As soon as the truck stopped, the team was out. They were wearing civilian clothes-various shades of dark button-down shirts tucked into loose charcoal pants. Each member wore a fabric mask covering the lower half of his face and carried an FN P90 submachine gun and a MK23 handgun. Four of them also carried two M84 flashbang grenades.

As Hicks approached the door, he could hear the sounds of Arabic voices and loud laughter inside. The smell of freshly baked khubz warmed his nostrils. So far, their intel seemed right.

They reached their positions-three men in the front of the house, two in back, and one on each side. “Predator Three has one hostile down in back,” Hicks heard Guitiérrez say through his comm.

“Copy,” Hicks replied.

Hicks had been counting since he left the truck. When he hit twenty, he said, “Go, go, go!”

One team member on each side of the house tossed a flashbang through the windows. A second later came the rapid-fire sound of the four stun grenades. Hicks and the team burst through the doors while the people in the house were still dazed and trying to clear their heads enough to figure out what had just happened.

Hicks, Steve Kasay, and Chris Johnson found themselves in the main room, the center of which held a long table surrounded by eight men.

“Hands up! Get your hands up!” Hicks yelled, knowing the men probably couldn’t understand his words but hoping the intensity of his voice would stop them from doing anything stupid. Gunfire erupted from an adjoining room, causing one of the men at the table to reach for the gun that was lying by his right hand. With a quick two-shot burst into the man’s chest, Hicks made sure that neither that man nor any of the others would make that mistake again.

“Predator Four has Umari,” came a call on Hicks’s comm, telling him that Brad Musselman had captured the first of their targets.

“Predator Six’s sector is clear,” Arsdale said.

That meant that the second target had to be in Hicks’s room. The problem was, no one looked right. Hicks shouldered his P90, pulled out his MK23, and pressed it against the forehead of the man nearest him.

“Bazzaz?” Hicks yelled.

The man’s eyes were wide, and Hicks could smell him soiling himself.

Hicks cocked back the hammer. “Bazzaz?”

The man slowly lifted his hand and pointed to the head of the table, causing the man sitting there to dive for his gun. Kasay brought the butt of his weapon down hard across the man’s forehead, bringing that movement to a halt. Hicks hurried over and lifted the stunned man’s head by his blond hair. He held a picture next to his face. “Add a beard and subtract a dye job… yep, we have a winner!” He let Bazzaz’s head drop back down on the table.

“This is Predator One. We’ve got Bazzaz!” Hicks yelled into his comm. Then to Kasay he said, “Zip him up!”

So far so good, Hicks thought. With both targets acquired, now it was time to beat a hasty retreat. “Predator Five and Six, get into the main room and secure these bogies,” Hicks ordered. “Predator Three and Eight, hold front and back door. All others, back to the nest. I want everyone home in ninety seconds!”

As they ran to the truck, Hicks saw the two captives being carried on the shoulders of his men. Both of them looked terrified, and there was blood running down Bazzaz’s cheek from a gash on his forehead.

When Hicks got to the truck, Kruse was already behind the steering wheel, ready to roll. Hicks waited outside the back of the truck-he wouldn’t set foot in the vehicle until he knew all his men were safely inside.

A minute later, the other four members of Predator team ran from the house and dove into the rear of the truck. Hicks followed them in and slammed shut the back doors. They all braced themselves as Kruse punched the accelerator.

Hicks looked around the truck and smiled grimly-two prisoners and all eight members of the team accounted for. No good guys hurt.

But then he noticed Kyle Arsdale holding his right arm. There was blood oozing between his fingers.

Arsdale saw Hicks moving toward him and laughed. “Don’t worry, boss, it’s not deep.”

“What happened?” Hicks asked.

“Some grandma-,” Ted Hummel began.

“Hey, my arm, my story!” Arsdale said. “There was this elderly lady-”

“Elderly?” Hummel interrupted. “She was ancient-had to be eighty!”

“Yeah, maybe, but she was a spry eighty! Anyway, she’s in the kitchen, cutting some lamb for the boys, when we come in. I see her, and she’s acting all hurt and stunned. But as soon as I got close, she went all ninja on me! Granny had some skills! I felt bad clocking her, but what else could I do?”

Hicks laughed with the rest of the team, then turned to Carlos Guitiérrez, Predator Three and the team’s medic. But before he had a chance to say anything, Guitiérrez reached for his medical kit and said, “I’m on it.”

The two prisoners, Hamdi al-Umari and Taha al-Bazzaz, bounced around on the floor against the rear wall of the truck’s container box. All the team members were able to steady themselves, but the two prisoners, with their hands zip-tied, bore the brunt of every turn and pothole. Both men were in their late forties and both were directly responsible for supplying the explosives that had killed and wounded thousands in Denver.

Hicks walked over to them and dropped to one knee. Al-Bazzaz had his head down, the blood from his cut dripping on the floor between his thighs.

Al-Umari, on the other hand, was staring defiantly at Hicks. Suddenly he began shouting something in Arabic. Seeing no apparent understanding, he switched to French and finally stilted English. “I… laugh… their… deaths!” He finished by spitting directly into Hicks’s face.

One team member swung for the captive, but Hicks deflected the blow. He used his sleeve to slowly wipe the saliva off his face, then smiled and nodded at the prisoner.

Al-Umari apparently misinterpreted this gesture to mean that he could say whatever he wanted-probably thought Hicks’s restraint a part of the ridiculous American commitment to free speech. He grinned and said again, “I… laugh… their… deaths!”

As the final word came out, Hicks lunged. His left knee landed with a crunch against al-Umari’s ribs. All the man’s air shot out of his lungs in an audible burst. Hicks grabbed the terrorist’s hair and flung his head back against the side of the truck. His knife was out of its sheath with a metallic ring and instantly was pricking blood from the prisoner’s Adam’s apple. “As I will laugh at yours,” Hicks said in Arabic. “As I will laugh at yours.”

He slammed al-Umari’s head one more time against the truck, then stood up. He looked at Guitiérrez and, pointing at al-Umari, said, “Stitch him up next. I want them both ready and in their right minds for interrogation when we get to the safe house.”

Guitiérrez nodded and turned back to stitching up Arsdale’s arm. Hicks went to the front of the truck’s box and ducked through the door into the cab. He dropped himself into the passenger seat, stared out the window, and began reviewing his next steps.