Origins of Honor: An Action-Thriller Collection Read online

  Origins of Honor

  An Action Thriller Collection

  Jason Kasper

  G. Michael Hopf

  Kyla Stone

  Ciara Knight

  Jeff Kirkham

  Jason Ross

  A. R. Shaw

  Eric Gardner

  Kwen D Griffeth

  Ryan Schow

  T S Paul

  W J Lundy

  M. L. Buchmann

  Lars Emmerich

  M L Banner

  Jay J. Falconer

  Formatting Service Donated By

  Nina Morse, V.A.

  Contents

  Jason Kasper

  The Night Stalker Rescue

  G. Michael Hopf

  Binary

  Kyla Stone

  Edge of Survival

  Ciara Knight

  The Conformist’s Accord

  Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross

  Lightfighter

  A. R. Shaw

  The Wild League

  Eric Gardner

  Extraction

  Kwen D Griffeth

  Fanfare of Man

  Ryan Schow

  Dark Days of the Albatross

  T S Paul

  Free Fall

  WJ Lundy

  Blackbird

  M. L. Buchman

  Galaxy

  Lars Emmerich

  Shanghaied in Paris

  ML Banner

  True Enemy

  Jay J. Falconer

  Bunker

  The Night Stalker Rescue

  Jason Kasper

  Copyright © 2020 Jason Kasper

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Jolo Island, Philippines

  The jungle blazed in my night vision, a luminescent universe of bright green extending up the steep volcanic slope.

  Clambering up the thickly jungled hillside was loud, but stealth wasn’t an issue—not yet. A chattering chorus of insects and amphibians concealed our movement, and I felt reasonably confident that no bad guys were out here at this time of night, clinging to the slope. They didn’t have to be. After all, the Abu Sayyaf Group owned a significant portion of this island, moving freely among their jungle bases and enjoying the support of a local populace with abundant familial ties.

  But we couldn’t take any chances under the best of circumstances, and it didn’t help that our intelligence couldn’t tell us whether to expect twenty bad guys along our route, or a hundred.

  I glanced to my right and left, verifying that a teammate still trailed me on either side. They were visible only in fleeting glimpses through a labyrinth of vegetation, appearing as shadowy silhouettes that moved as I did: suppressed rifles at the ready, faces half-covered by night vision devices.

  Together, our three-man wedge formation followed the point man as he threaded his way uphill.

  My team had packed light for our inaugural mission, wearing assault packs with just enough water and supplies for a two-night operation. But weight was relative in this hazardous terrain, particularly when we’d all sweated through our fatigues within minutes of entering the sweltering jungle.

  We carried HK416s, gas piston rifles that fired the same 5.56mm round widely used by the island’s many jihadist terrorists. Sure, our guns had a few key differences from your average outdated insurgent weapon—optics, infrared lasers, suppressors, and subsonic ammo—but none of that would matter once we were gone. When we left this island in two days’ time, the only evidence of American passing would be bootprints, expended shell casings, and, if all went according to plan, one dead terrorist leader.

  My radio earpiece crackled with a genteel Southern accent—Worthy, our point man.

  “I can see the crest, David. We’re almost there.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief in the humid night air and transmitted back in a whisper.

  “Copy, let’s take a short halt at the top.”

  As I advanced a few meters up the slope toward the crest, the dense wall of foliage gave way to clear sky. By the time I reached the top, I faced a breathtaking view.

  The short scrub brush and scattered trees of the high ground fell away to reveal Jolo Island’s interior, a rippling expanse of jungle and crop fields, a round crater lake, and a jagged coastline ending at a flat, calm sea. A brilliant galaxy of stars glittered overhead, and I scarcely had time to observe the sight before a breeze washed over my sweat-soaked face. The cool night air, salty with seawater, was a welcome respite from the humidity and swarms of mosquitoes we’d fought through to get here. Now that we’d arrived at the high ground, we could easily follow this volcanic ridge to reach our bed-down site well before sunrise.

  I approached Worthy, now on a knee and pulling front security. He had the least operational experience of any of us, and that made him a liability. But a childhood spent in the forests and swamps of south Georgia with his hunting guide father had endowed him with a preternatural ability to navigate through the most heinous terrain with ease and, perhaps more importantly, detect the slightest thing out of place with the natural surroundings.

  He was eager to prove himself, and I’d made the decision to employ him as the team point man. This mission would tell if I’d chosen wisely or not, and I hoped that uncertainty accounted for the light quivering in my stomach, growing in intensity and hinting that something was about to go terribly wrong.

  I stopped behind Worthy’s kneeling figure, taking a knee to face back the way we’d come, and watched as our remaining two teammates climbed onto the ridge, approaching like a pair of green ghosts in my night vision.

