Sons of Valor, page 37
“I have loved you from afar for as long as I can remember. I was drawn to you because I thought you were not like the other men, always chest-pounding, settling their disagreements with their fists and their guns. In you, I saw a compassionate and wounded soul. A man with inner courage and conviction. A man not afraid to turn the other cheek. A gentle man. A studious man. I told my father this. I told him my greatest fear was being married into the Taliban. My greatest nightmare was to be a terrorist’s wife.”
“I am not a terrorist,” he said, trying very, very hard to keep his voice measured and calm.
“We are married now, Qasim. Please don’t lie to me,” she said.
“I’m not lying.”
“You think of me as the shy girl who stands at the wall and watches everyone. That is true, I am shy, but it does not mean I am stupid. I may not be educated and worldly like you, but I could have been, had my circumstances been different. I knew what Eshan was doing. I also knew that he was using me as a pawn to manipulate you. That he was trying to recruit you . . .”
A pit formed in Qasim’s stomach as it hit home that Diba understood everything. “Then why did you agree to marry me?”
“Because I did not, in a million years, think that he would succeed,” she said, the dam finally breaking as she began to sob. “I guess I am a stupid girl after all.”
He didn’t touch her for a moment, just watched her chest heave as she cried in front of him. Eventually, pity got the best of him, and he pulled her in for a hug. She did not resist his embrace, but she did not reciprocate either, her body wooden against his.
“Can you get out, Qasim?” she asked, her breath hot on his chest. “Tell them you’ve changed your mind and you want to live a simple life.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know if you can, or you don’t know if you want to?”
“Both,” he said, finally being honest with her.
She nodded, then after a long silence asked him, “Will you try, for me . . . please?”
He let out a long exhale. “Okay,” he said, caressing her hair and wondering if he was lying to her and to himself. “I will try, Diba . . . for you.”
EPILOGUE
macdill air force base
tampa, florida
three weeks later
1030 local time
“What the hell is this place?” Whitney said, putting her hands on her hips and squinting as she took a measure of her surroundings.
Chunk grunted a laugh as he set the two heavy Pelican cases on the wooden firing stand. She hadn’t offered to help carry them, because, well, so many reasons.
“This is the range where they do initial quals for junior airmen on the base,” he said, snapping the gun cases open, “and the best place for other units just looking to put some lead on paper.”
She looked around the heavily scarred and weathered outdoor range, a facility she imagined would be put to shame by any of the civilian shooting clubs in the Carrollwood suburbs north of the base. Plywood dividers separated the simple wooden shooting stations, with dirt lanes leading to target stands at seventy-five yards. Unmowed grass grew between them, probably tall enough to reach her knees. A hill behind the target stands served as a berm to absorb rounds that found—or didn’t find—their mark. Behind the berm, unoccupied marshland stretched for hundreds of yards, a secondary backstop for any bullets that sailed high.
She brushed a sweep of bangs out of her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt today, which exposed several of her more intricate tattoo jobs, but did nothing for her waifish physique. She’d never cared about her “task-chair fitness level” before this assignment, but upon seeing Chunk’s gorilla arms rippling in the afternoon sun, she suddenly felt self-conscious. No, not self-conscious . . . inadequate?
Not inadequate . . . something else.
“But shouldn’t I be practicing in the kill house? I need to learn how to shoot and move—isn’t that’s what you said? We have to train like we fight—that I need muscle memory. Remember?”
“I did. You’re right,” he said and pulled a short-barreled Rattler from the case. He set it down on the wooden stand and placed a magazine beside it. Then he walked the lane, carrying two targets—simple circular things that flashed neon when hit with a bullet—while talking to her over his shoulder. “But I made a mistake. In the Teams, when we first start weapons training, we break the weapons down and put them together again, over and over. Then we fire rounds, three at a time, at a simple target, dropping the magazines and reloading, over and over.” He secured the targets on the target posts at the end of the two center lanes. “The point is there is lots of muscle memory we need to train into you before you’re ready for the kill house,” he said, walking back. “We need to make the weapon into an extension of you. Then the shoot-and-move component will be easier. Better to think of muscle memory in terms of layers. Weapon familiarity and handling first, aiming second, shoot and move last. Make sense?”
She nodded. It made perfect sense.
