Dawn breaks pale and colorless over the blown-out mosque, nestled among a row of buildings in various states of decay. The air hangs still and silent.
Then shadows dart into the alley beside the mosque, one, then another, then more.
Figures crouch in the narrow space, assault rifles and shotguns gripped tight, full military body armor strapped across their chests. They are a FAST Team, an elite DEA unit, operating deep in hostile territory.
A woman kneels behind a half-crumbled wall across from the mosque. Renee Monaco, late twenties, fit and sharp-eyed, carries a cold determination in her expression. Call sign: Wrangler. Team leader.
Beside her, Gabriela Fernandez: Mad Dog. Compact and tightly wound, eyes scanning the target.
Ajay Chandra completes the forward group: Thundercloud. Communications expert, Eastern Indian, calm under pressure.
Renee’s voice comes low through her headset. “Wait for my signal.”
She motions to Ajay.
“Get confirmation the target’s in there.”
“I’m on it.”
Ajay moves stealthily toward a hole in the mosque’s lower wall, keeping low, weapon ready. He reaches the breach point and crouches below the window line, pulling a small snake-like camera from his pack. He feeds it through the gap in the stone, angling the lens inside.
The screen in his hand shows a dozen Taliban fighters. A man with a grey beard gives orders. The rest of the room remains hidden from his angle.
“Their backs are to me...” He strains to adjust the camera. “I count ten, eleven... twelve black hats, Wrangler.”
“Is our Ace of Spades with them? Do you see Yuri?”
“I can’t tell. It’s possible. Has to be.”
Renee keys her headset. “Command, we have a visual.”
A kilometer away, on a potholed road at the edge of the district, a mobile command center has claimed the cracked pavement. Dust still hangs in the air from the convoy’s arrival. Jack Darcy stands at a makeshift table covered in maps and equipment, one hand pressed to his headset. Fifty-two, fit, handsome in a weathered way.
Renee’s voice crackles through. “Hector Bravo, should we proceed?”
Jack leans toward the microphone mounted on the table. “Negative. Can you confirm we have Yuri?”
Higher up the slope, overlooking the village from a rocky outcrop three hundred meters north, two agents lie prone in full camouflage. Scopes trained downward through the haze. Max Kelly: Mozart. The squad’s sharpshooter, adjusts his position slightly. Beside him, Josh Moore: Boomer. A fit African American bomb expert, scans with binoculars.
Max speaks into his headset. “What’s going on? I can’t see a thing from here.”
Back in the alley behind the mosque, Renee’s jaw tightens. She looks anxious. Annoyed. She keys her mic. “Mozart, I’m sure it’s him.”
Jack’s voice comes back firm over the radio. “Hold your position, Wrangler. We need confirmation, or this mission is a bust.”
Renee points to Gabriela and Ajay, motioning for them to keep their eyes on the door. Hand signals indicate she’s moving around the corner. She shifts low along the wall, weapon up, moving toward a better vantage.
Inside the mosque’s dim interior, visible only through Ajay’s camera feed, the Taliban fighters work quickly, stuffing duffel bags with small packages. Shafts of dusty light fall through the damaged ceiling. Then a Russian brings in a suitcase and opens it on a broken table, revealing stacks of cash.
A satellite phone rings. Another Russian man answers, listens without speaking. Thin, grey-bearded, mid-to-late forties, wearing Russian fatigues. Demetri Vaclav.
He speaks in Russian. “It’s Moscow.”
Yuri, weathered, late fifties, in an overcoat and clearly in charge, motions to him. “What do they want?”
“Confirmation.”
“Go handle it.”
Vaclav walks away from the group, boots crunching on debris, and exits through a side door into the daylight.
Renee has pressed herself against the outer wall near a different entrance, satellite phone in her hands. She presses the end call button and stuffs it into her pack.
Vaclav steps into the alley. Morning sun catches the dust motes between them. He turns and stares directly at her.
She returns the stare, nods and lets him go.
Vaclav puts the phone away and starts slowly down the side alley, boots scraping stone. Two red laser dots appear on the back of his jacket. He stops, turns toward the hillside where the dots originate.
Through Max’s rifle scope up on the hillside, Vaclav stands centered in the crosshairs, the magnified image showing every crease in his fatigues.
Max’s finger rests on the trigger guard. “I got eyes on grey beard. I can take him out.”
Renee’s voice comes through his earpiece. “No. We will tip the rest of them off. Stand down, Mozart.”
Max exhales slowly and swings his weapon back toward the mosque entrance.
