Boxers replied, “I copy room secure. See you in five.”

Thomas Hughes was screaming, but with the duct tape gag in place, nothing made sense. From the emphasis on the hard consonants, however, the smart money said that it was mostly obscenities. Jonathan approached the young man carefully, not wanting to get kicked, and even more, not wanting to leave any unnecessary footprints in the spreading pool of gore.

“Thomas, be quiet,” he said. “You’re safe. I’m here to take you home. They’re both dead, and you’re going to be just fine. Do you understand that? Nod if you do.”

Thomas hesitated, and then he nodded. It was clearly a calculated move. The fear remained in his eyes, but how could he go wrong allowing the new attacker to think otherwise?

“I’m going to get us some light now,” Jonathan explained. As he snapped his goggles out of the way, he reached behind his head into a side pocket of his rucksack and produced a glow stick. He cracked it and shook it to life. The room glowed green again, only now they could both see.

The fear in Thomas’s eyes peaked when he saw Jonathan’s masked face. The rescuer tried hard to make his eyes look friendly. “I’m going to cut you loose,” Jonathan explained. “That means I have to use a knife. Don’t freak out when you see it.”

The eight-inch tempered steel blade of the K-Bar was honed to a razor’s edge, and looked scarylet that happen. The last thing he needed was a bad guy on the loose. Operating by instinct, Jonathan brought the slung M4 rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired six quick rounds at the van’s front left fender. The muzzle blast ripped like thunder through the humid night. He’d loaded every third round in this clip as armor-piercing, and he wanted to make sure to blast two holes in the engine block. He was rewarded with the infrared flash of two heat plumes as the vehicle stopped dead on the pavement.

With his rifle still up and ready, Jonathan moved toward the crippled vehicle.

His earpiece crackled, “I’m on infrared, and I’ve got visual on you and the vehicle. There’s movement on the far side. He’s out of the car, moving north toward the woods. He’s using the vehicle to cover his retreat.”

Jonathan didn’t take time to acknowledge, but he liked knowing that Boxers was watching from the air. In his gut, he wanted to ignore the vehicle and chase the bad guy, but doctrine wouldn’t allow it. There might be a second guy in the van, and he couldn’t afford having someone sneak up behind him while he was trying to sneak up behind someone else.

The passenger side window-the one closest to him-was up and unbroken. Keeping the rifle tucked against his shoulder with his right hand, he used his left to pull his collapsible baton from its pouch on his web gear. He approached in a wide arc to come in from the rear. The back cargo doors of the van were closed, and their windows were intact.

“Careful there, cowboy,” Boxers said in his ear. “There’s only one of you.”

Jonathan stooped low to the ground near the back doors, let his rifle fall against its sling, and lifted a tear gas grenade from the right side of his web gear. He pulled the pin, and with the safety handle squeezed, he rose, shattered the glass in the back door with one enormous punch from the baton, and tossed the grenade into the van. As the cloud of noxious gas bloomed, he moved forward and shattered the glass on the passenger door. He confirmed in a single glance that it was empty. The fleeing driver had come alone.

“Vehicle’s clear. Where’s my target?”

After a pause, the voice in his ear said, “Sorry boss, I was watching you. I lost him. Can’t have gone far.”

Terrific. “No exfil till we find him.”

“Understood. Gauges say lots of time.” Translation: he had enough fuel to hover for as long as it took.

Something popped inside the van, and Jonathan whirled on it, rifle at the ready. Heavy black smoke was pouring from the broken window in the back. He must have lobbed his CS grenade onto something combustible.

“Your van is burning, boss.”

Jonathan started moving away from it, closer to the farmhouse, giving the vehicle a wide berth. You never knew what people carried in vehicles with them. He’d seen portable drug labs in Colombia-perfectly harmless looking trucks or vans-go high order because of the bizarre mixture of chemicals they needed to make the shit they sold. He snapped his NVGs out of the way again, turning the night from iridescent green back to shades of black, silver, and gray.

His earpiece popped again. “You got company coming in from behind you. Blind side. From the house.”

Shit. Jonathan dropped to his knee and tried to become small as the fire grew behind him, creating an ever more perfect silhouette for a shooter. The NVGs came back down, and there was his target: Thomas Hughes. Goddamn kid. These were the times when he hated working alone with Boxers. If this had been a Unit operation, somebody from being stupid. “Get down!” Jonathan called.

Thomas froze in his tracks. “Don’t shoot! It’s me!”

“Get down!”

“It’s me!” The kid was terrified.

Jonathan rushed him, closing the thirty yards that separated them in five seconds. He slung his arm across Thomas’s chest, pivoted his hip, and flipped the precious cargo onto the wet grass. When he was down, he covered the kid with his own body. “I didn’t ask who you were,” Jonathan hissed. “I told you to get down. I swear to God, if you don’t start listening, I’m gonna shoot you myself.”

“I heard shooting,” Thomas said, grunting against the weight on his back. “Then I saw the fire and I got scared.”

“So you wandered toward the guns and the fire?”

Thomas wriggled to get rid of the weight. “Get off of me.”

Jonathan unpinned him, and scanned the horizon again for Chris.

“I came out because I thought you might be hurt.”

The comment drew a look. “Thanks, then,” Jonathan said. “I need you to stay down because the driver of that van is no friend, and he’s still out there.”

They had to move away from the van. The light made them too good a target, and it rendered his night vision gear useless. Into his radio: “Do you see anything?”

“A big-ass hot fire, but not much…wait. I’ve got movement-”

Jonathan saw it, too, at exactly the same instant he heard the crack of a bullet passing disturbingly close to his head. A second bullet tore into the ground near his elbow.

Thomas yelled something that Jonathan didn’t care to hear. He was busy. “Stay flat!” He nestled the M4 back into his shoulder.

The gunman kept shooting, his muzzle flashes providing all the visual input Jonathan needed. Twenty yards past the burning van, the posture said pistol shooter; the range and accuracy said good one. Jonathan squeezed his trigger, three quick rounds. He went for center-of-mass. He knew that his first shot found its mark because he saw the target stumble backward. He was pretty sure about the second shot, but the third was anybody’s guess. When he thought he saw additional movement, he fired two more.

Then the silence returned, except for the sound of Thomas screaming. He had his hands over his ears, shouting for it to stop. It was the sound of raw terror.

“Hey!” Jonathan barked.

Thomas jumped, his arms up to ward off an attack.

“Are you hurt?”

“What’s happening?” Thomas yelled.

“Are you hurt?”

The kid shook his head and stammered, “N-no. I d-don’t think so.”

“Then shut up. Stay down.”

A kill wasn’t a kill until it was confirmed. He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the tree line. Keeping low, he skirted the light-wash from the van and charged the spot where he’d seen the shooter fall. “Talk to me,” he said to Boxers.

“Not much to tell. I saw the muzzle flashes, and I think I saw him fall, but nothing confirmable. I don’t see any movement.”

The movement part was all he needed. Jonathan knew that the target was hit hard. Speed now trumped surprise. Jonathan sprinted through the und. “Don’t move,” Jonathan said, and he stepped closer.