“Problem, Matt.” Laura had barely stuck her head into Mitchell’s office. He knew something was wrong because she always knocked before opening his door. It was like an unwritten law for her, and for her to break it now, even under these circumstances, something must be really haywire.
“Report.” Mitchell dropped what he was doing to give her his full attention.
“You know that we don’t usually keep in contact with the other squads, right?” Mitchell nodded, urging her to continue. “Three other teams were hit at almost the exact same time as we were. Same M.O., same results.”
Mitchell paled. He stood up slowly as the information sunk in. Out of five teams that covered the world, only one remained untouched? “Holy shit,” he whispered. He turned to look at Laura. “Which team is still kicking?” Mitchell knew a lot of the operators personally, and he couldn’t choose any one team to root for to have survived this coordinated attack.
“Team Five. The Brazilians got the same kind of report of a large cell of vampires in a southern area, except their scout couldn’t verify anything. They’re going back now to look to see if he missed something that was supposed to be there to bait the trap—”
“Which would make him inept,” Mitchell finished for her. “What of our boys with the Brits?” Matt’s eyes couldn’t hide his concern.
“No, they’re all safe. But you know the Brits have three squads with Team One. They lost eight men when one of their squads was hit. I’ve sent word to send our boys home,” she said. “Whoever coordinated this attack may not have baited their trap good enough for the Brazilian scout to catch it.”
“Or maybe they didn’t want to take out all of the squads…for whatever reason,” Mitchell added.
“To what purpose?” Laura asked, puzzled.
“Think about it, Laura. If you have a group like ours, small, tight-knit, everybody pretty much knows everybody else, and you take out four of the five, and you leave that fifth team totally unharmed, it could cast a shadow of suspicion on that fifth team.”
“How so, sir?”
“Like they’re in cahoots with the monsters.”
“Surely you don’t think the Brazilians would team up with the monsters, Matt. I’ve known Pablo and his team since you brought me on here and—” Laura began to argue, but Mitchell cut her off again.
“No, I’m not saying that is the case at all. I’m saying that the monsters might be trying to make it look like that.” Mitchell sighed and reached for the scotch again. “All I’m saying is, to the Europeans, it might not look so good that the SA team got off without a scratch. We might have to keep our eyes and ears open for a bit.”
Laura nodded, thinking through his thought processes.
“Meanwhile, start reviewing active duty personnel files and get the trainers and detailers geared up for work. Let’s get ‘em with doc for the enhancement protocols and their inoculations. I want you to look at SEALs and Green Berets first.” Laura shot him a questioning glance. “I’ve learned from personal experience that those two groups make the easiest transition to the squad. Just get me the best candidates in here. Tomorrow!”
“Yes, sir!” She turned and was out the door before he could add any other demands.
Mitchell sat at his desk and considered the ramifications of this attack. Whoever was behind this knew their tactics. They knew what it would take to get squads from all four of those teams out at the exact same time, and had something strong enough and fast enough to take out and destroy armed operators in broad daylight. Their previous intel had said vampires were in the area, and the scouts had confirmed evidence of vampire attacks. Mitchell hand-picked his scouts so he knew his men were trustworthy. If the evidence was faked, then it was a damned convincing fake.
But vampires that could attack in daylight? Not unless they wore lead-lined clothes and sunscreen with an SPF of, oh, about 10,000. So, what does that leave? Zombies are slow moving and they don’t leave a heat signature, and it would take a horde of literally thousands to overtake a fully armed squad. Werewolves? They’re night creatures as well, and so far, no squad had reported evidence of werewolf activity in those areas. Besides, the next full moon was two weeks off.
Whatever this new attacker was, they needed to start coordinating with the other teams to ensure that this never happened again. Losing a squad member was horrible. Losing a whole squad was a fucking tragedy. But losing four squads from five different teams? In one night? That is totally unacceptable.
Elsewhere, across the world…
The heat was unbearable. The wind just made it worse, blowing sand into places that sand was never meant to be. Insects in the desert were never your friend. For them, it’s eat or be eaten. Same thing goes for reptiles. If they weren’t venomous, they had some form of defense or attack that made them very unpleasant and not good bedfellows. The nights are cold, the days are sweltering, and even the brushy cover that provided the shade from the unrelenting sun barely allowed movement for the two man sniper team sent to this insurgent camp buried in the shallow valley below.
The mission: assassinate one terrorist leader. Cut the head from the snake and allow the insurgents to feel the terror of knowing that they, too, can be stung in the same manner in which they sting others. In other words, a taste of their own medicine.
“I’ve tasted this shit before,” Lamb muttered softly.
