MIKE4

The first novel

A note from JR: For those of you who haven’t read or listened the first novel in my MIKE4 series, I thought I would serialize this one before releasing THE SWORDFISH DECEPTION and SWORDFISH REVENGE on SUBSTACK. This will give you a bit of a background for some of the characters who will become central to the story throughout the series. I hope you enjoy the beginning of the MIKE4 series.

Section One: OPERATOR

06 July 2000, 2200hrs, Nairobi

Sue O’Connell was not enjoying her shift. The room smelled of sweaty humans and the smell of urine creeping under the door. There was little in the way of comfort in the room other than a case of bottled water and a box of granola bars. Sue hadn’t eaten any of the granola bars because she was convinced that the bugs that scurried around the floor at night had already eaten the best parts. She had a thermos of coffee and two peanut butter sandwiches in a reinforced canvas shoulder bag, but that was for mid shift when she needed some energy.

Sue’s eyes hurt from staring into the spotting scope. She had shifted from the straight scope to the night vision scope an hour ago and the change from normal light to the green glow of the night vision scope that had helped some, but she was tired of this shift and tired of staring at a warehouse from the fourth-floor window of the wrecked apartment building with no running water and no electricity.

Sue was sitting behind a black screen that covered window – only the scope peered through the screen and saw the outside world. No fresh air penetrated the screen, which added to the claustrophobic atmosphere. Next to her was her computer– capturing the images from the scope, her suppressedMP5, and her radio. She was sitting on a straight-backed chair wearing a t-shirt, cargo pants, black trainers with her Glock 26 in a nylon shoulder holster. The door behind her was “locked and chocked”– the room door hadwith two old locks and a set of steel chocks wedged in the door to insure no intruders could get in before she could kill them.

Night shift was never fun and any sort of observation point work was not what Sue liked. After selection and the yearlong training course that followed, Sue had arrived at her squadron in S&R. The Command Sergeant Major had warned her about what Squadron work was like.

“Chief O’Connell, welcome to S&R. You are one of our first chief warrant officers to come from Army military intelligence, so I want to warn you ahead of time about what you are getting into. “

What he didn’t need to say to Sue was also the first female warrant officer to pass selection. The shock on the faces of S&R leadership when she passed selection was something she had gotten used to after six years in the Army. Sue found out soon enough in the Special Operations Forces (SOF) once you passed any selection program, most of that gender prejudice went away. Sue remembered, what her mom had said years ago about her work. She said she saw the world for women in intelligence as a “Ginger Rogers” world – Ginger Rogers had to be as good a dancer as Fred Astaire, but she had to do everything backwards in high heels.

“Thanks, Sergeant Major. I thought selection made it pretty clear – our job is to find and fix the bad guys so that the raid teams can finish them.”

“Too true, but find and fix sometimes means watch and wait. I hope you have patience, because patience is the single most important attribute you need here.”

The sergeant major had been right. And Sue wasn’t thrilled about that.

Sue had been in Nairobi for eight weeks assigned to the embassy undercover as a logistics staffer to the military assistance and advisory group, the MAAG, at the embassy. Her real job was as part of a team designed to find and track members of the al-Qaida infrastructure that had attacked the embassy in 1998. The President was determined to bring the terrorists to justice and SOF’s role as the premier anti-terrorism arm of the US military meant that this became their job. Once the targets were identified and could be fixed in place, SOF raid teams would “finish” the targets one way or the other.

They started with a few leads eight weeks ago – suspected supporters of the network provided, according to the morning briefing, by “the Klingons.” Back in May, Sue was still new enough that she didn’t mind asking dumb questions. Her boss, Chief Warrant Officer 5 William Jameson, had more time in SOF than anyone else. He had spent ten years with the raid teams and now five in S&R and he was a good liaison between the shooters and S&R. He looked about 50 but was only 40. “Time in the harness” was his only explanation. He didn’t seem to mind dumb questions – at least not from Sue.

“Chief, Klingons?”

Jameson smirked. “Come on, Sue. Klingons. Star Trek? Cloaking device? Cloak and dagger?”

“The station, right?”

“Brilliant deduction, Holmes. I assumed you knew that simply because you are a child of a pair of Klingons.”

“Don’t remind me, Chief. It is burned into my head.” Sue had spent years avoiding being called the “daughter of the O’Connells” or even the “granddaughter of Peter O’Connell.” She had been able to avoid this sort of legacy discussion in conventional military intelligence, but the links between the special operations community and the CIA were far deeper and more profound.

