, he couldn’t feel the cold, or anything else for that matter, all the way down to his toes.

  His gray tactical vest hissed and began to fill with compressed CO2. Gritting his teeth and swallowing his pride, he let the inflatable vest bite into the skin around his neck and underarms. He felt a tug at his chest, which prompted him to unhook his descender from the drop rope to which he was still tethered. Then, using his right leg, he kicked backward out of the landing area.

  Bobbing like a cork in the waves, he glanced up at the stern of the Darya-ye Noor. A green silhouette dropped toward him from the port side of the ship, and then Pablo was at his side, tugging at his collar.

  “You okay, Senior? You need a tow?”

  “I’m good,” he lied.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Go help Rousch with Spaz.”

  Pablo let go of his collar, and Kemper immediately listed to the left from the weight of his dead leg. No matter how he tried to lean, he couldn’t compensate. He watched Pablo swim over to Spaz, while kicking lamely with his right leg.

  “Am I still bleeding?” Spaz whispered, looking at Kemper. “I don’t wanna get eaten by some big fuckin’ shark.”

  Viewed through night vision goggles, all human skin glows with a disturbing green-gray pallor, but at that moment Spaz looked as ghastly as Kemper had ever seen someone who wasn’t already a corpse. He shook his head. “If only Spider-Man were here, he could shoot a web under your ass and net that great white I saw circling before he bites off your leg.”

  Spaz lifted a gloved hand out of the water and flipped him the bird.

  That was the reassurance Kemper was looking for.

  As soon as Spaz looked away, Kemper shifted his gaze to Rousch for a second opinion.

  “Don’t worry. I got a tourniquet on him,” Rousch said, his voice calm and serious. “He’ll be fine.”

  Kemper nodded, but he could tell from Rousch’s tone that the situation was grim. Every SEAL knows that lacerations don’t clot in cold water. He wondered if the tourniquet would be enough.

  “Starboard team, clear,” said Thiel’s voice in his ear.

  He keyed his mike. “Push out,” he said.

  Two clicks in his ear.

  He kept his eyes on the Darya-ye Noor as they finned away. The ship looked so much larger from this perspective than it had during the helo approach. His mood soured as he realized that the ship wasn’t getting any smaller. Despite the exhausting effort he was putting into finning with one leg, he was barely compensating for the current. Gritting his teeth, he cinched down on his rifle sling, bringing his weapon tight against his side to free up his arms for paddling.

  After a minute of flailing, he felt a tug on his arm.

  “Spaz can’t make it a mile,” Rousch said, cruising along next to him.

  Yeah. Me either, he thought. He grunted in agreement but didn’t look at Rousch. He was falling behind. Even Pablo, who was towing Spaz, was about to pass him by.

  “How much farther?” Rousch asked, forcing the issue.

  Kemper looked again at the ship and contemplated how much more separation they needed before Thiel could blow the package. Detonate too early and he risked a lethal chemical drift on top of their position. He considered ordering the team to mask up, but the thought of trying to retrieve his MOPP gear from his pack suddenly seemed too overwhelming.

  He keyed his mike. “Two, One. How much farther till we can blow the package? The last thing I want is to take a shower in toxic rain, but this is taking too long.”

  “Roger that. I say we open another five hundred yards and blow it,” said Thiel’s voice in his ear.

  “Copy.”

  He looked at Rousch, who was still cruising along beside him.

  “Five hundred, but no more,” Rousch said, his expression grim.

  Kemper nodded.

  After a pause, Thiel came back over the radio. “And Jack, just an FYI, we didn’t find any chemical weapons on the boat.”

  “Then what the hell did you wire up?”

  “Six crates of Sayyad-2 anti-air missiles.”

  “Copy that.” Kemper turned to Rousch. “Surface-to-air missiles? What the fuck?”

  Rousch shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the first time the spooks fed us bad intel about a package. Remember the clusterfuck in Fallujah in ’07?”

  “Yeah, and wish I didn’t.”

  He switched to the air channel and keyed his mike. “Stalker, Blackbeard Actual. Mike Charlie—EXFIL in ten mikes. We have two casualties and we’re all lit up.”

