Levi said, “How far away is the package?”

“Far enough to feel safe,” Yasser answered drily. His eyes weren’t friendly, but Levi didn’t expect friendliness, just cooperation. Many moderate Arabs didn’t care for Westerners, but cared even less for radicals or their own governments. For his part, Levi wasn’t concerned with whether or not Yasser was sympathetic; all he wanted was cooperation.

“I need a time frame.”

Yasser shrugged. “Fifteen minutes.”

About a mile, then, well within Tweety’s range. Levi looked around. He didn’t like leaving Babe here, but the whole point of her job was to squat in a safe location and keep an extra eye out for the rest of the team. Taking her with them defeated the purpose, because she couldn’t walk and operate the drone at the same time. That left him with a choice to make: split the team and leave a couple of guys here with Babe, or take them all with him to maximize the odds of mission success. His training said mission success was the most important. If the informant was so afraid that he was hiding even from his rescuers, then he likely had reason to be, which meant there could well be others out there looking for him. This could still turn out to be a simple retrieve-and-go, but experience told him otherwise.

“I’m leaving one of my team members here,” he said, “to handle communications.” That was true, as far as it went. He wasn’t telling anyone about Tweety, and it would be up to Babe to deploy the drone unnoticed. She likely already had. Looking around, he could see Boom and Jelly kidding around with Mamoon, which meant she was alone in the ruin, doing her thing. The little drone was virtually silent and wouldn’t be noticed at night.

“Ah,” said Yasser. “I see. That is good. I will be able to leave Mamoon with him, then. I did not want to take the child, because there could be danger, but did not like to leave him here alone.”

Levi nodded an affirmative. He liked the idea; that way Babe wouldn’t be by herself. The kid seemed bright and friendly and spoke English as well as his uncle. He said, “I’ll have a word and be right back,” and entered the ruin to talk to Babe, picking his way through the rubble.

She looked up as he pulled aside the black curtain and stopped beside her. She already had the laptop booted up, as he’d expected; she’d made a mostly level place on top of the half-collapsed wall where she’d set the laptop and stood in front of it, tapping on the keys. The illumination of the screen was the only light, giving her a ghoulish look. She’d removed her jump helmet, but even so her hair was dark with sweat and her skin was shiny with it. He liked the look on her, but then he liked how she looked regardless. Smart girl; she’d taken her pistol out of the holster and placed it by her hand, saving her a second of time if she needed it.

She glanced up at him, then back at the screen. “Yeah?” She never maintained eye contact for longer than she had to. He understood that boundary, respected it. He’d love to smash it to pieces, but he respected it . . . for now. How long that would hold true was anyone’s guess.

“The kid is going to stay here with you, so you aren’t alone.”

“Fine.” Another quick glance. “Not necessary, though. I’ve been alone before.”

“This could get hairy. You gotta figure the informer has someone hot on his ass, or he wouldn’t be so jumpy. There’s no telling what we might run into out there, retrieving him—and that’s assuming he doesn’t get cold feet and rabbit on us.”

“Nothing we can do about that. He’s either there or he isn’t. And if anyone is out there, Tweety will see them.”

He looked at the screen. As he’d figured, Tweety was in the air. She had the drone hovering silently over the ruin, slowly rotating as she checked on each teammate, one by one. Yasser and Mamoon were standing together, Yasser’s hand on the kid’s shoulder. They appeared to be having an earnest conversation, the kid nodding his head as he got his instructions.

“Be careful,” she said. For a second their eyes met, then she looked down again before he could get a read on anything, given the dimness of the light.

“You too, babe,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t hear the faint difference in how he said the word, without capitalization. His palm tingled; the impulse to smooth his hand over the back of her head, her neck, was so strong he could actually feel the sensation even though he wasn’t touching her.

Ah, shit. He needed to get his head off this dead-end path and back on the job.

He ducked through the curtain and back outside, though “inside” was a loose description to use for a structure that was mostly in ruins. “Lead the way,” he said briefly to Yasser. Yasser pulled a fold of his headdress across his nose and mouth, to filter out the dust blown by the hot wind. Levi and the rest of the team pulled their balaclavas up over the lower half of their faces, for the same reason. With their NVDs in place, their faces were almost wholly obscured.

