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Hundreds of tangos were swarming toward their position and G
ENGHIS
was split off from them.

“T
IN
M
AN
this is S
ABER
T
OOTH
. Request suppressive fire, your two o'clock. G
ENGHIS
, S
ABER
T
OOTH
. Fire whatever's ready and move to link up. Now!”

 

G
ENGHIS
twisted the last wires together and crawled as fast as he could to the north, toward Stone's last known position. As soon as he felt resistance from the wires attached to the firing devices he was carrying, he stopped and keyed his mike. “C
HALK
O
NE
, G
ENGHIS
. Fire in the hole.”

Scores of tangos were about to overrun the Claymore line. G
ENGHIS
dropped to his belly and pumped the firing device several times for good measure. The C-4 in the mines flashed, then sent fireballs into the air and a thousand steel balls hurtling toward the tangos. His ears were still ringing, but he could hear a crossfire of screams. He took his XM8 and pelted the tangos who'd overrun his line. Staying low, he searched for his teammates.

God, I love this job
.

Through the machine gun's night vision scope Iggy could see tangos pouring from the barracks on all sides of his chalk's last known position, but he couldn't see them now that they needed him to take out the tangos. He had to get them to signal their location. “S
ABER
T
OOTH
this is T
IN
M
AN
. Rope your position.”

 

The tangos were coming as fast as Hunter could shoot. They'd be overrun if he paused to signal his position. “S
ABER
T
OOTH
to T
IN
M
AN
. Busy here. Stand by.”

 

“I got it. Slowing down on my side,” Camille said as she removed the IR laser pointer from the soft case on Hunter's belt. Pointing it into the air, she turned it on and moved it in circles, until the lasso formed a cone of invisible light.

 

“S
ABER
T
OOTH
this is T
IN
M
AN
. Contact. Terminate rope.” Iggy aimed the machine gun and it roared. His NVGs refocused so fast that the glare of the muzzle burst hardly bothered him. He took out the tangos nearest his chalk, then moved his line away from them, sweeping toward the north. But the area was too wide and some were getting through.

 

G
ENGHIS
heard the rapid chatter of the machine gun just as he spotted the cone of light and started to run toward it. The Claymores had knocked out dozens of tangos, but more were coming at them, shouting something about Allah as they ran and fired.

Crazy Mofos
.

The rope stopped, but he could see the team. “C
HALK
O
NE
, G
ENGHIS
. Approaching from your six o'clock. Hold fire.”

G
ENGHIS
slid in beside the boss lady and began firing. He yelled at Stone. “S
ABER
T
OOTH
, they're pouring in from our six o'clock. You better call in the CAS.”

“T
IN
M
AN
, S
ABER
T
OOTH
here. Request CAS, our six o'clock. Stand by for position rope.” Then Stone shouted. “Stella, rope, now!”

 

Iggy would've given anything for someone to work the machine gun. They were all stretched too thin. No commander should be gunning, playing forward air controller for close air support all the while commanding the battle. He had pushed ahead with no intel and with too few of resources because it was Camille and now the situation was going to hell fast. He keyed his mike as he continued to shoot, stopping only to speak.

“D
RAGON
O
NE
, T
IN
M
AN
. Cleared hot.” Iggy approved the helo to come in with guns blazing. He reached for his commander's pointer, turned it on and moved it in a figure eight on the target area. “Snaking target now.”

“T
IN
M
AN
this is D
RAGON
O
NE
. CAS on station. Contact the mark. Steady. Coming in hot, fangs out.”

“D
RAGON
O
NE
, T
IN
M
AN
here. Caution C
HALK
O
NE
roping on deck.”

“Roger that.”

 

Camille heard the whop, whop of the Cobra and saw it rise from the pit, its guns spitting fire. Hundreds of small explosions flashed and it sounded as if an entire minefield were exploding at once.

High Explosive Rounds
.

