One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel Read Online Free PDF

them.”
    “Don’t tell me you’re putting me in command of SEALs?”
    Webber shook his head. “Not SEALs … and not in command.”
    Afrin, Syria—April 2014
    Delta Force operator Major Kolt “Racer” Raynor considered his lot in life and decided it was definitely … interesting. Only two weeks ago he’d been fighting for his life in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Now he was sitting in the back of a nondescript van deep in Syria, on the lookout for a Syrian Army officer known as the Barrel Bomb Butcher. Not satisfied with rockets, mortars, and chemical weapons, the Syrians had begun dropping fifty-five-gallon drums filled with explosives from helicopters onto civilian areas. The Butcher was a particularly zealous proponent of these massacres, and so he was now on the target list.
    “You got the ass you aren’t gonna kill anyone today, Racer?” Noble Squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Rick “Gangster” Mahoney asked, his voice filled with sarcasm.
    “Just a dude in the back today,” Kolt said from six feet behind in the rear cabin seat closest to the back doors, “strap-hanging with no dog in the fight.”
    Kolt let Gangster’s smart-ass comment roll off his back like a heavy rucksack dropped after a forty-mile suckfest. He didn’t need to be reminded. He knew he wasn’t there to do anything but watch. Hell, Colonel Webber had warned him back at Bragg, several times actually, not to start any shit.
    Yes, maybe Kolt could take some mental notes, but, as every operator knows, on target trouble can find you, whether you like it or not.
    “SITREP, over,” Gangster said from the front seat of the panel van as he released his push-to-talk.
    “This is Jackal Two, no change.”
    Jackal Two, one of the sniper teams perched inside the vacant third floor of a half-finished block of flats, had scoped out the target at exactly 247 yards. The hide was good enough to easily range the old adobe-brick-and-plaster house’s huge front door, painted with odd-looking multicolored geometric patterns, and the small courtyard. Even a massive crystal chandelier, a favorite Syrian decoration even in the poorer villages, could be scoped from two and a half football fields away.
    “Rog. Thirty mikes till sunrise. If the Butcher loved his mother as much as the agency said he did, he’s there,” Gangster said.
    Speaking into a handheld mike connected to a coiled black cord that ran to the SATCOM radio positioned just behind the black curtain, Gangster was calm and collected. And why shouldn’t he be?
    Gangster was a shit-hot Delta Force squadron commander, on the very short list to someday command all of Delta Force. In fact, the word on the street was that he was being specifically groomed for it. Kolt knew the type for sure. The kind of guy always picked first when choosing sides during a neighborhood pickup game, or the guy that scored the hottest cheerleaders in high school.
    Like everyone else, Gangster had his skeletons. But nobody expected him to be perfect all the time. To most guys in the building, his flaws were manageable and easily massaged. But to Kolt Raynor, his peer Delta officer for many years, a risk-averse reputation was a deal breaker. Kolt didn’t care if the guy had won two of the last three Unit annual triathlons.
    Behind the wheel and up front with Gangster sat a dirty-blond operator named Trip Griffin, one of the few guys in the Unit whose first name was so unique that it became his de facto code name. Kolt sensed Trip’s pucker factor fully pegged as he kept a keen eye on the dense bed of gray and tan adobe single- and two-story homes about a block or so away and about two hundred feet lower. The black curtain separated the front seats of the panel van from the two guys in the back, but more importantly it hid the red and green radio lights from being seen by curious locals outside.
    “Let’s go to one hundred percent from here on out, over,” Gangster transmitted over his