Page 1 of Surge
PROLOGUE
SOMEWHERE OVER DJIBOUTI
“The chancewe’ve been waiting for is finally here,” Navy SEAL Master Chief Garrett “Bear” Walker said as Charlie team huddled in the hangar. “According to COMINT, Sachaai terrorists have been training in their homeland for a purported large-scale attack on America, but they were spotted boarding a C-17 to return to their Tadjoura workhouse early tomorrow morning and will effect that attack.”
Communications Intelligence hung slightly below Human Intelligence on the intel ladder, but that was harder to come by in Djibouti City and especially with these terrorists—cowards, who poisoned the air and people rather than facing their enemy head-on like real men.
Petty Officer Third Class Blake “Zim” Zimmerman—the newb on the team with a couple degrees in chemistry—let out a low whistle. “They deal in some nasty stuff.”
“To put it mildly,” CIA operative Bryan Caldwell said as he strode across the hangar. Leathered skin spoke of many hours in the sun. Gray hair at the temples spoke of stress. Probably because the guy didn’t have friends. He slid images—satellite photos, pictures of men, structures, an aerial shot of a village, and a picture of a container—onto the table. “Sachaai is Urdu fortruth,” Caldwell said, “and their goal is to make Pakistan the world hub of Islamic truth. They will stop at nothing to remove all obstacles in their way.”
Thethwumpof rotors and engine whine of the Black Hawk powering up on the tarmac fought to dominate the air.
“Hold up.” Senior Chief Petty Officer George “King” Kingery scowled, his thick red beard twitching as he frowned and took in the spook. “This op is vetted byhim? The guy who burned us in Burma?”
Petty Officer First Class Beckett “Brooks” Brooks tapped his heart and pointed at King. “Truth!”
“I didn’t?—”
“And we’re going to believe he’s giving us everything andnotrisking mission success?”
Grunts of agreement skidded around the hangar from the rest of Charlie team.
Caldwell huffed. “I’m giving you everything you need?—”
“Need? That’s a load of?—”
“Bury it.” Garrett didn’t bother to hide the growl in his voice. Nobody was happy about operating on intel from the operative. “We’ve been champing for a chance to get these pukes, and now we have it. The chemicals they’re using are lethal. I’m going to hand it over to Zim for a quick brief, but the second thing is that we need to get in and out before first light. We aren’t exactly American Idols here. So, we have a few hours to get in and get back here.” He nodded to Zim. “Brief them on the chems—but fast. Helo’s waiting and the clock is ticking.”
“When we head in there, we’ll be looking for metal lockboxes with an indicator like this,” Zim said, holding up his phone with an image of a red-and-black panel. “We’ve all heard about sulfamic acid and potassium cyanide—not a big headache, but the Sachaai love to make hydrogen cyanide gas with those chems.”
“Symptoms?” Garrett asked.
“Nausea. Vomiting. Temporary blindness. Heart palpitations. . . or heart attack. Shortness of breath . . . or no more breath—but if this stuff disperses into the air, we have seconds. If that.” His dark eyes were wide.
“Their chemist has found a way to stop it from doing that,” Caldwell said, “so if we can get hold of him, we could possibly shut down the Sachaai for good. Or at least long enough to decimate their infrastructure.”
“We know who that is?”
Zim sagged. “No, but this guy is a genius. Being able to do this and keep these chemicals?—”
“See your nerd coming out,” King teased in his deep Southern drawl.
“Which is why we’re all going in with chem gear,” Garrett said, not willing to be turned into a blistered corpse. “HAZMAT will be on standby to come in behind us to secure the site, if we find anything.”
“Okay,” King said, stroking his beard as he stabbed a thick finger at the image with the white buildings. “Djibouti City?”
“SATINT tracked Sachaai to a neighborhood a klick inside the southern border of Tadjoura before signals got scrambled, impeding analysts from narrowing the target location any further.” Garrett grunted. “That’s a quarter mile of potentially unfriendly territory to sort through. HUMINT has an informant describing their headquarters as a small white building.”
Laughter filtered through the space.
“Reckon it’ll be a challenge to find the Sachaai’s ‘small white’ HQ in that sea of white structures,” King said, eyeing the device with the SAT imaging of their target location.
“Doesn’t matter,” Zim said, pointing to the MWD team. “We’ve got the Mal to sniff ’em out.”
All eyes turned to Petty Officer Third Class Sam “Samwise” Reicher and his military working dog, Tsunami M501—also a petty officer, but Second Class, one rank above his handler. MWDs were force multipliers and morale boosters all wrapped up in one aggressive package.
Samwise patted Tsunami’s tac vest. “Tsunami has all the training of a military working dog with the added special forces training. On top of that, she is the only MWD with specialized training to rout the signature lipid that’s unique to the Sachaai.”