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  “It can’t be obvious,” Simmons replied.

  “Fucking politics. Bradley has no idea what’s going on over there. He’s as bad as the last guy, scared of his own fucking shadow.”

  “He’s new; give him time. But you have to stop thinking that I’m on his side. I’m the one who raised the issue with the president in the first place.”

  “How much longer?” Cage asked, ignoring the Rolex Submariner on his wrist.

  “Thirty minutes, max,” Simmons said, taking another sip. “Try to relax. You’ve done everything you can do.”

  A lot was riding on the president’s decision. Cage always fought his own battles, but now he was the one sending the warriors into harm’s way, and it was a heavy burden. The two men stood alone in their assessment of ISIS, and Cage knew that President Bradley desperately wanted to avoid another war. In fact, the only reason he’d agreed to the operation was because he hoped that if they cut the head of the snake, the body would die.

  Cage, on the other hand, knew that this was just the beginning. If the president refused to face reality, Cage was going to have to force him to make the right decision.

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  Mason was turning toward the door when a bullet cracked past his ear—so close that he heard the 7.62 round snap as it cut through the air. He dove to the ground, searching vainly for the shooter. As he landed, he felt a sharp sting cut across the back of his arm.

  He’d been hit.

  The roar of the Kalashnikov echoed off the gray concrete walls, making it impossible to locate the direction of fire.

  “Where is he?” Mason yelled as the rounds slammed into the wall above his head like hammer blows, sending shards of cement cutting into the back of his neck.

  One of the computer monitors exploded in a shower of sparks just as Zeus dove behind the table for cover and the shooter traversed his fire across the room. Zeus cursed loudly, unable to locate the source of the gunfire.

  Mason knew he had to move.

  He scrambled away from the wall, leaving a smear of blood as he pushed off. Directly across from him, a piece of brown and red fabric had been nailed over what he’d thought was a window, but from his place on the floor, Mason could see the base of a concrete step behind the curtain.

  He flipped off the safety, noticing the fabric snap as another burst cut through, and fired three quick shots through the center.

  “The curtain. He’s behind the curtain,” he shouted, scrambling out of the line of fire. Mason’s knees burned as he scraped the floor, tearing his pant leg.

  Once out of range, he scrambled to his feet. He ignored the sharp pain from the bullet wound that refused to heal, and ripped the curtain from the nails securing it to the wall. Knowing the gunner was less than five feet away, he flipped the AK to full auto and stuck it around the corner. Yanking the trigger to the rear, he let the muzzle climb as the Kalashnikov chewed through half a magazine.

  His ears were already ringing from the first salvo of fire, and Mason could feel the pressure driving back from the muzzle, slapping him in the skull like the palm of an invisible hand.

  A flash of reddish mist splattered across the wall perpendicular to his line of sight, followed by the sound of a man shrieking in pain. Mason released the pressure on the trigger, and for a second, silence fell over the room. So much for the surprise element, he thought grimly. Everybody for blocks around had been alerted by now.

  He reached down to rip the mag out of the rifle and was just about to slip a fresh one into the mag well when he heard a metallic tink above his head.

  Mason rocked the magazine forward, yanking it to ensure it was secure, just as a dark green orb bounced out of the hidden stairwell. The Russian grenade seemed to hover at eye level, and before he even realized that he was moving, Mason snatched it out of the air and hurled it back up the stairs.

  “Oh shit,” he thought, realizing what he had just done. He turned away from the opening and screamed, “Grenade.”

  The concussion blew out of the stairwell like a freight train, spewing shrapnel and noxious black smoke into the room in a rush of overpressure. Mason let go of the rifle, cupping his hands over his ears. He could only pray that he hadn’t blown out his eardrums.

  His equilibrium off, he stumbled, retching on the smoke that burned his lungs. He had to steady himself against the wall. The thick haze obscured everything in the room, like premature twilight, and he thought he heard gunfire coming from downstairs over the ringing in his ears.

