to the terrorist after a sanctioned raid to capture him was called off by higher authority. Al-Maliki was a CIA asset and his value as a long-term penetration agent meant he was off-limits as a target. The device that sent Al-Maliki to the afterlife contained a fertilizer-based main charge with commercial detonators from Pakistan, an IED profile common to Ramadi at the time. The CIA was furious, accusing Raife of killing their prized asset and demanding he be prosecuted. The navy had not been sure what to do and immediately launched an investigation. Reece was the only person who could identify Raife as the bomber and he refused to cooperate with investigators, causing no shortage of consternation between the navy and the CIA and between Reece and Raife. Raife didn’t want to see Reece’s reputation tarnished by investigations, and Reece wasn’t about to be a witness against his blood brother.
Due in no small part to his friend’s refusal to provide any useful information to investigators and out of concern for the damage it could do if the facts of the case became public, Raife was eventually cleared of the accusation. The CIA protecting an insurgent responsible for blowing up members of the U.S. military, long-term penetration agent or not, would not play well in the court of public opinion. Wasn’t the job of SEALs to kill terrorists?
Raife was removed from theater and assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Warfare Detachment on Kodiak Island in Alaska. There he put his ample outdoor skills to use training new SEALs to survive and thrive in the austere climate of the North. It was a perfect fit for the adopted son of Montana but, as an officer, he couldn’t stay in the job indefinitely. He had grown tired of watching men and women come home from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan physically and emotionally broken; it was time to move on. When he received orders to move into a staff role down in Coronado, he dropped his papers and resigned his commission.
He first took a job in finance, throwing himself into it with the same zeal with which he had attacked all of life’s challenges, but he felt suffocated by life in Manhattan. Raife was rushing to the office one day when he received a text message telling him that his old team chief at [Redacted] had shot himself in the heart. He’d left a suicide note apologizing to his wife and children and asking that his brain be used to study the effects of traumatic brain injury and PTSD. After two weeks in Virginia Beach assisting the family and attending the memorial and funeral, Raife decided it was time to go home.
As Raife made the long drive from New York to western Montana, his mind went to work. He needed to find a way to help transition his former teammates into life beyond the fight, a bridge to the next chapter in life. You couldn’t just hand them a suit and help them write a resume; they needed to find purpose again.
Raife also examined his own life. A natural loner who thrived in the solitude of the outdoors, Raife still knew something was missing.
Annika Thornton had been his on-again, off-again girlfriend since high school. Their fathers were close friends and adjoining landowners in many of their real estate holdings. It had been Annika’s father, Tim, who had encouraged Jonathan Hastings to diversify his cattle earnings into Montana real estate; that move had proven to be vastly more lucrative than ranching. While Raife chose to attend the University of Montana in Missoula, Annika was accepted to Yale, and they drifted apart. When Raife was based in Virginia Beach and she was in graduate school at Wharton in Philadelphia, their relationship rekindled, and Raife had nearly proposed.
When he received word that he’d earned a coveted slot at Green Team, his personal life was forced to the back burner. Annika took a job in San Francisco and, soon after that, 9/11 hit. Raife’s life was focused on his endless overseas deployments, and hers was spent making her own way in the business world. They kept in touch and reunited whenever their geographic paths crossed.
When it came time for her father, Tim “Thorn” Thornton, to pull back on the reins of life and spend some time away from the business, he was finally able to convince Annika to return to Montana. She was serving as the chief operating officer of a Dallas-based energy firm