SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops – ISIS Broken Arrow I

By Eric Meyer

For the first time, an epic SEAL Team Bravo – Black Ops short read novella.

It is Christmas, and US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Kyle Nolan’s unit is returning Arctic Warfare exercises. The men looking forward to spending time with their families. Instead, they find Air Force Boeing C-17 waiting on the tarmac for them to board. The destination is the Middle East, where their orders are to search and recover the payload from a downed aircraft.

A Russian Backfire supersonic bomber has crashed and disappeared inside a tiny Sultanate in the mountains of Northern Syria. The aircraft was carrying a nuclear bomb, and ISIS has sent a squad of fanatics to locate the wreck and seize the weapon. Team Bravo has to face three separate enemies. The soldiers of Hermon, the Sultan's bodyguard, who despise outsiders and want to see the Americans dead. ISIS, the soldier fanatics, under whom Syria has become a bloody chamber of horrors. Last, the environment. High, snow-covered mountains, ice sheeted glaciers, and deep, hidden crevasses.

Negotiating the treacherous peaks, they are pursued by both the Islamic fanatics, and the Sultan's bodyguard. Fighting to survive enemy gunfire and an environment that is no less lethal, they battle on. Determined to keep killing the enemy until the last bullet is fired, and the last drop of blood spilled. Team Bravo will do what it takes to recover the nuke, and prevent the Islamic fanatics from inciting a nuclear exchange. In this war, there is no second place. Only death.

This is a thrilling story of US Navy SEAL Team Bravo, battling to save the region from obliteration. Outnumbered and outgunned, the battle traverses the peaks of Hermon as they fight to survive both enemy gunfire and the hostile terrain. SEAL Team Bravo Black Ops: ISIS Broken Arrow is by the bestselling author of many other Spec Ops stories. These include the popular SEAL Team Bravo titles, the Raider series, as well as Echo Six and the Devil's Guard series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Swordworks Books
• Release date: Aug 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463985434

Eric Meyer

An internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and Web standards, Eric has been working on the web since late 1993. He is the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting, a co-founder of the microformats movement, and co-founder (with Jeffrey Zeldman) of An Event Apart, the design conference series for people who make web sites. Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the campus Web coordinator for Case Western Reserve University, where he authored a widely acclaimed series of three HTML tutorials and was project lead for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History combined with the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, the first example of an encyclopedia of urban history being fully and freely published on the Web.

Book preview

SEAL TEAM BRAVO: BLACK OPS

ISIS BROKEN ARROW

By Eric Meyer

Copyright 2016 by Eric Meyer

Published by Swordworks Books

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Prologue

Two days before Christmas, and they were on their way home. For Lieutenant Kyle Nolan, he’d come to a decision. Enough. He wanted out. He gave no inclination of his plans to the man sitting next to him on the aircraft as they chatted. Master Chief Will Bryce was one happy dude.

Why ruin the moment?

Boss, for a while I thought we weren’t gonna make it back. Whoever decided to concertina the schedule deserves a medal. This is one Christmas present I won’t forget.

Nolan forced a smile. I’ll second that medal recommendation. Home for the Christmas vacation, damn, but it feels good. Maybe we’ll have a peaceful few weeks. A pity the Muslims don’t celebrate the festival, it may take their minds off the brutality and killing. For a few days, at least.

We should mention it to the Mullahs, Bryce suggested, Make love, not war. Peace and goodwill to all men.

Merry Christmas to Mohammeds everywhere.

He grimaced. Santa Claus with an AK, that’s enough to give a man nightmares. He yawned and adjusted the seat; I’ll grab some shuteye before we land. Any more great ideas, don’t wake me until we’re on final approach.

They were on the way back from a tough spell of Arctic Warfare exercises in the rugged Northwest of Alaska. Muscle-wrenching cross-country skiing, and simulated battle drills that taxed each man to the very limits of his strength, and beyond. The harsh, unyielding environment was a place where life and death were always at odds, with death often the victor.

U.S. Navy SEAL Lieutenant Kyle Nolan, with Master Chief Will Bryce, and Petty Officers Vince Merano and John-Wesley Ryder, dozed in the coach class section of the Alaska Air Boeing 737-800. Despite the allure of the pretty cabin attendants, all they wanted was to switch flights and head south, homeward bound. A member of the cabin crew approached Nolan’s seat, but he was lost in thoughts of home, until he scented her perfume and looked up.

She’s pretty, real pretty. Maybe home can wait a few hours. She’s worth a short stopover in New York, should the opportunity arise!

Can I get you anything, Sir?

