Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
ELEVEN YEARS AGO
T he explosion came out of nowhere. Through the chaos and firefight that ensued, Julian received verification that Patriot was dead on the other side of the convoy. The others tried to get Julian to leave, secure the package while they held the enemy off, but the odds were not on their side. Whether he stayed or went, failure was inevitable. The package would fall into enemy hands. It was just a matter of when.
Mission failure.
Eight soldiers—now seven—did not stand a chance against the several dozen surrounding them. They were Delta Force. They were the best of the best. They served with honor and without equal. They were the Army’s quiet professionals.
But they were still human.
When the second explosion came, Julian was thrown nearly twenty feet. He landed in the sweltering sand but his wrist felt too light. As darkness took him, Julian’s mind frantically thought, The package! Where is the package?
* * *
Julian’s head throbbed as his eyes blinked open. He tried to speak, but his mouth was so dry that he only coughed up phlegm and sand.
“Solo? Come back to us, brother!”
His ears picked up the words around the high pitched ringing but not the individual speaker. “Sit-rep,” he forced out. His head swam and he felt his cheek press against something hard yet malleable.
“We’re in a cave of some sort. Based on the blast marks, they used dynamite to create this place. Can you stand? You’re putting a lot of pressure on your wrists and bleeding heavily.”
Julian hadn’t realized he wasn’t standing. He hadn’t placed much thought into his legs at all. Firming his jaw, Julian deliberately tried to wiggle his toes. He felt them scrape against something hard, which told him his boots were missing.
Pain lanced the back of his head when he tried to order his legs to move. Fuck, what the hell was wrong with him?
“Solo! Stay with us, man! You need to stay conscious!”
It took everything inside him to force the pain back. Something metal and strong touched his fingertips. After a small investigation later, Julian realized he could use that metal to pull himself up. He wrapped his hands around the links and shifted his feet more firmly beneath him.
The effort cost him. Everything that had been in his stomach suddenly came up. His head swam more, but he forced himself to stay conscious.
Spitting out the last of the bile, Julian grumbled, “Report!”
The speaker said, “We were ambushed. Do you remember?”
The package… Julian felt around but his hands only moved but so far. Where was the package? “Package?”
“It was separated from you in the firefight. They have it.”
Julian didn’t need to ask who they were. The Taliban. Sunni Islamic nationalists who were radicals on a good day. And the very people Julian and his team were ordered to keep the package away from.
Fuck.
Julian blinked, still unable to open his lids all the way. His eyes felt like he was wearing sandpaper contacts. Everything hurt, from his nose and ears to his eyes, mouth, tongue, throat… Like he’d taken a shower in sand instead of water.
Recalling the metal he’d used to lift himself, he used his finger tips to investigate more. The links were easily identifiable as thick pieces of chain. He realized then that his hands were above his head. His cheek was resting on his right bicep, like a makeshift pillow.
Julian managed to open his eyes—and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were indeed inside a dimly lit cave. A string of lightbulbs ran around the outline of the misshapen ceiling, illuminating the different hues of brown and sepia surrounding them. Scorch marks like blackened grill marks hinted that the structure was manmade.
The rough grainy feel, like brick, on his back told Julian that he was not wearing a shirt. His arms were bound above his head by thick manacles attached to the ceiling by chains. He could hear running water but saw no visible stream. There were no windows or doors, no sunlight to indicate the passing of time. A break in the wall created a horseshoe-shaped room rather than a circular one. He could not see what lay beyond the darkened gap.
To his right, hanging in the same fashion as Julian, was St. Nick. He had a black eye, split lip, and a chunk of his right ear was missing. Cajun was next; he was still unconscious, all of his body weight hanging from his bleeding wrists. Farmboy was bleeding from his shoulder, but Julian couldn’t see the shape of the wound to know the cause. The former CIA operative was trying to loosen the bolts of his chains from the ceiling to no avail. Sparkles was trying to contort himself in such a way that he was putting a tremendous amount of pressure on his shoulder, as if he was trying to pop it back into place.
Little Tyke, the twenty-two year old that had been on their team for less than a week, was trying in vain to stretch his foot far enough to reach the center of the room. In the middle lay Patriot’s still form. Half of his head was missing, taken in the initial explosion, but he was still recognizable. Unlike the rest of them that were stripped down to the skivvies, Patriot was still in his uniform and boots.
