Scars Read online

  SCARS: John Dempsey

  By Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson

  Tier One Series

  Tier One

  War Shadows

  Crusader One

  American Operator

  Red Specter

  Collateral

  Tier One Origins Novellas

  Scars: John Dempsey

  Other Titles by Brian Andrews

  The Calypso Directive

  The Infiltration Game

  Reset

  Other Titles by Jeffrey Wilson

  The Traiteur’s Ring

  The Donors

  Fade to Black

  War Torn

  SCARS: John Dempsey

  A Tier One Origins Novella

  Andrews & Wilson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ASIN: B086LLTKZQ

  Cover design by Andrews & Wilson

  www.andrews-wilson.com

  Contents

  Books by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson

  Note to the Reader

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Collateral Sneak Peek

  About the Authors

  Note to the Reader

  Thank you for downloading Scars, the first installment in a new series of novellas called Tier One Origins. Each short features a different Tier One character during a pivotal event in their past before joining Task Force Ember.

  Nowhere in this story will you find the name John Dempsey, and for longtime fans of the series that will come as no surprise. But if you haven’t read any of the Tier One novels and this novella is your introduction to the series, then spoiler alert . . . Jack Kemper is John Dempsey.

  This story is set in 2006, a decade before the tragic events of Operation Crusader described in Tier One, and a decade before the character we all know and love as John Dempsey was born. But Dempsey’s hero’s heart is easy to recognize, and we hope you enjoy spending a little time with his younger, raw self.

  As a thank-you for your purchase of this novella, we’re including the first chapter of Collateral—book six in the Tier One saga, which goes on sale September 1, 2020, and is available for preorder at:

  Amazon: US UK CA AU DE FR ES IT NL JP BR MX IN

  Audible: US UK CA AU FR

  Chapter 1

  Al Asad Airbase

  Anbar Province, Iraq

  June 3, 2006

  0450 Local Time

  Out of blackness, a thin strip of pink began to materialize to the east as night gave birth to a new day in the Iraqi desert. But that’s not what the Team guys sprawled out in the back of the Air Force C-17 transport called this place. For Special Operator First Class Jack Kemper and the rest of his Tier One Navy SEAL brethren, Iraq was the “sandbox,” or most days, simply “the suck.”

  Kemper watched dawn’s arrival through one of the few porthole windows toward the front of the jet as the plane banked left, then right—flying an unpredictable pattern of jinks and turns on the approach. War zone landings were nothing like the smooth approach of a civilian airliner, or even the scheduled refueling stop they’d made in Germany. If you couldn’t stomach the infil, you had no business being on the plane, let alone in country. The suck, above all else, did not suffer cowards or fools.

  Kemper marveled at how much this engagement felt like his first deployment as a SEAL at Team Eight had—feelings of anticipation and excitement competing with self-imposed stress to perform at the highest possible level. After a year in the elite Tier One, every white-side SEAL’s dream billet, Kemper was certainly no nugget. He’d graduated from Green Team—the vetting program for the clandestine special missions unit—over a year ago and had since participated in two intense underway exercises and one combat deployment. But this was his first deployment as a squad leader. He felt the weight of being responsible for the other members of his team as they prosecuted the most dangerous terrorists and highest value targets in the War on Terror. Together with their Army, Air Force, and “Other Government Agency” brothers, they were America’s most lethal weapons of war.

  Gravity returned and pressed him into the orange mesh bench seat as the C-17 leveled from its spiraling descent, rolling wings level just before flaring over the long, wide runway. Kemper pulled his eyes from the window—the sprawling airbase was mostly in blackout conditions anyway, so there was little to see—and spun his ball cap around forward again on his head. He leaned back against the padded insulation on the wall of the fuselage as the C-17’s tires barked their arrival.

  “Welcome back to the suck,” one of his brothers shouted from the rear of the plane.

  On that cue, the smiling face of Kate, his beautiful wife, and their chubby little four-year old boy, Jake, popped into Kemper’s mind’s eye—a snapshot confirmation of who and what he was doing this for. Or maybe . . . a reminder of the stakes if he failed. After the loss of two teammates from Second Squadron last winter, Kate had broken down and begged him to leave the Teams. Her sobs, and his son’s confusion and wide-eyed tears at the family crisis, had burned a hole in his heart. He’d promised he would try—promised to say goodbye to Team life and find another billet. But then, shit spun up again in Iraq, and First Squadron was tapped to go. When he told her the news, Kate didn’t cry, just bid him goodbye with a pained, knowing smile.

  He’d broken his promise. Now, he couldn’t help but wonder if when he came home this time, his wife and son wouldn’t be there to greet him.

  He quickly chased the morbid thought away. He would make it up to them. When the War on Terror was done—which it certainly would be soon—the operational tempo would return to manageable. If it didn’t, he would find something else in the community that allowed him to be present at home—to be the husband and father they deserved him to be. But right now, he needed to be present here. The intensity of what awaited him on this deployment meant that his teammates in First Platoon, First Squadron needed him to be focused. For the next six months, they would be his family.

  “’Sup, boss man?” a familiar voice greeted him.

  Kemper looked up to see Senior Chief Perry grinning down at him.

