Breaking Ties by Elle James

 

Prologue

“I got a bogey at two o’clock,”Dawg whispered into his headset. Doug “Dawg” Masters lay low in the underbrush, his night vision goggles trained on the small compound thirty yards from his position.

“Got a truck coming in from the west,” Rucker reported. “Looks like it’s loaded with armed men. Estimate eight to ten plus the driver and passenger. ETA three minutes. Any sign of our target?”

“Not yet.” On point, Dawg was the closest to the compound and had the best vantage point. Movement from the central hut caught his attention. “Wait. Got people coming out now.”

“Kalani?”

“Hard to say in the dark. Three…four…five men, and they seem to be gathered around the one in the middle.”

“Kalani,” Rucker stated. “Be ready to move.”

The team responded, one by one. “Ready.”

“Lance, Tank and I will hold off the incoming,” Rucker said. “The rest of you know the plan. Let’s do this.”

The team moved in under the concealment of night, each equipped with either an M4A1 rifle with the SOPMOD upgrades or small machineguns.

Their mission was to take out an important leader of the Boko Haram, a man responsible for the latest rash of kidnappings of school children they held for ransom. The last raid had netted one hundred and twenty girls from a boarding school and had cost the parents and government a lot of money. The Deltas wouldn’t have been involved if the raid hadn’t also involved killing several American school teachers in the process. One of the teachers had been the daughter of a New York senator.

The powers that be in Washington wanted to send the Islamic State faction a message by way of taking out one of their most prominent leaders.

Which was why Dawg and his team of Delta Force operatives were neck deep in the brush and up to their eyeballs in bad guys. Their advantage? Boko Haram didn’t know they were there or that anyone would actually target them. They had the northeast area of the African country so afraid of them they met little resistance.

That was about to come to an abrupt end.

“Going in.” Ryan “Dash” Hayes moved the fastest of all of them. Because he was so fast, he was their point man moving forward.

“I’ve got your six,” Sean McDaniels’s voice sounded in Dawg’s ear. Mac was an excellent shot. He’d make certain Dash was covered on his way in.

Blade would move in at the same time from his position with Dawg providing fire support until Blade got ahead of him. The team would leapfrog closer until they were near enough to launch their strike.

“Blade going in,” Blade said into the radio.

“Bull going in,” Bull said.

“Gotcha,” Dawg said. “I’m right behind you.”

As soon as Blade and Bull made it past him and hunkered low in the tall grass surrounding the compound, Dawg left his position. Hunched low to the ground, he ran forward until he reached the corner of one of the huts.

“Dash is in position,” Mac reported.

“Dawg, Bull and Blade are too,” Blade whispered.

Dawg held his silence and raised his rifle to his shoulder. He and Dash had M4A1 rifles with noise suppression devices. Their best bet was to take out the leader while he stood outside. The people around him would immediately fall back and take cover inside the building. The trick was to hit their target before the leader made it back into the building.

Cutting off the head of the snake would slow the Boko Haram movement. The team knew it wouldn’t last for long. The US government hoped the strike would send a message to others of the Islamic State movement that their continued terrorism against the children of Nigeria would not be tolerated by the rest of the world.

Dawg hoped the leaders in Washington were right but doubted that Boko Haram would stop laying siege against the children, farmers and herders in Nigeria as long as the jihadists were alive and breathing.

As Dawg sighted in on his target, an SUV rumbled across the gravel toward the group of terrorists gathered around Kalani. Then a man stepped between Dawg and the terrorist leader. “I don’t have a clear shot,” he whispered.

“I do,” Dash said.

“Take it before the SUV reaches them,” Rucker ordered.

As Dash fired off his round, the group shifted again, giving Dawg a clear view of the leader.

The man between Kalani and Dash jerked and fell to the ground.

Dawg pulled his trigger. The bullet left the rifle’s chamber and hit the target a moment later.

The group of men still standing dove for the building, shouting. One of them grabbed Kalani as he slumped, dragged him through the doorway and slammed it shut behind them.

Dawg cursed. He’d aimed straight for Kalani’s heart. If the man had moved even slightly before the bullet reached him, he could survive. If he did, he’d use the incident as a war cry and proof that he was the chosen one to intensify the jihadist movement until all the infidels were annihilated from the earth.

The team moved in.

Gunfire sounded to the west where Rucker, Tank and Lance held off the truck full of terrorists.

More terrorists emerged from surrounding buildings, wielding AK-47s and machine guns.

Before long, the night was alight with gunfire and men shouting. If the team hadn’t been prepared, the confusion would have been overwhelming.

While Dawg, Mac and Blade covered, Dash ran forward, kicked in the door of the central building. He tossed in a fragment grenade and dove to the side, covering his ears.

Dawg ducked and covered his ears.

Boom!

The front wall blasted outward, spewing a cloud of dust and debris.

The men who’d emerged from the nearby huts picked themselves up off the ground and fired into the night indiscriminately.

One by one, Dawg and his team picked them off.

The SUV that had been headed toward the central building spun gravel up from its back tires as the driver raced toward the road leading out of the compound and toward Rucker, Lance and Tank’s positions.

“Got one making a run for it,” Dawg said into his mic.

“On our radar,” Rucker responded.

The sharp report of gunfire continued, but the SUV plowed through the gauntlet of Deltas, swerving right then left. The windshield was blown out, but the driver kept moving until he was out of range.

“Damn,” Rucker muttered into the mic. “Gather what intel you can find. I’m calling for extraction.”

“Roger,” Dawg said.

The team moved in, conducting a swift sweep of the area and collecting anything that might be used by the intelligence guys.

With Bull covering for them, Dawg, Dash and Mac entered the blown-out building and dragged the bodies of the men inside into the open for identification. They took photos of the dead.

“Is it Kalani?” Dash asked.

Dawg nodded. “Looks like him.” He brushed his finger across the man’s dusty face and nodded. “He’s got the scar on his left eyebrow.”

“It’s him,” Mac said. “He had a gap between his front teeth, too. This guy has it.”

“We’ve got another truckload of fun coming our way,” Rucker said. “Time to bug out.”

The team converged outside the east side of the compound at the predesignated pickup point.

A Black Hawk helicopter swooped in and landed just long enough for the men to climb aboard.

Dawg, Dash and the helicopter gunner provided cover until the others were aboard.

The truckload of terrorists flew through the compound heading their direction, firing their weapons into the air.

“Go!” Dawg yelled.

Dash ran for the helicopter.

As soon Dash was aboard, Dawg turned and darted for the aircraft as the pilot started to lift off.

When he was near, Dawg leaped.

Rucker and Bull grabbed his arms and hauled him into the craft.

“Go!” Rucker yelled.

The pilot lifted the helicopter up into the air and swung to the east, away from the oncoming vehicle full of angry jihadists, firing their weapons up into the sky.

Until they were out of range, Dawg didn’t let go of the breath he’d held since diving into the fuselage.

“Did anyone see who was in the SUV that got away?” Mac asked.

Rucker shook his head. “No. The windows were dark. All we could tell was that there was a driver and a passenger based on heat signatures.”

“We got our target,” Bull said.

“Yeah, but who got away?”

“Doesn’t matter. We did what we were sent to do,” Rucker said. “Kalani is dead, and we can go home.”

Dawg climbed into a seat and buckled his harness.

Home to Texas sounded good.

He leaned his head back, thankful they hadn’t lost anyone and the world was down one badass son of a bitch responsible for destroying the lives of so many children.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that for every terrorist killed, there were always a couple dozen more ready to take his place.