He waited long enough after the shots, letting the dust clear, letting his emotions come back enough to again feel that hot worry for the kids in the van. The worry got so strong that he could no longer wait through his customary threat analysis.

Logan powered down the steps, his boots slapping the metal, the sniper rifle he’d been holding replaced with a tactical shotgun. He liked how heavy it felt in his hands compared to the rifle. He liked knowing how intimidating even just the rack of it sounded. Two surprise head shots and then a shotgun on a scene everyone ran away from—it should be enough to tell anyone, bystanders and bad guys alike—who was in charge. It was his scene now. His mission. For these next few minutes, it was his everything. Perhaps the greatest few minutes of his life, if he lived through them. If he could one day look into the eyes of the children he was about to rescue. No matter what kind of legal trouble or Jackson trouble it resulted in, looking into their eyes later would be all the reward and justification he’d need.

Outside, the scene had gone eerily quiet save for the cries of the kids. One of them was standing outside the van, tugging on the shirtsleeve of his brother, urging him to leave the van and run. Logan could hear the pleas, hear them crying. He scanned the street, looking down both directions for any newly arriving parties, Jackson or the kidnappers, but he saw nothing.

Back to the van, he ran up, took a deep breath, and tried on that smile he was planning on using to gain their trust. But it didn’t quite work. Instead, he was afraid he’d scare them worse with the strained attempt. He abandoned it and lent them a firm hand, holding it out, palm up and strong, and saying, “Hey, guys, we’ve gotta get out of here. Take my hand, and you two take his hand, and we’ll cross the street just like in school. Okay?”

There was no response except for the little girl, who began crying even louder.

Logan looked to the eldest boy, the one standing outside the van, the one who at least was clear-headed enough to formulate the plan in leaving the van. Logan asked him his name. Chase. “You ready to go home, Chase?”

Chase nodded, open-mouthed. All the planning he’d been doing for his two siblings seemed to have stopped now that Logan had arrived. He could only stare at his rescuer, at a fellow American. Maybe he even thought he looked cool with all his gear on.

“You like guns, Chase? I can show you all my stuff while we wait for the cops to get here. Okay?”

It was perhaps the dumbest thing he’d ever said. Did the boy like guns?

Chase indicated that his interest in guns and action movies and cool army dudes had been greatly diminished after the week’s events. Logan switched to a simpler approach and gave them all a firm voice command to get out of the van and follow him. Follow him now.

He was relieved to see movement in the car, the two kids still inside clambering up and across the bucket seats, hunching on their way to the opened sliding door. Logan was relieved that they’d finally be on the move to safer ground, behind cover in the bird’s nest. He was relieved it would soon all be over.

He could almost taste that margarita . . .

Delicious cocktails made him think about the outside world. And the outside world made him think about the dangers it contained—mainly, backups for the kidnappers. Would they arrive before his own backups?

“Where are we going?” the little girl cried, her head sticking out the door and craning around, her sweet little face squinting in the open sunlight.

The boy behind her said, “Who are you?”

“He’s an American soldier,” the eldest boy said from outside the van. “Right?”

Logan confirmed that he was their American soldier, their rescuer, and likely the last person they’d see carrying a gun for a long while. They were pleased at that.

Until a loud thunk, the sound of a bullet striking the frame of the van. Another shot clunked into the metal near the rear of the van. Someone was shooting from behind, down the street, but Logan had no time to look and find the source. Instead, he pushed the girl back inside the van, turned around, grabbed the eldest boy, and dragged him inside. The eldest, the smartest, knew what to do already and gladly followed his soldier into the vehicle, where the four of them tumbled into a panicked mess of bodies and limbs.

Logan straightened himself out and ordered them out of the other sliding door, spilling out like clowns from a clown car, finding themselves huddled against the van. Near the front, Logan knowing precisely where, behind the safety of the engine block. He made sure the children had the best coverage of it, then he squatted and waddled toward the rear of the van, steadying the shotgun on his knee as he looked out and flinched hard at the sound of another bullet hitting the van. He couldn’t tell where it had struck, but the thud was close and deep and loud enough that he wondered for a second if he’d been hit.

He hadn’t, and neither had the kids—yet.

He looked around the corner again but still couldn’t see where the fire was coming from. Now the voices in his head came back, screaming at him, his father questioning his thinking, Jackson . . . Jackson . . .

“Triple, we’ve got—”

Another round of bullets smashed into the van, shattering the glass from the energy of the impact. The size of the caliber made him wonder if the enemy had been something a little more official than a group of kidnappers and drug runners. It was a cartel they were up against, or so their intel had said, but the way the fire came in, and the size of the rounds made him think almost of what an Apache gunship’s arsenal could do to civilian vehicles . . . what it could to do to human flesh and bone. What it could do to children.

Fuck.

Under fire for the first time since Afghanistan, Logan felt the cool grasp of death upon him. Not only him but on the children huddled behind the engine block of the van, his responsibility. He’d done all this, he’d put them in this situation. Sure, he didn’t get them kidnapped, but he also could have avoided breaking the situation into an all-out firefight. Maybe it would have been different, and better, if he’d waited for his backup . . . but they were on the move. He kept telling himself that so as to hold on to at least some sanity, that they were on the move, and that his shots were necessary. This, no matter how awful it was for everyone at the moment, was necessary.

“I’m taking some serious fire,” Logan yelled into his radio. He glanced again at the children. They were scared but unhurt. “Serious fire incoming from the eastern end of Madero. I think they’re up high.”

Another skull-vibrating, loud thunk.

Logan yelled, “I think they’re . . . military.”

“Hold steady, Logan,” Jackson said, scrapping their mission names and going right to the heart of the matter. Right to that calming place. To the bond they all shared, the trust that no matter what, they’d be bailed out of any situation.

