SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops IV by Eric Meyer

fine.”
    Maybe she’ll break an ankle. That would solve a heap of problems.
    “Not at all. My training starts tomorrow night. It’s called learning on the job.”
    “I’ll say one thing,” Brad said. “You’ve got guts, Captain. HAHO jumps are not the easiest way to make your first jump, neither is an infil into hostile territory.”
    “We’d better make it a tandem jump,” Nolan said abruptly. “No way are you jumping on your own, not the first time.”
    “You want me to jump with you?”
    “Yeah, we’ll go out together. You just hold on tight and enjoy the ride.”
    “I don’t want…”
    “I don’t give a shit what you want, Mariko. That’s the way it’s going to be. If you go out on your own and come down in the wrong place, maybe with a broken bone or two, you’ll likely be picked up. They’ll assume you’re a spy, and you know what they do to spies? They behead them.”
    She looked at both men, clearly unhappy and wanting to take issue with him, but one look at their implacable expressions told her she was wasting her time.
    “Okay, I accept your offer of a ride. But I’ll get the next round in, so what’re you having, Brad? Kyle?”
    She called the barman over, a suspicious looking Afghan. Nolan wondered if he’d been thoroughly vetted. He could do without his beer being poisoned. He served up more drinks, and Brad held up his glass.
    “We’ll see the enemy in hell.”
    Mariko sighed, and Nolan realized she was less than impressed with the gung-ho attitudes of SpecOps operators. He smiled to himself.
    Maybe she wants to talk about shopping?
    But finally she raised her glass, and they touched them for the toast.
    She smiled. “See ‘em in hell.”
    But Nolan had a sudden vision, almost a premonition. It wasn’t the enemy that was in hell. It was Mariko Noguchi, screaming in agony, her face contorted with terror as the captors tortured her.
    It can’t happen. I’ll do everything in my power to protect her. Damn, she shouldn’t be coming on the mission at all!
    He fought to control the shiver that tore through him. They finished their beers, and he made an excuse and left. He knew that he’d have trouble sleeping, and the nightmares would return. Garish visions of women who were close to him calling out for help, and he couldn’t respond; something always stopped him, got in his way. He also had a real life nightmare to get to grips with, the rape allegation. A statement to the cops made by someone he’d never met, about a time he couldn’t remember because he’d suffered a mental blackout.
    Life never gets any easier, that’s for sure.

Chapter Three
     

    They walked across the tarmac in the gathering darkness and up the ramp into the waiting C-17. The hold of the giant transport aircraft was lit only with red lights that would not betray them to any watcher. There’d be no sense in advertising what they were about. A Seal Team embarking on a cargo aircraft heavily laden with weapons and ‘chutes only meant one thing, a drop into enemy territory. Alarm bells would ring. They had plenty of room inside the fuselage. Either side of the huge space were jump seats, so they each found their preferred position and sat down. Mariko carried no parachute, just a small pack with her disguise inside, a blue burqa. Nolan sat one side of her and Brad the other. Although Nolan wore the same uniform as the rest of the Platoon, in his pack he carried a change of clothes, robes typical of the Waziristan region. He’d dyed his hair black during the day and used camouflage cream to darken his skin. It was all they could do and had to be enough. At night, he’d pass as a local. Just about. If the mission ran over into the dawn, they’d see through his disguise and shoot him on sight. He turned and watched as the ramp came up, and the four Pratt and Whitney turbofans began to scream as the pilot worked them up to full power. The huge aircraft began to roll, gathered speed, and took off into the