She picked up the assault rifle, feeling both apprehensive and determined. This was the first time she’d touched a weapon since that night in the hotel. He watched her check the chamber clear by pulling the charging handle back a few inches. Next, she looked at the spine of the magazine, counting her rounds. Satisfied, she snapped the magazine into the receiver, tapping it twice, just like he’d shown her. She checked the safety, then chambered a round with the charging handle, checked the safety again, and set the weapon—barrel pointing downrange—on the table.
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Good,” he said.
She nodded, but her gaze fell to her feet and the dirty Oakley boots she’d worn every day since they’d returned from Pakistan . . . she wasn’t sure why.
“Did Theobald tell you I shot a man?”
Chunk took a deep breath, like he’d been waiting for this. “Yes,” he said.
“Did he also tell you I missed?”
“He said you hit the guy in the leg.”
“Like I said, I missed.”
“A hit is not a miss.”
“Oh, don’t patronize me. If Theobald hadn’t been there to back me up, I’d be dead.” She lifted her head and let her mind’s eye take her to the hotel hallway in Mingora. The image was so real that she could almost smell the sweat of the approaching terrorists and felt her pulse quicken. She squeezed her eyes shut ,and the image evaporated—for now. She looked over at Chunk, who was watching her without staring. “I’m glad I didn’t kill that man, but I’m also glad that Theobald did. Is that crazy? It sounds like a contradiction. It’s the strangest damn thing, Chunk. I tried to kill the other one, the younger fighter, but I couldn’t. Or didn’t. I’m not sure which. But I’m glad he’s dead too.”
He didn’t say anything, seemingly content to let her talk through her first combat experience uninterrupted.
“I was so scared,” she said and felt her eyes rim with tears. “I was certain I was going to die.”
No, you’re not doing this in front of him, Whit, she silently chastised herself, shifting a quarter turn so he was in her peripheral vision now.
“And I didn’t want to die . . . but I didn’t want anyone else to die either. I didn’t want to kill those men who were trying to kill me, but I wanted them dead . . .” She shook her head, frustrated that she couldn’t properly articulate what she was feeling.
He touched her arm, and she turned to look at him, eyes wet but unashamed.
“People who like killing have no business here,” he said. “Contrary to what you might think, we work hard—very hard—to weed out those who like killing. Because we are not in the killing business. We are in the intervention business.”
“Are those your words,” she said, “or someone else’s?”
“You know I ain’t smart enough to come up with something like that all on my lonesome,” he said, cranking his Texas twang up to eleven and flashing her a self-deprecating grin. “Nah, it was something Captain Bowman told me, that Kelso Jarvis once told him. He said that every Tier One mission is a preemptive strike. We kill so that innocents can live. We conduct violence on a small scale to prevent violence on a mass scale. We fight battles to avoid fighting wars. It’s violence, for certain, but it’s a violence of action.”
“Sounds very Machiavellian. The ends justify the means and all that.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m a pragmatist, not a philosopher. In my humble opinion, it’s not what we do that defines our character, it’s how and why we do it. Show me a pacifist who defeated a terrorist and saved lives, then we can debate methods and means.”
“I’m not trying to pick a fight,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I’m just trying to figure out where I stand on killing. In that hallway I was conflicted, and it almost cost me my life. Right here, right now, I’m still conflicted. A man named Andy, who I never even knew, died on that roof in Mingora. Jax died in the drone strike on Kandahar, and so did others. Do you think—”
“No,” he said, immediately cutting her off.
She gritted her teeth and pushed. “But if I had put the pieces together sooner. If I had anticipated the enemy’s next move before . . .”
“Don’t do it, Whitney. Remember, those questions go nowhere,” he said, then under his breath, “nowhere good.” He looked away, contemplating his own demons, she surmised. After a long pause, he fixed his eyes on her. “You’re smart. And bold. And not afraid to give your best self and risk being wrong. We had setbacks, and you didn’t quit. Without you, there wouldn’t have been a mission in the first place, and a lot more innocent people would have died.”
“But I didn’t stop it. A missile got through.”
“One missile, yes, but the other missile was destroyed and so was the drone before it crashed into the barracks, or the chow hall, or a C-17 loaded with soldiers. If not for you, the Phalanx might never have been activated. If not for you, an F-18 would not have been scrambled. We could have lost hundreds—even thousands—had the attack on Kandahar been executed as planned. You did good, Whitney. We’re damn lucky to have you.”
“Do you really mean that?” she said.
“Hell yes, I do. And I’m going to make damn sure that next time, you’re ready. Out here,” he said, gently squeezing her biceps, “up here,” he added, tapping her forehead, “and in here,” he concluded, pointing to her heart.