The direction Yasser chose was north-northeast, toward rougher terrain, but that was a logical position for the informer because it offered more concealment. A mile there, make contact, a mile back; Babe would be alone for no more than forty-five minutes if everything went smoothly, but there were no guarantees. Shit happening was such a given that Levi planned for it. The only unknown was what shape the shit would take.

Jina took Tweety in slow circles around the fanned-out line of men, looking in all directions. She spotted a gazelle once, standing motionless and watching the humans pass by. She’d done her homework, knew there were gazelles and jackals and other mammals in the desert. There were also, surprisingly, scraggly shrubs and small trees, rock piles, jagged and barren mountains, and lots of flat space. Bedouins roamed the region, though in the heat of July it made sense that they were likely closer to water sources than they would be during the winter months.

She wouldn’t mind a little winter right now—or even a water source she could be close to. Sweat was dripping off her. But which was worse, cold misery or hot misery? Hot misery, she decided, because she felt as if she could barely breathe. The hot wind kept the dust and sand stirred up, getting in every crevice, making her eyes and mouth feel gritty, her nose clogged. None of it was a happy feeling.

She watched the screen, controlling Tweety with both keystrokes to bring up his various cameras, and the mini roller-ball mouse that ruled the drone’s movements, which she had attached to the laptop. Her communications headset was in place, earbud and throat mic, her NVD, equipment and gear bags, pistol, and jump helmet right beside her, so she could grab and go if necessary.

For the most part the guys were silent, communicating by gesture or low-pitched comments when necessary. She too was quiet, because she had nothing to report. Idle chatter was distracting.

She heard Mamoon enter the outer part of the ruin, moving around, singing a little under his breath. He’d been outside for a while, which suited her fine. If he was like most kids, her solitude back here wouldn’t last long, because his curiosity would get the better of him.

No sooner had she had the thought than the black curtain moved, and he slid behind it to join her in the small room.

He stared at her in shock. “You are a woman!”

She nodded, maintaining communications silence, keeping an eye on the screen. She feathered the roller ball, turning Tweety in a slow circle.

“You travel with men?”

His tone was scandalized. Jina clicked off her communications mic and indicated the pistol by her hand, though she kept watching the screen. “I’m armed,” she said briefly. “They leave me alone.” There was no point in getting into any long discussion about anything, just let him know how such a thing was possible, then get back to her job. She clicked the mic back on.

He watched her for a minute, her nimble hands in the fingerless black gloves moving over the keys, “fuzzing” the track ball in minute adjustments. He looked at the screen, tilted his head a little, watched the view change as she surveyed the surroundings. The thermal imaging picked up a very small signature and she zeroed in, enlarged, found some kind of weird rodent going about its ratty business. It looked like a mash-up of rabbit, rat, and kangaroo. Backing out again, she resumed her area surveillance.

Mamoon gasped as the line of men came on-screen. “How are you doing this?”

Crap. She wished he’d shut up and let her do her job. She clicked off the mic again. “I have a flying camera I’m controlling.”

His eyes got big, and he looked back at the screen. “You saw the jerboa!”

“The rat? Yes, the camera is very sensitive.” Mic back on. She moved Tweety to the other side of the team, searching, watching.

She tried not to sound as impatient as she felt, just keep it businesslike, but the kid must have picked up on something in her tone because abruptly he darted back through the curtain and left her alone. Maybe he remembered something he was supposed to be doing. Maybe he was going to get something. Definitely he was a kid, so who knew? She was just glad he was gone, so she could concentrate.

Checking the time, she saw that the men had been moving for twelve minutes; they should be getting close to where the informant was hiding. She wondered if there were any caves. There were jagged and rocky mountains and such, so logically there had to be caves. It was time to take Tweety farther in advance, see what he could see.

Mamoon had gone outside the ruin. She could hear a faint thunking sound to the left, as if he were fooling around the truck, maybe getting inside it and pretending to drive. Could be he already knew how to drive. Maybe he was getting in it to take a nap, out of the blowing sand, though she thought the interior of the truck would be too hot for comfort.

She focused on Tweety, taking the little drone ahead, looking for the heat signature of the informant.

