The author would like to thank the following individuals whose technical advice and support made this book possible:

Mr. Tom Clancy

Mr. David Shanks

Mr. Tom Colgan

Mr. Michael Ovitz

Mr. Chris George

Ms. Sandra Harding

Mr. Robert Lang

Mr. James Ide, chief warrant officer, U.S. Navy (Ret.)

Major Mark Aitken, U.S. Army

Mr. Randy McElwee, master sergeant, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Major William R. Reeves, U.S. Army

Major Craig Walker, U.S. Air Force

Mr. Jean-Louis "Dutch" DeGay, Natick Soldier RDEC, U.S. Army

Mrs. Carole McDaniel (carole.mcdanieldesign.com)

William and Belinda Telep

Ghosts

Operation War Wraith

Alpha Team

Captain Scott Mitchell

Master Sergeant Jose "Joe" Ramirez

Sergeant First Class Paul Smith

Sergeant First Class Alex Nolan

Bravo Team

Master Sergeant Matt Beasley

Sergeant First Class Bo Jenkins

Staff Sergeant John Hume

Sergeant Marcus Brown

Charlie Team

Sergeant Alicia Diaz

Ghost Command

Lieutenant Colonel Harold "Buzz" Gordon

Major Susan Grey, D CO. 1st BN. 5th SFG

General Joshua Keating, Commander of USSOCOM

Dr. Gail Gorbatova, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

Spring Tigers

Operation Pouncing Dragon

Major-General Chen Yi (Target Alpha)

Colonel Xu Dingfa (Target Bravo)

Vice Admiral Cai Ming (Target Charlie)

Major-General Wu Hui (Target Delta)

Deputy Director Wang Ya, CMC Political Department

Captain Fang Zhi

USS Montana Control Team

Commanding Officer Captain Kenneth Gummerson

Lieutenant Commander Sands, Executive Officer

Master Chief Suallo, Chief of the Boat

SEAL Chief Tanner

SEAL Chief Phillips

Lieutenant Jeff Moch, Predator Support

Lieutenant Justin Schumaker, Predator Support

MAPS

Master Sergeant Scott Mitchell blinked at the sweat in his eyes and pushed on through the rubber plants, their leathery leaves brushing against his boonie hat and cheek. Ahead lay a slight clearing in the otherwise dense, twilit jungle, and Mitchell used his M4A1's barrel to lift a thin branch as he hunkered down at the edge.

Captain Victor Foyte, his detachment commander, moved ahead beside an uneven stretch of wilting palm fronds still dripping from a storm that had rolled in several hours ago. "Ricochet, this is Road Warrior 06," the captain whispered into his radio. "Think I see something. And I hear some buzzing, like flies. Let's check it out, over."

"Right with you, Boss," answered Mitchell.

Although Foyte outranked him, Mitchell was the team sergeant, responsible for fighting all twelve members of Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 574. The captain and warrant officer coordinated with the twelve-man Filipino and Taiwanese teams they'd been cross-training with for the past two weeks.

Mitchell started forward as up to his right a snake coiled around an overhanging limb, its tongue fluttering. Special Forces operators ate bad guys for breakfast and snakes for supper; consequently, they weren't unnerved by either. Nevertheless, Mitchell grimaced and got out of there to join the captain.

Barely three steps later, a whoosh of musty air, a rustle of leaves, and the sharp crack of a rope sent lightning bolts through his gut. He looked up and gasped.

The captain had been moving toward a pole stuck in the ground. Atop that pole was a human head with long, brown hair flowing around it.

A twenty-one-year-old American missionary had recently been captured by Abu Sayyaf, the local pseudo-Islamist terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda. Military and police forces had been combing the island, looking for her and for Abu Sayyaf's stronghold, hidden somewhere deep in the mountainous interior.

It seemed the captain had found the missing woman — and much more. A rope had snapped taut around one of his ankles, and now he was being hurled three meters into the air, screaming, "Ambush!"

Mitchell was about to get on the radio when the captain swung forward, a human pendulum heading straight for a tree impaled by rows of razor-sharp punji stakes now revealed as fronds strung up by more ropes fell away — all part of the carefully designed booby trap.

Captain Victor Foyte was only twenty-four years old, and in the next breath he slammed back-first into the punji stakes, the foot-long pieces of sharpened wood driving into his arms, neck, and torso.

The team had been operating light, forgoing body armor in the rainy, hundred-plus-degree jungle. Foyte shrieked and gurgled as the stakes grew slick with his blood.

Chief Warrant Officer 02 James Alvarado, who'd been positioned about a dozen meters behind them, burst forward crying, "Captain!" Alvarado cut loose multiple rounds below the tree where Foyte now hung, inverted and bleeding to death.

Again, Mitchell keyed his mike, ready to issue orders, but Alvarado's gunfire cut him off.

This was Mitchell's first live mission as a Special Forces operator. He was an experienced infantryman and team leader from an Opposing Force (OPFOR) recon unit at Fort Irwin. He already had an impressive resume and was hoping to make a name for himself in the Special Forces community — yet in a flash, he'd already lost his first CO.

A strange thumping noise sounded as Alvarado ceased fire and advanced into the clearing. The warrant suddenly clutched his neck, where a tiny dart extended from between his fingers. He screamed as he tugged it out.

Mitchell dropped onto his gut as more thumping sounded behind them. Alvarado wobbled forward then crumpled to the ground, poisoned and probably dead.

The team was, it seemed, being attacked by loinclothed savages whose traps and blowguns had ironically overpowered the men with their thunder sticks.

"Mitchell?" called the captain, his voice burred by the agony, his face now drenched in blood. "Mitch… ell?"

Unable to stare at Foyte any longer, Mitchell finally got on the radio. "This is Ricochet. Ambush! Ambush! The captain and warrant are down!"

Before he could continue, the terrorists somewhere out there, crouching in the wet foliage, revealed they were not the loinclothed savages of Mitchell's imagination but were, in fact, ruthless and modern killers.

So much automatic weapons fire blasted through the clearing that it sounded as though a thousand men with machetes were cutting apart the trees and fronds. Rounds from AK-47s and machine guns popped and boomed, wood splintered, and birds squawked and flew off as holes appeared in the leaves, the debris tumbling down on Mitchell as he rose to his elbows and spied his first pair of muzzle flashes.

At the same time, voices erupted over the radio:

"Ricochet, this is Rumblefish," called the team's weapons sergeant, Jim Idaho. "We're taking fire from both flanks! Can't get any shots from here! Need orders!"

"Ricochet, this is Red Cross. Got two men down," reported Lance Munson, the team's senior medic. "I need to evac these guys now!"

"Ricochet, I think we got incoming mortar—"

That last voice belonged to Rapper, one of the team's engineers, who was cut off as a flash lit up the jungle just northeast of Mitchell's position. A second later, the ground trembled, and a powerful explosion boomed across the landscape as showers of shrapnel and debris needled through the zone.

These terrorists were reckless, stupid, or insane, perhaps all three. They were laying down mortar fire on their own position. They didn't care how many of their own they took out, so long as they killed the Americans.

Willing himself not to panic, reminding himself of who he was and the countless hours of training he had gone through, Master Sergeant Scott Mitchell, twenty-six, took command of the ODA team. "This is Ricochet! Listen up! Rumblefish? You and the rest of Bravo Team get to those wounded men and fall back south to our first waypoint. Rutang, Rockstar, and Rino, regroup on me. Move out!"

The team had been operating as two six-man units: Alpha and Bravo, with all radio call signs beginning with the letter R. Mitchell would exploit their division in order to provide cover for evacuating the wounded.

Another whistle rose in the night, this time closer, and suddenly the next mortar exploded, gray smoke and more shrapnel hurtling up through the canopy.

"Ricochet, this is Rutang," called the team's assistant medical sergeant, Thomas "Rutang" McDaniel. "Me and Rockstar are good to go, but Rino is gone, man. Hit by that last mortar. No pulse!"

There wasn't time to tally up the dead. All Mitchell knew was that he needed support — ground, air, anything — and he needed it now. He acknowledged Rutang's call, then switched frequencies, calling up Captain Fang Zhi's Taiwanese team. They were much closer than the Filipino team and were working the grid on the other side of the creek. "Wushu 06, this is Ricochet, over."

He waited, listened to the sound of his own breathing, the withering gunfire booming somewhere nearby, the shrill hiss of yet another mortar round, falling, falling…

"Wushu 06, this is Ricochet, over."

Mitchell switched frequencies once more to call upon the Filipino Team. "Black Tiger 06, this is Ricochet, over."

Boom! That distant mortar finally detonated.

"Ricochet, this is Black Tiger 06. I've heard what's happening. We're moving to your location, but we're still pretty far. ETA about twenty minutes, over."

"Roger that, Black Tiger. I have a lot of men down. Need you ASAP." Mitchell fed the captain his current GPS coordinates, then added, "Don't be late."

"We are running, Sergeant."

"Good! Ricochet, out."

Captain Gilberto Yano, aka Black Tiger 06, was a member of the Philippine Army's elite Light Reaction Battalion (LRB), the Delta Force of their army and specifically trained in counterterrorist activities. Yano was well-liked by his men and the rest of Mitchell's team. Knowing Yano and his boys were already on the way felt good, but it was going to be the longest twenty minutes of Mitchell's life.

And quite possibly the last.

Again, where the hell was Captain Fang Zhi? Mitchell called once more. No answer. Was he back in one of the nepa huts, smoking a cigar, while men died out here in the jungle?

Rutang and Rockstar hustled up and dropped down beside Mitchell.

Rutang was a baby-faced assistant medic and competitive video game player. He'd even entered and won several national tournaments, though he rarely bragged and was, for the most, curiously insecure about himself and his skills.

Staff Sergeant Bennet "Rockstar" Williams was the assistant engineer, a hard-faced African-American who hated rock music but who had pissed off the company commander by insulting the commander's AC/DC collection. The incident had become infamous, and the call sign had stuck.

Mitchell eyed both of them, drenched in sweat like he was, eyes bugged out, breath ragged.

"We need to cut off these guys and buy Bravo some time to evac. I saw muzzle flashes on our flanks."

"Me, too," said Rutang. "No telling how many yet, damn."

"Don't worry," Mitchell said, pouring more confidence into his tone. "We'll swing around, come in from the west, and tag their asses. That simple. You ready?"

"Sergeant, are you sure about this?" asked Rockstar.

"Of course he's sure," said Rutang. "Shut up!"

"I'm just saying—"

"Rock, I'm sure," said Mitchell, putting some real steel in his voice. "Go now!"

Mitchell took point, and they began scissoring their way through the jungle. He clutched his rifle a little too tightly, and the chin strap of his boonie hat began digging into his skin. He took a sharp turn around two trees, and the sounds of gunfire grew louder, along with the trickle of running water out there, beyond the jagged tree line.

At the next cluster of palms he called for a halt and slid back his boonie hat. Then he dug out his binoculars and scanned the area.

Despite the growing darkness, Mitchell still picked out several men dressed in nondescript fatigues with bandannas tied around their heads. They darted south, back toward Bravo Team.

He issued hand signals to Rutang and Rockstar: Got three, there, let's go!

They charged off, with Mitchell once again taking point, Rutang and Rockstar on his rear flanks, Rockstar checking their six o'clock as they advanced.

The ground was muddy, sucking too loudly at their boots as they cut through the brush, came around several more trees and clusters of dark shrubs, and right into a swarm of malaria-carrying mosquitoes that had all of them swatting at their faces. He prayed the layers of bug spray and the vaccinations would do their job.

As Mitchell's vision cleared, he spotted the three guys, ten, fifteen meters ahead, still weaving forward, seemingly unaware they had been followed.

Mitchell bolted to the base of the next tree, whose reddish brown bark was alive with ants. He signaled the others to drop and prepare to fire.

"Got one in my sight," said Rutang.

"Me, too," Rockstar added.

"Fire!" Mitchell cried, breaking the silence, but it didn't matter, because their M4A1 carbines echoed like rolling timpani drums, hungry rounds chewing through the air until they caught flesh.

"Bang, bang, bang, they're dead." Rutang grunted.

He wasn't lying. They'd dropped the trio cleanly, efficiently.

"Move!" cried Mitchell, knowing that before they could blink twice, they'd draw incoming fire.

He was wrong. It took three blinks before the trees and ground exploded as they sprinted past the men they had killed. They moved onto a steep mound, then Mitchell descended and turned back. Rutang came up hard on Mitchell's heels.

A triplet of gunfire cracked too close for comfort as Rockstar reached the crest. The stoic-faced black man gasped and shook as more rounds tore through his chest a second before he collapsed right on top of Mitchell.

"Bennet!" cried Rutang as he pulled the man off of Mitchell, who was now lying flat on his back, the tiny speaker in his ear rattling with yet another voice: "Ricochet, this is Red Cross. I cannot fall back. Say again, I cannot fall back. We're pinned down. I count at least eight Tangos and two DP positions. Sounds like they got plenty of rounds for those machine guns, too. We won't last long here. I need support, now!"

"Aw, Bennet, man, come on." Rutang gasped.

Mitchell rolled over, took one look at Rockstar, and knew. That warm feeling on Mitchell's neck was Rockstar's blood.

Rutang wrenched his rifle around, his face twisted with the desire for payback.

"No, hold fire a second," said Mitchell as he got on his radio. "Black Tiger 06, this is Ricochet, over."

No response. He called again.

Finally, Captain Yano answered, though his voice was nearly drowned out by a firefight, that same gunfire thundering in the distance. "Ricochet, this is Black Tiger 06. We've been engaged by the enemy — at least twenty Tangos. We're cut off from your position. Cannot get to you at this time, over."

"Roger that. Clear that zone and get here, over."

"We'll try, but they're hitting us hard! I've already got one killed, two wounded, over."

"I'm not taking no for an answer, Captain. Ricochet, out." Mitchell cursed under his breath and switched frequencies. "Wushu 06, this is Ricochet, over?"

He waited. Repeated the call. Cursed again. "Move!" he ordered Rutang.

They burst from cover and sprinted off, rounds tearing into limbs and leaves behind them.

"Ricochet, this is Red Cross. Too late, man. We just lost another two. And I've been hit. I'm bleeding out pretty bad, Sergeant. I can't stop it. You need…"

The transmission broke off as Mitchell and Rutang found themselves running near a volley of machine gun fire hammering the trees a few meters ahead.

He and Rutang thudded hard into the mud as the Degtyarev Pechotnyi (DP) light machine gun rattled and brass casings jingled and plopped into puddles.

For the first time in his life, Scott Mitchell doubted if his courage, skill, and audacity were enough to carry him through. His eyes burned as the senior medic's voice broke once more over the radio. "Sergeant, I'm dying, man. Please…"

Captain Fang Zhi, leader of the Taiwanese team, was propped on his elbows and observing the valley below through a pair of night-vision goggles. He had taken his men away from the creek and into the mountains when the first shots had been fired.

Though frowning over his orders, his team had obeyed without question, and only now did Sergeant Sze Ma, thirty-three, the oldest and most experienced soldier among them, voice his concerns.

"Sir, I am not doubting you. But I am confused. Why haven't we answered their calls for help? Why have we moved up here, if not to prepare sniper positions?"

Fang lowered his goggles and regarded the man whose deep-set eyes widened. "You attended the briefing."

"Yes, Captain—"

"Then you heard what I said to Major Liang and the Americans and Filipinos."

"I did. And they said they cannot provide the air reconnaissance you requested."

"Because it is cheaper for them to use us as bait."

"But, sir—"

"Our morale is already far too low, our recruitment numbers dropping. I won't waste good men on an ill-conceived mission. We need a victory here, but the Americans have not planned one for us. They planned to sacrifice us to save a dollar."

"Sir, they will call us cowards."

Fang raised his voice. "We are not cowards! And we are not sheep! Do you think they care how many of us die?"

"But, sir…"

With his temples beginning to throb, his teeth gnashing, Fang rolled over and burst to his feet, reaching over his shoulder and into his pack. His gloved hand locked onto his sword cane, a one-of-a-kind weapon and family heirloom that had been passed down to him from his father, who had died last year.

The cane's wooden shaft was slightly longer than an Eskrima stick and had been hand-carved with a tiger-stripe pattern. The blade inside was much more than just a flat sword, its cross section forged to resemble the Chinese character representing a square, side, part, or scheme, but, more importantly, the Fang family name:

Although the sword's design prevented it from cutting in the traditional sense, whipping strikes produced distinctive welts. Repeated strikes resembled the tiger-stripe pattern of the cane itself. The ultimate signature was the puncture wound from multiple sharpened tips. Fang Zhi's great-grandfather, who had designed the weapon, had wanted his enemies to never forget the Fang name, whose bloodline could be traced to one of the premiers of the Tang Dynasty.

As he had risen through the ranks, Fang had employed the sword cane to keep his men in line, beating them with the wooden sheath for minor offenses, drawing the sword and whipping them to produce welts for larger transgressions. He reserved the thrusting signature mark for those he wanted to teach the ultimate lesson. Thus far in his career, he'd never had to do that.

Yet at the moment, his anger had bested him, and the sword slipped fluidly out of the cane. He clutched the round handle, the ornate steel pommel etched with the same character representing the Fang family name. Yes, he could easily bludgeon someone to death with that hardened globe, but it was the sword he raised above Sergeant Sze Ma's head.

The sergeant scrambled up, raised his hands in defense. "Captain, please!"

"How dare you question me!" Fang reared back and struck the sergeant in the side of the neck, even as Sze Ma ducked from Fang's advance. Fang followed up with two more heavy blows to Sze Ma's head, dropping him.

Then Fang stood there, panting, seething, listening to his sergeant whimper in pain.

Finally, he could take no more. "Get up!" he screamed at Sze Ma. "Get up!"

Rubbing his wounds, the bleary-eyed sergeant glanced at Fang and nodded. "Yes, sir." Sze Ma got to his feet, stood a moment, then collapsed.

Fang's breath vanished. He dropped to his knees beside the sergeant, checked his neck for a pulse. Nothing.

Sze ma. I didn't mean to kill you!

Then… there it was, a weak but steady pulse. Fang closed his eyes and sighed as Sergeant Gao called, "Captain? Has Sergeant Sze Ma been hurt?"

Fang opened his eyes, slowly craned his head toward Gao, who was staring in awe at the sword in Fang's hand. "Yes, Sergeant, he has. Get Sergeant Dong here right away."

With Rutang's cry still ringing in his earpiece, Mitchell launched himself into the air and crashed into a long puddle at the base of the hillside, the water rushing over his head and blinding him for a moment until he came up, rolled onto his right side, and returned fire on the three men now emerging from the trees.

He dropped one, panned toward the second, but was surprised to watch that guy stagger back, his chest bursting apart.

Off to Mitchell's right, Rutang was on his gut and directing steady fire toward that guy, emptying his magazine.

Mitchell clambered to his feet, just as the third and final thug charged toward Rutang's position, knowing that Rutang was reloading. Mitchell rushed to the next tree, froze, tracked the man, and fired, the first burst catching him in the leg. The terrorist began limping, turned back to face Mitchell, opened his mouth to scream, and swallowed Mitchell's next volley.

"Rutang? Looks clear for now. Hold it there, over."

"Roger that."

Taking in a deep breath, Mitchell charged from the tree, racing hard and fast toward Rutang's position on the other side of the narrow valley. He wove a serpentine path, feeling the heat of imaginary fire — until he didn't need his imagination anymore. Another squad of terrorists targeted him from above, AK-47s popping, the trees and mud suddenly alive with fire.

"Black Tiger 06, this is Ricochet, over!"

"Go ahead, Ricochet," answered Captain Yano, his voice faint as gunfire boomed in the background.

"Stand by to receive my new GPS, over."

"Give me a minute, Ricochet! We're still taking heavy, heavy fire!"

"Roger that. I'll signal in a few minutes, out."

Nearly out of breath, Mitchell slashed through a path heavily draped in vines, then came up behind Rutang's position and cried, "Rutang, coming up!"

"Okay, Scott."

Rutang lay on his side just behind a pair of small palm trees. He was using the secondary blade of his Blackhawk Mark 1 knife to slice open his pants leg. In his other hand was a big trauma bandage that he summarily slapped on the wound with a gasp and groan. Then he cursed and said, "That hurts."

"I know, buddy." Mitchell turned his gaze just ahead. "Billy, how you doing?"

Billy Bermudez, the team's assistant weapons sergeant, lay bare-chested on his back, his young face creased in pain, his M9 Beretta clutched tightly in his hand. A small incision had been made between his ribs and a tube inserted to relieve the pressure. That tube now dangled from the bloody hole.

"Scott," Billy began after a labored breath, "I'm not so good."

"He's got a hemopneumothorax, but the tube will help for now," said Rutang.

Billy shifted his shoulders. "Don't move me again. It hurts too much, man."

"I know," answered Mitchell. "But you'll take the pain." Mitchell locked gazes with the man.

Billy hesitated, then nodded. "Give me more pain."

Mitchell grinned weakly, then regarded Rutang. "You're first. Before they get any closer."

Rutang nodded, and Mitchell slid Rutang's arm over his shoulder and hoisted the man to his feet. Rutang began to pant, as though being burned. He held his breath, tried to put weight on his wounded leg, then exhaled a string of epithets.

"Just let it out, man." Mitchell was dealing with his own wound, but he wouldn't allow these men to detect any sign of weakness.

"Scott, I can't use the leg." Rutang's eyes were blood-shot, his face screwed up in a tight knot. "I'm not kidding, bro. I'm not kidding."

"That's okay. Here we go." Mitchell hoisted the man across his shoulders and took off, his arm throbbing, his knees beginning to give out as he started up the hill, working at a forty-five-degree angle to alleviate some of the pressure on his legs. He concentrated on his rhythm, just marching, breathing, nothing in the way.

Automatic weapons fire raked the hillside as he turned up toward a large outcropping of rock shaped like an arrowhead and painted a deep brown in the darkness.

Mitchell eyed the puffs and splashes on the hill as the rounds struck. At the same time, he pricked up his ears, listening for the locations of those shooters.

In fact, every sense was dialed to ten, the stench of the jungle and his own salty sweat making him grimace as the earth sank under his heavy boots.

"Almost there," he told Rutang.

Just on the other side of the outcropping lay a wide crevice with a flat floor and backed by another wall of rock. The area made for an excellent defensive position. They would have the high ground.

But getting them all there… Mitchell didn't want to think about it.

Once in the crevice, he slowly lowered himself to his knees and began to let Rutang slide off his shoulders.

"I'm down," cried Rutang.

"All right. Crawl back up near the top here and give me a little suppressing fire."

"I'm on it, Scott."

As Rutang got into position, Mitchell took in a long breath, rubbed the corners of his eyes, then gripped his carbine. He made a quick call back to Black Tiger 06, relaying their new GPS coordinates.

Then, for just a second, he glanced up at the stars. Not much of a religious man, he figured it couldn't hurt to ask that big commanding officer in the sky to cut him a little slack.

And in that second, a surprising peace came over him. He would get Billy and Carlos. He would bring them back. He would make it.

"Scott, I'm set."

"All right. Here goes nothing."

Mitchell took off, came around the outcropping, and swept across the hill in a full sprint, assuring himself that every step was good, that no bullet could touch him.

