Chapter Five

Nomad

Over the last three nights in Ankara's city center, Nomad's job, along with his Delta Force team, was to ensure his principals slept safe and sound behind the heavy doors of their hotel rooms.

The modern card-locking systems seemed anachronistic amongst the art and statuary stringing the length of the hall.

The place was pristinely clean, but there was that musty smell endemic to centuries-old buildings.

Nomad had paced up and down this hall enough times that he had a mind map of the squeaky floorboards hidden under the golden design on the red carpet.

For this close protection mission, Delta Force Team Echo was traveling with a bi-partisan delegation of representatives from the House.

It wasn't typical for a Delta Force team to be involved when members of the legislature went overseas to a non-combat zone.

A number of variables were weighed when deciding how to keep government officials safe. The reason Nomad was in this hall (keeping himself amused and focused by avoiding the squeaking floor planks) boiled down to three issues—the proximity to the Russian war against Ukraine, the current concerns over the Black Sea just to the north, and the fact that Representative Johnstone tweeted a meme that struck a match then held that flame uncomfortably close to the fuel of regional unrest.

His tweet went viral.

Johnstone followed up the tweeted meme by spending his Sunday morning on talk shows "shooting off his mouth," riling tensions through insults and threats.

In America, Johnstone got what he'd wanted, the pundits opined, suggesting that this tactic made sense from a politically strategic point of view. After all, Johnstone was behind in the polls. Viral outrage was free publicity and nudged his grassroots supporters to take action. With the furor, funds flowed to his coffers.

Nomad didn't have an opinion on any of that.

Nomad's concern focused squarely on ramifications and how the present situation might impact the group's safety.

How it played in America was not necessarily how other countries reacted. Türkiye felt the sting of Johnstone's words and expressed their anger loudly on social media—much more quietly in the halls of government. As a result, the incoming messages were full of vitriol and highly detailed, credible threats.

Usually, the DSS— the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service—would handle the protection of official representatives of the United States government while abroad. But with the ensuing backlash, the FBI got involved. After more hoopla, the protection had upgraded to a CIRG team—the tactical operators in the FBI.

The other representatives scheduled for the Ankara outreach—the ones who had to walk by Johnstone's side and climb into a car with him—were fearful but unwilling to back out of the trip lest they seem cowardly.

And so, one of the delegates called his brother, a top brass with JSOC, and requested Delta Force protection. Though the FBI's CIRG was full of retired Delta Force operators, and both groups had similar skill sets, Echo was handed the assignment.

Dressed, albeit atypically and uncomfortably, in suit and tie, Echo took on the mission of guarding the politicians.

The job of tamping down the political backlash belonged to the State Department.

Politics wasn't Nomad's sphere of present expertise. In the military, as with his parents, who ostensibly worked for the State Department, Nomad had served under both parties' administrations. His loyalty was to the American people. His job was to use his skills to protect American interests. And right now, that meant focusing on the three feet around him. Or, in this case, the fifteen meters of hallway.

Back and forth. Back and forth, he paced the hall.

Nomad was vigilant.

Protection was boring, but it was never light duty.

A great deal of pre-planning and groundwork was included in any protection plan. Every moment of every day. Every stop—and that didn't mean hotel to meeting space, that meant every light, every roundabout, every tunnel, every thing —was researched and assessed. And while Türkiye was a NATO member, the team understood there was a war raging just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Echo team weighed each threat made against the American contingent and mitigated it.

The meme war aside, from the point of embarking on their commercial flight out of D.C. until now, nothing had stood out as particularly dangerous. But that was the thing with mental health and violence; sometimes, there was nothing to see until it was playing out. Nomad knew that you don't focus on the dog that barks; you focus on the one that will stalk and bite.

Back and forth. Back and forth, Nomad strode.

The four days had come and gone with him pacing this hall.

