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  Sure enough, rumbling and roaring down the tank track was a Marine HMMWV—High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee—that seemed intent on leaving sergeant and corporal jelly beneath their ten-foot-ten-inch wheelbase.

  Even though his mental fog, Key could tell that whoever was driving was fully committed to get the hell out of there. The now opaque windshield looked like crimson stained glass, and the doors looked as if they had been pounded by Satan’s fists. The big tan Humvee roared by them as Daniels’ eyes bulged—first at the retreating vehicle, then at his strangely apathetic friend.

  “Fuck,” Daniels started as he let his M240 drop, it’s strap making it swing behind him. “A,” he continued as he grabbed the M32 Multi-shot Grenade Launcher that hung from his other shoulder. “Duck!” he boomed as he aimed it at the back of the diminishing lorry.

  Key just stood there, feeling strangely calm amidst the storm. Then, as if his eyes were cameras, they suddenly zoomed in for a close-up on the rear of the Humvee. Strapped to the back of the payload bed was a large rectangular box he didn’t recognize.

  That’s weird, he thought. We didn’t leave base with that.

  “Daniels,” he suddenly yelled. “No!”

  But it was too late. The sarge had decided that either the enemy had captured the vehicle or some chicken-shit coward was running. Either way they deserved a forty by fifty-one millimeter extended range low pressure high explosive.

  Key was jumping onto Daniels as the shell made a grey line toward the back of the barreling Humvee. It hit its target just as Key hit Daniels. The reaction between the two, however, could not have been more different.

  The corporal bounced off the sergeant, who had been described more than once, by more than one person—including soldiers too young to know what the expression even meant—as a brick shithouse. The fact that he could carry both a M240 and a M32 at the same time as if they were a messenger bag and a purse gave testament to his size and strength.

  The grenade, however, did not bounce. It detonated with a cracking bang, followed, as Key feared, with a ground-shaking, Humvee-bouncing, air-quaking ba-boom. The back of the HMMWV was filled with boxed enemy ammo.

  Key slammed to the ground just as a sizzling shockwave of heat, dust, sand, and shrapnel swept over him like a scythe. The force was so strong, he didn’t even bounce. Instead he was buffeted, shook, and even skidded a little. But this time he was sure he didn’t lose consciousness. Which was strange, because a cloud the color of bones settled over him, along with a perplexing sensation of peace.

  That’s it, he managed to think. I’m dead.

  The certainty of his demise made it easy for him. If he was dead, the concussion wouldn’t matter, nor would anything else. So, he just sat up, rolled to his side, and rose to his feet. He stood there for a few seconds, trying to see or hear anything. Anything: screams, gunfire, Daniels’s profanity. But there was nothing. Nothing but the uncanny off-white cloud that seemed to envelope him.

  So Key started walking. He thought the mist would soon dissipate, but it didn’t. So he just kept moving. He didn’t know for how long or in what direction. As long as he was covered in fog he kept moving.

  Come on, come on, he thought. Heaven or hell, make a decision.

  He only paused for a second when he realized that maybe they already had. Maybe this was purgatory. Maybe he was doomed to walk in this for God-knows-how-long.

  Key chuckled at the truth of that. Yeah, only God knew how long. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken Your name in vain so often….

  As if in response, the mist finally began to clear. Key stopped dead in his tracks as the smoke retreated—like he was a circular fan. All around him a devastated village began to appear. The whole place looked like a giant lawn mover had been dropped on it. The dwellings didn’t look so much detonated as shredded. The foliage didn’t look so much cracked or broken as frayed.

  Then something else started coming into view. At first Key didn’t even recognize them as corpses. The pungent smell—it could’ve been anything dead. He’d smelled carcasses before, in the mountains of Southern California where he grew up. It wasn’t until he realized that the hair, fingernails, and toenails were human in origin that he acknowledged them as more than elaborately slaughtered animals.