  “Blackbeard, Stalker. Copy.”

  He reached up with his gloved right hand and confirmed his IR strobe was in the ON position. He was still wearing his NVGs, so he swept the horizon until he counted seven blinking lights in the waves.

  He was about to resume paddling when someone grabbed his collar and began tugging him along. He arched his neck and saw it was Rousch. Instead of biting his head off, Kemper sighed and accepted the tow to the pickup point.

  Once Thiel’s team of four had melded with theirs, he checked his GPS and glanced back at the ship.

  “Whatcha think, Jack?” a voice said to his left.

  He turned his head, and now it was Thiel finning alongside of him.

  “Blow it.”

  Thiel gave him a thumbs-up, rolled onto his back, and retrieved a tablet computer in a waterproof case. Kemper watched him tap out the detonation instructions on the keyboard, while somehow managing to keep pace with the group. After the last tap, Thiel averted his eyes.

  Kemper and the rest of the team followed suit.

  Thiel’s charges detonated, and the Darya-ye Noor’s main cargo deck erupted like a volcano. A split second later, a deafening boom hit him like a slap in the face, followed by the unmistakable squeal of steel tearing from steel as the hull of the container ship absorbed the shockwave. Unable to resist, Kemper tipped up his NVGs and looked. Black smoke, lit from below by towering walls of flames, spiraled skyward.

  Another burnt offering to the God of War, compliments of the Tier One SEALs.

  He flipped his NVGs back down into place and keyed his mike on channel three. “Stalker, Blackbeard Actual—set for extraction. Two urgent surgicals will need special attention.”

  He’d phrased the message so the Stalker boys would know that they’d need help getting Spaz and him into the bird. By switching to the CASEVAC plan, they were assured of having advanced medical care aboard, including some Air Force PJs who were on assignment to their joint task force. It also meant command would send two birds, both old school MH-60M Black Hawks instead of the cramped stealth birds they used for INFIL.

  “Blackbeard, Stalker. Flight of two—gotcha in sight. Eight strobes.”

  The Blackbirds were reliable workhorses, but far from stealthy. He heard the helicopters at about the same time he saw their IR strobes winking just above the horizon. He double-clicked twice and then tilted his head back to look at Rousch. “Thanks for the ride, dude.”

  “No problem, Senior,” he said and let go of Kemper’s vest.

  Seconds later, the first bird settled into a hover above them, kicking up sea spray in a forty-foot disc. At the same time, he heard Rousch on channel three, barely audible over the whine of the engines and the rotor wash. “Need litters for both,” Rousch shouted.

  “I don’t need a litter,” Kemper barked, tilting his NVGs off his face to glare at the medic.

  “Yes, you do,” Rousch hollered back. “Don’t be a dumbass. You have a fucking spine injury.”

  Kemper wanted to yell something back in protest, but he held his tongue instead. Rousch was right.
His back was a mess. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up needing a cane. Or worse. What would he do if the injury was bad? Unfixable bad. So bad that he couldn’t be a SEAL anymore. Every operator has a shelf life. Was tonight proof that he’d passed his expiration date, like a package of rotten deli meat? This was a question he’d been mulling over recently, but the pain from this injury was like a judge’s gavel pounding in his mind before the pronouncement of his sentence:

  Senior Chief Jack Kemper, Tier One Navy SEAL operator and twenty-year Naval Special Warfare veteran, is hereby sentenced to retirement, where he will spend the rest of his days as a civilian, telling anyone who will listen that he is still important, while living vicariously through his active-duty teammates as he hobbles his way toward senility and irrelevance as an independent government contractor for hire.

  “You still with me, Senior?” he heard Rousch ask. “Don’t black out on me, bro.”

  Kemper gave Rousch a thumbs-up and looked skyward at the two litters dropping from the hovering helicopter above. He stared at the coffin-shaped metal cages as they swayed and twisted in the turbulence while making their parallel descents. A heartbeat later, two Air Force PJs splashed down into the water. Twenty yards away, the second bird arrived and flared into a matching hover. Lines dropped and the other five SEALs hooked up; within seconds that helicopter had drifted clear. While a PJ helped Rousch maneuver him into the litter, Kemper watched his fellow operators disappear into the night, dangling from ropes like . . .