Blood dripped from his wounded arm, but he ignored it, swept a little wider, as the mud-covered hill boiled with even more incoming fire.

The drumming of all those rounds, the clinking of brass, and the screams in Arabic and Tagalog all funneled into a steady hum that no longer bothered him. In fact, the hum drove him harder, faster, back toward his fellow operators.

Mitchell stumbled down on his heels through a little washout, fell backward onto his rump, and began sliding along with the streaming mud, landing with a sharp thud on a bed of broken rocks. He crawled forward, looked up, and found himself a few meters from a little ditch.

He blinked, saw three silhouettes in the distance, then his vision focused. He had just found three more of his men who had taken up a position some twenty meters west from Rutang's original spot.

The senior medic, Red Cross, lay in a pool of blood surrounded by soaked bandages. Rumblefish had taken multiple rounds in the chest and was propped up on a tree, his eyes vacant. Rapper, it seemed, had been dragged to cover after being hit by that mortar, his legs chewed down to the bone. He'd bled out quickly, his face gone gray in the half-light.

Mitchell wanted to close his eyes and remember their last moments together, but without a second to spare, he fought off the urge to gag and raced through the trees toward Billy and Carlos. In his haste, he'd forgotten to warn Billy he was coming, and as he rounded the last bush, a gunshot cracked on the tree to his left.

"Billy!" he cried.

"Geez, Scott!"

He reached the man and dropped to one knee. "Sorry, my fault. Thanks for having bad aim."

"Forget me. Go check on Carlos. I've been calling, and he's not answering now. He's right behind those palms."

Carlos Alejandro, the assistant communications sergeant, was arguably the most eloquent and scholarly member of the team. He spoke expertly on world politics, religion, and philosophy and could schmooze with majors, colonels, and even generals better than most officers Mitchell knew. And because of that, he wasn't one to ever go silent.

Mitchell found the man lying supine, his head turned to the right, as though he were listening to the ground. His eyes were wide open. "Carlos?"

The sergeant turned his head, looked up, his gaze slightly unfocused. "They're moving."

"You can tell?"

"Yeah, I just heard them scream."

"And you didn't hear Billy calling?"

"I figured if I didn't answer, he'd finally shut up."

Mitchell shook his head and smirked. "Ready? I'm carrying you back."

"Not in my lifetime."

Carlos had been hit at least twice in one leg and had taken a serious round in the shoulder. There wasn't a single white spot on any of his bandages.

"Don't give me any BS. You're coming."

Feeling guilty about having to lift the man but without another choice, Mitchell helped Carlos up to his feet, the man balancing on one leg and moaning softly.

Behind them, Rutang opened up on the men across the valley, muzzles winking from both sides of the jungle now.

And just as Mitchell pulled Carlos around and got him onto his back, a rocket-propelled grenade flashed and went streaking overhead like a falling star, casting harsh white light over the jungle as it headed toward Rutang's position.

Mitchell screamed into the radio, trying to warn the man, but his words were cut short by the explosion.

Smoke billowed, and rocks plummeted, as Carlos said through a shudder, "They got him."

"No," snapped Mitchell.

He started off with Carlos, heading directly toward that blast.

"They got Rutang," Carlos repeated.

"Don't believe it."

Yet Mitchell was back to losing hope himself. Was it all for nothing: the mission, his military career, his whole damned life? Would he get his men up to the high ground, where they would be slaughtered?

Where was the Scott Mitchell he knew? The guy who envisioned himself a Special Forces operator because he wasn't meant to live an ordinary life?

Where was the Scott Mitchell who pressed on, despite the odds, who never said quit?

The withering gunfire closing around Mitchell like a set of sharpened teeth began to taper off, and soon he heard only his breathing, his footfalls, and the soft groans coming from Carlos draped across his back.

He started up the hill toward the dust clouds still obscuring the rocks.

A single shot echoed across the valley, followed by the telltale whoosh of another RPG.

Mitchell whirled toward the sound. This was it. He took a last breath.

But the RPG arced wildly across the sky, raced over the trees, and vanished.

He frowned, spun back, and resumed his pace, reaching the shattered rock face where the outcropping had been. He came around the other side to find Rutang huddling deep in the crevice, illuminated by a penlight and inspecting an arm pinpricked by shrapnel.

"Oh, man, Scott." Rutang groaned.

"Hey, you're still alive. Don't complain. Turn that light off."

"Roger that. Just wanted see how bad it was."

"It's not bad."

"Feels bad."

Mitchell carefully set down Carlos. "Just hang on here, bro."

Carlos winced and nodded. "Somebody needs to go back for Billy."

Mitchell smirked. "Uh, yeah, that'd be me — and without covering fire this time. Aw, the hell with it…" He tugged out his M4A1's near-empty magazine and shoved in a fresh one as his earpiece buzzed:

"Ricochet, this is Black Tiger 06, over." Captain Yano's voice was freighted with tension.

Mitchell swallowed. "Go ahead, Black Tiger."

"We're still dug in pretty deep. You have at least ten Tangos moving toward your position, maybe more, and we can't cut them off from here. We've been calling for air support, but they're saying the zone is still too hot. You need to get out of there, over."

"Thanks for the heads-up. Ricochet, out."

Mitchell hadn't bothered calling for air support because he knew it would only come if the battalion commander was willing to risk those birds flying low over the jungle. The commander was no doubt monitoring all communications and knew very well what was happening.

Nevertheless, Mitchell made one last attempt himself, and to his utter surprise, Major Vic Zacowsky, the company commander, said he'd convinced the battalion commander to commit their three evac choppers to the fight. The Black Hawks were en route: ETA ten minutes.

Rutang and Carlos still had their headsets clipped on and had been listening to the channel. "They'll be late," said Rutang. "I just know it."

Mitchell nodded, keyed his mike. "Billy? I'm coming to get you, over."

"I hear that. Better run. I'm seeing movement out in the trees — those guys Black Tiger called about."

"On my way." Mitchell eased himself across the rocks, came around the other side, then rushed down the hill, a wave of adrenaline coursing through his chest.

Once again, he slid down the muddy stream, dropped onto the rocks, then stole his way past his dead teammates to reach Billy, who was right where they'd left him, M9 in hand, tube dangling from his chest. His breathing had become more labored, with blood now leaking from the tube.

Between labored breaths, Mitchell managed, "Hey, Sergeant. Time to go."

The man's face tightened in agony. "Okay."

"Here comes the part you won't—"

Mitchell cut himself off at the sound of a faint whoosh growing louder: an incoming mortar.

He dropped down over Billy, shielding the man's head and face as the mortar round blew apart the hill above them, the boom stinging Mitchell's ears.

As if cued by the burst, rounds scissored through the trees behind them, and Mitchell pushed himself in tighter against Billy. He knew if he returned fire they'd finish homing in on his position, despite his carbine's flash suppressor. If those Arabs had trained the kids right, they'd been taught to estimate enemy positions based on the telltale pops and cracks.

But Mitchell did have a couple of frags left. He reached into his web gear, drew one out, pulled the pin, then turned and hurled it toward the string of muzzle flashes, four, maybe five in all, festooning the rows of trees like Christmas lights.

"Okay, Billy, here we go," he said — a second before the grenade exploded.

He hauled the weapons sergeant onto his back and started off, leaving behind the shouts of the remaining terrorists and several incoming volleys of AK-47 fire.

"Ricochet, this is Rutang. I can see you. I know you can't talk, but they're moving in from your six. I can hear the choppers. I'll pop red smoke down there. Just keep running, Scott. Don't stop!"

The first mortar round had dug a crater surrounded by dozens of muddy pools, while rocks and split tree limbs now littered Mitchell's path. He circled around, but it was getting harder to see through the swirling dust. His right leg ached, and a warm, trickling sensation drifted down his calf.

Don't stop. That was right. No matter how he felt. No matter what he heard or saw.

But his legs just weren't capable anymore, every muscle blazing, his hips straining against the load until his boot rested squarely on a rock, and his ankle began to twist. He screamed and shifted his weight, getting off in time before the searing pain ripped through the ankle. He staggered forward, nearly fell, regained his balance.

"It's okay, Scott. Just put me down."

Another mortar exploded off to their right, maybe forty meters, followed by a fresh wave of incoming rifle fire.

"Hang tighter," he ordered Billy, then raging silently to himself, Mitchell poured everything left into his stride. He bounded up the hill, digging deeply into the mud, grunting through his teeth with every breath.

The fire in his legs had worked into his spine and fanned across his shoulders. He stooped over even more, about to drop Billy.

He had a dozen more steps.

Rutang appeared up top, reared back, and hurled his M83 smoke grenade, which landed far behind them and began to hiss…

Ten steps now. Six.

Four.

On the day he'd announced he was joining the army, Mitchell's father had told him, If you're going to be a soldier, Scott, then be the best.

A mortar whooshed down, somewhere directly behind him, and with the hairs on the back of his neck tingling, Mitchell threw himself and Billy around the rocks and into the crevice as the mortar exploded behind them.

They tumbled across the rocks and came to a bruising halt on the stone, arms and legs jutting into each other's faces.

Mitchell held his breath a few seconds more, then chanced a gasp, the stench of the explosion sending him into a fit of coughing. He pulled himself out from beneath Billy, then turned his gaze skyward at the spirit-lifting whomp of incoming Black Hawks.

Billy began screaming, the chest tube nearly wrenched from his body. Rutang was already attending to him while Carlos could barely keep his eyes open.

Above the drumming helicopters came shouts in Arabic, shockingly close now — right near the base of the hill.

Mitchell swung around his rifle to the ready position and hauled himself up, out of the crevice, wishing he hadn't looked back at his men. They were barely recognizable behind all the blood and mud.

He moved forward and shifted along the rocks, keeping his shoulder tight to the stone until he could hazard a look around the corner.

Two gunmen came charging up the hill.

Mitchell burst from cover and unleashed fire on the lead man, cutting him down.

The second guy dropped to his belly and rolled. Mitchell fired on him, but Rutang's red smoke began wafting back over the hill, blanketing the entire area.

Even as Mitchell squinted hard, rounds suddenly chewed into the rocks at his shoulder, ricocheting and sparking, sending him down low behind the rock. He swore and caught his breath.

One of the Black Hawks wheeled overhead, the door gunner leaning hard into his M134, rounds and tracers lashing out into the jungle like a phosphorescent tongue.

Mitchell came back around the rock, blasted by rotor wash and smoke, but even through burning eyes he spotted the thug below, who was running straight up at him to avoid the minigun fire stitching into his path.

All three of Mitchell's rounds punched into the guy's chest. He staggered back, fell onto his side, and rolled right into the door gunner's fire.

Before Mitchell's lips could even curl in a smile, something flashed from within a tree cluster across the valley.

And from that flash came a fiery streak of light, an RPG to be sure, arrowing straight for the Black Hawk.

In the time it took for Mitchell to crane his neck, the rocket struck the chopper and detonated inside the bay. Rapt by the surreal image, Mitchell just stood there a second as the bird pitched and turned erratically, trailing smoke and descending directly toward him.

One of the door gunners, his body engulfed in flames, bailed out, dropping some thirty feet to the ground.

Mitchell blinked — and the enormity of the moment took hold. He dove onto his gut as the Black Hawk wailed over him, passing within twenty feet, one of its landing skids scraping into the rocks behind him as the bird continued on, over the hill, then suddenly plunged down toward the trees.

He couldn't see the chopper, but he heard the rotors chewing into the limbs and the horrific whining of its engine until a series of smaller explosions and loud creaking of metal echoed away.

"Scott, this is Rutang, over? Scott, this is Rutang?"

"I'm here," he answered, picking himself up out of the mud. "Somehow."

"I'm up to the edge with the NVGs. I think I see Captain Yano's guys out there."

"Tell him he needs to help secure this area. I'm going over to the chopper to see if anyone made it."

"Don't waste your time. I can see it from here. Nobody survived that."

"I'm going anyway. Be right back, out."

Mitchell rushed down the hill, then worked his way through the trees toward the column of smoke.

The other two Black Hawks were off to the west, both door gunners hosing down the mountains, their laser beams of lead flickering in an eerie light show.

At the top of the next hill, Mitchell paused to survey the crash site with his NVGs, panning 180 degrees around the forest.

No sign of enemy activity yet. He started toward the downed bird, the stench of fuel hanging thick in the air.

Admittedly, no operator in his right mind would go in there. But there was always a chance that someone might still be alive, and Mitchell couldn't live with himself if he didn't have a look. Just a quick look, he assured himself.

So he held his breath and broke into a sprint.

The Black Hawk was listing to one side but still lay on its belly in a steaming trench. The tail and main rotors were gone, the landing skids ripped apart and jammed in mangled pieces behind the fuselage. Oddly, the cockpit panels were still illuminated.

As Mitchell neared the bird, waves of heat warmed his face, and he was forced to sneak a breath. The stench made his eyes tear as he stormed into the bay.

The charred crew chief lay in pieces on the floor, along with another of the door gunners. Mitchell nearly gagged as he made it to the pilot, who was barely conscious but alive. The copilot had caught several large pieces of shrapnel in the back of his neck, and Mitchell checked for a carotid pulse. Nothing.

"Captain, I'll get you out."

"I told them the damned zone was too hot."

"It's going to get hotter," Mitchell said as he unbuckled the man.

"Can't move my legs."

Mitchell tugged a penlight from his web gear, directed it into the pilot's lap, his legs showing no signs of injury.

But then he checked the back of the pilot's seat, which had been shredded by shrapnel. As he took the pilot by the shoulders and moved him forward, Mitchell noted bloodstains on the man's lower back. He had a spinal injury, no doubt.

Unable to get a good fireman's carry in the cramped quarters, Mitchell took hold of the pilot's shoulder straps and dragged him out of the cockpit, through the smoking bay, and outside, onto the ground, where he caught his breath.

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement among the twisted and severed trees.

He brought his rifle around and hit the deck.

The perimeter had come alive with the silhouettes of gunmen, shifting in and out from behind the trunks to get a bead on him.

One ricocheting round off the chopper's fuselage could ignite all that fuel that had spilled into the mud.

"Scott, this is Rutang, over."

"Rutang, stand by." Mitchell breathed a curse and braced himself for yet another gunfight.

"I won't lie here and die without a fight," said the pilot at Mitchell's side. He reached for his sidearm. "I'm taking one with me."

"Just hold up," Mitchell said, aiming at the nearest gunman leaning out from behind a tree, barely visible in grainy darkness. "Something's weird. They see us. They should've fired already."

"Ricochet, this is Black Tiger 06, over?"

Mitchell lowered his voice. "Go ahead."

"I've got my Bravo Team at the chopper crash site. They see you but are holding to continue recon, over."

Mitchell sighed deeply. He got up onto his haunches. "Hold fire!" he cried to the men on the perimeter. "Fall back on me!"

The gunmen came dashing from the trees, and they were, in fact, Yano's men.

"Ricochet, the last of the Tangos is on the run," the captain continued. "Let's regroup on the pickup zone, over."

"Roger that. I need help with my wounded."

"My medics are on the way, out."

Mitchell shifted over to the pilot. "Captain, it's time to go. I'll try to take it easy on you."

"Well, it's not like we can fly. In fact, I'll never fly again. You know that."

Mitchell wasn't buying into the pity party, and maybe he could relight the man's hope. "Sir, we don't surrender — ever."

"That rocket just ended my career. My life. Leave me here."

"No, sir."

"What's your problem, soldier? I said get away. That's a direct order." He raised his pistol.

Mitchell took in a long breath. "I guess you'll have to shoot me." He slapped the man's gun away and lifted him over his shoulders as the Filipino guys arrived. "I got him," he said, waving off their offers to help.

"What's your name, soldier?" asked the captain, his tone as threatening as they came.

"Mitchell. Scott Mitchell."

"I'll remember that."

"I'm sure you will." Mitchell shuffled away from the chopper, fighting to keep his balance.

Every operator they could locate was transferred back to the pickup zone, but Mitchell's team still had five unaccounted for and presumed dead. The search for their bodies would begin at daybreak. The row of bodies was too hard to look at.

As they rested on their packs, being attended to by Yano's medics and waiting for the choppers to land on a broad field bordering the jungle, Mitchell tried to call Captain Fang Zhi. He even went on to ask for any member of the Taiwanese team to respond, but none did.

Rutang shared the grim news passed on by one of the Filipino medics: Carlos had passed away. To the best of Billy's knowledge, only himself, Rutang, and Mitchell had survived the ambush.

Mitchell backhanded sweat from his brow, threw back his head, and closed his eyes.

Welcome to the Special Forces…

He was exhausted enough to sleep into the next century and so emotionally drained that he felt only a deep emptiness in his chest, accompanied by a low hum, like Gregorian monks chanting, their voices carried on the breeze. His thoughts began swirling, moments flashing from the distant to the more recent past.

He was a teenager in Youngstown, lying on his back beneath an old Ford Mustang and learning how to do his first oil change on a car…

He was wearing his neatly pressed uniform and saying good-bye to his father and siblings before he shipped out for the first time…

He was shaking Captain Foyte's hand and grinning broadly over being selected for ODA 574…

A commotion began at the edge of the field, and Rutang tugged on Mitchell's shoulder. Mitchell stirred, looked up, and saw the entire Taiwanese team emerging from the trees: all twelve of them, looking exactly as they had upon entering the jungle, perhaps a little sweatier.

His first thought was, Why aren't they all dead? Dead men tell no tales — or answer radio calls.

Mitchell sprang off his pack and jogged toward them, his bandaged arm and leg stinging again. He spotted Captain Fang near the back of the group.

Fang's English was pretty good, though he'd asked on several occasions for people to speak more slowly around him.

Well, Mitchell was happy to oblige, and his question, voiced entirely out of breath, was simple: "Captain, where… were… you?"

Fang brought himself to full height, and although he was several inches shorter than Mitchell, his muscular form and penetrating eyes offered ample intimidation. "Sergeant, I am sorry for your losses."

"You were listening?"

"Yes."

"You heard my calls for help?"

"I ordered my men to fall back."

"Excuse me, sir?"

Fang's team was beginning to gather around them, along with Captain Yano and his men.

"You heard me, Sergeant Mitchell."

Yes, he had, and the news made Mitchell nauseous.

"We weren't brought here to cross-train with you. We were brought here to be sacrificed — and I won't allow that to happen. Not to my men. Not for you. Not for anyone."

Mitchell began to tremble in rage. "Captain, what have you done?"

"I made a decision. And I stand by it."

"Captain Yano lost four men. I lost nine. You're insane." Mitchell took a step closer, coming within inches of Fang, getting directly in the captain's face. Mitchell raised his voice. "How could you walk away from the fight?"

"Step back, Sergeant."

"Answer my question!"

"Step back!"

Mitchell took another step forward, thrusting his bare chest out into Fang's and shoving the officer backward. "I will not step back! You should have stepped up! You're a coward! You're a traitor! You abandoned us! You left us to die!"

One of Fang's men shouted something, and Mitchell craned his head to Captain Yano, who quickly translated: "He says the American is right. We are cowards. We wanted to fight. But you wouldn't let us."

Even as Yano finished the translation, Fang spun around, reaching into his pack and unsheathing a strange, sticklike sword with many edges.

He started toward his man with the weapon, but Mitchell grabbed Fang's wrist with one hand and latched onto the sword's handle with the other.

Suddenly, Fang tripped Mitchell to the ground, wrenched free his sword hand, and struck Mitchell on the side of the head with the blade.

The blow sent Mitchell's head jerking to one side, and he literally saw stars for a moment before he sat up, blinking hard, checking his head for blood. He should've been cut badly but wasn't.

Meanwhile, Fang turned back toward his man, raising the sword over his head.

Yano raced in to try to block Fang, but the rest of the Taiwanese team rushed to intercept, seizing him and beginning to drag him away.

That's when an all-out brawl erupted, guys shouting, fists coming down while above the choppers swooped in, pivoted, and made their final descents.

Mitchell rose, started toward Fang, screaming his name.

Fang spun back, lowering the sword to make his thrust toward Mitchell's chest.

Still dizzy from the blow to his head, Mitchell tried to grab the sword before it dug into his abdomen, but the metal slid through his sweaty fingers, and the sharpened tips penetrated his flesh. He gasped and groaned as Fang was ripped away by Yano, who had freed himself and now drove the man to the ground, straddling Fang.

Mitchell stood there, blood dripping from his chest, the wound resembling an odd pattern of lines. "Captain Fang," he shouted. "You're a coward!"

The chopper crews rushed forward, weapons drawn, just as a third chopper landed.

Between the roar of engines and the hollering men, Mitchell couldn't hear anything, save for a single voice in his head repeating three simple words: Oh my God.

One of the Filipino medics came over to Mitchell, lifted his voice above the din. "Let me see that wound, Sergeant."

"What?"

"Your wound."

"Oh, it doesn't feel that deep."

"Deep enough for a good scar, though."

Mitchell shrugged and pushed past the medic, watching as the COs from all three teams began shouting and breaking up the riot. It was a scene unlike anything Mitchell had ever witnessed in his military career. But then again, none of them had ever hiked through this little corner of hell.

Fang's CO, a stout, hard-faced major named Liang, began reprimanding him, then raised his voice even more and slapped Fang in the face — in front of all the men. Liang then seized Fang by the back of the neck and escorted him toward the chopper.

Fang's gaze met Mitchell's for just a second, and all Mitchell could do was shake his head in disgust.

Five years after the ambush on Basilan Island, Fang Zhi stood on a street corner, smoking a cigarette and reading his newspaper in the late-afternoon glare. Yellow taxis lined the curb, and across the street, near the Toyota dealership, Fang's man, Yeh Chun-chang, sat parked in his gray sedan, waiting for a cell phone call from Fang.

In less than thirty minutes, a man would die.

And not just any man.

This individual represented the primary obstacle between Fang and his future life. It was not the man's fault. He was simply a victim of his own skills.

With car horns resounding in the street and the wind of a passing bus buffeting him as it roared by, Fang tried to calm himself. Nothing could go wrong. He had spent too many hours planning it all, waiting, watching, determining exactly what he must do.

Nearby, a small group of middle-aged Americans obviously on vacation were marveling over the cans of Coca-Cola they had just bought, cans imprinted with Chinese characters. Fang wanted to strangle the smiles from their faces.

Their country provided the model of arrogance, wealth, and self-indulgent lifestyle that had poisoned Taiwan's government. Officials routinely exploited their citizens to benefit themselves and gain American support. In doing so, they had created a culture of haves and have-nots, just like in America.

The Republic of China (ROC) Army in Taiwan, taking its cue from the government, behaved the same way. They would march Taiwanese troops into the fire if it would please the United States.

The more Fang thought about it, the shallower his breath became.

He scowled at the tourists as they walked by, then his gaze shifted to a man standing on the corner.

Fang did a double take. It was Sze Ma! Old Sergeant Sze Ma from Fang's last mission as an army officer. He was dressed in civilian clothes but still wore a crew cut, suggesting he might still be in the army. Fang tucked his newspaper under his arm, ditched his cigarette, and approached the man.

Sze Ma, who was simply waiting for the light to change, glanced up. His lip twitched as he recognized Fang. Probably out of habit or reflex, he blurted out, "Captain."

Fang's voice came coldly. "Sergeant. What are you doing here?"