The machine gun fire started up again north of their position. She knew she should cover her head with her arms, but she couldn't resist watching. Then she saw a large figure run toward the firestorm.

Al-Zahrani
. He'd escaped from Ashland.

Camille leapt up and dashed after him, keying her mike. “D
RAGON
O
NE
, L
IGHTNING
S
IX
. Break, break, break.”

The Cobras continued firing, not recognizing her orders since she wasn't officially attached to the mission. Al-Zahrani was almost in their line of fire, which was moving toward them.

“D
RAGON
O
NE
, T
IN
M
AN
here. Break, break, break.” Iggy's voice was as rapid-fire as the rounds coming at them.

She tackled al-Zahrani just as the explosions stopped, only meters away.

 

In seconds, her teammates joined her. “I'm not sure we can punch through to the pick-up zone,” Camille said as she sat on al-Zahrani. Every time he started to wiggle, she pulled his head up by his hair and smacked it down into the sand.

Green and red tracers were flying everywhere in search of targets. Some of the tents were starting to burn from the Cobra attack, throwing off deadly light, leveling the playing field in the tangos' favor.

“We'll never make it,” Camille said, shaking her head. “The tangos keep coming and they're going to see us any moment. It's too bright. Who's your pilot?”

“A Night Stalker named Beach Dog,” Hunter said.

“You made my day.” Camille keyed her radio. “B
EACH
D
OG
this is L
IGHTNING
S
IX
. Request extraction. Dude, come straight up the Pali and meet us at the top. Stand by for rope.”

“L
IGHTNING
S
IX
, Beach Dog. Coming up the Pali, warp nine. I've got an extra package with me.”

“What the hell was that?” Hunter said.

“A Hawaii thing. I'll take you there if we make it out of here.” Camille rolled off al-Zahrani and jerked him to his feet. “Move out. Head to the edge.”

They ran to the drop-off at the next level of the mine with G
ENGHIS
and Hunter leapfrogging one another's positions, firing back at the tangos. The burning tents exposed their position and Camille hoped the IR pointer would be bright enough against the flames as she roped the beam.

The chop of rotors came from the pit in front of her and the Hawk rose from the depths, then hung directly off the ledge, nearly flush with the bench floor, but with a three foot cleft between the crew door and the edge. Running toward the open door as fast as she could force al-Zahrani to move, she wasn't sure how she was going to get him to jump the gap. She kept running and leaped, giving him a fast choice: jump or plummet.

He jumped.

They landed on the metal floor. She immediately smacked him on the back of the head, knocking him out.

The Hawk's gunner mowed down the approaching tangos. Green tracers hit the fuel tank and sparks flew. She hoped the damn thing really was self-sealing. Ashland came out of nowhere and sprang aboard next, but Hunter and G
ENGHIS
were still twenty meters away, providing cover for one another.

“T
IN
M
AN
this is L
IGHTNING
S
IX
. Recommend take the Cobra in hot after we egress.”

“Copy that. Call it in at your discretion. Got that D
RAGON
O
NE
?”

“D
RAGON
O
NE
here. That's affirmative and welcome back L
IGHTNING
S
IX
.”

Hunter reached the helicopter first and jumped inside, landing on al-Zahrani. He got up, reached out his hand and helped G
ENGHIS
aboard.

“Beach Dog, pick up Iggy and get us the hell out of here.” Camille keyed the mike. “D
RAGON
O
NE
, L
IGHTNING
S
IX
. Light up the fuckers.”

41° 34' 34.96 N, 63° 07' 25.32 E (Uzbekistan)

Camille had heard the detailed account of the harrowing basket separation and she held her breath along with everyone else while Beach Dog pulled the Pave Hawk straight back, away from the MC-130. The basket released. She let out a sigh of relief and held onto Hunter while Beach Dog hot-dogged, surfing the wake, tossing the Hawk in sharp turns that knocked the passengers into one another. They were wedged in tightly, but Camille didn't mind sitting on Hunter's lap even though she knew she really shouldn't in front of G
ENGHIS
, Beach Dog and Iggy. They would just have to deal with it. She wanted the safety and reassurance of the closeness. Her body was still revved from the constant adrenaline bombardment and as exhausted as she felt, she still couldn't relax. The happiness and relief of being with Hunter kept getting interrupted with flashbacks to the horror of al-Zahrani each time he groaned from the back row.

