Clear by Fire by Joshua Hood

Author:Joshua Hood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

CHAPTER 18

* * *

Jalalabad, Afghanistan

One of the “armchair commanders,” a major Renee had never seen before, came flying out of the operations office, his mouth twisted in anger as she and Kevin and Bones made their way toward the hangar.

“Is that a hot weapon?” he yelled as he marched across the tarmac, his finger pointing directly in Renee’s face.

“Yeah, we just got off a mission. Do you have any idea what’s going on out there?” she asked, stunned by his blatant aggression.

“I don’t give a shit about some ragheads outside the wire. What I care about is you securing that weapon.”

“Ragheads? Have you ever been outside the wire?” she demanded.

“That’s not the point—”

“Look,” she said, raising her rifle up to his face. “Do you see that smoke covering the horizon? Do you know what’s going on right now? An American drone killed President Karzai, and those ‘ragheads’ want blood, because assholes like you keep sticking your finger in their face. So unless you want to try and take my weapon away from me and unload it yourself, I suggest you stand the fuck down.”

She stood there staring hard at him as his mouth opened and closed a few times in disbelief. Renee guessed that most people allowed him to bully them with his rank, but she wasn’t about to take shit from a guy who had never fired a shot in anger. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to say anything else, she walked through the hangar door and headed to the operations center. Swift still wasn’t back, but there was plenty of activity.

Men in a mixture of civilian and military dress were crammed into the operations center, and she knew right away that this wasn’t the place to address her team. Renee had been in Jbad long enough to recognize Tier 1 contractors when she saw them, and she wanted no part of what they were involved in.

Typically, these men were contracted by the CIA and the NSA to conduct operations illegal to the military. They were paid operatives who worked outside of military channels on operations never meant to see the light of day.

Renee motioned for her team to head back to their room, where they could talk in private.

Five minutes later they stood around the table in the privacy of their team room and Renee asked, “So, who is Master Sergeant Mason Kane?” She wanted to know now that she’d had time to cool down.

“From what I heard, he’s a guy who decided to grow a conscience at the wrong time,” Bones said from his place at the briefing table.

“Why is he labeled a terrorist?”

“That is the million-dollar question,” Kevin said as he opened his knife and began cleaning his fingernails.

“There was a team around here, about the time you went to Iraq. Guys called them the Ghost Squad,” Kevin chimed in. “Their colonel was handpicked by General Swift.”

“You mean the Anvil Program?”

“They had a lot of names. One of those urban-legend things,” Kevin said, looking up from his battlefield manicure.

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