  “Zeus, are you good?” he croaked, unable to make out the voices coming over the radio.

  “Why did you do that?” the Libyan demanded.

  Mason staggered into the stairwell, his muzzle fixed on the body lying near the top. The fighter’s left leg was ripped to shreds, and beneath pinkish bits of sinewy meat, Mason saw blood squirting weakly from the femoral artery. The blood looked black as it pooled on the step, and above the corpse, dark, jagged fingers marked the spot where the frag had detonated.

  The explosion had taken off the man’s head, leaving him unrecognizable, but out of habit, Mason still kicked his rifle away. He continued up the stairs he hadn’t known were there until he was standing on the roof.

  Dawn was breaking in rosy fingers along the horizon, and Mason took a greedy gulp of fresh air while scanning the roof for any additional threats. His attention was drawn to a gray satellite TV dish, pointed skyward, and he realized that this was how the fighters had hacked into the military’s UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle, feed. Next to it, a freshly sandbagged position protecting a Soviet-made DShK .51 caliber machine gun gave him pause.

  A similar position had been set up to his right, but instead of a machine gun, the fighting position had two American-made Stinger missiles stacked inside it. “Kill us with our own weapons,” Mason thought. What else was new?

  Realizing that he was out in the open, Mason took cover behind a low wall. With all clear for the moment, he turned his attention to the pain in his arm. He winced and gingerly probed the wound with his fingers. The pain radiated up his arm, and he craned his neck to get a better look. The bullet had left a nasty tear along his triceps muscle.

  “Christ, it hurts,” Mason thought.

  The swelling made it difficult to bend his arm. But it was the large amount of blood soaking his assault shirt that concerned him. He dug awkwardly into his kit for a roll of gauze, knowing he needed to control the bleeding.

  Mason used his teeth to rip open the sterile plastic pouch and began looping the gauze around the wound, holding the free end under his chin. He managed a loose, dangling loop, but even as he pulled it tight, he could tell it wasn’t going to hold.

  “Fuck this shit,” he cursed, getting to his feet. “People hiding behind goddamned curtains.”

  One thing he knew for certain: the mission was compromised. Mason reached for the sat phone, knowing that he had to warn David, but as he did, he realized he’d dropped it when taking fire.

  All he could think about was that Boland was out there by himself, with no idea that he’d been compromised. No matter how much Mason wanted to believe that everything was going to work out, he knew his friend didn’t stand a chance.

  The city reminded him of Ramadi and the many times he and Boland had been ambushed while operating there. Mason couldn’t think of a worse place to be out by yourself. Entire buildings were missing huge sections of their roofs, while others lay in piles of rubble. From his perch on the roof, he couldn’t find a single wall that wasn’t pockmarked from small-arms fire. Obscene holes, blackened and charred around the edges, revealed the insides of apartments, like cutaway dollhouses, displaying the shattered lives of the innocents caught in the cross fire.

  What was left of the city reminded him of a bum who’d gotten the shit kicked out of him, and the buildings that lined the streets resembled punched-out teeth in a shattered smile. Back home in East Los Angeles, it looked like a war zone sometimes, but that was paradise
compared with this hellhole.

  He heard Zeus talking behind him and forced his attention back to the mission at hand.

  “They are calling for you on the radio,” Zeus said in Arabic. “Here, let me do that shoulder right.”

  Mason reached across his body, mindful of avoiding pain, and depressed the hand mike while the Libyan moved to tend his bandage.

  “Ronin 6,” he said simply.

  “Ronin 6, Striker 5, I’m ten minutes out.”

  It was Boland, and Mason felt relief wash over him.

  “Striker, be advised you are compromised. I advise immediate abort.”

  “Ronin 6, say again?” Boland asked incredulously.

  “Striker 5, abort,” he yelled into the hand mike.

  “Break, break, break. Ronin 6, Striker 5, this is Tomahawk Base,” a voice said, suddenly cutting through his transmission. “The mission is a go. I repeat, the mission is a go.”

