The other squad, the other seven men of Retiarius, including his best friend and BUD/S brother, Brandon Blake, had beeninsidethe barracks building.
The senior chief and Murphy must have been trying to warn them.
John had to do something. He pushed Jim Bob away,told him he was fine, and struggled to his feet, swaying as he tried to find his equilibrium. Christ, his head hurt. The ground was spinning. He started to run—stumble—toward the orange inferno.
But the LC had guessed his intent and grabbed his arm to hold him back. “It’s too late,” he yelled, his voice sounding like it was coming from the far end of a tunnel. “They’re gone.”
Gone. The finality of that one word penetrated his shell-shocked brain.
John wanted to argue. With every bone in his body he wanted to deny the LC’s words. But the truth was right in front of his face. The gulag was gone. Both the command and barracks buildings had been flattened. What was left was being incinerated before his eyes.
He’d never been so close to one before, but he suspected what he was seeing: a thermobaric explosion. It was also known as a vacuum bomb, although this one had been attached to missiles. They were nasty shit, frowned upon by the international community for humanitarian reasons. Russia had been accused of using them in Syria, and the US had used them to target the caves in Afghanistan, including one nicknamed the “Mother of all Bombs.” They used more fuel than conventional weapons, producing a much hotter, more sustained, and pressurized blast that was far more destructive—and deadly—when used in buildings, bunkers, and caves.
He knew what it meant. Just like that, his best friend, half the platoon, and half the family he had in the world were gone.
It was too horrible. Too hideous to think about.
He couldn’t think about it. John had been here once before, and it wasn’t a place he ever wanted to go to again. Utter devastation. Feeling as if the entire world had just gone black and he was lost.
He forced himself to look away. To move on and shiftgears. Putting the bad stuff behind him was what made him so good at his job.
But his eyes glanced back to the fire, the instinct to run toward it still strong. SEALs didn’t leave their brothers behind. Ever.
“Donovan... Dynomite,” the LC said, shaking him as if it weren’t the first time he’d said his name. Kid Dyn-o-mite from the old 70s showGood Times. That was him. “I need you to focus. We don’t have much time. They’ll be here soon, looking for survivors. They can’t find us.”
John’s head cleared. The heavy weight in his chest was still there, but he was back. The op... he had to focus on the op. “What do you need me to do?”
The LC looked relieved. “Get rid of anything electronic. Anything that might let them detect that we weren’t in one of those buildings like we were supposed to be.” Taylor looked at the other three men around him. “That goes for all of us—and the senior chief as well.”
Baylor was still unconscious. He didn’t rouse until they went into the river. That was after they’d thrown their electronics into the fire. But fearing that the Russian soldiers—probably their special forces, Spetsnaz—might also be using thermal imaging, they needed to mask their body heat as well.
So, into the icy river they went, taking turns keeping the senior chief afloat. Baylor had come around, but he was still out of it, and every time they had to go under and hold their breath as the Russian soldiers drew near, they feared he might not surface.
But he made it. They all did. Although those hours in the cold river weren’t anything John ever wanted to go through again. He’d thought BUD/S had prepared him for cold and uncomfortable. But the Pacific Ocean in San Diego didn’t have anything on a river in Arctic Russia.
It seemed as if the bastards would never leave. Theywere having too much fun. John didn’t need to understand Russian like Spivak did to know they were gloating.
Spivak could only catch a word or two of what they were saying in between breaths, but other than making some kind of joke that John took to be the Russian equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel and having what they needed to make the American “cowboys” pay, they weren’t thoughtful enough to mention how they knew the SEALs were coming. If it hadn’t been for the LC receiving a last-minute warning—that was what he and the senior chief had been arguing about—they would all be dead.
By the time the Russians left, John wasn’t the only one battling hypothermia. But he pushed it aside just like everything else.
He never looked back, only forward.
And forward in this case meant getting the hell out of Dodge—or, in SEAL terminology, exfil.
SEALs had contingencies for contingencies, and this op was no exception. They’d all been well briefed and knew the mission plan backward and forward, but they didn’t use their original exfil plan or the backup one. They were going to hump a good seventy miles through the Ural forests and tundra to the nearest city—or what passed for a city in the polar circle—to the old coal-mining town of Vorkuta.
The LC suspected that someone in their own government had set them up, and until he found out who it was, they were going to stay dead. That meant going dark, staying off the grid, and scattering in different directions as soon as they could.
It also meant getting rid of anything that could identify them as American or military. Due to the nature of their mission, most of their gear was unattributable, but even having it could be suspicious, so into the fires it went. They’d even have to ditch their weapons once they got closer to Vorkuta. Fortunately, they’d been trained inhow to blend in—low-vis, as they called it. No buzz cuts or clean-shaven jaws for them. Relaxed grooming standards where common in the Teams. Once they had street clothes they would be good to go.
The only thing they saved was food—they would need what little they had—DEET for the bugs that would otherwise eat them alive, and medical supplies.
No one argued with the LC. Not even the senior chief, who had a few burns and was cut up pretty bad but was managing to stand up by himself. Of course, the senior chief could have two broken legs and would likely find a way to stand up by himself. He was one of the toughest sons of bitches John knew, and given that John hung out with Navy SEALs all day, that was saying something.
Senior Chief Baylor was the link—and sometimes shield—between the men and command. If there were problems, the men went to the senior chief. He was their leader, their teacher, their advocate, their confessor, and their punisher all rolled into one. To a man, they would follow him into hell and not look back. There was no one in this world John admired more.
Officers like the LC were part of the team, but their rank kept them apart.