Al-Zahrani was lying on his side with his arms bound behind his back and shackled to his feet. Part of her wanted to take a blade to him, but she was so repulsed by him, she didn't want close contact. A couple of bullets through his forehead would have been cleaner. And she still felt dirty. She could hardly wait to get his smell and touch off her. Whenever they touched down in the Uzbek desert to refuel the Cobra, she planned on taking a dirt bath in the sand.

Memory of the rape smoldered inside. But she knew she couldn't tell Hunter. Iggy, maybe, but not Hunter. It would absolutely kill him to know what al-Zahrani had done to her. It would be even worse because he had gotten there only an hour too late to save her from him.

Packed in with everything else was a creeping sense of guilt from having killed her former mentor Joe Chronister. At the same time, part of her was glad she'd done it because of what he had done to Jackie and because of how he had sabotaged her dream.

Al-Zahrani cleared his throat loudly and everyone looked around. He and Ashland were crammed together onto the stretched nylon bench with no leg room due to the internal fuel tanks. Ashland looked miserable, hugging the door to put as much space as possible between them.

“That was quite the cluster fuck,” al-Zahrani said with a perfect American accent.

Camille was shocked to hear him speaking English, let alone American English. He had given no indication of it earlier and the intel reports she had read on both him and Abdullah had been clear that neither of them spoke English.

“Depends on whose side you're on,” Iggy said.

“I meant for our side. For the US,” al-Zahrani said, craning his neck.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You have to have a secure satellite uplink onboard, don't you? Contact the DDO or the Director. Inform him you have NOC B
ARKER
in your custody and you just compromised G
OLD
D
RIFT
.”

“Holy mother of god,” Iggy said, unbuckling his harness so he could turn around completely and get a good look at the guy.

“You can't believe this piece of shit,” Camille said as she felt the helicopter descending to land and refuel.

Al-Zahrani smiled. “Maybe you know it as S
HANGRI-LA
. That's only the designation for the Rubicon op running us. The Agency program is called G
OLD
D
RIFT
.”

“No one's calling anyone. We're handing him over to Force Zulu,” Camille said. As far as she was concerned, he was Hunter's trophy. He had already been on the team that captured bin Laden and taking in al-Zahrani would make him a legend in the spec ops community. She could really get into the idea of dating a legend, almost as much as creating one.

“You can't do that,” al-Zahrani said, his voice becoming alarmed. “The Pentagon will fuck it up even more than they already have.”

“Ashland, shut the fucker up,” Camille said, turning back toward the front of the helicopter.

“You do it. I'm not touching him.”

“I got it,” Iggy said as he took out his knife and sliced off the lower part of his 5.11s that covered up his dumb leg. Camille watched as he squeezed into the back and had to lean part of his weight on Ashland's lap.

Al-Zahrani jerked his head away as Iggy tried to gag him. “You dumb fucks. You destroyed the CIA's most successful counterterrorism operation against al Qaeda.” Iggy stopped. “We might be able to salvage some of it, but not if you give it over to the wannabe spies at the Pentagon. They have the finesse of a rhino.”

“Ah, I understand now. You're an
agent provocateur
,” Ashland said with the arrogance of a professor. “Don't you see? It's not only Rubicon ensuring that the War-on-Terror industry doesn't extinguish itself by mopping up all the terrorists. The CIA's in with them, just like I suspected.”