Logan returned the sentiment. “Jack, make sure they’re watching up high. Tell them to watch for high ground.”

Just as his mind—and his gaze—wandered up to the second and third level storefronts along the street, wondering in what building they’d been placing their shots from, Logan heard boot steps coming closer, a soldier’s run approaching the van, and then stopping.

Was this his backup?

Or theirs?

He could fire through the van. He could put the buckshot of his shotgun shell through the car and into whoever was standing on the other side.

Who the hell was it?

The idea was clear, too, that if he could fire through, so could this person fire through to him.

Under any other circumstances, it would be easy to radio Jackson, to radio the command center for an ID. But now that he was mere feet away, and still hiding . . .

He heard a loud voice near the front of the car, near the kids: “Todos quietos!”

A man in a type of green military uniform was holding an M16 and pointing it at Logan, his eyes shifting from him and the kids and back and forth in quick succession. Then he said to Logan, “Drop that gun, hombre. Drop it, motherfucker, do it now!”

Logan did not drop the gun.

Instead he held it tight and felt the barrel of another gun jab into his spine. Then another voice behind him, all Spanish this time, all menacing. It was all over.

The military man up front said, “Do it or the kids get it, too. Come on, do it.”

Logan began to slowly lower his weapon to the ground. He’d fucked up. Badly.

“Just fucking drop it quick, ese!”

Logan dropped it quick, his soul already shriveling up and dying, his vision going black and away. It was over.

Then a heavy weight on his back and his shoulders. A staggering body flailing and falling on top of him from behind. At first, he felt his neck almost snap forward with it. Then the weight slumped off, leaving a warm, wet streak along the back of Logan’s head and neck. He heard the next shot before he opened his eyes to the sight of a body bleeding out on the ground in front of him. And in front of that, beyond the huddled, hysterical children, was another bleeding husk of misguided humanity. The military man with the gun falling to a knee and grabbing his arm. Pain wracked his face. His gun falling to the ground gave Logan time to reach back for his own. He fished and pulled it out from under the first body, taking hold of it and aiming from the hip and taking the shot that finally sprawled his attacker to the ground. The shot that brought quiet back to the simple family vacation nightmare.

A quiet that lasted a half second before the children’s cries, and then the cries of grown adults, of his DARC Ops teammates rushing in to secure the scene. They lifted Logan off the ground and leaned him against the van. Logan took one last look at the children he’d tried saving—the children he had saved—seeing them scared but alive and in the custody of the good guys.

Now, finally, it was over.

After the rush of activity, and long after the moments where he’d have to be poised and smooth and impossibly logical about what he was doing, he could feel his hands begin to very subtly tremble.

The shakes would always come after the action. He was fine with that. Better after than before, or during. Though it almost seemed impossible during, since that was when, for whatever reason, he felt the bravest, surest, and most solid. During, he was invincible; after, he was painfully human.

This time, it was slightly different. The adrenaline would fade, and he’d feel the shakiness of what he’d done, plus the unease of not knowing Jackson’s reaction. He knew, on the outside, it would be all cheers and congratulations from most of the participants. It was a job complete, and a heroic action to get it done. But it was a whole line of disobeyed commands that had gotten them there. Disobeyed commands that had saved the children.

Thank God, the kids were safe. Logan couldn’t imagine how he’d feel if he’d disobeyed commands and failed. Or even worse, if what he did was an active reason why those children wouldn’t be making it back to their parents and back to America.

He felt a slap on his shoulder, someone’s big hand. It was a good shock to get him out of his thoughts. A much better feeling than the metal point of a gun barrel. He could almost still feel that, the M16 in his back before someone a lot farther away took the shot.

Logan turned to see his West Virginian friend, Matthias, the leader of DARC’s SWAT camp. He knew already that it was Matthias who took the shot. Eagle eye from the camp.

“You?” Logan said to him.

Matthias smiled as if he already knew the actual question. There were times, especially right after the heat of battle, when all the men essentially shared the same brain. All of them riding for a while on the same wavelength.

“Great shot,” Logan said.

Matthias, still smiling, nodded this time. Modest Matthias.

Logan said, “I’ve got one question for you.”

“Yeah?”

“How did you know he didn’t have a gun trained on me when you hit him?”

Matthias’s smile turned to a look of relaxed confusion. He said, “I didn’t.”

“Because he did,” Logan said. “He had that rifle right in my back when it hit him.”

Modest Matthias closed his eyes, turned away, and said, “Damn . . .”

“One little hand spasm, and I wouldn’t be here,” Logan said. “But it’s okay, I forgive you.”

“Sorry, Man.”

“Nah, I’m just messing with you.” But that was a lie. Logan really had been a muscle twitch away from death. But why add a little weight to his friend’s conscience? He had, after all, saved his life. Logan just wished Jackson would be similarly generous.

The voice came over his radio again, “Triple Zero Smoke,” the words this time calmer and almost whimsical. A good sign, perhaps.

“Go ahead,” Logan said, instead of the radio clicks he’d used all day. He figured he owed it to Jackson to be as expressive and cooperative as possible. It was the least he could do.

“Thanks for responding,” Jackson said, a hint of snark.

“Thank you,” Logan said.

“I wanted to check in. Are you okay?”

“I’m good.”

“The children?”

“Shaken up, but good. We’re all good here.”

“Do you hear that chopper?”

Logan had no idea what he’d meant at first, until he waited a few seconds for the thudding echo of a distant helicopter. He said, “Yes, I hear it.”

“Normally, I’d give you some time to decompress,” Jackson said. “But I think we need to have a talk.”

Logan swallowed away the little lump in his throat. But it came back. A dry, lumpy tightness. “Yes, sir,” he said, before turning off his radio entirely.