“Taylor!” The sound of his name barked across the open expanse of boiling hot air brought him to a wide-awake and ready position. He jumped to his feet.

“Sir?”

His platoon leader was headed his way with a look that would have withered most men on the spot. Owen smiled and saluted. The man glared and brought him to parade rest. “Something tells me I already know the answer, but do you know anything about this?” He shoved a computer tablet at Owen’s face.

He took it and read the Al Jazeera report about a night raid on an enclave of supposed terrorists, complete with a computer lab that had been obliterated, along with ten men who’d been holed up there. He handed it back over, keeping his face blank.

“No, sir.”

The other man raised a dark eyebrow. His bald head shimmered with sweat as he tucked the tablet under one arm. “You know, I had my doubts about you, Taylor.”

“Sir,” Owen said, standing completely still, his hands clasped behind his back. The picture-perfect, order-taking Marine.

“And I still do. But I’ll be damned if you didn’t find that place on your own, using that computer of yours.”

“Yes, sir.” Owen kept his gaze steady, fixed at a spot just over his platoon leader’s shoulder.

“But you went rogue. And I just got a second asshole chewed to match my existing one, thanks to that and to you.” The man wiped his bald pate with the towel around his neck. “You have to stop this. Channels exist for a fucking reason. We’re the goddamned good guys in his hellhole, Taylor. You could have killed friendlies.”

“But we didn’t. Sir,” he added when the man shot him another of his patented, withering glares.

“No, not this time. Or the four times before this. But by all that’s fuckable in the universe, Taylor, you are not a goddamned Green Beret, or a SEAL, or some kind of whacked out special-ops secret agent. You’re a goddamned grunt. You’re my grunt, got me? And all this showboating, risk-taking bullshit stops now.” He held a dark finger close to Owen’s nose. Owen didn’t even blink.

“Sir, yes sir.” He snapped another salute. The picture-perfect Marine.

The man sighed, saluted, and stomped away. Owen waited until he was out of sight then turned and shot two thumbs-up to the men around him. They all raised their water bottles in silent salute. Before he could sit, some boot scurried up to him, his eyes wide and shocked looking.

“What?” Owen said, easing into the seat. He’d pulled his hamstring and sustained pretty serious burns at that last firefight. But his reputation was preceding him lately, so the nurse had soothed the burns then eased him even more with a quickie before she shooed him out the back door of the hospital tent the night before.

“Sir, I was told to give you this.” He handed over a ratty piece of notebook paper, saluted, and scurried away. Owen studied it, crumpled it in his fist, and raised three fingers, then five to the men behind him, indicating he’d need five of them at three in the morning. They’d gather at the usual place. He didn’t look at the men to confirm they’d gotten his message. He simply assumed they had.

He dropped onto one of the hammocks strung between two steel poles and forced himself to sleep. He was going to need it.

* * *

They gathered at the usual spot behind the line of shit-stinking latrines at three a.m. sharp. Owen eyed the men, gave the SITREP in thirty seconds, and assigned positions. All his hours spent on the computer were paying off nicely, he acknowledged as they donned their purloined night vision goggles and set off into the desert. He’d forced himself to get close to the IT geeks for a solid year post-Paul’s memorial service, and he’d picked up how to use their various hacker tricks within months. That, along with the computer tricks he already knew had allowed him to gain access to some top level intel.

He had a couple of the IT guys and one gal—a real tiger in the sack as a side bonus—feeding him what he needed now that he’d garnered his rep as the guy afraid of nothing when it came to extracting his particular form of hellhole justice.

He kept a Jeep parked with a full tank hidden, thanks to a grunt in the transport pool who was in his inner circle. They pushed the thing for a solid mile and then hopped in so Owen could pop the clutch and head toward this week’s nest of soon-to-be-dead terrorists.

As usual, the small cluster of raggedy tents was badly illuminated. But he could make out the main tent—the one his intel had indicated was home to some super badass leader. Owen had every intention of sending said badass leader straight back to Allah this fine, early morning in the desert. He signaled that the men should begin advancing in formation. As they made their quick, silent way past the outer ring of tents, he registered random snores, farts, and a few groans along the way. This gave him a moment’s pause, reminding him that these were, indeed, simply men, such as himself. Men who’d been handed a gun, trained how to use it, and then pointed at the enemy. Nothing more or less.

Owen squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to picture the pink mist that had once been his friend Paul, some of which had landed on his face like a warm, wet powder as he stood frozen and horrified. Then he made himself recall Rosie breaking down at her husband’s memorial service. And the sound of Paul’s baby son crying in the background. He shouldered his weapon and gave the signals for his men to surround the largest tent.

A different sound floated out from it. Not snores or farts, but loud grunts and a distinct, unmistakable slap-slapping sound of flesh on flesh. Owen grinned and put his finger on the trigger. He was gonna blow this shithead’s brains out while he was fucking some poor, likely unwilling girl. Even better.

He lowered the weapon then, acknowledging his vow to keep as many innocents safe as he could. In the five seconds between lowering his gun and deciding she could meet Allah too—she’d be better off since these fuckers treated women like dog shit scraped off their sandals anyway—he heard a noise behind him.

“Taylor,” someone whispered.

“Look out!” someone else yelled.

Owen whipped around, already shooting. He took out two men directly behind him as more of them ran into the big tent and started dragging out an old dude with a long gray beard. The girl he’d been fucking screamed until someone’s abrupt blat of gunfire ended that.

Owen ducked behind another tent. His pulse raced, but his breathing was calm and steady. The guttural languages flew all around him as he focused on the four guys with the big bad asshole between them, scurrying into the darkness.

He followed them, grinning as his own men took on the various so-called guards behind him. He ran from tent to tent, keeping the group in his sights but not close enough to give himself away. When they reached the edge of the outer circle of tents, Owen cursed, noting the rusty van idling on the dirt road.

Now or never, Taylor. One less little-girl-raping-shithead-terrorist in the world. One more kill for Paul.

He rose quickly and aimed, getting off two quick blasts of auto fire and taking down a couple of the guards before the other two threw the old dude into the van and climbed in behind him.

“Oh no, you do not,” he yelled, breaking into a run, his gun at his shoulder. As he shot out the van’s tires, then aimed for its gas tank, his left foot sank deeper in the sand than his right. He looked down, and his brain dredged up some long-ago-learned factoid before he attempted to jump as far away as he could manage before the IED detonated.

In the space of a nanosecond, agony filled every one of his senses. It was a full-body pain like he’d never experienced before focused in his left leg, which he figured must be on fire.

Well, at least that means I’m not pink mist, he thought before he passed out.