“Kujo, you’re up.” Bear stood at the door to the Black Hawk helicopter waving at him to step forward.

Joseph “Kujo” Kuntz stood, snapped the O-ring onto Six’s harness and moved toward the door. He locked into the cable that would lower him and his dog to the ground into enemy territory.

Their mission: rescue two female soldiers being held by the Taliban in a remote Afghan village. Al Jazeera television had released videos of the women trussed up like animals, their faces bruised and battered, Taliban soldiers pressing rifles to their heads.

During his unit’s briefing, the intel guys had replayed the video, displayed the satellite images of where they’d determined the women were being held and gone over and over the village layout.

Kujo’s gut clenched every time he thought of the captives. He knew what Taliban men did to foreign women. If they didn’t outright kill them, they tortured them until they wished they were dead. The looks in those two women’s eyes were of beaten resolution. They were prepared to die. Perhaps praying for an end to the pain.

The video had the desired effect on the extraction team. They wanted to get in, rescue the hostages and put the hurt on the bastards who’d tortured the American women.

Yeah, he’d be just as determined to free them if they were male soldiers. Kujo didn’t discriminate with his need to help any American in trouble. But he couldn’t push aside an image of his sister or his mother in a similar situation. Those captured women could be someone’s sister or even mother.

Rage roiled in his gut, churning, burning its way through his veins and firing up his adrenaline. He wanted to make those murdering, cowardly Taliban men pay for what they’d done.

Standing at the door of the aircraft, he channeled his rage into tightly strung control. First, his unit had to find the women and then safely get them out. That was his job. His, along with the aid of Six, his sable German Shepherd that had been trained to sniff out explosives.

The information the intelligence guys had received originated from one of their Afghan spies. After verifying the data via satellite, they’d formulated their plan. That’s when Kujo and Six had been called in.

The commander had a bad feeling about the entire operation. The fact the women had been paraded on Al Jazeera led him to believe it was a setup, a potential trap. But they couldn’t leave the women to the machinations of the Taliban. They wouldn’t last much longer. If they were even still alive.

Thus, the quickly formed extraction team of available Delta Force and SEALs who’d performed similar operations over the past six months. The integrated team members had proven their abilities. They trusted every operator to have their backs.

The helicopter slowed and hovered behind the hill blocking the view of the village. They’d fast-rope to the ground and move in on foot.

In Kujo’s case, he and Six would be lowered to the ground by cable. Once they were there, they’d slip into the village, Six taking point to sniff out the danger of IEDs or other types of explosives the enemy might have set out to welcome their insertion.

Kujo briefly rested his hand on Six’s head. The dog nuzzled it, and then waited patiently for their cue to step out.

“Go!” Bear said.

Kujo grabbed Six’s harness, stepped out the door of the aircraft and dangled from the cable as they were quickly lowered to the ground.

Six didn’t whine. He hung in his harness beside Kujo, his gaze fixed on the darkness below.

The dog had been whelped in Germany and spent the first year of his life there. He still responded to many German commands.

When he had been assigned to Kujo for training in the United States at Lackland Air Force Base, Kujo had called him by the last number of the tattoo on his left ear, ß826. The number just happened to coincide with the number of dogs Kujo had worked with in his career with the Army. He’d learned through the loss of the first five animals not to get too attached. They belonged to the Army.

His first dog, Fritz, had been a Belgian Malinois. He’d saved countless lives before he’d stepped on an IED and died in Kujo’s arms. His second and third dogs had been German Shepherds whelped in the United States by a trusted breeder. They’d been retired after they grew skittish over the sounds of explosions.

The fourth, another Malinois, had developed a tumor in her face and had to be euthanized. The fifth, Rambo, had been a very smart black Labrador who’d saved many lives sniffing out IEDs, but he’d been too close to an explosion and lost his hearing. A retired Brigadier General and his wife in Colorado Springs had adopted Rambo and given him a great retirement home.

For five intensive months of training, Kujo had worked with Six, getting him ready to deploy. The animal had responded quickly, learning what he needed to know to help save lives in war-torn countries.

As soon as Kujo’s boots touched ground, he unclipped his harness from the cable, reached for the O-ring, and released Six. The dog knew his mission and took off.

