In anticipation of book three of Monroe Doctrine coming out. I wanted to share with part of the first chapter of the book. This is one of the longest chapters of the series. Plenty of action, lots of fighting that revolve around a single ODA and a 101st Airborne unit being surrounded.

Chapter One
This is Bananas

Montecristo National Park
El Salvador

Sergeant First-Class Rusten Currie slapped the side of his neck a bit harder than he had intended to. Pulling his hand away, he saw some blood on his fingers. He wasn’t sure if it was his or from the damn mosquito. The little bastards were almost the size of a nickel.

“I told you to start taking those garlic pills,” said their medic, Mark Dawson, teasingly. “They work like magic at keeping those things away from you.”
“Yeah, and they keep the women away from you too,” Currie shot back angrily as he swatted at another one.

“Maybe that was the plan all along,” chided Dawson with a grin.
“Ha, is that what you were trying to do, Dawson? Keep all the girls to yourself?” Currie countered.

Dawson laughed as he shook his head. “I’m just trying to help you not become an all you can eat buffet to the local bugs of Central America. You’re free to think what you will.”

Slapping yet another mosquito, Currie grudgingly said, “You were right, Dawson. I should have accepted your offer for those garlic pills.”
“What was that, Currie?” Dawson asked with a lifted eyebrow.
“You heard me. I’m not saying it again.”

Dawson laughed. “I just wanted to hear you say it one more time.”

“Say what one more time?” Currie pressed.

“That I was right.”

Currie looked at his friend Mark Dawson and spat a stream of chewing tobacco on the dirt near his foot and shook his head.

“Damn, you two whine and fight like a married couple,” Captain Thorne commented good naturedly before turning serious again. “In five mikes, we’re going to move to checkpoint Gamma and either clear it or confirm what’s there. Then we’ll stand by and see what headquarters wants us to do next.”

“You really think the Chinese built up some sort of massive military complex here like they did in Cuba?” Currie asked skeptically.
Thorne shrugged. “Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is to do or die, gentlemen.”

“Why can’t we do normal Special Forces stuff—you know, like train up an insurgency either here or in Venezuela?” asked Currie. “I heard 1st battalion’s fully deployed down in the Amazon part of Venezuela.”

“Yeah, and part of 2nd battalion is here doing the same thing,” Dawson added angrily. “Yet our company continues to draw the short stick for this crappy reconnaissance work.”

“Hey, you all wanted to be part of a HALO team,” Captain Thorne chided. “Reconnaissance work is like our primary function. We go in behind enemy lines, find important and valuable targets and either blow them up or set them up to be blown up. Now stop your whining and get with the program. We’ve two more grid squares to recce before we can get out of here. Let’s do our damn jobs and scoot.”

The guys nodded at the short rebuke from their team leader. Currie realized this was something they should be talking about back on base, not out here in the field. They had broken a bit of field decorum with their whining. Chief Miller shot them both a dirty look, letting them know they’d get an earful from him when they got back to base.

Master Sergeant Altenburg had a slight grin on his face as he shook his head. Currie had just made E-7 when the war broke out; he wanted to be a team sergeant like Dawson and lead his own team, but that wasn’t going to happen if he had to question everything. The fastest way to move up in the Army and Special Forces was to be damn good at your job and just do as you were told.

“All right, all right. I get it,” said Currie. “I’m shutting up now. Sorry—I just needed to vent and get it off my chest.” Currie finished off his protein bar and then started to bury the wrapper.

Four Hours Later

Dawson raised his hand, then he lowered it as he took a knee. Currie could hear voices in the distance, speaking in Spanish and Chinese. He scurried up to Dawson, and Thorne made his way up to them as well.

“What do we have?” Currie whispered.

Dawson pointed off in the distance. “Looks like a joint patrol.” He paused. “Yeah, it’s a patrol. I count nine tangos.”

Thorne grunted at the assessment. “Good catch, Dawson. Let’s let them pass through the area and then look to back trace where they may have come from. We need to see if they are operating out of some sort of larger facility or just a small camp.”

