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  McAllen seized him by the collar. “Where is he?”

  Shakura slowly blinked. “He got here by sub. We’re just the . . . just the decoy. He was never on this flight.”

  McAllen’s shoulders slumped. He released Shakura and glanced over his shoulder at Jonesy.

  “Well, I thought I was a Marine, not an actor,” snapped Jonesy. “And I just love being expendable.”

  McAllen took a deep breath, composed himself. “All right. Doesn’t matter what’s going on here. Decoy, no decoy. We got a survivor. Help him out, get him strapped into a litter.”

  Jonesy sighed in disgust. “You got it.”

  Drawing in another deep breath, McAllen shifted outside, where Friskis and Szymanski had taken up firing position on their bellies alongside the fuselage, whose port side faced the tree line, now obscured in thick walls of gray smoke.

  McAllen got on the radio with his platoon leader, shared the grim news that they were just part of a decoy mission but that they did have one survivor to rescue. The PL promised close air support within five minutes.

  A pair of grenades exploded somewhere behind them. That would be the Russians trying to take out Gutierrez and his big gun. “Outlaw Six, this is One. Take Three and rally east to our second hill, over. We’re bringing up a survivor.”

  “Roger that, One. On my way, out.”

  McAllen and Jonesy moved Shakura out of the Learjet. As Jonesy unfurled the portable litter he had removed from his pack, Friskis and Szymanski kept the Russians busy, triplets of fire drumming repeatedly.

  Somewhere in the distance, the whomping of helicopters began to grow louder.

  Once Shakura was strapped in, McAllen called back the scout and radio operator from their firing positions and gave them the unenviable task of hauling the injured man back up the hillside. He and Jonesy would remain behind to cover.

  “Go now!” he cried, and while the two men took off with their survivor, he and Jonesy set up on either side of the fuselage.

  Not three seconds later, something remarkable and utterly breath-robbing occurred:

  The damned Russians decided to storm the jet!

  A wave of six troopers in masks appeared in the smoke not twenty meters away, running directly at McAllen, their rifles blazing, rounds punching into and ricocheting off the plane, popping in the mud, whizzing overhead.

  Out of the corner of his eye, McAllen spotted at least as many troopers charging toward Jonesy.

  “Oh my God, Ray! Here they come!” cried his assistant.

  A terrible ache woke deep in McAllen’s gut as he realized he couldn’t get them all. Damn, there was too much life left in him. He hadn’t even found the right woman . . .

  And he’d worked so damned hard to get where he was, a Force Recon warrior—swift, silent, and deadly—the eyes and ears of his commander.

  How many training missions? How many real operations, including that big one in the mountains of Bulgaria, fighting those terrorist bastards, the Green Brigade?

  And now the big war had just started, maybe the war to end all wars, and he’d barely had a chance to make his contribution to the fight.

  His life wasn’t flashing before his eyes. That was a myth. But that ache, that solid, thick ache whispered like the Reaper in his ear, This is it. Time’s up. The bill’s come due.

  He figured the best he could do was lay down some fire across their unarmored legs, try to drop all six of them as quickly as he could, and as they fell, he might be able to pan again with another salvo.

  He set his teeth and squeezed the trigger of his carbine, striking the legs of the Russian to his far right, bringing that man down, though he could still recover and fire.

  Yet before McAllen knew what was happening, Palladino’s sniper rifle boomed once, blasting the head off one Russian, boomed again, tore off the shoulder of another. McAllen continued sweeping across the last three guys, dropping all of them.

  Not a second after he did that, Gutierrez cut into them from above with his SAW.

  McAllen exploited the moment to burst up from his position and charge toward the Russians attacking Jonesy’s position. He already had a grenade loaded in his carbine’s attached launcher, so he let it fly. Just as the grenade hit the mud and exploded, McAllen hit the deck himself, bringing up the rifle and raking their line with fire.

  Suddenly, out of the smoke, came a lone Russian, blood pouring from his neck, his helmet gone. He screamed something at McAllen and swung his rifle around.