She looked at him—really looked at him—and in that moment she thought maybe she saw the real Lieutenant Commander Keith Redman for the first time. He had peeled back the layers, both hers and his, to give her the counsel she needed. He was not a mindless killing machine. He was not a cowboy with a machine gun. He was a leader, by example. A motivator, by force of will. A teacher. A brother.
A hero . . .
He was a Tier One Navy SEAL.
Chunk picked up his unloaded rifle and checked that the chamber was clear. “First lesson. For now, don’t worry about aiming.” He sighted on the target in a combat stance. “Just concentrate on trying to not move the weapon when you squeeze the trigger.”
He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.
Click, click, click.
“See how my trigger pulls did not impact the attitude of the weapon?”
“Show off,” she grumbled and lifted her Rattler off the table stand.
She aimed down range, adjusting her stance and noting the feel of the weapon against her shoulder and cheek. She squeezed the trigger three times, concentrating on not moving the weapon as she did, and three rounds barked out. She watched three neon flashes appear on the target—wide apart and almost random, but all of them on the paper.
That was something, she supposed as she set the smoking rifle back on the stand.
“You’ll get there,” he said with a laugh. “I have no doubt about that.”
An awkward pause hung between them, until she said, “Thanks, Chunk.”
“For what?” he said, fishing a tin of wintergreen snuff from his pocket.
“For today,” she said, giving him her best bro nod, “and everything else.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, and also for not calling me Heels.”
Chunk laughed, “Today only.” Then he gestured at her rifle. “Go again.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank far more people than space allows, but in particular, we wish to thank our families for their endless support of our work. Without them and their love and encouragement, none of these books could happen. We love you.
Thank you to our phenomenal agent, Gina Panettieri of Talcott Notch, who continues, day after day and month after month, to deliver more opportunities to share our work with the world.
Thank you to our new team at Blackstone for proving to be among the very best in the business, taking our story and turning it into a novel.
A special thank-you to you, our loyal readers, for following us on yet another adventure and for encouraging us to find a way to bring Chunk and his team to the front and center of their own series. Hope we did it justice for you.
And thanks to our many of brothers, and some new friends, from the Special Operations community for your support, advice, and encouragement. While our work is fiction, we strive—always—to bring to our characters a realism that honors the work you still do and the sacrifices you and your families make. Thank you . . . You know who you are.
GLOSSARY
AQ Al-Qaeda
BDU Battle Dress Uniform
BUD/S Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training
CASEVAC Casualty Evacuation
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CO Commanding Officer
CONUS Continental United States
CSO Chief Staff Officer
DNI Director of National Intelligence
DoD Department of Defense
Eighteen Delta Special Operations Medic
EOD Explosive Ordnance Disposal
Exfil Exfiltration
FARP Forward Area Refueling Point; a forward staging area
FOB Forward Operating Base
GSW Gunshot wound
HALO High Altitude, Low Opening
HUMINT Human Intelligence
HVT High-Value Target
IC Intelligence Community
Infil Infiltration
IR Infrared
ISAF International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
ISR Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
JO Junior Officer
JSOC Joint Special Operations Command
JSOTF Joint Special Operations Task Force
KIA Killed In Action
LZ Landing Zone
MARSOC Marine Corps Special Operations Command
MEDEVAC Medical Evacuation
NCTC National Counterterrorism Center
NOC Nonofficial Cover
NSA National Security Agency
NSW Naval Special Warfare
NVGs Night-Vision Goggles
ODNI Office of the Director of National Intelligence
OGA Other Government Agency; frequently refers to CIA or other clandestine organizations
OIC Officer in Charge
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence
OPSEC Operational Security
PJ Parajumpers; pararescuemen of the Air Force Special Operations Command
QRF Quick Reaction Force
RPG Rocket-Propelled Grenade
RTS Relay Tracking Station
SAPI Small Arms Protective Insert
SAS Special Air Service; British Special Operations Forces equivalent to Green Berets
SCIF Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility
SDV SEAL Delivery Vehicle
SEAL Sea, Air, and Land teams; Naval Special Warfare
SecDef Secretary of Defense
SF Special Forces; refers specifically to the Army Special Operations Green Berets
SIGINT Signals Intelligence
SITREP Situation Report
SOAR Special Operations Aviation Regiment
SOCOM Special Operations Command
SOF Special Operations Forces
SOPMOD Special Operations Modification
SQT SEAL Qualification Training
SWCC Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman; boat teams supporting SEAL operations
TAD Temporary Additional Duty
TS/SCI Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information; the highest level security clearance
TOC Tactical Operations Center
UCAV Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
USN United States Navy
Brian Andrews, Sons of Valor
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“I am not a terrorist,” he said, trying very, very hard to keep his voice measured and calm.
