Trident Force (3 page)

The “firing range” on which Chambers and his team were suffering was just one of a number established to help the nation's many special operations units keep their skills honed. There was a jungle firing range and a desert firing range, as well as arctic, alpine, urban, coastal and deep ocean firing ranges. And they weren't just a place where you stood with ear protectors hung over your head and fired at a target or two. They were nightmare stages on which you waged near-total, personal war. All simulated, of course.

“Watch it, Chief!” growled Chambers as he waved his arms, hoping the other side would note the moving grass. Jerry was getting a little old for this too, he thought. Jerry and Lynn were grandparents, for that matter, although they'd gotten an early start.

Their souls weren't over the hill, thought Chambers, a little resentfully, but their bodies weren't as well tuned as they once were.

Each firing range had at least one objective, which was defended by one force and attacked by another. Neither side knew the true identity or precise size of the other. Thus, Mike and his Trident Force might be competing with one of the CIA special groups. Or maybe a normal SEAL detachment. Or Army Rangers or a contingent of the Delta Force. Or the president's security force. Or even some obscure group of DEA agents. Or any of the special mercenary forces now employed by the government. Or anybody else the secretary of defense and his minions thought might contribute something to the felony. Not only did Mike now not know, but he was supposed to never know the other side's identity. And the same for the other side. The only thing of which either could be reasonably sure was that the other's armament was as basic as their own. The drill was supposed to be a test of wits and stamina, not who had the biggest weapons budget.

The marsh firing range on which Mike and his fellows were pinned down was located in the middle of the Big Cypress National Preserve in the southern tip of Florida, not far from the Miccosukee Reservation. The objective was a ratty little long-abandoned village of crumbling mud and daub huts.

The morning had started out cool as Mike and his Force team commenced their eight-mile slog toward the objective. So cool was it that it took almost fifteen minutes for the big blobs of sweat to begin appearing on their jungle greens. They forced their way through three or four miles of sharp-edged, head-high grass. Then the sun and the deep, glue-like muck—“God's own crap” as Jerry called it—began to wear them down. They maintained their alertness, however, and were rewarded. Around mid-morning they spotted a contingent of the other force emplaced on a small, brush-covered hummock that stood between them and the objective. As far as Mike could tell, the defenders hadn't spotted them.

Chambers's initial thought was to detour around the hummock and move on directly to the objective, but it seemed clear that was not practical. They would be spotted unless they detoured so far that they would not make it to the objective before the end of the exercise.

Among the many iron-hard rules of warfare, two stand out: Never attack an entrenched, very possibly superior enemy head-on, and never divide your forces. If you violate one of these rules—or both—and win, nobody says a word. If you violate one—even to execute the other—and things don't work out, you will be hanged. By the journalists and other armchair generals and by the court-martial.

On the assumption they hadn't been spotted, Mike decided to surprise the defenders. He sent Ted Anderson and Jack Kudloe—both twenty-something SEAL petty officers who were still fast and nimble—off to the left to circle around behind the defenders. He, Jerry and Alex Mahan the older members of the team, would provide the diversion.

The first part of the plan seemed to have worked well enough. After Ted and Jack had gotten well clear of them, Mike and his companions continued along their original track, making just enough muted ruckus to attract attention. In due course they'd been spotted and brought under fire, which they returned. Each side was firing M-16s with blanks and lasers, which triggered the sensors attached to every participant's clothing. Now it was just a matter of avoiding the lasers and waiting for evidence of Ted and Jack's attack from the rear. Unless, of course, the defenders spotted the two SEALs prematurely or decided to send out a party to track down Mike's group.

“They've got us well pinned down, Boss,” observed Jerry. “You have a backup plan?”

“Try to sprint past them.”

“Umm,” replied Andrews noncommittally, as he wiped away some of the sweat pouring into his already-red eyes.

“I think we may be okay,” said Alex quietly. “Ted and Jack have been circling around for more than half an hour and don't seem to have been spotted.”

