He hid his rifle by covering it on the back seat with a poncho somebody left in the cab. His heart was pounding as the truck pulled away from the MOUT area. Real-world missions were the reason all SEALs trained with such intensity. He was pumped!

  Stuttgart, Germany

  Petty Officer First class, Boone Kilpatrick shook his head, his overly long blond curls reflecting the bright sunlight. These idiots can’t even draw a straight line, he thought. Boone was temporarily assigned to the naval special warfare unit in Stuttgart as a reconnaissance instructor.

  His home command, SEAL Team Two in Little Creek, Virginia, had been asked to provide a man with experience in reconnaissance and surveillance to give a class to the bored SEALs, who had been drinking and skiing too much in their winter wonderland. Someone, he didn’t know who, thought it made sense to send him. Lucky him.

  Boone’s job, for the time being anyway, was to refresh the SEALs in the fine art of target sketching. An old-school skill that the SEAL teams realized they needed to recover after several years in the sandbox using nothing but advanced technology. Most of the men in the room hadn’t drawn a recon sketch since BUD/S, and it showed.

  Boone wasn’t the greatest artist himself. But he could draw a straight line. He also could write neatly and legibly. A critical skill if you’re making maps and charts for someone else to use. The five SEALs in the classroom seemed incapable of executing either requirement.

  “This exercise is simple, gentlemen,” he began the lecture for a second time. “All you have to do is duplicate the drawing I’ve placed on the whiteboard. By duplicating the drawing neatly enough for someone else to read, you’re halfway to becoming real recon artists.”

  Boone didn’t believe a word of it. As if to punctuate the end of his sentence, one of the SEALs in the back dropped his number two pencil, snapping off the sharpened end. His head bobbed and his body jerked around as he struggled to escape the confines of the small student desk in pursuit of the writing implement. He began to use the pencil, then sheepishly rose out of his chair, walked to the wall mounted sharpener, and began to make noise.

  This is a waste of time, Boone thought. None of these guys want to be a point man, let alone part of a surveillance team. What I have here is two M-240B machine gunners, two SAW gunners, and a demolition guy. The sixth student, a skinny ensign, left to go to the bathroom two hours ago.

  Why are they even in this class? Why did they send me over here? Boone walked to the front of the classroom and checked his watch for the hundredth time. The digital watch face mocked him; he still had two hours to go.

  Boone made a decision. “All right, guys, we only have five more minutes left before we’re through for the day. All that I ask is that you finish this drawing so we can move on to the rest of the curriculum tomorrow.”

  The five-minute warning seemed to perk the class up. The SEALs frantically worked to finish the drawing assignment now that they knew the end was so close at hand. Boone was sure he’d take some shit for ending the session almost two hours ahead of schedule, but he was through wasting his time.

  The door to the classroom opened a crack, the rusty hinges complaining loudly. Boone heard the odd sound and looked at the source. Did the ensign finally finish his business?

  One of the administrative naval personnel for the unit was standing in the doorway holding a note. He beckoned to Boone to come over to the door. Boone glanced at the class. They were all scribbling away, ignoring him and the man at the door.

  He walked over and grabbed the piece of paper handed to him. It was a memo from the unit’s operations officer. Boone raised his eyebrows. The note said he was being ordered to Panama. Panama? SEAL Team Two was responsible for Europe and the western Mediterranean. Panama was SEAL Team Four’s area of operations.

  “Hey, Boone!” one of the denser SAW gunners shouted out. “Can we get out of here now?” Boone nodded without looking up from the note. He stepped aside absentmindedly as his students bolted for the door. Why Panama?

  Boone walked back to the desk and collected his things. He left the classroom and walked rapidly down the passageway toward the operations office. This has to be a mistake, but it gave him an excuse for ending early. Boone smiled.

  FARC Base Camp – Colombia

  Auger was suffocating. The knotted T-shirt used to gag him was pulled so tightly up against his nose he could barely draw a breath. To make things worse, one of the guerillas was sitting on his chest. After two days of slogging it through the jungle, the guerillas had linked up with yet a third group.

