KABUL, AFGHANISTAN —5 MAY 2004

Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

The line had been drilled into Marcus Ryker and his buddies in Charlie Company by a Marine general they both feared and loved. Not a day went by when they didn’t ask themselves how to live it out, and that was no less true on the fifth of May.

American Special Forces units had been steadily inserting themselves all over Afghanistan since December 2001, and the Taliban and al Qaeda were on the run. Working with a coalition of tribal leaders known as the Northern Alliance, the U.S. military was systematically strengthening local forces fighting against the jihadists —and hunting for Osama bin Laden —throughout Afghanistan, providing them with professional training, arms, communications equipment, and suitcases full of hard cash. It was a high-profile operation and one the American people were watching closely, eager to know their leaders were responding to the shocking and unprecedented attack on America with decisive speed and overwhelming power.

The day began as any other in a godforsaken country crawling with radical Islamist terrorists. Marcus expected monotonous hours in a cramped, deafening, sweltering chopper, traversing to and fro across the Hindu Kush. Visits to countless dust-ridden, poverty-stricken villages whose names most of Marcus’s colleagues could hardly pronounce, much less remember. Standing for hours in the blazing sun and blistering heat while a U.S. congressman or senator or deputy assistant secretary of something-or-other met with one warlord and provincial governor after another. Meaningless photo ops. Mind-numbing political speeches. Lousy meals. Not nearly enough coffee. And always the gnawing knowledge that at any time the endless boredom could be shattered by moments of searing terror.

As Marcus awoke in Kabul, flies buzzing about his head, the Afghan capital was experiencing the ninth day of a historic heat wave. The mercury had reached ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit by eight in the morning and was expected to hit a hundred ten by midday. Dressed in full combat gear and carrying his M4 carbine assault rifle, Marcus was already drenched with sweat as he clambered into the back of the Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion, took his assigned seat, and buckled up. On most days he was grateful the Marines had done their own investigation of the incident with his stepfather and cleared him just as the local DA had. Still, sometimes he half wished his background check had coughed up something disqualifying, something that would have kept him from coming here of all places.

Climbing in after him as the rotors began to turn were his sergeant and his two closest friends in the theater. William Sanford McDermott was their squad leader. Hailing from Pittsburgh, he got his dark complexion from his Kenyan mother and his toughness and fearlessness from his father, a lapsed Irish Catholic with skin “as white as the wind-driven snow,” he loved to say. Everyone in the squad called him Sarge to his face, but behind his back he was known as Big Mac. He was enormous —six foot five and almost two hundred and sixty pounds —and he literally consumed (inhaled, actually) more McDonald’s burgers and fries than anyone Marcus and his colleagues had ever met.

Peter Hwang was a Texan, born and raised just outside of Houston, though his parents were from Seoul, South Korea. A hospital corpsman third class, he served as the unit’s medic. He was a devout Catholic, and the guys all called him St. Peter.

Marcus was probably closest, though, to Nicholas Francis Vinetti. He hailed from North Jersey and was the youngest of a huge family, with four brothers and three sisters. Vinetti had been trained as a sniper. He was without question the best marksman of the lot. But he talked funny, and Marcus had dubbed him Vinnie Barbarino since he sounded an awful lot like John Travolta’s iconic character in the long-defunct TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter.

Marcus had met Hwang and Vinetti the first day of boot camp in San Diego in May of 2002. They’d been assigned to the Twenty-Second Marine Expeditionary Unit and arrived together at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to serve on a battalion landing team known as the One-Six —First Battalion, Sixth Marines —which was where they’d met Sarge. Twenty-six additional weeks of grueling training, along with hours of card playing, debates on every topic under the sun, and of course, far too much McDonald’s, had forged some tight bonds, and by the time they were eventually shipped out to Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban in Operation Enduring Freedom, they knew each other better than their own families.