  The roar of their Black Hawk was deafening now, the rotor wash suddenly hitting them, knocking the Russian back. As the enemy soldier lost his balance, one of the helicopter’s door gunners opened up on him, and he jerked involuntarily before hitting the ground.

  Since the valley was far too dense for the chopper’s pilot to land, the bird continued to wheel overhead, door gunners cutting apart the tree line, giving the remaining Russians something to think about.

  McAllen got to his feet and jogged past the dead troops to where Jonesy was lying on his gut.

  Unmoving.

  McAllen ripped off his mask and dropped to his knees, shaking his assistant. Then he ripped off Jonesy’s mask and rolled the man over, seeing that he’d been shot in the face and neck.

  McAllen rose, and all the anger and frustration suddenly funneled into his arms and legs. He hoisted Jonesy over his back in a fireman’s carry and staggered away from the downed plane toward the hill. Friskis ran to meet him. “They got Jonesy,” was all McAllen could say.

  He told himself over and over that it didn’t matter that the mission was a decoy and that they’d been pawns in a little game of deception. It didn’t matter. It was a Marine Corps operation and Jonesy had done his job, as they all had.

  But his mind raced with the what-ifs and with the names of the people he could hold responsible. If higher knew that the mission was a decoy, then why did they risk the lives of highly trained Marine Corps operators? Couldn’t they have played wait and see or just attacked from the air? They probably wanted the decoy to look perfect, right down to the bogus rescue mission on the ground.

  McAllen was left with only one hope: that Jonesy had died for something meaningful. Something important.

  FIVE

  Team Sergeant Nathan Vatz had Colonel Pavel Doletskaya strapped to an inclined board, his head lowered to about forty-five degrees. He’d wrapped cellophane over the colonel’s face, allowing just a small gap for him to breathe.

  Vatz picked up the hose and released some pressure, allowing a steady stream of water to flow over the colonel’s head. Most prisoners lasted a handful of seconds, until the gag reflex kicked in, along with the fear of drowning; but the colonel didn’t move, didn’t flinch.

  And this went on for more than two minutes until Vatz got so frustrated with the man that he threw away the hose, ripped off the cellophane, and screamed, “What’s in your head that’s so important? What do you know?”

  The colonel’s eyes widened. “What’s in my head? The real question is what’s in your head. And the answer is me.”

  “If I can’t kill you, they will. You need to die.”

  “Nathan, please. I know exactly who you are. I know that you joined the Army because you were bullied all through school, that you somehow wanted to get revenge on them, to prove to them that you were more than just a punching bag. You thought you could be a man.”

  “Not true.”

  “Why did you kill your father?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You killed him when you joined the Army. Murdered him. Because he knew, deep down, the war was coming. And he loved his son. But you killed him.”

  “No!” Vatz beat a fist into his palm.

  “And now you are alone. The diabetes took him. The alcohol took your mother. And I took all your friends, your brothers in arms. You’re the only one left. Why were you spared? Do you think it’s fate?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m just having
another nightmare about how much I want to kill you.”

  “Would that make you feel better?”

  With a gasp and shudder, Vatz sat up in his bunk. He looked at his hands, which were still balled into fists.

  Then he glanced up, out the window of his barracks. It was a beautiful morning, a cloudless sky sweeping over Fort Lewis, Washington.

  He was back home with the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), and recently assigned to a new Operational Detachment Alpha team, ODA-888. The company commander wanted to keep him out of the field until he “healed,” but he’d insisted that he was okay. There were those officers further up the chain of command who believed that his pain could be converted into a powerful weapon, especially during times like these, when the JSF’s forces were spread so thinly around the globe.

  “Hey, Nate, you want to get some chow?”

  Staff Sergeant Marc Rakken stood in the doorway, lifting his chin at Vatz.

  Rakken was about to turn thirty, already had a little gray in his sideburns, but his baby blue eyes and unwrinkled face made him look like a kid. He was assigned to the Stryker Brigade Combat Team and was a rifle squad leader in charge of eight other guys. They’d storm down the Stryker’s rear ramp, divide into two teams, and raise serious hell on the enemy.

