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“I'm sure he doesn't know he has corporate sponsorship.”

“You know, sometimes I even feel a little guilty the War on Terror has been so good to me, but there's nothing I'd like more than to see every tango wiped off the face of the earth. I can't imagine even Rubicon supporting the fuckers.” Camille squeezed the bag, forcing the saline into G
ENGHIS
' arm faster. She radioed Iggy. “He's going to need more than this. There's another one in Pete's ruck.”

“I'll get it,” Iggy said.

“No. I will. Maintain position.”

“I'll go,” Iggy said. “You don't need to see her again.”

“Yeah, I do,” Camille said. Her lips were cracked and her mouth parched. She sipped from a canteen and leaned her head back, looking at the deep blue sky.

No Hunter
.

Gora Muruntau, Kyzyl Kum Desert, Uzbekistan

A carpet of black flies and beetles already covered Pete's throat and face. Their constant movement made it harder for Camille to stare at the motionless body. She forced herself to reach for the butt of the Makarov in Pete's hand, but the muscles had already tightened so that she would have to break the fingers. Rigor mortis came fast in the desert heat. One 9mm pistol wouldn't make that much of a difference in their arsenal, so Camille decided to cut herself a break and let it go.

The dry desert wind wiped away her tears, but couldn't blow away the pain. Camille bowed her head and averted her eyes as she felt the hollowness that always follows a kill. She scooped up a handful of sand and let it flow out of her fist onto the body. She knew she had to hurry back with the IV solution, but she stood there, paralyzed by memories of the flesh giving way as she pulled the knife through Pete's trachea.

At first, Camille thought her guilt was haunting her when she felt a steel blade pressing against her throat.

“Don't move,” a man said in Arabic.

Camille held her breath, hoping that Iggy was watching through his scope and could get a clear shot. The man's hand pressed against the back of her head and she couldn't move without slitting her throat.

The Arab slid her Makarov from the thigh holster, then the knife from her ankle holster. She looked around, searching for an opening. Pete's Makarov was less than two feet from her, but they couldn't help her. The tip of the blade pierced the skin under her chin and she could feel blood drip down her neck.

Come on, Iggy
.

Then she saw the Gulfstream banking to align itself with the runway and she knew Iggy was distracted.

Gora Muruntau, Kyzyl Kum Desert, Uzbekistan

The Gulfstream's airstairs couldn't go down fast enough for Hunter. He couldn't wait another moment to see Stella. When they were low enough for him to get a good look outside, he spotted two men in the shadow of a nearby dune and a pile of bodies on the runway, but no Stella.

Oh god. I hit her on takeoff.

As the stairs were being lowered to the ground, Hunter bounded down them, then dashed across the runway to the men. Thanks to the Day-Glo prison coveralls, he immediately recognized Ashland and G
ENGHIS
. As he approached them, he could hear a voice coming over an oversized walkie-talkie.

“L
IGHTNING
S
IX
, come in. Report.,”

“Where is she?” Hunter shouted. “L
IGHTNING
S
IX
, where is she?”

“L
IGHTNING
S
IX
, come in.”

“We just lost contact,” G
ENGHIS
said and pointed. “She went up there, Twelve o'clock, five hundred meters.”

“Radio your overwatch and tell him I'm going there and not to shoot me.” Hunter said as he scooped up an AK and checked it for ammo. “Get into the aircraft. Take what gear you can and make sure you load the body of the other prisoner. He's a Bushman. We don't leave men behind.”

“Neither does Delta,” G
ENGHIS
said.

 

As Hunter ran up the dune, he could see a contorted lifeless body lying in the sand. Everything in him screamed. She couldn't be dead. Not when he was this close. The sand crumbled away under his feet and he could hardly get any traction, as if the desert itself were struggling against him, trying to keep him from seeing her.

His feet finally found some packed sand and he was able to make some progress. He got close enough to see the body and forced himself to look.

Stella's alive
!

Or at least the corpse wasn't hers.

“Looks like it happened a while ago,” Hunter said as an operator with an artificial hand walked up. He knew him by reputation as Iggy, Stella's chief ops officer.

“Camille's work. I'll fill you in later.” Iggy was breathing hard. He scanned the horizon with his binoculars, then lowered them. “She came back to grab the med kit to help that worthless son of a bitch G
ENGHIS
.”

The heavy wind had wiped away traces of any footprints, but they could see indentures in the sand where someone had climbed down the back side of the dune. The trail stopped on the flat desert floor where the wind had erased it.

“Look at this,” Hunter motioned for Iggy as he pointed to the ground beside Pete. “The blood preserved a footprint.”