Al-Zahrani laughed. “You sound like some dumb-ass conspiracy theorist, like that Frenchman who claimed the US was behind 9/11. How in the world did bozos like you find us and manage to do so much damage?” Al-Zahrani shifted his weight and tried to get upright again. “We're running a false-flag op. Rubicon is the contractor running S
HANGRI-LA
. By outsourcing it, the president didn't have to inform Congress. There's also plausible deniability. A greedy company running a terrorist training camp would be a huge scandal, but not a White House scandal.”

“Clever, but the Americans didn't invent that tactic,” Ashland said, sounding more and more to her like a Frenchman. “The tsarist secret police used to set up fake Russian dissident groups among the émigrés in Paris.”

Al-Zahrani cleared his throat. “We've succeeded in splitting al Qaeda between my faction and Abdullah's. I've recreated the succession problem after Mohammad's death that split Islam between the Shi'a and Sunni. I keep my followers focused on purity of the movement and that means the foremost duty of the faithful is wiping out Abdullah's heretics.”

“Can someone please shut him up?” Camille said.

“Cam, I think he's got something,” Iggy said as he moved back to his seat.

Al-Zahrani continued. “Training the tangos also allows us to keep tabs on who's who, where everyone is and to preempt any serious plots against the West. Not to mention the lousy training we gave them. Any time the Agency wants to send another mole into al Qaeda, all it has to do is have Rubicon drop them off at our doorstep and we take care of the rest. And then there are all the homegrown al Qaeda-wannabe groups who turn to us for official endorsement and support.”

“You've turned al Qaeda on itself. That's genius. It sure beats the Whack-A-Mole game we've been playing, taking out individual terrorists when they pop up,” Iggy said, taking a deep breath.

Hunter chimed in. “I've seen it in action. Some of your followers in Iraq were trying to truck bomb a wedding of Abdullah's followers. Crazy SOBs, eating their young.”

“It's working brilliantly—or it was until you fucked it up,” al-Zahrani said.

“What was Chronister's role?” Iggy said.

“Joe? He's my inside officer and he was the project case officer for S
HANGRI-LA
and B
ALI
H
AI.
He's also the contracting officer's technical rep for both contracts.”

“What the hell's all that?” Hunter said.

Iggy turned toward Hunter. “It means he was this SOB's main contact and he ran the shows and controlled the purse strings on behalf of The Agency. Then Joe wasn't selling out the Agency for a retirement package with Rubicon?” Iggy said. “That was a hard one for me to believe.”

“Are you kidding? The man's incorruptible—prickly, but clean. He kept Rubicon in line. Those bastards were cutting costs every chance they got. Joe was the only one who could break their balls and even then they got caught shipping us arms they seized from al Qaeda in Iraq. Stupid, greedy bastards.”

“Oh my god,” Camille whispered. Camille suddenly felt alarmed. She remembered her father telling her about the old Cold War days when the CIA used to run its own Marxist organizations so it would know which activists to keep an eye on. The Agency also kept the left constantly infighting this way. The FBI used to do it to anti-Vietnam groups and she vaguely recalled the British doing something similar in Kenya when they couldn't defeat the Mau Mau tribesmen through conventional means. If the CIA were really running the al Qaeda faction and they had just destroyed the operation, Black Management was finished. They all were. It couldn't be the truth. “Are we really supposed to believe you would give your life to do this? This is bullshit, I tell you. This is bullshit.”

“I was with the Bureau, getting ready to go undercover with a fundamentalist Islamic group in New Jersey because I was one of their few native Arabic speakers. My wife and kid had just flown in from Dearborn and we were celebrating my kid's birthday with brunch at the Windows on the World restaurant that day at the top of the Twin Towers. I got delayed.”

“That's no excuse.” Camille swung around and shouted, surprising herself.

“For what I did back there?” Al-Zahrani licked his lips. “Honey, you were the best lay I've had in years.”

“You son of a bitch,” Hunter shouted and nearly knocked Camille off his lap as he tried to get up.

“Later, Top.” Iggy grabbed his arm as he blocked him. “G
ENGHIS
, Cam, help me out.”