  The newcomers numbered around nine shooters, and they looked different somehow, maybe younger. Men in their prime, younger than his current escorts, but older than the first group to lead him and the general into the jungle. Maybe these were the frontline fighters, he mused.

  It was near sunset, and the combined guerilla force was assembled on the trail, huddled up and listening to instructions growled out by a man with a pockmarked face and a dark scar across his neck. The man on Auger’s chest stood up, and he was able to breathe at last. He was yanked to his feet, and once off the ground, he could see the terrain stretched out ahead of him.

  A low ridge ran perpendicular to the trail about twenty to thirty yards away on his right. For now, he was content to catch his breath and focus on the scarred man. From what little he could tell, he was watching a mission brief of some sort. There was a sense of urgency in the man’s tone. Were they about to engage with someone? If so, was it the home team? His heart beat a little faster. Would these assholes kill their captives if overwhelmed, or would they let them go?

  He took another look around. The ridge was high ground. Anyone following this trail would be exposed and at a disadvantage should a team hit them from above. The man with the scar looked at Auger and barked an order in a mix of Spanish and a local dialect.

  The two guerillas closest to him responded by grabbing him by the shoulders and, part dragging and part shoving, moved him forward and upward to the ridgeline. Once there, the guard shoved him violently to the ground again. He heard the others moving into position all along the ridge.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Auger didn’t have to wait long before his new best friend came over to sit on his chest again. The men were whispering instructions now. Auger assumed this meant the intended victims were close, real close. It only took three minutes before everything calmed down and only the sounds of the jungle reached Auger’s ears; the ambush was set.

  The minutes crawled by. His legs and hands went numb, and the hard points of his shoulder blades were on fire from being pressed into the small stones and rocks on the jungle floor. The ground under and around him seemed to crawl and move with a life of its own.

  Auger’s shirt and pants were now home to a wide array of insects that burned, bit, or just wiggled. It was enough to drive him insane if he focused on the sensations.

  Eventually, he fell asleep, for how long he couldn’t determine. When he did wake up, he didn’t feel refreshed. Waking up only allowed his mind to register the pain. Auger knew something was up when he felt the man sitting on him nervously shift his weight and slide to one side, going prone.

  Auger heard the classic sounds of warriors getting ready for a fight. Bolts sliding forward slowly, whispering, slight adjustments in body position. Up and down the firing line, the guerillas were getting ready for a fight.

  What a bunch of amateurs, he thought. Who sits for almost an hour quietly waiting to spring an ambush, then when the moment arrives, puts a round in their chamber? He decided that based on his professional observation, two or three SEALs could kick all their asses.

  Auger spent the next few minutes detailing in his mind’s eye how he would’ve set up the ambush. Claymore anti-personnel mines on the flanks and one back behind the team for rear security. Add in machine guns, forty-millimeter grenade launchers, and the world’s best riflemen, and all you needed was a target.

  A SEAL ambush was a real thing of beauty. These idiots, on the other hand, were in a rough skirmish line, no more organized than students on a firing line at the training range. Pathetic.

  His fantasy was interrupted by the sound of crunching boots coming down the trail. Heavy feet, men tired and at the end of a long walk. They couldn’t be US troops. Conventional American infantry would never patrol in such a sloppy manner, especially in a combat environment.

  He could see the outcome as clear as if the fight was already over. Whoever they were, the FARC guerillas saw them as a threat, Colombian soldiers most likely. The tired men slogging their way up the trail were as good as dead.

  The narrow jungle trail made a tight hairpin turn to the left, angling away from their position on the ridge like a check mark. The ambush position on the ridge was contoured the same way, placing the victims below them in a well-defined kill zone, with shooters on both flanks of the soldiers. The guerillas waited until the soldiers were bent around the trail, and then they opened fire.