Nomad was the newest member of Delta Force Team Echo. And this happened to be his first Echo mission. A proud member of the United States military since he was old enough to sign on the dotted line—Army boot to Ranger School to Green Beret, and recently a move to The Unit—he'd served both in combat and in peace.

But a military record didn't matter much when you joined a new team.

They tested you.

And rightly so.

Nomad had no expectations that he'd walk through the door with his battle rattle and Echo would embrace him as a brother.

When their lives were on the line, the team needed to know Nomad's character as well as the skill sets listed in his file.

Did it amuse him to be a burr in somebody's backside?

Would he snatch at the cream assignments and try to snake his way out of doing crap jobs?

Would his ego jeopardize a good outcome?

Would he go along to get along? Sometimes, that was a good thing; sometimes, it was deadly. You had to know when to speak up and when to shut it. Every choice had ramifications.

Nomad absolutely understood why Delta Force Team Echo needed to test him and see how he performed under stress. And there were few things as good as sleep deprivation coupled with boredom to assess someone's capacity to stay even-keeled and focused.

When assignments were handed out, and Nomad's schedule looked like he was basically on duty twenty-four/seven for the duration, Nomad had planned to hit exhaustion by the time they wrapped up this four-day handshake mission.

Nothing new in that.

Taking night shifts, walking the halls in a five-star hotel wasn't a crap job. It was low bandwidth.

Yeah, there were far worse things he could be doing right now. One that came readily to mind was the day Nomad had slithered through a minefield on his belly, wearing a wounded Ranger buddy on his back like a turtle shell. Or the day his Green Beret unit was in Hatari, East Africa, and they raced into the fray as guerilla fighters, hopped up on khat leaves, attacked a village of women and children. That was one of the most horrific days of his life. He still had nightmares about it. He still felt guilty that only one person from that village, his friend Hailey, had survived.

Comparatively, this assignment was cake.

But Nomad didn't have much of a sweet tooth.

He preferred the adrenaline rush and the power of physically and mentally pushing himself.

He wouldn't be pacing the hall that much longer.

The delegates were in their rooms, gathering their bags. Soon, they'd be loading up and heading back to the airport to fly to D.C. The group would spend their weekend overcoming jetlag before they were back in session.

Maybe he could grab some shuteye on the flight back.

The elevator dinged, and two of the DSS officers from the embassy stepped off, followed by Nomad's teammate Havoc, who signaled him over.

The DSS walked to either end of the hall, somehow hitting all the squeaky floorboards along the way.

Nomad stopped in front of the elevator with a lift of his brow.

"Changing of the guard. Echo is heading to the embassy," Havoc said in a tone that wouldn't travel the halls and slip under the hotel door cracks.

Nomad followed Havoc onto the elevator. "This is about the delegates?"

"Someone sent up a bat signal." Havoc pushed the starred button. "We're jumping off in a new direction."

They'd be turning on a dime.

Sudden pivots fit Nomad's personality. He enjoyed the challenge. A little like the waltz that he grew up dancing at embassy events with his parents, "slow, slow, quick" was a good metaphor for his job. The change of balance, the constant redirection, never standing with the feet planted. And when one did it well, it seemed effortless and graceful.

The metaphor came readily because of the embassy setting he'd been working in and the memories of his youth that it pulled up for him, but he liked it.

Nomad was sure that wasn't an easy call out of JSOC to redirect Echo. This must be a high-stakes event. If it ever came out that Echo was rerouted from their protective duties and something came at this legislative group, there would be hell to pay.

Yes, it had to be big. They'd know soon enough.

Hopefully, somebody had some gear they'd be handing out because Echo came to Türkiye with wool suits, not battle rattle.

***

When Nomad walked into the embassy's SCIF—Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, where classified information could safely pass from one set of hands to another—T-Rex sent him an assessing look. "You good to go? We pushed you these last four days when it comes to sleep cycles."

"I'm squared away." Nomad moved into the room. "I don't need much on a normal day."