“We are married now, Qasim. Please don’t lie to me,” she said.
“I’m not lying.”
“You think of me as the shy girl who stands at the wall and watches everyone. That is true, I am shy, but it does not mean I am stupid. I may not be educated and worldly like you, but I could have been, had my circumstances been different. I knew what Eshan was doing. I also knew that he was using me as a pawn to manipulate you. That he was trying to recruit you . . .”
A pit formed in Qasim’s stomach as it hit home that Diba understood everything. “Then why did you agree to marry me?”
“Because I did not, in a million years, think that he would succeed,” she said, the dam finally breaking as she began to sob. “I guess I am a stupid girl after all.”
He didn’t touch her for a moment, just watched her chest heave as she cried in front of him. Eventually, pity got the best of him, and he pulled her in for a hug. She did not resist his embrace, but she did not reciprocate either, her body wooden against his.
“Can you get out, Qasim?” she asked, her breath hot on his chest. “Tell them you’ve changed your mind and you want to live a simple life.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know if you can, or you don’t know if you want to?”
“Both,” he said, finally being honest with her.
She nodded, then after a long silence asked him, “Will you try, for me . . . please?”
He let out a long exhale. “Okay,” he said, caressing her hair and wondering if he was lying to her and to himself. “I will try, Diba . . . for you.”
EPILOGUE
macdill air force base
tampa, florida
three weeks later
1030 local time
“What the hell is this place?” Whitney said, putting her hands on her hips and squinting as she took a measure of her surroundings.
Chunk grunted a laugh as he set the two heavy Pelican cases on the wooden firing stand. She hadn’t offered to help carry them, because, well, so many reasons.
“This is the range where they do initial quals for junior airmen on the base,” he said, snapping the gun cases open, “and the best place for other units just looking to put some lead on paper.”
She looked around the heavily scarred and weathered outdoor range, a facility she imagined would be put to shame by any of the civilian shooting clubs in the Carrollwood suburbs north of the base. Plywood dividers separated the simple wooden shooting stations, with dirt lanes leading to target stands at seventy-five yards. Unmowed grass grew between them, probably tall enough to reach her knees. A hill behind the target stands served as a berm to absorb rounds that found—or didn’t find—their mark. Behind the berm, unoccupied marshland stretched for hundreds of yards, a secondary backstop for any bullets that sailed high.
She brushed a sweep of bangs out of her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt today, which exposed several of her more intricate tattoo jobs, but did nothing for her waifish physique. She’d never cared about her “task-chair fitness level” before this assignment, but upon seeing Chunk’s gorilla arms rippling in the afternoon sun, she suddenly felt self-conscious. No, not self-conscious . . . inadequate?
Not inadequate . . . something else.
“But shouldn’t I be practicing in the kill house? I need to learn how to shoot and move—isn’t that’s what you said? We have to train like we fight—that I need muscle memory. Remember?”
“I did. You’re right,” he said and pulled a short-barreled Rattler from the case. He set it down on the wooden stand and placed a magazine beside it. Then he walked the lane, carrying two targets—simple circular things that flashed neon when hit with a bullet—while talking to her over his shoulder. “But I made a mistake. In the Teams, when we first start weapons training, we break the weapons down and put them together again, over and over. Then we fire rounds, three at a time, at a simple target, dropping the magazines and reloading, over and over.” He secured the targets on the target posts at the end of the two center lanes. “The point is there is lots of muscle memory we need to train into you before you’re ready for the kill house,” he said, walking back. “We need to make the weapon into an extension of you. Then the shoot-and-move component will be easier. Better to think of muscle memory in terms of layers. Weapon familiarity and handling first, aiming second, shoot and move last. Make sense?”
She nodded. It made perfect sense.
She picked up the assault rifle, feeling both apprehensive and determined. This was the first time she’d touched a weapon since that night in the hotel. He watched her check the chamber clear by pulling the charging handle back a few inches. Next, she looked at the spine of the magazine, counting her rounds. Satisfied, she snapped the magazine into the receiver, tapping it twice, just like he’d shown her. She checked the safety, then chambered a round with the charging handle, checked the safety again, and set the weapon—barrel pointing downrange—on the table.
