Peter Kirsanow - Target Omega

“How…”

“Don’t ask. Training accident.” Dwyer made air quotes with his fingers.

Olivia blinked acquiescence.

“When you recruit players, you’re actually recruiting the whole family — Mom, Dad, siblings, girlfriends — to encourage them to get the recruit to sign with you.”

Olivia nodded. “My father played for Bear Bryant.”

“No kidding? Really? Then you know how it goes. I got to know his sister, Katy, pretty well. Major babe, though she’s probably even tougher than Mikey. Over beers she tells me Mikey was a runt as a kid. Their mom had serious complications when pregnant with him and his twin. Doctors recommended she abort. Mikey was born almost three months premature. His twin died in utero. Mikey spent a long time in the NICU before coming home. Grew up undersize for most of his childhood, chronically ill. He wasn’t a Big Bad Wolf back then. He was prey, not predator.”

“That wouldn’t necessarily turn him into a Boy Scout. Some people might be resentful or vengeful once they got strong and healthy.”

“Look,” Dwyer said. “That’s about the limit of my psychoanalytic abilities. All I know is Mike is not someone you want as an enemy. You definitely want him on your side.”

“But he never became a SEAL. If he’s so smart and tough, why did he drop out?”

“He didn’t. Not technically, at least. Mike was going through all the evolutions during BUD/S and coming out at, or near, the top in all of them. He was definitely a candidate for honor man of the class. Push-ups, pull-ups, running. Didn’t matter how much or how many. He just kept plugging. Never lagged. And he seemed oblivious to the cold — getting wet and sandy all the time. Everybody else is frozen, teeth chattering. Guys were dropping out like flies. But there he was, with that determined look in his eyes. I’ll tell you, it can be unsettling. We sometimes get star athletes that come through. Many of them, most of them, can’t hack it. Not only could Mike hack it; he thrived. No, he didn’t DOR. He went to SEAL Qualification Training. But then he just disappeared.”

“DOR?”

“Drop on Request. Anyone dropping out just places their helmet on the grinder — an asphalt area — and rings a bell. No questions asked. Mike didn’t do that. He didn’t ring the bell. Like I said, he was in SQT and then he was just gone.” Dwyer shook his head as if still trying to sort out what happened. “Mike’s disappearance stunned the rest of the class and the instructors. Naturally, there was some talk — not much; we don’t dwell on those things. But people were trying to figure out what happened. We asked around a little. No one knew anything. There was some speculation that he got sheep-dipped, but that was about it.”

Dwyer noticed Olivia’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “Sorry. Sheep-dipped. Some thought he might’ve been snagged by the OGA — the CIA — and trained at the Farm, Camp Peary,” he explained.

“He wasn’t?”

“Hell, I still don’t know.”

“When was the next time you heard from him?”

“The next time I heard about him was more than a year later. Rumors of Garin sightings. One night, back when I was with Task Force 121 looking for Saddam Hussein, some guys came back to Baghdad Airport buzzing about how they got ambushed, but some guy with an M4 shows up out of nowhere and takes out eight of the enemy. When the smoke clears, he’s gone. But one of the guys who knew Mike from BUD/S claims it was him.”

“Was it?”

“Who knows? I asked Mike about it once and he just got quiet like he always does.”

“Like you did when I asked you about DEVGRU this morning.”

Dwyer pursed his lips. “Anyway, over the next year and a half, I heard the occasional Garin story. Someone saw him in the Ma’laab District in Ramadi. Then all the way over in Kandahar. And the stories.” Dwyer rolled his eyes. “The stories got more and more ridiculous.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they sounded like he was Batman or something: Garin wipes out ten al-Qaeda fighters with a dull can opener; Garin leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Unbelievable stuff.”

“You’re confusing superheroes,” Olivia needled. Dwyer could see that Olivia was becoming absorbed in the story despite its marginal relevance to Iranians and Russians. “Was it really Garin?”

“Again, don’t know. Sounded over-the-top. But operators aren’t generally given to hyperbole.”

“Do you know what Garin was supposedly doing in those areas, presuming it was him?”

“He never told me. But clearly, he was killing bad guys.”

“Do you believe the stories?”

“I believe one of them, that’s for sure.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I was there.”

NORTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN

AUGUST 28, 2004 1:12 P.M. AFT

The crevasse ran deep and long, high in the Hindu Kush. A short distance ahead, no more than a two-hour walk, was the mountain that intel had identified as the safe haven for Taliban fighters who had been harassing allied troops for the last three weeks, often with devastating effect.

Lieutenant Dan Dwyer led his team cautiously through the narrow passage, alert for any signs of the enemy’s presence. This was their territory and they knew how to remain hidden in the rocky crags and nooks until it was often too late for allied patrols to react.

The crevasse was perfectly constructed for ambush, with only one avenue of retreat. To the team’s left was a steep four-hundred-foot slope, behind which the midday sun was already beginning to disappear, casting hideous shadows throughout the canyon floor. On the right was an imposing wall of rock that rose more than three hundred feet at a sheer ninety-degree angle. Between the steep wall and the more gradual slope, the floor of the crevasse was no more than forty feet wide, with massive boulders throughout.

Every single member of the team preferred not to be walking this path, but there were no practical alternatives. Most of the terrain surrounding the safe haven was impassable and the only other plausible path was controlled by the Taliban.

Dwyer and his men — Chief Petty Officer Terry Cipriano, Petty Officer Ron “Cochise” Coleman, and Petty Officer Bob McKnight — had been in the mountains for three days and had yet to encounter any of the fighters they were looking for. Consequently, with each passing minute their tension grew. Each wanted to get out of the crevasse as quickly as possible, shake the sensations of claustrophobia and being watched, and have room to maneuver. They felt straitjacketed in this place.

As they approached a cluster of boulders, Dwyer heard Coleman whisper behind him.

“Boss. Ten o’clock high.”

All four slowed and looked midway up the slope to their left, squinting as the blinding sunlight framed the crest.

“Don’t see anything,” Dwyer said quietly.

“Me neither,” McKnight concurred.

Coleman stared at a spot on the slope. “Seeing ghosts, I guess,” he said, shaking his head. “Light gets funny up here.”

“You just keep right on looking for ghosts, Cochise,” Dwyer said, turning back to Coleman. “This place—”

Before Dwyer finished the sentence a 7.62×39mm round tore through Coleman’s throat, nearly severing his head from his neck. Almost simultaneously, McKnight took a round in his left shoulder, and Dwyer’s left thigh was also struck. Ground sausage.

The three SEALs dove behind the cluster of boulders a fraction of a second after Coleman’s body collapsed to the ground. A storm of gunfire chased them, slamming against the boulders for several seconds before halting abruptly.