Below, Ajay has repositioned at the mosque wall, peering through the camera feed into the main room. His expression changes.
“Wrangler, they’re gone!”
Renee presses her back against the wall. “Thundercloud, repeat that.”
“Wrangler, I’m telling you, they were just there!”
At the command center, Jack’s hand tightens on the radio handset. “Damn it, Wrangler! Wait for backup.”
He snaps his fingers at another FAST Team member nearby, Dylan Campbell: Deuce. Late twenties and good-looking in a cocky way, leaning against one of the vehicles.
“Deuce, move out. Go cover her ass.”
“Roger. Let’s go, trench monkeys! Time to get in the game!”
Dylan grabs a few more team members. They scramble into a vehicle and tear off toward the mosque, dust plume rising behind them.
Back in the alley, Renee, Gabriela, and Ajay move forward in tactical formation toward the mosque entrance. The building looms ahead, silent now.
“Take the mosque! Move!”
Jack’s voice barks over the radio. “Wrangler, I’m giving you a direct order to stand down!”
Renee just keeps moving steadily toward the entrance.
Ajay and Gabriela reach the mosque door first, weapons raised. Renee comes up behind them.
“Check your corners!”
Renee signals four more agents who’ve caught up from the rear. “Take it!”
They storm through the entrance. Gabriela and Ajay cover the rear flanks, sweeping. One of the agents’ boot crossing the threshold catches a tripwire.
The explosion is massive. Cascading. Obliterating.
What remains of the mosque erupts in fire and debris. The concussive wave throws Renee backward off her feet, over a low wall, into a pile of rubble twenty feet away.
Up on the hillside, Max and Josh see the fireball bloom in the center of the village, smoke mushrooming upward. Josh scrambles out of his hide position.
“They were right where that went off! We gotta go get them.”
“Stay put, we are covering their sixes! Deuce can handle it.”
Josh ignores him, already crawling out of position. “That’s a PR man, a PR, personnel recovery, Mozart. Maybe even a CASEVAC”
Max keys his headset. “Looks like a total Charlie Foxtrot at Ground Zero. Wrangler? Mad Dog? What’s your situation? Do you need a Band-Aid?”
Nothing on the radio.
“Time to un-ass ourselves and get into the hot zone.”
Josh takes off in a sprint down the slope.
“Dammit, Boomer...”
Max abandons his position and follows, rifle bouncing against his chest.
Near the smoking ruins of the mosque, Renee, Ajay, and Gabriela pull themselves from the rubble. Dust coats their faces. Knocked around, bruised, ears ringing, but not critically hurt.
“Let’s pull back!”
They run down the side street, firing at Taliban attackers emerging from buildings as they retreat. Renee catches movement, it’s Yuri, running down an alley to the east.
“I’ve got eyes on Yuri! Cover me!”
She breaks off, sprinting after him. Ajay and Gabriela slide into defensive positions at the corner, laying down suppressing fire.
Yuri disappears around a building ahead.
In the narrow alley between two collapsed structures, an unidentified figure lies wait in shadow. Yuri rounds the corner at full sprint, glancing back over his shoulder.
A shot cracks. He stumbles and collapses as he falls.
A moment later, Renee comes around the same corner, weapon raised. She sees Yuri sprawled on the ground ten meters ahead.
Too late. A bullet punches through her shoulder. Pain explodes white-hot. She goes down hard, vision swimming.
Back at the intersection where Ajay and Gabriela hold position, Ajay watches through his scope as Renee spins and goes down. The rumble of engines, Dylan’s vehicle, screeches to a halt nearby, and ten heavily armed agents spill out. Dylan sprints toward Renee’s position.
“Wrangler!”
He reaches her, drops to one knee, checking her wound. Blood soaks through her gear. She’s dazed but conscious.
“I’m okay.”
Ajay starts to respond. “Let’s get the hell out of—”
An RPG streaks in from a rooftop and slams into the center of the group. The blast wave rolls outward. Gunfire erupts from multiple positions. Chaos.
“Son of a bitch!”
Ajay grabs his sat phone, fingers moving fast. “Command, this is Thundercloud. We’re taking heavy fire. We’re going to need immediate extraction. Wrangler is down. Repeat, Wrangler is down.”
Josh’s voice comes through, distant, breathless. “Roger that. Hang tight, the cavalry is coming!”
Russian soldiers materialize from doorways and alleys with tactical precision—not Taliban, but. Russians—moving on their position with brutal efficiency. They cut down most of the outlying team members in seconds and close in on Renee, Gabriela, Ajay, and Dylan.