She heard something else outside—a voice. A man’s voice, hushed, too indistinct for her to make out words. At first she couldn’t tell if she was hearing it in her earbud, or in her uncovered right ear. She frowned, concentrated, listened.

Then she heard Mamoon’s lighter tones, as hushed as the other.

Someone was out there, someone they hadn’t expected. Had Mamoon heard him, gone out to deflect attention?

No. It was the middle of the night, and they were in the freaking desert. People didn’t just wander around and visit, especially not visit a ruin where no one was likely to be anyway. Whoever was there wasn’t there by accident.

Alarm tingled her spine. She started to let the team know she had company when Tweety’s cameras picked up a thermal signature, a man-sized one. Then another. Then another, and more, easily ten or fifteen, concealed on either side of the route the team would take. She forgot about the threat outside the ruin, focusing entirely on her guys.

“Ambush! Ambush—” she said urgently.

There was no time for anything else. As she got the second word out a thunderous explosion sent rock and dust flying through the ruin, the percussion knocking her to the right. Her head and right elbow banged painfully against the wall and she went down in a heap, with debris raining down on her.

Coughing violently, dazed, she nevertheless did what her training had taught her to do and pushed the debris away, immediately scrambled back to her feet. The darkness was absolute, the computer screen gone black.

Assume the worst.

The guys were too far away; whatever attack was happening, she had to save herself. She couldn’t see. Her night-vision goggles . . . they’d been beside her and were now God only knew where. She couldn’t find anything. Blindly she groped, touched something warm and metal, recognized the smooth edges of the laptop.

The laptop was made to withstand being dropped, submerged, and any number of other insults to the sensitive workings. She had to assume it was still operable, which meant she couldn’t let it fall into anyone else’s hands. She couldn’t hear anything, her ears were ringing from the explosion. She couldn’t tell if whoever had been outside was even now coming through the ruin in search of her.

Assume the worst.

She had to destroy the laptop. That had been drilled into her over and over, into all of the drone operators. The software was highly classified and could not be allowed to fall into anyone else’s hands. Before she did anything else, even before she tried to save herself, she had to do her job and destroy the laptop.

Feeling along the edge, she located the switch on the upper left of the casing, and toggled it down. There was a bright, brief flash as the hard drive was destroyed. She had to trust that the destruction was complete because she had no way of checking.

Now she had to save herself.

Her scrabbling fingers couldn’t locate her bag, the NVD, anything. Ahead, a flashlight beam . . . two beams . . . were slashing through the dust and smoke. She couldn’t go out that way, couldn’t hear if they were talking, if they thought she was dead and were looking for her body, or if they assumed she’d lived through the destruction and was waiting for them, possibly injured but definitely armed.

Armed. Her pistol had been lying beside her. Now it was God knows where, and she didn’t have the time to feel around for it.

The hole, the one she’d located in the back wall—that was her only chance. Her gut instinct to not be trapped in the back with no escape had been completely on point. A flashlight beam flashed too close and quickly she ducked to the floor. She had seconds, literally less than a minute, before they would be back here unless by some miracle she found her pistol and shot in their direction. She wasn’t waiting for that miracle, she had to move and move now. She half crawled, half slithered back and to the left, holding her breath so she wouldn’t cough and give away her position, assuming the people searching for her could hear better than she could.

She reached the back of the ruin, couldn’t go any farther. She scrabbled around, searching for the opening, and finally found the partially blocked hole. More stones had fallen, slowing her down. She shoved some rock out of the way, got down on her belly, tried to wiggle through. The stones scraped on her arms, caught on her shoulders. No. Desperately she turned on her side, worked her head through, pulled with her hands, pushed with her feet, and her shoulders were free. She was half in, half out, completely helpless if anyone saw her. She sucked in a breath and dust clogged her nostrils, her throat. Quickly she covered her mouth with both hands and tried to muffle the harsh cough she couldn’t stifle.

Out. She had to get out. She pushed some more, got her hips free, and pulled her legs out. Quickly she turned, on her belly, and reached back through the wall, pulled some debris back in place to hide the hole. Maybe that would buy her some time before they realized she’d escaped rather than being buried under the rubble. Staying flat, she belly-crawled to where she remembered the wadi being, though she couldn’t see a damn thing and could only pray she was going in the correct direction.

