‘I’m moving up,’ he announced. ‘Cover me now!’ With that, he sprang from the mushy ground, weaving a serpentine path along the perimeter, elbowing past vines and ducking beneath low-hanging branches with raindrops threatening to fall from them like hot wax dripping from a candle. He was drenched in sweat now, his mouth salty, his eyes burning. He ignored his pulse ringing in his ears and was all about the course ahead, cutting, weaving again, sidestepping, and bounding over two fallen logs whose bark was flaking off like sunburn. His boots made sucking noises in the mud, and for a moment his vision blurred and returned as he blinked away more sweat and crossed beneath a stand of wax palms.
He broke from there to a small clearing and the nearest shack, where three of the FARC rebels had assumed defensive positions beside a wall that resembled a quilt of cannibalized sheet metal with fading soda company logos.
One of the rebels glanced back.
Ross lifted his HK416 assault rifle, the same one he carried as a member of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as DEVGRU. Like the AFEUR team’s rifles, his thirty-round magazine was loaded with 5.56mm NATO rounds, and he was about to express deliver some flaming hot lead to these rebels –
When Kozak’s voice buzzed through his earpiece: ‘Ghost Lead! Get down! Got three behind you!’
Ross hit the deck. Craned his neck.
And his HUD lit up like the Vegas strip.
TWO
Kozak was perched about halfway up the mountain overlooking the FARC outpost, and he had a clean line of sight on the shacks and trucks.
With the drone crawler’s remote clutched in his hands, he gaped at the LED screen showing the drone’s point of view: Ross had just hit the deck and activated his optical camouflage. The team’s fatigues, boots, gloves, scarves — everything — were made of a meta-material specially engineered to reflect the current environment. The drawback was that you had to remain perfectly still; movement produced a visible distortion as the system’s microprocessor attempted to catch up. Moreover, the report of your weapon would send reverberations through your body that often deactivated the system.
‘Ghost Lead, I have you covered,’ Kozak said, taking the drone into a nosedive, then flying in and out of trees until he reached an opening in the brush. He brought the drone down, the quad rotors rolling into tire position, and thump, she was on the ground, speeding up behind the three FARC rebels who were jogging toward Ross.
Kozak switched on the drone’s speaker and spoke into the remote’s built-in microphone: ‘Oo ti blya, golova, kak obezyaniya jopah.’
If the FARC rebel who spun around had grown up in Little Odessa, Brooklyn, and been the son of Russian immigrants, then he would’ve understood Kozak’s words: Your face looks like a monkey’s ass.
But the rebel did not share Kozak’s background. And getting his attention was all Kozak needed. The bearded rebel took aim at the little ‘toy’ rolling toward him –
And that’s when Kozak thumbed the touchscreen and launched the drone right into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground, a triplet of gunfire erupting from his AK, his two comrades crying out and turning back to see what had happened.
‘Get ’em now, boss!’ Kozak cried.
It was, in Kozak’s young mind, a perfect marriage of technology and tenacity, with the drone diverting the rebels and clearing the way for Ross to attack. Indeed, Ross fired three rounds — perfect head shots that dropped the targets nearly in unison, as though they were androids controlled by a single power supply that had suddenly been cut.
‘Get that drone back in the air,’ Ross ordered, bolting off toward the shacks.
‘Roger that.’ Kozak flew the drone straight up above the canopy and once more began sweeping the entire perimeter. ‘The Colombians have their squad attacking in the west,’ he reported. ‘I got eyes on about ten guys around the shacks, marking them now. Still no sign of the package.’
The drone’s computer picked out and highlighted each of the targets and updated their positions every one-hundredth of a second. Kozak wasn’t sure what he liked more: providing overwatch and intel with the drone (which in his youthful twenty-six-year-old mind gave him major baller status) or actually being in the shit and firing the guns (which was equally awesome). He figured he’d catch hell from Ross later for that stunt with the drone, but he’d argue that he had just been improvising, not trying to show off, not trying to perform some feat of heroism. They had the technology — why not put it to good use with a little old school demolition derby?
A rustle of leaves from behind, followed by the sudden rhythm of footfalls, had him turning, tucking the remote into his web gear, activating his camouflage, and holding still –
Just as two dark-faced rebels wearing boonie hats approached from the east, one grunting in Spanish, ‘I heard him up here, somewhere.’ The other used his free arm to hold back some fronds while he and his comrade drew closer.
Kozak adjusted his grip on the rifle, a Remington ACR with suppressor, well suited for jungle ops like this one.
He held his breath. Time slowed. Sounds congealed into one another like pieces of clay to form one constant: the beating of his heart. The men drew closer. He could ambush them now, but in the second he killed one, the other could get off a shot.
Don’t move, he ordered himself.
‘Being a great warrior isn’t just being a good killer. It’s knowing when to pull the trigger, and when to shake a hand. It’s doing what it takes to win.’
Kozak’s father, Leonid, who’d remained behind in Russia, had said that after learning his son wanted to join the Army. And while Kozak hadn’t realized it then, he understood now that being a successful Special Forces operator required just that: knowing when. And the only people who’d ever witness his decisions, good and bad, would be his teammates. They were, in truth, the audience he needed to please. You didn’t become a Ghost to get famous — that was for sure. ‘Credit is failure,’ Major Mitchell had told them time and again. You became a Ghost because you wanted to serve, you wanted to make sure that all those kids who’d suffered through 9/11, those kids who’d lost their families, would never, ever have to go through something like that again. Someone had to do the job, someone who would not lead an ordinary life. Kozak had always known he would be a soldier. He had the Russian fighting spirit in his blood and the love for America in his heart and soul. He was a Russian-American. He was proud.
‘There he is! Right there!’ cried one of the rebels.
Whether he’d been shaking unconsciously or his optical camouflage system had malfunctioned, Kozak wasn’t sure. That he would die in the next heartbeat was absolutely certain –
Unless he sprang up, took his chances, and fired.
THREE
Pepper had a feeling the two rebels who’d broken off from their buddies on the east side of the outpost were aware of Kozak’s position. He also noted that the drone was now on autopilot, conducting a series of slow passes along the perimeter out to the river, wheeling around like a lost buzzard without a meal, which all meant that Kozak’s attention had been diverted.
Pepper’s teammates didn’t call him ‘Old Reliable’ because he was a self-indulgent slacker; no, when he had a hunch, he paid attention to it because years of combat experience had taught him to ‘read the signs’ and ‘watch the skies’ in order to better sense danger. These were a hunter’s instincts, forged over decades in the field.