Detachment Delta (25 page)

He went out the door with his Glock 19 in his right hand behind his back and walked rapidly toward the gangbangers. His rapid walk toward them and the look on his face unnerved them. His hand went to the back of his waistline, and Charlie knew he was going for a gun, so Charlie's right hand came out holding the Glock 19 as he went into his modified Weaver stance, his left arm up in front of his chest, fingers up and wrapping comfortably around the grip of his right hand.

Louie was wearing a large fake diamond earring in his left ear. While he raised his gun, Charlie smiled on purpose to scare them even more, and he said, “Nice earring, punk.”

Flame belched from the gun with a loud bang, as they all ducked, and Louie screamed, dropping his cheap little .380 pistol on the ground, as he grabbed his left ear. The ring and the bottom part of his earlobe were gone. Blood oozed out between his fingers.

They all stood, and suddenly a second Glock, Fila's, appeared in Charlie's left hand.

“Oh, man, battle,” Charlie said enthusiastically. “Come on, punks. You started the dance, and I love to fight, so let's rock and roll! This is cool! I have a hard-on! Come on, assholes. It's party time.”

One of them who was fairly slender started vomiting, and his legs were visibly wobbly.

Charlie knew he was significantly outnumbered, so he spoke in a very bold and gross manner in order to gain a psychological advantage. He pointed both guns from one gang member to the next and back.

Then he said, “You boys wanted to fight. I am not a sweet old lady, like my mom is in that house. I am a real warrior. Any pussy can throw beer bottles at little old ladies. Let's do battle. I am ready to kill. You want to go home and get your daddies? I'll do battle with them, too. You have to have more guns.”

He paused to give his remarks greater affect.

“Speaking of that, each of you that has one or a knife, toss it in front of me. If I catch you with one on you, I will shoot you dead.”

Two more guns were tossed out and three sheath knives and one Boy Scout pocketknife.

Charlie yelled, “Fila!”

The front door opened, and Charlie said, “Tell my mom to come out, and you come here, too!” Fila and Betty came out on the porch, but Fila walked out to Charlie and stood behind and to his left.

“Baseball jersey!” Charlie said. “Grab your baseball hat by the brim and throw it straight up in the air as high as you can!”

The young man complied and Charlie yelled, “Fila!”

Without looking at her, he tossed her Glock back to her with his left hand. She caught it in her own modified isosceles gunfighter's stance, and three shots rang out as the hat flew with each and sailed to the ground with three holes through it.

Charlie commanded, “Go pick it up and bring it here for your friends to see.”

Betty yelled from the porch, “My son is a Green Beret and a mighty warrior. You little brats better not mess with me again!”

Charlie looked back to his mom, shaking his head, while wearing a big-toothed grin.

The baseball brat showed the hat with three neat holes through it. They all were amazed.

Charlie said, “You know, sometimes it is not very smart to make war on women. You never know what you might be getting yourself into.”

He grabbed Louie by the bloody ear, squeezing what was left of it, and dragged him in pain, almost on his tiptoes, over to Betty.

Charlie yelled at the rest, “All of you, come here!”

While still wearing a big grin, Charlie said, “Mom, these gentlemen starting with Bloody Ear all want to apologize to you.”

Charlie gave Louie's ear a squeeze, and he screamed in pain before saying, “Ma'am, I am very sorry. I am very, very sorry.”

All the rest of them started apologizing profusely.

Charlie said, “Mom, you can call the PD and tell them to send Charlie back.”

She went in and reappeared with her cell phone, speaking on it.

Charlie said, “What is your name, punk?”

“Louie Horse, sir.”

“Well, Louie, first let me tell you all about my gang. If you want to belong to a tough gang and win every fight you ever get in, grow some balls and join my gang,” Charlie said. “Our gang colors are forest green and digital camo, and it is the baddest, toughest gang in the history of the world. My gang is called the U.S. Army Special Forces. If you guys want to fight and want to belong and do some good, then join the U.S. Army and try to get into my gang, if any of you are tough enough, which you are not.”