Master Chief T-Rex Landry was Echo's number one—then there was Havoc, Nitro, and Jeopardy. Their second in command, a guy named Ty Newcomb, handled Rory—the team's Tactical K9 who was both a nose and a bite on the job and a goofball when hanging with the team. He wasn't just an amazing athlete and a force multiplier but a respected team member and good stress relief.

Nomad? He was, "Hey, new guy."

And if the past defined the present, he would be for quite a while.

The men sat around a long table with a large screen connecting them to their support team back at Fort Liberty. Nomad found a place where he could easily see and pulled his notepad and pen from his bag.

"Gentlemen, we're changing gears," Colonel Watts said by way of greeting. "Keeping our principals out of the public eye served its purpose. The news cycle has moved on to the next topic. Our intelligence community believes that the Diplomatic Security Service can take over our duties regarding the legislators. Right now, JSOC needs you in the field."

There was a shift in the room as the focus sharpened. The only sound was Rory panting under the table.

"We have an AWOL servicemember. Army. A Sergeant Daniel Poole. We believe that Poole is a traitor who committed espionage and has connections with terrorist activity imminently planned for American soil. We need to scoop him up for interrogation." He turned his head to focus on T-Rex. "Master Chief, I've forwarded the intelligence package. It includes what we know of our target and our window." Colonel Watts shifted his gaze to the whole team. "Intelligence has developed initial suggestions for how this might go down, but we're leaving it up to you how you get the job done. We have two asks—that you don't swing and miss and that there is zero footprint."

"Yes, sir," the men responded in unison.

"Where is this?" T-Rex asked.

"Syria."

Arms crossed over chests, chins tucked in. That area was dry tinder. The tiniest of sparks could set off a conflagration that would be time and resource-heavy to put out.

"We need to pick him up in the next few hours and get him someplace with American jurisdiction. Poole can't reach EU territory," Watts said. "He'd fall under our friends' laws, and we simply don't have time to wrangle red tape. We need Poole's information. And honestly, it would have been better to have had our hands on it yesterday."

"Why didn't we?" T-Rex asked. "Was there a hold-up getting this signed off?"

"The field officer got the information during an early lunch meeting today in the Middle Eastern time zone, is my understanding. That means we received this information five hundred hours East Coast time—we pulled people out of bed. We've now had the information in hand for just over an hour. We're pushing this along as quickly as possible."

"To clarify, sir, you've sent us an intelligence package," T-Rex asked, "not orders?"

"Not all the stakeholders have signed off. They're in discussion in the Situation Room. We're waiting to hear back. We think we know where Poole is right now. We lose him at dawn. Until we hear back, you need to act as if—" Watts looked over his shoulder as someone handed him a piece of paper. He paused to read it over, then handed it back. "That can wait." He turned his attention to Echo. "Gentlemen, we're staging as if we have the green light. You'll agree, it's easier to pull down a mission that's ready to go. No sense in wasting time twiddling your thumbs. You have commercial tickets on a flight from Ankara to Adana ?akirpa?a at your sixteen twenty hours. That's the closest airport to the base."

The team scribbled notes on the pads in front of them.

"The flight takes an hour and twenty minutes. We'll have someone there to pick you up. It's thirty minutes by vehicle to the base. They're bringing in a jump plane as we speak. Your intelligence package suggests a HAHO." Watts used the term for a High Altitude High Open parachute jump. "Everyone is packed up already, and you have your bags with you?"

"Yes, sir," Echo said in unison.

"Then I'll leave you to it. T-Rex, once you've come up with a cover story and a list of items you'll need, send them to the base contact. They'll do their best with it. Gentlemen, we trust your training and your professionalism. You're the right team in the right place and time. I'll let you know as soon as we get the nod. Good luck."

Here was one hell of a twist. He was moving from the robotic tedium of hall pacing to a HAHO into a hotspot, chasing an American traitor.

Nomad was ready for it.