"I came to look at a car across the street."

"How have you been?"

Sze Ma frowned. "Captain, years have passed, but I will never forget that night. That terrible night. And now, seeing you here again… I don't know what to say."

Fang bared his teeth, slapped a hand on Sze Ma's shoulder, shocking the man, and said, "Do you think I deserved what happened to me?"

"It doesn't matter what I think."

"I want to know."

"I'm sorry, Captain."

Fang grabbed Sze Ma's arm and tightened his grip. "Are you married now? Do you have a family?"

"Yes, one little girl."

"And does she know that she would not exist were it not for me and what I did to save your life?"

"You beat me with your sword. You refused to let me fight. I have not changed my mind about such things."

"You would be dead. And for what? To please the Americans?"

"Let me go. Because if you don't—"

"What will you do to me that they haven't already done? Strip me of my rank, my duty, everything I worked so hard for? Years spent in Fengshan at the academy? All for nothing!"

"Captain, I'm sorry. I need to go."

"So do I," said Fang. "So do I."

With that, he released the man, who hurriedly crossed the street before the light changed.

Sze Ma reached the opposite corner and stole a worried look at Fang, then he started toward the car dealership.

With a start, Fang was struck by what he was supposed to be doing. His gaze probed the street. He checked his watch and cursed.

Even as he reached for his cell phone, it began to ring: Yeh Chun-chang was calling.

"I saw him," said Yeh. "He crossed the street just like you said he would. He was wearing the jacket. I saw you talking with that other man. I could have done the job, but you told me not to go until you called."

"I'll call you back."

Fang broke into a sprint, reached the corner, turned left, then raced down the sidewalk, past rows of buildings, looking for a man wearing a white athletic jacket with red sleeves. The jacket bore the 2008 Olympic Games logo, along with a dragon wrapping around its side.

The jacket belonged to Kao Ku-ching, the man who was supposed to die, the man who was now gone.

Fang reached the corner, shot looks both ways up the alleys, then glanced forward to an old apartment building where Kao lived in a modest one-bedroom on the third floor.

Through an open window Fang saw a television flick on, and he knew Kao had made it home safely. Fang called Yeh and said, "We'll need to wait until tomorrow."

"I will need to be paid for today."

Fang sighed in disgust and said, "Yes. Same time tomorrow."

"Very well. You should pay attention because this can become very expensive for you."

"I will. And you will receive your final payment only after the job is done. Remember that."

Scott Mitchell took a deep breath and grinned in satisfaction over the scent of fresh-cut pine. He was out at the storage garage he rented, just fifteen minutes off the base, where he'd set up his woodworking shop.

Although it was only ten A.M., he was already soaked in sweat. He tugged off his T-shirt and used it to wipe away the perspiration running down his chest and over the scar on his abdomen. That curiously shaped mark often drew questions that he avoided in an effort to bury the past. He got back to work on the table saw, cutting his next piece.

Some Special Forces operators went hunting or fishing in their off time, and Mitchell did a little of both. He'd bagged a few nice deer in his day and could tie on a Texas-rigged worm to bass-fish with the best of them, but it was the woodworking that gave him both a perfect release of stress and an incredible sense of accomplishment when he finished a piece.

While he was hardly as accomplished as those woodworking hosts on TV, he had designed and built some very intricate and ornate pieces: writing desks, curio cabinets, gun racks and display cases, and even a large entertainment center that he had sold to the battalion commander, whose wife had ordered Mitchell to do so.

His current project was a little different. One of the warrants of an ODA team in his company was a breeder of African and South American tortoises: sulcatas, leopards, and redfoots, respectively, and Mitchell had been hired to build several tortoise tables upon which the critters would roam and live indoors when the weather did not permit them to graze outside.

So he'd come up with some rather simple but attractive designs for these enclosures and was hoping to finish the first table and have it ready for stain by the end of the day, because he'd be quite busy that evening.

Ah, yes, the smell of fresh-cut pine in the morning. Better than napalm any day.

People's Liberation Army Captain Xu Dingfa dropped his duffel bag in the apartment's entrance foyer, didn't bother closing the door, and collapsed onto one of the beds. He rubbed his eyes and ran fingers through his crew cut.

The elevator had been so crowded that Xu opted to hike up all six flights of stairs to the top floor of his building. As an Olympic gymnast and specialist on the rings and pommel horse, he possessed considerable upper body strength, but he had also worked hard to improve his legs, turning them into sinuous sticks of solid rock. Consequently, all those stairs should not have posed a problem. Yet even he was exhausted, in part from all the adrenaline and anticipation.

Xu was billeted in one of twenty such apartments constructed in the western part of the village dubbed the Residential Quarter, where another twenty buildings rose to nine floors. More than sixteen thousand athletes and officials were staying there, and Xu had encountered at least a half dozen languages within the first ten minutes of arrival.

In two weeks the opening ceremonies would commence, and until then all of the athletes could spend time training and familiarizing themselves with their new quarters — and their new roommates.

Xu's roommate had yet to arrive. The man was from Taiwan and competing on their shooting team, but that was all Xu knew about him.

Taiwan… Of all the countries his roommate could have been from…

Xu's first thought had been to seek a new room or at least swap rooms with one of his teammates, but in the spirit of the Olympic Games, he thought he would at least give the man a chance. Perhaps they could engage in some interesting political debates.

However, just mentioning Taiwan made Xu's breath grow shallow and his chest tighten. He would never forget the bitterness of his father and the lament of his mother as they spoke of the land they only referred to as Formosa.

He rose from the bed, went to the window, gazed down at the forest that stretched out between the buildings. Hundreds of people milled about down there, with knots of athletes and reporters conducting interviews on nearly every corner.

"Hello," came a voice from the doorway.

"Oh, hello."

A muscular man with short black hair and a fiery gaze stood in the doorway. He would have resembled any other Taiwanese man, were it not for those eyes.

Xu shifted to the man and offered a light handshake. "You are Fang Zhi?"

"Yes, and you're Xu Dingfa."

He nodded. "This is our apartment."

"Yes."

Their exchange was cold, formal, and Xu hoped it might remain that way. Perhaps the less they said to each other, the better.

Fang shifted inside, noted the wrinkles on the bed Xu had chosen, then carefully moved to the other bed. "I will sleep here?"

"Yes."

"So you are in the army? So was I."

Xu frowned. Why had Fang's tone lightened? First those eyes, which suggested he would be anything but friendly, and now an attempt at casual conversation?

"Fang. I must be honest. I was not happy to learn that I would be sharing a room with someone from—"

"I understand. But on the contrary, I was happy to learn I would be sharing a room with you."

"You were?"

"Yes, you are a military officer for whom I have the utmost respect."

Xu drew back his head in disbelief. "I have only known you five minutes, and already you are an interesting man, full of surprises."

Fang's eyes widened. "Yes."

Captain Scott Mitchell, Ghost Team leader, lay prone on a ridgeline approximately fifty meters south of three mud-brick houses standing in sharp relief against a frozen hilltop. Smoke wafted from stone chimneys and fluttered like pennons before dissolving into the night air.

Somewhere in the valley below, within the snow-covered alleys between dozens more homes, a dog howled and firelight flickered from more windows. Then… it grew eerily quiet.

Up ahead, Staff Sergeant Joe Ramirez and Sergeant Marcus Brown shifted furtively toward the houses, following a gully that ran up near a lone, leafless tree.

Sergeant Alicia Diaz, the team's marksman, had darted off west toward the opposite hill overlooking the houses to select her sniper's perch.

Mitchell cleared his throat and tapped a button on his earpiece with integrated camera and microphone. "Cross-Com activated."

Attached to that same earpiece was a monocle that curved forward and glowed with screens displaying his uplink and downlink channels, icons representing his support elements, and his rifle's targeting reticle, among other bits of data. While the three-dimensional images seemed to appear in his head-up display (HUD), they were actually being produced by a low-intensity laser projecting them through his pupil and onto his retina. The laser scanned vertically and horizontally at high speed using a coherent beam of light, and all data was refreshed every second to continually update him.

In order to accomplish that task, the Cross-Com system connected via satellite to the entire military's local and wide area networks (LAN/WAN) so that in effect the commander in chief could see exactly what he was doing and speak to him directly on the battlefield. That level of network-centric warfare — all part of Mitchell's Integrated Warfighter System (IWS Beta Version) — was as significant as it was unnerving. No mistake ever escaped his superior's attention.

He thumbed a button on the wireless controller in his hand and switched his HUD to a view captured by the UAV3 Cypher drone hovering two hundred feet over the houses. The ring-shaped drone with central rotor and multiple cameras and imaging systems was small, barely two meters, and newly rigged to operate much more quietly than earlier models.

With his gloved finger, Mitchell shifted the controller's joystick, steering the drone toward the target while switching between infrared and thermal modes in an attempt to identify how many occupants were in each house.

Mitchell grinned in awe.

During the past eighteen months he had fielded some mind-blowing gear while serving in the countries of Georgia and Eritrea, and he never ceased being impressed. Now, not only was he on a mission of utmost importance, but he had been chosen to field-test an early beta version of the Cross-Com system, a program whose funding was already in jeopardy. Despite that, he had made the stern argument that every operator on his team should be fitted with the devices, cost be damned. He thought it invaluable to have all Ghosts equipped with the best technology to have total situational awareness, not just the team leader. He'd won his argument.

Indeed, Susan Grey had been right about the Ghosts. They got what they wanted because they produced results.

Originally formed in 1994, the Ghosts were better funded, better trained, and better equipped than all other Special Forces companies because they had to be. They were the spearhead of all American Special Forces, a quick-response team, first in and last out. While the cliche "the best of the best" made Mitchell wince, it was undeniably true. Every operator had been handpicked, and the organization's existence was classified, compartmentalized. The army did a damned good job of keeping that secret, too, disguising them as just another unit. Mitchell had been in the service a long time, and he'd never heard of the Ghosts until Grey had crashed his party.

It had been an eventful and enlightening eighteen months to be sure, yet of all the missions he had run thus far, this one was arguably the most difficult — for multiple reasons.

Earlier in the evening, the wind speeds had been increasing, nearing the limit, and they shouldn't have jumped at all, but Mitchell wouldn't allow weather to stop them. No way.

So they had bailed out of a perfectly good C-130 and had made a hair-raising high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) insertion into the mountains just west of a town called Miranshah, where for the last three years the Taliban had established several bases of operations, including public offices — an act that had continually outraged the locals. The team had been given full drone support; otherwise, they were on their own until they rallied back on the pickup point one kilometer due east of their current position. They were dressed and armed like Taliban insurgents, save for the suppressors on their AK-47 rifles. Even Diaz was toting along a Dragunov sniper rifle instead of a silenced SR-25 or some of the other rifles she preferred.

For his part, Mitchell had offered his people the requisite sarcastic welcome to the tribal lands of Waziristan, the most hostile part of the entire country, a wild west ruled by local leaders or maliks (kings) who had either made deals allowing the Taliban to live and train within their territory or who had been coerced into making deals. Over the years, over two hundred maliks had been slaughtered trying to stand up to the Taliban.

Despite that legacy of death, Mitchell had no reservations about taking on the mission, especially when he'd learned about who was involved.

He maneuvered the drone to the farthest house, descended a few meters, centered the reticle and grid overlay, and whispered to himself, "Come on. Be there."

The drone hummed quietly. Mitchell's breath steamed. He sniffled, tensed, waited.

Abruptly, three brilliant green diamonds flashed in his HUD, along with three familiar names and their blood types. The diamonds zoomed in on the locations of each man in the house.

He'd found them! And he repressed the desire to shake a fist in the air.

Signals coming back from specially modified "Green" Force Tracker Chips under the skin of each man had allowed the computer to discern them as friendlies.

The GFTCs were part of a sophisticated and fine-tuned Identification, Friend or Foe (IFF) system that functioned much faster and more accurately than laser-based predecessors. Implanted chips were less cumbersome and more secure than external, radio-like identifiers. Additionally, the GFTCs were equipped with two security systems: (1) a DNA identifier so that the chips couldn't be used by enemies and still function, and (2) rolling encrypted signals to avoid enemy interception. Mitchell also had the command authority to update those rolling codes at his discretion.

The drone was beginning to get too close to the house, blowing snow from its roof, and Mitchell swore and guided it back to gain altitude.

The other individuals inside, four in all, were located via thermal infrared imagers and designated as "soldiers" with red numbered diamonds that also flashed and zoomed in on their positions. Mitchell could change those designations with a voice command override, should an enemy turn out to be a friendly or a civilian. "Target Three is Green," he might say.

Calming himself now, he flew the drone even higher, all of its data transmitted in real time over the entire network.

The drone picked out eight more targets, including a heavily bundled-up man posted outside each door.

They were only outnumbered three to one. Mitchell liked those odds.

"Ghost Lead, this is Brown," called the gunner. "I'm in position."

"Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez. I'm moving up. Almost there." The rifleman and communications expert aka commo guy had shivered through his words as he fought for breath.

The Cross-Com's security measures gave Mitchell and his teammates the luxury of using their own names over the radio, though he was identified as Ghost Lead in most cases. Sometimes he missed the old call signs, all starting with the same letter on an ODA team: Rockstar, Rapper, Rutang…

He took a deep breath. "Ghost Team, this is Ghost Lead. Check your HUDs. You can see our package of three is in the last house. Looks like we have twelve Taliban here. Note their positions. I'm sighting the first guard. Talk to me, Diaz."

Staff Sergeant Jose "Joe" Ramirez had his eye on the remaining guard, whose head snapped back as he tumbled to the snow. The last thing that had gone through the guard's mind was 7.62 mm long, weighing 21.8 grams, and Ramirez gaped over Diaz's outstanding shot.

Captain Mitchell barked his order to move out, and Ramirez and Sergeant Marcus Brown sprang up from the snow like thawed zombies and charged toward the houses.

It felt good to run. For a while Ramirez thought his legs and a few other more important parts were going to freeze and crack off.

They reached the door of the farthest house, and Ramirez dragged what was left of the guard's body out of the way so that he and Brown could position themselves on either side of the warped wooden door.

Captain Mitchell would join them in a minute, while Diaz was booting her way through heavy snow to reach her secondary position.

The houses were only about four meters apart, so if they made any serious noise, the Taliban guys next door were sure to come out — or at least begin writing letters to their homeowners' association complaining about the noisy neighbors firing all those guns. This was the part about being a Ghost that frustrated Ramirez. If they could just blow the other two houses while simultaneously raiding the last one, they'd only have four bad guys to deal with. However, most of the really fun explosives tended to be a little noisy, and the team was supposed to get in and out without drawing attention. If they could change their name to Big Loud Badasses, they could awaken the pyromaniac in every operator. He'd even pitched the idea to a few colleagues who'd smiled, said they liked the name, and told him he was a fool.

As a kid growing up on the streets of North Hollywood, California, he'd had ample opportunity to get into trouble and develop a taste for blowing things up.

But it hadn't gone down that way. Not at all. His parents had immigrated from Mexico and had held fast to the old ways. He couldn't relate to them or to the kids running the streets. So he retreated into himself, got into ham radios, and talked to people all over world.

During high school he flourished on the ever-growing Internet but lacked the social skills to have any close friends. By the time he graduated, he was part of a hacker community that, well, got him into a little trouble. Petty stuff, initially, but his "skillz" soon implicated him in a case of identity theft that left him staring into the eyes of a North Hollywood detective, Ms. Roberta Perez, who took him under her wing, got him off of some serious charges, and suggested that he join the army before he did something even more stupid.

Perez's brother Enrique was in the army, and he sat down with Ramirez to explain that the military wasn't just for people who couldn't hack it in society like Ramirez had thought.

Ramirez wouldn't lie and say that the army didn't have its share of dummies and criminals (like most government-run organizations), and he had encountered a few of those exceptional individuals during boot camp. But his time in boot was life altering. His drill sergeant, Paul "Papa" Montgomery, had taken a liking to him, and, after driving him to within an inch of death, Montgomery had practically ordered Ramirez to apply for Ranger School.

Long story short, he was accepted and served two tours right here along the border and had already won the Purple Heart and a Silver Star — all while working on his undergraduate degree in history.

And then some administrators at Officer Candidate School got the bright idea to offer him a desk job.

Were they kidding? They'd advertised it like a promotion, even hinted that he was getting a little old for the battlefield. He was now only thirty-one.

Ramirez had tried to be polite, saying what an honor it was to be offered a desk job after engaging in some of the most exciting, adrenaline-pumping operations known to mankind. Yes, what an honor it would be to replace ink-jet toner cartridges and squint at applications files stored via outdated software instead of thwarting the efforts of those who wanted to terrorize and control others.

All right, so maybe he wasn't exactly polite. His wiseass attitude and keen sense of humor were the products of years of living in the field and contending with the great ironies of life. The high school introvert had finally grown up.

It was Lieutenant Colonel Harold "Buzz" Gordon himself, a member of one of the first Ghost teams and now a legend, who had rescued Ramirez from the world of simulated wood grain and stress balls. While some called Gordon "the old man," Ramirez was more fond of "O-G," not for "Original Gangsta" but for "Original Ghost." Lieutenant Colonel Gordon, the O-G, was a man of impeccable taste and unparalleled foresight, in Ramirez's humble opinion.

And Ramirez felt certain that Captain Mitchell had picked him for this mission because of Gordon's recommendation and because of his Ranger experiences in the region. Ramirez was intimately familiar with the people and the terrain. While his Dari and Pushtan weren't bad — never as good as Diaz's — his Arabic was pretty impressive. He even knew a little slang that could incite some folks.

He glanced over at Marcus Brown, who, despite being a burly African-American rising some six feet four inches, appeared lean and white, his face half obscured by his breath.

Seeing how intense Brown was made Ramirez want to lower his weapon and start unzipping his fly — but he thought better of trying to get a laugh now. Sometimes he took the humor too far.

The captain stole his way toward them, then hunkered down behind Ramirez as Diaz, with her mild Texas accent, cut in over the radio, "Ghost Lead. I'm in my secondary. Good to go. Waiting for you."

They were seconds away from initiating the raid, and in his mind's eye, Ramirez went over the interior of the house one more time.

The structure was rectangular, single-story, just a thousand square feet if that. The door was positioned on the left side, forcing them to move deep into the house, past a partitioning wall to get to their package.

Two of the four Taliban were lying in the forward room, near the fireplace, while the other two were in back, in the colder part of the house with the hostages.

This complicated things. They couldn't ram through the door, shoot the first two guys, and hope the guys in the back wouldn't kill the friendlies.

They had to get into the house quietly, dematerializing and walking through the walls, then returning to normal inside.

Damn, it'd be nice to have that power.

Instead it was up to Ramirez to kneel down, fish out his tool pouch, and begin picking the lock.

And no, the door was not unlocked. He always checked that first.

"Ghost Lead, this is Diaz. I got one coming out of the back house. He's stopping, lighting up a cigarette."

In five seconds that guy could round the corner and spot them. Ramirez almost had the lock.

"Diaz, can you take him out?" asked the captain.

"It's not clean. He's in a bad spot. And he seems a little weird now, might be getting ready to look for his buddy. I don't have a shot. No shot."

"Brown, go get him," ordered the captain.

Picking the lock was one thing. Getting the door to swing open quietly was another, and Mitchell flinched as Brown placed his gloved hand on the icy wood and drove the door forward.

Ramirez wore a smirk of confidence, thoroughly convinced that their entry would be smooth and soundless. After picking the lock, he had sprayed the corners of the door with his own custom blend of lubricants that he insisted would seep down, get into the metal, and eliminate what he called those "Haunted-house-Michael-Jackson-'Thriller'-type door squeaks."

The hinges, of course, were located on the inside of the door, so Mitchell remained dubious about the amount of lubricant that had actually reached them from the outside. But lo and behold, the door glided open. However, the cold wind rushed in, a wind they had no control over. The two men lying in small wooden beds on either side of the fireplace stirred, and one lifted his head.

Before Mitchell could fire, Ramirez and Brown put their pistols to work, sending both men back to eternal rest, blood pooling on their pillows.

Mitchell bolted to his feet and moved inside, closing the door behind them.

A voice came from the other room: a guy complaining in Pashto about the door being open.

Mitchell shifted around the partitioning wall toward the voice and took in the scene at once: another two beds, two guys, hostages in the corner. One guy rolling over.

Mitchell directed his own silenced pistol at the first guy and cut loose a round, hammering him in the chest.

Continuing in one fluid motion, he turned to his right and targeted the second guy, who was reaching for the rifle propped beside him. The guy's head twisted as Mitchell shot him.

But now the first guy was moving again. Mitchell rushed up to the bed and finished him with two more rounds. One would have been enough, but his frustration got the best of him. "Clear," he grunted into the radio.

"Who are you?" someone called.

Mitchell stepped around a beat-up dresser, piles of wool blankets, and a half dozen or so crates of ammo to reach the man who had called out to him.

Agent Thomas Saenz, code name Mongoose, was a longtime field operative for the CIA who had spent the past eight years in Afghanistan. With a ruddy complexion, long beard, and matted, shoulder-length hair, Mitchell could barely distinguish him from his Taliban captors. His hands were bound behind his back with a pair of heavy police cuffs.

Beside him sat Agent Erik Vick, code name Viking, a broad-shouldered, stocky man with a shock of chestnut brown hair and a wiry beard. He, too, could easily be mistaken for an insurgent and had spent the past three years working the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the tri-border area to the west.

And the third man, well — Mitchell could barely breathe, and a dull ache came into his eyes. It was Rutang, all right, his old friend who had gotten back on the horse, deployed to Afghanistan, and been making a new name for himself for the past couple of years as a top-notch Special Forces medic. The last time Mitchell had seen him was at his promotion party.

Rutang's face was mostly purple, his left eye swollen, and they'd obviously drugged all of the men to keep them docile. Mitchell's penlight revealed dilated pupils.

"Diaz, here, sir. Got another guy coming outside the center house. Better hurry."

"Roger that. Ramirez, keep covering the door. Brown? Get in here, now." Mitchell glanced over his shoulder as the gunner entered. "They're cuffed. I need keys."

"I'm on it."

"Tang, can you hear me?"

"Who are you?" asked Saenz.

Mitchell regarded the man with a weak grin. "We're the guys getting you out of here." He faced Rutang once more. "Come on, bro, you with me?"

"Scott, is that you?"

"Yeah." Mitchell swallowed and steeled himself as Rutang began to cry. "You're all right, Tang. Stop." They had beaten him so thoroughly that Mitchell feared picking him up.

"Keys," said Brown, after wrenching them from the nearest insurgent's pocket. He crossed around the bed and began opening Saenz's cuffs. Then he worked on Vick's.

"Captain," called Diaz. "The guy outside is moving around the back. He'll spot the bodies. I have a shot."

"Take it!"

Rutang cleared his throat. "Scott, I let everybody down again."

"No. The cache was blown. You stayed alive."

Three days ago Rutang's ODA team had been tasked with entering Waziristan based upon intel provided by Saenz and Vick. A pair of arms dealers with Chinese connections had arrived with a massive shipment of Chinese-made small arms, and the team's mission had been to kill the dealers and destroy the cache before it was delivered to the Taliban insurgents. Those small arms would undoubtedly be smuggled across the border into Afghanistan and could even reach Iran and Iraq. Those arms would no doubt be used against American and coalition forces in the region.