“That’s a good copy, sir.” Dawson then pulled his map out and found their exact position. His finger traced along the edge of the ridge they were skirting along. “I’m going to lead us along this section and see if there may be a camp in the base of this valley or along the top of the ridge section here. My gut says they are operating in one of these two locations.”

Thorne nodded. “I like it. Let’s do it. Currie, I want you to scout ahead of the rest of us, but move parallel to us along the top of the ridge. Let’s minimize our coms, only make contact if you find something. We’ll do likewise. Got it?”

Currie smiled; he liked this plan. He was a bit of a lone wolf. “Got it. I’ll see you guys in a few hours.”

Two hours later, Currie paused just long enough to eat a bite of his protein bar. The climb up the ridge had really sapped the energy right out of him. Aside from the initial patrol they’d spotted earlier, they hadn’t seen any new groups of soldiers.

Moving through the jungle just below the top of the ridge, Currie did his best to listen for anything out of the ordinary.

Looking to his right, he saw a multicolored parrot gnawing on a banana. He smiled at the bird. It was beautiful and majestic. The red, blue, and green colors contrasted against the colors of the jungle in the most incredible way.
Suddenly, the bird stopped eating and it took to the air. Currie instinctively dropped to the ground, ready to fire on whatever had scared it away.

Then he heard a soft, faint voice. Currie couldn’t tell if it was far away or just muffled by the jungle. Scanning the area around him, he thought he spotted something that didn’t belong.

Currie moved slowly to his right as he kept a handful of large trees and some thick bushes between him and the source of the noise. As he advanced, his eyes darted around, searching for what his ears told him was nothing good. His body snaked around a fallen log as he sought to go low, sensing he wasn’t alone out here. When he slithered through a large bush, his eyes caught a glimpse of the object that clearly wasn’t a natural part of the jungle.
Oh wow. I need to call this in…

He depressed the talk button on his throat mic twice. The double chirp of the radio would let Thorne and the others know he needed to speak with them.

He waited for what felt like an eternity but was more likely sixty seconds. Time seemed to stop as he waited for the reply that would let him know they were ready to receive his message.

The longer he waited, the more concerned he became. Did something happen to them? Are they still all right?

Finally, he heard a two-chirp reply. Captain Thorne was ready.

Currie depressed the talk button. “Red Six, Red Two. I have a visual on a mobile radar truck, likely part of an HQ-9 system. Break. Along the top of the ridge appears to be a single-lane dirt road. Break. Do you want me to deploy my black hornet to get us an overview of the area?”

Currie waited for the reply, hoping he’d get the go ahead to deploy the nano drone—it was great for providing a quick overview of the battlespace without having to leave his hide or overwatch position. The only drawback to the little drone was its battery life. Currie knew he had to get the images and situational awareness you wanted quickly and return home, or it could end up crashing because it ran out of juice. If the drone crashed in the wrong location, it could let an adversary know they were nearby.

“Red Two, that’s a good copy. Deploy the hornet and get us some eyes on the ridge. Break. We’re deploying a hornet down here. We think we’ve found a possible bunker complex. Over.”

“That’s a good copy. I’ll get it linked up to Red Five. Out.”

Currie pulled his patrol pack off his shoulders and grabbed for the hornet’s case. He unzipped it and turned it on. Once it was synced with his secured phone app, he searched for Red Five’s stealth phone. These were the newest piece of coms equipment the folks at DARPA had created for SOF units operating behind enemy lines when they needed to establish mobile hotspots without being detected. Moments after activating the ghosted Bluetooth on the hornet, the drone synced up with Red Five’s network. Captain Thorne and the rest of the team would now be able to see what he was seeing.
Currie pulled the visor control unit over his eyes and activated the hornet. As he gave it a little bit of juice, the drone began to gain altitude. The camera captured a good view of the radar truck, which had been parked on the side of the trail. Currie also saw half a dozen Chinese soldiers milling about near it.
Currie panned the drone in a slow 360-degree circle, taking everything in. As he looked further down the road, he saw what he thought were a few barrels sticking out through some tall grass and jungle vines. Once he’d gotten a good overview of the area around him, he angled the drone to head toward the mystery objects.