  The hands and feet of the corpses weren’t just sliced open, they seemed inflated until they burst. In fact, all the limbs of the corpses were like that—even the heads. Popped balloons. Balloons popped from the inside, by shattering nails. What sort of weapon did this? What sort of weapon could do this?

  Key walked slowly around, forcing himself to stare at the devastated bodies—trying to recognize something, anything, about them. Their hair was colored the same dark black by their staggeringly violent deaths, so that was little help. Only the length gave hint of male or female—but not in any convincingly effective manner.

  But their remaining, tattered, blood-and-gut-stained clothing held the only real clues. Key could distinguish villager from soldier, but just barely. He dreaded seeing insignia or ID patches, but he looked intently for them just the same.

  A young woman’s face flashed in his mind’s eye. He wasn’t proud that he put his hope that Terri Nichols was alive above the rest, but he had felt protective from the moment she joined their squad. She was also from Michigan, like him, and was the youngest, the nicest, and, yes, the prettiest member of the unit. Also the toughest, strongest, smartest girl he had ever met. He was proud to work alongside her, and he wasn’t going to blame himself for feeling that way, or for feeling glad that he could find no evidence of her among the corpses.

  Then he heard it. And felt it. A foot fall.

  Josiah Key looked up, straining to see into the remaining mist, which encircled the ruined village like a net. As he stared, a silhouette began to outline itself in the steamy shroud. He suddenly felt his M249 SAW tight in his hands, but he did not shift his stare a centimeter. He waited until a figure began to emerge from the cloud like a drowning victim surfacing from the sea.

  He was not a US soldier. He wore a darkly dyed thawb, the traditional long-sleeved, ankle-length garment, only with fatigue pants and army boots. He also wore a turban, but with a gauzy scarf that rippled in the breeze like a flag. But it was not a flag of surrender. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Key would have recognized him even if he was wrapped like a mummy. He had seen his face enough, on screen, on paper, on walls, on desks, and even on flesh in the form of a tattoo. It was Usa Awar, one of the enemy’s most wanted terrorists and killers.

  He stood twenty feet away from Key, staring back at him with indifference. No, it was more than that. He stared at Key the way a serial killer stares at a victim: not as an animal, but the way a human stares at an animal it is about to kill. As something only worthy of slaughtering.

  And he held in his right hand, blood pouring out its neck to spread on the village ground, the decapitated head of Private Terri Nichols.

  Key screamed in regret and rage, his forefinger clamping on the trigger of the M249 until its thirty forty-five caliber shells obliterated Awar from his sight. Even then he didn’t stop. He instantly replaced the empty weapon with his M9 Beretta sidearm, emptying its fifteen nine millimeter rounds into the same smug face.

  It wasn’t until a distant beeping distracted him that he finally stopped. He looked down to see a red light flashing inside his pants pocket. The beeping was coming from there.

  Like an automaton, Key reached into his pocket to find his personal smartphone flashing and beeping—something he never equipped it to do. He raised it to his numb face to see a small box on the device’s screen. The box read: “Military Override. Urgent Incoming Message.”

  Like so many in the cellphone age, Key’s thumb automatically, seemingly involuntarily, responded.

  The message appeared, and repeated, again and again. “C5, C5, C5, C5, C5…�
�

  The cleaning had been upgraded. It was now “With Extreme Prejudice.”

  Josiah Key looked up to see that Awar was gone. There was no sign of Nichols’s skull, or any other part of her.

  Chapter 2

  “You should have seen him,” Usa Awar said quietly, even gently, to Private Terri Nichols.

  They were in a cave, illuminated by oil lamps and candles, so a glimmering yellow sheen dappled over everything, making her flesh seem to glow. Awar was kneeling before the chair Nichols was tied to. The chair was obviously homemade, from coarse but demonically strong, heavy wood. The rope was also strong and coarse, as well as coiled and thin.

  “Obviously in shock, his eyes vacant and unreasoning….”

