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  A dark stairwell rose directly ahead of him, and Kemper dragged his red dot up the shadow-shrouded stairs. He sighted an armed, older man backpedaling three-quarters of the way up the stairs and dropped him with a headshot.

  Gunfire blazed from his left, coming from either Romeo or Perry. Kemper took a knee for a lower angle up the stairs, intent on keeping any upper-level tangos out of the fight until they’d finished securing the downstairs.

  “Choctaw Two is coming over the wall—you have movement upstairs, One.”

  Yeah, no shit, he thought as three figures appeared at the top of the staircase with AK-47s. All three insurgents opened fire, hosing down the center of the room where Perry and Romeo were advancing. Kemper held position and returned fire, wounding one as the three terrorists scrambled to take cover and disappeared.

  Then the world suddenly turned very bright, very hot, and very loud—

  The explosion knocked Kemper backward, but he caught himself. Perry and Romeo, however, seemed to take the brunt of the blast, Perry hitting the wall beside the door and sliding down to the floor on his ass, and Romeo landing half in and half out of the ruined front doorway. Kemper shook his head clear, sighted back up the stairs, and fired a three-round burst into the smoke and dust billowing down on him, earning a scream from above. A teenaged fighter, barely old enough to carry the AK-47 slung over his shoulder, tumbled down the stairs and landed dead beside him. Kemper fired another burst, but whoever else was up there had wisely pulled back.

  He drifted left to look around the stairs, and that’s when he saw what had actually been blown up—the entire back wall of the house was gone, nothing but a charred and gaping hole looking out into the courtyard. Agonizing worry hit him like a punch to his gut. Had Thiel and his team been in the courtyard when that thing blew?

  “Choctaw Two, SITREP,” he choked into his Peltor boom mike, and then honked a big cough to clear his lungs of dust and debris. While he waited on a reply, he glanced over his shoulder at Perry and Romeo and called, “You guys okay?”

  “All good,” Perry said. “Checking Romeo.”

  “Sandman has shrapnel in his leg,” Sandman called. “But I’m in the fight.”

  “One—Two,” came Thiel’s strained voice in his headset. “That explosion hit when we were coming over. Took out half the wall and blew us back into the alley. I have casualties here . . .” A three-round burst of M4 fire filled the air from behind the house, followed by another. “Shit, One, tangos are squirting. Repeat, our HVT is squirting out the back!”

  “Romeo smacked his head pretty good,” Perry called out. “He’s out of the fight.”

  “Sandman,” Kemper hollered, firing another three-round burst as he rose to his feet and surged forward. “Cover the stairs. I’m going to finish clearing this level and sweep the courtyard. See if I can catch these assholes.”

  “Check,” Sandman said.

  Visibility improved for Kemper as the smoke billowed out of the house and the dust settled onto the floor. He saw movement through the massive hole at the back of the house as he advanced. He moved fast, in a low tactical crouch, scanning left and right.

  “Choctaw One for Apache,” he called to the Captain leading the 3/8 Marines securing the block perimeter. “We need immediate CASEVAC at our pos and security to close in and tighten the noose.”

  His senses on high alert, he reached the giant maw in the back wall. Sighting through the hole into the courtyard, Kemper spied the back of an enemy fighter. The terrorist was sighting over his rifle and advancing toward where Thiel’s men were no doubt recovering from being blown off the wall by the explosion. Kemper fired, hitting the shooter between the shoulder blades; the man pitched forward and skidded on his chest through the dirt. Kemper put a second round in the back of the longhaired jihadi’s head and stepped through the hole into the courtyard, clearing left, then right. With the ground level clear, he swiveled, scanned up, and found a target. He fired twice at a jihadi trying to escape by climbing down a drainpipe. Kemper’s rounds flew true and the man fell headfirst. If the gunshot hadn’t killed him, the impact—which split his head open like a melon—certainly did.

  “Choctaw One, Apache—sending wheels and medical for CASEVAC now,” the Marine Captain reported.

  “Copy.”

  With the courtyard clear, he leaped over a pile of rubble and made for a collapsed section of the perimeter wall.