The team drags Renee behind a crumbled wall and fires back, rounds sparking off stone. They’re outnumbered. The Russians have them surrounded, closing the net. The team looks to Renee, waiting.
She nods.
They toss their weapons out into the open, hands raised. Ajay’s satellite phone crackles weakly at his side.
Jack’s voice, urgent: “Thundercloud, do you copy? Help is on the way.”
Silence.
Hours later, in the Maruf mountain range northwest of the village, the captured FAST Team trudges along a narrow switchback trail carved into the mountainside. Russian soldiers flank them front and rear, weapons ready. Dylan and Ajay support Renee between them as they climb the rocky path. Burlap sacks cover all their heads, the rough fabric stinking of diesel and dirt.
“Wrangler, how you holding up?”
Renee turns her covered head toward Ajay’s voice. “I’m gonna pass out in a minute.”
The Russian leader barks in his native tongue, voice harsh. “No talking!”
He jabs the barrel of his AK-47 into Renee’s gut. “Move!” She winces in pain.
They continue upward into the mountains, boots slipping on loose stone.
Max and Josh have been tracking the column for the last hour, staying parallel on higher ground. They crouch now behind a cluster of boulders overlooking the trail below. Max peers through his scope, counting hostiles and friendlies.
“I count eight of them. We need to hit them fast. From the left, I got one, two, four, and six.”
Josh raises his binoculars, scanning the formation. “Roger that. I’ll take the rest.”
He splits off, scrambling up to a higher vantage point thirty meters upslope. Max adjusts his breathing, lines up his sight picture.
Max keys his headset, barely a whisper. “Now.”
Two shots crack in quick succession. Max fires, then Josh. Two Russians drop cleanly. The rest dive for cover, shouting, scanning for the shooters.
Down on the trail, the hostages yank off their hoods as bullets whiz past. They scatter, diving for rocks and low ground.
Max and Josh abandon their positions and sprint down into the canyon, closing distance to extract the team.
Josh’s eyes track the cliff walls towering on either side. “I don’t like this, Max. We’re sitting ducks in here.”
“I know—”
One of the Russian soldiers, crouched behind a boulder, takes careful aim at the fleeing hostages. He fires a controlled burst. The rounds hit Dylan in the head. He crumples instantly, dead before even gravity finishes with him.
Gabriela screams and lunges for a weapon from one of the fallen Russians. She swings it up, fires at the soldier who killed Dylan. The round clips his leg. He goes down. Their eyes lock across the chaos.
Higher up, hidden among the rocks, a Taliban fighter, drawn by the gunfire, spots the Americans. He sights carefully and squeezes off a round.
Gabriela is lining up her second shot when the Taliban bullet strikes her weapon, tearing it from her grip.
Max sweeps his scope, hunting for the new shooter. Suddenly, there are more. Taliban reinforcements pour down from the ridge line. Renee stumbles, legs giving out. She collapses. Max pivots and starts firing upslope.
“Mad Dog, get her out of here! I’ll cover you!”
Gabriela doesn’t hesitate. She hooks her arms under Renee’s shoulders and drags her toward cover. The rest of the FAST Team grabs weapons from the dead Russians and joins the firefight.
Then the sound of rotors and a helicopter crests the ridge behind them. It banks hard and strafes the Taliban positions with devastating accuracy, cutting them down in seconds.
Inside the helicopter’s troop bay, Jack sits strapped in beside the pilot and door gunner, eyes locked on the chaos below through the open door. Dust, gunfire, bodies.
He speaks into his headset, calm and clear. “We got you. Head to the clearing for extraction. Hector Bravo, out!”
….to be continued…
FAST TEAM is a serialized novel published weekly on Substack—structured like a season of television, but written sentence by sentence for the page. It follows a highly trained DEA FAST team (Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Team,) operating in the grey spaces between law enforcement and warfare.
This is an ordered story. It’s built to be read from the beginning.
“FAST TEAM” is Written by Brian S. Kalata and Rick Shaughnessy. Based on the screenplay by Brian S. Kalata & Eric Hooge and the teleplay by Brian S. Kalata & Rick Shaughnessy. Copyright 2025
Nice story. Are photos AI? Will this be a movie? Awful lot of women in combat. Why? Here's what I learned from AI: "While the DEA employs female special agents in various capacities—including undercover and investigative roles—the FAST program was a highly selective, male-dominated tactical unit. There is no public record of women serving as tactical operators within FAST prior to the program's decommissioning in 2017." But then I am an MCP.