2

Marcus forced away such thoughts.

This was not the time to speculate about what might happen. He had to stay focused on what was happening right in front of him, in real time, and keep his team alive until backup could arrive.

Marcus wasn’t worried about Special Agent Kailea Theresa Curtis. The woman was a pro. Though she’d never served in the military, she’d been a New York City beat cop before joining the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, and she was as tough and smart as anyone he had ever worked with. Marcus had been most impressed watching her in a firefight in Jerusalem. Even while taking a bullet, she had never lost her cool. She had stayed in the hunt, returning fire, keeping her target pinned down until Marcus had been able to work around behind the guy and take him out.

She could have accepted a desk job after that. Indeed, she could have retired to a cushy private-sector position and a fat six-figure salary. Marcus would have been the first to applaud her for it. But Kailea was a warrior. She loved her country. She loved her job. She loved the DSS. She had been relentless about getting back into the field as rapidly as possible, and Marcus was glad to have her at his side now.

Yigal Mizrachi of the IDF’s 869th was another story. Marcus had met him for the first time upon landing in Tel Aviv a mere twelve hours earlier. He had quickly become impressed with the kid’s encyclopedic knowledge of the enemy and the terrain along Israel’s northern border. But was the young Israeli officer really up for this?

Raised by a religious Jewish father who had made aliyah from Brooklyn in the 1960s and an even more religious mother who’d grown up in the Israeli port city of Rishon Leziyyon, Yigal was the baby of the Mizrachi family. The youngest of six brothers and two sisters, he was barely two years out of high school.

The kid was razor-sharp—borderline genius—and was fluent in Arabic and French, as well as Hebrew and English. It was no wonder, then, that Yigal had been recruited into Isuf Kravi, the IDF’s combat intelligence unit, and assigned to Northern Command. There, he’d been assigned as an aide to the unit’s commander and had worked hard to become a Hezbollah specialist. Still, Yigal had never seen war. Never been in a firefight. Never even been near one. So Marcus had no idea how the kid would handle himself under these conditions or if he could be trusted.

Marcus breathed a bit easier knowing that the message Kailea had just fired up the chain of command would set into motion events that could soon bring this nightmare to an end. Even now, he knew, Unit 669—Israel’s elite combat rescue team—was spooling up and would soon be headed their way. So would a quick reaction force. In ten minutes, tops, the good guys would bring overwhelming firepower to bear on the enemy.

The question was, could they hold on for ten more minutes?

JOINT PERSONNEL RECOVERY AGENCY,
FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, SPOKANE, WASHINGTON

“Commander, you’re going to want to see this.”

The two-star U.S. Army general could hear the tension in the voice of his twenty-six-year-old duty officer. He stepped out of his office and moved quickly to the young aide’s side. “What’ve you got?”

“We’re getting a distress signal from the Israeli-Lebanese border, sir.”

“We don’t have any forces on that border.”

“Nevertheless, sir—I’ve got reports of contact with the enemy and an urgent request for extraction.”

Three fighters emerged from the east through the flames and billows of smoke.

Dressed in dark-green camo and full combat gear, they approached the remains of the last vehicle in the convoy.

Marcus motioned to his colleagues to hold their fire. He reached into his backpack and drew out a suppressor and attached it to the muzzle of his rifle. Then he waited—ten seconds . . . fifteen . . . twenty—until all three were obscured from the view of the rest of their cell. Then, accounting for the cross breeze coming from the Mediterranean just a few miles to the west, Marcus zeroed in on the exposed neck of the last fighter in line and took the shot.

A puff of pink mist filled the air. And before the man hit the ground, Marcus pivoted, found the neck of the next man, and squeezed the trigger again.

Both shots were nearly silent. Whatever incidental noise the suppressed rounds might have made was swallowed up in the roar of the raging fires. But the second tango didn’t simply collapse to the ground. Rather, he stumbled forward several steps before falling and in so doing hit the lead fighter in the back of the leg.

Startled, the commander swung around fast, his weapon up, stunned to find his two colleagues sprawled on the ground. Pivoting toward the brush, the man searched desperately for a target to shoot back at, but he never got the chance. Marcus double-tapped him to the forehead and he went hurtling backward into the inferno of the second vehicle.

“Come on,” Marcus said. “Time to go on offense.”

He ejected a spent magazine, popped in a fresh one, and scrambled to his feet. Kailea did the same, as Yigal asked what he should do.

“Watch our backs and our gear,” Marcus said, then led Kailea out of the brush.

He moved left, his weapon up, sweeping side to side, and reached the wreckage of the last vehicle in the line. Wincing from the acrid smoke in his eyes, he could see the burning bodies of the IDF soldiers trapped inside. He saw no movement. Heard no cries. Spotted no signs of life. The three men had surely been dead from the moment the missile hit their jeep. He certainly hoped so. At any rate, there was nothing he could do for them, so Marcus kept moving, peering through the smoke and the flames, hunting for the rest of the terrorist cell.

They were coming—all of them.

Marcus counted five masked men. They had made their way through the large hole in the fence and were coming up the ravine. There were two more out there somewhere, he knew—the ones who’d used the bolt cutters—though it was possible they had retreated back into Lebanese territory.

Marcus inched backward, careful to remain hidden by the burning jeep. Raising his left hand, he signaled to Kailea that he could see five targets, then motioned for her to take up a position near the wreckage of the first vehicle in the convoy. When she complied, he got down on his stomach, facing the east, tried to steady his breathing, and lay in wait.