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  To the Eagles still fighting demons long after the drumbeat faded and the guns have gone silent

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Kolt did most of the heavy lifting in Black Site, which for an informed reader—a student of black special ops—is easily the biggest hurdle to being absolutely sure that it could ever be anything more than fiction. You see, in special operations, like any other military unit, it’s the sergeants that carry the heaviest load, not the Os.

  Besides the Tsunami-size bad call Kolt “Racer” Raynor made in the Pakistani badlands, he spent most of his time working what we call “singleton” missions. He operated alone. Those kinds of ops that for one reason or another, someone reasoned that it made more tactical sense to send a single operator instead of a team to handle the job.

  But the quickest route to burnout for any operator is back-to-back-to-back singleton ops. They are just inherently packed with stress, high blood pressure, self-doubt, and living a backstopped but shallow cover. And of course, nobody expected Racer to survive the Black Site mission. But he did.

  Everyone knows Kolt was the luckiest son-of-a-bitch alive. Including Kolt.

  In fact, he vowed to stiff-arm any future singleton ops. Just to stay sane, he needed mates. He needed like mindsets, someone to cover his six and pick up his slack. Can you blame him? It’s been a heckuva long war on terror, and everyone has limits.

  If you are still with me, after reading Tier One Wild, you know that Racer preferred a team. Without them covering for him, or providing covering fire, this Delta Force thriller series is dead on arrival.

  With the first two books behind us, I ain’t flapping when I say Kolt and I have more in common than I originally thought. We both hate operating alone. And we both have a ton of God-given vices. So it’s a no-brainer that we both recognize that we are only at our best when working with teammates. We’re happiest when our Ranger buddies are there to keep us sharp. Safest when our mates are posted at the breach, porting the windows, or pulling high cover in the stairwell. Our critics might even say riding the coattails of more talented operators.

  And just as it took a team of teams to track down Abu al-Amriki and the SA-24s, it took a mirror effort—a collective World Series attitude—to birth what you hold in your hands.

  Operators don’t leave ranks until they are ready to jack it in and retire to the house. And I am proud to say nobody left our team. The same commando-minded professionals that brought Black Site to life remained on the manifest for Tier One Wild. And with any book, or any mission, the support effort by anonymous pros behind the scenes can make or break the op. I am deeply grateful and exceptionally proud of the folks at St. Martin’s Press and Trident Media Group whose work in the shadows made the main effort look good. Within specops, we call the main effort the assault force. Everyone else is support.

  Leading our assault force once again was my editor and diehard New York Mets fan Marc Resnick. I am convinced that a pack of terrorists couldn’t break his positive spirit, or his smile, or even get him to root for the Braves for a single inning. And even if they could, my superagent, Scott Miller of Trident, would be there in no time to make things right. Like many of you, there is a little tier one wild in Scott. With Marc, Scott, and me once again was the übertalented and savvy writer Mark Greaney, to whom I owe an enormous debt for his coaching, mentoring, and friendship. Even though Scott could handle any terrorist, Mark would still pile on like the Cleveland Browns’ secondary. But make no mistake, there is no doubt that the only member of our assault force that we could have put on waivers to bring Kolt Raynor to life would have been me.

  Besides the boys at work, nothing gets done without the support of family. And even though my wonderful wife and daughters aren’t all that impressed by all this Dalton Fury stuff, they let it slide as long as it doesn’t interfere with my day job. Keep it out of the house and all is good, but one thing is for sure. Let Kolt slip up and lose the support of the ladies in my house, and he is a dead man.

  I’m often questioned if the stuff Kolt pulls off is real. Would Dalton Fury try to take down a hijacked airliner as it was taking off? Of course not, but I’m no Kolt Raynor.

  And since ST6 smoked Bin Laden in mid-2011, I’m often asked if Delta Force really tells other people or troops that they are Navy SEALs to preserve their true identity or cover. Well, yes, I am a Navy SEAL. In fact, just because I don’t surf, or sky shark you in free fall, or kick your ass at a bar and steal your girlfriend, as far as my cover for action is concerned, I’m the best darn Navy SEAL on target.

  Of course, either you don’t believe me, or I ain’t sticking around long enough to play twenty questions. Just like on target.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Definition

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Also by Dalton Fury

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Tier One Wild (1) Using common sense over process, getting away with more than the other guy, and possessing a bit of an attitude. (2) The mindset that all Tier One (Delta Force and SEAL Team 6) operators roll with, encompassing the idea that someone who is specially assessed and selected to serve in the ranks of a special missions unit (DF and ST6) has the mental and physical capacity to perform to a much higher standard, to accept more risk, to march to a different drummer, and to tell a general officer that he is full of shit (with slightly more tact but with absolutely no fear of retribution).

  PROLOGUE

  New Delhi, India

  The dead lay throughout the first-class cabin. Their bodies stank in the still air.