He tucked his Glock away in the folds of his clothes, and Fila followed suit.

“Now, Louie,” Charlie said, “I am going off to war again, but I can come back anytime, or I can send a friend. I am making you head of security for my mom while I am gone. If someone throws a cigarette on her lawn, I will hold you responsible. If someone disses her at the grocery store, or if she even has to carry a bag of groceries again, I will hold you personally responsible. Do I make myself perfectly clear to all of you?”

“Yes, sir!” they said in unison, then Louis added, “Don't worry, sir, we have your mom's back. Nobody will ever screw with her.”

The PD cruiser pulled up and the other Charlie got out and walked up.

Charlie Strongheart stuck his hand out and shook with the officer, saying, “Been a long time. Hi, Charlie.”

“Hi, Charlie yourself,” the cop said. “I heard you got killed in Iraq or was it Afghanistan?”

Charlie said, “Neither. I am still alive, bro. You are mistaken. It must have been another Charlie.” He went on. “Officer, young Louie Horse here had an accident with his pistol laying over there and accidentally shot his earlobe off. Thinking weapons in the wrong hands can be a bad thing, all these gents decided to turn all their weapons in to you. They are laying there on the ground. They knew that they will be very busy anyway. They have decided to clean up around my mom's house and yard, and starting with Mom's, they decided to get some paint and paint over all the gang graffiti on all the propane tanks and buildings in the neighborhood. Didn't you, guys?”

“Yes, sir!” they all yelled enthusiastically.

Charlie Ten Horses said, “I am glad that somebody was finally able to talk sense into you guys. I tried to tell you all to take pride in being Sioux. Don't buy into the lame excuses reservation losers use to become failures.”

Charlie went into the house with his mom and Fila and sat down.

Betty started laughing and Charlie asked what was so funny.

She said, “You two are getting married. I was just thinking what would happen if some burglar ever tried to break into your house.”

All three started laughing.

An hour later, after some talk and good-byes, they went outside to leave, and Charlie grinned as he saw the entire gang walking up the street with a gargantuan Lakota man in the middle front. Several of them carried bags.

The man walked up to Charlie and said, “Are you Charlie Strongheart?”

Charlie nodded.

He pointed at Louie, who was wearing a large bandage on his ear and said, “Louie is my son.” He stuck out his hand and said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The man turned and walked away. The gang members pulled brushes and cans of paint out of the bags and immediately started painting the propane tank. Two guys pulled out cleaning supplies and walked over to the house and started cleaning where the beer bottle had hit.

Charlie and Fila got in the car and pulled out, waving at Betty.

Little did Charlie know that within the next year, two of those boys would start back working on their GEDs, one would join the navy, and four, including Louie, would join the army.

WHEN
they got back to Fort Bragg, the Quick Reaction Force Team under Custer, now referred to as Team Dog Soldier, in honor of Charlie, had practiced various rescue scenarios repeatedly and had made mock-ups of different Iranian buildings and houses.

Charlie and Fila immediately started practicing with the car and found all the devices located on it. It had been armor-plated and fitted with all kinds of neat devices, which had been learned from the super-secret British 14 company.

They stopped speaking in English and only spoke in Arabic and Persian. Charlie started wearing the specially made hearing aids and practiced all day long and part of the evenings with the team of linguist/translators provided for him by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Davood was being watched day and night, and Detachment-Delta had a constant stream of reports every time he moved, which was very frequently. He had built a large compound southwest of Tehran and started training his operatives there. Many were assembled there now, being trained on all aspects of jihad.

Within three weeks, Charlie, Fila, and the entire team were on the ground in Mosul, awaiting the green light. They stayed in air-conditioned trailers that had been brought in, and which remained on the edge of the tarmac. The Rangers stayed there, too, and maintained a tight twenty-four-hour-per-day security perimeter for the Delta operators.