Part of a split team operation, Rutang and the rest of his six-man group, along with the two CIA agents, had served as the outer cordon, providing security and overwatch while the other six moved into the small village to take out the dealers and blow the cache.

What happened after that only Rutang and the agents could tell. Signals Intelligence had picked up a beacon in a snow-covered saddle about a quarter kilometer east of the houses, and further investigation of the site via satellite and Green Force tracking revealed that at least five members of the team were there, although all five GFTCs indicated no pulse.

The weapons cache had been destroyed, and higher assumed that Rutang, Saenz, and Vick had tried to hide the bodies then escape across the border into Afghanistan. Somewhere along the way they were captured.

"They got us because of me, Scott," Rutang said through a groan. "Because of me."

"No time to worry about that."

"Listen. First team got taken out in the explosion. But the others… We couldn't just leave 'em there."

"Tang, forget it."

"We planted a beacon on the site so higher could bring 'em home."

"Higher knows about the marker. They'll send in a recovery team. Don't you worry, brother. Nobody gets left behind."

Brown finished removing Rutang's cuffs, just as Diaz's voice broke once more over the radio. "Captain, I got him. But the bodies are piling up out here — you'd better move!"

"Roger that. We're getting them out right now. Ramirez, they're drugged. I need help."

Ramirez rushed back into the room, helped Saenz to his feet, draped the guy's arm over his shoulder. Brown assisted Vick, while Mitchell got Rutang to his feet — and it was now even more clear that he'd been the worst beaten of the group.

"Get some jackets, hats, gloves, whatever you can find. Bundle them up and get 'em ready to move," Mitchell ordered.

Ramirez and Brown got to work, and within minutes they had all three dressed and ready to face the weather.

"Buddy, I have to lift you," Mitchell told Rutang.

"I know."

Mitchell hoisted Rutang over his shoulders. "Just like old times, eh?"

"Yeah."

"At least you're lighter than the last time I carried you."

"I've been on the Taliban diet. Lose ten pounds in three days, guaranteed."

"Great. Now shut up and let me rescue your ass. Diaz, are we clear to move?"

"Affirm — wait, negative, negative! Another guy from the middle house, heading right for your door! He looks unarmed, but he's too fast for me."

"Captain, he's mine," said Brown, who carefully brought Vick to the bed, then rushed to the front door, drawing his Nightwing.

Mitchell put a finger to his lips, warning Brown.

The gunner nodded, eyes growing wide with an intensity that nearly lit the room.

The door swung open, and in stepped the guy, much shorter than the others, wearing a tan and black shemagh over his head and face. His voice came muffled: "Who stole my cigarettes? I want to know right now!"

Brown rolled away from the door. And the rest happened so quickly, so efficiently, that Mitchell could only mouth a curse in utter awe.

Like a bolt of lightning, Brown got behind the insurgent and slid his arm beneath the guy's chin, locking his jaw shut while simultaneously driving his blade into the man's heart.

With the blade still jutting from the man's chest, Brown released his hand, loosened his grip on the guy's neck, and began stuffing the guy's shemagh into his mouth.

The insurgent was still alive, beginning to bleed to death, and it could take a minute more before he lost consciousness. Knife wounds did not produce instant death the way they were portrayed in films and on TV, and Brown knew exactly what he was doing to keep the man quiet until blood loss took its toll.

"All right, let's go," Mitchell ordered.

Brown freed his knife, then hustled back to Vick, who slung his arm over Brown's shoulder, and they fell in behind Mitchell.

Ramirez and Saenz led the way out into the bitter cold and a more powerful wind that stung their cheeks.

They started down the hill, rallying back toward Diaz's position, but Mitchell found a little section of hill where a pair of snow-covered boulders provided exceptional cover. "Set 'em down here."

"Scott, what now?" asked Rutang, slurring his words.

"Just making sure we're not followed. Brown's staying with you. We'll be right back. Diaz, you reloaded and set?"

"Yes, sir."

Mitchell stole a moment to pull up intel from the UAV3 Cypher drone. He brought the drone back over the houses to confirm that of the twelve insurgents, only three remained. Two guys were in the center house, one in the first house.

"Drone's confirmed their positions. You seeing this?"

"Roger that," said Diaz.

"Got it, sir," added Ramirez.

"Okay. Ramirez and I got the center house. Diaz, cover that door of the first. That guy comes out, he's yours."

"Standing by."

Mitchell loaded a fresh magazine into his pistol, then said, "Ramirez? Move out!"

Boots digging deep in the snow, they drove up the hill and reached the middle house, entirely out of breath. They weren't wasting time with the lock now. Ramirez drew back and kicked in the door.

Mitchell rushed in, knowing that their targets were on the left side, near the fireplace. Both men had rolled over, sat up, and began screaming at Mitchell, who shot the first one even as Ramirez cried, "Shut up!" and silenced the second.

The MH-60K Black Hawk was the Special Forces variant of the army's front-line utility helicopter and designed to take ODA and Ghost teams on long-range missions deep into enemy territory. In order to do that, a pair of 230-gallon external fuel tanks had been mounted on either side of the fuselage, beneath the rotor, and at the moment, Mitchell watched as those tanks were being targeted by the insurgents below.

With the awe-inspiring grace of its namesake bird, the pilot throttled up the pair of General Electric engines and banked hard out of the line of fire. He made a complete circle then dove, bringing his chopper to bear on the targets below. The pair of M134 7.62 mm mini-guns mounted in the crew doors wailed and stitched blazing, tracer-lit paths through the snow as the Taliban fighters dove for cover.

Those gunners continued putting serious steel on target, but one carefully aimed rocket-propelled grenade from the bad guys could end it all, as it had back on Basilan Island. Their pilot was taking one hell of a risk for Mitchell and his team.

"I don't believe this," cried Ramirez. "The zone can't be hot!"

"Bad intel," said Brown. "After all that. Bad intel."

"Ghost Lead, this is Black Hawk Two-Niner. I'm heading for a ridge just west your position, twenty meters. I'll hover there."

"Roger that, Two-Niner."

The Black Hawk came out of its dive and made a climbing turn to the south as the gunners broke fire.

All along the mountain trail ahead, muzzles winked, as though a long cord of short-circuiting wire had been stretched over the rocks and ice.

"Everyone, listen up," snapped Mitchell. "Those guys weren't waiting for us. They're on a rat line, coming back from A'stan. They were probably in the caves till now. We just got bad timing. Diaz, you and I help out those door gunners. Brown? You and Ramirez get 'em on board. Ready people? Here he comes!"

As the Black Hawk roared by, and a fresh wave of gunfire pinged off its fuselage, Mitchell craned his head and realized that Ramirez and Brown were taking the CIA agents. "No!" he cried, pointing at Rutang still strapped into the stretcher. "You get him first."

"Roger that," hollered Ramirez.

"That how it is, Captain?" shouted Agent Saenz. "You decide who lives and dies?"

Mitchell gave the man a look, then regarded Diaz. "Move out."

He sprang from cover and broke left, with Diaz right behind. They picked their way along a stretch of broken boulders and snow, then dropped behind a narrow spine of mottled rock, able to prop up on their forearms.

Mitchell's HUD began to light up with so many targets that he thought the IWS had crashed. He estimated near thirty now, and who knew how many more to come.

"I'm hunting for the RPGs," announced Diaz, ready to shoot any Taliban fighter shouldering a rocket meant for the chopper. "Got one. Taking the shot!"

"Oh my God," said Diaz.

"I told you not to look back," said Mitchell.

"Saying that made me look back."

"Me and my big mouth." Mitchell tightened his grip on her wrist.

The Black Hawk, outlined in green on Mitchell's HUD, was churning up a storm that quickly enveloped them, ice particles needling into Mitchell's nose, ears, and cheeks.

He'd take the pain, because all that rotor wash helped conceal them. The Taliban fighters in pursuit, who'd come in a long stream across the top of the hill like a Roman army, had just lost sight of their targets.

But in a last-ditch effort, they fired anyway, rifles popping and echoing behind them as Mitchell and Diaz shifted to the left, around the external fuel tank and reached the open bay door. Brown was there to accept Diaz, and Mitchell spun around and returned fire until Brown called, "Captain!"

Mitchell turned back, just as one of the minigun operators collapsed forward on his gun, blood pooling down his face and neck. "Portside gunner's down," Mitchell cried.

"Captain, get on that gun," snapped the pilot.

With rounds sparking and clinking off the chopper as he climbed aboard, Mitchell cried, "Go! Go! Go!"

Brown and Ramirez had already unbuckled and were lifting the wounded gunner from his seat, and Mitchell immediately slid into his place, two-handing the Gatling gun and utilizing the AIM-1 laser pointer as he guided the six barrels back onto the hillside. He shifted his aim once more, easing the weapon left as the chopper pitched forward and gained altitude.

Showtime. He began hosing down the insurgents as they leapt forward, crashing onto their bellies to avoid his bead. Tracer rounds flashed from the spinning barrels like glowing arrows fired from a hundred bowmen until they burned out at 900 meters.

At the same time, all those hot brass casings were funneled out from the gun through a tube mounted on the fuselage, and as the pilot brought them around, they left long trails of clinking and tumbling brass in their wake.

The gun's reverberation sent chills rushing up Mitchell's spine. It was hard to imagine that he was firing roughly fifty bullets per second. He needed to carefully select his targets, too, since he only had 4,000 rounds of linked ammo in the box before he'd have to reload.

But the pilot didn't seem to care about that. "Come on, Captain, keep up that fire!"

Mitchell obliged, sewing a jagged seam in the hill, his HUD and the AIM-1 putting him on those red diamonds that quickly turned white as his hailstorm of fire left behind walls of flying dirt and snow and death.

As he and the other gunner maintained fire, Ramirez and Brown worked on Saenz and the wounded guy, though they were probably using hand signals since the racket inside the helicopter made voice communication impossible.

Reminding himself of all the good people who had been lost in Waziristan, Mitchell kept the minigun on target, drawing more lines through hordes of fighters before the Black Hawk rolled right and descended over the hill, on a course due east for the border.

He released his white-knuckled grip on the gun and slumped in his seat. Every muscle ached. He could sleep for a year.

A hand came down on his shoulder. It was Ramirez, who pointed to the wounded gunner, then to Saenz, and flashed a thumbs-up; both guys would make it.

Mitchell nodded and, as Ramirez returned to his seat, directed his attention to Rutang, still barely recognizable beneath his swollen face. The medic had been through several lifetimes' worth of combat, and Mitchell had been proud of his comeback after his battle with depression and stress. He'd gotten off the propranolol and was managing to be a good father. Mandy had had that second baby, a boy, who Rutang had said definitely resembled the FedEx guy.

As Mitchell sat there, growing numb from the cold and exhaustion, he wondered what would happen to his friend. Could Rutang bounce back yet again?

Mitchell parked the rental car outside the old house, making sure he was at least six feet ahead of the mailbox. Then he got out and opened the trunk to fetch his duffel bag.

Dad's blood pressure would rise because Mitchell had rented a foreign car instead of a GM. Dad had spent thirty years at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Lordstown, working his way up to foreman. He had taught Mitchell his fierce sense of loyalty to people, products, and ideas.

But Mitchell had a coupon, and he was decidedly more loyal to his own wallet. While Ghosts did receive bonuses and special allowances for clothing and food, keeping the world safe from terror and destruction still paid less than 60K a year. Sure, he had few expenses and a nice nest egg and retirement, but being frugal in an unstable economy was just plain smart.

However, none of those arguments would work on Dad.

Mitchell shut the trunk and checked his watch: 16:30 hours. He was thirty minutes past his ETA. Blame it on the airline. He drew in a long breath through his nose. Clean air. It was good to be home.

He had made a quick stop back in '09 for the holidays, feeling good about seeing everyone and about his work in Eritrea, and then there had been Cuba in the following year, with missions against those narco-terrorist Colombians. Mitchell had earned himself yet another Silver Star and had chosen to remain a Ghost Team leader, despite being slated for promotion and the promise of more pay. He'd forgo the money and remain behind a weapon instead of a computer. And when it was time to step off the battlefield, he'd return to Fort Bragg to become an instructor. He'd already done a few stints of that, was scheduled to instruct again, and enjoyed paying it forward.

Earlier in the year his missions in North Korea and Kazakhstan had gone exceedingly well. While he continued to keep himself out of the politics that threatened the security and success of nearly every deployment, it still frustrated him when the Ghosts scored a win that could never be shared with the public.

He started up the long walkway toward the house, a two-story Colonial Revival-style home built in 1920 with white shingles and a large American flag flying beside the garage door. This was Mitchell's boyhood home, and the older he got, the smaller the house seemed. It did have four bedrooms, with that second bathroom that Dad had added over twenty years ago. And most recently, Dad had erected a white picket fence around the entire property. Dad was a small-town boy with small-town sensibilities that would never change. "Now I'm living the dream," he'd said, marveling over the fence.

Mitchell mounted the steps to the porch and, with his attention focused on the sounds of the TV coming from inside, he nearly fell on his rump as he tripped over a radio-controlled car that he assumed belong to his little nephew Brandon, who at seven was unaware of Dad's strict policy regarding guest parking.

Mitchell gently booted the car aside, yanked open the screen door, then pushed in the heavy wooden one and yelled, "This is the United States Army. Put down your alcohol and come out with your hands up!"

He stepped into the entrance foyer, immediately accosted by the incessant ticking of Dad's tall grandfather clock and that smell, a cross between wood chips and wool, that always permeated the house.

His sister, Jennifer, who preferred Jenn, came rushing down the hall from the kitchen with her arms extended, crying, "Scott!"

She was the youngest of the four children, only twenty-nine, and Mitchell recoiled as he saw how much weight she had lost. The last time he'd seen her, just after baby Lisa had been born, she was at least thirty pounds heavier. While growing up, she had always been a bit mousy, avoiding eye contact when she could, and at barely five feet tall, it was easy not to notice her. Yet after the baby had been born, it was as if a new mother had been born, one who was loud and outgoing.

Now she was even thinner than before getting pregnant, and he barely took her in before her bear hug threatened to expel the airline peanuts from his gut.

When she released him, she pulled back and traced a finger over his sideburn. "Is that gray hair?"

"Ah, got some paint on me or something," he muttered.

"You're getting old, Scott."

"Thanks for the tip. Hey, uh, I almost killed myself out there on Brandon's car."

"Oh, that's not Brandon's. It's Gerry's."

Mitchell snorted. Gerry was Jenn's husband, a software designer who made serious money. They lived in Northern California in an 8,000-square-foot multimillion-dollar home. Despite his keen business sense and remarkable work ethic, Gerry obviously still liked his toys, big boy and little boy. "So where is the geek?" Mitchell asked. "I'll have him arrested for attempted murder."

"Shut up, you idiot. Hey, everybody! Scott's here!"

He followed her into the kitchen, where, as he had expected, Tommy and Nicholas were seated at the long bar nursing beers while watching a Buckeyes game on Dad's little thirteen-inch TV because Dad had the new plasma screen mounted in his bedroom.

Nicholas, who was now sporting a pair of trendy, plastic-framed glasses, had earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering and had secured a tenure-track teaching position at the University of Central Florida.

Tommy was no good with the books and had always worked with his hands. For a while, he and Mitchell had both worked as assistants at the same auto repair shop in Youngstown, one now called Mitchell's Auto Body and Repair and owned by Tommy himself.

"Ten-hut," shouted Nicholas, who was second oldest behind Mitchell. "Knucklehead on deck!"

Mitchell came around the bar and gave his brother a firm handshake and what they liked to call a "man hug," not too close, buddy. "And there he is," Mitchell began as Tommy, just thirty-one years old, rose and offered his hand. "The last American bachelor and grease monkey."

"That was never me," said Tommy, giving him a slap on the back. "That's you."

"I married the army."

"Well, I have to tell you, Scott, my wife-to-be is a whole lot prettier than yours."

"Yep, lured away into the world of diapers and mini-vans, and all it took was a woman who'd actually have sex with you!" Mitchell slapped Tommy's newly soft gut.

That drew a big laugh from Nicholas and Jenn as Tommy frowned and shook his head. "Get a haircut," was all he could say; then he returned to the game.

Mitchell's hair was high and tight, as always. "Where's Dad?" he asked Jenn.

"He's out back in the shop."

"Hey, what time do we have to be there tomorrow?"

Tommy snorted, interrupting Jenn. "Why do you ask? You got plans? Too busy to see your brother get married?"

"If you want to know the truth, it was pretty hard to fit you into my schedule…" Mitchell's tone softened. "But I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Well, best man, you need to be at the church by eight thirty."

"Oh eight thirty. I'll be there. So you didn't tell me where Gerry is. And where's Angela?" he asked, the latter being Nicholas's wife of five years, also a scholar who refused to answer questions about when they were having kids.

"Angela's cooking, so they went to get stuff for dinner while we waited for you. We're having pot roast."

"I thought you were vegan."

"I am — three hundred and sixty-four days a year."

"You're a trip." He grinned and turned as Nicholas pushed a beer into his hand.

"It's great to see you, Scott." Nicholas was getting choked up.

"You, too. I'm going to go say hi to Dad."

Nicholas snickered. "Good luck. He's kind of cranky today."

"Today?" Mitchell winked and headed out past the sliding glass doors. He walked across the long backyard, the brown, gold, and orange leaves crunching underfoot.

Dad's woodworking shop was actually a two-car garage he'd had built about a year after Mom had died. Dad had spent many weekends cutting, routing, sawing, and sanding, and everyone said it was good therapy for him. Mitchell was only fourteen when Mom had died, and her loss was devastating to them all. She had been born in Latvia, in the Saldus district, and Mitchell could still hear her thick accent: "You must do your homework. You must study. You must not throw away the great opportunities of your life!"

She had worked hard to become a pharmacist, and when she had passed, Mitchell had taken on the role of rearing his younger siblings because Dad worked overtime to support them. But Dad still managed to teach Mitchell a strong sense of leadership that he passed on to his brothers and sister.

Mitchell crossed around to the side door, which was cracked open. "Dad?" He pushed open the door.

His father, William David Mitchell, had donned a pair of denim overalls, and his sizable gut tented up the central pockets. He had a flat-sided carpenter's pencil behind his ear and was staring down the edge of a long piece of pine he had balanced on one of his tables. Dad glanced up, a thin layer of white stubble rising from his jaw. "Well, well, well, the prodigal son returns home in his foreign-made rental car."

"You haven't been here the whole time?"

"Nope. I saw you pull up."

"And then what? You came running out? You trying to avoid me?"

"You?" He chuckled under his breath. "You know I hate all that hello crap. Damn house is so noisy with everybody here."

"Nice to see you, too. What are you making?"

"A tortoise table."

Mitchell's mouth fell open. "A what?"

He grinned. "Just kidding. Your sister forwarded me a couple of your e-mails way back when. All those weekends out here with me, and you're not even building furniture anymore? Doghouses and turtle houses?"

"I just finished up a real nice piece for my company commander. It's a custom footlocker for stowing military mementos. I even engraved it."

"Yeah, well I'm working on a nice box myself. Figure I'll save you kids a lot of money once I croak."

"What do you mean? You're not… you're building your own coffin?"

His eyes widened. "Absolutely."

"Dad, is there something you want to tell me? I thought the stress test went okay."

"It did."

"So what are you doing? Tommy's getting married tomorrow. Does marriage make you think about—"

"No. It makes me think about your mother. About missing her. That's all. I'm happy for your brother."

"You don't think this is weird?"

"It's morbid, yeah. But weird? Nah. It's smart. We'll save a lot of money, and I'll go out in style, in a box I made. You can't beat that."

"Whatever you say." Mitchell shifted up to his father and gave him an awkward hug. "They're making a pot roast."

"I know. I say we eat, get drunk, and you can tell us all about your missions. You got any juicy stuff? You meet any beautiful frauleins who are double agents?"

Mitchell chuckled. "Dad, it's all pretty boring."

"Uh-huh. And speaking of frauleins, you know Tommy's fiancee just hired an accountant — and she got invited to the wedding."

"And I should care because…"

"It's Kristin."

Mitchell slumped. "Oh, man."

"You haven't seen her in a long time."

"And I don't think she'd mind a few more centuries."

"Whatever happened between you two is water under the bridge. She's still single, and she teaches one of those kick-step whatever classes at the gym, too."

"How do you know? You've been talking to her?"

"She did my taxes this year. Gave me a good deal."

"But Dad, you know how it is. It never works out."

"One day it will. And I guess I'm just selfish, Scott. What can I tell you? Maybe you can fall in love with her, quit the army, and come back home so your old man can enjoy a few more years with his firstborn son."

"That's your plan?"

Dad wiggled his brows, then he frowned as his gaze lowered to Mitchell's bottle. "You come all the way out here with just one beer?"

"Take a break, Dad. Come on. You can build your coffin another day."

"Okay, but at the wedding, just don't ignore Kristin. Dance with her. Talk to her."

Mitchell gave a reluctant nod. "I'll try. Hopefully she won't draw blood."

The dinner conversation focused mainly on Tommy, who had been wise enough to have his bachelor party the weekend before his wedding. It had taken him three days to recover, Mitchell had learned. At least he hadn't come home with any new tattoos, just a world-class hangover.

Afterward, they'd had coffee and a triple-layer chocolate cake that, according to Jenn, weighed over five pounds. Mitchell had fended off their questions about his work, saying only that it was not as glamorous as they imagined.

Finally, they retired early for the evening. Mitchell would sleep in his old bedroom and, as expected, Dad still hadn't changed a thing. The dog-eared and fading Metallica and Michael Jordan posters still hung from the back wall; the Atari 2600 game console still sat atop Mitchell's dusty old Zenith; and the Uncle Sam poster — I Want You for U.S. Army — was still tacked to the wall above Mitchell's bed.

In fact, Dad had left all of the kids' bedrooms untouched. Mitchell assumed that all the memorabilia made Dad feel less alone. Jenn had been arguing with him for years to get rid of everything, sell the old house, and get a nice little house in The Villages, Florida. Dad would have none of it. He still had a few more years to go before retirement, and with work and his woodshop, he was "too busy to even think about that."

Even Mitchell's comic book collection still sat in plastic milk crates inside his closet. He thumbed through the stacks, pulling out an issue of DC's Sgt. Rock and another, Marvel's The 'Nam, both among his favorites. He brought them back to the nightstand.

After stripping down to his T-shirt and boxers, he sat on the bed and looked around. He could never have imagined that the little boy sleeping in this tiny room would, years later, travel around the globe. He was just a small-town kid who had joined the army because he couldn't afford college and had planned to use his GI Bill benefits to help pay for tuition once he got out. He and thousands of other guys had the same idea.

But army life suited Mitchell. The camaraderie, the loyalty, and the pride he felt were unlike any he had experienced in civilian life.

One night at the hospital, just a few days before the cancer had taken Mom, she had held his hands and said, "Scott, just remember, you are a very special boy. You were not born to live an ordinary life. Do everything you can to make the best of it. I know you will make your father and me very proud."

He never forgot those words, and he often thought that his mother somehow knew what would happen to him.

Mitchell shut off the main light, flicked on the small reading light on the nightstand, and settled down for a good read before turning in.

