Tier One (Tier One Series Book 1) Page 7

  “What’s that, Kemp?” said Thiel, glancing over.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just ready to get it on.”

  Thiel held out his fist. Grinning wide, Kemper slammed his knuckles into it.

  They approached MacDill Air Force Base via the main gate at the end of Dale Mabry Highway. The sprawling base occupied the entire southern tip of the South Tampa peninsula. Fueled by the events of 9/11, Central Command had expanded to near-biblical proportions to support the war on terror. As a theater-level unified combatant command, CENTCOM was responsible for the planning and execution of all joint military operations in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. In addition to CENTCOM, thirty-six other major and subordinate tenants called MacDill home. One of these tenants was the US Special Operations Command.

  Like CENTCOM, SOCOM was a unified command, with the mission of overseeing Special Operations warfare for all branches of service. Unknown to the residents of Tampa, and even to the military personnel on base, Kemper and his teammates fell rather loosely under the SOCOM umbrella. They had been known by many code names over the years, but whatever the brass changed their name to, they were the Navy’s elite and secret special warfare team. Along with their Army sister unit, Delta Force, they were designated as “Tier One” Special Forces. The best of the best. The most versatile and lethal counterterrorism weapons the United States had.

  Unlike the rest of the Special Operations community, the Tier One units had the shortest possible chain of command and often received orders directly from the White House. Once tasked, they operated with unprecedented autonomy within their mission parameters. The secrecy around the unit—and often the rumors and false information that circulated—made it easier to do their job, but also much more dangerous. Only one link in the chain separates us from the top dog, Kemper often joked with Thiel. Whadaya think would happen if that link broke?

  At the gate, Pablo gathered up their military IDs and passed them to the Air Force Military Police. The guard stared at each of them, comparing their faces to photographs, and then scanned each ID with a handheld scanner. A second MP walked a complete circle around Pablo’s Jeep, surveying the vehicle. As usual, their long hair and beards prompted closer scrutiny of their credentials and the vehicle. Finally satisfied, the MP waved them through.

  Pablo weaved past the commissary and then followed an access road along the expanse of airfield ramps and runways. They drove past rows of KC-135 aerial refuelers belonging to the 927th Air refueling wing—the only resident flying unit since the F-16 fighters departed years ago. Halfway down the two-mile-long runway, Pablo turned the truck onto a smaller, unlined road, past the sign that read “Authorized Personnel Only. Use of Deadly Force in Effect.” After fifty yards, the road doglegged sharply to the right and then disappeared into a thick grove of brush and mangrove trees. After another hundred yards they were forced to snake among a series of concrete barriers that deliberately slowed approaching vehicles to a crawl. A runaway vehicle at sixty miles an hour was a hell of a weapon. After exiting the serpentine gauntlet, the road opened onto a large blacktop parking lot serving a small brick building. The lot was deserted, except for the desert camo Humvee and its .50-caliber machine gun pointed at the approaching road. Pablo drove them past the Humvee, gave a nod to the unseen occupants, and proceeded to another guard gate. Like MacDill’s main entrance, this portal was equipped with twin hydraulic metal barriers, but it was the unseen surveillance equipment and invisible barriers that made it different. Presently, the massive steel plates were flipped up at forty-five-degree angles, blocking access to the road just beyond.

  Pablo stopped short of the barrier and put the Jeep’s transmission into park.

  “Gents,” said a guard clad in black Nomex, his finger on the trigger guard of his short barrel SOPMOD M4.

  “’Sup, bro?” Pablo said and handed over all four special IDs within their hard plastic cases.

  The guard nodded and scanned the IDs with his handheld scanner, linked to a computer log controlling access to the secret compound.

  “Having a good week?” the guard asked, staring into Pablo’s eyes with a gaze that suggested he couldn’t care less.

  Pablo nodded and gave the programmed response. “About average.”

  This was one of four acceptable responses. Had they answered differently, a dozen armed men would have converged on the vehicle from the woods a few yards away, and life would have gotten infinitely more interesting for everyone.