“Well, I could think of worse things to have burned into your head. I have my drill instructor’s face burned into my head…”

“Fair enough, chief. Fair enough.”

It turned out the Klingon leads had been very good and the two S&R teams started building out the full network of active AQ targets and local supporters working 24/7. Surveillance operations on the street were challenging in Nairobi. Most of the team were very fit, very large, very white guys. They were hard to blend into the markets and coffee houses where the Arabs and Kenyans met unless you were trying to look like oil or dock workers on holiday, but hard even then. She and Joe Billings, the single black guy on the team, were out every day. Sue had been used on the street more than most of the team, including Joe, simply because she could fit into nearly any market place – “woman shopper” was her cover story and she used it over and over again while buying cloth, cheap jewelry and trinkets. All the while, she was watching a target attend a meeting. Meanwhile, the rest of the team circled the area in Toyota Hilux pickups and from small Suzuki and Indian Enfield motorcycles. They still stuck out, but looked more like their peers from the oil fields or the docks.

When she was working as an intelligence analyst at the Corps level at Ft. Bragg, her work had been primarily on force protection operations and counterintelligence operations. She was loaned out once to the airborne battalion at Vincenza when they went into Bosnia and once to the Berlin brigade, but mostly she trained and did paperwork. In SOF, she was either “downrange,” preparing to go to downrange or on block leave. It was focused work and she loved it. The adrenaline rush when you were following a target in a foreign country – high or medium threat - was transformative. She could feel her senses enhanced the more she practiced her new trade. She thrived on the street work. Just as the CSM had warned her, hated the watching and waiting when you were located in a fixed-point observation point. Worse still was when you were in a “night standing observation point” forced to stay awake watching nothing happen through the green world of night vision and waiting for something to happen. Generally speaking, it never did.

Each shift of 12 hours had a five-man S&R team and a full raid team of 10 building the network that would eventually result in some sort of take down in Nairobi or wherever the target took them. So far, their surveillance efforts had identified a warehouse on the edge of town. It was near a truck depot that ran authorized convoys of supplies from Nairobi to Mombasa as well as smuggled cargo to the warlords in Somalia. The warehouse was now designated Alpha6 and Jameson decided that this had to be either a safe house or a bed down location – either way, it was better than trying to follow young Kenyans on the streets going nowhere fast. Eventually, any action would end up at Alpha6.

The ear bud in her left ear clicked twice, bringing her back to the present, the room and the green viewer of the NVGs attached to the spotting scope. Jameson’s voice came through the earpiece as clearly as if he was whispering in her ear. “All stations, this is Zero. 22hrs. Time check.”

Jameson was in a van about a half mile away. His driver was Terry. They would be cruising the neighborhoods, circling the area and staying just in range of the radios. Inside the van with Jameson and Terry was Johnny Marshall, the raid team liaison officer operating on a different set of communications with his raid team leader located someplace else in the city. Sue had no idea how or where they were hiding a dozen operators in black nomex flight suits kitted out for war, but she was certain they were out there and ready.

“Mike 8” George was located on the roof of the building she was watching. He had it far worse than Sue. He had to be outside among the mosquitoes and various other creepy crawlies dressed in his black jumpsuit and face mask. Sometimes you just had to embrace the suck.

Sue spoke into her headset, “Mike4.”

“Mike7” Nate was in an old, apparently abandoned 12 passenger van down the street. He could drive anywhere, anytime with anything. He would either recover the team or, if necessary, follow a vehicle. In the passenger seat next to him was Jim Massoni, the senior NCO for the team.

“Mike9” Joe was on a rooftop down the street. Enjoying the same vermin as George. Over the past week, he and George had a competition to see who had the most bug bites.

“Mike 3” Deke was in a hotel room in the same building as George. Like Sue, he had been staring into the spotting scope since they took over from the other team at 1800hrs. Deke had avoided the rooftop service because on a previous rotation he had come down with Dengue fever. A second infection could be fatal. Even Jameson thought that was a good reason to keep him inside.

“Folks, we just heard from the Klingons that one of their sources has report of a meeting at our Alpha tonight. Meeting is set for ca. 24hrs, but that would be Arab time. Keep alert because we don’t know when we will start to see visitors. Out.”