  Four men, two women. A Flight attendant. An air marshal. A man who had looked like he might start trouble. An Indian diplomat from the Punjab. A German woman who had been shot for screaming.

  And one martyr.

  Unlike the five dead nonbelievers, Marwan’s body had not been dumped across the seats. No, his men had laid him gently on his back, his arms positioned across his chest, a clean starched napkin from a first-class dining cart draped over his face, the two running ends of his red headband just visible. Marwan had been the leader of the six-strong cell of Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters. He and his men had boarded this aircraft two days earlier dressed like businessmen returning from a telemarketing conference in Mumbai. Marwan had gone to the rear galley shortly after takeoff, while the rest of the passengers sat strapped into their seats, compliant like lambs chained to posts in the marketplace. He’d found the case left for him by a Jordanian brother who worked in food service at the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, and from it Marwan quietly and efficiently passed the Skorpion machine pistols out to his men. He donned the bulletproof vest left in the bag and slipped the hand grenade into his pocket, and then the seven Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives rushed up the aisles and took over the plane.

  Twenty-five seconds after they thought they had control, Marwan fell to the aisle dead, killed by a pistol shot to the back of the head, fired by an air marshal. The marshal was himself killed by Skorpion fire in the next moment, which immediately put Jellock in charge of an operation that still had not recovered from the death of its leader.

  Jellock was not Marwan. He was scared and uncertain. He was tired and hot and sick of the strange food on the aircraft and the overflowing toilets and the bodies putrefying up in first class. The ballistic vest he now wore dug into his skin and weighed him down as he ran the length of the plane shouting orders.

  In the past fifty-five hours he’d forced the 767’s American flight crew to fly to New Delhi, then back to Mumbai, then to Bangalore, and now back to New Delhi. Jellock had been afraid to keep the aircraft in one place for too long while he waited for his demands to be met. In the meantime, the Indian government had stalled and his men had threatened and then killed passengers and crew.

  He wished Marwan were here to tell him what to do, where to go, how to keep order among the other five men in the cell.

  But Marwan was dead in first class, and the others looked to Jellock for direction wh
ile they bickered among themselves and beat on the passengers in frustration.

  What do I do? This is taking too long!

  The twenty-three-year-old’s exhausted and stressed mind focused quickly. Too long. Yes! Too long they had been on the ground here in New Delhi. He felt the government’s delays had been trickery, that he’d been played for a fool.

  Too long.

  Jellock stood, stormed into the cockpit, found the flight crew sleeping in their seats, and he screamed at them. “We leave New Delhi! We fly away!”

  “Where?” asked the pilot wearily.

  Jellock thought a moment. He needed a safe place. Someplace where the aircraft could remain for enough hours for him to get some rest. “Quetta!”

  “Pakistan.” The pilot said it as a groan. A statement of frustration.

  “Yes!” Jellock screamed every word he said to the pilots, thinking it would make him appear authoritative.

  The pilot shrugged. “When?”

  “Now! Take off!”

  “Son, you don’t understand. We have to go through a preflight checklist and pull our maps for the route we—”

  “Take off now or I kill a passenger!” Jellock turned to yell out into the cabin. “Mohammed!”

  The pilot rubbed his eyes and reached for his case containing his maps and charts. “Okay! Okay. Just give me five minutes to—”

  “One minute!” Jellock yelled, certain of the deceit of this nonbeliever. “In one minute we are moving to the runway or I kill one passenger every minute!”

  “Three minutes! You’ve got to give us at least—”

  “Two minutes! No more!”

  “I need three!”

  “You can have three, but I kill one passenger.” He turned back to the cabin. “Mohammed! Bring me the first child you see!”

  “All right! Calm down! We’re moving in two!” shouted the pilot, before tuning out the terrorist and focusing on his aircraft.

  ONE

  The hazy night sky was cool three thousand feet above and aft of the Boeing 767, but Delta Force Major Kolt “Racer” Raynor perspired into his goggles. Rivulets of sweat ran down the back of his black Nomex suit as he hung under the taut canopy of his square parachute and focused on the scene below.

  It had been nearly four years since he’d led other men into battle. He had been assessed as ready by both his superiors and his peers, and he felt ready, but still, he was human.

  And this shit was scary as hell.

  Two more canopies drifted down through the darkness near him. The three chutes were stacked—teammates Digger and Slapshot were strapped together in a tandem rig below and fifty feet ahead of Kolt, and Stitch was positioned slightly above and fifty feet behind.

  All four men floated with the wind down toward their drop zone, a few hundred feet aft of the hijacked American Airlines flight.

  Digger spoke into his radio from his position up front, hanging in front of Slapshot. “Hey, boss. That plane looks like it’s ready to depart. There’s no auxiliary power attached. Aft stairs are up, too.”

  “Guess they aren’t gonna wait around for us to sneak up all ninja-like,” Slapshot mumbled into his mic. The big man always injected humor when no one else was in the mood.