Finally, after a week, the message came in. An operative had delivered a message to one of Davood Dabdeh's lieutenants about a wealthy Iraqi businessman with an Iranian wife wanting to meet with him privately about conducting business. Charlie's character would hire Davood's trained terrorists to sabotage American offshore drilling rigs, and he would also use them to kidnap wives and family members of the American oil companies drilling at the new platforms because of the oil crisis, until he could start taking over each little oil company by intimidation and strong-arm tactics. Then the platforms would also be disguised as staging areas for hit-and-run attacks inside the United States.

Dabdeh loved the idea, but saw no reason in the world why he would need this Iraqi to carry out such a plan. That, he did not convey in his message. He sent word to meet him out in the desert off of Highway 5, which runs between Tehran and Qom, and is in fact called the Tehran-Qom Highway. It is a well-paved, well-maintained roadway which runs for seventy-four and a half miles between the two major cities, but in between is some of the most desolate desert one could possibly imagine. There were a couple major ridges along the way and many gullies and gulches.

It was in one of these where the Special Forces team went with members of the Free Iranian Freedom Fighters Party, which is called the Komala, and which had created the hideaway and landing zone. Oddly enough, this party was headquartered in the mountains in Kurdistan, much closer to where Charlie and Fila were staying in Mosul than to the guerilla base near Qom in the southern part of the vast desert area. Davood Faraz Dabdeh's compound was also located some miles off of the Tehran-Qom Highway, also out in the desert but very close to Tehran.

The Komala had become one of the strangest revolutionary organizations in the world, in that there were actually two different Komala organizations and both of them had a red flag as their symbol. Both had the same founder, and each Komala had a separate headquarters, and the headquarters were actually within sight of each other. They were not identical twins, though. One Komala Party, which had a team of Special Forces advisors working with it, referred to itself as a leftist party, but the other Komala was actually affiliated with the Communist Party.

Both originally opposed the United States and most European nations, and the opposition was mainly because the U.S. supported the Shah of Iran, who brought a great deal of death and suffering to the revolutionaries. After the shah was deposed, however, and the Ayatollah Khomeini took the reins of power in Tehran, it got much worse—much, much worse.

In the beginning there was only the original Komala, or the Association, which was called the Iranian Freedom Fighters Party by many outside of Iran. Then after the ayatollah ascended to power and the suppression got worse, one group, which did not like the Communist Party or its precepts, became the leftist Komala—but not the communist Komala. It kept the name and the flag, but was diametrically opposed to its communist twin, and conversely so was the United States. Its group started becoming known outside Iran as the Free Iranian Freedom Fighters Party.

Dave, Charlie's soon-to-be-hopefully father-in-law, had commanded the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, and he knew from his friends still there that a small contingent from the 5th Group, working with the Free Komala, had gone with some of the Iranians they advised to a place in the desert about twenty miles or so from Qom, but that was all Dave's friends knew about it.

But knowing that Charlie and Fila were going on a very dangerous assignment, Dave also knew that they would have simply told him if that assignment was into Iraq or Afghanistan. They would not have told him what their mission was, but they certainly would have stated that they would be in Iraq or Afghanistan. He also knew that after he knew Charlie in Ranger School, when his haircut was “high and tight,” and Charlie ended up with 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, he had grown his hair out long and worn it in a traditional Native American style or a long ponytail. He was expecting that before he met Charlie again. When he saw that Charlie was working on a beard and had his haircut high and tight again, a buzz cut actually, he knew he had to be going on an assignment where he would be trying to blend in with a traditional Muslim environment. The clincher was knowing that his daughter, who he knew was in the Funny Platoon in Delta, spoke flawless Persian and Arabic, so chances were almost 100 percent that the pair was going into Iran on a very dangerous mission.

The entire mission was told to “saddle up.” Charlie and Fila went into their trailer. As a precaution he changed the powerful batteries in his fake hearing aids, just so he would not have to worry about one of them dying out in the middle of the mission.