Free Dead in Damascus: A Special Operations Group Short Story ([#0] Special Operations Group) by Stephen Templin

 
    SUMMER 2009
     
    C hris Paladin’s taxi soared through the black morning wasteland like a Valkyrie out of Valhalla, filling his muscles with tension. Laughter boomed from his SEAL Team Six Teammate, Kapua, the Hawaiian giant seated behind him. It was a wonder their CIA driver could see where he was going in the dark hours of the morning as they put distance between them and their base in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. At any moment, they could fly off a ravine or crash into a sand berm, instantly killing everyone in the car, but Chris and Kapua had always been lucky. When others dropped out of Hell Week, the duo remained—albeit unshaven and covered in sand mixed with their own snot, drool, and piss. Later, as they joined SEAL Team Three in Iraq, they lost some of their brothers, but Chris and Kapua survived. When they tried out for SEAL Team Six together, other SEALs didn’t make it past Green Team, but Chris and Kapua did. Although assigned to different platoons, they were reunited for this one mission because of their joint ability to slay enemies. Chris and Kapua were at the top of their game, and there was no end in sight to their winning streak.
    Breathe . It was a simple, yet effective mantra. With the thought of that one word, Chris automatically inhaled deeply and slowly before he exhaled long, banishing any negative thoughts. He continued to focus on his mantra until all the kinks bled out of his muscles.
    In the back seat next to Kapua sat Hannah Andrade, a crack CIA officer who recruited agents and gathered intel on the enemy for the SEALs to do their duty. She was a chameleon with Middle Eastern features, fluent in Farsi and Spanish, who could appear insignificant one moment, but when she turned on the charm, she could make most men brag about themselves—especially their secrets. She was also a former regional mixed martial arts middleweight who could hold her own if things got physical, and although she was proficient with firearms, the Agency didn’t provide her the time or training to reach the skill level of Chris and Kapua—which is why she brought them along—they were about to venture to where the wild things were.
    They’d headed southeast through the desert and, after confirming there was no surveillance behind, the driver circled around and motored northwest. Gradually, the darkness from the dust lightened to a gray haze, and the sloping shapes of berms appeared. Soon they crossed the Syrian border and passed stretches of desert, farms, and small villages. The driver stopped in a town at a bazaar where shopkeepers opened for business.
    Foregoing the dress-right-dress mentality of the conventional military, Chris and Kapua had grown beards and longish hair and wore white ghutrahs on their heads and white Didashah robes. Underneath their robes they wore camouflage clothing and carried Glock 9mm pistols with spare ammo. Their robes had customized Velcro cutaways, so they could access their weapons and ammo quickly. Similarly, Hannah wore a black abaya with a head and face cover that only exposed her eyes. She also carried a pistol with ammo. They would be better armed with assault rifles, but those would be difficult to hide while sitting for lunch, so they sacrificed firepower for concealment.
    Chris, Kapua, and Hannah stepped out of the taxi and strolled into the bazaar. The rising sun swiftly burned off the cool of the desert morning as a man on a donkey pulled a cart full of vegetables. The trio walked a surveillance detection route (SDR) through the myriad of shops, which provided multiple venues for Chris, Kapua, and Hannah to exit and enter. Because the customers had yet to arrive and the walkways were mostly clear, an enemy surveillance team would need to move in close and expose themselves or lag far away and risk losing Chris’s team. On one of the walkways, the trio surprised a feral cat that leaped away.
    After completing their SDR, they exited the bazaar and boarded a second Agency