Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

He returned to the front room to retrieve his Beretta, a much more efficient weapon for field work than the overly powerful Desert Eagle, but as he was about to discard the latter, he hesitated.

Stan Tremblay had a deep appreciation for a well-engineered piece of killing technology. True, the Desert Eagle was about as useful to a stealthy Delta operator as a Lamborghini Diablo was to a soccer mom, but that didn’t make it any less a thing of beauty. Besides, the Fates had literally dropped it right in his lap, and not a moment too soon…obviously, the universe wanted him to have it.

Despite the urgency of his situation, he flashed an approving grin at his unassailably logical conclusion, and searched the body of the big Arab for spare magazines. To his utter delight, he found that the dead man’s shoulder holster rig contained not only four more seven-round magazines, but another identical pistol on the opposite side.

Tremblay let out a low whistle. “Holy shit, pal. Trying to overcompensate for something?”

Since breaking up a matched set seemed like bad luck, and it was probably dangerous to just leave them lying around, he appropriated the holster for himself and once he’d looped it around his own shoulders, he returned the first pistol to its place. He shifted the rig experimentally; the added weight felt strangely comfortable.

He lingered in the suite a moment longer, searching the closets until he found a baggy windbreaker jacket that would both conceal his new acquisitions and be a little less conspicuous than the white waiter’s outfit. Then he headed back to the balcony and swung over the rail.

Despite his size, or maybe because of it, he moved down the exterior of the hotel like King Kong on the Empire State Building. He’d grown up with the woods of New Hampshire as his playground; climbing was second nature to him. He swung between balconies, made dynamic leaps between the patios when necessary and finally dropped the last ten feet to the concrete deck that surrounded the entire building, whereupon he immediately melted into the shadows.

He considered trying to steal a car from the parking lot, but rejected the idea. Someone was bound to contact the authorities in response to the shooting; the last thing he needed was to roll up to a police checkpoint with a hot ride, a small arsenal and a bogus Canadian passport. Instead, he employed the method of travel that had served soldiers like himself well for untold millennia. He started walking.

The airport was only about six miles away, a distance he could have traversed in about an hour without even breaking a sweat, but when he emerged from the hills that separated the Gold Mohur coastal area from the residential areas of Aden, he was able to hail a taxi cab and shorten the journey. Forty minutes after leaving the hotel, he was on the tarmac at Aden International Airport where a USAF C-17 waited. As he hiked up to the open rear ramp of the enormous cargo jet, Vaughn stepped out to meet him.

Vaughn was a little shorter than Tremblay, but solidly built. He had wavy brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard that was—like Tremblay’s goatee—against Army regs, but Delta wasn’t like the regular army. Unit operators needed to be able to blend in with the general population as much as possible, and that meant some rules had to be bent a little. The Texan’s expression was uncharacteristically grim.

Tremblay nodded to him. “Houston, we have a problem?”

“Shake a leg, Juggernaut. There’s a fire.”

Tremblay’s brows creased but he withheld his questions until he was on the ramp. “What the fuck, over? Didn’t you get the kid?”

“We got the kid; zero complications. Handed him off to State fifteen minutes ago. This is something else.” Vaughn waved to one of the flight crew, then ushered Tremblay forward to where the rest of the team was waiting. When Tremblay was seated, Vaughn spoke again. “You know about Cipher element, right?”

“The CT unit working with the Agency.” Cipher element wasn’t a unit, per se, but rather an assignment, and the plan was for every Delta squad to get their turn. Most of the current Cipher roster were from Bravo team, but Tremblay knew a few of them.

“That’s right. Well, we just got word that they are in the shit. Right now, as we speak.”

Tremblay frowned, trying to recall the names of the men he knew who were currently deployed with Cipher. “What went wrong?”

“What didn’t? All I know for sure is that they are stranded in the desert and they could use a few more shooters.”

He let it hang right there, and Tremblay couldn’t tell if Vaughn was ordering them into the fight or asking for volunteers.

It didn’t matter really. Either way, he was going.





TEN


Iraq