Prologue
Date: February 3, 2011
Time: 02:14:32 UTC
Location: CLASSIFIED
Operation: Down Strike
The night was quiet. No wind. Only a sliver of the moon with a few stray clouds drifting through the sky above to obscure the stars. A slight glow to the west marked where the closest civilization was. Before them sat nothing but dessert.
Tobias Casey rolled his wrist slightly to get a look at the timepiece there. According to their intel, the convoy would be coming through in fifteen minutes. They’d gotten into position sooner than could have been anticipated, everything going in their favor for a change. In other words, it was all going to go straight to hell in a handbasket.
“Talk to me, Herc. What do you see?”
“Sand, sand, and you’ll never guess, more sand. I’ve got nothing on the scope, Rogue.”
“Whip, anything on your side?”
“Negative.”
“Cherry, talk to me.”
“Movement in the distance. Can’t quite make out what it is. Over six hundred yards out behind a dune.”
“I can confirm that, Rogue,” Ripper said through the com. “Can’t make out anything specific, only movement.”
“Copy that.” Blowing out a breath, Tobias, otherwise known as Rogue, frowned at his watch. Convoy was supposedly eight minutes out now. “Keep an eye on that movement, Cherry. Ripper keep an eye on her sector for anything else. No surprises.”
He got acknowledgments from them both. Tobias expected nothing less from his highly-trained team. He’d pushed them to become the best and they were. There was no one he’d rather be out in the middle of nowhere with but these five men and women.
Herc, Aaron Heinrich, was their sniper. He was in the top five shooters currently working in the Rangers. The man also had serious hand to hand combat skills, and was rather scary good with a blade. He was two hundred-sixty pounds of pure muscle and mean as hell.
Whip, Rainer Yates, was their tech geek but could hold his own in a firefight. The man’s skills with a computer were fucking unreal. He’d ended up getting arrested at seventeen for hacking into the NSA’s mainframe. Apparently, he’d been looking for the Colonel’s secret recipe and figured if anyone had access, it was them. The judge he’d ended up with hadn’t been amused. But he had given Rainer a choice, jail, or the military. Since Rainer had been four days out from his eighteenth birthday, it was a viable option to join up and the one Rainer had taken, not wanting to get charged as an adult for his snooping.
Scout, Landon Price, was a world class tracker. His grandfather on his mother’s side had been Comanche. The summers spent out on the man’s horse ranch had given Landon a greater appreciation for Mother Nature. Not only had the man taught Landon to track, but also to survive off the land in every climate there was. All valuable things Landon had brought with him to the team.
Ripper, Winston Furlan, was their communication and language expert. The guy knew an absurd number of languages. A benefit wherever they might be in the world. He was also, oddly enough, the quietest of them all. He spoke when necessary and only what was required.
Then there was Cherry, Cherilyn Tremblay. The only female in their group. She was a tough one, small in stature but unbelievably vicious. Cherilyn could often go places they as men could not. She could also talk to women in countries where they couldn’t, often finding out information that might otherwise be missed. The woman was also a smartass. Not on the job, but every second in between. And the mouth on her. How she’d never had it washed out by soap he couldn’t begin to imagine.
Last, there was himself to round out the six-man (and woman) team. Tobias Casey, known as Rogue. He was the team commander, the guy that had to make the tough calls about when to send a teammate in or to pull back. Tobias was a decisive man, once he made a decision, nothing could change his mind. According to Cherry, he was a reject from a long dead and thankfully forgotten time in human evolution.
Individually they all had something to offer, but throw them into a team and they were practically unstoppable. It had taken Tobias a long time to get the team he wanted with military politics such as they were. But it had been worth it all in the end. He had a crew that trusted every other member with their lives and knew that if one went down they’d all be there to pick them back up.
“I have a vehicle approaching from the south. Correction, three vehicles. Hummer in the lead with a large transport vehicle in the middle and a SUV trailing. Too far out for a body count.” Herc’s words brought him fully back to the present.
Tobias turned his head and brought the binoculars to his eyes. Working the controls, he had the convoy in sight a moment later. “Copy that, I see them.” Zooming in further he could almost make out shapes in the lead vehicle. They were still a way out and until they got closer they wouldn’t be able to verify it was the convoy they were to stop.
“We have someone coming in from the west,” Ripper said.
Swinging around it took him a second to find the other vehicles. They were identical to the ones coming from the south. Son of a mother fucking bitch!
Scout was the next one to ramp up his growing headache. “Uh, boss. You’re not going to like this but we have a third set coming in from the southeast. Same vehicles.”
“It’s a shell game,” Cherry muttered. “They figure if anyone is watching that by the time they figure out which vehicle is carrying the actual cargo it’ll be too late. Plus, you have to figure they have extra men riding in the other trucks. This feels like a setup, Rogue.”
Yeah, it did to him, too. “Whip, figure out a way to identify the actual transport truck.”
“We calling this in?” Herc asked.
He should but that felt wrong to him. If this was a setup than it could well have come from the chain of command. Tobias had been hearing rumors, nothing concrete, but enough to have him concerned about his team’s safety. “No, we’re not calling in shit until we get this done. Then we’re going back to base, having a drink, and talking about your future. Now get your heads in the game and find me the right truck.”