This is something new that I just started work on, but I decided to give you guys a teaser.

I’ll be back with more regular stuff after the holidays.

***

Somewhere over the Arabian Peninsula

John Adams Beatty woke immediately at a touch on his shoulder.

Around him was the familiar noise and vibration of an elderly C-130 cargo plane. Outside the ports, it was dark. Beatty looked up to see the plane’s captain looking down at him.

“Ten minutes, Colonel,” the man said.

“Very well.”

“There is the matter of payment,” the scrawny, dark man said. “For the flight, for eight men with equipment – and for my silence, and the silence of my crew.”

“Of course,” Beatty agreed. In the circles in which Beatty and his men moved, it was best to be known as a man of one’s word. “As agreed. Eight men with equipment. And your silence.” He reached into a jacket pocket and handed the man a package containing eight large, heavy coins. “Eight one-ounce South African gold Krugerrands.”

The pilot opened the package and glanced briefly at the coins inside, gleaming dully in the dim red lighting of the plane’s cargo bay. “Thank you,” he said. “A pleasure, as always, Colonel.” He checked his watch. “Eight minutes to the drop zone.”

Beatty checked his rifle, a Springfield Armory M1A SOCOM, chambered in the 7.62 NATO. He checked his parachute, his reserve chute, and his oxygen mask. It was to be a HALO jump; the C-130 was at 26,000 feet AGL. Around him, Beatty’s men were doing likewise. Beatty stood up. He looked at his watch. Five minutes.

“Stand up,” he called out. “Equipment check.”

The other seven men in the team checked gear and weapons, then called out, each replying, “OK.”

“Stand ready,” Beatty called. The red light at the back ramp flashed on.

He considered the men before him, the team he had assembled, the team he had worked with for the last seven years since he had left the Légion étrangère – the French Foreign Legion. These were the men that made up the “private security consulting” group that Beatty had founded and called Die Spinne – The Spider.

Ragnar Nordberg, from Norway, Beatty’s second in command, an old friend and comrade from the Legion. Nordberg was a six-foot, four-inch, blond giant; in times past he would have been a Viking. In addition to his rifle and sidearm, he carried a Viking war axe on his web belt. Nordberg also liked the M1A rifle but carried a wood-stocked, full-sized version.

Jagdish Tamang, formerly of the 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles. A small, lean man, he still preferred the Enfield SA-80 carbine – and still carried his kukri everywhere he went, even formal black-tie events; Beatty had seen that for himself on one infamous incident two years earlier.

Antoine Jean Boullion, a Cajun and U.S. Army Sniper School graduate. He was tall, lean to the point of emaciation, and carried a carefully customized Accuracy International AWM in .338 Lapua.

Harry MacDonald, explosives expert, formerly of the British Army Special Boat Service. MacDonald sat snoring in the canvas jump seat, his unusually long arms hanging at his sides with his hands nearly touching the deck. Red-haired, and green-eyed, he had a simian look to him but was great with explosives – whether disarming or blowing things up. The Heckler & Koch G3 was his primary weapon of choice.

Goro Sumirigawa, martial arts expert, formerly of the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ 7th Infantry Regiment. Sumirigawa was scribbling away on a pad of paper, no doubt another letter to his sister in Tokyo. Despite being on the small side, he favored the big, heavy Heckler & Koch HK417 as his service rifle.

Bonginkosi Hadebe, formerly of the South African Army’s 5 South African Infantry, was an expert tracker and as impervious to heat and drought as anyone Beatty had ever seen. Hadsebe’s eyes were closed, his mouth moving silently; he was, Betty knew, praying for success in the team’s mission. Hadebe had his FN-FAL rifle at his side; he relied on it as much as on his faith in God.

Quinn Ookpik, from Wainwright, Alaska via the US Army Team Delta. An expert forager, hunter, fisherman, and tracker, capable of surviving almost anywhere. Unlike the rest of the team, he eschewed modern weapons, insisting “they jam.” He now held his prized ’94 Winchester across his lap; Beatty knew Ookpik’s ammo pouches were full of .30-30 rounds. Beatty knew that the Yu’Pik team member had been using that old Winchester since he was ten years old and had killed moose and grizzly bears with it; Beware the man with only one gun, he reminded himself.

Time ticked by. “Two minutes to drop zone,” a voice called over a speaker above the ramp. The ramp rumbled slowly open, admitting a blast of icy air.

“Thirty seconds,” the voice said. The men lined up in two rows of four, facing the open ramp. Beatty took the last spot in the right-hand line; his second in command, Ragnar Nordberg, took the last spot on the left.

The light flashed green, and the eight legs of the Spider, two by two, stepped off the ramp into the frigid darkness. Below them, somewhere, was Yemen. Below them, somewhere, was a compound owned by a rare person – a wealthy Yemeni – and in that compound an American teenage girl was held captive. The girl’s father, a wealthy oil executive, had been given short shrift by the U.S. State Department. So, as have others with problems like this that governments cannot solve, he turned to the Spider.

Beatty and his colleagues had a reputation for dealing with trouble. Now trouble was falling out of the Yemeni sky, bound for a hidden compound, and a rescue.