  “I’m good to go, Senior,” Kemper said and meant it. Since flying to Tampa and checking in for this deployment, he’d felt supercharged. He was born for this job and not afraid to say it.

  The big man laughed. “Don’t get all formal on me now, bro,” the platoon NCO said with a smile. “We don’t do a lot of that shit here, Jack, as you know, and that ain’t changing just ’cause you’re leading a team.”

  Kemper nodded and Perry slapped him hard on the back. Then the salty Senior Chief hiked up his board shorts and padded away, flip-flops smacking as he crossed the steel deck.

  “Bro, I can’t believe we’re finally here,” a SEAL they called Romeo said, dropping into the open seat across the aisle from Kemper.

  He noticed the man’s left foot jumping up and down with nervous energy. Romeo was the nugget at the unit—the youngest SEAL in the squadron, and a new Green Team grad. Romeo was a goofball, but on mission—at least during the exercises a
nd the last underway—he’d proven himself a solid, disciplined shooter. Despite his relative inexperience, he was a tactical savant, seemingly always in the right place at the right time. At a unit where making Chief meant you still took the trash out, earning that kinda reputation was a helluva thing for a nugget. Kemper felt lucky to have him in First Squadron, but training and combat were two different things. Romeo had multiple combat deployments with SEAL Team Seven, but this was the Tier One—he’d need to watch Romeo closely for the first few weeks. He’d never fought beside Romeo, and the nugget was going to be a member of his four-man fire team.

  Nothing vets like combat, he thought and patted Romeo on the shoulder.

  “You’re gonna love these missions,” he said. “High tempo, hunting HVTs, every mission matters—it’s a frogman’s wet dream.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Romeo said, grinning behind his sorry excuse for a beard.

  Feeling the C-17 begin to slow as it came out of a turn off the runway, Kemper climbed out of his seat for a stretch. He twisted his shoulders, right and then left to crack his spine, then rolled his wrists and neck, earning him a few additional satisfying pops. Heavy boot steps behind him made Kemper turn, bringing him chest to chest with a grinning Aaron Thiel, his closest friend and teammate at the unit. Dempsey smiled large and pulled Thiel in for a hug.

  “Dude, I haven’t seen you since we left Tampa—you slept through beers in Germany,” Kemper said.

  Thiel shrugged. “I had to get my beauty rest.”

  “I hate to break it to you, bro, but no matter how much beauty rest you get, you ain’t never gonna be pretty.”

  Thiel chuckled at the dig. “Actually, I tried Ambien and that shit kicked my ass. Who knew? Gonna do only five milligrams on the way back. Apparently, I tried to snuggle Perry back at our campsite,” he said, referring to the hammocks and sleeping bags where most of the SEALs camped out during the flight. “I didn’t even wake up when he elbowed me in the face, but I know they ain’t lying, because I feel the bruise on my cheek.”

  Kemper laughed at the picture of his buddy, and fellow squad leader, spooning up to the Senior Chief and getting clocked for it. He and Thiel had graduated BUD/S together—after Thiel fractured his clavicle and had to cycle back to second phase—and had been together since. They’d done SQT together at Team Eight, been roommates in a townhouse on Chick’s Beach near Little Creek, and now had screened together for the Tier One.

  “Nice,” Kemper said. “I think that’s Senior’s way of sayin’ he just wants to be friends.”

  “Apparently.” Thiel laughed, rubbing his cheek.

  “Gonna be a good deployment, bro,” Kemper said. “Gonna get some. The N2 brief before we left made it sound like there’re some serious players who need to spend quality time with the spooks. Gonna be fun making those meetings happen.”

  “Or just erasing them altogether, bro,” Romeo said, joining the two and sliding his black rectangular pack—nearly the size of a twin bed—out from under the mid-aisle bench.

  Thiel stared a moment, as if he had something to say, then glanced at the younger SEAL and seemed to change his mind. Instead, he shouldered his own bag and grabbed his weapons case. Kemper did the same and followed him to the back of the plane. He wondered if Thiel was going ask about Kate, but had thought better of it in front of Romeo. Thiel’s wife seemed like the perfect Team guy bride—fiercely independent, fun loving, and career oriented. But what did Kemper know? Appearances could be deceiving, and he’d learned to never judge a marriage he wasn’t party to. There was a reason the divorce rate in the Teams hovered above fifty percent. It might even be higher in the Tier One—although maybe a unit filled with more senior guys, and marriages that had to survive so much, meant they’d already selected for partners who could weather the storms.

  He hoped that was true with Kate.

  Kemper followed Thiel down the ramp and out the back of the gargantuan transport jet. A circle of white pickup trucks—like a caravan of covered wagons in the Old West—sat at the base of the ramp. Kemper walked to one of the closer ones, threw his gear in the back, then climbed into the bed. He sat on his rectangular deployment bag like it was a bench seat, and Thiel did the same on the opposite side.

  “Hey, bro,” a sniper from Second Platoon greeted them, stepping out of the driver’s seat and scratching at his full beard.

  “’Sup, Ted?” Kemper said. “Ya’ll been getting some?”

