"Drone's confirmed their positions. You seeing this?"

"Roger that," said Diaz.

"Got it, sir," added Ramirez.

"Okay. Ramirez and I got the center house. Diaz, cover that door of the first. That guy comes out, he's yours."

"Standing by."

Mitchell loaded a fresh magazine into his pistol, then said, "Ramirez? Move out!"

Boots digging deep in the snow, they drove up the hill and reached the middle house, entirely out of breath. They weren't wasting time with the lock now. Ramirez drew back and kicked in the door.

Mitchell rushed in, knowing that their targets were on the left side, near the fireplace. Both men had rolled over, sat up, and began screaming at Mitchell, who shot the first one even as Ramirez cried, "Shut up!" and silenced the second.

Diaz had the option of aiming via the reticle in her HUD or choosing the traditional method of sighting the target via her rifle's attached scope. The choice came into play now because the IWS allowed her to zoom in on the target and actually see him behind the door.

A flashing red outline appeared, indicating the insurgent's exact position despite the wood between him and Diaz. She had range, wind speed, and direction--and most importantly--the talent and desire to drop the very last man standing between them and completing the mission.

She wouldn't give him the luxury of opening the door and taking a last cold breath. Holding hers, she squeezed the trigger. The Dragunov thumped, the sound echoed by a distant crack from the door as her round penetrated the wood and pierced the man behind it.

The red outline turned white. "Ghost Lead, this is Diaz. Third guy is down."

"Roger that. We're out of here. Fall back on me."

Diaz rose and tried to shudder off the chills. Her blood felt icy, and her joints ached. She was beginning to lose sensation in her toes. "The cold is my friend," she muttered, resorting to survival school mantras drilled into all operators.

Shouldering her rifle, she picked her way down the hill toward the others, their position glowing in her HUD. She smiled to herself as Carlos and Tomas shook their heads in disbelief over what she had just accomplished.

Carlos was now helping run the ranch with Dad, and Tomas had gone on to become a distinguished professor of agriculture at Iowa State. However, whenever they got together, Diaz would gaze into their eyes and always see the jealous twelve-year-old still lurking inside.

She reached the bottom of the hill, just as Captain Mitchell called their chopper: "Black Hawk Two-Niner, this is Ghost Lead. En route to pickup zone. Terrain's rough. ETA twenty, thirty minutes, over."

"Ghost Lead, this is Black Hawk Two-Niner. Roger that. We're on our way."

Carrying an approximately 180-pound man about a hundred meters to the next hill was within Mitchell's capability. Carrying the same man a full kilometer over rocky, snow-covered terrain in subzero temperatures, in the wind, was being unrealistic, but Mitchell gave it a shot nonetheless. Because it was Rutang, his friend.

Mitchell lasted about three hundred meters before he had to stop. He and Diaz unrolled one of their portable stretchers, velcroed Rutang into it, then sought the smoothest paths they could follow while dragging him through the narrow pass, utilizing the stretcher's built-in harnesses.

The delay only lasted a couple of minutes, but Saenz and Vick appreciated the break.

When they reached a large boulder to their left, marking the top of the pass, they paused to recon the barren valley below, where their Black Hawk would land. Now Mitchell paused a moment to bring in the UAV3.

As the drone whirred overhead, Mitchell zoomed in with the cameras, and suddenly red diamonds began to appear in the hills. There were two at first, then three, four, a dozen--maybe more now--all moving along a trail leading directly toward them.

"Ghost Lead, this is Black Hawk Two-Niner," called the pilot, who was no doubt observing what Mitchell saw via the network. "Hold position. The zone is hot."

But it was already too late for a stealthy escape by the pilot and his crew.

They'd been swooping down and immediately drew a storm of small arms fire from the insurgents on the ground.

"Get them back," Mitchell ordered the others. "Back behind the rocks." Then he called to the pilot. "Black Hawk Two-Niner. Zone's too hot! Pull out. We'll need more support, over."

"Sorry, Captain. None available. We're all you got. And we didn't come all this way to leave you behind."

Chapter Twelve.

NORTHWEST WAZIRISTAN

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN BORDER

JANUARY 2009

The MH-60K Black Hawk was the Special Forces variant of the army's front-line utility helicopter and designed to take ODA and Ghost teams on long-range missions deep into enemy territory. In order to do that, a pair of 230-gallon external fuel tanks had been mounted on either side of the fuselage, beneath the rotor, and at the moment, Mitchell watched as those tanks were being targeted by the insurgents below.

With the awe-inspiring grace of its namesake bird, the pilot throttled up the pair of General Electric engines and banked hard out of the line of fire. He made a complete circle then dove, bringing his chopper to bear on the targets below. The pair of M134 7.62 mm mini-guns mounted in the crew doors wailed and stitched blazing, tracer-lit paths through the snow as the Taliban fighters dove for cover.

Those gunners continued putting serious steel on target, but one carefully aimed rocket-propelled grenade from the bad guys could end it all, as it had back on Basilan Island. Their pilot was taking one hell of a risk for Mitchell and his team.

"I don't believe this," cried Ramirez. "The zone can't be hot!"

"Bad intel," said Brown. "After all that. Bad intel."

"Ghost Lead, this is Black Hawk Two-Niner. I'm heading for a ridge just west your position, twenty meters. I'll hover there."

"Roger that, Two-Niner."

The Black Hawk came out of its dive and made a climbing turn to the south as the gunners broke fire.

All along the mountain trail ahead, muzzles winked, as though a long cord of short-circuiting wire had been stretched over the rocks and ice.

"Everyone, listen up," snapped Mitchell. "Those guys weren't waiting for us. They're on a rat line, coming back from A'stan. They were probably in the caves till now. We just got bad timing. Diaz, you and I help out those door gunners. Brown? You and Ramirez get 'em on board. Ready people? Here he comes!"

As the Black Hawk roared by, and a fresh wave of gunfire pinged off its fuselage, Mitchell craned his head and realized that Ramirez and Brown were taking the CIA agents. "No!" he cried, pointing at Rutang still strapped into the stretcher. "You get him first."

"Roger that," hollered Ramirez.

"That how it is, Captain?" shouted Agent Saenz. "You decide who lives and dies?"

Mitchell gave the man a look, then regarded Diaz. "Move out."

He sprang from cover and broke left, with Diaz right behind. They picked their way along a stretch of broken boulders and snow, then dropped behind a narrow spine of mottled rock, able to prop up on their forearms.

Mitchell's HUD began to light up with so many targets that he thought the IWS had crashed. He estimated near thirty now, and who knew how many more to come.

"I'm hunting for the RPGs," announced Diaz, ready to shoot any Taliban fighter shouldering a rocket meant for the chopper. "Got one. Taking the shot!"