  He laughed.

  Like fucking Spider-Man.

  CHAPTER 4

  United Nations Office

  Geneva, Switzerland

  March 14, 0900 Local Time

  Masoud Modiri folded his hands in his lap and waited patiently while Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, David Arnon, addressed the committee members. Modiri had listened to Arnon’s arguments so many times over the past six months that he could recite them in his sleep—in English, no less.

  “. . . And I cannot overstress that Iran’s nuclear program—which Mr. Modiri and his government claim exists solely for peaceful purposes—has been a matter of international concern since 2003, when we discovered that Iran had been concealing uranium enrichment and heavy water-related development activities for nearly two decades. This activity is in direct breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory. Since the ill-advised Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was pushed forward by the United States, Mr. Modiri continues to demand that all sanctions be lifted—some of which predate the JCPOA and have been in place since 1979 to address decades of treaty noncompliance. The lifting of sanctions under the terms of the JCPOA has resulted in nothing more than funneling cash into the coffers of a rogue nation. Moreover, by lifting sanctions mere weeks after Iran performed overt missile testing, the council has set a terrible precedent of non-enforcement and emboldened Tehran to continue its weapons-development program. How can this council deem a nation that publicly calls for the destruction of Israel and flagrantly disregards international law to be a benevolent and peaceful state? Let us not forget that Iran lied about the very existence of its weapons program and continues to deny its existence in the face of indisputable proof. Let us not forget its recent missile testing is a breach of the JCPOA, a breach that was dismissed without consequence. So I ask you, what cause does the council have to lift additional sanctions when we have proof that Iran deceived the world about its nuclear weapons program, and continues to deceive the world about fulfilling its obligation to dismantle it?”

  Modiri listened, politely and without interrupting, while Arnon spewed his rhetoric. When the Zionist finally finished speaking, all eyes shifted to him. He smiled, leaned forward in his chair, and said, “What my counterpart from Israel seems to have forgotten is that we have moved beyond talks. Whether Mr. Arnon likes it or not, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has been signed. The government of Iran has agreed to all of the conditions, including providing all requested information on the Gchine mine in Bandar Abbas, on the heavy water-production plant outside Arak, and on the Natanz fuel-enrichment plant. In addition, we have permitted managed access to these facilities by IAEA inspectors. Furthermore, over seven thousand centrifuges have been destroyed or dismantled to date. If this is not cooperation, if this is not trust, then I ask the committee—what is? The longer these unfair sanctions are in place, the more the people of my country suffer. The majority of the frozen assets released by the JCPOA have been used to settle Iranian international debts. Yet despite taking immediate steps to meet our fiscal and trade obligations, Iran is met with renewed distrust. Iran is not the nation of radicals that Ambassador Arnon suspects. Instead, Iranians like myself and the new leadership in Tehran wish only for our nation—and our people—to flourish in peace. Economic stability and independence are the keys to that peace. Freeing us to conduct commerce with other nations not only rebuilds our economy, but also rebuilds relationships with those nations who have publicly committed to investing in Persia, the future of our people, and our mission of peace.”

  Instead of rebutting, the Israeli glanced at the US ambassador, Felicity Long. She nodded at Arnon, but to Modiri’s astonishment, she did not respond in the manner he expected.

  “While I agree with Ambassador Arnon that talk of lifting all sanctions against Iran is premature, I think it is important to recognize that progress has been made since the signing of the JCPOA. For the first time in a decade, UN inspection teams have been permitted open access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Dismantling activities, while behind schedule, are progressing steadily. If Iranian compliance continues at this level, I’m confident that within three to six months, the IAEA Board of Governors will be able to assure the international community that Iran is in full compliance. Should this happen, the United States will support lifting all UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, and the six signatory members of the JCPOA, the United States included, will suspend all economic sanctions not already lifted under the terms of the JCPOA.”