  And Kolt was not in the mood. “Damn,” he said.

  Next Stitch came over the radio: “Back to me a bit, boss,” and Racer immediately realized he had drifted a little too close to the men in front of him. Calmly he adjusted his toggles to remedy the error.

  The plan had been to land and then link up with other Americans on the ground—CIA case officers and military types from the embassy here—and then they would decide how to proceed. They’d set their drop zone as a spot on the tarmac behind the hijacked aircraft, out of sight from the terminal, because the Agency boys on site had said TV cameras were positioned all over the terminal, and no one at Delta wanted the cameras to get a shot of a team of commandos dropping in from the sky at 0330 hours.

  As he hung twenty-five hundred feet above the ground, Kolt eyed the plane, keeping it between his stack and the cameras.

  He hoped like hell he and his mates would get a crack at taking the jet down before this was all over. He reasoned that, if the plane stayed put in New Delhi for just a few hours more, there was a decent chance he would get the order from the Joint Operations Center to hit the target.

  But as he was thinking this, below his boots red and green indicator lights began blinking on the wingtips of the 767. Almost instantly the two Pratt & Whitney engines on the aircraft began to roar. Seconds later the nose of the craft turned slightly to the left, centering on the long runway that ran off to the west.

  The 767 began to move forward as the engines pitched higher.

  Kolt Raynor groaned in frustration. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Digger shouted into his radio, “Son of a bitch is rolling.”

  “Repositioning on the tarmac or heading to the runway?” Stitch asked from the back. He could not see past Racer’s chute.

  “Bet they’re flying out of here. They’ve been doing a lot of erratic shit like that.”

  “Suggestions?” Kolt asked quickly into his mic. He knew to get the input of his sergeants at a critical moment like this.

  Slapshot said, “There isn’t much sense in linking up with officials if the hijacked plane isn’t gonna hang around.”

  And then Stitch chimed in, “Racer, you have execute authority. Why don’t we hit it?”

  It was true, Raynor had pried execute authority from Colonel Webber, the head of Delta Force. This allowed Raynor, as the military commander at the scene, the flexibility to call for a hasty in-extremis takedown of the aircraft if he saw the opportunity to do so or if he felt the necessity to try, like if the terrorists, or “crows” in Delta parlance, started shooting hostages before official approval for Delta’s mission came from the JOC.

  Still, Kolt wasn’t sure what Stitch was getting at. He keyed his mic. “Hit it? While it’s moving?”

  “We can land on the roof and head for the cockpit. I’ve got the harpoon. If we go in single file we can breach the escape hatch. If we increase our descent speed we can be inside before they go throttle-up.”

  “Have you guys done that before?” Kolt asked incredulously.

  “Not on a moving aircraft, and only in training back at Bragg, boss,” Slapshot answered. But he agreed with his fellow sergeant’s assessment. “We aren’t going to get another chance at this. If the plane isn’t there, then the TV crews might see us, and if they film us dropping on the tarmac that will get back to the crows in the jet. Might just piss them off enough to kill some more passengers.”

  “Now or never,” Stitch said. “What’s the call, Racer?”

  Kolt asked, “What about Digger?”

  Now Digger chimed in. Though he was the youngest of the team and perhaps the most fit overall, he possessed one potential handicap to the operation.

  Where his lower right leg used to be, he now wore a titanium prosthesis. Kolt could not imagine how he could run along the roof of a moving aircraft with a leg made out of metal.

  “No sweat, boss. I’ve got this,” Digger said. He sounded confident and eager.

  Kolt’s operational brain trust had spoken and their vote was unanimous. Still, this was his first hit since returning to the Unit just two months prior, and Colonel Webber had made it crystal clear to Raynor that he needed to change his ways. There was no room in the modern Delta Force for the Tier One Wild antics that had gotten him in hot water in the past, and Webber had reminded Kolt numerous times that he was on incredibly thin ice. Nevertheless, Kolt and his boys had been the alert squadron at Fort Bragg when this hostage crisis unfolded, so Kolt and his team had been called to bat.

  Make your decision, Raynor! He said it to himself in a silent shout.

  Three seconds later he pressed the push-to-talk button on his chest rig again. “Let’s hit it.” Webber’s gonna have my ass, he thought, but right now he had much bigger fish to fry.

  * * *

  In the Joint Operations Center at Forward Operating Base Yukon in Bagram, Afghanistan, the chow hall, the gym, and the movie tent stood empty. Right now everyone with access was stacked at the back of the JOC watching the shocking footage displayed on a single large plasma screen at the front of the room. A Predator drone’s night-vision camera caught the huge commercial aircraft moving slowly through the darkness toward the runway, and its satellite uplink broadcast the ghostly images to the screen at the JOC. Racer and his team were not in the picture, they were still high in the air on their descent, and their drop zone was out of the camera’s current field of view.