Now, just before the side door of the chopper slammed shut, a dozen or so civilians climbed aboard, joining them for the day’s tour. From behind his polarized combat goggles, Marcus quickly sized them up, one by one. All were young, certainly under thirty. Seven were career State Department foreign service officers, assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Six were political appointees working for the DoD, having just landed in Kabul less than an hour before. They were paper pushers. Bureaucrats. Functionaries. And they were liabilities in a war zone. They’d read about combat, but they had little experience and certainly no training in how to handle themselves in a fight. They were here to take pictures and make notes and file reports and return to the safety of walled compounds and glass-and-steel offices with air-conditioning and leather executive chairs and flat-panel television screens and gourmet meals and Starbucks coffee. Anyone more senior to this group —whomever these young staff members worked for —was sitting in one of the two choppers spooling up beside them.

The last person to scramble aboard commanded the attention of the entire One-Six. The attractive young blonde with big green eyes and a short shag haircut was Annie Stewart. Marcus remembered her from her bio, distributed during the mission briefing, but she introduced herself to them all just the same. She was a deputy press secretary for Senator Robert Dayton, the Iowa Democrat who was the ranking minority member on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Marcus suspected she was fresh out of graduate school, twenty-four or twenty-five at most. His age, or thereabouts. She was a long way from home.

As the three Super Stallions lifted off and headed southwest toward Kandahar, Marcus cringed as Sergeant McDermott —predictably —began flirting with Annie almost immediately. It might not have looked like flirting. It was a bit more subtle than that. But Marcus, St. Peter, and Vinnie glanced at each other knowingly —they’d seen it all before.

What brought Senator Dayton to Afghanistan? Big Mac began as if the answer wasn’t obvious. How does the senator feel the war is going? What do the American people think about the war so far?

Then came the pivot.

So how long have you worked for the senator? Just six months, my goodness, that’s not long. Do you like it? Where are you from? Charleston? Really. That’s crazy. I have a cousin there. Love South Carolina. Ever been to Parris Island? So where did you go to school? Sure, I have lots of friends who went to Georgetown. Did you ever expect to come to Afghanistan? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, that’s why I signed up. That’s why all of us enlisted —to come here and kill bin Laden.

McDermott occasionally tried to misdirect the young woman by asking similar questions of some of the folks from State and the Pentagon, but he invariably got back to her. If she was bothered by all the attention, she was too polite to let on. She did make one mistake, however. She asked McDermott if he and his unit had seen any real combat. Marcus rolled his eyes and looked out the window as his commander leaned forward with his hands on his knees and began to answer.

Perhaps they’d given their squad leader the wrong nickname, Marcus thought. Big Mac didn’t really capture the tales he was telling now. Whopper would have been far more appropriate.

That said, the man was certainly a world-class storyteller —funny, engaging, even mesmerizing at times, if not completely accurate. Marcus didn’t recognize having been part of any of the firefights Sarge was claiming they’d engaged in, but he had to give the man credit. He certainly made the time pass. The cabin roared with laughter. Given how loud the engines were, McDermott had to shout, and everyone had to lean in to hear him. But he had them all eating out of his palm now, Annie Stewart included. Even Vinnie and St. Peter were enjoying the show as one cleaned his weapon and the other one restocked his medical bag with pharmaceuticals.

Marcus’s thoughts, however, were half a world away. Elena had written him just one letter since he’d shipped off to boot camp. Her father, she wrote, had been impressed when he learned that Marcus had enlisted, but he still didn’t think the two of them should be in contact yet. Not only that, but he had declared that life married to a Marine was no life for his daughter and had suggested it might be time for Elena to move on. Marcus couldn’t tell from the letter how Elena felt about it. He was still devoted to her, but now he was less sure than ever what the future might hold for them.

Just then he heard his name.

“Now, the guy you really want to stick close to, Miss Stewart, is Lance Corporal Ryker here,” McDermott said.

Marcus turned and was surprised to see nearly every eye on him.

“Really, and why’s that?” Annie replied with a curious smile that Marcus couldn’t quite decide was bemused or slightly flirtatious.

“Because Vinnie and I are notorious bachelors,” McDermott said, grinning. “And St. Pete —well, don’t be fooled by his cherubic face. But Ryker here, he’s a good Christian and a real family man.”

Annie laughed. “You don’t say.”

“Oh yeah, a real straight arrow,” said McDermott. “Fell in love with his high school sweetheart, practically engaged, and planning to get married as soon as he gets out of the corps. When the chips are down, you can count on this guy.”

No sooner had the words come out of McDermott’s mouth than they all heard and felt the explosion.