Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

The mood in the Special Forces compound at Contingency Operating Base Speicher was somber. The Delta shooters busied themselves with maintenance tasks—cleaning their weapons, inspecting their equipment to ensure that all was ready for the next mission and even grabbing some food and shut-eye—but hardly anyone spoke. The brief sense of elation that accompanied their salvation was tempered by the knowledge that, for several of their friends, the help had arrived too late.

Every career Spec Ops shooter had experienced the emotional conflict that occurs when not everyone makes it back from a mission, but this instance was on a different order of magnitude. Only three members of Cipher element remained. Four of the snipers had survived, though two were wounded—including Lewis Aleman, whose crushed hand would almost certainly spell the end of his career as a Delta operator. Of the eight men comprising the flight crews of two Night Stalker Black Hawk helicopters, only one had made it back. Everyone on Beehive Six-Six was MIA. Perhaps even worse, the survivors knew that their lives had been bought with the blood of those who had come to save them, including Sonny “Houston” Vaughn, the Alpha team leader, who had caught a bullet on his way to the Humvee and died in Stan Tremblay’s arms on the ride back.

Sigler’s black mood wasn’t just due to survivor’s guilt, though. He was angry. The deaths of his teammates weren’t just the fortunes of war; someone had set them up and sent them into a trap.

He was going to find out who that someone was. Then, he was going to kill them.

They’d returned to the regional base just as dawn was breaking in the east. The 7th Special Forces team—the guys that had come riding to the rescue—had given the survivors a hut to recover in, but Sigler had been kept busy with administrative tasks, seeing to the needs of the wounded and of course, reporting the details of the disaster to headquarters. Thus far, JSOC had not responded to his requests for information that might help identify the persons responsible for the attack.

As he sat with the tattered remnants of Cipher element, Eagle-Eye and Alpha team, meticulously disassembling and cleaning his weapon—an activity that was, for a soldier, something akin to meditation—he searched his memory to see if the answer lay somewhere in the events of the previous night. He was physically exhausted, but his mind would not let go of the mystery.

Someone had set a trap for them…why? He rejected the obvious answer—to kill them. There were plenty of ways to accomplish that.

But if killing Cipher element wasn’t the primary objective, then what was?

He was working through the possibilities when two men he didn’t recognize strode into the room. One of them was wearing civilian clothes—khakis and a long-sleeve, pale-blue dress shirt—the other was wearing ACU fatigues. The name-tape over his breast pocket said ‘Keasling,’ but it was the rank badge in the middle of the man’s chest that got Sigler’s attention: a single black star.

He jumped to his feet and was about to call the room to attention, but the general waved him off.

“Stand easy, men.” Keasling regarded each man in turn, and finally brought his attention back to Sigler. “I won’t bullshit you. We are at condition FUBAR. Sixteen hours ago, the President did two things: He asked General Collins for his resignation, and he hired me to run the Joint Special Operations Command. I’m your new boss.”

Glances were exchanged but no one spoke. Keasling gestured to the civilian. “This is Domenick Boucher, the Director of the CIA. Gentlemen, we are here to fix this train wreck.”

Stan Tremblay folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “You’re the new JSOC? That’s a three-star billet. That must have taken some grade-A ass kissing.”

Keasling’s right eye twitched, and for a moment, Sigler thought the general was going to blow a gasket, but then the twitch went away. “I guess the President liked my smile. Now, if you’re done busting my chops, sergeant, there’s work to do. We’re in the dark, men.”

Sigler pointed a finger at Boucher. “Why don’t you start by talking to him? It was his people that sent us out there in the first place. Last I heard, they were both aboard the Black Hawk that went missing.”

Boucher glanced at Keasling, as if silently asking for permission to answer, and then cleared his throat. “Then let me update you. After leaving you, the helicopter designated Beehive Six-Six crossed the border with Syria and continued on to Damascus. The pilot flew nap-of-the-earth to avoid ground radar, but we were able to track him from an AWACS plane.