  Ordinarily, a Special Forces operator like Vatz wouldn’t socialize much with an infantryman because of differing schedules, billets, and because, well, some regular Army guys referred to Spec Ops as the “prima donnas” of the military, wild men and wasters of precious resources.

  But Vatz’s friendship with Rakken cut through all that. They’d met during basic training, since most Special Forces guys started off in the regular Army. They’d talked about fishing and knife collecting and learned that they’d both been born and raised in Georgia, in small towns no more than a hundred miles from each other. Small world. They’d kept in touch over the years and eventually had both been assigned to Fort Lewis.

  And while Vatz had come home to a few friendly faces, mostly acquaintances, Rakken was the only guy he’d call a friend, the only guy he’d talked to in the past few days.

  “Marc, I don’t feel so good. Maybe later.”

  “Bro, you don’t look so good. Couldn’t sleep again?”

  Vatz shook his head.

  “Come outside, get some air. At least get some coffee.”

  After rubbing the corners of his eyes, Vatz nodded, dragged himself from the bed, and pulled on his trousers.

  They took the long path toward the mess hall, the snowcapped mountains on the horizon. Vatz squinted in the sun. “Any word on your next deployment?”

  “None yet. The Euro ops have a lot to do with where we might get sent next. Who knows?”

  Vatz nodded.

  Up ahead stood the long, rectangular mess hall with a brick facade, a new facility constructed in just the past year. Vatz took another three steps—when the windows of the mess hall blew out with an ear-shattering boom.

  He and Rakken hit the deck as the glass tumbled to the pavement and smoke began billowing from the jagged holes.

  Rakken was already on his feet, sprinting toward the mess hall, with Vatz screaming for him to wait up, there could be more bombs.

  They charged forward, over carpets of glass and pieces of blinds and other debris.

  The pair of glass entrance doors had been blown off, and they couldn’t see through the clouds of brown-and-gray smoke.

  “Marc, it’s not safe yet!”

  “I don’t care! Jesus, they hit us here?” Rakken gasped.

  The question was who. The Russians? Any one of the hundreds of terrorist groups out there? Or was it just some grunt who’d gone insane and strapped himself with explosives before sitting down to breakfast?

  After waiting another moment for the smoke to clear a little, Vatz followed Rakken into the mess; an oppressive wall of heat still emanated from the area. He held his breath, spotted a lance corporal on the ground, clutching his bleeding arm. He helped the guy to his feet, got him through the front, and led him to the grass. Then Vatz, coughing hard, his eyes burning, headed back into the mess.

  The smoke and dust cleared a bit more, and it appeared that the blast had come from the center of the large dining area; there was a gaping crater in the concrete, tables upturned and shattered by the concussion.

  And there were pieces of soldiers everywhere.

  Vatz gagged. The rest of it became a blur of images accompanied by the sickly sweet odor of burned flesh. Someone shrieked, and the cry wouldn’t stop echoing.

  In the hours that followed, he and Rakken learned the truth: the Green Brigade terrorist group was responsible for the bombing.

  Formed in 2012, they were a militant environmentalist /antiglobalist group with cells throughout the world but primarily in Europe and South America. From 2012 until 2018, they were credited with more than a thousand acts of violence, including acts of intimidation against factory and refinery workers and the kidnapping and murder of business executives, military personnel, and computer scientists.

  One of their operatives had infiltrated the base and walked into the mess hall. He’d removed his uniform to reveal the explosives strapped to his chest. He’d made some announcement, but no one Vatz had spoken to remembered what he’d said before detonating his bomb.

  At the same time, the terrorists had struck a motor pool at Fort Bragg and a dozen other facilities all over the globe, including a few more Euro military bases, a refinery in Venezuela, and even a Japanese whaler.

  The group had gone silent after their leader, who dubbed himself “Green Vox,” had been killed when his plane was destroyed by Spetsnaz forces late last year.

  Oh, the man portraying Green Vox was dead. But the impassioned true believer who was next in line had simply assumed his place and his identity.