The ground fell out from under her and she slid into the wadi, rocks and sand going with her. Found it.

She had to move, she couldn’t stop and assess the situation until she was in a safer location. All they—whoever they were—had to do was walk to the edge of the wadi and shine one of those flashlights down, and they’d see her.

Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel her fingertips throbbing. She knew what direction the team had gone in, but when she thought about what she’d seen through Tweety’s cameras, she remembered that the wadi went roughly left to right, not on the diagonal she wanted. But it wasn’t as if she had another to select, she had to go with the wadi she had. She chose to go right, stumbling along the rough bottom, tripping over rocks, falling again. Shit! The delay and possible noise dismayed her more than any pain she might have felt if she’d thought about it.

On her feet, move, keep moving.

Her eyesight was adjusting, clearing, now that she was away from the smoke and dust. She could see deeper shadows, tell that the wadi curved back to the left, taking her more in the direction she wanted and the curve effectively hiding her from anyone still at the ruin. She stumbled along, unable to run because the bottom of the wadi was so rough, but at least she was moving.

She realized there was light, a strange light, with an odd flicker to it; she glanced back and saw the night sky lit by the red, pulsing glow of fire, at least a hundred yards behind her. Whatever had exploded was now burning. What? Couldn’t be the ruin, stone neither exploded—on its own, anyway—nor burned. The truck. Had to be. There was nothing else there.

The pieces fell into place. Mamoon. He’d been talking to someone. The little bastard! He and his uncle—if Yasser was indeed his uncle—were part of the ambush. When he’d seen on the laptop that she was surveilling the area ahead of the team, and that she could see them in the dark, he’d left immediately, likely to warn the others. Then whoever he’d told had faced the problem of both alerting the ambush waiting, and preventing her from giving the alarm to the team. He’d failed in the last, but succeeded in the first.

Levi. The team.

The ringing in her ears was fading a little, enough that she could hear rapid, muted sounds. It took her a few seconds to identify gunfire, but where? Blindly she spun in a circle, oriented herself by the glow from the fire, focused in on the distorted sound.

There.

Yes. The gunfire was coming from the direction of the team.

Her stomach clenched. At least she’d been able to give them warning. Her headset had been knocked askew but was still around her neck; she fumbled for the earbud, put it in place. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear disjointed curses, grunts, the cracks and booms of gunfire, but she couldn’t distinguish individual voices.

She started walking again. Her headset was out of place, wrenched sideways by the explosion, or when she’d pushed herself through the jagged hole. The strap was twisted, the throat mic . . . her fingers ran over it. The mic was damaged, she could tell just by touch. Shit. Shit! She couldn’t make radio contact with the guys.

She tried anyway, clicking on the mic—no, the mic had been on, she’d at least gotten out a warning about the ambush, so she had just turned it off. She clicked again, opened her mouth, then shut it. Anything she said right now, assuming her mic worked, would be a distraction.

The wadi turned sharply to the right, once more taking her away from their direction. She didn’t dare climb out of it, not yet, she wasn’t far enough away from the ruin, and they were in the middle of a firefight.

She couldn’t get to them.

Sick with worry, she continued cautiously following the wadi; in some places the dry creek bed was shallow enough that she could see around her, plainly see the blaze in the distance, though it was beginning to die down. She had to bend double to not offer a silhouette in case Mamoon or the man—men?—with him was scanning the area with night-vision goggles. An NVD had fairly limited range of vision and she thought she might be beyond that now, but she wasn’t certain.

The wadi continued to bear to the right; if she continued following it, it would take her farther and farther from the team. Uneasy, she stopped, trying to make sense of the cacophony she could hear from the earbud.

The rapid RAT-TAT-TAT of automatic weapons in the distance died down. Anxiously she waited, her heart pounding, sweat pouring off her. Please, God, oh please, let them be all right.

At Babe’s two sharp words, “Ambush! Ambush!,” they all hit the ground. Simultaneously behind them was a boom! and Levi snapped a look over his shoulder to see, in the distance, a spreading glow exactly where the ruin would have been.

