Getting it Done: Prologue
Rylan was in full-on hunting mode. His target was his sister’s rapist. It had taken three months to track the bastard down, but Rylan had followed the trail to Alaska and to a seedy motel outside a little town there.
Rylan’s plan was simple: go in and shoot him twice in the chest and once in the head.
He’d scouted the motel and observed that the clerk left at six. The other units were occupied by guys working on an oil rig. They’d gone to the only bar in town for dinner the last two nights and didn’t return until closing time. So Rylan had a window of opportunity to get in and take care of business.
Rylan ‘T-BAR’ Starling was a former Navy SEAL. When he joined, he wanted to become the best of the best, and at the time, he’d thought the SEALs were the gold standard. But once he was in, Rylan learned that Delta was of an entirely different caliber. While the SEALs’ missions could be discussed, Delta’s missions were secret, so Delta didn’t get the press.
Rylan took to being a tier-one operator with gusto, which earned him the call sign of T-BAR, which stood for ‘That Boy Ain’t Right.’ He’d received the nickname the first week of training at Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training or BUD/S—a twenty-four-week training program with the infamous ‘hell week’ during the fourth week.
He’d been selected to attend and reported to the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. It was on an island connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of eight miles of sand called the Silver Strand. NAB was the West Coast shore base for naval amphibious operations, including training and special warfare. It also housed the Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Naval Special Warfare Command, and Expeditionary Warfare. The North Island Naval Air Station, known as NAS North Island, provided maintenance, training, and repair for the Naval Air Command of the Pacific Fleet.
Rylan knew he needed to make an impression if he wanted to stand out in that year’s class—187 of them—to contend for a coveted position of special operator.
He’d performed well during his initial screening test. His five-hundred-yard swim done in just over seven minutes, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred and ten push-ups, and twenty-five pull-ups put him near the top of the class.
They were lined up, and one of the training officers singled him out. Rylan just looked straight ahead as the man yelled at him.
“Do what you do best!”
“Be a menace?” Rylan asked.
The instructor actually blinked before breaking out into a smile.
“Yeah, that.”
Once he became a SEAL, he made it his job to learn everything he could. In a SEAL unit, each member had a job or specialty. The SEALs considered Rylan a Swiss Army knife because he could fill in for any position, be it sniper or dog handler.
His versatility caught the attention of the CIA. They invited him to join their paramilitary, which was as good as, if not better than, Delta. They took the cream of the crop from the various tier-one units, be it SEALs (Navy), Rangers (Army), Delta (Army), Special Tactics Squadron (Air Force), Recon (Marines), etc. The CIA then trained these elite warriors up to their intelligence standards.
The bottom line was that Rylan was a badass motherfucker who would ruin someone’s day, trained to do wet work or black ops in any part of the world. Everything he did while in the CIA was classified and could never be shared with anyone outside the op.
He’d joined the Navy as a wide-eyed kid and was now a hardened veteran. He’d seen his share of death, but when he learned that his sister, Dalia, had killed herself, it shook him to the core.
There’d been an incident in high school when Dalia went to a party. There, she’d gotten drunk, and a guy took advantage of her. She’d gone to the police, and they’d arrested the kid. But before it got to trial, the DA dismissed the case.
Later, Dalia found out that the kid was the son of someone who worked for the DA. She heard he’d done this before, and his dad had gotten him off each time.
That episode turned Dalia’s world upside down. She didn’t go to college, became an alcoholic, and turned into a shut-in. While all this was happening, no one shared it with Rylan, so he had no idea what his sister was going through.
This all happened before he became a SEAL. He’d been deployed on a destroyer at Bab-el-Mandeb, or the BAM, probably the most dangerous place he could’ve been sent. This global choke point lay off the coast of Yemen and was akin to the Wild West. Each and every day, there was the chance of a full-on missile battle with rebels.
Between that and not really knowing Dalia very well, it was understandable that he wasn’t in the loop when things turned sour for her. Their parents had been killed when he was fourteen, and Dalia was eleven. He’d gotten into some trouble and ended up being sent to juvie for two years while his sister moved in with their grandparents.
When Rylan was released, his grandparents refused to take him, so he was sent into foster care. On his eighteenth birthday, he was given pocket money and kicked out. Joining the Navy was a simple decision.
Once he entered the system, he lost track of his sister. It didn’t help that his grandparents blocked him every time he tried to contact Dalia. Since he was just a messed-up kid, he’d walked away.
Even though he hadn’t talked to his sister in over twenty years, when he heard she’d committed suicide, it hit him hard. In fact, hard enough that he’d resigned his commission to hunt down the bastard who’d caused all this.
Rylan didn’t see any need to finesse this since there was zero traffic and no one nearby; he simply walked up to the door and kicked it in. He found the guy in the process of torturing some young girl, kicking her while she lay curled up in a corner.
Rylan didn’t hesitate: he put two rounds into the bastard’s back. Once the guy was on the ground, Rylan stepped up and shot him in the back of the head.
He turned to check on the girl and had a ‘fuck me’ moment. She had a twenty-two pointed at his face. They both fired at the same time. As he hit the floor, Rylan had a split-second to think, ‘I wish I’d done all this differently.’
Everything faded to black.
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