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Good,” he said.
She nodded, but her gaze fell to her feet and the dirty Oakley boots she’d worn every day since they’d returned from Pakistan . . . she wasn’t sure why.
“Did Theobald tell you I shot a man?”
Chunk took a deep breath, like he’d been waiting for this. “Yes,” he said.
“Did he also tell you I missed?”
“He said you hit the guy in the leg.”
“Like I said, I missed.”
“A hit is not a miss.”
“Oh, don’t patronize me. If Theobald hadn’t been there to back me up, I’d be dead.” She lifted her head and let her mind’s eye take her to the hotel hallway in Mingora. The image was so real that she could almost smell the sweat of the approaching terrorists and felt her pulse quicken. She squeezed her eyes shut ,and the image evaporated—for now. She looked over at Chunk, who was watching her without staring. “I’m glad I didn’t kill that man, but I’m also glad that Theobald did. Is that crazy? It sounds like a contradiction. It’s the strangest damn thing, Chunk. I tried to kill the other one, the younger fighter, but I couldn’t. Or didn’t. I’m not sure which. But I’m glad he’s dead too.”
He didn’t say anything, seemingly content to let her talk through her first combat experience uninterrupted.
“I was so scared,” she said and felt her eyes rim with tears. “I was certain I was going to die.”
No, you’re not doing this in front of him, Whit, she silently chastised herself, shifting a quarter turn so he was in her peripheral vision now.
“And I didn’t want to die . . . but I didn’t want anyone else to die either. I didn’t want to kill those men who were trying to kill me, but I wanted them dead . . .” She shook her head, frustrated that she couldn’t properly articulate what she was feeling.
He touched her arm, and she turned to look at him, eyes wet but unashamed.
“People who like killing have no business here,” he said. “Contrary to what you might think, we work hard—very hard—to weed out those who like killing. Because we are not in the killing business. We are in the intervention business.”
“Are those your words,” she said, “or someone else’s?”
“You know I ain’t smart enough to come up with something like that all on my lonesome,” he said, cranking his Texas twang up to eleven and flashing her a self-deprecating grin. “Nah, it was something Captain Bowman told me, that Kelso Jarvis once told him. He said that every Tier One mission is a preemptive strike. We kill so that innocents can live. We conduct violence on a small scale to prevent violence on a mass scale. We fight battles to avoid fighting wars. It’s violence, for certain, but it’s a violence of action.”
“Sounds very Machiavellian. The ends justify the means and all that.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m a pragmatist, not a philosopher. In my humble opinion, it’s not what we do that defines our character, it’s how and why we do it. Show me a pacifist who defeated a terrorist and saved lives, then we can debate methods and means.”
“I’m not trying to pick a fight,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I’m just trying to figure out where I stand on killing. In that hallway I was conflicted, and it almost cost me my life. Right here, right now, I’m still conflicted. A man named Andy, who I never even knew, died on that roof in Mingora. Jax died in the drone strike on Kandahar, and so did others. Do you think—”
“No,” he said, immediately cutting her off.
She gritted her teeth and pushed. “But if I had put the pieces together sooner. If I had anticipated the enemy’s next move before . . .”
“Don’t do it, Whitney. Remember, those questions go nowhere,” he said, then under his breath, “nowhere good.” He looked away, contemplating his own demons, she surmised. After a long pause, he fixed his eyes on her. “You’re smart. And bold. And not afraid to give your best self and risk being wrong. We had setbacks, and you didn’t quit. Without you, there wouldn’t have been a mission in the first place, and a lot more innocent people would have died.”
“But I didn’t stop it. A missile got through.”
“One missile, yes, but the other missile was destroyed and so was the drone before it crashed into the barracks, or the chow hall, or a C-17 loaded with soldiers. If not for you, the Phalanx might never have been activated. If not for you, an F-18 would not have been scrambled. We could have lost hundreds—even thousands—had the attack on Kandahar been executed as planned. You did good, Whitney. We’re damn lucky to have you.”
“Do you really mean that?” she said.
“Hell yes, I do. And I’m going to make damn sure that next time, you’re ready. Out here,” he said, gently squeezing her biceps, “up here,” he added, tapping her forehead, “and in here,” he concluded, pointing to her heart.
She looked at him—really looked at him—and in that moment she thought maybe she saw the real Lieutenant Commander Keith Redman for the first time. He had peeled back the layers, both hers and his, to give her the counsel she needed. He was not a mindless killing machine. He was not a cowboy with a machine gun. He was a leader, by example. A motivator, by force of will. A teacher. A brother.