  “Yep,” the sniper said with a grin. “Operations almost every night. Also doing some cool overwatch stuff. Gonna take you to drop your shit, then I’ll grab the guys who just got back and we’ll all head to breakfast. Don’t wanna get stuck in the long line for the omelet bar.”

  “War is hell,” Thiel agreed.

  “Amen,” the sniper said as four more guys, including Romeo and Perry, crammed into the bed of the truck.

  “Join you?” a voice called behind them.

  Kemper looked over his shoulder to see Lieutenant Commander Neal Mercer jogging over from the plane.

  “Sure, man,” the sniper said with the informality Kemper loved about the team. Downrange, they were just a collection of warriors. “Up front, we’re full in back.”

  “We got yer gear, Neal,” Perry said and grabbed the officer’s bag while Thiel hoisted his weapons case, both added to the pile of luggage in the bed.

  Moments later they were screaming down the taxiway, the dry air cool on Kemper’s skin, but the growing light on the horizon reminding him that they were only a few hours away from temperatures over one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.

  “But hey, it’s a dry heat,” Thiel said, slapping Kemper’s knee. He’d read his mind. “And anyway, we’ll sleep through that shit. I’m planning to PT before breakfast every night when we get back and be in the rack before it tops one hundred.”

  Kemper laughed. SEALs were vampires, after all.

  When they reached the Tier One compound, Ted hopped out of the driver’s seat, spun the combination to a simple padlock securing the twelve-foot-high fence, then dragged the gate open wide enough for the caravan of pickups to drive through. Inside the perimeter a cluster of long, low structures was laid out around a large square building topped with myriad antennas and satellite dishes. In back, two rows of gleaming white shower/toilet trailers served the bunkhouses. Kemper knew that the real security was not the silly padlock—he still remembered the combination from his last deployment—it was the understated nature and anonymity of the facility itself. Only cleared personnel from the main base were allowed up to the flight line, and fewer still to the southwest corner of the field—both of which were guarded by checkpoints. Few personnel on the base had any idea who they were, or that the most elite Joint Special Operations Command counterterrorist operators in the world ate breakfast beside them in the chow halls. The compound bore no signage and didn’t appear on any map or org chart. The operators themselves dressed in civilian clothes whenever they left their compound—5.11 cargo pants and plaid shirts or T-shirts, mostly—and sported long hair and beards. To the uninitiated, they looked like any other contractors doing maintenance, providing communications support, working in the base fire department, or driving trucks.

  The secret nature of their work was all the security they needed.

  Kemper’s stomach growled.

  A big breakfast, a workout, and then some sleep after checking their gear sounded perfect. But as tempting as the thought of passing out in his rack with a full belly was, he knew he should call Kate before she put Jake to bed for the night. Once he’d made that call, he’d be able to immerse himself guilt free in the business of being a covert operator.

  And if he was really lucky . . . when the sun went down again, First Squad would get to kit up and go to work.

  Chapter 2

  Al Asad Airbase

  Anbar Province, Iraq

  June 4

  1915 Local Time

  Kemper shuffled after Thiel and Perry into the large squa
re wooden building that for some reason reminded him of an old-fashioned schoolhouse. Maybe it was the wood walls, wood ceiling, and wood floors with matching wooden benches that completed the image for him.

  “Hey,” Thiel said over his shoulder as they pushed through the door, “I meant to ask you at dinner—what have you heard from Munn? Is that asshole really in medical school?”

  Kemper laughed. “Yeah. I talked to him on the phone just before we left, and he’s jealous as shit.”

  Munn had been the 18-Delta SEAL medic with them at Team Eight and had lived in the townhouse on the beach with them for a year and a half, before being the first to fall off into marriage. He’d also served at the Tier One for two years, leaving just as Kemper was making it through Green Team so he could chase his dream of becoming a trauma surgeon.

  “Really?” Thiel said.

  “Oh yeah. I think he thought that things over here were gonna wind down, and he didn’t wanna be an old man by the time he became a doc. But now that the shit’s hitting the fan, he sounded like he regrets the decision.”

  Thiel laughed as they took seats on one of the long wooden benches. “Probably gonna get fat,” he said.

  “Better not,” Kemper said as SEALs and support personnel crowded in around them. “He’s still in the Navy and says he’s coming back to the Teams when he’s done.”

  “Yeah, right. He’ll get a taste of that sweet life as a rich doctor and we’ll never see him again. Big gate around his mansion—paying people to read his mail and shit.”

  Kemper laughed, but he knew better. As tight as he and Aaron Thiel were, Dan Munn was probably the best friend he’d ever have. Munn was a genius and a warrior. He’d gone to medical school so he could treat his fellow SEALs at the highest level, but the trident tattooed on the man’s chest went way deeper—all the way to his soul. He’d be back. And he would always be a Team guy in Kemper’s mind.

  “Okay, gentlemen,” Lieutenant Commander Mercer said as he took the podium. It was made from the same wood as the walls and floor, rendering it almost invisible until someone stepped behind it. “Instead of doing our normal nineteen hundred intel brief, I’m kicking things off a little early today. We have some new and actionable intelligence on a serious fuck stick who made our tasking docket for tonight.”