  It was easy enough to tell who was who—apart from my familiarity with operating alongside them at night, they couldn’t have been more different.

  Reilly, our medic, possessed a heart as big as his torso. His broad shoulders made the rifle in his grasp seem like a plaything as he took a knee to my right, picking up a sector of fire and whispering in his boyish voice, a near-lisp marking the last word.

  “Well, that sucked.”

  Our fourth man closed in, his lanky frame moving at a casual saunter. His real name was Alan, but everyone called him Cancer. I’d first named him that because of his affinity for cigarettes, though he claimed it was because he’d killed more men than cancer. While he was a highly trained sniper, tonight he carried a suppressed HK416 in anticipation of shooting up close and personal.

  Cancer knelt beside me, completing our tight 360 perimeter and addressing the point man in his raspy Jersey lilt.

  “Find enough thorn patches to walk us through, asshole?”

  Trading his unflappably polished Southern accent for a crude Austrian one, Worthy calmly replied, “What’s the matter? The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?”

  I shook my head mournfully.

  During a break in training last week, we’d watched the ’80s Schwarzenegger classic Predator in our team room. Cancer had made a halfhearted comment that whoever had the best use of a movie quote on this Philippines mission should get a case of beer, paid for by his teammates—and this casual remark had ignited a firestorm of Predator references, from the remainder of our planning up until we’d slipped into the jungle hours ago.
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  “Let’s pick it up,” I said. “Catch our breath on an easy descent, and—”

  Then Reilly hissed one word that stopped me in my tracks.

  “Helicopter!”

  We leapt to our feet in a flash, scattering away from one another as each man sought the cover of trees in the clearing.

  I threw my back against a tree trunk, peeking out and trying to catch sight of the aircraft. Before I could locate it, Reilly transmitted over my earpiece.

  “David, I’ve got eyes on—it’s headed right for us. Ten seconds out.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling the hair lift on the back of my neck. The rhythmic throbbing of insect calls continued, quieter here on the ridge—but even with the jungle noise, we should have had more than ten seconds’ notice from any approaching helicopter.

  How had it managed to sneak up on us?

  I got my answer a second later when Cancer transmitted, “That’s a Little Bird.”

  The second I heard it, I knew he was right. The approaching rotor noise was unmistakable—a thin buzzing whir almost comically quiet compared to other helicopters in the US arsenal. The Little Bird was so named for good reason: it was absurdly small, requiring the two pilots to sit nearly shoulder to shoulder.

  But small didn’t mean it wasn’t deadly.

  Little Birds were outfitted in one of two configurations: either with armament for attack purposes or benches to deposit groups of highly trained assaulters. Either was a terrorist’s worst nightmare and, regrettably at present, equally nightmarish to my team.

  Because the two American pilots screaming toward our position were mere seconds away, and on their thermal display we’d be indistinguishable from the violent extremists swarming across this island.

  And while indiscriminate strikes were not the hallmark of US military pilots, the fact remained that none of them knew my team was here. We’d programmed a multitude of American and Philippine military frequencies in our radios but were expressly forbidden from making contact. Due to the nature of our mission, we lacked any legal protection afforded a sanctioned unit. That much was by design, though I now feared this safeguard was about to get us killed an hour into our first mission.

  My heart hammered in my throat as the buzz of rotor blades grew in volume until it was nearly on top of us; in seconds, we’d know if the pilots would ignore us or perceive us as a threat.

  But the helicopter’s noise peaked a moment before it reached us, then faded. I looked out from behind my tree as the tiny helicopter banked away from our position. Under night vision it looked like little more than a dark egg with rotors, and I saw at once that my fears of being shot at were unfounded. This aircraft wasn’t configured for attack but troop insertion—and the exterior benches were bare, a neat square of night sky momentarily visible through the empty fuselage. Whatever their mission, the two pilots were headed back to their staging area, likely one of the Navy amphibious assault ships currently operating off the island’s north coast.

  As the helicopter soared toward the sea, I transmitted, “All right, let’s pick it back up and—”

  But I never got to finish.

  The words died on my lips as a cluster of explosions sounded in the distance, a terrifying cacophony of booms followed by the hiss of rockets.

  I swung my night vision device toward the departing helicopter, locating it in the distance just in time to register a flash of light.

  The sound of the explosion reached me a half-second later, and the spark of flame darkened to reveal the Little Bird spinning wildly before disappearing into the jungle beneath a smoky pyramid of rockets that streaked skyward, victorious.

  My stomach turned to stone, my momentary disbelief vanishing as I shouted, “Worthy, take us there!”

  The only confirmation that he’d heard me came as he appeared in the clearing, running toward the far slope.

  Cancer, Reilly, and I followed suit, wordlessly falling into a tight single file—not the most tactically sound formation, but by far and away the fastest. If there was any time to sacrifice security for speed, this was it.