  “Choctaw Variable, One—if you have eyes, call Custer for me,” Kemper said, using the code name they had assigned to Bin Jabbar. In that moment, he decided he would not let whatever casualties his team had suffered on this hit be for nothing. He took a knee beside the gap in the perimeter wall and popped his head around the corner for a split-second look, pulling back to register what he’d seen: two SEALs on combat knees beside a third lying on the ground, a fourth administering aid.

  “One—that you?” called a voice from the other side.

  Kemper rose, rounded the breach, and came face to face with Thiel, the SEAL’s face smeared with dirt, soot, and blood.

  “Three of them squirted out the second story, cleared the wall, and headed north,” Thiel said. “One looked like Bin Jabbar, but I can’t be sure.”

  Kemper nodded and quickly surveyed the downed SEALs.

  “Davidson’s left leg is shredded all to shit, bro,” Thiel said and looked over his shoulder to where Epperson, the SEAL medic, was working on their fallen teammate. “Jacked up his arm, too, but that leg is bad.”

  Damn it.

  He doubted any tangos remained upstairs—blowing out the back wall had clearly been Bin Jabbar’s contingency plan in the event of a raid. But no point in anyone getting shot in the back in the event he was wrong.

  “Apache, come to the rear where we have an urgent surgical,” Kemper relayed. “Three, Four, and Five—hold the stairs and then move to the rear for exfil when Apache calls in.”

  He looked closer at Thiel and noted blood running in triple rivulets down the side of his friend’s face. “You good, bro?”

  Thiel wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand, looking at the mess, and squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again. “All good, I think.” Then with more confidence, he added, “Still in the fight.”

  “Coordinate the evacuation, bro,” Kemper said to him, and began quickstepping in a low crouch toward the corner of the perimeter wall.

  “Where are you going, Jack?” Thiel called.

  “Just gonna take a look around the corner to see if I can see them.”

  “Dude, wait . . .” Thiel called after him. “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, stay here and set up security. Every asshole in the neighborhood will be heading this way any second,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Kemper took off in a sprint up the narrow, dark street to the north . . . the only place that Bin Jabbar could have gone.

  Chapter 5

  As Kemper’s boots pounded the uneven pavement, two voices screamed in his head simultaneously. The first told him to take a deep breath, reconnect with the team, and stop chasing terrorists alone through the streets of a jihadi-controlled city. But the other voice insisted he needed to kill the assholes who’d just torn up his brothers. When he spotted the three men, the one in a blue tunic flanked by two heavily armed shooters, the second voice won.

  Kemper drifted to the left side of the road for cover, leaned into his combat crouch, and picked up the pace.

  “Choctaw Variable, One,” he called, checking in with his command and control. “I have eyes on Custer and I’m pursuing.”

  A long pause lingered on the circuit as he closed the gap, and he brought his M4 up to drop the two shooters flanking the primary. But before he could sight in, the trio broke left at the corner, heading straight toward the highway that divided the city into north and south sectors. Once Bin Jabbar crossed that road, he’d be in al-Zarqawi’s neighborhood . . .

  “Fuck,” he hissed and sprinted to the corner. “Va
riable, Choctaw One—I need eyes right now or I’ll lose Custer.”

  “Choctaw One, you need to—” an irritated Lieutenant Commander Mercer started to say, but then cut off.

  A moment later, a new voice was in his headset—familiar, but he couldn’t immediately place it.

  “Choctaw One, Variable—we’re getting you eyes in five seconds. You are not to cross the highway and do not engage if you are uncertain of the numbers. Confirm you understand.”

  The last words made clear who was speaking. The Tier One CSO, Captain Kelso Jarvis, was now in his headset. Kemper felt a wave of uncertainty. The boss had cleared him to continue, but then he had already broken a half dozen major rules by going this far, so why not, right? He had a feeling he had just fucked up so bad that his first op as a squad leader might well be his last day at the Tier One.

  “Copy, sir,” he said, breathing hard as he scanned left and right down the dark and empty street. Short stucco houses were crammed together only inches apart along the narrow road. A young man suddenly appeared in front of him, freezing and dropping the paper cup in his hand, eyes wide with surprise.