Special Operations Forces of the Nanjing Military Region of China were code-named the Flying Dragons, and consequently People's Liberation Army Colonel Xu Dingfa had suggested back in 2008 that the operation be called Pouncing Dragon, since colleagues from his old Special Forces group would play a key role in the attack on Taipei. The name had remained unchanged for all that time.

At the moment, he was seated in his office, sharing a cup of morning tea with his most esteemed colleague, Major-General Chen Yi, commander of the entire region. Only a select few were aware of Chen's visit, and Xu understood why the general did not want to discuss matters electronically or over the phone.

"As you predicted, the time is drawing near," Xu said, lifting his chin at a copy of the Beijing Daily resting on his desk. "They completed their negotiations yesterday morning."

Chen smiled knowingly, his lazy left eyelid barely moving. "Spring comes early this year."

Taiwanese officials had announced that they had reached an agreement with the United States to forgo three diesel submarines for one new-conversion Ohio-class SSGN. The Ohio SSGN was capable of ripple firing 154 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. No modifications were needed to Chingshan, Taiwan's recently completed secret submarine pen carved into a mountainside on the east coast. This was the first nuclear submarine the U.S. had ever considered selling to a foreign government, though Xu knew that the sale was subject to ratification by Congress.

If all went well, their government would deem the sale a provocative act and deploy additional ground troops to its military facilities from Shanghai to Xiamen.

Live-fire and force-on-force concentration exercises, along with aggressive amphibious operations exercises would commence immediately.

Moreover, the country's Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) — the phrase coined to outline the military's desire to build a smaller, more technologically advanced force — had resulted in the creation of many more high-tech units designed to target enemy communications and computer systems as well as jam the guidance systems of precision-guided munitions.

These smaller, better-equipped units, along with Xu's Special Forces teams, were exactly what the Spring Tiger Group required to initiate the first stage of its plan.

Tigers born in spring were on their own after the second year, the third spring, but Xu and his group had been waiting much longer than that to exact their will when others in Beijing were too cowardly to do so. The time had drawn near for the East and West to vie for supremacy in the Pacific.

"General, we will continue to monitor the situation very closely. I trust you will notify me when it is time to prepare for the final session."

"I will send the usual courier." Chen's attention turned to the photograph on Xu's desk. "And you may tell your parents that it will not be long now."

Xu nodded. After a long night of drinking, he had, quite regretfully, shared that most intimate story with the general, whose own lifelong frustration with the government motivated him to act. Chen stood. "I have a very busy day and a plane ride this afternoon. I will be meeting with the deputy director tomorrow."

Deputy Director Wang Ya of the Central Military Commission's General Political Department advised one of the most senior members of the PLA. Wang was a zhengzhi junguan (political officer), a graduate of the Chinese Academy of Military Science, a member of the State Council appointed by the National People's Congress (NPC) at the thirteenth National Congress. Chen would speak with the group's most powerful ally in the compound in western Beijing. From the beginning, Wang had offered his strong but silent endorsement of the Tigers' activities. When the time came, Wang's influence would be invaluable.

"General, thank you for coming. I will await your message."

"Excellent. And remember, when the time comes, we will need to move very quickly."

"I understand, sir."

As he showed the general out, Captain Fang Zhi was waiting for him in the outer office.

Fang hurriedly entered and said, "Have you heard the news?"

Xu grinned. "Hours ago, my friend."

"Do you think the time has come?"

Xu hesitated.

During the past four years he and Fang had become close friends. Neither of them had performed very well at the Olympic Games, but it was there that they had forged a relationship.

Once Xu had managed to secure a commission for Fang in the PLA, he had very slowly, very carefully, introduced Fang to his colleagues. Fang had, indeed, shared intimate knowledge of American and allied Special Forces operations and tactics. But Fang had still come from Taiwan, and Xu had been warned by Chen and others that Fang should never be fully trusted.

Consequently, Fang was quite aware of the group's existence and its membership, but he was not part of its inner circle and unaware of the exact nature of its plans. His task, as always, would be to lead the security teams whenever the group convened.

Xu finally answered, "Has the time come? I don't know. It's true we've been waiting for a long time, but conditions must be perfect. Don't forget the other opportunities that have come and gone. We must be patient."

"I understand."

"However, I would like you to go up into the mountains, meet with those elders, and see if we might secure that meeting place we discussed."

"Do you have an exact day and time?"

"Not yet. But I want you to see how quickly they can accommodate us."

"I will take care of it immediately."

Captain Zuo Junping, the twenty-eight-year-old military attache to Deputy Director Wang Ya, crawled out from beneath his stack of intelligence reports and greeted the leonine Major-General Chen Yi. The general had flown up from Xiamen three times in the past month and had remained in Beijing for a week, meeting daily with the deputy director.

That one commander from a single military region could gain so much of the deputy director's attention might have struck outsiders as odd were it not for recent events.

Since the U.S. had announced the sale of that submarine to Taiwan nearly thirty days prior, the entire Nanjing region had been at the highest military alert, and the office had been flooded with intelligence. The PLA's "training" exercises in the Taiwan Strait, along with the repositioning of troops, had resulted in the U.S. deploying a second carrier task force to the area as the American president continued to rattle his saber and caution the Chinese government about making any moves against Taiwan.

In response, China's air force had repositioned fighter and aircraft bomber squadrons, and on recommendation of Deputy Director Wang, the commander of the PLA Navy had ordered two Shang-class nuclear fast-attack submarines from its North Sea Fleet at Qingdao to the East Sea Fleet. That action doubled the number of Shang-class subs under operational control of ESF Vice Admiral Cai Ming, a fact quickly publicized online via the PLA Daily English News.

And just today, after a long month of uneasiness, the president, vice president, and premier of Taiwan, obviously threatened by China's significant show of force, had agreed to declare martial law. Chinese agents and sympathizers were being rounded up and imprisoned while the government and the Pan-Green Coalition — composed of the Democratic Progressive Party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, and the Taiwan Independence Party — now threatened to declare Taiwan's independence from mainland China.

The Americans had a metaphorical term for such a situation; they called it a powder keg.

Zuo showed the general into the deputy minister's office, closed the door, then returned to his chair. He wrung his hands and thought of slowing his pulse. It was just another day. Nothing to worry about. When it was over, he would return home to his little apartment and relax with a bottle of Tsingtao and a pack of cigarettes.

Life had been much easier back in the United States. Zuo had done his undergraduate work at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, earning an engineering degree. The following year he had enrolled in a joint program with Drexel University in Philadelphia to earn his graduate degree.

While in the United States, he had stayed with a host family whose son was an army captain, and they had developed a strong friendship. Moreover, Zuo's perceptions of America and American culture were transformed during his four years of study. A country he had once described in a school paper as the home of the corrupt and selfish had become something very different.

His home.

Knowing that Zuo would return to China to perform his "sacred duty" as a citizen and serve in the military, representatives of the U.S.'s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had recruited him as an operative with the promise that if he worked for them for no less than six years, they would help him defect and become an American citizen.

Zuo had agonized over the decision for months, but finally he had agreed.

After returning to China, he had assumed his military duties and also taught classes at the Chinese Academy of Military Science, where Deputy Director Wang had discovered him teaching the Citizen-Soldier in American Society course. Wang had been impressed by Zuo's scholarship, public speaking abilities, and keen sense of humor. Despite Zuo's youth and lack of experience, Wang had taken him under his wing and become his mentor. Wang's own ego was bolstered with every success that Zuo achieved.

Indeed, Zuo's remarkable ascension in the PLA was beyond his American employers' wildest dreams, and they had made him offers to extend his contract for another four to six years (he had already worked five). It seemed the higher Zuo rose, the less chance he would have of actually leaving the country.

Consequently, he had turned down their offer and had responded with one of his own: begin plans to get him out of the country immediately. If they did so, he would turn over intelligence he had gathered for the past two years on an operation known as Pouncing Dragon, one the DIA had queried him about in 2009, when they had first heard the phrase in Waziristan.

Zuo told them he had names, dates, and a forthcoming meeting day and time, but he would not deliver them unless they got him out of China. He was waiting for their reply.

As much as it pained him to abandon his post and leave his mother and ailing father behind, Zuo knew that the United States was where he belonged.

And he knew that if he remained at his post much longer, the deputy director would eventually discover his activities and, on a cold, dark night while Zuo was sleeping, a man would come into his apartment. They would call it robbery.

The deputy director clearly had a lot to hide, and Zuo's eavesdropping had yielded some puzzling blanks in his routines that left Zuo even more unnerved about the boss's connections and influence.

On the third Tuesday of every month, at exactly one in the afternoon, Wang made a phone call to a number in Geneva. And at least twice per month he took a clandestine lunch meeting outside the office.

Zuo wondered if the deputy director, like Zuo himself, had his own agenda. Zuo had considered asking the DIA if Wang was actually working for them. How ironic that would be, but no, that was hardly the case.

With a shivery sigh, Zuo returned to sorting and compiling his reports. In two hours he would need to brief the deputy minister on what was currently happening in the Taiwan Strait. However, Wang would only be half listening as he watched CNN via satellite and interrupted Zuo to decry the inaccuracies of the American media.

Captain Scott Mitchell tucked himself tighter into the underbrush as the sputtering whine of a diesel engine broke the morning silence. The mud road just ahead wove away like a rusty red bloodstain through the forest.

A moment later, the old truck with a tattered tarpaulin covering its flatbed rounded a cluster of pines and jostled forward, trailing rooster tails of clay.

Mitchell, dressed in black civilian clothes with a black shemagh on his head, clutched the paintball gun replica of a Beretta Cx4 Storm rifle.

Today Mitchell's name was Jawaad, and he was the local guerrilla chief, or G-chief, in this part of "The People's Republic of Pineland," a fictional country whose unassuming name suggested a land of trailer parks rather than a war-torn nation. For the past six months, insurgents from OpForland, a country of political and religious unrest, had been smuggling themselves across the border to terrorize Jawaad's village. They had killed his father and two brothers.

Jawaad was here to strike back at the insurgents, liberate his country from oppression, and send a message to the enemy. He was here for revenge. To that end, he and his guerrillas, or Gs, had linked up with Operational Detachment Alpha 927, a twelve-man team of American Special Forces soldiers who had armed and been training them for the past two weeks.

In point of fact, the entire scenario was part of Robin Sage, a nineteen-day field training exercise (FTX) and the final phase of the eighteen- to twenty-six-month-long Special Forces Qualification Course taught at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. The name Robin Sage was derived from Robbins, a nearby town, and from the man who had developed the exercise, Colonel Jerry Sage, one of the school's original commanders.

The exercise was conducted throughout fourteen counties and put operators through a grueling series of unconventional warfare situations in which they had to rely upon every aspect of their training, from mission planning to execution. Robin Sage was the final exercise before graduation and assignment to one of the operational Special Forces groups. To the men taking the course, passing the exercise meant everything.

But they had to make it past Scott Mitchell first.

Being the G-chief, Mitchell had already made it clear to the detachment commander, Captain Fred Warris, and the warrant officer, CW2 Baron Williams, that this was his show, and those guys had initially argued over that. Out there in the real world you sometimes had to trust the local chief you'd only known for a month, because if you didn't, you'd never get the job done. What's more, sometimes you had to let him lead because it was his fight and his honor at stake. That was difficult for many operators to accept, men who thrived on being in control.

Robin Sage training also incorporated the experiences of real-life soldiers like Mitchell, who had designed this particular scenario based upon an experience he'd had in Eritrea. The young Captain Warris was about to be overwhelmed.

Mitchell's breath grew shallow. The truck was about twenty meters from the trigger line now.

Close enough.

He burst from cover, ran onto the road, and began firing wildly at the vehicle, screaming at the top of his lungs, "For my father! For my brothers!"

Behind him, Warris began hollering, "Jawaad, what the hell are you doing? Come back!"

Mitchell kept firing, his paintballs exploding on the windshield of the truck.

Warris hollered even louder, "Jawaad, get back here!"

The truck's driver threw it in park and hopped out, along with a passenger: both OpForland soldiers armed with rifles. They dropped to their bellies and began returning fire, paintballs whirring past Mitchell, who was grinning to himself.

G-chief Jawaad had screwed up the entire ambush.

The ODA team and the guerrillas were supposed to lie in wait until the truck hit the trigger line, at which time one of Jawaad's men would toss a smoke grenade while a simulated claymore exploded, tearing apart the vehicle's front end.

Mitchell had, in his own way, just welcomed his students to Unconventional Warfare 101, where no battle plan survived the first enemy — or friendly — contact.

He continued running at the truck, taking fire from the enemy soldiers, paintballs striking his thighs and chest. He squeezed off a few more rounds and staggered forward, shouting once more about revenge until he dropped to his knees in the mud, fired again, then fell and rolled onto his side, crying, "Help! I've been hit! I'm hit!"

Now it was up to Warris and Williams to gain control of the chaos.

Mitchell lay there and watched as, across the path, one of the team's evaluators, Captain Simon Harruck, rose from the scrub to watch as the sergeant assisting him lifted his small camera to digitally record the event.

Warris ordered his engineers who'd been standing by on the claymore to circle around to the vehicle's rear, while everyone else opened fire on the truck, paintballs thudding and fountaining across metal.

Within five seconds the two enemy soldiers were "dead," and Warris called a cease fire. His engineers were the first on the vehicle and began unloading and busting open crates containing Meals, Ready-to-Eat and weapons caches.

Mitchell got to his feet. "ODA team? Guerrilla team? The exercise is terminated. On me right now!"

It took several more minutes for everyone, nearly thirty in all, to rally around Mitchell in the middle of the road. He shook his head at Warris. "You got two medics. Couldn't spare one to save my life?"

The captain furrowed his brows in confusion. "You ran at the truck, blew the whole ambush. You looked like you were trying to commit suicide."

"And now every G here is pissed off at you for letting me die."

"But you killed yourself."

"No, I was getting my revenge. And maybe that was more important to me than my own life. Or maybe I was trying to show my men how important their cause is. I was trying to teach them how to fight to the death."

"By running into fire."

"Maybe I martyred myself." Mitchell sighed and adopted a more conversational tone. "See, you don't know what these guys will do when it comes down to it. You always have plan B, which involves them betraying you or doing something crazy, like running into the road."

Warris nodded. "But we still accomplished the objective. Truck stopped, cargo seized."

"Maybe not. You put so much gunfire on that truck that you blew it up. Everybody should have held fire. You send out your medic and put your snipers to work to pin down the bad guys."

Warris swallowed, and Mitchell knew that every decision the captain had just made would weigh heavily on his mind. He was already wondering if his career was in jeopardy.

So Mitchell let him off the hook and added, "I know that one second could make the difference between living and dying, but you need to take that second and think, okay, I got a guy running at the truck. He's stopped the truck — which was what the claymore was supposed to do. We got no smoke, but the G-chief has all their attention. Let me get my marksmen on target. And yes, I know you need to make that assessment in one second. But we're not out in the woods because we're afraid of challenges. And for what it's worth, I did the same thing you did — just put tons of steel on target. I never sent the medic. The guerrillas turned it around and blamed me for his death. It took me a long time to win back their trust."

Warris considered that, muttered a "Whoa," then added, "Captain, I appreciate your honesty."

Mitchell offered his hand. "Lessons learned. So now that I'm dead, you need to figure out if you can still negotiate with my Gs and who's in charge — and sometimes even that can be a real headache. And oh, yeah, the Gs are going to loot those bodies, then after that, they might want to chop off their heads and put them on poles. How do you feel about that?"

Warris's eyes grew wide.

Mitchell gave a short nod to Captain Harruck, who began barking new instructions to the group as up ahead, an HMMWV came rolling forward and stopped. "Hi, I'm looking for Captain Mitchell," said the young PFC at the wheel.

Mitchell drew his head back. "Really, because I've been looking for you, Private" — he read the woman's patch—"Morgan."

"Sir?"

"Yeah, I haven't had a hot shower in two weeks. Can you take me to the nearest hotel?"

The private grimaced. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Yeah, I smell. You'll get over it. Just get me to a shower."

"I mean, I'm sorry, sir, they sent me up here to get you. I've been waiting back at your FOB all morning. Just got cleared to come up. I have orders to drive you back to Bragg — no detours."

Mitchell frowned. "Great." He climbed into the Hummer and collapsed into the seat, mud and paint splashing all over the floorboard. "Sorry about the mess."

"That's okay, sir."

He closed his eyes, hating that his driver, the pretty young PFC Morgan, could be Kristen's twin.

Sergeant First Class Paul Smith, Ghost Team rifleman, was home in rural Northern California for a few weeks, and it was not two days into his R & R that his boyhood friend Hernando Alameda called to say that he could use a hand loading about two hundred bales of alfalfa hay onto some flatbed trucks. Hernando had taken over the farm from his recently deceased father, and Smith knew that he was shorthanded, so he couldn't say no to his old buddy.

Hernando was twenty-seven, a few years older than Smith, and he'd been complaining all morning about the difficulties of finding good help. He worked out his frustration on the bales of hay, loading twice as fast as Smith did, both of them sweating profusely. Soon the conversation turned to women, as it always did, and Smith asked about Hernando's longtime girlfriend, Vicki, who had sweet-talked him into financing a brand-new pair of boobs.

"She just dumped me last week," Hernando said between breaths.

"How many times is that?"

"Three."

"You don't need her."

"Nope."

"But you'll be calling later."

"Yup. I'm calling in the loan."

Smith grinned. "Damn that woman."

"Hey, your dad told me he's retiring next year."

"Yeah, I can't believe it. He's been sheriff of this Podunk county for thirty years."

"You ought to take over."

Smith laughed. "I joined the army to get away from all this horse dung."

"You hate us that much?"

"No, but come on, bro, you know my parents. Dad wanted me to be a rocket scientist. And they're both still mad about the whole college thing. But I have my own life now."

"And the army's that much better? You never thought about quitting?"

Smith shrugged. There had been a time, near the end of his fourth year as an infantryman. The service hadn't been as glamorous or challenging as he'd thought. He'd spent the better part of his life outdoors, hunting and fishing. He was a bushman at heart, and a lot of guys from the city used to say he had a sixth sense. They always put him on point, like a bloodhound. And that was great, but he'd grown bored.

"There was a time when I wasn't going to re-up," he told Hernando. "But then I met this Special Forces officer, and things changed."

"He gave you the sales pitch."

"No, he just came in to do some combatives and martial arts training. The guy was amazing. He told it like it was, and to this day I still remember his training philosophy."

"Which was?"

"Well, he thought the mental advantage was just as important as firepower. He told us our training should always be mission-specific. It had to be short, and it shouldn't require us to be flexible like gymnasts. And even though he was shorter and lighter, he dropped me like a bad transmission every time. He was the most professional soldier I'd ever met."

"No kidding. You never told me this story. I thought you just did it. But I was right. He convinced you to re-up."

Smith nodded. "After working with me, he said I was Special Forces material. What he didn't tell me was how the Q-Course would kick my ass, especially Robin Sage at the end. I thought I would die out there."

"What was the guy's name?"

"Captain Scott Mitchell." Smith's cell phone began to ring. He set down his next bale of hay and checked the screen. "Sorry, buddy, I need to take this."

Deciding to pick up a newspaper and a cup of coffee, Master Sergeant Matt Beasley, proudly sporting his dark blue Pistons jacket, climbed off his Harley Sportster and started across the rain-slick pavement.

It had been two years since he'd visited the old neighborhood, and he remembered hanging out at this very store, keeping tabs on the motley crew of characters with nicknames like Old Man Freddy, Busted Head Bob, and Wayne the Wimp.

Beasley had been a latchkey kid with decent grades, though he spent most of his time on the streets, just watching people, occasionally tipping off the police when he saw something that shouldn't be happening in his neighborhood. There had been plenty of opportunities to get involved with drugs and gangs, but Beasley had avoided those invitations. He'd seen too many of those punks get their faces shoved down onto the hoods of police cars. Those same punks often referred to him as the weird guy who never talked. That was fine with him. He was a student of human nature.

Beasley grinned as he locked gazes with a freckle-faced kid about sixteen or seventeen seated on the window ledge, hands jammed into the pockets of his dirty pull-over, black ski cap pulled down over his ears. His long, reddish brown hair wandered down past that cap, and he repeatedly backhanded his runny nose.

He was Beasley, half a lifetime ago.

The kid just looked at him, then averted his gaze. Beasley stepped inside, announced by the store's familiar ding-dong, and went to the coffee machine.

An elderly African-American couple stood at the counter, bickering with the heavyset clerk over their expired coupon for milk; otherwise, the store was empty.

Beasley finished making his coffee, grabbed his paper, and by the time he reached the counter, the old folks were gone. The clerk rang him up, and he left the store.

The kid was still there, watching. Beasley thought of asking why he wasn't in school but decided not to hassle him. Beasley had been on the other end of that conversation way too many times. Nearly slipping on the wet pavement, he crossed to his bike.

And just as he tucked his newspaper under his arm and was about to fish out his keys, something thudded against the back of his head. He glanced ever so slightly over his shoulder, saw the kid standing there, his arm extended.

"This ain't no toy gun. Your keys! Now!" The kid shoved his pistol harder into Beasley's skull.

"Easy, buddy. I was just pulling them out."

"You hand them to me. And you don't turn around."

"Okay."

Beasley drew in a long, slow breath to calm himself. He reached into his pocket, felt the keys, but he didn't grab them. He visualized his move… then made it.

Whirling and wrenching his hand from his coat, Beasley struck the kid's forearm with his own, then slid his hand down and ripped the gun from the kid's grip.

Dumbfounded, the kid gasped and stepped back, turned, about to run, then slipped in a puddle.

Beasley shook his head in disgust. "Better stay down, buddy."

Breathless, the kid rolled to face Beasley, tears forming in his eyes.

Beasley gritted his teeth. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"What are you doing with your life? Throwing it away trying to jack me?"

Beasley wanted to tell this punk he was capable of so much more. He wanted to say that he'd sat on that very window ledge, yet he'd gone on to become a Ranger and even a team sergeant with the Ghosts. He wanted to scare this kid straight. But he already sensed his little speech would fall on deaf ears.

Abruptly, his cell phone beeped with an incoming text message, and the kid exploited the diversion to burst to his feet and take off.

Beasley was about to start after him, but something told him to check the phone. He took one look at the screen and muttered, "Whoa."

Sergeant First Class Bo Jenkins had just finished his weight training routine and had decided to take a group cycle class. At six foot five, 280 pounds, he knew he looked a little ridiculous on the bike, but that had never stopped him from joining in the fun.

In fact, he always turned the class into a party, hooting and hollering as the instructor, Marcy, played her classic rock songs and his fellow riders, mostly middle-aged housewives, released their stress and angst over living in a place that was dark for way too many months a year.

Marcy was in her late thirties and liked to touch Jenkins's high-and-tight crew cut. He'd once told her that if he applied enough mousse, he could balance a full bottle of water on his hair, and the bottle would never touch his scalp.

She'd grinned. "You are definitely husband material with talent like that."

"Hey, you know, women are always looking for skills."

Now, as he was about to enter the class, his phone rang. It was Aunt Judy.

"Bo, you'd better meet me at the hospital. They've admitted your dad again."

His heart sank. "I'm on my way." He raced to the locker room to grab his bag.