  “Tomahawk Base, we found intel. We found fucking pictures of Striker 5 on the objective. I say again: Striker 5 has been compromised.”

  “Striker 5, skip rope,” the voice said.

  “What the fuck?” Mason shouted, realizing that whoever was on the other end of the radio had just told Boland to switch to another frequency.

  “Striker 5, this is Ronin 6, how copy?” he asked. Meanwhile, Zeus tightened the bandage with a sharp tug, causing him to flinch.

  The Libyan looked at him, a frown crossing his face. “Looks like you suck at first aid, too.”

  Mason scowled at the man who’d saved his life more times than he could remember. They had been through so much and always managed to find a way to survive. Yet he owed Boland, too. He knew that Zeus deserved better, but there was no way he could turn his back on Mick, no matter what they had to face.

  He flipped over to the air-to-ground frequency, hoping that the strike team hadn’t launched already. Zeus shook his head while Mason tried to make contact, but the radio was silent. “This mission is fucked.”

  “If he dies, it’s on me,” Mason said, preparing to hit the transmit button.

  “What about us?” the Libyan asked, forcing Mason to make the hardest decision of his life.

  “I can’t leave him out there with his ass in the wind,” he said, conducting a tactical reload before turning toward the stairs. “Get the guys back to the safe house and get the hell out of here. I got him into this, and it’s up to me to get him out.”

  “You and your misplaced loyalties,” Zeus muttered, looking away. He surveyed the destroyed city before turning back to Mason. “Look, there is no way I’m letting you go out there by yourself. With your old-lady ankle and busted-up arm, you wouldn’t last for three seconds without me covering your ass.”

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  Mick Boland welcomed the adrenaline coursing through his body as he switched frequencies on the Thales MBITR multiband radio and waited for Tomahawk Base to key up.

  He was careful to hide his addiction from men like David Castleman, but with the legendary CIA operative temporarily out of the picture, he allowed himself a moment to enjoy the buzz. Boland caught the reflection of his dilated pupils in the rearview mirror. He savored the rush of power he felt, before glancing at the man driving him to the objective.

  “Is everything okay?” al Qatar asked in broken English.

  “Yeah, we’re good,” Boland answered confidently, despite the urgency he’d heard in Mason’s voice over the radio.

  Boland had met Mason at Delta selection, and the two men had hit it off right away. The deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq had formed a bond that most brothers would never know. It was a bond forged in the cauldron of combat, when your life depended on your teammate, and despite the chemical euphoria building inside him, Boland felt guilty that he’d been forced to deceive his friend.

  Mason had no idea what was really going on, because, honestly, Boland had been too embarrassed to tell him. The mission was entirely personal. He felt bad for drawing the task force in to clean up his mess, but Boland knew he had to recover the gear he’d lost, or his life wouldn’t be worth shit when he rotated back to the States.

  “Striker 5, Tomahawk Base. Are you secure?” the voice asked, pulling him out of his guilt trip.

  “Striker 5, roger,” Boland said.

  “Disregard Ronin 6’s last—the mission is still a go. I’ll advise when the birds are inbound.”

  “Good, copy.”

  Mason had done the right thing calling for an abort, but what his friend didn’t know was that there was no way in hell the task force was going to scrub the operation. He’d never kept anything from the man who had helped get him this job, but, unfortunately, Mason couldn’t be trusted—or controlled.

  Kane was the most fearless warrior that Boland had ever met, but after what had happened in Afghanistan with the Anvil Team, there was no way he’d ever be let back into the inner circle. Barnes had seen to that. If Boland had learned anything after all these years in combat, he understood what Mason still didn’t get: war was all about self-preservation.

  He’d done what he could to keep Mason and his men out of the fight, even going as far as telling Colonel Anderson that it was a mistake to use Mason on this mission. But both he and the colonel knew that Kane was the only one who could pull it off. All the same, he and Anderson were all too aware of what happened anytime you let Mason off the leash; there was no telling what he was going to do.

