Chapter One #2
“Let me knock this out and then I’ll meet you in there,” Wilde said, turning to walk away. “Some of us still have to work when the sun goes down,” he added with a grin.
McBride shrugged. “Poor life choices, buddy,” he said, before turning around and heading toward the tent that housed their primitive gym equipment.
Wilde shook his head. He had made a friendly jab at his teammate, but there was some truth in it.
While he had started as the communications expert on the team, Wilde had transitioned years ago to his current position, which entailed returning to Fort Bragg for a several-months-long course to be trained in intelligence collection, analysis, and targeting.
He found the work rewarding and enjoyed solving mysteries and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
In his current role he was still able to kick in doors, but after they cleared an objective he had the chance to exploit the take and produce leads for follow-on targets.
Still, it came with drawbacks. When much of the team was enjoying downtime, Wilde was generally stuck with the team’s leadership poring over data, creating enemy situation templates, or SITEMPS, and constructing what McBride called his “spiderwebs,” which were really link-analysis charts that tracked targets in the region.
He glanced at his watch, figuring the Saudi teams would be back by now, and made his way over to the JOC.
The camp was fairly small, and he passed by the tent that served as the chow hall, several living quarters, and tubes of PVC pipe hammered into the ground at an angle that served as urinals.
He quickly reached the middle of the outpost that contained the brain center of the camp.
The JOC was a large tent, the same size as the one that housed the chow hall.
Unlike the chow hall, the flap to this tent remained closed so that local workers passing through the area did not have an opportunity to gaze inside and begin to figure out what operations the multinational group was planning.
The locals were vetted and searched on the way in and out, but were not necessarily trusted.
Had they been able to peer into the tent, they would have seen what Wilde did as he threw back the flap and entered the large space.
The inside was filled with laptops sitting on folding tables and standing whiteboards with information written on them in both English and Arabic.
Different-colored cables ran everywhere, connecting various electronic components.
Papers were pinned to the walls, laminated maps were unfurled on tables with graphics drawn on them with dry erase markers, and television monitors showed live drone feeds as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, buzzed thousands of feet above the country.
Since it was a joint space, the scent of cigarette smoke hung heavily in the air, clinging to the fabric to create a powerful stench of both fresh and stale odors.
The tent itself was designated a General Purpose–Medium, with a metal frame supporting the weight of the tent.
There was a flap in the back that remained closed with a zip tie, the one main flap in the front being used to funnel personnel in and out.
The Americans and British took one side of the tent, with the Arabs occupying the other.
In the middle were several tables of shared space where meetings were held and planning conducted.
Toward the back was a table that held coffee and hot water with tea bags and was maintained around the clock, as there was always at least one representative from each command present at any given time.
Wilde looked to the American side and locked eyes with his team leader, Captain Deforest, who was speaking to the team’s interpreter, Ajax, who was in turn speaking with a Saudi major.
Wilde walked past Deforest and nodded. The team leader of an ODA was always a captain, and generally spent eighteen months to two years on a team, meaning that Wilde had seen four come and go during his tenure.
Oftentimes they arrived full of ambition and good intentions and the veteran sergeants, known as noncommissioned officers, or NCOs, had to temper their expectations and bring them back down to reality.
Deforest was an exception, as he had worked several years as a firefighter before joining the army and was a bit older and more experienced than the officers the team was usually saddled with.
Though it was Deforest’s first deployment with the team, he was smart and levelheaded, and Wilde liked him.
Wilde continued walking toward the back of the tent, where he spotted Captain Ahmed Malik with a group of other Saudi officers.
Ahmed and Wilde had become close over the last several months, utilizing each other to practice their English and Arabic skills, respectively.
They were both intellectuals and found a sense of shared satisfaction in their conversations about history, politics, religion, and philosophy.
The two were kindred spirits born worlds apart into different cultures, yet still found more than enough common ground to create a solid friendship.
“Marhaban,” Wilde greeted his friend in Arabic. “Kayfa haluk?” How are you?
“I am good,” Ahmed responded in Arabic. “How are you, my friend?” The two men embraced in traditional Arab fashion.
“Jayid jidan, shukran,” Wilde responded. Very good, thank you. Wilde greeted the other Saudi officers in turn, and they made small talk for several minutes before the other officers bade farewell and retired for the evening.
“How is the family?” Wilde asked once the others had left. “Farah and the children?” Ahmed had shown Wilde pictures of his family several times over the last few months, which included his wife and three children.
“Very good,” Ahmed said. “Thank you. Farah says that young Nasir is growing very fast. A good family is its own reward. You should find a good woman and settle down, my friend.”
Wilde laughed. “Perhaps one of these days. When there is no more war and there is peace on Earth.”
“Well, then,” Ahmed said chuckling, “I think you will be an old man before we see this.”
“Perhaps,” Wilde said, changing gears. “Speaking of war, what happened during the attack last night?”
“Ah, yes,” Ahmed responded in English. “The vehicle was ambushed on the highway as they turned north about fifty kilometers outside of town. The attackers appeared to be Al Qaeda.”
“How many terrorists did the locals kill?”
“Three. And the team sustained no injuries.”
That was good news. Wilde knew that if anything serious had happened he would have been alerted, but it was still good to know that there wouldn’t be any minor injuries plaguing them.
The Special Forces medics on the team were some of the best in the world at dealing with trauma, but they despised clinical care.
As such, bedside manner was not exactly their strong suit.
“Fucking right there weren’t no injuries!” a heavy British accent exclaimed from behind him.
Wilde turned to grin at the owner of the voice.
Sergeant Benjamin Walton of His Majesty’s SAS, called “Wally” for short, was smirking nearby.
The special operations medic’s tall, lanky frame and shaggy brown hair and matching beard hid a lethal capability that Wilde’s team had first observed in Syria a year earlier when they teamed up with Wally’s troop.
It was sheer coincidence that the two elements were deployed together again, to the same location, but one that all parties were exceedingly pleased with.
The SAS was Britain’s highly specialized counterterrorism force.
They recruited primarily from the Parachute Regiment and put candidates through a grueling selection process before pumping them through a training course that made the king’s men even more efficient killers.
The island nation used the SAS like a Swiss Army knife, throwing them against difficult problems knowing that these extraordinary men would die before failing their country.
It was an attitude shared by their American partners and made for a seamless pairing of forces.
“So your guys were out there last night,” Wilde more stated than asked.
“I should have known.” The fact that there were zero friendly casualties and all of the enemy were killed was unusual for a purely indigenous patrol.
Wilde knew that his team hadn’t been out there, so it could only have been the Brits.
“That’s right, mate. We find it important to keep all our former colonials safe,” Wally said, patting him on the shoulder. “Even the Yanks while they sleep.”
Wilde smiled and shook his head. Wally was trying to coax him into a friendly debate over America’s uprising against the British Empire. It was a near-daily occurrence.
“I’m not taking the bait, Wally,” he said, still shaking his head. “Too much to do today.”
Wally made a tsk sound with his mouth before proclaiming, “You’re no fun at all, mate.”
From across the room a voice boomed out from under a table, “I’ll take that bait!”
Rising from the shadows under the table, Shane Price unfolded his large frame from the small space, closed a crate that he had been rummaging through, and stood up.
The team’s senior engineer sergeant was an intimidating sight to the uninitiated.
He stood six three, weighed 220 pounds, and kept a closely shaved head and scruffy beard.
His size may have been the initial sign that the average ruffian would do well to steer clear of him; however, upon closer examination the misshapen nose and cauliflower ears told a deeper tale.