After his parents had gotten divorced when he was fourteen, Jenkins had gone to live with his father in Anchorage, where Dad had become a commercial fisherman. Dad had spent most of his life on boats, and all that hard work and hard drinking had taken their toll. He had liver problems and a host of other issues that were steadily growing worse. And if it weren't for Aunt Judy, who had helped raise Jenkins, he wasn't sure how he'd get through now.

Watching his father slowly wither away was far more difficult than all those missions in the Philippines, Indonesia, Eritrea, and Cuba. They were nothing compared to standing in that hospital room and holding Dad's hand, remembering that he was the one who'd said, "Bo, I think you should join the army. You need focus. They'll give it to you."

Jenkins was the most physically imposing member of the Ghosts, joking that he sprinkled brass casings on his cornflakes instead of blueberries, but he wasn't strong enough to handle this. Not this.

He could barely breathe by the time he left the gym and headed out to his car. The phone rang again. It wasn't Aunt Judy. And Jenkins's heart sank even more. "No, no, no. Not now. Come on, not now!"

"Alex, I really appreciate this. Just thought it'd be nice to see another life."

Sergeant First Class Alex Nolan smiled and lifted a thumb to shove his spectacles higher on his nose. It was a nervous habit that occurred every time someone embarrassed him or made him feel awkward. Even a sincere thank-you like the one Hume was offering could trigger the response. "Hey, man, it's cool. And don't feel bad. I didn't get to go here, either."

Nolan's buddy John Hume was a staff sergeant, anti-tank gunner, and demolitions expert with the Ghosts. He'd been in the Fifth Infantry Brigade in Iraq, had been an engineer sergeant on Special Forces teams, had fought in the Philippines and spoke fluent Tagalog, and was one of the first guys to befriend Nolan when he had been selected for the Ghosts as a senior medical sergeant. They were both a handful of years older than the average Ghost and had become fast friends. Hume had opted to spend the first few days of his R & R with Nolan in Nolan's hometown of Boston.

Hume had asked if they could visit MIT, and, after walking the campus, they had headed inside the museum to check out the Robots and Beyond exhibit featuring the work done at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Despite all the fascinating displays, Hume couldn't hold his attention on anything for very long. His brother Billy had called from San Francisco to say he was upset that Hume hadn't come straight home to see their mother. It seemed that Hume's brother had become the caregiver for their elderly mom. Hume had made a rather terrible faux pas by opting to spend a few days with his buddy first. Nolan could tell his friend was upset and had even let him off the hook by saying it was fine if he had to leave.

However, Hume needed to see MIT. After high school, he'd been accepted and never been more proud of that, but his father had had a stroke, and he'd been forced to take over the family farm in Salt Lake City and had given up on his dream. But then his father had passed on and, after a few years, he'd met an old buddy from high school who'd joined the army and had presented an entirely different path for Hume to consider.

Hume raised his chin at the crowd watching a demonstration of a haptic interface that allowed robots to simulate a sense of touch. "Hey, Alex, these robots are going to take over the world. If they replace me with a robot, then you can forget about your certification and residency, forget all about being a hotshot combat doc and saving guys like me. You need to be a robot repairman."

"No, they'll invent robot medics. You know, we trained with one of those unmanned ground vehicles a few years back. They call them SUVGs. Thing was small but nasty."

"Yeah, I've seen those. I'd like to blow one up — just to say I did."

Nolan chuckled. "You were the kid who stuffed fire-crackers in the frog's mouth."

"No, actually, Dad and I put on some world-class fireworks shows. People came from all over to see them." Hume's voice grew thin. "Dad would've loved to have seen this place, too."

Nolan's phone began to vibrate, just as Hume's began to ring. They checked their screens.

Hume sighed. "My brother's really going to flip out now."

"Dude, we have to be in Subic Bay, and they're timing us," said Nolan, already breaking into a jog. "Come on!"

The crew of USS Montana, a Virginia-class nuclear fast-attack submarine, was bound for Sasebo, Japan, after a week's monitoring of supertanker traffic through the Malacca Strait linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Passage through the strait was the shortest sea route for India, China, and Indonesia, and the key choke point in Asia. To bypass the strait added 944 miles to any ship's transit.

"Emergency deep," ordered Captain Kenneth Gummerson.

Montana's control team immediately initiated a full-power dive toward a depth of 150 feet — deep enough to avoid collision with the bottom of any modern supertanker yet shallow enough to recover from flooding should a collision ensue.

"Worked perfectly, Captain," reported the chief petty officer copilot. "Touch screen control all the way, no need to go to minimum electronic mode and joystick control."

This fourth drill in the last twenty-four hours reassured Gummerson that a computer module swap-out had indeed tweaked the digital interface between the stern plane actuators and the sub's fly-by-wire (FBW) computer.

Gummerson, a twice-divorced forty-seven-year-old victim of long separations and short reunions, had tacked on silver eagles during this operation, but the promotion meant giving up his command. All hands knew their relief commander would be waiting on the pier in Sasebo. Change of command was a bittersweet event for all concerned.

"Incoming flash traffic, CO eyes only, Captain," reported the duty radioman.

Gummerson nodded. "Bring it back to my stateroom after it's logged in."

Minutes later, in the privacy of his quarters, Gummerson carefully studied his new orders:

Gummerson reread the message, signed for receipt, then smiled broadly. He hoped his relief had decent accommodations in Sasebo, because the man would be waiting a little longer before he could steal Gummerson's boat.

When U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay was shut down back in 1992, the area was slowly converted into a tax- and duty-free zone not unlike those in Hong Kong and Singapore. Despite the naval base's closure, American warships continued taking advantage of the deep, natural harbor in order to resupply and provide their crews much-needed shore leave.

The Freeport Zone was operated by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, and it was with this organization that USSOCOM had negotiated to borrow an old navy office building currently under renovation to become a souvenir shop.

Captain Scott Mitchell stood near the door of what was once a conference room. Beside him sat piles of lumber, table saws, and sheets of drywall. He gazed out through the dust at the eight other operators who, like him, were hot and exhausted but eager to learn more about Operation War Wraith, the Ghosts' answer to Pouncing Dragon.

Other than the jet lag, the sore muscles, the blood-shot eyes, and the pounding headache, Mitchell felt great. His people felt likewise and lied about it exactly as he had.

He and Ramirez (now a master sergeant) had already set up the computer and projector so they could begin discussing the target intelligence package they had downloaded a few hours earlier. He began with the Situation Report.

"Sir, once we're onshore," began Diaz, "how far inland is the target?"

Mitchell brought up a series of satellite photos of the Hakka castle, with its four silolike buildings and single rectangular structure. "We'll cover all the details of our infil. But for now, have a look. These castles are scattered throughout the region. At least the Tigers picked one that's only a three-hour drive into the mountains. We've got good cover through the outer cordon. High-rising mountains to the west, and some nice hog-backs and saddles to the east. Forests look pretty dense, too."

Brown raised his hand. "Sir, the photos show lots of civilians."

Mitchell sighed. "Yeah, they do. The TIP confirms at least a hundred or more individuals living and working in the castle."

That drew a chorus of groans.

"There is a chance the Tigers will move out the civilians for their meeting — maybe for security reasons, but frankly, I doubt that."

"We do have at least one asset to help us deal with collateral damage," said Ramirez. He worked the computer's mouse and brought up a surveillance photograph of a skinny, gray-haired guy with pants hiked up to his belly button. "This is Huang. He's one of the village elders at the castle. Our two CIA guys have already gotten to him, and he'll be our eyes on the inside."

"That's right," added Mitchell. "We assume most of the Tigers will fly in, probably the night before the meeting. They'll be put up in various rooms. My problem with the initial OPORDER was we were being tasked to find these guys, who could be in five different buildings. That'd waste time and leave us too vulnerable. If Huang comes through for us, he'll indicate exactly where each commander is sleeping before we hit the place."

"And if he doesn't?" asked Beasley.

Mitchell snorted. "Then it's going to be a long night. Anyway, let's take a look at the targets."

Ramirez brought up another photograph depicting a cherub-faced, fifty-year-old Chinese man wearing thick glasses and a dark suit.

"The TIP suggests that this guy won't be at the castle, but he's the top dog. Deputy Minister Wang Ya from the Central Military Commission's political department. His military attache is the DIA operative who got us this intel."

"I like his haircut," said Nolan, referring to the sheen on Wang's bald pate. The medic was always good for a wisecrack, and Mitchell allowed him his fun — to a point.

"Next guy in line is this individual, Major-General Chen Yi. He's a graduate of the Army Command Academy and commander of the entire Nanjing Military Region."

Chen was a few years younger than Wang and had a lazy left eye. He offered a solemn stare in a clearly staged photograph with the Chinese flag in the background.

Mitchell continued, "When the Tigers meet, Chen runs the show. And then there's this guy…"

Ramirez brought up a picture of a dark-haired young man with a broad nose, long neck, and solemn stare who stood near one of the Chinese Army's new four-wheel-drive vehicles. "He's Colonel Xu Dingfa, a graduate of the Communication Command Academy in Wuhan. Xu was actually a member of the '08 Olympic gymnastics team. He didn't earn any medals, but let's make sure he doesn't cartwheel his way to escape."

That drew a few chuckles. Mitchell eyed Nolan, who raised his thumb and nodded.

The next photograph depicted a short but muscular man wearing a robe and slippers and holding the leash of a small dog. Behind him rose a lush garden.

"Say hello to Vice Admiral Cai Ming. He's the commander of the East Sea Fleet in the NMR. Here he is taking his dog for a dump near the HQ in Ningbo."

"I like his dog," said Nolan. "That's a Pekingese. They go good with a nice Cabernet."

"I prefer a Pinot Noir," said Diaz, smirking at Nolan.

"And last but not least, we have Major-General Wu Hui. He's a graduate of the Air Defense Command Academy in Zhengzhi."

Wu had just climbed out of a fighter plane and removed his helmet. He wore a scowl made famous by martial artists like Bruce Lee. Of all the Tigers, he seemed like the real badass, in Mitchell's humble opinion.

"So once again, we have four primary targets: Chen, the NMR commander; Xu, our army commo guy; Cai, our admiral; and Wu, our top gun. For simplicity and communications purposes we'll designate these guys as Targets Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta respectively."

Ramirez brought up a slide depicting all four men with target designations superimposed over the photos:

"Sir, y'all mean to say that these four guys can start World War III?" asked Paul Smith, scratching his head.

"Four guys? Only takes one with his finger on the trigger," said Nolan.

"Paul, these guys have been working on this Pouncing Dragon plan for years, and they have feelers spread through the entire military," said Mitchell. "The Politburo makes the ultimate decision about war in China, and their boy Wang is plugged in pretty well there. Once the ball's rolling, the Chinese government can't stop it."

"What's their strike plan?" asked Diaz.

"That's not part of our TIP, and higher may not know. But back to your question Paul, yes, these four commanders can light the fuse."

"Sir, we've mentioned the civilians," said Beasley. "What about threat force composition and disposition?"

"You mean bad guys guarding the place?" asked Brown, poking fun at Beasley's formality. The team sergeant didn't talk much, but when he did, it was always by the book.

Mitchell cleared his throat, and that quickly silenced those chuckling. He lifted his chin at Beasley. "Matt, we can assume the Tigers will bring their own security force. The larger that force is, the more attention they'll call to themselves, so we expect they'll limit that team to two or three squads, hopefully no more than twenty. I've requested streaming video of the castle so we can make an accurate threat assessment, assuming the security team will arrive before the Tigers do. If all goes well there, we'll run a split team op." Mitchell nodded to Ramirez, who brought up the personnel list:

"Alpha Team will be the inner cordon, tasked with infiltrating the castle and terminating the targets. Matt? You guys will be outer cordon, taking out security, removing any chances of escape from the AO. Alicia, you're on your own to clear Alpha Team an entry point."

Jenkins raised his hand, his expression dubious.

"What do you got, Bo?" asked Mitchell.

"Sir, I don't doubt Bravo can secure the outer cordon. But even with our guy on the inside to help locate the targets, you'll be going through multistories, probably got animals running around to make noise, old guys getting up in the middle of the night to use the outhouse, and a thousand other things that can go wrong to blow your cover."

"You mean it's just another day at the office."

"All I'm saying, sir, is if we recon the place, and it looks too hairy, why don't you let Johnny and me cut loose with some rockets. We'll be standing off and take down the entire castle."

"Sounds like a plan to me," said John Hume, who would always vote yes for explosives.

"I agree, that's safer," said Beasley. "But if the general wanted it big and loud, he wouldn't have called us."

"That's right," said Mitchell. "But I understand your reservations, Bo. And I hope you don't mind me acknowledging your sacrifice to be here. Bo's father was admitted to the hospital just before he got the call. His dad's stable, but he didn't even get a chance to say good-bye. Bo, I speak for everyone when I say thanks for being here."

Jenkins averted his gaze and nodded.

Ramirez glanced up from the computer. "Sir, we have a call from General Keating."

Mitchell exhaled in frustration. "I thought he wasn't calling until later. Put him through."

With that, everyone sat up.

"Mitchell, good to see you soldiers arrived on time."

"Thank you, General. And we'll be happy to stop breathing in the asbestos and ship out ASAP."

"Roger that, soldier. We just received word from your CIA contacts they've procured their trucks and boat."

"We were just getting ready to cover the infil in detail."

"That's good. No other changes to report. Your request for live stream on the target has been sent up the pipe. I've also put in a request to the DIA to call upon their operative one last time, should we need him during the exfil. I have a feeling that when all hell breaks loose, we'll need every asset we have."

"General, it is my intention to infiltrate that castle, take out those targets, and be back home before they know what hit them."

"I like your style, son."

"Yes, sir."

Keating raised his index finger. "Now, Ghost Team, I'm depending on you to pull this off. Those maniacs plan to invade Taiwan, and if they do, the U.S. will go to war with China. Millions will die, the U.S. economy will be ruined, and God forbid they raise a Chinese flag over the White House."

Mitchell steeled his voice. "Sir, we understand what's at stake."

"Good. Now, I want a clean operation. No blood trails. I've made sure all your ammo comes from our friends in Texas, so you'll field your best weapons. That brass is unmarked, untraceable — and that's a good thing, because I don't want you people packing Chinese water pistols on this operation. Oh, and by the way, if any one of you dies without permission, you're going to piss me off. And worse, you'll piss off your buddies, because they'll need to carry you home. No one — dead or alive — gets left behind. Do you people read me?"

Everyone answered in unison, "Sir, yes, sir."

"Very well then. The XO from Montana will be contacting you once they arrive at the pier. Send additional intel requests my way. That's all for now. Make us proud, people."

Mitchell answered for all of them: "We will, sir. Thank you, sir."

Ramirez cut the link. Every pair of shoulders slumped.

"Geez, no pressure at all," said Smith. "He sounded worse than my old man."

"But he's not nagging us to go to college or take over as sheriff," said Mitchell, hoisting his brows.

Smith gave a reluctant nod.

"All right, let's break for a drink. When we come back, I'll walk you through the infiltration. And whatever I don't cover, the SEALs will later on."

As the group filed out toward the door, Ramirez lingered behind, looking more than a little concerned. "Sir, this ain't Europe. This ain't the 'Stan. This is China."

Mitchell repressed a shudder. "I know what you mean, Joey."

Colonel Xu Dingfa had just spent a few days with his parents, and it had been exceedingly difficult not to tell them they would soon be reunited with their children. All he could say was that he had a great surprise and that they would know more joy than they'd had in many, many years.

His father, well aware of the current escalation of forces between the United States, Taiwan, and China, had warned Xu, "I hope, dear son, you are not talking about war."

Xu had not answered.

He wished he could have shared the Spring Tigers' great plan. He and his colleagues had waited far too long to set the dragon free.

In the days to come the Third and Sixth Destroyer/ Frigate Flotillas would set up a naval blockade of all Taiwan's principal cities, disrupting the flow of food and oil. The Tigers assumed that Washington would not sanction attacking a Chinese man-of-war patrolling in international waters. Moreover, those carrier commanders could not divert screening assets away from their carriers to shadow the Chinese warships, because that would leave antisub, antiair, and antisurf gaps in the screens protecting them. U.S. officials would be enraged, but their own rules of engagement precluded any military response as a viable option.

Once surface elements from the Third and Sixth were in place, air units from the Fourth and Sixth Naval Air Division would carry out surgical strikes on Taiwan's airfields, command and control centers, and those newly erected Patriot missile sites. This one-two punch would sever Taipei's communications with its U.S. protectors and eradicate the island's fledgling missile defense system.

At the same time, Xu's Special Forces already on the ground in Taipei near the Datong District would link up with two more companies of Chinese sleeper-cell forces and continue with direct-action missions to destroy radar facilities and further disrupt command and control as they moved south to capture the presidential office building.

At this juncture the pendulum could swing either way. The Americans could step up or Taipei could step down. Xu envisioned the inhabitants of the Pacific Rim watching, waiting. Only diplomacy could keep the pendulum motionless, but Xu had allowed for even that.

Those four Shang-class nuclear attack submarines from the Twenty-second and Forty-second Submarine Flotilla would, under Vice Admiral Cai's command, assume key positions in the Taiwan Strait, with their primary objective the two U.S. carriers.

Major-General Chen had argued that if those subs could damage or sink just one carrier, the loss would be catastrophic, and the U.S. Navy would have to retaliate with lethal force to save face. The Americans would hunt down the four Shang-class subs, while Major-General Wu ordered the launch of Dong Hai-10 Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM) with 900-mile ranges from the NMR into Taiwan, targeting major seaports.

Those LACM's would inflict even greater pressure on Taipei to capitulate while upping the ante on the U.S. to stand and deliver. The U.S. would have to launch a direct attack on mainland China to neutralize Wu's missiles, drawing both countries closer to nuclear confrontation. In his mind, Xu saw the entire world holding its breath.

And if the Tigers wanted their dragon to pounce even harder, they could launch even more missiles at the U.S. Air Force bases in Yokota, Kadena, and Misawa, Japan, as well as those in Kunsan and Osan, South Korea — all five within the Dragon's Lair, a term coined in a Rand Corporation report made several years prior. A translated copy of that report sat on Xu's desk.

Indeed, the U.S. would have to fight an all-out war with China or give up Taiwan.

However, the U.S.'s ongoing war on terror had stretched military personnel and its defense budget to the breaking point. What's more, the American public was still screaming for an all-out withdrawal from the Middle East and continued to be abnormally sensitive about military casualties. Officials seeking reelection would not vote for war.

Thus, the Spring Tigers had concluded that the United States could not afford to be challenged on its promise to defend Taiwan.

And once Pouncing Dragon was completely under way, the Chinese government could not afford to stop it, whether they took credit or not.

Finally, the plan cleverly avoided the use of large-scale amphibious landing forces, which all Tigers had agreed were far too predictable, far too cumbersome, and far too complicated to communicate with and support.

After finishing his tea, Xu left the office and took a drive out to a training field behind the base to see how Fang was doing with their security force, two eight-man squads who would be leaving tomorrow afternoon, bound for the Hakka castle.

The training field included an obstacle course with bridges and barbed wire, wall climbs, and a few other training challenges. At the far end of the field stood several buildings used for close-quarters combat training, and it was there that Xu spotted a circle of men.

As he drove closer, he realized Fang was in the middle of the group, and another man, one of the soldiers, was lying on the ground, head pulled into his chest as Fang struck him repeatedly across the back with his unsheathed sword cane.

Xu parked, climbed down from his Brave Warrior, and approached the group. The soldiers immediately snapped to attention, and Fang glanced up in midswing, then lowered his sword.

"What do we have here, Captain?" asked Xu, flicking his gaze down to the soldier, who chanced a look up at Xu, his face covered in blood.

"We have a discipline problem, sir," answered Fang, trying to catch his breath. "This soldier is not comfortable with my leadership."

"What do you mean?"

"Apparently, and I'm unsure how, a few of them learned that I was born in Taiwan. Sergeant Chung here has already referred to me as a spy."

Xu leaned down and got into the bleeding man's face. "Is that true, soldier?"

"I am sorry, sir."

Frowning, Xu faced the men. "Captain Fang's loyalty is without question. Is there any man who disagrees?"

The men stood, statues dressed in camouflage.

"Excellent. Carry on, Captain. You have less than twenty-four hours to be ready."

"Yes, sir!"

As Xu climbed back into his truck, a chill woke at the base of his spine. Fang Zhi's anger knew no bounds, but he would earn the respect of his new force.

Still, that rage could turn into something uncontrollable. Xu would continue to watch the man.

As Xu left the field, his cell phone rang. One of his smugglers in Pakistan was on the line. Another arms shipment had been successfully sold to the Taliban. Xu congratulated the man. The Tigers had turned their gunrunning operation into a most profitable venture. They used the money to buy the silence and fierce loyalty of many more military commanders within the region, men who, while not part of the group, would do as they were told when the time came.

Buddha stood on the ridge overlooking the castle, watching as Huang ascended the dirt road winding back and forth like a brown snake — or better still, a noodle, the thought of which made Buddha's sagging gut growl.

Buddha's real name was Hsieh Chia-hsien, but over the years he'd actually come to prefer his CIA moniker. He had been working for the agency for more than two decades, recruited at the ripe old age of forty-one. He'd had a full head of hair when the Americans had come calling, and Bill Clinton had been in the White House.

Yes, times had surely changed. Now the agency had paired him up with some college kid. Both the CIA and the DIA had been hiring too many of these Boy Scouts, as the Americans called them, and twice Buddha's cover had nearly been blown by them.

As an expression of his disdain, he'd dubbed his new partner, the baby-faced Chan Chi-yao, as Boy Scout, and that would be his code name, whether he liked it or not.

Boy Scout wore a perpetual scowl that he thought concealed his inexperience. At twenty-four, what he knew about the world could fit in a teacup. But oh, he wasn't afraid to tell you how smart he was, in case you forgot. Poor boy. It might take him fifty years, but he would realize what a young fool he'd been and that he should have had more respect for his elders. This new generation had been raised by wolves.

Buddha fished out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow, then shoved up his spectacles. The temperature was mild, but that didn't matter. He seemed to sweat no matter what he was doing.

Boy Scout glanced over at him, shaking his head. "Have you considered a diet?"

They spoke in Mandarin, but occasionally Buddha would throw an English phrase at the kid to test him, like he did now: "You wanna play, you pay. That's the way it is, kid. And I'm way too old for a diet."

The kid frowned. Nope, he didn't quite understand that one. But hadn't the kid said he was an expert on American slang? Uh-huh…

Their inside man Huang finally reached the ridge, and Boy Scout gave a slight whistle. The elder moved into the dense stand of trees and nodded to them.

"How did it go?" asked Buddha.

After a slight shrug, Huang answered, "Okay, I guess."

"What you mean, old man?" snapped Boy Scout. "Did you tell them or not?"

"I told them, but they still want to meet you. They don't trust me."

"Quiet for a moment," Buddha ordered the kid. "Huang, all they need to do is stay out of the way. You keep telling them that those men coming tomorrow night are drug smugglers working with the army. You tell them the secret police will be coming to arrest them, and that everyone should remain in their rooms. And when we're finished, I promise you that those men will not bother you or your family ever again."

"I want to believe you."