  Her ankles were bent back on either side of her, and lashed to the back slats of the chair seat. The chair did not have arms, but did not require them. Her arms were bent back and slung there by her wrists, which were also noosed around her neck, so if she let them hang naturally, she would strangle herself.

  “I was carrying your helmet,” Awar said. “You know, the one with your name on it? ‘Nichols, T.’”

  “He acted as if I was carrying your severed head,” Awar continued mildly. “He stared, eyes huge, then started firing wildly.” The captor shrugged smugly. “The shooting was easy to evade, as all your attacks are. Apparently I had hit a nerve….”

  With that, he diffidently swiped her left breast with the back of his fore and middle fingers. Her nipples were covered by squares of duct tape that he had scraped in the dirt before affixing. Otherwise she was naked, her uniform in a puddle beside her. Nichols cringed, her expression souring.

  “Apparently I have hit a nerve of yours as well.” Awar smiled. “Please understand that will not be the first or only one I will hit if you do not talk.”

  Nichols would have loved saying all sorts of things at that moment—how many others have you captured, how many others have you tortured, how many others have you killed—but he had taken that choice from her as well. Her lower face was sealed with swath after swath of duct tape. Behind it, inside her mouth, was a small light bulb. If she bit down, or they slapped her, it would shatter, leaving shards behind. If her tongue or jaw moved, they would cut, filling her mouth with blood until she drowned. If she swallowed, even involuntarily, slivers would pass through her entire system, slicing as they went, leaving her to die in continuous, seemingly endless, agony.

  It was the most effective gag she could have imagined—if she had ever bothered to imagine such things. But, astonishingly, it also gave her hope. It might mean that there were rescuers nearby her captors didn’t want to hear her.

  Even as she thought that, they both heard a sound. They both looked over to see one of Awar’s shrouded men in the cavern opening. His obscured face was another thing that gave Nichols hope. The fact that they did not want the underling recognized announced the chance she might be asked to describe him some day.

  The man said something in Arabic, which Awar reacted to with barely concealed concern. He thought for a moment, looking away from his prisoner, then nodded slightly before standing. He looked down at Nichols with an expression that mixed certainty and mercilessness.

  “When I return, you will tell me what I want to know. I leave you to consider the means we will use.”

  Then he grabbed her uniform and left, along with his underling, leaving her alone in the small cavern. If Awar expected her to sob, quake, or despair, he had captured the wrong soldier. As her family had constantly told her, she could have been anything: a ballerina, a gymnast, a nurse, a cheerleader. She chose to be a marine, and had worked damn hard to attain it, dealing with obstacles at every turn. Obstacles like Morty Daniels, who made leeringly clear that she had no business serving in combat units. She still wasn’t sure what she liked least, Sergeant Daniels continually ignoring her, or his bromance buddy, Corporal Key, continually looking out for her.

  At least Key was yet another hope to cling to. He had come looking for her. That meant he wasn’t dead or captured, like so many others. If he had come looking, he’d still be looking, and others would to.

  Nichols forced her eyes to stay dry. She forced her mouth to stay open. But she couldn’t avoid her hands turning into tight fists as the memory of what had happened threatened to engulf her again.

  The emergency orders had been clear: clean a village. That meant make sure that the first and second battalions would not be surprised by the sudden appearance of insurgents who might be occupying the town. No problem; they had trained for this. Marine transport had brought them close, then the drone crew took over. The images that came back were both reassuring and disturbing.

  The town was already “clean,” in that not a creature was stirring. In fact, the village of Shabhut looked like it had hit by tanks running side-by-side. It was not only seemingly uninhabited, it was flattened. The lieutenant had ordered them in anyway to make certain, and her unit responded with their usual skill and proficiency—until an ambush was sprung on them midway through town.

  It was the worst firefight she had ever experienced. Suddenly her comrades had started twitching as if being shot by needles, and, once they hit the ground, started writhing as if the dirt was electrified. She had taken a step, crouching to aid them, then the blasts started.

