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“Repeat—did not copy,” Jenny insisted. “I say, again, repeat, Alpha One.”

“Alpha One to High Top,” Marcus replied. “I’ve got no one here.”

“No one?”

“Affirmative.”

“You’re sure you’re at the right one?”

“Affirmative—they’re gone, High Top.”

“Wait,” Noah radioed. “I think I’ve got them.”

“Where?” asked Marcus.

“I see a group of men around a forklift and a baggage tractor.”

“Okay, but where?” Marcus pressed.

“Behind the terminal. Now the baggage tractor is pulling away. The men are getting into a . . .”

But Marcus had already stopped listening. Using their code names, he ordered Callaghan and Jenny back to the van. He and Geoff were heading out the back door. Noah was to keep them apprised of any new developments and meet Jenny and Callaghan at the plane.

Jenny began to protest but stopped herself.

This was her mission, but there was no point pulling rank. Ryker wasn’t wrong, and he and Stone were closest to the exit and thus had the best chance of catching up to the baggage tractor.

Slinging her sniper rifle over her shoulder, she sprinted back to the metal staircase and down to the ground floor. By the time she got there, Tomer had pulled up the van. She and Callaghan jumped in, and soon they were moving, weaving through a maze of pallets and people who were crisscrossing their path and severely slowing their progress.

Marcus burst out the back door and was blinded by the blazing morning sun.

He threw on the sunglasses the team had given him and scanned the tarmac. He saw at least a dozen narrow-, medium-, and wide-bodied Airbus commercial passenger jets, all owned by Turkish Airlines, all being refueled and loaded with baggage and cargo.

“There,” Geoff shouted as he raced up behind him. “Two o’clock.”

Geoff pointed to a twin-engine A319 about two hundred meters away. It, too, was being serviced, but it was the only jet being approached by a baggage tractor pulling a line of trailers and dollies and a cargo loader on which sat a half-dozen well-armed men.

There was no way they could simply make a run for it. They would be spotted immediately and be an easy target for any fighter good enough to be in the Radwan Unit. With Jenny, Tomer, and Callaghan nowhere to be seen, Marcus glanced around to see what was available. Parked nearby was a potable water truck. Marcus ordered Geoff to take the driver’s side while he would ride shotgun. But the truck was not running, and there was no key in the ignition.

They were running out of time. Al-Masri and his men were almost at the Airbus. A refueling truck pulled up. Marcus bolted from the water truck and raced up to the refueler. He should have taken Noah’s Taser—it was the only one the team had—but he had not thought of that. Not wanting to do serious harm to the driver, Marcus nevertheless had no time to improvise. The moment the man opened his door, Marcus sucker punched him in the face, knocking him out cold. The angle of the truck blocked anyone in the cargo terminal or the flight line from seeing any of this. But that was the only consolation. There was nowhere in the cramped cab to put the man, so Marcus and Geoff had to lift him up, carry him back to the water truck, and put him in the driver’s seat, slumped over the wheel.

Locking and closing that door, they now dashed back to the refueler—Geoff to the driver’s side, Marcus to the passenger side. The truck was still running. Geoff hit the gas as Marcus lowered his window and readied his M4. He was about to take his first shot when Jenny came on the radio to remind him that they needed al-Masri and at least some of his men alive. There was no other way they could properly interrogate them and find out who was behind this whole operation. But that was not going to be easy. The tarmac had not been repaved in years. It was not exactly dotted with potholes, but at this speed and acceleration, and with the cab of the refueler shaking and rocking as they crossed all kinds of cracks and rivulets in the pavement, Marcus knew his shots were not going to be precise.

There was no time to overthink it. Jenny wasn’t wrong, but she also wasn’t there. He had no idea what was taking her and Callaghan so long to catch up with them, but Marcus refused to wait. With a prayer that none of his shots struck a container with Kailea or Yigal inside, he pointed the M4 out the window and opened fire at about sixty yards out. He was using a suppressor, so no one heard the shot. Certainly not over the whine of the jet engines and the roar of all the electric and diesel motors. When the first man dropped off the cargo loader, the rest of the men were stunned. They had just reached the Airbus, and the loader came to a stop. Marcus could now see that all of the cargo had already been loaded into the fuselage of the plane.

That’s when he took the second shot. That went wide, so Marcus switched to semiautomatic and let loose one burst and then another. A second man dropped to the tarmac. Everyone else got the message. Scurrying for cover, they began returning fire. Both Marcus and Geoff ducked, but Marcus kept firing, and as he did, he ordered Geoff to floor it.

“Into them?” he asked in disbelief.

“No other option,” Marcus shouted over the gunfire.

They could hear rounds pinging off the engine block and even the storage tank they were pulling. Given that it was filled with hundreds of gallons of aviation fuel, Marcus couldn’t help but wonder if they had made the right choice. But there was nothing they could do about it now.

“Hit it, Geoff—now,” Marcus repeated. “Or we’re both going to die.”

The front windshield was being riddled by rounds from four AK-47s all being fired at them simultaneously. It exploded an instant later. Shards of glass rained down on them. Both men lowered their heads even further to shield their faces and eyes. They felt the impact. They heard the crunch of metal. And then came the screams of men being run over.

As Geoff slammed on the brakes, Marcus could feel the big truck blasting through the cargo trailers and trollies and skidding across the tarmac. The moment they lurched to a halt, Marcus kicked open his bullet-ridden door and jumped to the ground. The carnage was unbelievable. Blood and broken bodies were everywhere. But Marcus didn’t stop to check on them. Kailea and Yigal were in the fuselage. Marcus had to get to them before the cargo bay doors closed and the plane started moving.