“Camille was wearing Merrell hikers,” Iggy said as he squatted by the fly-covered body and studied the print. “That's from some kind of a sandal. No tread.” Iggy stood. “We've got to get out of here. Keep an eye out for anything else unusual while you help me grab the stuff.”

“We can't leave her,” Hunter said as he wrestled the Makarov from Pete. The bones of the fingers snapped. His Day-Glo prison coveralls had no pockets for him to stick the gun in, so he held onto it.

Iggy reached for the rucksack and saw something that had blown against it. As he leaned over to pick up a small green booklet written in Arabic script, a bullet crackled nearby.

“Hit the deck!”

Both men dug into the sand and pointed their AKs in the direction the bullet had come from—the same direction someone had taken Stella.

“See a target?” Hunter said.

“Negative. So wherever they are, they're at an angle where they can't get a shot unless we stand up.” Iggy slipped his arms into the pack's straps. “We're going to creep over there, then run down the dune and pray they can't get into a good firing position in time.”

Several rounds flew over them. Hunter couldn't see anyone, but fired a burst anyway to discourage the shooter from moving to a better location.

Iggy reached for the walkie-talkie. “G
ENGHIS
, this is T
IN
M
AN
. We're taking fire. Do what you can to cover us. We're coming in.”

“Understood,” Ashland's voice crackled through the radio.

“We'll be vulnerable most of the way,” Hunter said.

“You have any better ideas?”

“No, sir.” Hunter fired more rounds, then began crawling as fast as he could.

 

The sun scorched Camille's skin and she regretted peeling down to shorts and a T-shirt, but she was sure she would be more modestly clothed soon enough, if the tangos didn't kill her first. She sat upright in the back of a pickup truck, surrounded by four young men with AKs. They all wore the telltale beards of the Muslim fundamentalists and spoke Arabic with one another. A cross-eyed one wore a T-shirt silk-screened with a picture she recognized from the wall of Omar's Electronics in Ramadi. Her translator had told her which one he was, but she couldn't remember now if he was Abdullah or al-Zahrani. Not that it really mattered which faction of al Qaeda had kidnapped her.

She could pick up only a word here and there, but pretended to understand nothing and wished she hadn't heard the mention of
jihad
so frequently. Her arms and feet were bound with a heavy, scratchy rope and she saw no immediate options for escape, but she kept reassessing.

A white Toyota truck passed them going the opposite way, toward the airstrip. She coughed from the dust that blew in its wake. It honked and some of the men in the back waved their AKs at them while others fired joy shots into the air. Well over a dozen tangos were squeezed into the truck bed and four or five more into the cab. This was the third pickup they had met and she hoped to god Hunter was getting them out of there and not coming after her. But she knew he would come. And she had little doubt that he would be too late.

She watched the sky for the Gulfstream.

 

Carrying his IV bag, G
ENGHIS
wobbled toward the body of the dead Bushman. He grabbed the corpse by the arm and tugged. It barely moved. He plopped to the ground, light-headed, breathing hard. He raised his head toward Ashland. “Get your ass over here.”

“I'm no harm to you. And none of us can get out of here alone, except Stone. Free me. You need me.” He held out his bound hands.

“They didn't leave me with a knife. It'd be my pleasure to shoot the zip-cuff off you. Hold out your wrists.” G
ENGHIS
aimed his sidearm at Ashland's wrists.

“No, no, no. I saw Black using shears from the medic's bag. I'll retrieve them. And we might need every bullet.”

“Suit yourself.”

A few minutes later G
ENGHIS
was lying in the aisle of the Gulfstream hooked up to a second IV bag that Ashland had found onboard, when he heard Iggy call for backup. The bleeding was under control, but he was feeling light-headed. Ashland set down the walkie-talkie and picked up an AK-102.

“You're not going to be able to help them with that—too short range,” G
ENGHIS
said as he grabbed for the IV needle in his arm.

“Leave that in. You need it,” Ashland said.

“Fine. But they need a long-range marksman. Help me to the door and hand me the one with the scope.”

G
ENGHIS
pulled himself up using the armrest and grabbed the IV bag from the leather seat. Ashland hurried to support him under his arm and help him walk down the aisle. G
ENGHIS
lowered himself onto the floor in front of the cabin door, dropping the plastic IV bag beside him. Ashland picked it up and hooked it on the bracket for the emergency flashlight instead, then handed him the Dragunov that Camille was carrying earlier.

