DELETED Prologue
Northern Afghanistan
Leighton stared through the scope of his Schmidt and Bender, watching a few civilians step out of their homes, starting the day. Up at this elevation, his balls were freezing, but this mission should be easy enough.
In and out. That was the job. Extract the high-value target, then get back to base just in time for Thanksgiving. The food would still be shitty, but for any holiday, it was ten percent less shitty than usual and he wouldn’t be stuck eating an MRE. The turkey would be dry and the mashed potatoes cold, but he’d take it.
“Got any teriyaki left?” asked Hitch, his team member next to him up on the ridge for their part of this mission.
“Yep.” He didn’t move from his position, slightly shifting his long-range rifle as a man wearing a Peshawari cap and other traditional garb stepped onto a well-worn path headed toward the small building on the outskirts of the village. The building where their HVT was supposed to be hiding.
“So, you gonna share?”
“Nope. You can have some Cajun jerky though.” His friend Mary Grace sent him care packages often, which always included beef jerky, and he shared with the guys.
“Stingy,” Hitch muttered, no heat in his voice.
Leighton just snorted. “You’re greedy.”
“True enough. Man, I’m ready to get back to base.”
Yeah, no shit. Leighton was ready to get back stateside, not just to base. He was tired of…everything here. Just tired. “Looking forward to your near beer?” he asked dryly, his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry. His breath curled in front of him, a wisp of white smoke barely discernible in the air. In another month or two there’d be snow on the ground, all the greenery from this area covered. That was the thing that had surprised him more than anything when he’d first arrived in Afghanistan—how lush and green some areas were down in the valleys. He’d gotten over that surprise years ago, however.
“Fuck.” Hitch let out a muted laugh. “And hell yeah. I’m gonna drink the shit out of mine.”
Leighton didn’t laugh, even though he wanted to. For Thanksgiving or any holiday, they were given “near beers,” bullshit nonalcoholic beers that were piss warm. But it was better than nothing.
“Would you two assholes shut up?” Morris said through their comm line, making both of them snort softly. “I’m getting a fucking hard on thinking about my near beer.”
“Jesus Christ, we’ve been out here too long,” Leighton muttered. “And a Rip It would be better.” Rip Its were just as bad as the near beers. Discount energy drinks that no one back home had ever heard of.
Hitch grunted. “Fine, you can give me yours.”
“Hell no—I see more movement,” Leighton said, going still as he watched two more men he’d never seen before walking down that same well-worn path, heading out of town.
Their HVT was a Taliban leader who’d helped kidnap a physicist and her family—forcing her to work for them and using her family’s lives as bargaining chips. Like a bad goddamn movie, a small group of Taliban from this region had gotten their hands on uranium from Iran. At least that was the intel the CIA had given Leighton and his team.
So here they were on Thanksgiving Day waiting for the affirmative so the assault team on the ground could go in and extract the guy. Alive. Leighton and Hitch were the air-forward controllers for their MARSOC team and, while he didn’t expect much engagement, they were ready to go if necessary.
Once they got the guy back to base, the CIA would take him into custody and do whatever they needed to do to find the physicist’s location. Because while they knew she’d been taken and by whom, no one knew where she and her family were. And no matter how tough or committed someone was to their cause, ninety-five percent of the time, people cracked under torture. It was simply human nature. Whether the intel gleaned from it was good or not was another story. Not his problem though.
“How many?” Morris asked.
“Two men.”
“We’re going in now.” Morris’s voice was clipped.
“We got your six.” Leighton watched as two four-man teams moved out of the nearby forest and approached the building. The building was far enough on the outskirts of the small village that no one would be able to see them.
Quiet predators, they crept toward the building, moving in perfect formation as they spanned out. The sun was just peeking over the nearby mountain, giving Leighton and the rest of them enough light to see movement from the nearby village. Intel said this guy was hiding out here, using a few local contacts to communicate with the outside world, but he was basically alone.
As Morris, the team leader, motioned with his hand, the eight men on the ground got in position at the building entrance.
Morris kicked the door in, rushing in with the others.
Pop. Pop… Pop. Pop. Pop.
Leighton watched as the doorway lit up with gunfire, the flashes one after the other. He listened through the comm as the team faced resistance—and ultimately got what they’d come for.
“Target acquired. Five casualties… There’s a stockpile of weapons here,” Morris said over the comm. “Way more than we expected.”