A hero . . .
He was a Tier One Navy SEAL.
Chunk picked up his unloaded rifle and checked that the chamber was clear. “First lesson. For now, don’t worry about aiming.” He sighted on the target in a combat stance. “Just concentrate on trying to not move the weapon when you squeeze the trigger.”
He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.
Click, click, click.
“See how my trigger pulls did not impact the attitude of the weapon?”
“Show off,” she grumbled and lifted her Rattler off the table stand.
She aimed down range, adjusting her stance and noting the feel of the weapon against her shoulder and cheek. She squeezed the trigger three times, concentrating on not moving the weapon as she did, and three rounds barked out. She watched three neon flashes appear on the target—wide apart and almost random, but all of them on the paper.
That was something, she supposed as she set the smoking rifle back on the stand.
“You’ll get there,” he said with a laugh. “I have no doubt about that.”
An awkward pause hung between them, until she said, “Thanks, Chunk.”
“For what?” he said, fishing a tin of wintergreen snuff from his pocket.
“For today,” she said, giving him her best bro nod, “and everything else.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, and also for not calling me Heels.”
Chunk laughed, “Today only.” Then he gestured at her rifle. “Go again.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank far more people than space allows, but in particular, we wish to thank our families for their endless support of our work. Without them and their love and encouragement, none of these books could happen. We love you.
Thank you to our phenomenal agent, Gina Panettieri of Talcott Notch, who continues, day after day and month after month, to deliver more opportunities to share our work with the world.
Thank you to our new team at Blackstone for proving to be among the very best in the business, taking our story and turning it into a novel.
A special thank-you to you, our loyal readers, for following us on yet another adventure and for encouraging us to find a way to bring Chunk and his team to the front and center of their own series. Hope we did it justice for you.
And thanks to our many of brothers, and some new friends, from the Special Operations community for your support, advice, and encouragement. While our work is fiction, we strive—always—to bring to our characters a realism that honors the work you still do and the sacrifices you and your families make. Thank you . . . You know who you are.
GLOSSARY
AQ Al-Qaeda
BDU Battle Dress Uniform
BUD/S Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training
CASEVAC Casualty Evacuation
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CO Commanding Officer
CONUS Continental United States
CSO Chief Staff Officer
DNI Director of National Intelligence
DoD Department of Defense
Eighteen Delta Special Operations Medic
EOD Explosive Ordnance Disposal
Exfil Exfiltration
FARP Forward Area Refueling Point; a forward staging area
FOB Forward Operating Base
GSW Gunshot wound
HALO High Altitude, Low Opening
HUMINT Human Intelligence
HVT High-Value Target
IC Intelligence Community
Infil Infiltration
IR Infrared
ISAF International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
ISR Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
JO Junior Officer
JSOC Joint Special Operations Command
JSOTF Joint Special Operations Task Force
KIA Killed In Action
LZ Landing Zone
MARSOC Marine Corps Special Operations Command
MEDEVAC Medical Evacuation
NCTC National Counterterrorism Center
NOC Nonofficial Cover
NSA National Security Agency
NSW Naval Special Warfare
NVGs Night-Vision Goggles
ODNI Office of the Director of National Intelligence
OGA Other Government Agency; frequently refers to CIA or other clandestine organizations
OIC Officer in Charge
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence
OPSEC Operational Security
PJ Parajumpers; pararescuemen of the Air Force Special Operations Command
QRF Quick Reaction Force
RPG Rocket-Propelled Grenade
RTS Relay Tracking Station
SAPI Small Arms Protective Insert
SAS Special Air Service; British Special Operations Forces equivalent to Green Berets
SCIF Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility
SDV SEAL Delivery Vehicle
SEAL Sea, Air, and Land teams; Naval Special Warfare
SecDef Secretary of Defense
SF Special Forces; refers specifically to the Army Special Operations Green Berets
SIGINT Signals Intelligence
SITREP Situation Report
SOAR Special Operations Aviation Regiment
SOCOM Special Operations Command
SOF Special Operations Forces
SOPMOD Special Operations Modification
SQT SEAL Qualification Training
SWCC Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman; boat teams supporting SEAL operations
TAD Temporary Additional Duty
TS/SCI Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information; the highest level security clearance
TOC Tactical Operations Center
UCAV Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
USN United States Navy
Brian Andrews, Sons of Valor
