When Iraq ventured onto Kuwaiti soil to pillage the country in August, the United States and the UN coalition ordered Hussein to withdraw from the country immediately. However, several months of wasted negotiation evolved before the commencement of the counterattack by U.S. and coalition forces. It was during this period that President Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff called upon Kimball to take out Hussein before the allied assault began. They believed war could be averted if the rank and file of the Republican Guard fell into disarray without Saddam Hussein’s leadership.
Kimball asked no questions. He only needed to know what he had to do, not why he had to do it. It was this icy-cold fortitude that led his employers to consider Kimball practically inhuman. He seemed to possess no conscience, no remorse, no care. He was a perfect killing machine that seemed to take pride in that image. His commanders saw him as larger than life, the same way his father saw him that night on the football field. The feeling was indescribable.
As the window of opportunity lay open and the negotiations continued, Kimball breached Iraqi territory.
Just then the Gulf Stream hit an air pocket, causing the plane to dip sharply. When it leveled off Kimball recalled the moments of his pride, a deadly sin in the eyes of God. And his fall had come to him quickly.
He had been in Iraq for seven days and was making his way toward Baghdad when he happened upon a flock of goats herded by two boys, the older no more than fourteen, the younger perhaps ten, each carrying a gnarled staff of olive wood.
Kimball remained out of sight, with his back pressed against the sandy wall of a gully, listening to the goats bleating only a few feet away. And then a shadow cast over him from the younger boy, who had spied Kimball from above. The child’s small body was silhouetted against the pure white sun, a diffusion of light shining from him like a halo. And then the boy was gone, shouting, the sun assaulting Kimball’s eyes with a sudden and terrible brightness.
Kimball stood, immediately engaged his weapon, drew a bead and pulled the trigger, the bullet’s momentum driving the boy hard to the ground. The older boy stood unmoving with his mouth open in mute protest, his eyes moving to the body of his brother, to Kimball, then back to his brother. When he took flight Kimball took a single shot, the bullet killing the boy before he hit the surface.
Another bump of turbulence, this time stronger, jarred Kimball from the memory. But when the plane settled back into a smooth flight pattern, he closed his eyes once again and remembered what he had for so long tried to forget.
He had buried the boys and their staffs in the trench. Wordlessly, Kimball Hayden covered their bodies with sand and scattered the goats. Once done, he sat beside the two small rises in the earth and considered that maybe the White House brass was right after all. Maybe he was inhuman.
And suddenly it was no longer a game. The memory of his father’s approval on that Friday night when Kimball openly maimed another player, the smile on his father’s face, and the subsequent pats on the back no longer seemed to matter. He could not go on living life as a game in which those around him were merely targets — especially innocent children.
At that moment Kimball was greatly tormented by what he had done. His cold fortitude was gone. He had reached his limit. And though he could hear his father rage on about pushing further, he could not. Every man has his limits.
If his father had been alive on that fateful day rather than buried in a nondescript grave in an obscure township, he most likely would have turned his back on his son, but Kimball didn’t care anymore. His father was dead. Why was he still living for his approval? Why had he ever fought so hard to please a sadistic man who required him to deny his humanity? Kimball didn’t want to be emotionless anymore. He deserved to feel pain, to feel guilt. He wanted to suffer.
Kimball remained by the makeshift graves all that day. Even with the sun blistering his lips, he refused to take cover. He recalled the moments when day turned to night. He laid between the two mounds with a clawed hand on each rise of soft earth and prayed for forgiveness — not from God, but from the boys.
His only answer was the soft whisper of wind through the desert sand.
As he lay there watching the moon make its trajectory across a sky filled with countless stars, Kimball Hayden made a fateful decision.
On the following morning he headed back for the Syrian border with President Bush and the JCS never to hear from him again. The White House believed that Kimball Hayden had been killed in the commission of his duty. Less than two months later, the man who was considered to be without conscience was posthumously honored by the Pentagon brass, though the true nature of his contributions was never made public.
Two weeks after his defection, however, while Kimball sat in a bar in Venice drinking an expensive liqueur, the United States and the Coalition Forces attacked Iraq.
He had been drinking and doing little else since his defection, but he was becoming restless, anxious. It was not in his nature to be idle, but he didn’t have the first idea what to do next. A few days later at this same bar, a man wearing a Roman collar and a cherubic smile took the seat opposite him without permission.
“I really want to be alone, Father,” he told him. “It’s too late for me, anyway.”
Nevertheless the priest continued to smile. “We’ve been watching you.”
Kimball could only imagine the look he gave the priest. “I‘m sorry… you‘ve been what?”
“Kimball Hayden,” the priest said, offering his hand. “My name is Bonasero Vessucci… Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci.”
And a new alliance was born.
Kimball drew another deep breath and let it go. The Gulf Stream was flying at an incredible speed.
The time was 1834 hours, Eastern Standard Time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Steve O’Brien was second in command of Alpha Team and used the moniker of Kodiak, for the giant bears of Alaska. Prior to his induction into the squad, O’Brien had been an Army Ranger, an elite soldier in terms of combat, courage and duty. Now he was a mercenary, recruited for the tools he had to offer.
He stood six-four and two-hundred-seventy pounds. His body was pure rippling muscle, his biceps larger than most men’s thighs. And to keep with his military heritage he wore his flattop to specs, closely cropped and ruler straight. Running from the edge of his right eye to the corner of his lip, forever drawing his mouth into a sneer, was a puckered scar from a wound laid open by an al-Qaeda rebel hiding in the hills along the Afghan border. The rebel’s victory, however, was short lived once Kodiak took the knife away and used it against him. He ended up hanging the rebel’s head on a pike for several days.
The other members of the Alpha Team had taken the tags of Boa, Diamondback, King Snake and Sidewinder, monikers assigned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff indicating stealth, poise, and deadly precision. But Kodiak saw the tags as degrading, since snakes make it a lifelong journey to crawl along their bellies, something he saw as lowly and undignified.
Like him, Boa and King Snake were former Army Rangers, while Diamondback and Sidewinder were Green Berets.
But to this group, Team Leader remained a mystery.
Nobody knew who he was or where he came from, but he exuded such raw power nobody dared to consider challenging him.
Kodiak glanced at his team lying on the floor around him, sleeping. This was a moment of luxury. He closed his eyes, then rested his head against the wall. Finding comfort in the fact that he was surrounded by the deadliest men on the planet, he fell into a much needed sleep.