  Green Vox was the ultimate terrorist.

  You could never kill him.

  There was always another one.

  Vatz and Rakken had watched the bastard on one of the base’s big screens, standing there in some undisclosed and heavily wooded location, wearing his green balaclava, shaking his gloved fist, and crying out in English but with a thick, German accent: “I am Green Vox. I am alive! I have returned! We are the Green Brigade Transnational. Today marks our return. We will not stop until the warmongers and tyrants raping our dear Gaia and threatening to scorch her from above are wiped out. We call for all free-minded citizens to join us in curing our green mother globe of this disease that will eventually kill us all.”

  Soldiers in the room began to throw paper cups and balled-up napkins at the screen, cursing and shouting at the terrorist.

  Vatz drifted back to a chair in one corner, collapsed into the seat.

  Rakken sat next to him. “I’m still in shock.”

  “You? I lose my entire team in Moscow and come home to this. Just who the hell did I piss off up there?”

  “Piss off? You escaped death twice. Go play the lottery. We could both use the money.”

  “Marc, I should’ve died in Moscow.”

  “The survivor guilt is natural, man. You didn’t die there. And you didn’t die here. So that makes me believe you still have a lot of work to do.”

  “So it’s fate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vatz sighed loudly in frustration. “I need to work this out, go for a run, do some boxing, something . . .”

  “I hear you. And I don’t know if I believe in fate, but I believe in faith. I got faith in you, faith in me. We’ll get past this, move on. That’s it, man.”

  Vatz nodded, took a deep breath, closed his eyes.

  And there, in the darkness of his mind, stood Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, wearing a crooked grin. Beside him, materializing from the shadows, came the hooded Green Vox, who folded his arms across his chest.

  SIX

  They had given him the drugs.

  They had spent hours questioning him.

  They had grabbed him, shaken h
im, pummeled him, threatened to kill his wife.

  And still, Colonel Pavel Doletskaya would tell them nothing.

  Even he could not believe how long he’d held out. Surely, the drugs should have loosened his tongue.

  Or maybe they had.

  Maybe he’d already told them everything and had simply forgotten his betrayal of the Motherland.

  The thought sent chills fanning across his shoulders.

  He sat in the corner of his cell, elbows pressing against the painful confines of the straitjacket. He stared up at an energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulb glowing dimly from its socket.

  That’s what it was all about. Energy.

  No changing that. And here he was. The end of his journey, perhaps. Major Dennison’s people had shoved him into one of the JSF’s submarines, a rather impressive little boat, and had secretly ferried him to Cuba. He’d managed to overhear something about the decoy flight being shot down but nothing more. He’d lost track of time; oddly, that bothered him more than anything. He’d spent his entire professional life chained to the clock, and now he was free of those shackles, only to have them replaced by a prison cell.

  He nearly grinned over that irony as he glanced reflexively at his wrist, covered by the straitjacket. Some men had given up the watch, in favor of their phones, but not him.

  General Sergei Izotov wore a watch as well, a watch that told him that Doletskaya was still a threat. The chip in Doletskaya’s head had been their only way to silence him. Once the Americans had deactivated it, they had detached him from the system. Even if it took years, the Americans would try to extract intelligence from Doletskaya, one tooth at a time. Yes, Izotov knew that the Americans would keep Doletskaya alive, perhaps even use him as a negotiating tool, but Izotov and Kapalkin would not bargain.

  This was his life now. He should resign himself to it.

  But how does a warrior do that?

  He didn’t know. For now he turned his back on the present and looked to the past, the glorious past, if only to make himself feel better.

  It was he and Izotov who’d come up with the brilliant plan to secretly fund the Green Brigade Transnational and train them to attack the Freedom IV lifter at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The plan was to prevent the Americans from completing the Freedom Star Space Station from which three companies of Marines could deploy anywhere on earth within ninety minutes. It was a simple matter of hiring terrorists to become your mercenaries. The difference was, the Green Brigade actually believed in what they were doing. Ideals were more important to them than money. As the Americans said, it was a win-win situation.