Rogue Strike (A Jake Keller Thriller, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A keen outdoorsman, David Ricciardi incorporated many personal experiences into his work. He's backpacked through the mountains of the western United States and Alaska, received extensive training from law enforcement and U.S. special operations personnel, and once woke up for a two A.M. watch aboard a sailboat only to discover that it was headed the wrong way through the Atlantic sea-lanes in heavy weather, with one of the crew suffering from hypothermia. In addition to being an avid sailor, David is also a certified scuba rescue diver and a former ski instructor.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 David Ricciardi

1

The two men in the bed of the old pickup told the driver to step on it—they could survive a rough ride.

They might not survive being late.

Two days earlier, a signals intercept had revealed an upcoming meeting involving the number one target on the U.S. government’s disposition matrix. Known as Mullah Muktar, he was a quasi-religious leader who’d helped plan the September 11th attacks, then risen to become the leader of a violent extremist organization known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

And it was time to send him to Paradise.

A wake of dust rose behind the pickup truck as it pounded over the dirt road. The monsoon rains usually turned the Wadi Bana into a flowing river that made life in Southern Yemen almost tolerable for a few months each year, but the rains had been light this season. The land was hard and dry.

The driver switched on his lights as he turned onto a paved road. The town of Zinjibar loomed in the cracked windshield. Most of its buildings had been destroyed in the war. The air smelled of smoke and a fine dust that never quite settled to the ground.

The senior CIA officer slapped the roof twice as they passed an open-air market. The pickup turned into an alley and slowed. He threw a goatskin satchel over his shoulder and jumped down to the street.

Two blocks away, the second officer hopped out. He was dressed in a mishmash of loose-fitting pants and a faded wool coat that was popular with the locals. He stooped over and feigned a slight limp, hoping that darkness and distance would make him look like one of the many old men who carried their wares to the market each morning.

Game time, Zac, he thought to himself.

Then he grimaced.

Zac’s gone.

He was known as Jake Keller now, and on his first mission as part of the Agency’s elite Special Activities Center. He walked back to the main boulevard and climbed a pile of rubble to enter an abandoned apartment building. His partner was already there, standing in the dark with a scruffy beard, a scarf wrapped around his head, and a stubby AKS-74U rifle in his hands.

Curt Roach, a thirty-eight year old former special operations marine, was nine years older than Jake and had worked in the military or CIA his entire adult life. He hid a battery-powered motion detector in the lobby and motioned to the stairway. Jake unclipped his own rifle from a harness under his jacket and unfolded the wire stock. The two men ascended the concrete stairs in silence and cleared each room in the five-story building.

“Let’s get set up,” Roach said. “This thing could go down any minute.”

Jake hung camouflage netting from the ceiling, five feet back from the outside wall. Roach set up a tripod behind the net.

“Pass me the designator.”

Jake handed him what looked like a high-tech pair of binoculars. The device would bounce a beam of invisible infrared light off whatever it was pointed at. It could determine the target’s coordinates or guide a missile onto it from an aircraft circling above.

“Run the antennas?” Jake said as he scratched his beard.

Roach nodded. “Just be sure they can’t be seen from the ground.”

Jake disappeared up the stairs, trailing a thin cable behind him. He returned a few minutes later.

“SATCOM and GPS are up. I’ll check in,” he said.

“Mustang, Mustang, this is Cobra.”

From a top-secret facility halfway across the Arabian Peninsula, the CIA mission control element responded.

“Cobra, go for Mustang.”

“Mustang, Cobra at position Alpha.”

“Copy position Alpha. Strike package is two ships. Drifter-71 and Drifter-72 are hard altitude eighteen thousand feet and orbiting your position with fifteen hours till bingo.”

High overhead, two unmanned combat aerial vehicles flew racetrack patterns around the city. From a distance, the stealthy, bat-winged UCAVs resembled miniature B-2 bombers. They each carried fifteen hours of fuel and a pair of air-to-ground missiles in an internal weapons bay.

The two CIA officers watched the streets for hours until a battered Nissan pickup truck arrived, spewing black smoke from its diesel engine. Six men with rifles hopped down. After suffering through decades of a multiparty civil war, nearly everyone in Yemen had a gun, but these men positioned themselves around the intersection with overlapping fields of fire on all of the approaches.

Curt reached for the SATCOM. He whispered despite being two hundred meters away.

“Mustang, we have six military-age males in the open at Alpha. Definite weapons and tactical movement.”

“Roger that, Cobra,” said the radio. “Be advised we are tracking three vehicles westbound to your position.”

A heavily muscled man in fatigue pants and a black T-shirt stared up at the nearby buildings. His gaze shifted methodically, right to left, top to bottom, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Despite having the early morning sun in his eyes, he paused at the floor where Jake and Curt were holed up. He started walking toward the Americans’ building when three identical SUVs stopped in the intersection.

Mullah Muktar emerged from the third vehicle.

“Mustang, we have Jupiter at Alpha,” Roach said. “He’s linking up with the six dismounts.”

“Roger, Cobra,” said mission control. “Facial recognition confirms positive ID on Jupiter. Drifter-72 in range. Ten hours till bingo. Mustang standing by.”

The man in the fatigue pants escorted Muktar into the building across the street.

Twenty minutes later, a tan Yemeni government Land Rover arrived and four soldiers climbed out. A civilian wearing an open-necked suit emerged from the passenger seat.

“Dammit,” Jake said. “There goes our operation.”

Roach scowled. The Agency’s rules of engagement prohibited any action that jeopardized the safety of Yemeni government personnel. He picked up the radio.

“Mustang, we have Saturn in a tan government truck with a four-man security detail.”

“Why would government forces drive that truck into al-Qaeda territory?” Jake said. “Those two have been at each other’s throats for years.”

“Because those aren’t government forces,” Roach said. “These guys know our ROE and they’re using them against us. Look at Saturn’s security detail. They’re looking for external threats. Legitimate government forces would be watching Muktar’s men. The truck is a hoax.”

Roach looked through the laser designator’s magnified optics as the man in the open-necked suit entered the building.

“Jupiter and Saturn are inside the target,” Roach said.

“Cobra, government personnel are outside the ROE. Drifter-71 will target Jupiter’s vehicle once he clears the area.”

“Negative, Mustang. The truck is a ruse,” Roach said. “These bastards killed three thousand Americans and now it’s payback time. Spin up your missiles.”

The man in the fatigue pants returned to the street and linked up with another man. They started walking toward Jake and Roach’s building.

“You see this?” Jake said as he picked up his rifle.

Roach nodded.

“Why don’t you want to hit Muktar’s truck after he leaves?” Jake asked. “Just in case.”

“First, there’s zero chance that those are government...