Tier One Wild (49 page)
TJ’s eyes blinked weakly and blood ran down his lips.
* * *
Four miles north, Marine One passed over the National Mall on its approach to the White House. The South Lawn was ringed by Secret Service agents, ready to rush the President of the United States inside to safety.
* * *
Raynor sprinted as fast as his broken ribs would allow, out of the cover of trees and onto the manicured lawn at the northern edge of Cedar Hill Cemetary. In the blue sky ahead of him he saw the black smoke where a helicopter had been hit by an SA-24 and then crashed in a neighborhood in the Hillcrest Heights subdivision of Prince George’s County.
Kolt’s .45-caliber pistol swung with each stride, and his head swiveled back and forth, searching for either Doyle or TJ.
Just in front of Raynor, a wide marble crypt stood in the green grass. Kolt went wide around it to check the other side and there, twenty feet down a slight decline toward a road, David Doyle sat astride Josh Timble. The terrorist had a pistol in his hand and he leveled it, point-blank, down at TJ’s face.
“No!” Kolt shouted, and he fired a single round from his .45. The bullet nailed Doyle in the shoulder and he spun off TJ and tumbled down onto the damp grass. The Glock fell a few feet from TJ’s head.
Kolt walked forward, his pistol still pointed at Doyle. “TJ! TJ!” But he saw the hilt of the knife, and he watched Timble grab it with both hands and pull it out of his chest.
“Don’t move!” Raynor screamed, speaking to both men simultaneously. He ran forward and dropped to his knees.
Blood spurted from the sucking chest wound. Raynor’s years of training told him instantly that the injury was not survivable. Still, he put pressure on the hole in TJ’s chest. With all his strength he pushed his left hand down on the wound.
Blood pumped through his fingers.
TJ’s eyes were glassy. Unfixed.
“I surrender,” Doyle mumbled from the grass lower on the hill.
Kolt ignored him and spoke to Timble. Blood had trickled out of both sides of the lieutenant colonel’s mouth.
“I’m sorry, brother,” Kolt said, his voice cracking. “Shit! Just hang on. Help is on the—”
“Sir! I surrender!”
Kolt turned away from his friend now, and toward David Doyle. “No, you don’t.”
The bleached-blond man had sat up in the grass, clutching his left shoulder with his right hand. Slowly he rolled to his knees and stood up fully.
“I … I just told you, I give up.”
“You give up?”
“Yes. I know my rights, Officer.”
“Do I look like a fucking cop?”
Doyle shook his head slowly. “No. No, you don’t. You are … you are from the same unit as Captain Timble. You are in the Army. You have no jurisdiction here inside the U.S.”
Kolt stood now. “What does that tell you?”
Doyle thought it over. “You are committing a crime. You are a criminal!”
Raynor smiled angrily. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, asshole.” Kolt divided his attention between TJ and the man standing a few feet away. He pushed his knee into the wound now, but he could already tell the blood flow was slowing.
In the distance, Raynor heard a helicopter approaching.
Doyle said, “If you kill me, soldier … you will be committing a
capital
crime.”
“Like I give a shit right now.” Raynor motioned toward the Glock with his .45. “Go for the gun.”
“No. No! I told you, I surrend—”
Kolt shot Doyle in the left shin. The American al Qaeda operative fell facedown to the grass, his right hand just feet from the black pistol.
“There! It’s closer now! Pick it up!”
Doyle screamed. Raynor had taken enough battle damage in his life to know that the scream was from terror, not from pain.
Pain of that magnitude took time to register, for the mind to accept it.
And time was something Raynor had no intention of giving Doyle.
“Go for the gun!” Raynor demanded again. He purposefully did not look down into the eyes of his friend now. He focused every bit of his attention on Doyle and the Glock 23.
“Please! Take me in! Arrest me! Don’t do this! I am unarmed!”
“Last chance to arm yourself before I execute you!” Raynor barked.
Kolt felt movement from TJ below him. He looked down, away from the threat, and he saw that Josh had turned his head to face Doyle now.
As soon as Kolt looked away, Doyle lunged forward in the grass, his hand reaching for the weapon. As he got his fist around the grip and swung it toward Raynor, he screamed, “
Allahu Ak
—”
Kolt fired a .45 round into David Doyle’s forehead. The thirty-year-old was dead before his face hit the grass.
Sirens filled the air now, and their volume increased by the second. Helicopter rotors beat in the sky, but they were much farther off.
Kolt Raynor took his knee off of TJ’s chest. No more blood drained from the massive knife wound.
“We got him, TJ,” Kolt said. His eyes filled with tears. “
You
got him.”
With his fingertips covered in his friend’s blood, Kolt closed TJ’s eyelids. He then placed the pistol in his best friend’s outstretched hand.
“Medals for the dead, brother. Medals for the dead.”
Kolt Raynor stood and walked back into the trees.
ALSO BY DALTON FURY
Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man
Black Site: A Delta Force Novel
About the Author
Dalton Fury was the senior ranking military officer at the Battle of Tora Bora. As a Delta troop commander, he helped author the operation to hunt and kill Osama Bin Laden. He told his tale of that mission in the book
Kill Bin Laden,
which went on to become a national bestseller. His first novel,
Black Site,
was published in February of 2012.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
TIER ONE WILD: A DELTA FORCE NOVEL.
Copyright © 2012 by Dalton Fury. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs: helicopter courtesy of U.S. Army/Patrick Grieco; sky and flag by Shutterstock
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Fury, Dalton.
Tier One Wild: a Delta Force novel / Dalton Fury. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-66838-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01856-4 (e-book)
1. Soldiers—Fiction. 2. Terrorism—Prevention—United States—Fiction. 3. United States. Army. Delta Force—Fiction. 4. Americans—Pakistan—Fiction. 5. Qaida (Organization)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3606.U795T54 2012
813'.6—dc23
2012028285
e-ISBN 9781250018564
First Edition: October 2012