When the little drone got within maybe fifty meters, Currie knew what he was looking at. It was a PGZ-09: a self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery truck. They were equipped with two, 35-millimeter cannons and four fire-and-forget infrared homing missiles.

Crap! How many more of these do they have up here?

His earpiece chirped. “Red Two, see if there are any additional PGZs on the ridge. Then get us a view of the rest of the area. We need to see how many potential hostiles are up there. Make sure to tag the grids of these vehicles. Break. We’ll designate them for a follow-on strike once we’ve left the area.”
Currie smiled at the idea of raining steel down on these bastards. They’d spent the last four days traversing the jungle searching for the Chinese SAM bastions. It appeared they finally found one.

Fifteen minutes later, Currie had surveyed a good chunk of the ridge. He’d managed to find two more PGZs and probably three dozen Chinese soldiers. They had set up a number of machine gun positions and fortified positions around the vehicles. He also found a second radar site, further down the trail. Now they just had to figure out where the command-and-control center was and the various missile pods. Chances were, they’d be somewhere within a two- to five-kilometer radius of the radar sites.

Retrieving his micro drone, Currie swapped out the spent battery with a fresh one and put the unit away. If he needed to use it again, it would be ready.

“Red Six, Red Two. I’m going to start moving towards RP Beta. How copy?”
A second later, Currie received a single chirp, letting him know they’d heard him, and he was good to head to the rendezvous point. Once they linked up, the captain would probably break them down into three- or four-man teams to finish scouting the area. They had a lot of ground to cover now that they knew the enemy base was nearby.

It took Currie nearly an hour to slither and skirt his way down the ridge to the floor of the valley below. Thirty minutes after that, he finally reached the rally point. As he approached it, he felt he was being watched. He got a single chirp in his earpiece, then a soft voice announced, “We’re here. I’m going to stand up, so don’t shoot me.” Currie recognized the voice of Dawson, his partner in crime.

Dawson stood. He was maybe twenty feet from him, and he hadn’t even seen him. Damn he’s good at that, Currie thought.

Captain Thorne stood up not too far from Dawson and made his way toward them. He motioned for them to take a knee.

“Good job finding those radar units on the ridge,” said Thorne. “You were right, they probably have the other ridge over there fixed with a couple of them and probably another PGZ or two up there as well. That means the C&C truck and base is probably nearby as well. I’m going to phone in what we’ve found so far.

“Once we’ve phoned in, you and Dawson are going to come with me. We’re going to hike up to that hilltop over there. If you look at that group of trees right there,” Thorne pointed to a group of them that did seem a bit out of place. “I think those are cleverly disguised radio antennas. We’re going to check it out and see what we can find. It’s possible we stumbled upon something much larger than a SAM complex.”

Dawson shot Currie a worried look. He didn’t like this plan one bit.

“What about the rest of the team? Shouldn’t we try and stay together since we know we’re about to stumble into an enemy camp?” Dawson questioned.
Currie felt he should probably say something as well. “I think he’s right, sir. We know we’ve got hostiles all around us. We should stay together as a group in case we bump into something.”

Thorne shook his head. “No. Only the three of us are going to break off from the team to check that place out. The rest of the team will stick together and continue to search the area down here. Chief Miller and Master Sergeant Altenburg said they can handle it.”

Something about this didn’t feel right to Currie. But if Miller and Altenburg were cool with it, then who was he to speak against them? Those two guys had more experience and time in the SOF world than Currie or Dawson had combined. They’d defer to their judgment.

Taking a deep breath, Currie asked, “When do we leave?”

Laying with his body half tucked under a fallen log and the other half covered in leaves and underbrush, Currie tried to control his breathing and not make any unnecessary moves that might give away his position.

A tree branch snapped. Some leaves and underbrush got kicked. A boot stepped down just inches from Currie’s face. He tightened the grip on his Mark I trench knife.

The old trench knife was a personal weapon his great-grandfather had carried in World War I, when he’d been part of the 1st Army Division. Then his grandfather had carried it when he was part of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II. His dad then carried it during his three tours in Special Forces in Vietnam and Grenada. Currie had carried it with him during his deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. That knife had been with a Currie in a war for more than a hundred years.

To be continued.