Nate extended his hand. “Glad to finally meet you, Sergeant Albert. Bet you’ve been wondering what took us so long.”

“Every hour of every day, sir.” His voice broke with emotion before he regained his composure.

Nate laid a hand on his arm. “How about we take you home, son?”

Albert nodded slowly, clearly overcome with relief.

Nate motioned toward the two hooded, kneeling figures. “Who are these people?”

“Wakdar Kahn Kakar, the malik of this village, and his daughter, Rabia. I wouldn’t be alive if not for them.”

Nate motioned for Santos to remove the hoods and cut them free.

“You’re the one who contacted the U.S. patrol.” Nate addressed the woman.

She nodded.

“America is in your debt,” he said. “I don’t mean to be impolite, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

The old man rose slowly to his feet and spoke heatedly to his daughter.

“My father does not wish to leave.” She glanced fearfully at Nate, then at Albert. “He says he is an old man. He is ready to die here.”

Albert touched his hand on her arm and started speaking softly and respectfully to the old man in fluent Pashto. The malik continued to resist until Rabia’s name came up.

He lowered his head, then finally appeared to concede.

The woman smiled gratefully at Albert, who reached out and gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. Nate found the exchange both interesting and poignant. Albert had been with this woman for almost four months. He imagined a lot had happened between them.

Crystal’s voice in his headset interrupted his thoughts. “Charlie to Lead, we have located Reaper’s crash site—approximately five-zero-zero meters from your current position, north, along the road. No movement from the site but numerous dismounts moving rapidly toward it.”

They had to get to that bird and his men. Nate keyed his mike. “Roger that, Charlie. Advise that we will be moving toward Reaper. Repeat. Moving toward our downed team. Advise the brass that we have Beckwith. We have Beckwith and have verified. Need air assets now.”

Beckwith was the code word for Jeff Albert and the last name of the founder of Delta Force, Charlie Beckwith.

“We also have the two additional evacuees,” Nate stated.

“Roger that. You have Beckwith and two additional evacuees, and you need air assets at your position. Stand by. Charlie out.”

Nate turned to his team. “Let’s scramble up some ground transpo.”

“Rabia has a car, sir,” Albert said. “An older-model Toyota.”

“Not going to do it. Not big enough. Santos and Cooper. Go see if you can find a working vehicle large enough to transport all of us. We need to get to Reaper and check on our guys. We’ll take cover in the house until you return. And hurry your asses up. Reaper’s in trouble, and so are we.”

Crystal broke in again. “Lead, be advised that we are experiencing a slight delay scrambling air assets. ”

“How much of a delay?”

“Working it out. Will notify when ready. Charlie out.”

Nate looked at his men, then at Albert. “Looks like we might get to fight our way out of here yet. Don’t suppose you’ve got any weapons to add to the mix?”

“No, sir.”

Perfect. They were up shit crick in a leaky boat with no paddle. With a nod from Nate, Bravo team along with Green and Alpha team moved into the house, posting up at windows and doors and watching for bad guys as they waited for Santos and Cooper to show up with their ride.

RABIA SCRAMBLED TO change from her night clothes to her day wear, thankful that Jeffery had asked this favor for her. Still catching her breath, she sat on the floor, low along the inner wall of the cooking room, as the Americans had instructed her. Her father sat on one side of her, Jeffery on the other. Both were silent. Her father’s silence came from anger. Jeffery’s, she suspected, was prompted by disbelief. And relief.

They had come for him. He would now go home.

For him, she felt happy. For herself, in the aftermath of the terror when they had burst in with guns and bound their hands and placed hoods over their heads, she felt a numb sense of loss.

He was leaving. Just when she had convinced herself that somehow he would stay. It had been a foolish notion, she knew that. But the grief she felt at the thought of losing him seemed as huge as the night that swallowed the world in shadows.

In the dark, in the silence, as the Americans watched for resistance, she felt Jeffery’s hand seek hers. She clung and tried desperately not to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry I brought this to your door.”

“This is not your doing. This is Allah’s will. You were destined to leave here.”

“Come with me,” he whispered urgently. “Rabia… you can come with me. Your father, too. ”

The tears did come then. For the hope in his voice and the impossibility of it all. “I cannot go with you any more than you can stay.”

He said nothing. Because he knew the truth as surely as she did.

If they all got out of here alive, she and her father would go to their family in Kabul, as Jeffery had wanted. They would be safe there. She would return to teaching.

And there she would be alone, surrounded by family and friends.

She listened to the night, the cadence of breathing of the armed men guarding them. And she thought of the roof and wished with all her heart that they could have had one more night together beneath the stars.

TY CAME TO slowly. Pain throbbed through his head and back. And his arms—what the hell? It felt as if a pair of vise grips had clamped around his biceps. That’s when he realized he was being dragged.

Fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, and he started flailing. He’d be damned if he’d let some Taliban jihadist take him alive.

“Easy, bro. I’ve got you.”

Mike. Thank God. “What happened?”

“Remind me never to get into a helicopter with you again, Crash.”

Right. They’d taken a hit. Which would explain why his back was killing him. Now that he was marginally with the program, he could see the smoking wreckage of the bird Mike had dragged him away from.

“You OK? Waldrop? Where’s Waldrop?”

“We’re fine. Both of us. Waldrop’s setting charges to blow the chopper. Sit tight.”

Mike pulled a radio from his vest pocket. “Lead, this is Reaper. We are down, minor wounded, but are functional. Chopper is toast. Awaiting orders.”

“No shit, you’re down,” Nate replied, sounding uncharacteristically rattled but clearly relieved. “Damn happy to hear your voice. But you’ve got a bigger problem than a broken bird. Base advises numerous subjects approaching your position—assume they are enemy. Multiple dismounts, and a couple of trucks have joined in. Take cover and defend. We’ll be there as soon as we can to extract.”

“What about Albert?”

“We got him.”

Mike glanced at Ty and nodded, letting him know they’d found Albert.

If Ty had known what to say, he would have, but he didn’t have a clue. If they lived through this, life for him had changed irrevocably, no matter what.

Waldrop sprinted up beside them right then and pointed down the road. “Company. Coming full steam.”

“Crystal still have that Predator circling overhead?” Mike asked Nate.

“Roger that.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got a truck zeroing in, and I don’t think it’s pizza delivery. Be real neighborly like if you could do something about it.”

“Charlie copies direct.”

“Bless you, Crystal, darling.” Mike breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Crystal’s voice, clearly happy as hell that she’d been monitoring their commo. “Party’s about to start, sweetheart—now would be a really great time for the punch to arrive.”

“Ask and ye shall receive. Shot out,” Crystal advised urgently. “Duck and cover. Duck and—”

A fireball streaked across the sky, then exploded with a loud boom, drowning out the rest of her commo. The missile smashed into the Taliban truck, lighting it up like an oil-rig fire. Bodies spilled out onto the road. Men climbed from the wreck and scrambled into the shadows.

“Nice shot, babe!” Mike crowed.

Crystal’s relieved breath preceded her voice. “Roger that, flyboy.”

“Can you walk?” Mike asked Ty as he handed him an M-4 and a bandolier of loaded magazines.