  Kemper pointed his M4 at the boy’s chest.

  “Arini yudik,” Kemper growled, and the boy complied, showing the palms of both hands. But a wave of anger and hatred spread over his face—one Kemper instantly recognized. This boy saw Kemper and the Americans not as liberators, but as invaders. This boy would tell someone about the American soldier in the alley. Kemper scanned the boy’s torso for bulges indicative of a suicide vest or weapons. Seeing none, he commanded the boy to run away in Arabic. When the boy just stood there, glaring, Kemper sighted in on the young man’s face. “Yarkud,” he barked, and now the boy did just that, running down the street, glancing over his shoulder in fear of being shot in the back.

  “They went inside, Choctaw One,” came a cool voice from the Tactical Operations Center back at COP Falcon. He pictured Captain Jarvis standing behind the radio talker, arms crossed against his chest, supervising everything unfolding. “Left at the corner, two doors down.”

  “Check,” he said just as a bullet whizzed past his head, tearing a chunk of stucco from the corner of the house beside him. Kemper whirled, dropped to a knee, and sighted on a shadowy figure by a beat-up tan Mercedes with only three tires. He squeezed the trigger twice. His rifle barked out two 5.56 rounds, which hit side by side in the man’s forehead, and the patrolling jihadi fell to the ground, his AK-47 clattering beside him.

  Where there’s one, there’s more, he thought, and knew he was almost out of time.

  “How many inside, Variable?” Kemper gasped, as he spun around and quickstepped toward the target. He rounded the corner, sighting over his rifle. His thighs were on fire from the lactic acid building up from the constant surging in a combat crouch, like he was doing his nine-hundredth squat in the gym. “Just the three who went in, or is it a party?”

  “Hold on and I can retask the drone to get you thermals.”

  Kemper paused fifteen feet short of the target door. He’d assumed Variable was vectoring him behind Bin Jabbar based on the drone feed, but now realized they were using the drone for security on the SEALs waiting for exfil and the 3/8 Marines still holding the perimeter in what was about to become a city-wide gun battle if they didn’t get the fuck out of the neighborhood. He’d followed the enemy fighters to the edge of the perimeter. If they snuck another block north, they’d be at the highway and escape to where Zarqawi had an enormous presence. Either Kemper engaged them here or the op was over.

  He decided he couldn’t wait.

  “Let me know if they squirt out the back door,” Kemper said as he converged on the door. “And have the 3/8 collapse in on me to pick up me and Custer.”

  “Roger, Choctaw One,” the cool voice came back. If the operator realized the wild optimism Kemper’s order relied on, he didn’t express it.

  At the door now, Kemper paused, his weapon at forty-five degrees as he looked through his NVGs at the partially cracked-open door. If Bin Jabbar and his seconds were hiding in there, Kemper might well get them.

  He hesitated.

  I’m alone, with no backup, in the middle of terrorist country, about to breach a door into a possible hornet’s nest. I’m either going to die or be a hero . . .

  And the deciding factor was on the other side of this door.

  He exhaled, took a step backward, and kicked the door in.

  A tornado of adrenaline, Kemper surged into the room . . . but two feet past the threshold, he froze. Instead of facing three jihadis, he found himself surrounded by seven heavily armed, heavily bearded men. In their surprise at this unexpected turn of events, none of them had their weapons raised.

  “Bin Jabbar, ‘ant at mey,” Kemper barked, ordering Bin Jabbar to come with him. “Akhbar rajalak bi’iilqa aslihatahum!”

  Another idea came to him—a feint that might give him the seconds he needed.

  A man of Bin Jabbar’s status would speak English . . .

  “I have him, plus six tangos,” Kemper said into his boom mike, pretending he had an entire team outside the door. “Secure the four corners. Ten men behind and ten on the street as we come out.”

  The message he was trying to send was clear: I’ve got twenty men, asshole, so just give up.

