Though no one, least of all Jack Allstrong, ruled out the possibility that Ahmad might in fact be a spy checking out airport conditions for the insurgents, and though the consensus among Nolan and the other executives at Allstrong was that Ahmad was using the American military presence to settle vendettas with his personal enemies among his former Republican Guard colleagues, the fact remained that his information tended to be correct. When the targets he'd provided were eliminated, the mortar attacks on the airport had abruptly come to an end. That was about as far as Allstrong or Calliston needed to take it. Allstrong had paid Ahmad for similar information several times now, and counted on the intelligence he supplied to keep a step ahead of the insurgency just outside his perimeter. And so far it was working.

No one had expected today's attack, but Ahmad had arrived at the compound in its aftermath. Now, in the sultry early night, he sat in the front seat of one of Allstrong's convoy vehicles. Ron Nolan was driving. Evan Scholler, in black fatigues, his Kevlar vest, and with four beers in his bloodstream, stood uncomfortably manning the machine-gun platform on the vehicle's roof. Behind him in the seats, two other black-clad Gurkha commandos checked their weapons.

The party rolled out of the main gate. Off to their right, they could sense, more than see, the slumlike contours of the mud-caked domiciles of the residents. A quarter mile or so outside of the compound, the Humvee veered suddenly right and began bouncing across the no-man's-land that separated the airport from the homes. Nolan killed the regular beams, leaving only the car's running lights on.

Evan squinted ahead into the night, unable to make out many details either to the sides or ahead of them. He wished he hadn't had those beers. He wasn't drunk, but he could feel the alcohol, and though Nolan had assured him that they faced little or no danger, just an awesome adrenaline rush, he'd also insisted that Evan wear his bulletproof vest, as all the others had done.

Evan thought he might in fact wind up needing all of his faculties, and couldn't shake a keen awareness that his reflexes might not be there for him in a pinch. So his mouth was dry, his palms sweaty, his head light. He was alone up here, half-exposed. Behind him in the car, he heard nothing-and that didn't help his nerves either.

What the hell was he doing?

In another minute, they'd entered the town itself. As they'd approached, Evan thought for an instant that the car might just try to crash through one of the yards, but evidently Ahmad knew where he was directing them. Suddenly they were in a street so narrow it barely fit them. It was lit only by the lights from within the houses, but the place wasn't dead by any means. The locals were outside smoking, talking-their Humvee picked up some kids, running along beside the car, whistling, calling out for food or candy.

The foot traffic forced them to slow down. Nolan honked from time to time, never stopping, forcing his way ahead, making the populace move out of his way. Evan, sweating heavily now, kept his hands gripped tightly on the handles of his machine gun, even as he heard Nolan call up to him. "Stay cool, dude. Nothing happening here. We're not there yet."

They turned left, then right, then left again, now down unmarked and unremarkable streets, into more of what looked like a marketplace area, closed up for the night, with few if any pedestrians. Nolan accelerated through the space and entered another quarter of the suburb. People still milled about, but less of them, and with far fewer children. Nolan made another turn and pulled up to a stop at a large open space in front of what appeared to be a mosque. Here the foot traffic had all but disappeared. The only light or sound-television and music-came from a two-story dwelling at the next corner down on their left.

The passenger door opened and Ahmad got out of the car, closed the door gently, then leaned back in the window and said something to Nolan. Then he turned and ran, disappearing into another of the side streets. Nolan killed even the running lights next, and then immediately they were moving, only to stop again sixty yards along, after they'd passed the house Ahmad had pointed out to them.

This time the engine went quiet. The radio music from the house was louder down here, providing cover for whatever noise they made as Nolan and his two commandos opened their doors and got themselves and their weapons out into the street.

They all gathered now down under and just to the side of Evan's position. They'd blackened their faces and hung grenades on their vests since they'd gotten into the Humvee and these two details chilled Evan, who could barely make out anything but Nolan's teeth in the darkness. He seemed to be smiling. "I'm leaving the keys in the car," he said to Evan, "in case you need 'em. You remember how we got here, right?" A joke, even in this setting. Nolan went right on. "If you need to, hop in the driver's seat and get out any way you can. But this shouldn't be long. And, hey, remember, we're in black, but we're the good guys, for when we come out."

Then he illuminated the light on the helmet he wore, as did the other men. All of these were clearly well-rehearsed maneuvers. At a nod from Nolan, the men broke into a trot toward their target. In an instant, one stood on each side of the door of the house. Nolan took a position in front of the door and, without any warning or fanfare, opened fire with his submachine gun. This knocked the door open and Nolan kicked it and led his men in.

Immediately, bedlam ensued. Screams and yelling, shots and sporadic bursts of automatic weapons fire, then the three men assembling outside again-Evan thinking it was already over-when the night was split by a shattering explosion out of the lower window. And the men rushed in again, this time into pure darkness.

Evan's knuckles tightened on the handles of his machine gun. Behind him, he heard a sound and whirled. He couldn't make the gun turn a full one-eighty, and he suddenly realized that if anyone were to come up behind him, he had no defense. Drawing his sidearm, he ducked down for a second below the backseat and peered back behind him, but there was nothing in the street. In the house across the way, the yelling and the gunfire continued-again individual shots followed by bursts of automatic weapons. Another explosion ripped through the night, this one blowing out the upstairs windows, and then suddenly all went quiet.

A few seconds later, the three men in black fatigues appeared outside the front door again. Two of them bolted back toward the car, while the third reentered the building, then emerged on a dead run just as his two colleagues got to the car. Behind him, in the house, two nearly simultaneous explosions blew out any remaining glass in the downstairs windows and halfway knocked him to the ground, but he kept running until he, too, reached the car.

By this time, Nolan was back in the driver's seat, breathing hard, starting the thing up. Over his shoulder, he yelled up at Evan. "That was the place all right. That Ahmad is okay. Must have been a dozen Muj in there, dude, maybe two hundred AKs. RPGs, you name it. But nothing that a few frag grenades couldn't cure. God, I love this work. How 'bout you? Was that fun or what? Hang on, we're rolling."

Behind him, fire and smoke were beginning to billow out of the building's windows. Evan couldn't take his eyes off the spectacle. He was vaguely aware of doors opening on the street around him, people pouring out into the night, more shouts, the screams of women. Behind them now, he heard the crack of what he imagined must be gunfire, but he saw nothing distinctly enough to consider it a target.

But then they had turned the corner and were headed back through the space in front of the mosque, then the marketplace. Evan swallowed against the dryness in his throat, his stomach knotted up inside him, his knuckles burning white on the handles of his machine gun.