  Together the four of us crashed downhill, abandoning any attempt at noise discipline.

  We moved as quickly as the vegetation would allow, each man struggling to keep the teammate to his front in sight through the leaves. We needed no discussion about our next actions—an American helo was down, and the enemy would be swarming over the crash site as fast as they could reach it. If my team didn’t make it there first, the pilots would fall into the hands of a terrorist enemy whose calling card was decapitation.

  I keyed a button to transmit over the command frequency, speaking breathlessly as I ran.

  “Angel One, Angel One,” I gasped. “These fuckers just took down a Little Bird. We’re hauling ass to the crash site.”

  No return transmission came over my earpiece, and I was about to repeat the call when I heard a response: the nasal voice of an extremely calm man referencing me by callsign.

  “Suicide, this is Angel One. Copy all. I’m on it.”

  I gave no thought to what “it” meant for Ian, whose callsign of Angel One had been well-earned. In the intelligence world, Ian was a miracle worker; his expert analysis and boundless intellect were almost without peer. But his options now were limited—Ian was currently loitering offshore in the fishing vessel that had inserted my team on the beach, his only weapon at present a communications suite that served as the sole link to our higher command.

  I directed my thoughts to the tactical situation.

  This attack was no chance encounter. The odds of an RPG hitting, much less downing, a helicopter were absurdly small. So the implications of a coordinated RPG salvo were clear—this ambush was a well-planned and executed operation to capture US pilots.

  And on this part of the island, that meant one man was responsible.

  We’d been sent to kill him, the attack planned for tomorrow night, but our orders had apparently come one night too late. Now we were reacting to his plan, racing against a savage force of enemy fighters to recover two pilots whether they were living or dead.

  Ahead of me, Worthy abruptly halted his downhill movement.

  I stopped too, assuming he just needed a moment to evaluate his choice of path through the jungle’s myriad obstacles.

  But instead of continuing movement, he transmitted a radio call.

  “David, I can make out a campfire ahead—two, maybe three guys. We can probably redirect around them to bypass.”

  “Negative,” I transmitted, “we’re going to hit them and go straight through. I’ll initiate. Get on line.”

  Reilly and Cancer needed no encouragement from me; as Worthy held his fixed position, the three of us advanced on either side of him to form a consolidated front. No civilians inhabited this part of the island, and by the time we swung wide to bypass the campfire, we’d lose time we didn’t have to spare. I likewise had no interest in leaving an enemy element alive to our rear, where we’d be most vulnerable to tracking and pursuit.

  Besides, I thought, we were already uphill of the campfire. In a gunfight, occupying an elevated position against your opponent was practically half the battle.

  We advanced down the slope, remaining on line with one another. The campfire’s glow was now visible to each of us, and after we’d advanced slightly, so were the men around it.

  They were dancing, laughing, and hoisting their rifles like they’d just scored the winning goal at the World Cup. For an organization like Abu Sayyaf, downing an American military chopper was a far greater achievement, and these three men appeared to be celebrating the victory with glee. Their silhouettes were green shadows flitting in the center of their camp, our infrared lasers flickering in and out of visibility against the glowing blaze of the fire.

  I could only make out the three men through the leaves, and tried to hold my fire until the last possible moment as we crept closer. If any additional forces were present, the element of surprise wouldn’t count for much,
and we needed to kill as many as possible in the opening salvo to have any chance of wiping them out completely.

  But I saw no one else, and we were now only a few meters distant. If we got much closer, the fire would glint off the lens of a night vision device, alerting them that they were no longer alone.

  When my next footfall landed on the damp bed of leaf litter, I stopped in place. Flicking my rifle’s selector lever from safe to semiautomatic, I opened fire on the center man.

  My subsonic bullet found its mark, causing the man to jolt violently as I chased the first shot with three more, then swung my barrel left.

  I heard the hissing plinks of four suppressed rifles shooting in unison. My aim found the next man, who was already being drilled with bullets. I got two shots off before he fell, and by the time I searched for the third man, he’d already dropped out of sight.

  I called out, “Advance!”

  We moved forward on line, taking deliberate steps in a measured approach. My senses were on hyperalert, waiting for return fire to ring out, for unseen enemies to open fire from our flanks.

  But the rhythmic symphony of night creatures continued unabated around us. Creeping toward the edge of the trees, we found the three fallen bodies motionless around the small campfire. We fired another volley of suppressed gunfire, achieving stationary headshots that ejected splatters of brain matter across the jungle floor.

  Then we crossed through the small encampment, spreading ourselves wide around the fire as we swept our barrels across ponchos and tarps strung up as outpost shelters. But I saw no other enemy, no survivors rallying in a counterattack to our intrusion.