 

Hunter pulled away from Iggy and swung around to get to al-Zahrani the other way. Fucking middle seat. He couldn't wait to tear into the bastard. G
ENGHIS
jumped into his way and Stella grabbed his arm.

“Sit down. Now.” The force in Stella's voice caught him off guard. “He's mine.”

Hunter stood there for a moment, then without saying a word, sat back down and strapped in.

As he waited for the helicopter to land, all he could think about was what he had done to Jackie Nelson.

 

The Pave Hawk bounced slightly as it landed and the Cobra came in beside them, kicking up more desert. They waited in silence for the rotors to die down and for the sandstorm to settle. Camille sat there, trying to decide what to do. Everything she had worked for was collapsing in on itself. She wanted to pop al-Zahrani and leave the body in the desert for vermin to devour, but she knew if what he was claiming was true, he was too important to national security for that. With the Agency running an al Qaeda faction, she wasn't even so sure what national security meant anymore.

She wanted the fucker dead.

G
ENGHIS
slid the door open. He held his hand out to help Camille from the bird.

They stood beside the Hawk stretching while the flight engineer ran a hose between the two helicopters for the fuel transfer.

“Stone, G
ENGHIS
, I've got to make a call to the seventh floor at Langley and confirm that motherfucker's story,” Iggy said as he punched a number into a satellite phone. “The refueling is going to take about ten minutes. Why don't you two take our passenger for a walk? Be careful. I want him alive and I don't want to get any hospitals involved; doctors, but not hospitals.”

“No.” Camille moved in front of Hunter, grabbing his sidearm and pointing it at al-Zahrani's head. “I said he's mine.”

“Cam, don't do it. The boys will take care of him,” Iggy said, as he lowered the phone. “He's too valuable. And you've got too much to lose.”

“Not anymore.” She flicked off the safety.

Hunter grabbed for the gun just as she fired.

Al-Zahrani dropped to the ground. Hunter put his hand on the gun and guided it so that it pointed away from them as he drew her close. She released it without resistance and collapsed into his arms.

G
ENGHIS
walked over to al-Zahrani and kicked him in the kidneys. “You pantywaist. It hardly grazed you. On your feet. We're going for a walk.”

 

Several minutes later, G
ENGHIS
and Hunter dragged al-Zahrani back, bloody and moaning. Camille wasn't surprised he was still conscious because they probably had wanted him to be aware of his pain. “Boys, why don't we let him relax his hands a bit?” Camille picked up a pair of bolt cutters from the engineer's toolbox.

She approached al-Zahrani from behind and moved the bolt cutters close to the zip-cuff binding his wrists. Then she whispered into al-Zahrani's ear. “An eye for an eye, you piece of shit.” She shifted the bolt cutters and snapped off his right thumb. It snapped off with much less pressure than she had expected.

Al-Zahrani shrieked.

Without a word, she walked back to the toolbox, wiped off the blood with a rag and dropped the bolt cutters back inside the engineer's toolbox. “Thanks, chief.”

 

They shoved al-Zahrani back into the helo, this time stuffing a gag over his mouth and a duffle bag over his head.

Everyone stood around while they waited for the engineer to finish the fuel transfer. Ashland smoked a cigarette closer to the aircraft than he should have.

“I made the call to Langley, said the magic words and they couldn't patch me through to the Director fast enough.” Iggy shook his head. “The story checks out. The fucker's who he says he is. He's CIA. We just screwed the pooch. Black Management's going to be history. We had a good run, guys. It was fun.”

“Hold on.” Camille held up her hand. “I was thinking while they were on that walk. The camp's gone, but if the world believes al-Zahrani escaped, that would only add to his legend. I've got plenty to work with to save us. Black Management will come out on top. Trust me.”

“I love it,” Ashland said, holding the glowing cigarette at his side. “The Americans are running al Qaeda for a profit. Let me guess, now you're going to try to get a piece of the action. Wait until Paris learns about this.”