

He takes the rescue Castello and his team offer and he’s grateful for it. Chasing a lead takes him to a country that he never should have been in and his ass in more trouble than he’d ever managed to find before.

He is more concerned where his sister and her kid are. He couldn't care less about drugs on the streets and all that jazz. When a routine job in The Congo leads Castello to the side of himself he had suppressed for a lifetime, will he find the courage to acknowledge it and to claim the mechanic making him forget every rule he had put in place under Don't Ask Don't Tell so long ago?Īxel Shaw keeps his head down and his mouth shut. The former Team Lynx Commander now leads Task Force Ambra targeting former military personal gone rogue. When US intelligence tracked one of the conspirators in Somalia, two HRT operators brought him back to face justice.Castello Moran spent his life in Delta Force.

One operator helped during the negotiations, and another went in with the SEALs after the pirates killed the hostages. In 2011, when SEAL Team 6's Gold Squadron attempted to rescue four Americans taken hostage by Somali pirates, the HRT was there. The HRT had previously worked with the military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to hunt war criminals in the Balkans, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq saw HRT operators augmenting Tier 1 military units on raids, helping with forensics. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took the unit to a whole different level. As a result, the HRT was reorganized and doubled in size. In Alabama in 1992, the HRT rescued 10 prison guards who had been taken hostage by over 100 Cuban inmates.īut debacles at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Texas, in 1993 put the unit in the limelight for the wrong reasons. In Utah in 1988, HRT operators helped resolve a standoff in Virginia in 1988, an HRT sniper took down a man who was holding his girlfriend and son hostage as he was about to kill the woman. The HRT's initial operational years were a mixed bag. Live-fire close-quarter battle exercises in the HRT's "shooting house" mimic real-world missions. However, as the HRT's importance grew, a HRT assignment became a full-time job. In the HRT's early days, operators served part-time in the unit and continued their regular special-agent duties. Over 200 field agents applied for the initial 50 spots in HRT, including several Marines and soldiers and four Navy SEALs, among them Tom Norris, a one-eyed Medal of Honor recipient. For example, as federal agents, HRT operators must submit their weapons for forensic analysis after an operation that involves casualties. Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, and British Special Air Service (SAS) operators were pivotal in the HRT's early days.Īt first, the recently created Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 were eager to share a piece of the pie but soon had to back off due to the HRT's different rules of engagement. When the Bureau decided to create a dedicated hostage-rescue unit, it turned to the best for help. It was certified in 1983 and deployed for the first time a year later at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The HRT was created in 1982 by Danny Coulson, a visionary special agent. HRT members debrief after a training exercise at their facility in Quantico, Virginia. In a nutshell, the main difference between the HRT and its military counterparts, who are barred from deploying in the US, are rules of engagement and area of responsibilities. A small fleet of helicopters and boats ensures HRT operators can operate in any environment, but they also often train with military special-operations units that specialize in inserting commandos, such as the Army's Night Stalkers.

The HRT uses specialized vehicles and platforms to support its operations. The unit's roughly 100 operators are divided into two teams (Gold and Blue) that contain assault and sniper teams and train for a range of contingencies, including rescuing hostages, counterterrorism, executing warrants on high-threat suspects, and aircraft and ship hijackings. The HRT is the law-enforcement equivalent of the military's Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 and has the authority to conduct operations overseas. The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) is the Tier 1 law-enforcement special-operations unit and the go-to choice for domestic counterterrorism and hostage rescue.