Next to him was Lamb Chop. The man was not bound or restrained in any way, because he honestly didn’t have to be. The gaping hole in his chest guaranteed that he would not be any threat. Lamb Chop’s eyes stared up at the ceiling sightlessly as he took gasping, irregular breaths. His hand kept opening and closing at his side, like he was trying to reach for someone or something. His blood-splattered skin was deathly pale.
Even if Little Tyke could reach him, it would be pointless. The soldier had minutes left, if that.
St. Nick was the one who’d spoken to Julian, coaxing him back to consciousness. He was staring at Julian through his one good eye. “You with us, Solo?”
Julian nodded carefully, not wanting to invoke pain or sickness again. “How long?”
“Few hours,” St. Nick replied. “One tried to kill Lamb Chop, but the others wanted him to…” St. Nick’s voice trailed off. “Tyke says that they’re speaking a very specific dialect but he can get a good amount and glean the rest.” St. Nick’s expression and voice turned somber. “They want the code, Boss.”
Fuck. Julian closed his eyes, dread filling his soul. Best case scenario, the terrorists trigger the package’s failsafe and destroy the contents. They would kill Julian and his team in anger of their failure, likely making their executions public and humiliating, but it would be quick. Worst case… If they knew about the failsafe then they would know the only way to get inside would be with the code.
The code only Julian knew.
Their route to Mazar-i-Sharīf was classified, or it was supposed to be. Yet they’d been ambushed with such precision that it could have only been a coordinated attack. That led Julian to believe that someone had told the Taliban about the package, which meant there was a high possibility that they also knew about the failsafe.
“No, Lamb Chop! Hold on! I’m almost there! Just hold on!”
Little Tyke’s desperate plea rang through the cave, but the echoes did not give his words strength. A glance at Lamb Chop confirmed what Julian had already known. His brother in all but blood was gone.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Julian gave himself a moment to grieve before squaring his resolve. “Tyke!” he shouted. The harshness of his voice startled the young man enough that he froze in his attempts to reach his teammate. He looked up at Julian with tear-filled eyes from across the cave. “Save your strength. He’s gone. You can’t help him now.”
Little Tyke winced. The kid went through the same training they all had, but this was still his first mission out. He was so fucking young. What he needed now was a bit of harshness, not coddling him like the toddler they’d named him. He needed to understand the reality of what they were facing.
The fear in Little Tyke’s eyes was real because he knew the unlikelihood that he would ever see his family again. The kid had a fiancée back home.
Fuck. An image of Lamb Chop’s little girl popped into Julian’s head. That precious girl had just lost her father and didn’t even know it.
Two of their brothers were down. There was a high possibility that their mission had been betrayed, doomed to fail before they’d even been given their orders. Cajun’s prediction that the mission would go tits up had now become a reality.
Unless they figured out a way to escape, they were all going to die. Rescue would not come because the package was not supposed to exist. Commander Arik’s private warning to Julian rang through his head. Neither man knew what was in the package, only that they’d been told it could not, under any circumstances, fall into enemy hands. The repercussions of such a fate could mean mass American casualties.
It was why a stealth mission had been chosen for transportation. Several decoys had been launched the days prior to Julian’s Delta Team’s departure. No one was supposed to know.
Yet they’d known.
Whatever was inside the package needed to be protected at all costs.
Julian looked around the manmade room. From St. Nick to Cajun, who was still unconscious, to Farmboy, Sparkles, and finally Little Tyke. His brothers. The six of them would face whatever it was that was coming together. Because the knowledge of how to open the package might be in Julian’s head, but it still would not save their lives.
Unless they escaped, they were dead either way.
* * *
It was another several hours before five men came storming into the cave. The six Deltas had done everything in their power to escape from their shackles, but the manacles would not budge. Sparkles’ dislocated shoulder limited him. Cajun had finally woken up. Like Julian, he was obviously concussed and was suffering the aftereffects.
The terrorists were all carrying AK-47 rifles, though two also had handguns in their waistbands. One had a bandolier filled with grenades across his chest. The Kevlar vests they were wearing were likely taken from Julian and his brothers. All five had extremely long beards and black turbans on their heads. The harshness of their living conditions aged them, but Julian would guess that none were older than thirty.