  Mujahideen like Bin Jabbar rarely practiced what they preached. The fight-to-the-death allegiance they demanded from their followers did not apply to them. He’d seen ruthless terrorists cry like babies at the first question of an interrogation, so, maybe this one would give up instead of dying, right?

  For a moment, he thought his ruse might actually have worked. Most of the men, apparently, did not speak English and looked to Bin Jabbar for guidance.

  “Let’s go, Bin Jabbar,” Kemper barked at the man in the blue tunic.

  “Say again, Choctaw?” a voice queried in his ear. “The 3/8 Marines are still three or four mikes out. Recommend you hold . . . oh, shit, we see what you’re doing.”

  And then Bin Jabbar laughed—a long, deep laugh from his belly—and the men with him began to laugh as well.

  As their weapons came up, Kemper’s brain prioritized his targets by their speed, distance, and angle. He spun in a slow clockwise half circle as he fired rapidly from his SOPMOD M4, dropping three bad guys before any of them fired. He shifted back and slid hard left as the first shooter fired, and felt the heat from the 7.62 round that whipped past his cheek as he put one of his own rounds through the man’s forehead, splitting the top of his head open like a canoe.

  Three left . . .

  As he sighted on the blue tunic, a powerful arm knocked Kemper’s rifle off target, and his bullet sailed wide, missing Bin Jabbar’s smiling, bearded face. A second terrorist, who’d been closing on him from the other side, grabbed his left arm and jerked it violently, sending searing pain through his shoulder. Working together, Bin Jabbar’s two bodyguards tore the rifle from Kemper’s grip.

  Instinct kicked in—guided by a decade of close-quarters combat and grappling training—and Kemper dropped straight down, kicking his left leg out in front of him and landing hard on his right knee. The move freed his right arm, the terrorist preferring to retain his grip on the rifle, but his left arm remained held fast in the vise-like grip of the man on his left. With eye-blurring speed, Kemper pulled the Sig Sauer P226 from the drop holster on his right thigh, raised it, and fired blindly left. Meanwhile, the jihadi on his right spun his M4 in a tight circle, twisting the strap—which was unfortunately still around Kemper’s neck—into a noose. He heard an animalistic scream as the round from his Sig hit the man to his left, but the wounded terrorist kept a grip on his left arm.

  A flash of light made him look up just in time to see a long, curved blade slashing down. Bin Jabbar had gone savage—his face twisted in a demonic, vulpine snarl as he wielded the knife. Kemper threw all of his weight to the right, freeing his left arm and toppling the man beside him. The curved dagger—like something from The Arabia
n Nights—missed his neck. Kemper avoided decapitation, but the arm he’d raised to block the strike did not fare well. The blade bit into his left forearm just below the crease of his elbow. He felt it slice deep, carving him to the bone as he fell. Bin Jabbar deftly worked the blade, spiraling the cut from outside to inside, from the elbow halfway down to his wrist.

  Kemper landed with a grunt on top of the man to his right, who’d lost his balance and tumbled during the melee. With the strap now loose around his neck, Kemper had some room to move. He fired another round left and watched the top of that man’s head evaporate in a cloud of white bone, dark blood, and chunks of grey. Still clutching the Sig, with all his strength he drove his right elbow backward and felt the cheekbone of the fighter beneath him collapse with an audible crunch.

  He scrambled to his knees and fired his Sig at the fleeing Bin Jabbar. His first bullet tore away a chunk of doorframe three inches from Bin Jabbar’s head as the asshole disappeared out the back. He unloaded three more rounds into the void and tried to pursue, but the rifle sling stopped him as the man on the ground tried once more to choke him. Kemper pushed up and then dropped his full weight down center mass on the jihadi. He felt the nauseating crunch as the man’s rib cage gave way under the blow, like a piano had dropped on his chest. Instead of a scream, all Kemper heard was a wet, gurgling grunt.

  Kemper lowered his head, spun out of the rifle sling, and exploded to his feet, pistol up again. He tried to raise his left arm to steady his shooting hand, but the hand just slapped the side of his pistol uselessly.

  Then he felt it—the hot spray of blood across his face—and he looked down to see arterial blood arcing up rhythmically from his flayed left forearm.