“When’s that?”
“Yesterday.” He spat the desert sand out of his mouth. “And the day before that. And the day before that.”
“And the day before that.” Jacobs added. “I think I’ve heard this bitch before.”
“Nothing like sand to make your gum taste good.”
“Yeah, nice and crunchy. That’s why you don’t chew it with your mouth open, moron.” Jacobs grinned at him, his face crusting as he smiled, the dirt lines around his eyes making his Asian features look even more exotic.
“Hand me the water before I become jerky.” Lamb sipped the lukewarm water wishing he had something cold and alcoholic. Four days in the desert takes its toll on everybody but this mission sucked worse than the others. Being a sniper team lets you travel the world, take you to ALL the fun places, meet new and exciting people…and kill them.
“I’ve got motion at ten o’clock,” Jacobs barely spoke.
Lamb shifted the reticle of his scope towards the ten o’clock position and saw two people moving between barrels in the compound below. From their perch on a hill overlooking the compound below, they had a good view of everything in plain sight, but there was still a lot of the camp that was blocked from view. The heat of the day kept most of the camp’s occupants inside, and at night, their female entertainment meant that few wandered around then either.
“Tell me again how lucky we are to get tagged for this mission,” Lamb muttered to Jacobs.
“Oh, we’re lucky all right. In fact, if we were any luckier, I’d buy a damned lotto ticket.”
Lamb adjusted his scope to magnify higher, bringing the men’s faces in clearer. “It’s not him.”
Jacobs sighed audibly. Four days of sweating our balls off in this heat, under cover, eaten alive by sand fleas, eating dehydrated food, sipping piss warm water and for what? To take down ONE guy? “Personally, I think we should just call in an air strike and napalm the place. That would guarantee his ass was fried.”
“Boss man wants a positive ID on this turd. He wants to know for sure that the name on the toe tag matches the occupant. He doesn’t like matching dental records,” Lamb explained.
“We suffer so the forensic coroner doesn’t have to earn his check? That’s rich.”
“Movement,” Lamb whispered.
“Is it him?” Jacobs asked as he slipped closer forward, bringing his spotting scope up and scanning.
“Not sure yet, but maybe.” Lamb adjusted the scope again, zooming in on the man’s face. Yes! Finally!
“Bingo! We got him!” Lamb whispered.
“Then take him out and let’s get back to some type of civility. I need a shower as bad as you do.”
“I plan to but he’s moving.” Lamb watched the man talk with another of his cohorts, then stomp off toward a small outbuilding. “Looks like he’s going to the head.”
Lamb adjusted for range, windage, and elevation as Jacobs read them off to him. Level. Steady. Breathe. Hold. Both men studied the target, waiting for the pink mist that would have once been the man’s head, but he quickly opened the door and stepped inside.
“I got a good look at the innards of the shitter. Think I can make a good estimate of where he is.” Lamb grinned at Jacobs.
“Leave it to you to kill a man while he takes a dump,” Jacobs muttered. “One thing’s for sure. Nobody will notice the smell if he doesn’t come out after a couple of days.”
“The suppressor on that fifty will still be heard. Want a little diversion?” Jacobs asked.
“Go give ‘em an atta-boy and fire a few out of that AK you’ve been dragging around.”
Jacobs grabbed a small robe to toss on and pulled on his shumagh turban. With the dirt encrusted on his face and his three weeks of beard growth, he shouldn’t be recognized as anything other than a random goat herder from this distance. He crawled out from their cover and made his way about eighty yards down from where Lamb was set up for the kill shot.
Approaching the edge of the sheer drop, he waved his arms and shouted in Arabic, “Good hunting, brothers! Death to the infidels! Allahu akbar!” and fired his AK-47 into the air. The recoil from the .50 caliber was definitely felt, but the noise was much quieter since the sound suppressor took the majority of noise out of the picture. From the shallow valley bellow, a few armed men waved back and returned Jacobs greeting.
Lamb had focused his shot on the center of the latrine door. The round splintered the wood and left a jagged hole, but it appeared that nobody noticed the shot. Lamb waited to see if the target would stagger out of the shitter wounded or pissed off that somebody had shot at him. Nothing near the latrine moved. Lamb adjusted the scope on his rifle and zeroed in at the bottom of the door. Blood was flowing out from under the door at an alarming rate.
Jacobs approached the makeshift cover and scooted in next to Lamb. “Anything?”
“Bottom of the door.”
Jacobs verified dark arterial blood mixed with bits of debris. Far too much blood to have been a mere wounding. “Confirmed. We’re out of here.”
