Bravo scattered, shouting through dust, “CONTACT! CONTACT! RPG FROM THE NORTH RIDGE!”
Gunfire tore through the haze. Paulsen’s team returned fire in tight, controlled bursts, trying to find the shooters through the choking dust.
Ford scrambled toward him. “You good? DANTE!”
Dante pressed up to his knees and shoved him back. “GO! MOVE! GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE!”
The dust thinned for half a second, long enough to reveal silhouettes pouring down the ravine walls. At least thirty men were coming for the device. And Dante had given Ford room to run.
“BRAVO! FALL BACK TO SECONDARY!” Paulsen roared. “FORD, GO!”
Ford hesitated. Dante shoved him again, harder, freeing his first foot. “GO!” Then he freed his second foot.
He turned and fired, taking out the first militia fighter leaping off the rock. Another. A third.
But too many came. Gunfire echoed off stone, overwhelming and close.
Paulsen grabbed Ford, yanking him toward the exfil trail as Bravo laid down suppressive fire, dragging the nuke toward safety. But Dante was cut off by the collapsing pass. The blast had narrowed the gap behind him.
He was alone on the wrong side of the choke point.
He pivoted, firing until the slide locked back empty. Hands grabbed him. Two, then four, then six. He fought like a man trying to break the world in half. He broke one nose, dislocated another’s shoulder and split another’s lip with his forehead.
But they overwhelmed him. Knees, elbows, and rifle stocks struck him. His cheek smashed into stone, his arms were twisted behind him, and rope bit into his wrists.
The dust parted just enough to reveal a figure climbing down from the ridge, moving with infuriating calm. Krueger.
He wiped a smear of blood from his cheek, looking Dante over with a cruel, amused eye. “Well,” he stepped closer, “look who finally made it to my desert.”
When Dante spit blood at his boots, Krueger smiled. “You really should have stayed with the girl.”
WAR ROOM
The red-alert Klaxon pulsed low through the room, the kind of alarm that only sounded when everything had gone to hell.
Analysts were already scrambling to their stations when Ian Chase stepped in. “Put it on the main screen.”
The satellite feed bloomed across the wall: northern Niger, the jagged cut of the Massif Pass overlaid in Bravo Team’s emergency telemetry.
Martin Bailey strode in behind him, jacket unbuttoned, urgency in every line of his posture. “What do we have?”
An analyst swallowed. “Bravo’s forward element triggered an emergency signal. Code is… Omega-One-Two.”
Martin stopped cold. “That’s a capture code.”
Silence rolled across the room.
A second later, Mike Johnson entered, summoned by the alert. “What happened? Is it Shannon?”
Ian turned fast. “No.” His next words hit like a strike. “It’s Dante.”
Mike went absolutely still.
An analyst chimed in, voice tight, “Bravo reports the convoy was hit by an RPG during the extraction. They secured a nuclear device, but Dante was separated by the blast.”
Martin added, “Militia fighters overran the pass. They saw him taken alive.”
Mike braced himself on the table, knuckles whitening. “And the militia…?”
