Free Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland) by Jim DeFelice, Dale Brown

was with Grease in a smaller ruck. He started walking slowly toward the truck.
    Dome pushed him gently.
    “Come on, we gotta run. Don’t want to sit out here too long. Iranians got a little training unit just up the road. Sometimes the Guard does night maneuvers.”
    “Revolutionary Guard?”
    “Yeah, well, not the Coast Guard, right? You’re wearin’ their uniform,” Dome added. “We all are.”
    Grease got in the cab while Dome helped Turk to the back of the truck, which was empty. They lifted the bags in, then scrambled up after them. The inside of the truck smelled like cow manure.
    “Nice flight?” asked Dome.
    “I had better.”
    “Grease is a lot of fun, huh?”
    “Cracked jokes the whole way. Are you two the only guys on the team?”
    “The others are watching us, don’t worry.”
    They drove for about a half hour. Turk used the time to check his pistol—an Iranian SIG-226 knockoff, known in Iran as a PC-9 ZOAF, with authentic furniture and substituted parts like the AK—then filled his pockets with ammo from his personal ruck. But otherwise the time passed like sand slowly piling up on a beach. His legs had stiffened during the long flight and now felt like they were going to seize up. He flexed them back and forth, then got up and walked around the back of the truck, trying to keep them from turning into steel beams.
    “Getting spasms?” asked Dome.
    “Yeah.”
    “You oughta do yoga. Helps.”
    “Really?”
    “Shit, yeah. Every morning. Dread’s got some muscle relaxers if you need ’em,” he added. “Tell him.”
    “Who’s Dread?”
    “Petey Rusco.”
    “How come he’s named Dread?”
    Dome shrugged. “Not sure. Just is.”
    “How come you’re Dome?”
    “I used to shave my head. Plus my first name is Dom—Dominick Sorentino. Turk’s your real name?”
    “Yup.”
    “I thought all you Air Force guys had names like Macho and Quicksilver Hotshot and like that.”
    Turk smiled. “Turk’s enough.”
    “Yeah,” said Dome. “Call me anything. Just as long as it’s not asshole.”
    C AMP WAS A SM ALL FARM IN THE SIDE OF A HILL SOME twenty miles south of where they had landed. Two soldiers met them near the road and guided the driver as he backed into a ramshackle barn. Dome introduced Turk around, then got him some food.
    The team consisted of seven men. All but one was a member of Delta Force, though they never identified themselves as such. It was obvious from their easy camaraderie that they’d trained and operated together for some time; Turk knew they’d been in Iran for several weeks.
    The seventh man, Shahin Gorud, didn’t announce his affiliation, but Turk guessed he was CIA. His beard was longer and thicker than the others’, and he was at least ten years older than the next oldest man, David “Green” Curtis, a black master sergeant. Turk couldn’t speak Farsi—sometimes called Persian, Iran’s primary language—but he guessed Gorud was fluent.
    “You speak Russian?” asked Gorud warily when they were introduced.
    “Yes,” said Turk. “A little. My mother was from Russia.”
    Gorud said something quickly; it sounded like, Where did she come from?
    “Moscow.”
    “Say it in Russian.”
    Turk did so, then added, in slightly hesitant Russian, that he didn’t remember much of the language.
    “You’ll do. You know more than the Iranians. Just keep your mouth shut unless I say to talk.”
    “How did you know I spoke Russian?”
    Gorud smirked.
    Green was the father figure of the team, and while not technically the highest in rank, was the de facto leader, the first one the others would look to for direction. The officer in charge, Captain Thomas Granderson, was surprisingly young, just a year or two older than Turk. He spoke Farsi and Arabic fluently, though a notch less smoothly than Gorud and Grease. Dread—Petey Rusco—was one of two advanced combat medics on the team. The other was Tiny—Sergeant Chris Diya—who in time-honored style was the