Five casualties meant the HVT wasn’t alone as they’d been told. Shit. Leighton shifted again as movement to the right caught his eye. “Tangos headed your way. All armed.”
The teams moved out of the house, one man carrying their target. “How many?”
Shouts rose into the morning air as he and Hitch scanned the incoming enemy. “Fifty…maybe sixty. It looks like the whole damn village.” This wasn’t just some random village Farooqi had been staying at. This had to be some kind of base for these guys.
“Engage,” Morris ordered. “Meet at the LZ point.”
Hitch had already started firing on individual targets before Morris had finished talking,
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Shouting over the sound of the team’s fire, Leighton called in the airstrike even as the target building exploded—someone must have tossed a grenade inside to destroy the weapons. This op was too far from base for artillery fire to reach.
As soon as he’d called in the coordinates, Leighton aimed at his first target. A man carrying an AK-47. Gunfire erupted below them as he zeroed in on the guy’s center mass, pulled the trigger. Then racked his weapon again.
Next to him, Hitch did the same.
Thwump. Four feet to his left, dirt kicked up, spraying everywhere.
“Got him,” Hitch said.
Leighton watched the shooter holding the long-range rifle fall, then aimed for the man next to him. Pop. Target down.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Though it felt like an eternity, maybe ten minutes had passed when, in the distance, he could hear the fighter jets coming in hot.
“We’re clear!” Morris shouted over the comm. “Pull back now.”
Pop. Pop. Leighton and Hitch both fired again before crawling backward, weapons in hand. Once they were clear of firing range, they would have to hike half a mile back to the extraction point. Even as they moved back, he saw the explosion before he heard it.
Smoke and rubble shot high into the air, an outward wave of destruction as part of the village disappeared under the force of the five-hundred pounders. If it had been JDAMs being dropped, the entire town would have been leveled.
Boom. Another one slammed into the side of the mountain, missing its target.
That was their cue to get the hell out of dodge. No one was firing on them anymore as the men below them scattered like ants, running for cover.
Weapons in hand, he and Hitch raced south, heading for the LZ point and their waiting helicopter.
It was time to get the hell out of there.
* * *
“Hey, where were you this morning?” Hitch jogged up out of nowhere as he fell in next to Leighton. They were back on base, far from the op they’d gone on yesterday.
“Woke up early, went running.” Instead of joining Hitch for their normal morning workout at the gym, he’d needed some space to clear his head. Running was the only thing that did that.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
Hitch just shrugged, but didn’t say anything. Instead he kept walking with him.
“You going to the chow hall too?” Leighton finally asked.
“Nope. Just following you until you tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been a ghost the last two days.”
Leighton didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to talk about anything. “Just tired, man. Ready to get the hell out of here.” Here as in Afghanistan. He wanted to be stateside and, even if he couldn’t quite voice it yet, he was ready to get out for good. He loved the Marines, but he was done.
“You and me both. So you hear about the HVT offing himself?”
Leighton stilled for only a moment as they stepped inside the chow hall. “No. When did this happen?” They’d just brought the guy in yesterday.
“Dunno. Heard it through the grapevine that someone with the CIA screwed up. Farooqi got an opening and decided to kill himself instead of talk. And…Professor Evans,” Hitch whispered, “has been found dead too. Murdered. Her and the whole family.”
Leighton didn’t respond, just got in line with his friend. He didn’t want to eat, his stomach tightening with the news that their last op had been pointless. Well, not pointless. It was all part of the deal. He knew that. But goddamn, he was tired down to his bones of not making a difference. Maybe he was, but lately it didn’t feel like it.
“Heard you were asking about the BDA. What did they find?” Hitch asked.
Damn, nothing was a secret over here. He’d asked the leader of the Marine unit that had conducted the bomb damage assessment of the targeted village to see what they’d found. “Nothing unexpected. Destroyed weapons and ammunition.” And a lot of dead people. Including children.
One of the pictures he’d seen was seared into his brain. A charred teddy bear with one missing eye. He shook it off, shoved the image away.
He had two months until he got to go home. He needed his head on straight if he wanted to get out of here alive. He couldn’t get so caught up in his own head that he got himself killed. Or worse, got some of his guys killed.
The only thing he was sure of now was that it was almost time to get out, to start a different life. Become a civilian for the first time since he was eighteen.