Mike nodded in agreement He'd asked her to talk quietly, while he and Jerry did the opposite, to avoid giving away her gender. While he wasn't sure how he could make use of it, every little bit of information the other side didn't have was to his advantage.

Unlike the other members of the Force, Alex had never been in the navy. She had, however, been both a crack CIA analyst and field operative. She possessed a reputation for having a steel-trap mind, a high level of accurate intuition and a ferocious attention to detail. Alex was also fluent in four languages and had an advanced degree in engineering, but her greatest qualification was her network of contacts. She had, over the years, managed to develop and maintain dependable contacts not only in the CIA, but also at the DIA, the NSA, the DEA and most of the countless Homeland Security agencies. In a word, graceful Alex knew everybody. While the politicians in power loved to babble about the seamless cooperation they were building among the various intelligence agencies, the reality was that the cooperation was still far from seamless. No matter what the press releases said, people still had friends and enemies, self-interests, ambitions and agendas.

Suddenly all hell broke loose on the hummock. The volume and rate of gunfire exploded, its
crack, crack, crack
mixed with loud shouting. Then Mike could hear the
pop
of dye grenades.

“That's it,” he shouted, standing as he did. “It's now or never, so let's hit it!”

Without waiting for a reply Mike charged forward, as best he could, keeping his graying crew-cut hair below the top of the grass except when he popped up to fire. To his right, Jerry—big, tough but far from young—was doing the same, beginning to pant as his feet sank deep into the mud every few steps. To his left, tall, willowy Alex was gliding over the mud, her long, dark hair made up into a tight bun, as she tried to dance and weave between the stands of stiff, thick grass that Jerry was attempting to bulldoze.

Shortly before they reached the hummock, Mike realized the defenders seemed to have stopped firing. Fifty squishy, slippery paces later he and his team broke into the open and then charged up onto the slightly raised hummock. They came upon the sort of scene that Mike truly hated.

One of the defenders, a big, red-haired guy, was lying on his back. Leaning over him, forcing the barrel of his rifle into the redhead's neck was Jack Kudloe. The SEAL was screaming, “I killed you, you son of a bitch. I killed you,” over and over again, his face red with uncontrolled fury. The redhead kept trying to protest that he had only been hit in the leg. Ted and two of the defenders, both of whose mud-caked greens were highlighted by dye from the grenades, were trying to pull Kudloe off his victim. So far with little success.

Fury flashed through Mike's icy blue eyes only to immediately morph into cold calculation. He'd seen it too many times before. Wind a man up too tight, suggest that he was allowed to play by special rules, and you were asking for trouble. No matter how intense their training, many men—under the proper circumstances—lost sight of the objective and, in the process, lost all self-control. And any man who lost control was of no more use to an organization like the Trident Force than would be a mad dog.

The missions assigned to Chambers's group went far beyond the straightforward sabotage and assassination that characterized so many black ops. They tended to be delicate, complex and infinitely frustrating. Chambers was as interested in self-control, flexibility, brains and a minimum of couth as he was in killing skills. A little sea time was also a big plus.

What irritated him the most at the moment was that he'd personally selected Kudloe not two weeks before to replace a man who'd been badly injured and put on the retired list. Now he discovered that his handpicked replacement suffered from uncontrollable bloodlust. Well, damn it, he'd made a mistake.

“Get the hell off that man, Kudloe,” bellowed Chambers.

The enraged SEAL paid no attention whatsoever.

Chambers walked around to Kudloe's head, stooped down and jammed the barrel of his M-16 under the SEAL's armpit. He then lifted and pushed on the stock, using the weapon as a lever to pry the attacker off his victim. Kudloe grunted and turned toward him, rage still in his eyes.

“Get off that man immediately!” repeated Chambers.