  They were blinding, deafening, and seemingly everywhere. She had staggered away, bringing her M4 Carbine to bear, but there was nothing to shoot. Every target was already contorting, even bursting, before her eyes—her vision already being obscured by a chaotic assault of smoke, dust, and blood.

  She spun to find cover, then something hard and heavy hit the back of her skull. When she awoke she was in a cage in this network of caves. Some cowled underlings had taken her to this small cavern, stripped her, then gagged and bound her to the chair. Then Awar had appeared and the “interrogation” had begun.

  The memories were just a flash in her brain as she looked in every direction. When she found herself a prisoner, she immediately acted as dumb and numb, while tightening her muscles as subtly, as possible. She wanted them to think she was just a little, terrified, girl. She didn’t want them to know what she was capable of.

  Sure enough, the underlings judged her book by its cover. As she relaxed her wrist muscles, she felt a little give in the cords. When they wrenched her ankles and arms up, she let her tightened muscles give the impression that this was as high as they could go. Nichols inwardly scoffed.

  Yeah, she could have been a gymnast, remember?

  When she saw there was another exit opposite where Awar had gone, she worked quickly and efficiently. Her fingers and palm curled into the shape of an empanada at the same second her arms rose up her back into a yoga reverse prayer position. Her arms were free of the choking sling within moments. Despite their numbness, they fell silently upon her ankles on either side of the seat, already scratching at the knots. Her bare feet hit the dirt seconds after that.

  Only then did her fingers find the edges of the duct tape on her chest and face. Her Marine training co-eds use to have contests to see how long they could keep uncooked eggs, among other things, intact in their mouths. Political correctness and equality be damned, being female was far from a detriment if you knew how to work it. She was standing, holding the sodden light bulb by its screw-base in front of her, within a minute.

  Nichols was not embarrassed or ashamed by her nudity, so she moved silently away from Awar’s exit and hazarded a quick look out. The cavern continued down a winding tunnel, illuminated by strung bulbs—much like the one they had put in her mouth—hanging on nails hammered into the rock walls. Incredibly, from this exit to a turn in the cavern, it was empty, with no sounds giving hint of a meeting or eating area beyond.

  What, didn’t they have LED lights in this godforsaken sandpit? At least if they tried to catch her again, she could do with them, to them, what they wanted to do to
her mouth and intestines. If it came to that, she had to admit it would feel great to tear open their flesh that way.

  But, as Key had repeatedly told her, first things first. Nichols moved into the low, narrow, rock hallway, intent on being ready for anything. Anything, except for what happened.

  Once she had reached the curve in the stone hall, she heard a grinding sound behind her. She whirled to see the opening she had left from being filled by a huge, circular slab—which she had seen, but thought was part of the cavern wall. Apparently, as soon as she left, Awar’s people had snuck in and quietly pushed it into position so she was cut off.

  What the fuck? Do they want to…

  Nichols stopped her recoiling brain. Trying to decide whether they were going to gas, drown, starve, or simply imprison her somewhere else was a waste of time. The lights were still on, and she had yet to turn the corner of the cavern. There was only one thing for sure; they didn’t want her to go back, and she was damned if she was going to just stand there.

  Nichols started to step forward when a glint in the corner of the cave top caught her eye.

  Yeah. They might not have LED lights strung along here, but they definitely had recessed camera lenses stuck deep into the rock.

  The whole thing was some sort of insane set-up. But no matter how she racked her prodigious brain, she couldn’t figure out why. If they wanted her to go down this hall, why not just throw, or drag, her? And why the hell did they strip her?

  Nichols looked at the dim glow at the curve of the cave, feeling something she hadn’t felt since joining the Marines, even since waking up in this cave.

  Dread.

  Even so, she looked up at the camera lens with defiance. “Okay, sicko,” she said. “You want a show? You’ll get a show.”