  The guard’s shoulders relaxed and he flashed Pablo a legitimate smile. “Have a good one, guys,” he said, and waved them through. The steel panels lowered into the ground, and a superfluous wooden arm flipped up, clearing the path for them to enter.

  Kemper smirked at that. It’s the little touches . . .

  The “compound” on the other side was underwhelming—three small one-story brick buildings clustered around a common parking lot. A simple wooden deck, replete with bench seats and an oversize gas grill, spanned the gap between two of the buildings. As far as passing aircraft and satellites were concerned, this little back corner of MacDill held nothing of interest.

  Nothing to see here, folks, nothing at all.

  Above ground, that is.

  Kemper pursed his lips. Today, the parking lot was full, with twice again as many vehicles parked in the weeds along the tree line. This was not just a gathering of the squadron on 0300 alert. This was something big.

  “What the hell?” Thiel said as Pablo found a spot along the tree line. “Last time I saw this many vehicles—”

  Kemper shook his head, cutting him off.

  Not now.

  Their summons had officially taken an ominous turn. Kemper was unsure whether to be nervous or excited. Either something horrible had happened or JSOC was planning something big. He leaped out of the rear seat of the Jeep and hit the ground with a thud. The resulting stinger in his spine recalibrated his mood. He looked again at the full parking lot. Pain be damned—he would tell the docs whatever they had to hear to be sure he was at the front of the pack for whatever the hell this was. No way was he going to watch from the sidelines.

  A black SUV skidded to an angry stop in the grass next to Pablo’s Jeep—Rousch’s ride—and the remaining four members of the team popped out. Eight brooding SEALs converged on the center building and entered through a set of tinted glass doors. Kemper brought up the rear, following Spaz who, in only two weeks, had mastered the operation of his wheelchair as if it were a drift racer. If someone were to offer Kemper a wheelchair ride, he might actually take it, because the dull ache in his back had turned sharp and fiery. The combination of the Jeep’s off-road suspension and Tampa’s shitty roads hadn’t done his spine any favors. If only he’d listened to Munn and stayed on his pain meds instead of tossing the bottle like a macho dumbass.

  Inside, a young Third Class Petty Officer, whom Kemper recognized but whose name he could not remember, sat beside the quarterdeck desk. Beyond him stretched an office floor—government-issue banal—partitioned with lifeless gray cubicles. The four offices along the perimeter were similarly deserted. The doors were shut, the windows dark.

  Odd, Kemper thought. Thirty vehicles outside and up top is a ghost town.

  “Hey, Senior,” the young Petty Officer said. “Captain Thomas said to head directly down to the SCIF. Everyone else is already down there.”

  Kemper nodded, resisting the urge to ask what in the hell was going on. The young support sailor could not answer the question anyway. The kid’s ID, dangling in a plastic case from a lanyard around his neck, sported a green border around his name: EM3 RUSSELL, MICHAEL. Green indicated that Petty Officer Russell held a Top Secret–level clearance. TS access meant something to the rest of the world, but it didn’t buy a ticket to ride in the Tier One carnival.

  Kemper walked to his office and dumped his keys and cell phone into the top desk drawer. He held the drawer open, and the rest of the team followed suit. He shut the drawer and led
the gang to an elevator in the far corner of the building. He swiped his red-bordered ID badge across the wall-mounted card reader beside the elevator. When the light turned green, he pushed the down button, and the elevator doors whisked open.

  He often wondered how far underground the Tier One compound was located. The elevator plunge took six or seven seconds, and this lift was not some slouch commercial rig. One story per second, he figured, which put them at least fifty feet under.

  Probably more.

  The doors slid open, revealing a steel door five paces away, painted green and labeled SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION FACILITY. Flanking the stout green door stood two armed guards dressed in full battle rattle and clutching rifles slung combat-style across their chests.

  These boys weren’t much for small talk.