  Modiri stared dumbfounded at the woman, not trusting his ears. He glanced at Arnon. The pulsing veins in the man’s forehead were all the proof he needed. The Jew wasted no time launching into a heated rebuttal, but it didn’t matter. Ambassador Long had just played a perfect concert-pitch A. She had tuned the orchestra, and the musicians were ready to play.

  Music was inevitable.

  He smiled.

  Discussion among the delegates continued for two more hours, but the quality of the dialogue had changed. The timbre, the tempo, the dissonance were different now. The world was ready to embrace a repentant Iran. Reformed, remorseful, and well behaved—this was the Iran the new administration would present to them. And when they were all convinced—all except for the Zionists, of course—then Persia would finally become the true seat of Islamic power in the Middle East.

  In the world.

  This was all part of the plan.

  The recent election of President Hassan Esfahani was a strategic opportunity—one that Modiri and his fellow true believers intended to exploit. All war is strategy, and Iran’s political posturing over the past decade had been the country’s greatest strategic failure. Thanks to the outgoing Ahmadinejad government, Iran’s political capital in the Middle East and Europe was exhausted. Had it not been for Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric and acerbic belligerence, the United States and the Zionists would not have succeeded in rallying the public support needed to enact the crippling economic sanctions that had brought Iran to its knees. A Muslim who cannot control his tongue has no business being the leader of a nation. If only he could convince the Supreme Leader and the mullahs to curb their inflammatory rhetoric as well!

  Ahmadinejad’s shortcomings as a leader had gone beyond his failed diplomacy. He had handed Esfahani the reins to a country in financial ruin, with inflation at 42 percent, millions of young people unemployed, and a GDP held captive south of $500 billion. The wanton corruption and incom
petence that had plagued Ahmadinejad’s government was an affront to Islam and an affront to the people of Persia. Allegiance required full bellies and warm homes, and the last administration had made that all but impossible. Esfahani meant to change all that. His number one priority as president was to reinvigorate the economy and return Iran to solvency. But to do this, his administration had to first convince the UN Security Council and the West to lift all sanctions. And to do that, Esfahani needed a new voice inside the UN.

  Eight months ago, behind closed doors, Esfahani had approached Masoud. He could still feel the great man’s hand on his shoulder. He could still hear the echo of Esfahani’s sanguine voice in his ears:

  “There is much work to be done, and even more work to be undone. I’m counting on you, Masoud, for the latter. That’s why I’ve chosen you to serve as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations under my administration. The countries of the world are an ecosystem. Iran cannot prosper in isolation. Islam cannot spread its roots and blossom in the shade. My predecessor did not understand this. Your predecessor did not, either. Cooperation is a prerequisite for effective subterfuge. We cannot achieve our goals without tapping the economic arteries of the West. This is not shameful. It is not blasphemous. It is reality. Without material sustenance a body withers, becomes weak, and eventually dies. Without economic sustenance, a nation suffers the same fate. A prosperous Iran is a strong Iran.

  “Make no mistake, my friend, what I am asking of you will be difficult. In the course of your assignment, there will be times when you will feel like you are betraying your family, your country, and your God. But Allah sees inside the hearts and minds of his servants, and he knows the truth. Will you do this great thing that I ask of you? If not for me, for Persia and for Allah, praise be his name?”

  His answer had, of course, been yes. An overwhelming, tearful yes. His wife, Fatemeh, had also cried when he told her the good news. Even the dogmatic, militant Kamal, his elder son, had seemed genuinely impressed, his soldier’s eyes glimmering as Masoud recounted Esfahani’s speech over a shared pot of Turkish coffee. No longer was he a spectator of government, watching other men play the world’s most dangerous game from outside a fence. He was the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations—plugged into the highest levels of world government. He understood Kamal’s anger and his thirst to do battle for Allah. It was his dream that one day such violence would not be needed—that the world could live in peace under Allah, as promised by the prophets. Those same prophets had predicted that blood would have to be shed to achieve such a world, but perhaps they were now on a path beyond such violence. Perhaps even Kamal would be able to live in peace.