Jameson was mission focused, but also determined to keep his team in the loop. Even though the radios were encrypted to an NSA standard, he didn’t say much on the radio. Arab time – that meant it could be anywhere from 22hrs to 03hrs or tomorrow orthe next day. “Bukhra, inshallah” – tomorrow, god willing – seemed to be the motto for anything dealing with the local Arabs.

Two clicks in the ear bud. George asked if the info was coming from the SOF team on the ground or the Station.

“Not that it matters, but ours. Zero out.” Jameson was not big on chatter on the net.

It was 0125hrs and Sue was working on a sandwich and a cup of coffee when she saw a light blast out of the warehouse door. In the night vision screen, even a 60w bulb seemed like a searchlight.

“Stand by. Stand by. Mike4. Someone just opened the door at Alpha6. We have a armed bravo standing in the door – it looks like he is waiting for someone.”

“Mike4, this is Zero. Everyone confirm and then leave the channel open for 4.”

Sue watched the street and the door. The single bravo – now silhouetted in yellow against the green of the NVG. “The Bravo has an AK slung over his shoulder.”

“Which shoulder?” Jameson needed to know if the AK could be put into action.

“Right shoulder.” Sue blamed the time of night for not reporting that initially. Of course the raid team– especially thesnipers located on the same rooftop as George and on the roof of her building would need to know that important fact. Assuming he was right handed, it meant that he was not ready to put the AK into action.

An old Mercedes taxi cab rolled up in front of the door with its lights off. All four doors opened and six separate figures left the car. Sue keyed her microphone. “Standby Standby. A Charlie just pulled up. Mercedes Taxi. Old style – heavy. Six bravos just entered the building. Two were armed with AKs – carried at the ready. Both right handed. Four were in thobes. They pulled bags out of the car boot.

“Roger. Six bravos plus the one in the building. Any other seen?”

“No.”

“3 this is Zero. Do you see any Charlies at your end of the street that look like blocking elements?”

“No, boss. Nothing at my end.”

There was a pause. No one wanted to break the silence as they waited for Jameson’s orders. It didn’t take long. Jameson keyed the comms 30 seconds later.

“Zero to all –main team is taking over. 8, 4, 3 and 9, pack up your kit and be prepared for pickup from 2. We have ten, I say again, ten minutes. Clear and sanitize your space. We won’t be coming back. Confirm.”

“2”

“8”

“4”

“3”

“9”

Sue was more than a bit pissed off that she was not going to get to watch the assault. She knew better. Their positions needed to be clear and they needed to be out of the area before any shit storm with the locals started, but this was the first time she had been directly involved in this sort of find, fix, and finish operation. She wanted to watch.

She started by taking down the spotting scope and NVGs. These along with the collapsible tripod went into a small blackPelican case on wheels. Next, she put on a smaller set of NVGs and searched the room for debris. The water and the granola bars went into smaller pelican that fit on top of the wheeled case. This case also carried the garbage bag and the urine relief bottle that they all carried so that they didn’t have to leave their position during a 12-hour shift. She checked around her chair – thermos and food were already in her shoulder bag.

She pulled the chocks from the door and put them in her backpack. She collapsed the stock on the MP5 and attached the SMG on two straps on her shoulder holster harness with the rifle facing down. Finally, she pulled a dark cotton smock from her shoulder bag, put it on and buttoned the top button. She pulled the NVGs off her head and they hung by their strap around her neck. She disguised that by pulling a headscarf around her neck and over her hair. Sue waited a full two minutes to let her eyes readjust to the dark.

Finally, she pulled the black window cover off the window and over her shoulders and attached it at the Velcro strip. It wasn’t exactly a woman’s abaya, but at this time of night, it would have to do.

She pulled out her Glock and stood next to the door. “Time to go.” She said to herself as she checked the hallway and, since it was clear, she holstered the Glock, walked out the door, down the hall and to the stairs.

She was down the stairs and standing next to the door when Nate pulled up on what appeared to be a decrepit minibus. Just as she jumped into the bus, she heard the door to the warehouse being blown in by the team. Even from the other side of the building, the flash and noise of the explosion was deafening. She thought she might have heard a round go off, but that may have been her imagination. What she did hear was a 5-ton cargo truck pull up in front of the warehouse. Everyone – alive or dead was going to leave.

Nate pulled down the street, turned right on a very dark highway with the lights of the Nairobi airfield at the end of the road and started to drive carefully toward the lights.