It was during a routine free-fall parachuting exercise that he would impress the man who would soon become his surrogate father.
The military employs two types of parachutes, both different than those used in recreational sky-diving. Troops use the classic round chute with a static-line deployment, the Army trusting its troops with a weapon, but not with the steering of a parachute. Attached to the plane, the parachute opens the moment the trooper jumps, allowing for almost no free fall, little error, and even less maneuverability, with a hard landing to boot.
A light rain was falling on the morning of April 16 when Gunnar and his fellow students boarded the C-130 to begin the first in a series of bad-weather parachute-training exercises. Colonel Mike “Bear” Jackson was the commander overseeing Gunnar’s regiment—his job—to instruct Special Ops Forces to free-fall in rough weather conditions using ram-air canopies, rectangular quasi wings far more maneuverable than the ungainly troop chutes, and possessing significant forward speeds.
Of all training activities, Gunnar hated parachute jumping the most. He had lost control of his bowels during his first jump back in Airborne School, and had never taken to the idea of free-falling in storm clouds from thirteen thousand feet.
Gunnar’s best friend, Bill Raby, was first up. An experienced jumper, Raby made the fateful decision to leave his jump position to offer another Ranger a final word of encouragement. Buffeted by high winds, the transport dipped, causing Raby to stumble. Before anyone could react, the commando’s pilot chute caught on the hydraulic lift, loosened, and was immediately sucked into the tailgate’s gaping opening. As Gunnar watched helplessly, his friend was lifted off his feet like a rag doll, the powerful airstream flinging him facefirst against the hydraulic lift before yanking him clear out of the plane.
Unconscious, entangled within his parachute’s suspension lines, Bill Raby hurtled toward the earth like a ground-seeking missile, his speed quickly accelerating to more than 150 miles per hour.
Colonel Jackson was on his feet when he was pushed aside by Gunnar Wolfe, who leaped out of the plane as if he were Superman. Soaring headfirst in a steep vertical dive, the former farm boy-turned-human projectile flew after Raby at a death-defying speed, intent on saving his friend’s life or dying in the process.
Plunging through rain that felt like thousands of stinging bees, Gunnar adjusted his trajectory, aiming for that speck in the lead gray distance he prayed was his friend. At 9,000 feet, the tumbling object became the unconscious commando. At 3,500 feet, Gunnar reached out and caught the man, then fumbled as he attempted to pull the cut-away handle that would disconnect Raby’s main chute. As the main chute released, the drag pulled the pin on the reserve chute.
Gunnar fell away, pulling his own rip cord as Raby’s canopy blossomed open—a mere 650 feet from the ground. Moments later, the two student commandos found themselves knee deep in mud on a pig farm, two miles east of the drop zone.
Hooah.
Gunnar’s high-speed heroics not only saved Raby’s life, but forever bonded him to Colonel Jackson. He was the type of warrior Jackson wanted under his command. Brave. Compassionate. Patriotic. A true leader.
In other words, everything the Bear had always wanted in a son.
Under Jackson’s watchful eye, First Lieutenant Gunnar Wolfe was assigned to lead Second Platoon, Charlie Company, the First Ranger Battalion’s top company. Here he learned the art of demolitions and explosives, as well as advanced hand-to-hand combat.
Two years with First Battalion was followed by the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) course. Another six months spent completing Q (Qualification) Course at Fort Bragg, immersed in guerrilla-warfare training. Four months later, the Bear had him, on orders, transferred to SCUBA School in Key West, Florida, where he learned the art of military SCUBA diving. Then it was on to Basic Underwater Demolitions/SEAL (BUDS), to go through formal SEAL training.
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It soon became obvious to all that Colonel Jackson was grooming his young protege to be the ultimate soldier—the ultimate killing machine.
A broken ankle forced the Bear’s “cub” to take a much-deserved leave. Laid up in Key West, the former engineering major resumed work on a design for a remote submersible he had toyed with at Penn State, a fast, stealthy two-man vessel that could be used to transport SEALS deep behind enemy lines. Computer tests on Gunnar’s designs impressed his superiors. Patterned after the contours of a hammerhead shark, the vessel was not only “theoretically” capable of advanced maneuvers, but speed to boot.
The schematics eventually found their way to the Navy’s Warfare Division in Keyport, Washington.
After nearly a year away from Special Ops, Gunnar returned to active duty. When the Gulf War broke out a few weeks later, Detachment Commander Wolfe found himself on board a transport plane with the rest of his twelveman infiltration unit, bound for Kuwait.
The next seven years would be a blur. Mission after covert mission, his muscles twitching with adrenaline, his gut tightening in fear as he unleashed a calculated highly trained fury upon the enemies of his country.
Military dictatorships. Guerrilla forces. Cause-intoxicated rebels.
Gunnar was the consummate Army fighting machine, a trigger man for the long arm of the law—the United States military.
And Gunnar saw everything. Violence and hatred. Greed and corruption. Famine and pestilence. Bloody conflicts entangled with so much history, so much death, that right and wrong, good and evil no longer existed, only greed and hatred commanded the politics of the moment.
Gunnar might have been a well-trained fighting machine, but he was still an American soldier, and American soldiers live by a creed.
Soldiers fight to make a difference.
Soldiers kill bad guys.
Soldiers do not kill children.
After seven years of violence, the Army’s most capable stallion finally bucked his riders.
You do not shoot a champion racehorse after it tires of winning, especially one with an engineering background who understands the intricacies of combat. The Bear, now commander in Chief of the United States Special Operations Command, arranged for Gunnar’s transfer to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Keyport, knowing full well he was not just salvaging the career of a superior soldier, he was playing the role of matchmaker.
At first, the change of scene had worked. Gunnar was assigned to head the team constructing the SEAL Hammerhead minisub based on his own designs, and even the challenge of converting the two-man submersible to a computer-operated vehicle did not seem to faze him.
Or maybe he was just trying to impress his new CO, a fiery woman who made his blood boil and his groin melt. When their unbridled passion turned to love, Gunnar thought he was in heaven.
And then he was called to the Pentagon—to a private meeting to discuss the true purpose of his remotely operated minisubs.
His new identity shattered like glass.
What is it like to wake up, look in the mirror, and realize your life has been one big lie, that everything you were taught to believe in is wrong, that your existence has been corrupted to the point that you suddenly realize you are not the cure for the infection, but the disease itself.
Something snapped inside him. And in that single moment of clarity, he realized what he had to do.
Readying the computer virus had been the easy part—the decision whether to actually go through with the treasonous act had been the challenge.
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A Special Ops warrior knows better than to hesitate. Gunnar had hesitated. In the delay, someone else had acted, someone close. They had not only stolen $2 billion dollars worth of biochemical computer ware, but had set him up as the fall guy, using a false money trail to paint him a traitor to his family and friends.