  All business, Kemper handed the right-hand guard his ID. The guard scanned it with his iPod-size scanner, and the system assigned a digital-entry time stamp. Later, when Kemper left the SCIF, an exit stamp would be logged, thereby giving the system the ability to inventory the status of all persons granted access to what was the most secure space on all of MacDill Air Force Base. The guard rotated the scanner in his hand and offered it to Kemper to image his left thumb and right index finger. The scanner flashed green. His fingerprints were a match. The stone-faced guard entered a rotating code into the keypad beside the green door.

  The door hissed open, and the left-hand guard waved him through.

  Cavernous and serious, the dimly lit SCIF buzzed with all the clandestine self-importance and urgency one would expect from a place where decisions that change the world are routinely made. A star-shaped conference table dominated the center of the room—the six spokes of the star formed by three long tables joined in the middle. And around this polished mahogany Polaris, several clusters of SEALs worked huddled over laptops. Kemper spied the unit’s Chief Staff Officer, Captain Thomas, seated at the opposite side of the table, talking with three men in civilian clothes. And while their clothes screamed Wall Street executive, their chiseled chins and athletic builds suggested they were anything but. Kemper recognized the suit seated to the CSO’s right; he’d run into the guy a few times down range. The name escaped him, but the guy had made a solid first impression in the field. Competent, with balls as big as any team guy. From their prior interactions, Kemper had pegged him for a spook working for the Activity—the secret intelligence unit based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Like wolves, spooks preferred to travel in packs, so maybe the other two guys were also Activity. Feeling Kemper’s gaze, the suit looked up. Recognition flashed in the man’s eyes, and he gave a nod before returning his attention to the discussion at hand.

  Kemper stood with his team and waited until Captain Thomas beckoned him with a wave.

  “What the hell is going on?” Pablo asked.

  “Looks like it’s time to find out,” Kemper said. “Be right back with the gouge.”

  While he headed over, Pablo and the rest of the team smartly stayed put, clearly assuming that a private conversation requiring their Senior Chief was above their pay grades. Kemper scanned a wall of flat-screen monitors, looking for some clue as to why so many Special Warfare assets had been mobilized. Five ninety-six-inch flat-screen displays were tuned to various feeds, including CNN, Fox News, BBC, Al Jazeera, and an eight-way split screen showed camera feeds from the approaches to the compound, the upstairs admin spaces, the elevator, and the green access door. The televisions offered no hints of what had brought both of the Tier One squadrons, a couple of dozen operators from partner agencies, and a pack of spooks to the SCIF on such short notice.

  “How are you doing, Jack?” Captain Thomas said, extending his hand.

  Expecting to find the CSO grim and serious, Kemper had braced himself for bad news. Instead, the Captain’s tone was crisp; his mood eager and infectious.

  “Skipper,” Kemper said with a firm handshake. “What the shit is happening?”

  “Opportunity of a lifetime, we hope,” Thomas said. “I think you know Shane Smith from our friends up north?”

  “That little victory in the Hindu Kush, right?” Kemper said, certain that the spook’s actual name was neither Shane nor Smith.

  “Good memory,” Smith said. “We ran into each other in Ramadi, also.”

  Put a shaggy beard on this guy—and bingo. Memories of the longest eighteen-hour clusterfuck of his life came rushing back. He flashed a broad smile and gripped Smith’s forearm as they shook hands. “That’s right, that’s right. It’s been a while. You were Daniel then, I think.”

  Smith shook his head with a sly grin at the inappropriate comment.

  “I owe you big from that night,” Kemper added.

  “From what I remember, I’d say we’re even.”

  “Now that we’ve established you fellas have a crush on each other,” Thomas said with a shake of the head, “maybe we can get back to work?”

  “Absolutely,” said Kemper. “Whatcha cooking up, Skipper?”

  “Jack, we have a real chance to do something big here, but I’ll need all hands to execute the plan. I know you’re not fully operational, but we could use your help in the N3 shop with mission planning. Shane here will bring you up to speed first, then we’ll reconvene in about fifteen mikes. Solid?”

  “Good to go, Skipper.” He felt his heart sink. “Not fully operational” meant the CSO knew he wasn’t fit to fight. He pushed the self-centered thought aside. Executing the mission took priority. He followed Smith to a breakout room. Smith shut the door behind them and grabbed a chair next to Kemper at the small table. He pushed the room’s silver-colored secure phone to the side to make room for his notebook computer.