Both men quickly scooted back from the edge, grabbed their gear, and hauled ass away from there. Three clicks from the camp they had a small military SCOUT vehicle camouflaged and waiting to take them further from what would surely be a camp crawling with very pissed off bad guys just waiting to cut the nuts off of whoever had pissed in their Post Toasties once they found the body of their leader.
Three hours and four dozen kidney jarring bumps later the two men disembarked and trudged into their own camp. “There was a couple of bumps back there I think you missed. Wanna go back and hit ‘em again?” Lamb asked, pushing Jacobs with his rucksack.
“Nah. I’ll hit ‘em twice next time. Wouldn’t want ya to think I was going soft on ya or anything,” he chuckled. “Shower or debrief first?”
Lamb raised his eyebrows and gave Jacobs a ‘duh’ stare. “I’ve been microwaving in the desert for four days and shot across sixty clicks of the driest litter box God ever created. You tell me.”
“Catch you in twenty then. I’ll check in with the LT first,” Jacobs said, then tossed him his go-bag.
As Jacobs entered the headquarters tent, his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He pulled his sunglasses off and scanned the interior. A young Navy lieutenant raised his head and met his gaze, a smile playing across his face. Crossing the room, the man met him with a hardy arm grasp.
“Damned good to see ya again, Jake! I was starting to worry.”
“Me, too, LT. I hate silent ops, but we got the bastard,” Jacobs replied.
He had to admit that, although Lieutenant Andrews was fairly young, he held himself like a much older and more experienced officer. The LT, as his men called him, was an Academy Man, football player, and Navy SEAL who now commanded the elite team; but he was still one of the guys. He drank with them, played cards with them, went shooting with them, chased women with them, and treated them equally. Commission or not, he fraternized with his men as if they were brothers…because they were. He bled with his men the same as any other spec op warrior, and yet he would take all the blame if somehow an op went south. And for that, his men held even more respect for him. The big blonde man with blue eyes stood out here in the Middle East, but so did most other Americans. As the LT was fond of saying, ‘We’re not here to win their hearts and minds, we’re here to win a war. Otherwise they’d send the friggin’ Boy Scouts.’
“Where’s Lamb?” Andrews asked, glancing around.
“Showers, sir. He stunk to high heaven. I felt it was a necessary precaution prior to debriefing.”
Andrews smiled. “Just tell me you got the bastard and that’s all I’ll need for my report.”
“One shot, one kill, sir. Positive ID,” Jacobs replied. “Shot him through the latrine door.”
“Good enough for me, Jake. I’ll write it up, shoot ya a copy in an e-mail.” He clapped the man on the back. “Now go get some R&R. You and Lamb both. You got a special op coming up.”
Jacobs face fell. “Sir? Already? We just got back off a four day in the melt…”
The LT didn’t look happy. “I know, Jake. This one is from Pentagon Special. I don’t even know what it’s about, but it isn’t here. You’re flying out of here tomorrow at 0600 hours.”
Jacobs was confused and he obviously didn’t like being away from his comrades in arms. “What about the team, sir? What will they do without us as backup?”
“The detailer is sending replacements to cover for you fellas until you return,” Andrews answered flatly. Jacobs could tell by his tone that he wasn’t happy. Their well-oiled machine was about to have some monkey wrenches tossed into the gears.
“Sir, do we know the duration of this op?”
“May be permanent, Jake.” Andrews paused. He was obviously upset but trying not to show it. “Maybe you could break the news to Lamb for me? I don’t think I can do this twice.” Jacobs remembered the times that the LT and Lamb had covered each other’s asses in the thick, the friendship shared, the bond formed just being team mates and he understood completely. It was like losing a brother.
“Are we being kicked out of the Teams, sir?” he had to ask.
“What? Good God, no!” Andrews replied. “You boys’ records are exemplary! You’re the best I got.” The LT shuffled, seemed a bit uncomfortable, then he sighed, “Hell, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think somebody else was trying to recruit you boys out from under me. Maybe CIA or some shit. But to be completely honest, Jake, I just don’t know what’s going on. I’ve made inquiries up and down the chain of command, but I get blocked at every level. I can’t get any answers.”
“I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” Jacobs said, scratching at his chin in thought.
“When you do, let me know what the hell is going on, wouldja? I hate being left in the dark when it comes to my boys.” Andrews’ eyes bore into him. His Southern drawl kept slipping out when he spoke of his men. It was how his men knew they were close to him. Whenever he spoke of his family in Alabama, his accent would come slipping back, and before anyone could truly point to it, the man was speaking ‘fluent redneck’.
