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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Welcome

Dedication

Map

Author’s Note

The Cavalrymen’s Poem

Prologue: Focus

BOOK ONE
“WITH YOUR SHIELD OR ON IT

Roll Call: 3–71 Cav and Others

1. Every Man an Alexander

2. “Major Joe Fenty, Hard Worker”

3. Like Just Another Day on the Range

4. War, Fate, and Wind

5. “This Whole Thing Is a Bad Idea”

6. Maybe That’s Just the Wind Blowing the Door

7. Monuments to an Empire’s Hubris

8. Hill 2610

9. “This Will Happen to You”

10. The Abstract Threat of Terror

11. The Enemy Gets a Vote

12. Matthias the Macedonian and the LMTV

13. The 7-31

14. Buddy

15. “Don’t Go Down That Way”

BOOK TWO
TWO IN THE CHEST, ONE IN THE HEAD

Roll Call: 1–91 Cav and Others

Roll Call: 6–4 Cav and Others

16. “There’s Not Going to Be Any Ice Cream”

17. “Bulldog-Six, Where Are You?”

18. Balloons

19. If You’re the Enemy, Please Stand Up

20. “We Will Go to Kamdesh Next”

21. Chess with No Rules

22. After He Finished Washing the Blood Off

23. What Was Wrong with Kaine Meshkin

24. The Puppies

25. Pericles in Kamdesh

BOOK THREE
ENEMY IN THE WIRE: THE END OF COMBAT OUTPOST KEATING

Roll Call: 3–61 Cav

26. The General’s Competing Considerations

27. The Deer Hunters

28. Send Me

29. Elevator Ride

30. “Wish Me Luck”

31. GET SOMETHING UP!

32. “They’ve Got an RPG Pointed Right at Me”

33. Taking This Bitch Back

34. The Apaches

35. The Fundamentals

36. Blood and Embers

37. The Long Walk Down

38. Saint Christopher

39. Two Purple Hearts and Just One Scar

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by Jake Tapper

Acclaim for Jake Tapper’s The Outpost

Glossary and Military Terms

Notes and Sourcing

An Important Note and Some Thanks

Newsletters