"Just do as we say. And when you know exactly where each man will be staying, you will call us with that information."

"And if I don't?"

"Then we'll—"

Buddha slapped a palm over Boy Scout's mouth. "Then we'll assume you're dead. If you want to save your village, help us."

"But you are not with the secret police, are you?"

"What makes you say that?"

Huang flicked his glance to Boy Scout. "He is too young and too stupid."

Buddha smiled. "I agree. But the police are desperate these days, and we need anyone we can get."

"Okay, but remember our deal. The man I told you about?"

"Yes, Fang Zhi?" said Buddha.

Huang nodded. "You will kill him."

"Of course. Better go now. Fang will be calling you soon. And so will we."

For a moment, Huang just stood there, looking at them, and Buddha pitied the man. He was just a simple farmer caught up in something far more dangerous than he could possibly imagine.

Fang Zhi was assumably one of the Spring Tiger Group's cronies, a guard or security chief who meant nothing in the grand scheme. His name was not even worth mentioning to the Special Forces team coming ashore, and while Buddha had promised to kill him, that was only to satisfy Huang.

Buddha regarded his partner, then tipped his head toward the path. "Back to the car, little one."

Boy Scout's eyes widened. "You will not say that again."

"I see your parents have been neglectful, and the Americans have poisoned away what was left of your respect. But that is okay. You will do as I say, or I will strangle you until you are blue then white then dead. And then I will communicate the unfortunate accident to Langley." Buddha narrowed his fiery gaze, and Boy Scout withered where he stood.

Then, abruptly, Buddha threw his arm around the kid and chuckled. "We're going to have a lot of fun in the next couple of days. Let me ask you something. Other than in training, have you ever been shot at?"

"No."

"That's not good."

"Why should I be worried? This is an assassination, nice and quiet."

Buddha chuckled again. "My dear boy, when the Americans are involved, nothing is ever quiet."

Captain Scott Mitchell drove one of the team's two SUVs around some cargo pallets, then he and Ramirez, who was at the wheel of the other truck, slipped beneath a row of six-inch-thick hawsers secured to the bollards of a supertanker on the opposite end of the pier. They drove farther out, then finally parked alongside the submarine, whose hull glistened like the black skin of a killer whale in the moonlight.

Their weapons and other gear were packed in more than a dozen heavy load-out bags and stowed in the cargo areas of each truck. Jenkins and Smith began unloading, but Mitchell told them to hold off until they talked to the crew.

"Captain Mitchell," called a tall, broad-shouldered man coming forward.

"That'd be me, sir."

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Sands, the XO, and this is Master Chief Suallo, chief of the boat. We call him COB."

After shaking the XO's hand, Mitchell turned to the shorter, stouter man with the forced grin and did likewise. "Master Chief."

"Captain."

"Glad to have you aboard, Captain," added Sands.

Mitchell gave a little snort. "I appreciate that, sir, but you'll be happier once we're off your boat."

The XO chuckled then raised his voice to address the entire team. "Okay, listen up. Welcome aboard Montana. Master Chief Suallo will issue each of you a thermoluminescent dosimeter, like the ones he and I are wearing." Sands reached down to his belt and gestured to a device slightly smaller than a deck of cards. "The dosimeter records your total radiation dosage while on board, and it must be worn at all times. Once COB assigns you one, you'll be escorted down this after hatch, through the lock-out trunk, and into the galley on the upper level."

"Damn, we get to eat first thing," Ramirez whispered in Mitchell's ear.

"I doubt it."

"Question, Captain Mitchell?" asked Sands.

"No, sir."

"Good. You'll be briefed about spaces that are off-limits, certain ship routines called rigs, and most importantly, how to flush the commode."

Mitchell and his Ghosts chuckled.

But Sands wasn't kidding. "While that's happening, a working party will finish unloading your gear and move it below. It'll be waiting for you in the torpedo room."

Turning to Mitchell, Sands added, "Captain Gummerson would like to see you in his stateroom at your convenience."

"I'm at the captain's disposal," replied Mitchell. "Lead the way. But I guess I'll grab one of those Geiger counters first."

Montana's fly-by-wire system hovered the 377-foot submarine at exactly one hundred feet as Mitchell and his team flooded, exited, reentered, and blew out the lock-out trunk with lights on and in total darkness. The drills were completed within the first six hours after leaving Subic Bay, while still in warm seas.

It was, admittedly, unnerving to stand in that trunk in total darkness while the water rose. All Mitchell could think about in those last few seconds was an accident and the warnings offered by the two SEALs.

The twenty-one-hour trip to Xiamen Harbor was otherwise uneventful. Mitchell and his Ghosts listened to stories, shared some of their own, and the lies per nautical mile grew to astronomical proportions.

As they neared the harbor and the end of their journey, Montana "rigged for ultraquiet," with the sub's interior bathed only in red light. All nonwatchstanders remained in their bunks, and television or other leisure activities were prohibited. Even the galley was closed.

The captain told Mitchell that they were sweeping the entire harbor, their fathometer and minesweeping sonar actively probing under and around the sub with impunity because of the horrendous day and night noise level of numerous small craft and shipyard construction activity.

The sun had just set, and under the cover of darkness, the captain extended a photonic mast to photograph and measure laser IR ranges for potential drop-off sites.

Using those pictures, Mitchell and Gummerson met to determine a location, choosing a spot near the southeast tip of an unnamed and uninhabited sand spit.

"Looks good," said Mitchell.

"Yes, and don't worry. I'll get us in within a thousand feet so you won't have far to swim, and I'll still have about two hundred fifty feet of water around me."

The captain went on to say that hovering with her keel at one hundred feet would still keep the tip of Montana 's sail at forty-eight feet below the surface. He said he hadn't seen any ship in the harbor that drew that much water, fully laden.

"You must live right, Scott," he finally added. "We're at high tide, and it's a spring tide."

"So that's good?"

"It's excellent. Spring tides are really high or low when the sun and moon are lined up, and we get their combined gravitational pull. You get to swim in a little closer to the beach, and I get a few more feet under my keel."

"Great."

"And one more thing. Sunrise is at oh five twenty-four. If you're not in the water before then, we'll return every night, same time, until the National Command Authority gives me a direct order to terminate the operation. I'm not in the habit of leaving personnel behind."

"Neither am I, sir. And I appreciate that. But if you have to bail on us, we'll just highjack a rickshaw and head west."

The captain grinned. "I'm sure you will. Now I'll have our drop-off point forwarded to your higher, and they'll get it to the agents you'll link up with onshore."

"Thank you, sir."

The old truck made a gurgling noise then began to slow. Mitchell brought up the tactical map in his HUD, studying the tortuous mountain road glowing green and leading up to the castle, marked with the requisite yellow square and the words Primary Objective.

They had come to a fork in the road, and the truck carrying Bravo Team, driven by the guy named Boy Scout, was veering right for the 1.7 kilometer trek to the transformer station.

"Ghost Lead, this is Beasley. We're heading up now. I'll contact you once we're set at the secondary objective."

"Roger that."

"Captain?"

Mitchell reached down to the cell phone with walkie talkie function that Buddha had given him. "Go ahead."

"Good news awaits on the road ahead."

"You getting philosophical, or do you know something we don't?"

"I have a little surprise."

"Really? Bring it on. Just hope it's a good one."

"I think you will be pleased."

"You hear that?" Mitchell called to the others. "He's got a surprise."

Diaz shook her head. "I hate surprises."

"Me, too," said Ramirez.

Mitchell nodded. "When we stop, everyone look sharp."

Master Sergeant Matt Beasley was ordinarily a patient man. All those years as a student of human nature had taught him to be still like a predator, always looking and listening.

But the lights had just gone out. And the captain had ordered them to do… nothing.

They were waiting ten more minutes to give the Tigers' security team time to check in with each other, time enough to give them all a false sense of security.

Hitting the castle directly after the power went down was much too conventional, and they would be tense, despite whatever story the CIA's inside man told them about the outage.

And that explained why Beasley, Brown, Jenkins, and Hume continued lying on their bellies within the ditch at the edge of the woodland. The pair of small, two-man civilian helicopters were less than a hundred meters away.

Images of those choppers had been captured by Beasley's camera and uploaded to the network. Within a minute the helicopters had been identified as Brantly B-2Bs manufactured by a Texas company that had been bought out by the Chinese. A detailed set of schematics and even a suggested sabotage point within the cockpit focusing on the bird's electronics systems accompanied the intel.

Parked near the choppers were a pair of jeeplike SUVs identified as the new Brave Warriors, and Beasley didn't need the geeks back home to tell him how to sabotage them.

Out there, a few hundred meters beyond the vehicles, lay the castle, growing even darker as swollen clouds descended like enormous zeppelins to blot out the stars. From one window came the faintest trace of a flashlight being switched on.

Beasley returned his gaze to the helicopters. He'd hoped that the Tigers would have chosen much larger birds so that the Ghosts could've revised their exfiltration plan to include a swift chopper ride back to the coast courtesy of a Chinese pilot held at gunpoint.

But as Murphy and logic would have it, the Tigers had chosen to be discreet and flown in via those smaller civilian birds.

A few drops of rain struck the ditch, followed by a few more. Beasley hoped the captain didn't wait much longer, because once the storm really kicked in, their targets would seek cover in their vehicles, making them even harder to pick off.

The two chopper pilots and two drivers had gathered near the open tailgates of the trucks and were drinking, smoking, while one was engrossed in a small, handheld computer game.

Beasley had already played out Bravo Team's raid a half dozen times in his head. He'd initially considered a standoff attack, dropping each guy quietly like snipers and taking full advantage of the camera mounted on his Modular Rifle — Caseless (MR-C) to peek around the vehicles. However, once those men had gathered in close, he'd realized that the raid must be more swift, that all four needed to go down at once.

And to ensure success, Beasley knew they had to get in close. Very close.

"Well, that's ten minutes," whispered Jenkins over Bravo Team's radio channel.

"Ghost Lead, this is Bravo Lead," called Beasley on the main channel. "Still waiting on you, Boss."

"Uh, yeah. Sit tight."

Something ominous had crept into the captain's tone.

"What the hell's he waiting for?" asked Brown.

"The captain knows what he's doing," Beasley retorted, only half buying the assurance.

"I know he knows. Wish he'd share it with us."

"He sounds distracted," said Jenkins.

"We're all distracted," Beasley snapped.

"I think something's going down," said Brown.

"Yeah, it's called Operation War Wraith," Beasley finished.

"Uh, I don't know. This… this ain't right," said Hume. "Every time we work with the spooks, there's always something they don't tell us — and I got a feeling the captain just got a piece of intel he definitely doesn't like."

Beasley sighed. The longer they waited, the more paranoid they would become.

With a gasp, Mitchell was back, hot-wired to the moment, his senses flooded with input.

"Ghost Lead, this is Bravo Lead," Beasley called again. "Don't forget about us, Captain! I need that order!"

As chills raced up Mitchell's spine, he checked the downlink channel now showing Beasley's camera, zoomed in, and enhanced. Bravo Team's targets were seeking cover.

Instincts honed by years of combat experience took over. Mitchell began processing information and issuing orders with cool, calm efficiency:

"Bravo Team, attack."

"Roger that," Beasley answered in a stage whisper. "Moving up to attack."

"Diaz, snipers, then main gate, fire now."

"Roger that, Captain. Sighting my first target."

"Smith? Police up the drone, then fall in behind us. Ramirez? Nolan? Move out!"

Mitchell burst from cover, and Ramirez was already a few steps ahead of him and took point, his MK14 EBR rifle with attached silencer held at the ready as they raced along the road, then started down toward the castle, picking their way through streams of rainwater washing down the mountain.

Nolan was hard on Mitchell's heels, carrying his P90 SD Belgian-designed submachine gun with suppressor because, as many medics argued, the best form of preventative medicine was superior firepower.

"Got the drone," Smith reported, then hustled up behind them with a Modular Rifle — Caseless (MR-C). The MR-C fired caseless ammo at 900 rounds per minute, and while the regular army did not field the rifle, the Ghosts endorsed it wholeheartedly.

They had guns, all right. Lots of them.

But only four shots really mattered: one in the head of each Spring Tiger.

Or was it five shots?

Mitchell considered shouting to the others, The guy with cane? He's mine!

However, he could not reveal his personal bias and immediately undermine his command. The mission and his people came first. He knew that. They knew that. If Fang were killed in the crossfire, then so be it.

But who was he kidding? He wanted to fire that shot more than anything else in the world. His anger had grown talons that ripped apart his gut, and over and over he watched himself squeezing the man's neck and firing that shot. Mitchell gasped, shuddered off the thought, and hustled on.

After more than an hour's worth of dizzying passion, Colonel Xu Dingfa had fallen onto the bed, breathless and relaxed, with the comfort girl's head resting gently on his chest. He had vowed in the morning to ask her name and make arrangements to see her again.

He'd thought he'd been dreaming when the door had smashed inward, the faint light from the candle near the bed illuminating two figures, their faces concealed by masks, their night-vision goggles protruding like antennae from their heads. One was hunkered down, one stood, and as Xu's eyes had opened wider, he'd spotted their guns.

The reach for his own weapon was instinctual, worthless, really, but he couldn't just lie there.

Now, as the girl screamed and the first silenced rounds finished her, Xu wondered who was responsible for his death. Who had betrayed him? Fang? Had the man been lying in wait for these past four years, a tiger himself? No, it couldn't be. Could it?

The shots ripped through Xu's chest, and it took another second for the pain to register like a claw shredding his gut with slow, even strokes. He coughed, and his mouth immediately filled with blood.

Xu felt no sorrow for himself, only for his dear mother and father, whom he had failed. They would not see their lost children, and that was the greatest tragedy.

As the men rifled through his belongings, Xu thought of raising his fist in one last act of defiance, but the room had already grown dark around the edges, and there was only the strength for one final breath.

Maintenance Supervisor Tang Chia-jun coughed and squinted through the thinning clouds of smoke rising around the transformer station.

Once he and his men reached the breakers that he assumed were the problem, he took one look at the damage, and his mouth fell open.

Supervisor Tang had been working for the power company for over twenty-two years. He knew his job.

And he knew sabotage when he saw it. That new lock on the gate and the smoke had been the first signs of something much more than a routine repair.

Now his flashlight's beam shot up through the smoke like a laser and caught three gray bricks attached to the main lines. His breath grew shallow.

Just then, Tang's assistant supervisor shouted from the other side of the station.

Tang rushed over and found that the man had removed his hard hat and he, along with three others, stood near a small, robotlike camera humming softly.

Suddenly, the camera turned, jarring all of them. It rolled forward on its treads and seemed to stare at them, its "head" panning right and left.

"What is this?" asked his assistant.

Tang gaped at the thing. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" asked another of the workers. "Is this some new equipment?"

Tang turned back to the bricks on the main lines, then faced the robot.

He began to tremble.

Roughly three kilometers away, inside one of the north building's stairwells, Beasley frowned at the Chinese power crew in his HUD. Were they about to run off? He wasn't sure, but he needed them gone now. A data bar in the right corner of his HUD displayed a preprogrammed list of commands in Mandarin that he could issue through the SUGV's loudspeaker. He chose the obvious: Go away. Fast!

"Kuai Zou! Kuai Zou! Kuai Zou!"

The men slowly backed off. All right, they were beginning to get the message.

Beasley pressed a button on his wireless controller, and a detonation clock glowed and flashed on his screen: 00:00:20, 00:00:19, 00:00:18…

Not only would the rest of the station blow, but the SUGV was also rigged for detonation with chemical charges that would melt its components beyond recognition.

"Ghost Lead, this is Bravo Lead. Charges at the station have been activated. But I have two men down."

Tang's mouth finally worked. "Run now! Run!" He sprinted toward the gate, his men following, screaming their questions as a series of ear-piercing explosions came from behind them.

His heart hammering, his breath all but gone, Tang neared the fence when the concussion lifted him into the air for a moment, then slammed him into the gate.

The rest of his men joined him there, and they all turned back, breathless, staring in awe at the fireballs.

Diaz ignored the muffled booming from the northeast as she targeted that door Ramirez had indicated.

Three of the four Spring Tigers were already dead. If she could nab this guy, Admiral Cai, designated Target Charlie, the mission was over.

But poor Marcus. Had she killed him? She was too damned scared to ask.

And Beasley wasn't saying a word.

She began to pant and could almost hear the rattle of her nerves as the door swung open, and there he was.

No, that wasn't him. That was his guard. There he was, just behind, turning now to the right.

She gave him just enough lead.

"Yeah, you didn't just miss the bad guy, Alicia. You killed one of your friends!"

Shut up, Tomas!

She took the shot, but the round erupted in the earth at Admiral Cai's feet. She cursed as she threw back the bolt and reloaded, never taking her eye off the admiral.

He dropped and began crawling around the building's edge, out of sight, though the red diamond IDing him glowed over the wall.

A green diamond suddenly floated into view.

"Diaz, Ghost Lead here. Hold your fire! I got him."

Mitchell ordered the others to load Brown and Hume into his SUV. Nolan climbed into the back to better assess their wounds and treat them while en route back to the coast. Hume was in and out. Brown was just coming around.

They raced off, while Ramirez, Beasley, Smith, and Jenkins climbed into Buddha's SUV.

As Diaz took them up onto the slick mountain road, struggling with the wheel, Mitchell just happened to glance in the side-view mirror.

Buddha's SUV had yet to pull out of the courtyard. A man was running toward the truck, waving one hand.

"Ramirez, this is Ghost Lead. What's going on down there?"

They had been screaming for Buddha to get the hell out of there, but the fat man had spotted someone running across the courtyard and had cried, "Wait!"

Ramirez, who was sitting up front, swung his pistol around and aimed at Buddha's head. "Drive!"

"No, that's Huang, our contact. Just wait one second!"

"Get moving now!" shouted Ramirez. "This place'll get hot soon. Come on!"

Buddha faced him with widening eyes. "Patience."

"Get out of the car!" screamed Beasley from the backseat. "Out, fat man! I'm driving!"

"Huang?" shouted Buddha, ignoring Beasley. "What is it?"

Captain Gummerson approached the two naval aviators just as Lieutenant Moch shook his fist and muttered, "Yeah."

They were in the control room, and Moch and his copilot, Lieutenant Justin Schumaker, had been a study in sheer determination as they'd piloted the Predator over the twisting mountain road. Once they'd located a swath of ground wide enough to permit the Predator's wingspan of 14.8 meters, they had descended hard and fast through the rainstorm, putting the bird on a direct intercept course with Mitchell's fleeing guard.

Gummerson had listened to the initial request, which had raised a few brows on Montana.

"Predator support, this is Diaz," called one of Mitchell's Ghosts.

"Hey, Alicia. Go ahead."

"Jeff, remember that story you told me? Well, I need you to stop a train."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No. It's up to you, Mr. Naval Aviator."

"Roger that. Sit back and enjoy the show."

Now Gummerson leaned over Moch and said, "I assume you stopped your train — or is it a truck?"

"Oh, yeah, sir. All he saw was our headlight before we ran him off the road." Moch pointed at one of his monitors with thermal images and pairs of reticles superimposed over several data bars. "Check it out. You see the look on his face?"

"Wow. But he did see the bird."

"True. But he won't be around long enough to tell."

Gummerson nodded and glanced over at Lieutenant Commander Sands, who appeared equally impressed.

Moch's copilot began speaking quickly over his radio as flashing red circles appeared along a three-dimensional rendering of the drone's fuselage.

"What now?" groaned Moch.

"Looks like some hydraulic and engine damage, and a small fuel leak from all that gunfire," said Schumaker. "Sensor operators back home confirm."

"Lieutenant, I need you to take her back over the harbor before you ditch. Can you still do that?" asked Gummerson.

"We'll sweet-talk her into one last pass, sir."

"Focus on the gap between Haicang and Gulangyu Island. That zone concerns me the most."

Moch gently shifted the joystick controller. "On our way."

Gummerson faced Sands. "XO, are the SEALs ready?"

"Standing by."

"Excellent. Tell 'em it won't be long."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Satellite imagery relayed to Mitchell's HUD indicated that Fang was out of his ride, but he had not fled. He was trying to use the truck's forward winch to drag the vehicle from the embankment and, perhaps, tip it upright. If he could utilize a few trees and rig the tow line at the proper angle, he could get back on the road.

They were about five minutes away from his position, and Mitchell knew that if they roared up on him, he'd bolt into the woods.

A pang of guilt woke deep in Mitchell's gut. The mission and his people came first, yes, but this was a chance to slam shut one of the most painful doors of his life. Could he justify taking time out for revenge?

Maybe Fang had seen the Predator. Maybe he'd alert the PLA that the attack had come from Americans.

And didn't General Keating need more time to get those patrol boats away from the harbor?

He could rationalize it all he wanted, but the guilt still clawed at his neck and began robbing him of breath. He turned to the backseat. "Nolan, how're we doing?"

"A whole lot better," replied the medic.

"Hey, sir," said Brown, moving his lips as though tasting something very bad, a symptom of a head wound. "I'm okay."

"Me, too," said Hume.

"Marcus, I'm so sorry," said Diaz.

"Forget it. I know if you wanted to kill me, you wouldn't have missed."

"We'll talk more later," she said.

Mitchell tensed. "All right, listen up. We'll be on that last guard in a minute. He's rolled over and is trying to free his truck with a winch. I don't want to leave any loose ends — particularly a military witness like this guy, so I plan to take him out."

"Sounds good to us, sir," said Nolan.

"There's something else, something you have a right to know. That guard's name is Fang Zhi. He's from Taiwan. He was a captain in their army, and I worked with him in the Philippines, doing some joint training back in '02. We got ambushed, and he wouldn't order his team to attack. He said our orders were unconscionable. I lost a lot of good men because of that man."

"Sir, are you serious?" asked Diaz.

"I am. When the drone was deployed, I got a good look at him."

"Whoa, what the hell's he doing here?" asked Hume.

Mitchell sighed. "I heard he got busted out of the army. He must've defected to China. But that doesn't matter. All I'm trying to say is, you guys come first."

"Sir, the rumors have gone around," said Diaz. "He's the guy who gave you that scar, isn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Then, sir, you tell me where to pull over." Diaz's tone darkened. "We'll go down there and take care of business."

"No. I won't risk you guys for that. You give me five minutes. If you don't hear from me, I'm dead. You come down, get my body, and get to the coast. All right, this is close enough."

As Diaz slowed, she shook her head and raised her voice: "Sir, we have no intention of collecting your body. You're going to kill that bastard. And maybe you don't want us with you, but we can still help."

Mitchell climbed out of the SUV, gave her a curt nod. "Okay. Stay in touch."

What Fang did not realize and could never truly appreciate was that Captain Scott Mitchell was not alone.

His father, mother, brothers, and sister were with him.

Kristen was with him.

His Ghosts were with him — as was every Special Forces operator with whom he had ever served.

Maybe it was their presence that Fang detected. Or maybe it was something else.

But as the man came down for the kill shot with that sword whose tip was already familiar with Mitchell's flesh, there was a moment of recognition in his eyes, as though maybe, just maybe, he realized who was behind the balaclava covering Mitchell's face.

It was only a second of hesitation.

But it was enough.