Her eyes twinkled. Nolan was no stranger to approaches from pretty girls. Some said he resembled a younger Clint Eastwood. Tall, slim, and with chiseled good looks. It was all crap. Although he accepted his dark, wavy hair and eyes the color of a pale blue sky could tempt a girl. Sometimes.

I’m good. Thank you, Ma’am.

A warm grin, If you change your mind, press the call button, and I’ll be there. Anything you need… Her eyes raked him. She wanted him to be in no doubt about what was on offer, Just ask. And I mean, anything.

Yep, it could warrant a stopover in New York, no question.

I’ll do that.

Be sure you do.

She went to the rear of the plane, trailing a cloud of erotic scent in her wake. The allure of the perfume receded, and he thought again. He had people in California who needed him, his kids, for one thing, his friends for another. California, blue and sunny skies even in winter, a change from the mist and fog-shrouded Alaskan peaks, and a welcome respite from the bleak chilling wastes of the frozen north. Home to San Diego, where the SEALs had their base at Coronado. San Diego; where men would return to the bosom of their families, those men who had families. He wasn’t one of them.

Service in the Navy SEALs was not a recipe for stability. The Lieutenant was divorced, with two kids who lived outside Sacramento. Vince Merano, the sniper, was also divorced. John-Wesley Ryder, the son of a fire-breathing fundamentalist New Orleans preacher, was single. Which meant Will Bryce, Nolan’s number two, was the only member of his fireteam with a normal family life. And that was under threat. Before they boarded the aircraft, he’d hinted his long-time marriage was heading for the rocks. She was tired of the constant waiting for her husband to come home, and her patience had run out. Broken marriages were the price men paid to protect America from those who would destroy it.

Nolan thought about his own kids, whether he’d get to see them during the vacation. He’d tried to make contact with their grandparents, who looked after them after the death of his wife, without success. The unit had left for Alaska, and there’d still been no reply when he called.

C’est la vie, as the French say. That’s life. Or is it c’est la guerre? That’s war.

He’d kept quiet over another problem these past few days, a leg injury, and so far he’d hidden it. He’d probably pulled a muscle during a grueling uphill climb, maybe even cracked a bone. He’d get if fixed up when he made it home, and after that, he’d some serious thinking to do; whether to hand in his commission.

He’d had more than enough. He didn’t need the pain of the frequent injuries. Didn't need the hassle of constant alerts to fly anywhere in the world, to drop into some squalid shithole and put his life on the line. He needed a life, his kids needed a father, and instead he wandered the world’s trouble spots, cursed to walk the Earth until the day he died. He needed a regular girlfriend, someone he could settle down with. As long as he remained a SEAL, it wasn’t going to happen.

He drifted into a doze, plagued with worries and indecision. His mind was still battling the snowy wastes of the Alaskan northwest. Nightmares of the lung searing, gut-churning uphill skiing they’d endured. Going to places no sane person would even consider, forcing tired and aching muscles to keep moving in temperatures colder than thirty below zero. Pushing into the teeth of freezing gales that threatened to toss a man all the way to the bottom of the slope he’d just climbed.

The engine that drove them was the knowledge they couldn’t go back, wouldn’t go back. Retreat and you’d have to do it all over again. They never went back. SEALs didn’t retreat. Each man had faced down every challenge and boarded the homeward flight victorious over the brutal elements. Battered, bruised, and bloody, but they'd triumphed where lesser men may have stumbled and shied away.

They had yet to cross the final hurdle. Climbing ice-sheeted glaciers, firing a few shots, and skiing downhill afterward was one thing. Under fire, when a real-life, spitting and snarling enemy was doing his utmost to kill you, was another.

He came awake in an instant. A chilling shout had intruded into his dream. A violent reminder of the Islamist insurgents he’d fought on so many fronts.

Allahu Akbar!

The crazed scream that preceded a suicidal attack; the mindless pig grunt of the deluded, maniac followers of Islam, intent on death and destruction in the name of their Prophet. His eyes opened in time to see two men walking through the center aisle, armed with short AK-47S assault rifles. Compact and deadly, the iconic banana-shaped magazines loaded with thirty 7.62mm rounds, more than enough to turn the cabin into a bloody slaughterhouse.

The SEALs' weapons were in the hold, out of reach, which meant they’d have to face two hate-spitting maniacs unarmed. So be it. He tensed, knowing the other three SEALs would also be ready. The older terrorist, a man in his mid-20s, reached the cockpit door, opened it, and disappeared inside. Incredibly, the flight crew had failed to lock it, a criminal failure in the wake of the 911 attacks.

The remaining hostile, who looked to be about eighteen years of age, walked along the aisle. He was screaming threats and shaking his assault rifle at