“You got it, LT.” Jacobs snapped a crisp salute. He spun a quick about-face and marched out of the headquarters tent and double-timed it back to the tent he shared with Lamb.
Lamb was standing in front of his locker inspecting what few clean uniforms he had left, a towel wrapped around his waist when Jacobs came into the tent. “I got news from the LT!”
“Yeah? Wazzat?” Lamb asked without looking up.
“I’ll tell ya about after I wash the grit out of my ass.”
Lamb followed Jake to the showers. “What’s the news? You can’t hold out on me, bro.”
Jake tossed his towel over the edge of the shower door. “Another op. Wheels up at 0600 tomorrow.”
“What?” Lamb was aghast. He turned on Jacobs. “What do you mean another op? We just got back off four days in the microwave!”
“Don’t blow your top at me, brother. It’s from DC, not the LT. And he doesn’t know any more than I just told you. He tried pulling in what few favors he had to find out. We’re all in the dark on this one. Hell, with our luck, we’re going from this hellhole to the friggin’ Antarctic!” With that he turned back and hit the shower valve letting the cool water flow over him.
“Fuck!” Lamb threw a boot across the tent and knocked over his shave kit. “Shit!”
“Throwing a hissy-fit won’t do any good,” Jacobs’ voice called from further out.
“Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on.”
“Hothead!” Jacobs retorted.
Thirty minutes later, as both men lay on their cots, they contemplated the ramifications of their new orders. Both men had exemplary careers. Lamb had come from the East Coast originally, but being an Army brat and having no real place to call home, he joined the Navy to piss off his old man. The only thing that redeemed him in his old man’s eyes was when he became a Navy SEAL. The old man had been an Airborne Ranger and had spent the majority of his time barking orders both at work and at home. Lamb had been raised by his mother to be respectful not only of his father’s position, but of his temperament. But teenage boys tend to rebel and rebel he did. In spades. And when that fateful day came, Lamb was on the receiving end of the beating of his life. For a brief moment he actually thought he would hold his own until it became painfully obvious that the old man was holding back, taunting the younger Lamb into fighting harder, to prove himself to be worthy of the name.
“You may be a Lamb, boy, but you’ll never be a Lamb led to slaughter!” his father said as he backhanded him across the face. “I’ll make a man out of you if I have to beat you to death.” And he nearly did. Had his mother not gotten between them, he might nearly have paid for his pride with his life. The old man was many things, but smart enough to know when to quit wasn’t one of them.
Thankfully, one thing Sgt. Major Lamb would never do was raise a hand to a woman. And when Mrs. Lamb stepped between father and son, the beating stopped. She helped her son to his room and nursed his broken body as best she could. The next morning, Ronald Lamb was gone. No note, no goodbye, no ‘kiss my ass’, not even a thank you for his mom. He just packed a change of clothes into a small duffel and left. When the bank had opened the next morning, Ronald cleaned out his accounts and left town. It was three years later when Mrs. Lamb received her first letter from her only son, telling her that he’d joined the Navy and had just graduated BUDs. Her son was a newly minted SEAL. He was requesting permission to return home for Thanksgiving. It truly was a heartfelt reunion. And the first time in three years that his father hadn’t felt that his son hadn’t run away, but to something. Manhood.
“You reckon we’ll get stateside?” Lamb asked.
“Beats the dog shit outta me, brother. Like I said, we could end up in Antarctica. Or shoot, even Australia for all I know,” Jacobs replied.
“Oh, wouldn’t that be the shit? Australia! Koala bears and kangaroos and shit. And what are those sticks you throw in the air and they come back to you?” Lamb asked.
“What? You mean a boomerang?” Jacobs shot him a sideways look, wondering if he was serious.
“Yeah, that’s the thing. And those funky ass tubes those little pygmies blow in to make that weird ass noise.”
“Okay, moron, your brain has had too much exposure to the sun.” Jacobs stood up and stretched.
“Asshole, I’m not Australian, and it’s not like I ever played with one,” Lamb shot back.
“You don’t have to be an Aussie to know what a boomerang is, and they aren’t pygmies in Australia!” Jacobs accused.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!” Jacobs tried not to think of leaving the team behind. “I can’t wait to get stateside and crawl inside the biggest, coldest beer I can find.”
“Not me, pal. I haven’t had a drink since we got here and my system is cleaned out. I’m giving it up for good. I’m sick of the hangovers and bumming money from ya.”
We’ll see how long this one lasts, buddy. You got more demons than Lucifer himself, pal. Jacobs lay back down on his cot. Although the shower had really helped to cool him off, the heat was still there, and he knew it was going to be rough trying to sleep tonight. Especially not knowing what tomorrow might bring.