Prologue
“Hey Able, look at this!”
Hunter Callahan, also known as Able, looked across the tent to where his best friend, Mark “Stack” Hansen, held up his tablet, which was playing a video of a small blond boy: Stack’s two-year-old son, Jake. Jake was throwing a ball to someone out of frame, laughing and squealing with delight as he caught the ball when it was tossed back to him.
“You’ve obviously got a starting pitcher on your hands,” Hunter said, giving a snort of laughter at the proud expression on Stack’s face. Stack had married late, believing no woman would be willing to take on a rough mercenary who blew things up for a living, but he’d been wrong. Jennifer Hansen was fifteen years younger than Stack, a tiny brunette who had fallen hard for the big, burly merc, and Hunter had been best man at their wedding three years before, then stood as godfather a year later when Jake was born. He was happy for Stack, but he was envious as well. Not that Hunter was looking for a wife and kids; no, he was hoping for the right man to come along.
“You just wait. My kid is going to take the world by storm someday,” Stack said. “With my looks and Jen’s smarts, he can’t help but be a winner.”
“Of course he is. He’s my godkid, after all,” Hunter said, returning his attention to his book as Stack lowered the tablet and continued to watch the video.
Hunter knew Stack cherished the videos Jen sent him, which were the only real contact Stack had had with his family for the last six months. But Stack had been with Lawson and Greer, the private military contractor they both worked for, for almost twenty years now, and he was set to muster out and collect a pension in less than four months. If he managed things carefully, Stack could be a stay-at-home dad and be there for Jake all the time, making up for his absences during Jake’s first two years.
“Able! Stack! We have a situation out here!”
The deep voice of Blaze, their unit commander, sounded from outside. His tone was urgent, and Hunter tossed his tablet aside before crossing the tent in three long strides and slipping out between the flaps, with Stack hot on his heels.
“Where’s the fire?” he asked, seeing Blaze a few feet away with his back to them.
Blaze didn’t turn around, but he gave the hand gesture for them to approach slowly. As Hunter stepped forward, he saw Joker, their second-in-command, standing off to one side and speaking into a walkie, his face betraying his tension. Around them, men emerged from other tents in the billeting area, and Joker waved them away, indicating they should get the hell out of the area fast. As his cadre moved away, Hunter drew abreast of Blaze and saw the reason why.
The kid couldn’t have been any more than seven or eight years old, and he was barefoot and dressed in ragged clothing. His face was smudged with dirt, but there were clean streaks down his cheeks from his tears, and as Hunter stepped closer, it wasn’t hard to see why the kid was crying. If someone had strapped a bunch of bricks of C4 aroundhisbody, Hunter would be pretty fucking upset too.
“Ah, shit.” Stack stepped up beside him, the anger in his voice echoing Hunter’s feelings. “Goddamnthese bastards! What sort of monster does that to a kid?”
“Let’s leave the philosophical debate on the table for the moment,” Blaze snapped. “Why don’t you tell me what the fuck we’re going to do about this?”
Hunter had dealt with suicide bombers, or at least with the aftermath once the snipers got through with them. If their vests didn’t have a dead man switch, Hunter and Stack were called in to disarm the unexploded ordinance. One had never gotten past the sentries and into camp before — but then, none of them had ever been a kid either.
“'Ana la 'urid 'an 'amut!” The kid startled them all by calling out, and Hunter translated the Arabic in his head.I don’t want to die!
“Smart kid,” Blaze said. He looked at Hunter and Stack. “Can you two handle this?”
“I guess we have to, don’t we?” Stack said, his brown eyes dark with anger.
“We have this,” Hunter agreed. “Go on, boss man. Get everyone, including yourself, out of here.” He looked at the kid and spoke rapidly in the same dialect the child had used. “We will help you, but you have to stay very still. Can you do that?”
The kid nodded, and Hunter looked at Stack. “Go get our tool bags. I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Right.” Stack took off, and Hunter stepped closer to the little boy.
“I need you to answer some questions, so I can be sure we’ll get this off without hurting you,” he said. He kept his voice calm as he asked about what the boy remembered what the men who had wired him up said as they put the vest on him. By the time Stack came back with their tools and an anti-ballistic box, wearing his disposal suit and carrying Hunter’s, Hunter had gotten all the information out of the kid he could.
“They told him to keep his thumb on the trigger until he got to the middle of the camp,” he relayed as he got into his suit. “It looks like two connections, one under each arm. The boy doesn’t remember them saying anything about failsafes, but be careful.”
“Got it,” Stack said, his voice echoing hollowly within his helmet.
Hunter finished donning everything but his own helmet and turned to the boy. “Don’t be scared. These suits are just for protection, okay? Like spacemen.”
The kid nodded jerkily, and Hunter could see he was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Hey, don’t worry! Breathe slow and deep, right. In… out… in… out…”
Stack was already on his knees next to the boy, and once Hunter was sure the kid wasn’t going to pass out, he moved to the other side. He wondered about the wisdom of taking the trigger from the kid, but it was a big risk. If they fumbled the transfer, it would be all over — even their state-of-the-art bomb suits wouldn’t protect them from that much C4 going off in their faces.
They’d done this before, but on corpses, not a living person, and that made it a hell of a lot more dangerous. Hunter was already sweating inside his suit, and he knew they didn’t have long to work before heat fatigue started to take its toll.
“Looks like basic stuff,” Stack said, tracing the wiring path through the cloth of the “vest.” It was no more than rough-cut fabric with pockets to hold the C4 and the shrapnel it would hurl in the detonation, acting like a massive shotgun blast going off in all directions. The wires sticking out revealed the job had been done quickly and sloppily — but that didn’t mean it was any less deadly.
They started by removing as much as they could of the mess of ball-bearings, screws, and small pieces of metal scrap that made up the shrapnel, then started on the vest itself. After a moment, Stack held up his hand.
