The drone was beginning to get too close to the house, blowing snow from its roof, and Mitchell swore and guided it back to gain altitude.

The other individuals inside, four in all, were located via thermal infrared imagers and designated as "soldiers" with red numbered diamonds that also flashed and zoomed in on their positions. Mitchell could change those designations with a voice command override, should an enemy turn out to be a friendly or a civilian. "Target Three is Green," he might say.

Calming himself now, he flew the drone even higher, all of its data transmitted in real time over the entire network.

The drone picked out eight more targets, including a heavily bundled-up man posted outside each door.

They were only outnumbered three to one. Mitchell liked those odds.

"Ghost Lead, this is Brown," called the gunner. "I'm in position."

"Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez. I'm moving up. Almost there." The rifleman and communications expert aka commo guy had shivered through his words as he fought for breath.

The Cross-Com's security measures gave Mitchell and his teammates the luxury of using their own names over the radio, though he was identified as Ghost Lead in most cases. Sometimes he missed the old call signs, all starting with the same letter on an ODA team: Rockstar, Rapper, Rutang . . .

He took a deep breath. "Ghost Team, this is Ghost Lead. Check your HUDs. You can see our package of three is in the last house. Looks like we have twelve Taliban here. Note their positions. I'm sighting the first guard. Talk to me, Diaz."

Membership in the elite gun club better known as the army's Special Operations Forces was closed to women who wanted to participate in combat roles.

Therefore, Sergeant Alicia Diaz could not possibly be a Special Forces operator.

She could not possibly be crouched on a mountainside in Pakistan, peering down the scope of her rifle, about to whisper her report to her team leader.

But she was.

It had taken the open-minded leadership of the Ghosts brass to recognize that a woman who had won the Service Rifle category of the National Long-Range Rifle Championship at Camp Perry, Ohio, for an unprecedented two years in a row belonged on a Special Forces team, U.S. Army doctrine notwithstanding.

And Diaz wasn't the only female Ghost, either. She'd crossed paths with now Major Susan Grey, Lindy Co-hen, Jennifer Burke, as well as a few others. However, she was the only female marksman within the company, a distinction that had garnered her much respect.

She had joined the army to prove that she could perform as well if not better than any man in any situation. Those were strong words, and she had done everything within her power to back them up. Admittedly, she'd been taken down hard during her combatives training, and there was that incident in Kabul back in '05 when she'd almost been knifed to death, but she had learned to use cunning to compensate for her size.

The fact remained that when Sergeant Alicia Diaz was lying on her belly and clutching her rifle, she was the queen of the battlefield, and they would all bow willingly--or unwillingly--as these men were about to do.

"Ghost Lead, this is Diaz. I'm in position. I have your first target."

The captain's reticle floated over the guard at the last house, and his IWS sent an automatic request to Diaz's HUD to take out that target.

She held her breath, ready to fire.

The perfect sniper is 100 percent certain he will hit the target before he squeezes the trigger. He is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Yet in all her years of practice, being that certain still eluded Diaz. There was always 1 percent of doubt. Just one, but it was there, reminding her that she was just a twenty-eight-year-old tomboy from a ranch in Lubbock, Texas. She was just a girl who liked to play with guns. Hell, it seemed like yesterday that she was aiming at tin cans on fence poles, aggravating her brothers because she'd outshoot them every time.

And the strange thing was, it never got old. The same thrill she'd felt as a teenager still gripped her heart every time she got behind a weapon and sighted a target.

However, the thrill now was tempered by a healthy dose of fear; because if she missed, the entire operation could go south in a heartbeat.

She studied her target. He was seated and had fallen asleep on the job. Awake or asleep, he'd never know what hit him. He had an AK balanced across his knees, his head lowered. Her angle was perfect so that the round would not penetrate the house after traversing his skull.

Diaz had considered the wind speed and direction, automatically displayed in her HUD. She had her range, which was decreased by the specially modified 7.62 mm subsonic ammunition she fired to dampen her rifle's report. She'd already accounted for the force of gravity, the bullet drop.

This was the math every good sniper knew, not unlike the math they'd tried to sell you in high school: "Hey, kids, if you ever become an Army Special Forces sniper, you'll need this stuff." Perhaps they would have had more luck gaining students' attention if they had framed it like that.

And this was the math that had cost Diaz most of her romantic relationships with men. She could never tell them what she actually did in the army, and the lies never added up.

Besides, what man in his right mind would want a crazy woman like her, who would kite off on a whim to Europe to learn foreign languages when she wasn't shooting bad guys? Most of the men she had dated wanted a woman who was into pizza, beer, and sports, not a woman who watched PBS on TV.

But this was the math. And all of her calculations were, at the moment, complete.

Her reticle floated over the target and froze. Perfect head shot.

Her trigger finger came down slowly, gracefully, followed by a muted thump and puff of smoke.

The round struck the guard's head, took most of it off, and left him slumping sideways. No piece of him had struck the door. Even Diaz couldn't believe she'd killed him so cleanly.

"Nice," said the captain. "That's one."

"Stand by," she said, hearing the voices of her brothers like she always did when trying to take aim:

"Come on, girly girl, shoot it! Bet you'll miss!"

I don't think so, Carlos.

"She ain't going to hit it."

Watch me, Tomas. Just watch me.

The second guard had stirred and was now looking up. Diaz didn't have much time. She checked the readings in her HUD, adjusted her aim, and found the guard's head.

Her brothers were screaming now.

And the round cut loose from her rifle.

The guard joined his comrade, spilling blood onto the snow, dying silently.

"Last one," said the captain.

"I have him," answered Diaz.

"Brown, Ramirez, stand by to move," warned the captain.

"She ain't getting this one," said Carlos.

"Maybe," said Tomas. "She ain't missed one yet!"

A gust of wind ripped over the mountain, blowing snow across Diaz's field of view. She cursed and readjusted her position.

Particles of ice had gathered on her scope. She wrenched her microfiber cloth from a pocket and quickly cleaned the lens, then settled back into position.

"Diaz, what are you waiting for?" called the captain. "Come on."

"Wind burst. Stand by."

She could barely hold the rifle steady. Snow cut across her cheek, and her lips were sore and chapped.

In came another gust, and the guard was shaken awake. He rose, yawned, extending his arms in the air, then leaned forward, glancing up to the next house to spot his dead comrade in the snow.