LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      If it was true a man learned more from failure than success, Ben Collins knew he was in no position to test that theory. In his line of work, there were no second chances. Failure wasn’t an option; failure spelled death. In black ops, he made it a point to see losing was for the other guy.

      The stack of boxes stamped CARE, deep in the aft of the C-130, would be the last thing the warlord’s frontline marauders saw when they hit the ramp. The ruse didn’t stop with this first strike, but what others didn’t know, he thought, wouldn’t kill them. At least not yet.

      It was just about time to get down to dirty business, murky waters, he knew, that had been chummed since the first bunch of al-Qaeda and Taliban criminals had been dumped off at Gitmo. There was blood in that water again, he thought, flesh to consume, but it all went way beyond waxing a bunch of thugs and terrorists in some of the most dangerous, godforsaken real estate this side of Hell. Sure, there were bad guys to bag, chain, thrust under military gavel. There was a trial to consider, arranged to go down in secrecy….

      Whoa, he told himself. This was only the first giant leap; the goal line was way off on the distant horizon. No point in getting ahead. There were still details to nail down and he could be sure, given the nature of black ops, not to mention the usual chaos and confusion of battle, more than a few problems would crop up along the way.

      The ex–Delta Force major raked a stare over the six black ops under his command of Cobra Force Twelve. Seven more commandos on the ground were moving in right then, on schedule to help light the fuse. According to radar monitoring the two Hummers’ transponders, the sat imagery, piped into his consoles amidships from an NRO bird parked over and watching the area in question—AIQ—they were three miles out, closing hard, with Dugula and twenty-one henchmen rolling across the plain, the latest round of the Exterminator’s methods of population control framed, live and in color, on another monitor. Behind his ground force, two Black Hawks and one Apache were picking up the rear, covering all bases.

      All set.

      No blue UN helmets, doctors, or relief workers were on board. This was no mission of mercy, or another group of unarmed do-gooders from Red Cross or UNICEF, he thought, getting ripped off by Dugula.

      He studied their faces, but there was no need to sound off with last-minute Patton speeches to shore up resolve. They knew the drill, briefed thoroughly for days, the details gone over one last time on the Company airbase just inside the Kenyan border, before he put the radio call on the special UN frequency to Dugula that they were moving, coordinate the drop-off. All of them were battle-hardened CIA men—specifically Special Operations Division—or ex-military, he knew, with more than a few Afghanistan forays notched on some of their belts.

      It was reassuring to know he was wading into the fire with pros. To an operative they had on their war faces, togged in brown camos, M-16/M-203 combos the lead weapon. Webbing, combat vests, all of it stuffed and hung with spare grenades and clips, then on down to Beretta 92-F side arms on the hip, commando daggers sheathed on the lower leg. The blades were last resort, Collins stating earlier this was blast and burn, the faces of Dugula and a few of his top lieutenants committed to memory.

      Once they blasted off the ramp it was going to be a turkey shoot for the most part, Somali thugs hemmed in, turning tail, unless he missed his guess, when the flying hammer dropped on them from above. He glanced at their own two armored Hummers, one mounted M-60 machine gun, belted and ready to rip. The other vehicle, showing off its TOW antitank launch pad, would be out of the gate first. Altogether, plenty of firepower, muscle, experience and determination to win the day against a bunch of one-time camel herders who now had control of Mogadishu, and into the deep south of the country, because none of the other competing clans had the guns or the guts to stand up to them.

      He took a moment next to ponder the sudden curve-ball thrown him by superiors. Cobra Force Twelve was his diamond, once in the rough, but with three successful missions under the belt, with his track record in Delta and later on working with the Company, he had made friends in high and powerful places. Hell, he was a damn hero, in fact, enough medals and ribbons to fill a steamer trunk, but this one wasn’t for God and country. What was now in motion—at least the campaign given the thumbs-up by the White House—was pretty much his show.

      But there was a wild card—the man’s handle—out there with the ground team.

      It wasn’t entirely true he was solely in charge, Collins knew. There was this odd man out preying on his thoughts, some hotshot hardballer, according to his dossier, dropped in his lap at the eleventh hour. The order to put the thirteenth man on the team had come straight from the President, Wild Card inserted as coleader of Cobra Force. Beyond some irritation and anxiety, a dig to professional pride he was forced to share all tactical and command decisions, the tall dark man tagged Wild Card made him a little nervous, what with the question as to exactly why the White House shoved him onto the mission in the first place.

      He wanted to believe the colonel—with a record full of deletions that left little doubt he was likewise black ops—was simply there as an extra gun, with supposedly all the combat experience in the world to aid, assist and kick much additional ass. Or was it something else? Was Wild Card a watchdog? Had the rumor mill churned at the Pentagon, spilling some seeds of doubt into the Oval Office? Had someone in the loop gotten cold feet, gone running to the higher-ups if just to save his own skin? Were his own people sharpening blades right then, poised to spring a trap?

      No matter. If Wild Card had some personal agenda, if he proved a threat to the bigger picture, well, Collins knew there was an answer for that problem.

      “Dragon One to Cobra Leader.”

      Collins strode to the intercom on the bulkhead. “Cobra Leader. Go.”

      “You boys strap in—we’re going down. Show time.”

      “Roger. Stick to the plan, Dragon One, no matter how hot it gets out there.”

      “Aye-aye. Catch you on the flip side. Good luck. Dragon One, over and out.”

      Collins grabbed a seat, fastened on the webbing as the bird began to descend. Round one, he thought, coming up, but it was only the beginning. Shortly, if nothing else, one question about Wild Card would be answered. And if the odd man out couldn’t pull his weight, wasn’t as good as advertised, he would just be one less hassle to eliminate with a bullet in the near future.

      The picture, small or large, both fuzzy

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