“Check the rucksack for extra clips,” G
ENGHIS
said as he pulled off the magazine and checked the cartridges. Eight were left. Russian ammo was foreign to him, but he trusted that Camille always worked with the best equipment and had probably acquired match-grade rounds.

“Here.” Ashland handed him three.

G
ENGHIS
grabbed them and loaded two 7.62 rounds as fast as he could while he watched the distant dune. Iggy and Stone were skidding down it and no targets were in sight—yet. He set up the rifle's bipod and looked through the scope, estimating the wind and ranging to the top of the dune. He adjusted the dope.

Several seconds later, he was tweaking the settings when a man with an AK came into sight above Iggy and Stone. He moved him into his crosshairs and fired. The man dropped, but then two more replaced him. As quickly as he could, he acquired the mark, squeezed off a round and without a breath, aimed and fired again just as the son of a bitch hailed bullets at Iggy and Stone.

 

Bullets flew past Iggy and the sand was getting softer, pouring in on top of his foot with each step, making it harder for him to pull his leg up. Just as a round zoomed too close to his head, his leg pulled out of its binding and his stump waved in the air. Flapping his arms to catch his balance, he tumbled to the ground and slid down the dune. He looked back. His dumb leg was stuck in the sand, fifteen feet above him.

 

The tangos were appearing as fast as G
ENGHIS
could take them out and the growing collection of dead bodies seemed to do little to discourage them. G
ENGHIS
had seen it before. The fuckers were determined to get to their seventy-two virgins. He pulled off the magazine and shoved more rounds into it.

 

Iggy saw Stone glance back, then turn around to help him, but Iggy waved him on. Using his elbows to pull himself along, Iggy dragged himself through the sand to his leg. Bullets kicked up sand all around. When he got to it, he took the knife from his ankle holster and sliced off his pant leg above his knee, cursing himself for wearing long pants. As he strapped it on, sand got into the sock over his stump. With a good seven hundred yards to the plane, it would rub blisters that would plague him for days.

He climbed to his feet and ran.

 

“Permission to come aboard.” Hunter shouted from the base of the Gulfstream's stairs, waiting so he didn't shake the plane because it didn't take much to spoil a long range shot. Iggy hauled ass down the tarmac, a good four hundred meters away.

“Okay, now!” G
ENGHIS
said as he refilled the mag. Hunter climbed up the stairs, taking two at a time.

G
ENGHIS
fired off more rounds as Hunter stepped over him. G
ENGHIS
said, “The fuckers keep coming. We've got to get out of here.”

Ashland moved back so he could pass. He paused and said to Ashland, “As soon as Iggy's onboard, throw that switch to retract the airstairs, then turn the lever to secure the door.”

Hunter hurried onto the flight deck. The dead first officer was still strapped in. Hunter flipped on the APU as he climbed over the captain's body into his seat.

 

As Iggy zigzagged down the runway, he could feel his stump rubbing raw against the sand that had come between him and his artificial leg. The stump had sweated so much, it felt like it was sloshing around in a bowl of water. The hot air seared his lungs, but the bullets skipping off the tarmac around him made him push harder.

It only took one, he reminded himself.

 

G
ENGHIS
chambered a new round, retargeted and fired in less than five seconds—a personal record, but it wasn't enough. More and more tangos crested the saddle and he couldn't drop them all before they started heading down to the tarmac. He gave up on eliminating them as they came into sight and picked off the ones who were closest to Iggy. He was only a couple hundred meters out, but the hordes were gaining on him. They were running and shooting without aiming, but with enough rounds in the air, even a stray bullet could find a mark.

“Hand me an AK and keep 'em coming,” G
ENGHIS
said. They had salvaged four from the Rubicon guards.

The tangos were now within five hundred meters and Iggy was within one hundred. G
ENGHIS
stood, the damn IV dangling from his arm. He saw bright flashes of light and became dizzy. He steadied himself on the bulkhead as he breathed deeply. He took the assault rifle and aimed as best he could, given the iron sights, the distance and the wind.

G
ENGHIS
laid down a curtain of fire while Iggy dashed toward the airstairs. He emptied the weapon in his hands and Ashland passed him another one. Iggy ran up the stairs and G
ENGHIS
extended his arm, grabbed Iggy's forearm, and pulled him inside.

“Go! Go!” Iggy yelled to Hunter.

G
ENGHIS
threw the switch to raise the stairs and then he leaned outside and stepped onto the top stair while they were retracting. They were the type that the bottom part of the stairs folded over onto the top when they were halfway up and G
ENGHIS
figured he could get off a couple more shots and jump back inside before they started to double over on themselves. Suddenly, the plane lurched and G
ENGHIS
slipped.