Other members of the team were already on the ground, having rappelled from the aircraft.

The Black Hawk lifted and swung away from them. The pilot would be far enough away to be out of range of RPGs and small arms fire, but the help would be quick to respond should the team radio for extraction.

Six led them over the hill and up to the village, sniffing his way through brush and the rocky terrain. So far, so good.

Perhaps, too good. No resistance, no guards perched on the rooftop.

The hairs on the back of Kujo’s neck rose.

The team’s weapons were fixed with sound suppression. Moving through a village, they relied heavily on stealth. For each mission, they strove to get in and get out, undetected. Their sound-suppressed weapons allowed them to fire a shot in one room of a building without being heard from another.

Kujo carried an HK MP7A1 submachine gun. The lightweight weapon allowed him to be more mobile and deadly, without announcing to the world or the village he was there.

As they approached the village, Kujo and Six moved ahead of the team. In the dead of night when most people slept, nothing moved but the team.

They paused just outside the village in a jumble of large boulders and scanned the buildings using night vision goggles, or NVGs, searching for heat signatures—the shadowy, green silhouettes of enemy soldiers perched on rooftops.

“Cover me,” Kujo said.

“Gotcha,” Bear replied into his headset. “Go.”

Kujo sent Six forward several feet before he followed, hunkering close to the earth, moving swiftly toward the stick and mud wall surrounding the village. As soon as he arrived, he waited, providing cover for the others as they traveled the same path cleared by Six.

Bear knelt at the base of the barrier.

Kujo stepped onto his back and pulled himself up to the top of the wall and scanned the immediate surroundings through his NVGs. When he was certain the area was clear of enemy personnel, he motioned for Six to follow. Six leaped up on Bear’s back and over the wall, dropped to the ground below and went to work.

Kujo slipped to the ground behind him and directed the dog down an alley between buildings toward their target. According to the satellite images in their briefing, the intel folks believed the women were being held in the largest of the mud and brick structures at the back of the village where it hugged the base of a rocky cliff.

At one corner, Six paused and waited for his handler to catch up.

Kujo stopped beside the dog, and sneaked a peek around the corner. Nothing moved. The town was too quiet. His gut tightened. He spotted the target location. “Building in sight.”

“We’ll cover,” Bear said. “When you’re ready, go”

“Roger,” Kujo whispered, careful not to give away his position. To his partner, he gave the signal for the animal to move forward, nose to the ground, quietly sniffing, doing the job he’d been trained to do, search for explosives ahead of the humans.

Kujo could see the green outline of Six as the dog rounded the corner, his nose to the ground.

First into the village, members of the dog handling team had to be on their toes, whether two or four-legged. Their job was to warn the others of potential explosive hazards.

Kujo and Six had graduated top of their class during concentrated training at Joint Base Lackland in San Antonio. They’d received additional Tactical Explosive Detection (TED) training in southern Afghanistan before they’d been attached to the Delta Force unit where Kujo, a trained Delta Force soldier, reconnected with a couple of men he’d served with, Bear and Duke, prior to being trained as a dog handler.

He was glad to be back among men who’d shared some of the most intense missions of their lives. They’d survived because of their attention to detail, dogged preparation and dedication to teamwork, and all of them had come back alive.

Six moved through the narrow walkways between the buildings. Every so often, he would return to Kujo for instruction, and Kujo would send him back out.

They worked their way toward the target, coming to a halt twenty feet short, across the road and at the edge of a squat structure. Six returned to Kujo’s side and sat, staring ahead, his head raised, ears perked high, ready and alert.

Bear moved in behind Kujo and waited for the rest of the small team to catch up.

“Too quiet,” Kujo stated, his voice soft, barely enough to register on a radio. “Be alert.”

Bear nodded, his face grim. He glanced back at the team. “Ready?”

Everyone nodded.

Three men took positions on either side of the alleyway to provide cover.

Kujo gave the signal for Six to search for explosives.

The dog set out in the dark, moonless night, with nothing but starlight to guide him.

Kujo watched, waiting for Six to indicate the presence of explosives.