  “I’m gonna go fast, Senior. Just the down-and-dirty overview,” the spook began, flipping open his laptop and angling the screen to share the view. “Most of what I’m showing you comes from source data above my pay grade, but I’ve seen the raw intel, and trust me, this is all solid shit.”

  Kemper took Smith’s comment to mean he would not be sharing any of his source data, but that was hardly unusual. Source data was compartmentalized and fiercely protected. In the case of human intelligence (HUMINT), source data might come from an asset whose identity was known by two people in the entire US intelligence apparatus. Some of the team guys hated the fact that they couldn’t validate source data for missions they would be risking their lives on. Thiel, for example, only trusted intel from the Group Ten Special Activity Units, which were staffed by fellow SEALS. In Thiel’s mind, Group Ten source data was pure, and the only intel he was willing to bet his life on, no questions asked. Kemper, on the other hand, had no such hang-ups. He had no desire to pore over raw data. The intelligence community had scores of folks much better suited for that kind of analysis than he was. If the intel was vetted by his Head Shed, then Kemper considered it actionable. His job was to capture, kill, rescue, or destroy whatever target was packaged for his team. Sure, sometimes the intel was wrong, and sometimes that sucked hard for guys like him at the pointy end of the spear, but that was the business he’d chosen. He was a Tier One operator, not a spook.

  “I understand,” Kemper said. “Whatcha got?”

  Smith clicked on a thumbnail, and a satellite image of a compound filled the screen: brown buildings surrounded by brown walls, in a sea of brown land. The bottom edge of the screen showed a sliver of blue surf breaking against a shallow cliff.

  “Definitely Middle East,” Kemper said. “If I had to guess, I’d say this is somewhere in Yemen.”

  “Correct. This particular compound is located southwest of Al Mukalla in southern Yemen. For several years now, it’s functioned essentially as a rest stop for Al Qaeda and other groups moving along the coast and in and out of the country. Shitheads from the Horn of Africa traveling to or from Oman, for example, often stop over here. Lately, we’ve observed points of interest from the other side of the Gulf using this compound to both shed gear and gear up before disappearing into whatever ho
le they choose to hide in.

  “We keep this place off the list of targets for drone strikes and counterterrorism action because it gives us a nice spot to monitor movement, look for activity, and the like. Activity has increased in tandem with the drone tasking because the shitheads think this place is off the grid.”

  Kemper nodded, rubbing his beard. “It looks familiar. I’d swear I’ve seen this place before.”

  “Could be,” Smith said. “These shithole compounds all look the same to me, but this one could have popped up on any number of your prior action briefs. If you were operating in the remote areas farther south and west, this compound could have been the source for a bad-guy QRF. A handful of low levels are in residence at any given time, with the head count surging periodically. But because the compound serves a waypoint, it houses a robust weapons cache at all times.”

  Kemper marveled at how much the spooks knew about every little nook and cranny of the enemy’s operation.

  “The important thing is that, as far as we know, it has never housed anything but low or occasional midlevel operatives.”

  “AQAP?” Kemper asked, referring to Al Qaeda members occupying the Arabian Peninsula.

  “Almost exclusively,” Smith said. “In total, we figure there’s six hundred-plus AQAP fighters in Yemen at any given time, plus maybe half that number on the other side of Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia.”

  “That’s a lot of shitheads.” Kemper wasn’t sure where Smith was going with this. The Special Warfare community had been asking for permission to strike the low-level bad guys in Yemen for years but always met a stonewall. “Why are you showing me this? Please tell me this means we finally get to go after these guys in their breeding grounds.”

  “Activity in Yemen has always been limited to high-value targets only,” Smith said. “And unfortunately that has not changed.”

  Kemper shook his head. A bullshit policy. Why limit yourself to attacking the head of the snake, when savaging the body could yield equally effective results? A dead snake is a dead snake. To his surprise, the right corner of the spook’s mouth curled into a crooked grin.