Mitchell slammed his knees into Fang's back, even as he reached out and knocked the sword to the left while throwing Fang back, over his head. He rolled and clawed frantically through the dirt, toward his rifle, Diaz's voice still rattling from the earpiece/monocle, the rain turning torrential and blown sideways through the trees.

Mitchell seized the MR-C, rolled back onto his rump, and took aim at Fang, who was coming at him once more, clutching the sword in both hands like a baseball bat.

Fang froze. He had a decision to make.

Mitchell blinked the rain from his eyes and wondered if Fang would drop the sword.

Fang was no doubt wondering why Mitchell hadn't already fired. He'd find out in a second.

Slowly, Mitchell got to his feet, as Fang held his ground, his chest rising and falling, his mouth twisting as he flinched from his chest wound.

Holding his rifle in one hand, Mitchell ripped off his balaclava, shoved it into his pocket, and stepped toward Fang, whose eyes widened in shock.

"You… you are Mitchell. Master Sergeant Mitchell," Fang said in English. He was unaware of Mitchell's promotions since then, unaware of so much.

"That's right," Mitchell answered. "Let's talk before I put a bullet in your head."

"You will never have that pleasure."

In a blur of movement, Fang adjusted his grip on the sword and turned the tip on himself, ready to plunge the sword into his chest.

Mitchell fired a single round into Fang's abdomen, blood spraying as Fang twisted and fell onto his back, the sword tumbling from his grip.

As Fang turned onto his side to retrieve the sword, Mitchell splashed past him and kicked the blade out of the man's reach.

Then he set down his rifle and seized Fang by the collar, hauled him back into a sitting position.

Fang's head lolled back as he threatened to lose consciousness.

"Fang, look at me!" cried Mitchell. "Look at me."

While Ramirez was technically the assistant team leader, the shooting pain from his gunshot wound made it difficult to think straight, so he'd placed Beasley in charge. Smith, who'd been hit himself, had done a fine job of taping up Ramirez and fitting him with a makeshift sling, but Ramirez had refused painkillers. He'd wanted his head to be clear. Maybe he'd have Nolan inject him with a local anesthetic when the medic arrived.

Ramirez and Beasley remained inside the idling SUV while Jenkins and Smith had gone down to the docks and loading ramp, just fifty meters ahead to secure the boat.

All of Haicang up to the Xiamen Bridge was still dark, but just across the harbor, Xiamen Island remained brightly — and unnervingly — lit.

Ramirez checked his watch, then pulled up the tactical map in his HUD and zoomed in on Mitchell's SUV. "They should be here by 0410 hours."

"And the sun comes up at what, 0524 hours," said the team sergeant. We need to move."

"Yup."

"You know something, Joey? I don't like this plan." Beasley grinned.

"Neither do I."

They banged fists, the words and act a little ritual often repeated during exfiltration.

Headlights shone behind them, and Ramirez whirled. "Captain's early? But I just saw him on—"

"No," grunted Beasley. "That ain't him. Get down!"

Beasley, who was in the driver's seat, shut off the engine and lowered the window, pistol in hand.

Ramirez clutched his own pistol and hit the window button as the headlights drew nearer.

"Ghost Lead, this is Bravo Lead."

"Go ahead."

"Boss, we might have a problem."

SEAL Chief Tanner wouldn't let some punk with a cheap pistol ruin his night. Phillips's eyes said likewise.

In unison, they squeezed the triggers on their remote detonators and rolled under the pilings, out of the barge worker's aim.

The guy fired, the shot ricocheting off the rocks behind them, just as the first pair of detonations resounded so loudly that even Tanner, a veteran of blowing stuff up, was awed by the initial cacophony and blast wave, which threw him and Phillips back against the rocks.

It was the fuel, all that fuel, whose sound and detonation Tanner could not have anticipated.

Then came the reverberation ripping through the pier like an earthquake, tearing up the farthest planks in succession as he and Phillips got back to their feet, dashed below the pier, and came up the other side, where the barge worker had turned to face the dozens of fireballs lighting up the entire spit.

Tanner summarily shot him, then he and his partner raced back into the woods, their backs warmed by fires.

After jogging a few dozen meters, Tanner stole a look back, saw some of the patrol boat's crew members jumping ship and swimming toward the shoreline, even as the Zodiac motored away from the explosions.

Tanner swore and hurried to catch up with Phillips, who had already found their secondary position and was ready for the next detonation.

Mitchell's mouth fell open, and he found himself clambering to his feet for a better look.

Fifty-five-gallon drums burst apart, catapulting others into the air, all part of a hellish fountain swelling up from the pier to spew orange and red showers of burning diesel fuel. Dozens of smaller bursts mushroomed up before walls of black smoke as the stench of fuel and hot metal finally reached them across the water.

SEAL Chief Tanner had been right about the gunpowder remark, but it was the Chinese who had also invented fireworks, and this display rivaled anything Mitchell had ever seen — in combat or otherwise.

The fuel barge itself finally went up in a single, massive blast, the intense, near-white light coming first, followed by a boom that made everyone aboard flinch as it echoed off the opposite shoreline.

Thousand of pieces of flaming debris shot high into the air, like a swarm of bottle rockets, then tumbled down into the dark water, immediately extinguished, the hissing steam fanning out in ringlets as the bow of the barge suddenly appeared behind the flames. That bow tipped up and began sinking, the rest of the boat either gone or simply unseen behind the raging fires.

The crew aboard the patrol boat, which had been gliding up toward the barge, was scrambling on the deck, the boat beginning to turn away from the catastrophe off their port bow.

But then the crane cabin tore apart in yet another thunderclap, shards of metal slicing through the air like throwing stars that tore into the patrol boat's hull and pilothouse as a dragon's breath of fire spread over the deck, igniting crew members who staggered to the rails and threw themselves overboard.

Tanner's placement of the C-4 was sheer artistry. While the debris continued slamming into the patrol boat, the crane's massive boom blew loose from its support fitting and slowly came down with a screech and groan as piercing as it was foretelling.

And if timing was everything, then Tanner's delay had been intentional, because that boom caught the forward corner of the patrol boat's pilothouse like a sledgehammer on a loaf of white bread.

Metal peeled back amid flurries of sparks and flames licking along the surfaces, but the boat's twin diesel engines kept on, dragging and bending the boom with it, waves suddenly rising up over her sides under all that added weight. Suddenly, her bow became entirely submerged, the water streaming up to her antiaircraft guns.

"Captain, I know fireworks," cried Hume. "And the navy's putting on one hell of a show!"

Not a second after Hume finished, the ammo stored in ready lockers on the patrol boat's stern deck began cooking off in dozens more pops, cracks, and bangs that lit up the shattered boat like a rock concert.

The bursting of more fuel drums on the pier, the roar of the still-burning fuel barge, and the creaking of the toppled crane, along with the patrol boat's exploding ammo, combined to form a brilliant beacon of devastation easily seen and heard for kilometers, especially by those situated along the powerless coastline.

And those in the air.

"There he is!" cried Diaz, as they sailed directly opposite of the burning pier. The marksman had already taken aim with her secondary rifle, the Cx4 Storm SD.

"Got him," replied Mitchell, spotting the helicopter, whose doors had been removed to allow gunners to hang out either side.

The chopper's searchlight painted a gleaming puddle in the harbor as thick smoke wafted through its beam. Mitchell squinted as the light momentarily blinded him.

And then, just as the beam shifted, two helmeted soldiers lifted their rifles.

"Weapons free, fire!" ordered Mitchell, cutting loose with his own MR-C, Diaz's weapon rattling a second after his.

The pilot reacted immediately, banking hard left and pulling up, the chopper's belly gleaming with ricocheting rounds for a few seconds until the pilot finally ascended out of the fire.

"Give him more lead, more lead," cried Mitchell, seeing how much faster the chopper was than his team had anticipated.

Jenkins, who was still at the wheel, turned the boat left, bringing them past several long piers crowded by old sampans and a few junks with crimson sails waiting to be unfurled. A trio of more modern ferries was moored behind them. Jenkins made one more turn, now heading directly toward the gap between Haicang and Gulangyu Island.

"He's not coming back," said Smith, lowering his rifle. "What the hell?"

The downlink channel appeared in Mitchell's HUD. "Better step it up, son," warned General Keating. "Remember, Montana won't surface till you get past that gap. And she won't surface with that chopper up there." The general turned away from the camera. "What is it? Hold on, Mitchell."

"Can't you go any faster?" hollered Beasley.

Jenkins shook his head.

"Aw, man, look at that!" cried Ramirez.

As Mitchell turned toward the bow, Keating appeared once more in the HUD. "All right, Mitchell. You don't have one chopper to deal with — you got two."

And Mitchell didn't need that new intel now. The second bird swept in behind the first, and now both soared back toward their boat, noses pitched forward, gunners taking aim.

If the Ghosts survived this, there was a great lesson to be learned: Never bring an old fishing boat to a helicopter battle.

He cursed then shouted, "Alpha Team, target left chopper. Bravo, take the right. Diaz, go for the pilots. And Smith? Hold fire and deploy my drone!"

Smith dove to the deck and sloughed off his pack. He withdrew the MAV4mp Cypher and tossed it hard like a Frisbee over the side, while the others began firing at the choppers.

Mitchell took control of the drone with his wireless controller and steered it directly toward the chopper on the right.

"Keep up that fire!" he ordered as both helicopters swooped down to strafe them.

Shifting the drone's camera to a forward view, Mitchell took the UAV into a dive, then came right up toward one of the gunners leaning out his open door.

The gunner looked up, frowned, as Mitchell throttled up and slammed the drone directly into the guy's head, even as he continued on, bringing the Cypher inside the chopper.

"Zai jian," Mitchell muttered.

He thumbed a button.

The drone exploded inside the chopper with a small flash and subsequent puff of smoke. Despite the relatively small charges, the self-destruct was still powerful enough to take out both gunners and blind the pilot, who suddenly pulled up, breaking off in an erratic turn.

"Put your fire on him!" ordered Mitchell.

But he'd failed to realize that the second chopper had dropped like a hawk, talons extended to snatch a fish from the water. Streaking now off their port side, the chopper edged closer, the gunner opening fire as Beasley and Smith answered in unison with their MR-Cs, while Diaz released a salvo at the cockpit window.

Ramirez, one-handing his MK14, directed his bead at the smoking chopper, automatic fire chewing into glass and metal.

"Joey!" shouted Smith.

Mitchell craned his head as Ramirez took a round to his left side, near his waist, a round that punched him back, over the gunwale, and into the waves.

"We lost Ramirez!" cried Beasley, his words nearly drowned out by the chopper off their port side, the gunner there now dead, the pilot wheeling off hard to the right.

SEAL Chief Tanner lay on his belly near the last cluster of trees before the long, sandy beach washing out behind them. Phillips was at his side.

The six sailors from the Chinese patrol boat who had launched in the Zodiac must have either spotted them or decided that the infiltrators had used the spit for their exfiltration, because all six of them, armed with pistols and rifles, had come ashore and were combing the forest.

Tanner imagined what must be on their minds. They had just witnessed the destruction of their beloved patrol boat. They had watched their comrades die. Their hearts were hard and aching for revenge.

And damn, Tanner wished he didn't have to confront them, but he and Phillips had no choice. Tanner had thought that they could don their Draegers and simply hide in the waves while these men searched the spit, but if Mitchell was going to double back and bring the fishing boat around to the east side of the spit to pick them up and take them past the gap (well beyond their own swimming capabilities), then these Chinese sailors needed to die here and now; otherwise Mitchell would have yet another firefight on his hands.

Of course, given the radio transmissions Tanner had been monitoring, there was a good chance that Mitchell and his Ghosts would not make it, stranding the two SEALs.

At that point, the best Tanner could hope for was to kill the Chinese sailors, don their gear, and swim out till they ran out of oxygen.

Higher's insistence that nothing be left behind to indicate this was an American operation worked in their favor. However, Captain Gummerson would still ultimately decide whether a security breach was worth risking his crew and his multimillion-dollar submarine.

Phillips lifted his chin, then gave Tanner a hand signal: movement ahead.

Tanner tensed as two Chinese sailors eased forward, not a meter apart, just three trees away.

Tanner gave Phillips another hand signal.

Phillips nodded slowly and raised his pistol.

Taking in a long breath and holding it, Tanner rolled away from his tree, aimed at the sailor on the left, and fired.

"Jenkins, turn around!" screamed Mitchell. "We're going back for Ramirez."

Even as Jenkins rolled the wheel, throwing all of them to the rail, Beasley and Smith shifted their fire to the smoking chopper, whose pilot was still trying to regain control.

Suddenly, a new trail of smoke unfurled from the chopper's tail rotor, and a fire appeared there as Beasley and Smith whooped and reloaded.

"Get him!" cried Mitchell as they came back toward Ramirez.

Jenkins released the wheel, turning it over to Mitchell, then dove into the water as Mitchell killed the throttle.

Meanwhile, the now-burning chopper began spinning and wobbling away from the boat, and Hume cursed that he didn't have a rocket to finish her off. But it didn't matter. The chopper rolled hard onto its side, the main rotor now perpendicular to the water as Mitchell brought the fishing boat around once more, trying to slow up near Jenkins and Ramirez.

The chopper's rotors began slicing into the water, and it suddenly turned once more as it made impact, the rotors snapping like twigs, the cabin slapping hard, waves of white water cascading up around the craft.

"Got that one, sir!" shouted Smith.

At the same time, the remaining chopper and its single gunner came back around for another pass, and that pilot had all the time in the world to get his gunner on target. Now their searchlight swept up, across Mitchell's wake, and found the two men in the water.

"Jenkins, come on!" cried Mitchell.

The moment the second sailor collapsed with a bullet lodged in his head, SEAL Chief Tanner and his partner wove back through the woods, heading west to circle around and come in from behind the remaining men.

Tanner and Phillips now held their pistols in one hand, their SOG SEAL knives in the other, the seven-inch blades powder-coated to conceal glare.

They darted to the edge of a slight clearing and crouched in the brush.

Just ahead, one sailor shouted to another, giving up his position — his last mistake.

With their predator's instincts finely tuned on the forest ahead, Tanner and Phillips moved in for the kill.

Diaz sat cross-legged on the deck and propped one elbow on the gunwale, sighting the oncoming chopper pilot. He roared down at a forty-five-degree angle, lining up on their stern and interrogating them with his searchlight.

Mitchell hollered as the rotor wash finally hit the boat, whipping up a mist that, in the next few seconds, would ruin Diaz's shot.

The chopper's gunner opened fire, and it was Brown who, despite his head injury, held a steady bead on the bird with his light machine gun. He quickly adjusted fire, and the gunner slumped after firing a salvo that stitched across the deck, missing Diaz by an arm's length.

Brown glanced back at her. "You're clear, Alicia! Take him out!"

It was the least she could do for the man she had almost killed.

Diaz froze and tuned out every noise, jostle, and vibration of the boat. She ignored the cuts, stiff joints, and bruises, and even the searchlight's pulsating glare.

Carlos and Tomas were strangely silent, as though she'd finally convinced them that she was their equal. Oh, that was hardly the case, but maybe they, too, were wondering in rigid silence if she could really pull this off.

Her crosshairs lined up, and just like that, she took a shot, squeezing off a second before thinking about it.

Both rounds punched through the canopy and struck the pilot in the chest and shoulder, respectively, blood darkening the side window as the man fell back, then slumped forward.

To her left, Beasley and Mitchell hauled a bleeding Ramirez back into the boat, and Jenkins climbed aboard himself while the chopper continued to descend.

"Oh my God," Diaz whispered, lowering her rifle as the enemy bird pitched even more, engine and slicing rotors blaring, speed increasing.

The deafening noise stole everyone's attention, Diaz knew, and it was Mitchell who vocalized their thoughts: "It's going to hit! Everybody out of the boat!"

Tanner had holstered his pistol when he'd realized he'd had the perfect kill. He called, "Over here," in Mandarin and got the sailor to turn around and come toward him. As the young man passed the tree behind which Tanner huddled, Tanner came around, covered the kid's mouth with one hand while punching his blade into the man's aorta.

The sailor would not die instantly, Tanner knew, so he'd kept his hand over the guy's mouth and withdrew the blade. He drove the sailor forward and came down with a second strike to the spinal cord.

That finished him.

Tanner carefully lowered the body to the ground and stood upright to catch his breath and wipe off the blade on his thigh.

Phillips, who'd slipped off to their right to take out the dead man's partner, called to say his guy was down, but his transmission broke off at the sound of gunfire.

"Phillips?"

He didn't answer. A hollow pang seized Tanner's gut. He cursed and bolted toward his partner's position.

They had just finished hauling Ramirez into the boat when Mitchell grabbed him and threw himself and the assistant team leader back over the side.

He wrapped an arm under Ramirez's chin and swam as hard as he could until the horrible sound of the chopper's rotors slashing through the fishing boat made him cry, "Joey, hold your breath!"

Mitchell dragged them underwater as a fireball swept over the water and lit up the waves with a surreal, flickering light, as though he were staring at a fireplace through warped glass.

For a moment, time slowed, and nearly all of Mitchell's senses shut down, but then the muffled cries of his Ghosts and the reverberating chomp, chomp of the rotors as they snapped off wrenched him back to reality and drove him to paddle deeper.

His thoughts reached out to the others, to what would happen to them now as his legs burned with exertion and his wounded arm twinged.

Ramirez began to struggle. He could no longer hold his breath, and Mitchell turned and kicked harder, heading back up.

They broke the surface just a few meters outside a large pool of burning fuel that had leaked from the chopper and boat as both had begun to sink.

Mitchell's earpiece/monocle was still attached to his head, and although the device was waterproof, he only got static.

He spotted Diaz treading water off to his right. "Alicia?"

"I'm all right," she answered. "I see Marcus, John, and Alex. They're okay."

Something thumped into Mitchell's head. He shifted around, saw Boy Scout's body floating facedown. Just a few meters off lay Buddha, faceup.

Mitchell wanted to shake his fists at the universe. They'd been so damned close — and now the ultimate failure. Operation War Wraith would be pinned on the United States because he and his Ghosts had failed to exfiltrate. They would be captured, tortured, paraded in front of the media, then spend the rest of their lives rotting away in a Chinese prison. It was hard to suppress those thoughts while floating in the harbor beside a pool of fire.

Beasley and Smith kicked toward him, clinging to a long piece of the fishing boat's hull. Beasley grabbed Ramirez, who was still conscious but barely moving, and pulled him up, onto the wood.

"Got nothing on the Cross-Com," Mitchell told them.

"Me neither," said Beasley.

Tanner returned fire, nicking the corner of a tree trunk. One of the sailors behind the tree kept rolling out and firing, while the other was on the ground, wailing over his wounded thigh.

Phillips had shot that man, but not before taking a round in his neck, another to the chest. Now he just lay on his back, breathing slowly.

Tanner crawled to his side. SEAL or no SEAL, it took incredible force of will for Tanner to remain composed with his partner and friend lying there, dying.

A pale orange shimmer out in the harbor caught his attention, and he fished out his binoculars. He gasped over floating wreckage, a wall of fire lifting from the black water, and the Ghosts floating at the edge of it all.

Tanner steeled himself. "We're getting out of here, buddy. Time for plan B."

Phillips nodded. "I'm ready."

A round blasted dirt in Tanner's eyes, and he rolled, faced that tree trunk, and returned fire. His second shot was echoed by a groan.

With that, he rose, hauled Phillips into a seated position, then, with the inhuman strength fueled by a massive adrenaline rush, he lifted the stocky SEAL over his shoulder, turned, and double-timed off, back toward the pier.

Only ten steps into their escape it dawned on Tanner that they'd shot five sailors. The sixth was still out there, and that fact sent a chill coiling up his spine.

Gummerson stood in the control room, flinching as every new piece of information came in.

The XO came over, his expression souring. "Captain, SEAL Chief Tanner reports that SEAL Chief Phillips is seriously wounded. Tanner also says he's lost contact with the Ghost Team. We just got some streaming vid from the harbor. The two choppers are down, but the Ghosts are in the water near burning fuel. They've lost their boat."

Gummerson frowned, then studied the images and map overlays on the screen before him and shook his head. "They're still too close. We can't risk surfacing there."

"Agreed, but, sir, how will they get out of the harbor?"

"I want to talk to SEAL Chief Tanner. I bet he's already got a plan."

Mitchell clung to another piece of the hull, along with Diaz and Smith. All of them floated there, coughing and spitting salt water as the fires began to die. Beasley had made sure that the bodies of the CIA agents were secured to another piece of wood in the event that some miracle happened and Captain Gummerson decided to risk it all and bring his boat into the harbor and surface.

Hijacking a rickshaw and heading west seemed a real possibility and a not-so-amusing quip now.

All right. The team was looking to him for orders, perhaps his final order as a Ghost Team leader. He would instruct them to paddle toward the piers along Haicang. Xiamen Island to the east was twice as far away. They had no other choice.

He took a deep breath. "Everyone, listen up."

"Captain, wait," said Diaz, staring through her binoculars. "Got a small boat coming from the sand spit. Looks like that Zodiac launched by the patrol boat. One guy on board."

"Who?"

"Can't see him well enough yet."

"Beasley? Jenkins? Target that boat. Get ready to fire."

"Roger that," said Beasley, trying to balance his rifle atop the shattered piece of hull he was lying across.

"Diaz?" called Mitchell.

"He's turned again, coming right at us. Wait. I see him now, but something's wrong. Aw, no."

Tanner began to lose consciousness as he piloted the Zodiac toward the Ghost Team across the harbor. The puddles of burning fuel blurred into a sheet of darkness painted with shimmering stars.

At the moment, the outboard's vibration was the only thing keeping him awake — that and the idea that he was the only guy left who could get the team home. He had to hang on for a little longer. He turned slightly, saw one of the Ghosts watching him through a pair of binoculars.

Behind them, the night sky was already washing down from mottled black to purple and pink. They were nearly out of time.

Tanner came within a hundred meters of the group and cut the throttle.

Only five minutes prior he'd loaded Phillips onto the Zodiac. His friend was already dead, and just as Tanner had fired up the outboard, that last Chinese sailor, the one he'd been concerned about, ran onto the beach and began shooting.

Tanner had taken a round in the back but was able to whirl fast enough to tag the sailor before he fired again.

Grimacing in pain and barely able to move, Tanner had levered himself into the Zodiac and had launched.

Now, as he drifted toward them, he tried to raise his hand and wave but instead swam forward into the darkness.

"It's Tanner!" cried Diaz, pushing free from the section of hull she'd been clinging to and swimming out to meet the Zodiac.

Mitchell had, over the years, voiced his criticism of SEALs, Force Recon Marines, and air force combat controllers. Army Special Forces were, in his not-so-humble opinion, the most accomplished warriors in the world.

But as he watched the Zodiac drift forward, he choked up with a newfound respect for Tanner and all his SEAL brothers. Tanner's escape from the sand spit was an act of sheer will, determination, and courage in the face of utter defeat, and Mitchell knew all too well what it took to find that courage when all seemed lost.

He spat again, smacked his lips, and rattled off his orders: "All right, Nolan, get in there, see how he is. Beasley, tie up the bodies to the sides, then we help the wounded into the boat. Everyone else hangs off the side. Smith, you take the outboard!"

"Roger that!" he cried. "But you're wounded, too, Captain. Up in the boat."