  For Boland, this operation was the only way he could redeem himself for the mistake he’d made a few weeks earlier; he prayed that Mason would find the intel he’d left at the target house and decide it was too dangerous to hang around.

  He stuffed the radio into the space between the seat and the door and, when he turned, noticed Abu al Qatar watching him closely. Up ahead, a checkpoint came into view. Four men stood next to a Toyota Hilux guarding the road, and one of them stepped off the concrete median as the Arab slowed the blue Toyota Cressida and rolled down the window.

  The young jihadist, dressed in black jeans and a blue Captain America T-shirt, stuck his head inside the window. “Where are you going?”

  “We are going to see Latif,” al Qatar said simply.

  “I was not told of this,” the fighter replied, shaken by the mention of his commander’s name.

  “Of course you weren’t,” al Qatar sneered. “But if you value your life, I would let us through.”

  “This road is closed.”

  “Why don’t you call him on the radio and tell him that you won’t let us pass? I am sure he would love to hear that.”

  The young jihadist looked around, unsure of what to do. Finally, he nodded his head. “Very well.”

  As soon as the jihadist stepped off the street, al Qatar put the Toyota in gear and gently placed his foot on the accelerator. Once the car was moving, he pulled a cigarette from the center console and lit it with shaky hands.

  “I didn’t think they were going to let us pass,” he said.

  “Relax, I told you it would be okay,” Boland said.

  “Yes, you did, and you were right.”

  Al Qatar sounded too complimentary, and Boland felt a flicker of suspicion. He knew al Qatar was a liar, but right now he was the only friend he had.

  Abu al Qatar wasn’t yet thirty years old, but he had been working for the CIA since he was twenty-three. He was the agency’s only asset in Syria. More to the point, he was its only link to Khalid al Hamas, and the CIA would give anything to capture the Iranian facilitator.

  “How much farther?” Boland asked.

  “It is not far; just at the end of the street.”

  “Are you sure they are both going to be there?”

  “Yes, Latif is very interested in this meeting.”

  “Tell me what you are going to do once we are inside.”

  “I will give the money to al Hamas,” he said, motioning to the duffel in the backseat.

  “And who am I?”

  “
Your name is Hassan, and you speak for Emir Baghdadi in Iraq,” al Qatar answered for the hundredth time.

  “Why am I here?”

  “You have been sent to offer Latif a chance at an alliance.”

  “Very good.” Boland smiled. “What do you do when the shooting starts?”

  Al Qatar swerved gently to avoid a hole in the asphalt, and checked the rearview mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed. “When the shooting starts, I get on the ground and hope the other Americans don’t kill me,” he said finally.

  “Listen to me: if you don’t pose a threat, they won’t hurt you,” Boland said.

  Al Qatar gave him a queer look, and again Boland felt his hackles rise. But he dismissed the spark of doubt as soon as it came. Al Qatar was a traitor, and as long as you kept that in the forefront of your mind, he’d never get the upper hand.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  Renee kept trying to get hold of Mason as the pitch of the Mi-17’s rotors began to change. She’d needed a situation report but was running out of time.

  Renee looked down the half-open ramp, where the caramel-colored sand was beginning to give way to the gray cityscape. She knew that Mason wasn’t prone to exaggeration, and if he was calling for an abort, she couldn’t fathom why they were ignoring him.

  “Five minutes,” the pilot said over the internal net.

  “Get ready,” Warchild yelled from his perch near the door gunner.

  Renee knew her team leader couldn’t care less what she had to say, but maybe if she could get Parker to listen, they could avoid flying into a hot LZ.

  “Ground team is calling for an abort,” Renee shouted at Parker.

  The man frowned behind his dark sunglasses and ran his hand over his thick brown beard. He checked the GPS strapped to his wrist and said, “We are almost on target. What did Tomahawk Base say?”

  “They said continue mission,” Renee replied.

  Parker depressed his push-to-talk button that allowed him to talk on the team’s internal net. “Be advised, Ronin 6 is calling for an abort,” he began.