Kudloe leaned back, taking the pressure off the rifle. “Oh, shit!” he mumbled. Fortunately for him, he didn't add “fuck you.” Even more fortunately, real knives were not permitted on the firing ranges.

His eyes still pale with anger, Mike glanced to his side at Alex, who was standing with her rifle under her arm. She was shaking her head to herself and looking at Kudloe with an expression of distaste. She understood how things had to be done if the Trident Force was to achieve anything.

A voice squawked out of the radio clipped to Mike's belt. The same voice emerged at the same time from the radio clipped to the fourth defender, who was thereby marked as the opposition's leader. Mike and the other leader exchanged glances then both looked up in the sky to where the monitor drone was now slow-flying directly overhead. “The attacking force is scored with having overrun the defending force and suffering no casualties,” announced the stereophonic voice of the exercise mediator, who had been spying on the whole drill from above. “The attacking force is reminded that it has less than two hours remaining to reach and take the objective.”

“Damn!” mumbled the defense leader. He then shrugged his shoulders.

“Good work,” said Mike to his team. “Even you, Kudloe. Up to a point. Now let's hit the road. We don't have much time. And Kudloe, your performance for the rest of the day will determine whether I transfer you back to a regular SEAL unit or to storekeepers school or to the brig.”

He looked up at the blazing sun, took a deep breath of the rich, hot, organic air—it tasted of salt and long-dead seafood and sun-baked salt hay—and gritted his teeth. How many more defenders lay ahead? he wondered. Were they all concentrated in the objective or had they established other little outposts on other hummocks? How many roving patrols did they have out?

They never told you how big the other side was. That was supposed to be part of the fun.

 

Ramon Fuentes, Captain, United States Marine Corps, tried hard to convince himself that he felt left out; that he'd rather be on the firing line with the rest of the Force than where he was, stuck inside the Force's drab, windowless, concrete block facility, staring at a computer, surrounded by the smell of the wax on the floor tiles and waiting for something to happen. He tried, but he couldn't do it.

He could crawl through mud, fire an M-16—or anything else—and suffer the god damned horseflies as well as any man—or woman. Better, in fact. But the pleasures of the field—whether it be Paris Island, Quantico or Little Creek—couldn't possibly compare with the pleasure of having a leisurely family lunch with your wife and daughter. Each of whom had taken time out of her busy day to join him for an hour or two in the admittedly under-decorated, but well air-conditioned and bug-free conference room.

Sandy and little Jamie had left, but the glow continued as he stared at the snippets of news rolling down the computer monitor. They were much like newspaper headlines, except they were directed at a very select, need-to-know audience.

The phone rang. “SecResGruTwo, Captain Fuentes speaking, sir.”

“Ray, this is Alan. Give me Mike,” said the deputy secretary of defense who served as liaison between SECDEF, himself and the Force.

“He's out at the firing range with the rest of the team.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“Is this an emergency? I can alert him, have him break off the exercise.”

“No. Not yet. Maybe not at all. Will he be coming back to the office today?”

“Yes.”

“Have him call me then.”

“Aye, aye.”

Ray Fuentes didn't really trust Alan Parker. He'd seen the bureaucrat change his story one too many times in order to protect his own ample ass. To be on the safe side, the marine officer relayed the message verbatim to the firing range, for delivery to Chambers as soon as possible. Half an hour later the firing range reported back that the message had been delivered and that Captain Chambers was going to take it at face value and return the call when he got back to his office.

 

Fuentes was struggling halfheartedly with some paperwork when the security lock clicked and the outside door opened. In, out of the dark, marched Mike Chambers—mud-covered, sweat-soaked and looking slightly cranky.

“How'd it go, sir?”

“In the end it was a draw. They—whoever the hell they were—must have had at least twenty people at the objective . . . Ray, we missed you. Please open the garage door.”

Ray pressed the garage door opener while Chambers stepped out in front of the building. “I want all the gear cleaned and restowed to Jerry's satisfaction. Then you can shower.