The internal shock wave that hit him was staggering. Jina! Before he could process anything else, Yasser wheeled, holding a weapon he must have had hidden beneath his loose clothing, and began firing while he ran to the side. Yasser didn’t have an NVD so he was shooting wildly toward where he thought Levi’s team was, which came close enough. A bullet zinged overhead with an angry whine. Levi rolled, aimed, and stitched a line of shots across Yasser’s torso. The man staggered, shook, went down. He twitched a time or two, then was still.

Not taking anything for granted, both Levi and Trapper took almost simultaneous head shots at Yasser. Careless people got killed by other people who weren’t quite dead yet. Levi wasn’t careless, and Yasser was now completely dead.

Jina.

He did a quick surveillance and saw nothing, urgently surged to his feet. Had Jina been telling them there was an ambush at the ruin, or warning them of Yasser? Maybe both. Already moving, he jerked his NVD up and stared in the direction of the ruin. Even at this distance, the glow had become a noticeable fire, pulsing skyward, bright enough to have blinded him if he’d kept the NVD in place.

The entire team was on their feet, looking back toward the fire.

Another shot, this one from the direction where the informant had been hiding. They hit the ground again. Cursing silently, Levi pulled his NVD back into place. The white flare of muzzle flashes revealed the location of the new attackers; they were running, advancing fast.

The good news was, that drastically affected their accuracy, which in his experience wasn’t great anyway; it was more blast away until they ran out of cartridges. The bad news was that the team was outnumbered by at least two to one.

He began squeezing off shots, carefully placing the rounds for maximum effectiveness, moving after each shot because his muzzle flash revealed his position, too. The rest of the team was returning fire, doing the same thing he was doing, looking for what cover they could find before the attackers overran them. They scrambled, looking for indentions in the terrain, a pile of rocks, anything. He saw Voodoo get hit, go down, get up, and keep moving.

Then some of the attackers began diving for cover, too, proving that they had at least some training. Shit! He was pinned down by these assholes when every cell of his body was being eaten by urgency to get back to Jina. Never before—never—had he had to force himself to concentrate during a firefight.

By his count six attackers are down and unmoving, seven if he counted Yasser. There were nine more, unless a couple had hung back to maybe flank them and come up behind them. He did a swift check of his six—clear—and also checked on Voodoo, who signaled a thumbs-up.

Using hand signals, Levi sent Jelly and Crutch snaking around to the left. He and Boom shifted to the right—not too much, didn’t want to get in the line of fire from Jelly and Crutch. Snake and Trapper, along with Voodoo, held the middle, but Voodoo was a worry despite the thumbs-up because Levi didn’t know how mobile his man was.

“Let’s take care of these fuckers,” he said.

“Report.”

Levi’s voice. Even though her hearing was still muffled she recognized that rough tone, and tears of relief sprang to her eyes. She wiped them on her grimy sleeve, then had to blink away the dust. She thought she’d heard him say something before, but the sound had been garbled.

“Crutch and Voodoo are down.” That was Snake.

Ah, no. No no no. Down didn’t mean dead, but they were a long way from the secondary pickup point, and that wasn’t good.

One by one the team reported, except for Crutch and Voodoo. Then Levi spoke again. “Babe, report in.”

She couldn’t. Automatically she reached for her holster so she could fire a shot to let them know her location—she’d also be alerting the bad guys who might or might not still be at the ruins, but that couldn’t be helped—and her hand slapped an empty holster.

Damn it, damn it! Why had she ever taken it from the holster? She’d felt uneasy, yeah, and with good reason, but she wished she’d ignored that impulse.

“Babe!” His tone was sharp now. “Report in.”

“Shit,” Boom said softly, a few seconds later.

“Trapper and I will go back—”

“No.” Levi cut Jelly off.

“She might be alive—”

“Snake, what are their conditions?” Again Levi’s voice overrode Jelly’s.

“Crutch has an abdominal. Voodoo was hit in the leg and upper right torso. They’re both bad.”

“Find something to make litters. We’re carrying them out of here.” There was both ice and steel in Levi’s tone. “Snake, do what you can to stabilize them. We have to move fast.”

“Ace . . .” That was Boom, his voice shaking a little, then it steadied. “Do what he said, guys, and double-time it.”

“But I’m here,” Jina whispered into the night. “Don’t leave me.”