False Friends

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Seal Alpha stood up, bracing himself against the fuselage. ‘Lock and load!’ he shouted. ‘Five minutes and counting.’ His name was Adam Croft and he was the ranking non-commissioned officer and leader of the mission, a ten-year veteran of the Navy Seals who had spent half of those years serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were thirteen Navy Seals sitting on the floor of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. All the seats had been stripped out to keep the payload to a minimum. The Seals weren’t in any way superstitious and thirteen was the maximum number that could be squeezed into the belly of the helicopter. All thirteen had been hand-picked by Croft.

The Seals started chambering rounds as Croft and the Black Hawk crew chief readied the four ropes that they would be using to abseil down into the courtyard close to the main house. They were all dressed in the same desert camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests but their headwear varied. Some favoured Kevlar helmets, others wore scarves or floppy hats. Their weapons varied too. Most cradled M4 rifles fitted with noise suppressors but there were several Heckler amp; Koch MP7 carbines and one pump-action shotgun. They all wore noise-cancelling headsets to neutralise the roar of the Black Hawk’s two General Electric T700 turboshaft engines.

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