A trickle of sweat slipped down the side of his neck. The earth retained much of the heat from the oven-baking, one-hundred-twenty-degree temperature of the day. Loaded with weapons, his vest and steel plate, Kujo carried an additional fifty pounds of gear.

A minute later, Six returned, tail wagging, anxious to please.

Kujo patted his head. “Let’s go.”

Kujo, Bear and Duke took the lead, with the others as backup. They approached the building at an angle, running in a low crouch toward the entrance.

Six arrived at the door first and sniffed the ground and doorframe, but he didn’t sit, which would have indicated the presence of explosives.

While Bear and Duke flattened their bodies against the side of the building, Kujo pushed the door. It didn’t move. He pulled a Ka-Bar knife from the scabbard on his side and slid it between the door and the frame, applied a little force and the door opened.

He toed it open and stepped aside. If someone had been on the other side, he wouldn’t have an immediate target.

Kujo signaled to Six. The dog trotted through the entrance.

Figuring Six would have growled or tensed if someone had been inside, Kujo concluded the room was unoccupied and entered behind the dog, keeping low, and shifting quickly out of the doorframe.

Six made a quick survey of the room, nose to the ground, and headed for a hallway.

“Clear,” Kujo whispered into his headset.

Six continued his search, one room at a time.

Bear and Duke followed Kujo down the hallway. The rooms were empty except for discarded cardboard boxes and empty cans and bottles. A wad of blankets was piled in the corner. Kujo nudged the blankets, praying he wouldn’t find the dead bodies of the women beneath. He released the breath he’d been holding when he realized they were only rags.

He moved on, bounding past Duke to check the third room along the hallway, and then moved on to the doorway at the end.

Six was already there, sniffing at the gap beneath the door. He glanced up at Kujo and then sat.

Holy hell. Kujo’s gut clenched.

The dog had identified the scent of explosives. The door wasn’t closed all the way; it hung open a good four inches, and the room beyond was shrouded in darkness.

Kujo glanced back at Bear and Duke as they exited the rooms they’d cleared and waited for further instruction.

“We have a problem,” Kujo said, hoping the others would hear his softly spoken words.

He didn’t have to spell out the problem. Bear and Duke would deduce the issue, seeing Six sitting on his haunches, proud of his find and awaiting his next command.

Without a doubt, some kind of explosive device awaited the team behind that half-opened door. The only question remaining was whether the women were also inside the room.

A noise came from the darkness, sounding like a muffled sob.

Kujo’s initial instinct was to step forward, toward the sound. He reached out, but paused before pushing open the door. If it were wired to the explosives, he would end up killing the women, the dog and himself. Instead, he pulled a shiny piece of metal from his pocket and squatted beside the door. Holding the metal mirror in his hand, he pushed his hand through the opening and angled the mirror so that he could see what was inside.

A small glimmer of light glowed in a far corner. Using the mirror’s reflection, Kujo scanned the room until he found what he was looking for.

His hand froze and a lead weight settled in the pit of his gut. The women were there, and they were alive. But they wouldn’t be for long.

Gagged and bound together, they were also equipped with vests of explosives of the kind suicide bombers wore beneath their robes.

Anger rose in Kujo’s chest. The door wasn’t rigged. The women were.

He slowly pushed the door wider but didn’t enter. Instead, he slid his NVGs up onto his helmet and beamed a tiny flashlight toward the female soldiers.

The women blinked their swollen eyelids open and spotted him. Their eyes rounded, and they started shaking their heads, grunting through the wads of cloth in their mouths.

His gut told him not to enter the room, so he hesitated and motioned for Six to back away from the door. He studied the explosives from a distance, but he couldn’t locate the detonator from where he stood. About the time he considered entering, a blinding flash burst around him and the world exploded.

The half-open door was blasted off its hinges and slammed into Kujo, knocking him off his feet. He landed on his back, his ears ringing, pain knifing through his knee and his head, his chest feeling as though a weight pressed down on his ribs. The air quickly filled with dust. If he could have breathed, he was sure he’d have choked.

Before he completely lost consciousness, he felt something sharp dig into his arm, and then he was being dragged across rubble. Before he could glance sideways at his rescuer, darkness closed in, burying him in a bottomless abyss.