Julian was trained in Farsi but the dialect they were speaking was different. Possibly Luri. He picked up maybe one word out of every dozen.
Little Tyke, though, was following along enough to speak to them. Two of the men started towards Little Tyke. One trained his weapon at Little Tyke’s chest as the other reached for his manacles. They had one of Little Tyke’s wrists free before a third man stepped forward. He said something to the man undoing the manacles. Little Tyke spoke again, even though neither man was talking to him.
When they started to put Little Tyke’s wrist back into its manacle, Julian demanded, “What’s going on? What are they saying?”
Little Tyke said something else in their tongue before turning to Julian. His voice shook slightly. “They don’t want to use me yet. They said they need me to translate.”
The relief that filled Julian at the knowledge that Little Tyke would be spared was quickly replaced with fear and guilt when the men moved onto Sparkles. Even with his bum shoulder, he fought against the terrorists as soon as his wrists were freed. One of the men slammed the butt of his rifle into Sparkles’ face, causing Sparkles to collapse to the cave floor.
He was dragged to the center of the cave and placed on his knees next to Lamb Chop’s and Patriot’s corpses.
Two other men approached Julian’s side of the cave. He thought they were coming for him until they stopped in front of St. Nick. Helplessness swarmed him as St. Nick was dragged to the center as well.
The two Deltas were positioned with their hands tied behind their backs facing each other. Sparkles was more hunched over than St. Nick. The hit to the head had been so hard that he was bleeding from one eye and he was having trouble breathing.
The two Taliban men with the handguns removed them from their waistbands and placed the barrels of the weapons at the backs of St. Nick’s and Sparkles’ heads.
The man with the bandolier approached Julian. When he spoke, Julian caught the staleness of his breath.
“He says to give him the code or your men will die.” Little Tyke’s voice shook as he translated.
Fuck. How the fuck had they known that Julian knew the code? For that matter, how had they known which of them Julian was?
“I don’t know the code,” Julian lied, not looking away from the man in front of him.
The Afghani’s eyes were so dark they looked black. He spoke again. Julian caught one word he was positive meant ‘sunrise’ but did not understand anything else to glean the context.
Rather than translate, though, Little Tyke started talking back to the man. There was a plea in his voice, but not as if to beg for his teammates’ lives. From the way Little Tyke used his pointer fingers above his head to keep pointing at himself, Julian suspected the kid was trying to negotiate, to trade his life for that of his brothers’.
The lyrics started out so low that Julian could barely hear the words over the sounds of Little Tyke’s and the leader’s voices.
March along, sing our song, with the Army of the free.
Count the brave, count the true, who have fought to victory.
We’re the Army and proud of our name!
St. Nick’s voice rose in volume. He was certainly not a vocalist by any means, but the man’s voice held strength and determination.
We’re the Army and proudly proclaim:
First to fight for the right,
And to build the Nation’s might,
And the Army goes rolling along.
“He says to talk or they die!” Little Tyke shouted, his eyes and translation frantic.
Proud of all we have done,
Fighting till the battle’s won,
And the Army goes rolling along.
Then it’s hi! hi! hey!
Sparkles, though looking like he was on the verge of passing out, joined St. Nick in The Army Song.
The Army’s on its way.
Count off the cadence loud and strong;
For where’er we go,
You will always know
That the Army goes rolling along.
Julian looked directly at the Taliban’s leader. The man’s dark eyes were a complete void, like no soul was housed inside his body. Leaning forward on his chains, ignoring his shoulders’ protests, Julian got right up in the man’s face. “I will not talk.”
Valley Forge, Custer’s ranks,
San Juan Hill and Patton’s tanks,
And the Army went rolling along.
A single gunshot rang out. It echoed throughout the cave, ricocheting until deafening, but it still would not block out Sparkles’ remaining voice.
Minute men, from the start,
Always fighting from the heart,
And the Army keeps rolling along.
The second gunshot fired. Julian did not look away from the cold, lifeless eyes of the man in front of him as the cave eventually fell silent.
Julian clamped his jaw shut, locking his teeth together to the point of pain but still did not open his mouth. The mantra inside his head continued even after the Taliban departed from the cave room, leaving Sparkles’ and St. Nick’s bodies behind where they’d fallen next to Lamb Chop and Patriot.
I will not talk…
I will not talk…
I will not talk…