Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Combat Ops Read Online Free PDF Page B

make me say something I’ll regret.”
    I smiled weakly. “Me, too.”
    I’d had no idea that Harruck was exercising tremen dous reserve in that meeting, when, in fact, he’d proba bly wanted to leap out of his chair and throttle me.

    Forward Operating Base Eisenhower lay on the north west side of Senjaray. It was a rather sad-looking collec tion of Quonset huts and small, prefabricated buildings walled in by concrete and concertina wire. The main gate rose behind a meager guardhouse manned by two sentries, with more guards strung out along the perim eter. The usual machine gun emplacements along with a minefield on the southern approach helped give the Taliban pause. The juxtaposition between the ancient mud-brick town blending organically into the landscape and our rather crude complex was striking. We were foreigners making a modern and synthetic attempt to assimilate.
    Harruck knew he’d never get his job done by hiding behind the walls of the FOB, so nearly every day he went into the town to communicate with the people via TCAF interviews (we pronounced it “T-caff”), which stood for Tactical Conflict Assessment Framework. Har ruck’s patrols were required to ask certain questions: What’s going on here? Do you have any problems? What can we get for you?
    And he’d get the same answers over and over again: We need a new well, we want you to rebuild and open the school. We need a police station, more canals. And can you get us some electricity? The diesel power plant in Kanda har serviced about nine thousand families, but nothing had been provided for the towns like Senjaray.
    The following week, Harruck’s patrols would ask the very same questions, get the same answers, and nothing would be done because Harruck couldn’t get what he needed. The reasons for that were complex, varied, and many.
    Despite the cynicism creeping into his voice, I still trusted that he’d fly the flag high and struggle valiantly to complete his mission. He said that at any time the tide could turn and assets could be reallocated to him.
    We Ghosts didn’t have the luxury of leaving the base. In fact, higher wanted us to protect our identities by remaining in quarters when we weren’t conducting night reconnaissance, so I told my boys we were ghosts  and vampires while in country, but that didn’t last very long.
    I finished up a quick conversation with General Keat ing via my satellite phone, and he gave me the usual: “We need Zahed in custody, and we need him talking to us about his connections to the north and the opium trade. It’s up to you, Mitchell.”
    It was always up to me, and I had a love-hate relation ship with that burden.
    Keating’s trust in me was like a drug. Sometimes I felt like he was grooming me for his own job. I’d already turned down a promotion only because that would mean less time in the field, and I thought I was still too young to rotate to the rear. Scuttlebutt about the mili tary restructuring was rampant, with talk of a new Joint Strike Force, and the general told me I needed to catch the wave. But I believed I could make a greater differ ence in the field.
    I guess, even after all these years, I was still pretty naïve in that regard, probably because most of my mis sions had allowed me to turn the tide.
    With the sun beating down on my neck with an almost heavy-metal pulse, I headed toward my quarters. Up ahead, Harruck was coming into the base, riding shotgun in a Hummer. He waved to me as the truck came under sudden and heavy gunfire.
    Rounds ricocheted off the Hummer’s hood and quarter panels as I dove to the dirt, and the two guys on the fifties on the north side opened up on the foothills about a quarter kilometer away. But the fire wasn’t com ing from there, I realized. It was from inside the FOB.
    Three insurgents had somehow gotten past the wall and concertina wire and were firing from positions along the south side of one Quonset hut, which I recalled housed the mess