Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Parker fell into line behind his team leader, Jack Sigler, as the second group filed into the house. All but one of the members of the first group were spread out throughout the front room in tactical positions. The remaining operator stood guard over a figure that lay face down and motionless on a mattress in the corner, his hands secured behind his back with flexi-cuffs.

Just as they had rehearsed dozens of times…hundreds of times…Sigler’s team lined up on the corner of the hallway, and at a gesture from their leader, each advanced into the unknown space beyond. Sigler was the second man into the room, as was their protocol, and he broke to the right. Parker, in the number three position, peeled left behind the point man, Mark Adams. Another mattress was positioned along the far wall right in front of Parker, and a bearded man lay sprawled out atop it, snoring loudly.

Sigler and the fourth man in their stack, Casey Bellows, visually scanned the rest of the room, while Adams moved directly toward the sleeping man, with Parker close behind him. A narrow beam of green-tinged light—invisible to the unaided eye—lanced from the AN/PAQ4 targeting laser mounted on the upper receiver of Adams’s suppressed Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifle. As seen through the night-vision devices each member of the team wore, it appeared as a bright, wavering point on the supine man’s forehead.

The sleeper stirred and opened his eyes.

Adams froze in mid-step. Below the brilliant spot of the laser, a pair of white dots appeared—the man’s pupils, fully dilated and reflecting only the infrared spectrum of light—staring right back at Parker.

Then the man rolled over onto his side, facing the wall.

Parker didn’t exhale the breath he was holding. Maybe the man was still asleep, maybe he was just playing possum; either way, in another three seconds he would either be bound and gagged, or bagged and tagged. Parker activated his own PAQ4, aiming at the back of the man’s head, as Adams moved in for the capture. Before the man could even begin to wake up, he was flipped onto his stomach. The flexi-cuffs were pulled tight around his wrists and a strip of olive drab ‘100 mile an hour’ tape was slapped over his mouth, to preemptively silence his uncomprehending protests and cries of alarm.

Adams gave a thumbs-up signal, indicating that the captive was under control, after which Sigler’s voice whispered across the net: “Room secure.”

“Roger,” Rainer answered. “Cipher Seven, we are ready for pick-up. Over.”

Cipher Seven, Doug Pettit, who presently sat behind the wheel of an up-armored M1151 HMMWV—a Humvee to the rest of the world—idling quietly with no lights showing, half a mile away, replied immediately. “Roger, Six. We’re on our way.”

“All right, boys,” Rainer said. “Clean up time.”

A falsetto voice cooed in Parker’s earpiece: “Knock, knock. Housekeeping.”

It was probably Jesse Strickland, who styled himself the team’s court jester. Someone groaned in response, but that was the end of it. The team went to work. Parker lowered his assault rifle, leaving Adams to look after the prisoner. He took a large green nylon pouch—a standard military-use body bag—from a pocket. He held it open so that Sigler could begin dropping stuff in. Everything but the furniture went into the bag: loose papers, books, articles of clothing and even a collection of empty soda bottles. There was no telling what might be worthwhile, and this was not the time or place to make such judgments. There would be plenty of time to sort through it all later, when they were back safely behind the wire.

Thirty seconds later, the eight men, along with two captives and three bags full of what might or might not be important evidence, hustled from the door of the house to a row of waiting Humvees. Parker heaved his burden through the rear door of the fourth vehicle in line and then climbed inside, slamming the heavy door shut and engaging the combat locks. Sigler settled into the front passenger seat and secured his door.

There was another round of radio check-ins, with each driver reporting their readiness, and then the convoy pulled away. Despite being in armored vehicles, the team remained vigilant. The mission had gone flawlessly to this point, but the last thing any of them wanted to do was jinx things with a premature round of self-congratulation. It took only a single roadside IED to ruin an otherwise perfect outing. They avoided the known patrol routes, where insurgents most often targeted occupation forces, and instead risked a course that led them through neighborhoods that were known to be sympathetic to the opposition, reasoning—or rather hoping—that Hajji would be less likely to blow things up on his own doorstep. Nevertheless, every man in the team knew that no amount of preparation and planning could guarantee success; luck always played a part.

This time, their luck held. Twenty minutes later, they rolled under the arch that guarded the entrance to Camp Blue Diamond. The mission had gone flawlessly. They had captured both of the al-Awda couriers and gathered a ton of evidence, without firing a single shot…or being fired at.

It was a great way to end their four-month deployment to Iraq.





TWO