  A shattering blast of light and rapid firing signaled the initiation of the ambush. The guerilla’s fire was sporadic. They couldn’t see well, and their training didn’t include learning the principle of sustained firepower.

  Each man picked his target and fired in his own manner at that target. A few targets were being hit repeatedly, and others were, for the time being, untouched. Everybody was firing on full automatic, without discipline. Auger knew they were burning up ammo at an incredible rate.

  He knew what came next. The firing began to die down, not by command, but gradually, determined by each rifleman. Then there were lulls in the shooting, ten seconds of quiet before more shots were fired, then silence again. Auger guessed the dummies executing the ambush were probably reloading at the same time.

  The man next to Auger was spraying bullets in earnest, expending his magazine in less than ten seconds, then taking over a minute to reload. The man’s hot brass casings sprinkled down on Auger. A few made their way down the collar of his shirt.

  Everybody was firing and people were shouting in Spanish, but nothing seemed to change one way or the other for several minutes. Auger couldn’t distinguish the fire of the soldiers from that of the guerillas.

  He just assumed that as long as the guerillas kept firing there must be somebody firing back down below on the trail. He was happy to be on the reverse slope of the ridge where he was relatively safe.

  Auger suddenly felt a pang of guilt. For the last half a day, his only thoughts were about himself. Except for a fleeting glimpse during the first turnover between groups, Auger didn’t have a clue if General Alexander was dead or alive. Was he still with the group fighting on this ridge? He strained but couldn’t see anything while on his back. There were only fighters on either side.

  Auger was considering his options. He was gagged, so shouting the general’s name was out of the question. His handler wasn’t mounted on his chest for the time being, but sitting up was an invitation to a bullet in the head, fired by the good guys down below.

  He realized in frustration that he would have to wait. If the guerillas truly believed he was the general, the ruse may have backfired. They could have dumped his body off on the side of the trail long ago.

  Just then the pace of firing abruptly stopped. He heard a few grenades detonate, but he was sure the guerillas had won the day. Now it was time to clean up the kill zone and count bodies.

  The ambush had taken forever, a full ten minutes by Auger’s calculation. A sloppy mess executed by a bunch of third-rate amateurs. BUD/S students could do a better job. A few more shots rang out and then silence.

  A flurry of excited commands was shouted out in Spanish, generating frantic movement all along the ridge. It looked to Auger like the fighters were being sent to sweep down and through the kill zone in a haphazard manner, every man running down and into the trail on his own.

  Almost immediately, a short flurry of automatic weapons fire exploded from a few yards on the other side of the trail. The guerillas were the winners. They were sloppy and ill-trained. They’d chosen what looked at first glance to be an excellent site, but there was more to selecting a good ambush location.

  Auger wasn’t sure, but the firing seemed to indicate that there were survivors on the far side of the trail. He guessed there was some sort of terrain feature, camouflaged by the jungle, that provided shelter from the bullets rained down onto the trail by the FARC guerrillas.

  He rolled onto his belly and eased forward until he could see the trail and the cluster of confused fighters. They’d just discovered that the opposite side of the trail slanted away steeply from the path. This feature had apparently provided an escape for many of the soldiers.

  With the lower ridge formed by the trail protecting them, the soldiers were free to roll down the steep decline, and once on flat ground, either run or wait for the attackers to cease fire and sweep the trail. By exposing themselves, the ambushers became the ambushees. “Boy, these guys are all FARC’d up,” he mumbled. Then he laughed at his little joke. It had been a long time since he’d found anything to laugh about; it felt good.

  It looked like one guerilla found this out the hard way. He was lying dead on the trail. The veteran fighters in the guerilla group yelled for everyone to hit the ground. Then the wiser men among the prone bodies casually rolled six or seven grenades over the ridge and waited. A few more grenades and a few shots later, it was all over; this time for real.

