CHAPTER TWO

"This my girl, sir."

The young officer handed his commander a picture of a beautiful young woman.

"Very nice."

"I plan on asking her to marry me after this assignment."

Hammer Reese looked at the young man who was his driver for that night. "You plan on having a career in special ops?"

"Yes, sir. Very much so, sir."

"She may not understand this lifestyle."

"Oh, she'll understand it. She loves me."

Love don't have shit to do with it, Hammer wanted to say. But he held his tongue.

"Besides," the young officer added, "you're a top of our profession and you're married. Own a nightclub too." Then he smiled. "I wanna be just like you, sir."

Hamilton "Hammer" Reese wanted to tell him that the last person on earth he wanted to be like was him. But the kid was young. Twenty-four if he was a day. And still filled with that undying hope that he could beat the odds and be a good husband and father and prostitute his very life for his country. Couldn't be done. But he, like Hammer once upon a time before him, was going to give it his best try. It was a fool's game, but he wanted to play it. Back then nobody could tell Hammer any differently. Nobody was going to tell the young officer either.

Hammer had his own problems anyway. He was sitting in a Peruvian jungle dying to call his wife. What kind of shit was that? But his marriage was failing fast. And he didn't want it to fail. But he was being pulled from every single corner of his being as crisis after crisis threatened national security and every high-level official in Washington wanted him to swoop in and solve the problem. While in the meantime his personal life was spiraling so out of control that national security paled in comparison.

He sat in a satellite van in the jungles of Peru as night began to fall and an eerie quiet descended all around them. He sat on the front passenger seat beside his young driver. Two more of his men sat in the back of the van, by the big gun, as the boss pulled up his tactical radio to make his regular checks. Every man in that van felt privileged to be on assignment with the great Hammer Reese, and even though they were there, they still couldn't believe their good luck. This man used to run the entire CIA. Now he was in charge of every single special operations' units within the entire U.S. government. A man like that, to them, was the cream of the crop.

But unlike all the other big wigs they heard about but never met in the slog, Hammer practiced what he preached. And for the most sensitive assignments, many times he was right in the trenches with them.

But tonight was more than a drop by. They had to get in, get those hostages out, and then get the hell out themselves. It was a major undertaking. And what was worse, Hammer was feeling uneasy about it. Like something was off. That was why he kept pulling up that multiband handheld tactical radio and checking in.

"S.O. 9, how do you read?"

"Straight position straight ahead, sir. No activity here. Copy out."

"S.O. 8, how do you read?"

"Straight position straight ahead, sir. Nothing to report. Copy out."

"S.O. 7, how do you read?"

"Activity earlier, sir. But a false alarm. Nothing new. Copy out."

That sounded odd to Hammer. He never wanted to hear anything from his men but straight position straight ahead. Nothing happening, in other words. "What made it false?" he asked.

"The wind, sir. It's so damn quiet out here, everything sounds louder and creepier."

"Keep your eyes open. Take nothing for granted."

"Roger that, sir."

Hammer hesitated. He was looking at the trees around them. Stiff as stiff could be. "What wind?" he said out loud and was about to get back on the radio with S.O. 7 when S.O. 3 suddenly screamed into the radio: "We're under attack, sir. This is S.O. 3. We are under attack!"

Everybody in Hammer's van got on ready alert. They could hear the bombardment through the radio, even though Special Ops 3 was nearly twenty miles away as a watch team for the southside of the jungle. "Air, land, or sea?" Hammer yelled back.

"Air and land, sir."

"Abort the mission!" Hammer cried out. There was no way they could fight air support. Not in this jungle. "Get out of here," he ordered his driver. Then he yelled into the radio to all of the special ops teams on the mission. "Abort! Abort! This is Hammer. Abort the mission! Choppers 1 and 2, get to the southside. Chopper 3, hold your position. Copy out."

As the van driver was speeding off, their van was suddenly rocked by surface-to-air missiles as well. Three were completely off target, hitting the woods nearby, but one was within inches of a clean strike. Then the bombardment of gunfire could be heard bouncing off the metal of the walloping van.

Hammer, in army fatigues, dropped the radio and hurried to the back to help his men get the big gun firing. But both men had been struck already by the sudden bombardment of unrelenting incoming and weren't in position to do anything.

Dodging bullets, Hammer got behind the big gun and with the spear on the front of the gun he knocked out the bullet-ridden windows of the van. And then he began firing at everything he saw moving, including three pickup trucks that were within fifty feet of overtaking them. Hammer's entire muscular body was shaking as he was firing the powerful weapon with the accuracy of a man who'd been to this rodeo before, and who couldn't afford to give their attackers a chance to fire back. One of the three trucks ran down a dangerous incline trying to avoid Hammer's incoming. The second truck tried to turn around, but Hammer was able to take them out even as they were rocked onto two wheels and then overturned. The third truck started backing back so fast and so out of control that it swerved at top speed into the giant bark of a massive shihuahuaco tree, splitting it. Hammer's van kept speeding away just as fast. Until they were completely out of the line of fire.

But by the time they made it to base where their chopper, Chopper 3, was waiting to airlift them out of the jungle, nearby teams were just arriving with their own wounded. Hammer and his driver jumped out of the van and got their own wounded safely onto the chopper, and then Hammer began assisting the other teams as they hoisted their wounded onboard too. Hammer got on last, slamming the doors behind him. And then the big, medic-style helicopter took off.

But Hammer's work still wasn't done. "Choppers 1 and 2, how do you read?"

"This is Chopper 1. Everybody onboard, sir. We're heading out. Copy out."

"Chopper 2, how do you read?"

Nothing.

"Chopper 2, how do you read?"

Still nothing. All of the men were looking worryingly at Hammer.

Then Chopper 2 came online. "This is Chopper 2, sir. Many wounded, but everybody safe. We're heading out."

The men on Hammer's helicopter let out an audible sigh of relief. They were different teams, but they were all under Hammer, and were all brothers-in-arms.

"Copy out," Chopper 2 said, and Hammer exhaled too. He'd assess casualties once they got out of harm's way. But he slid down onto the floor with the rest of his men. It was always strange for them to see the big man sitting amongst them. But that was why they loved him so much and would take a bullet for him. He was one of them. He never put himself above a single one of them.

"Did any of you suffer any fatalities?" Hammer asked his commanding officers. "Did we lose anybody?"

"No fatalities, sir," each C.O. responded. "Nobody was lost."

And that, for Hammer, was manna from heaven.

But his heart was racing. Those missiles came too damn close. He had a wife and a child to get home to. That young driver had a girlfriend to go home to. It all could have ended right then and right there and Amelia would have never seen a change in him, and JoJo would have never known the kind of great father he wanted to be. And that angered him. "How the fuck did they find out we were even here?" he yelled out, transferring that anger.

Since nobody had a clue, they all remained silent.