  A few minutes later, two men half crawled and half walked up to the ridge and closed the distance to where Auger lay. He had a fleeting thought that he’d probably blown the best chance he’d ever get to escape, but he still didn’t know where the general was. The two men reached down and jerked Auger to his feet.

  His legs were half asleep, so he promptly collapsed under his own weight. He was heavier than his handlers, so the three of them came crashing down. Auger pitched over as he fell and hit the ground with his face. The guerilla who fell on top of him cursed and struggled to stand up. Once on his feet, he began kicking Auger viciously.

  The SEAL knew the drill. He curled up in the fetal position as tight as he could, hoping the beating would tire the small Colombian before he did any real damage. He covered his head and waited. The brutal attack ended, and the young fighter shouted for Auger to stand up.

  When Auger failed to react, the man struck him in the shoulder with the butt end of his rifle. Auger inched closer to the man’s feet, making it hard for the guerilla to use his gun as a club again. It worked. The second man said something and the attacks stopped.

  Auger’s legs were screaming in pain as the blood rushed back into the tissue. He was lifted to his feet a second time and was greeted by a new face. This new handler was much stronger than the first two men. He had little problem guiding and controlling Auger through the dense jungle, over the ridge and down to the trail below, all with one hand gripping his shoulder. Once they reached the trail, Auger was allowed to sit down Indian style.

  There were bodies all over the place, and the stench of death and gunpowder mixed with the jungle humidity to create a terrible cocktail. He tried to breathe through his nose in short intakes and exhalations. Then he noticed a large man with gray hair lying behind him.

  General Alexander! The general was breathing, so he was alive. The general sneaked a quick look at the navy SEAL. His face was covered with dried blood and dirt, but his smile spoke volumes. Auger nodded. They were both still in the game!

  SEAL Team Three–Coronado, California

  Lieutenant Jared Stone, platoon commander of FOXTROT Platoon, SEAL Team Three, reported to his commanding officer as ordered. He’d been pushing paperwork for hours, having just finished a training trip at the SEAL’s Niland desert training facility. His platoon was the team’s designated hostage rescue platoon, and he loved every minute of it.

  Jared’s guys were the unit responsible for short notice emergencies associated with maritime platforms in distress. Their geographic area of responsibility was the Pacific theater of operations. FOXTROT consisted of two troops of eight men each.

  Stone’s men were adept at taking down ships and oilrigs and rarely trained for anything else other than weapons proficiency, the very purpose of their recent trip to Niland.

  Jared wasn’t sure why he’d been called to the captain’s office. First, he assumed that one of his men had gotten into trouble. He thought that theory through and realized if that was the case, he’d be in front of the operations officer or the XO, not the skipper.

  That meant he was in some kind of trouble personally, and it must be serious. The CO didn’t waste time on trivial issues. He knocked on the door frame and waited. Captain O’Connor looked up absentmindedly then gestured for Stone to enter.

  “Morning, captain.” Jared decided to act cool and calm.

  “Morning, Jared. Have a seat.” Captain O’Connor indicated a plush couch against the wall. As the lieutenant sat down, he couldn’t help but see the old man’s professional history splashed on every wall in the room: plaques, flags, paddles, strange carvings, and other mementos of all kinds.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Afghanistan, Iraq, memories of the teams, and personal experiences Captain O’Connor cherished. Someday, Jared thought, I’ll have all this, a history worth putting on display. Someday I might even be captain of my own SEAL team.

  The captain was ignoring Jared. A minute or two passed until O’Connor finished up a short stack of paperwork. Next to him on the large desk was another stack twice as high.

  On second thought, Jared observed, maybe he didn’t want this job. Jared hated paperwork of any kind. The captain finally stroked a final signature, leaned back in his chair, and looked over at Jared.

  “Son, your platoon is being placed on a high state of alert. This is a real world, national command authority directive. You will be going to San Clemente Island where you will be placed in isolation. I don’t know much about this whole thing, but I do know your platoon has been designated as a support asset for a highly classified rescue operation. This should be right up your alley.”

 

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