"On me," Goose ordered. He tracked the vehicle with the M-4A1.

Twenty yards in front of the Rangers' position, the Subaru's front wheels hit the portable spike barrier concealed under the sand. The tires blew as the spikes shredded the rubber. Before the driver could hope to regain control over his vehicle, the rear tires hit the spikes and went to pieces as well.

"Go!" Goose commanded, pushing himself up and racing down the hill. Sand, gravel, and rock tore loose under his combat boots, throwing up dust. He skidded twice, dragging a knee both times to stay upright while he cradled the M-4A1 in his arms. Bill pounded along behind him.

The station wagon driver tried to keep going, but the tire rims sank into the soft sand and chewed through the hard-packed earth. In less than five feet, the station wagon had mired up to its chassis. The engine roared as the driver tried to use the four-wheel drive to fight free of the earth. The churning rims threw rooster tails of sand and rock behind the vehicle, then reversed and threw them forward.

Skidding down the hill, Goose closed on the vehicle. He watched the movement in the station wagon, tracking his unit as well as the targets. Years of combat training, discipline, and action in several deployments stood him in good stead. He kept his finger on the trigger guard. Until he knew he was going to have to shoot and he had a confirmed target, he never touched the trigger.

Dust filled the air around the station wagon, obscuring his vision. The man getting out of the passenger side looked blurred, but there was no mistaking the Uzi submachine gun clenched in his fists.

"Weapon!" Goose yelled, throwing himself forward and down. He brought the M-4A1 up and slid his finger into the trigger guard, squeezing the trigger three times. The butt stock shoved against his shoulder with each shot.

Hit by the rounds, the terrorist fell backward. The passenger window erupted in a spray of glittering shards.

Even as the terrorist fell to the ground, Goose spotted the station wagon's driver lifting a semi-automatic pistol in his fist and pointing the weapon at the CIA spy. Goose tracked the man but couldn't fire because one of the Rangers was in his field of fire.

Then the driver's head snapped back.

For Goose, time seemed to slow down. His senses whirling, his mind driven to adrenaline-charged razor awareness, Goose noted the starred hole that had formed on the windshield, then heard the heavier 7.62mm report of Tanaka's M-24 sniper rifle roll into the gap around the road.

As he died, the driver fired a pistol round that punctured the station wagon's roof and the jerry can on top. The jerry can exploded in a seething mass of hungry orange and yellow flames that spread across the top of the vehicle. The second can, already propelled by the first can's explosion, detonated in midair. A sheet of flames arced over two of the Rangers standing ahead of the vehicle to the left. Both soldiers hit the ground and rolled to extinguish the flames that clung to their fatigues and helmets.

The heat wave generated by the blast hammered Goose. Through tearing eyes, he stared through the pool of flames that clung to the station wagon. Flames poured down over the vehicle's side and formed fiery puddles on the ground.

The third terrorist was fumbling for the door.

The battered CIA agent screamed, "Kill him! Kill him!"

Managing to hit the door release, the terrorist vaulted from the Subaru and ran. He pulled a sat-phone from his pocket even as he brandished a 9mm pistol in his other hand. The man hit the dirt and crawled for cover.

"Kill him!" the CIA agent yelled from inside the burning car.

Goose transferred his M-4A1 to his right arm and pushed himself up. The car blocked his line of fire. He ran toward the station wagon. The windshield, covered in flames, imploded and blew back over the body of the dead driver. Fire rushed into the vehicle's interior.

Ducking to avoid the tongue of flame that spat from the open passenger door, Goose reached into the burning car and hooked a hand inside the agent's elbow. He yanked the man from the vehicle, nearly sending both of them sprawling before getting his feet under him.

Bill rushed in and grabbed the agent's other arm. They had to drag him back from the burning Subaru because his feet were taped together.

"You've got to get that guy!" the agent yelled hoarsely. Fresh blood trickled from his split lips and broken nose. Bruises showed all across his face.

"Our mission is to get you out of here alive. That's our first priority." Something else in the car blew, sending waves of blistering heat over them. Goose quit talking and helped Bill drag the guy farther from the flames.

"Take it easy," Goose said. He stood, cradling the M-4A1 and looking for the terrorist.

Bill flipped a combat knife from his LCE and slid the sharp blade through the duct tape securing the man's ankles and wrists.

The agent reached for the tape covering his eyes but couldn't manage to pull the strips from his face. The binding at his wrists had been tight enough to cut off his circulation, and his hands probably remained numb. Goose knew that when the man started to get the feeling back he was going to be in a world of hurt.

The terrorist was out of sight, invisible in the cloud of black smoke spewing from the burning station wagon.

"Don't you understand me?" the agent bellowed. He tried a couple different languages while Bill pulled at the duct tape over his eyes.

"We understand you," Goose replied. "We're U.S. Army Rangers. With the 75th out of Fort Benning. Our mission is to get you out safe. Why do we have to kill him? Give me a good reason to risk my men to do it, now that we've done what we came here to do." As a soldier, Goose had killed, but always to protect himself or others. He had never killed indiscriminately or allowed any man under his command to do so.

The agent blinked his eyes against the harsh sunlight. Tears rolled down his dusty cheeks. "That man will transmit to the Syrian forces. They'll know you've saved me. They know that I know they're planning to launch a major offensive against the Turkish and U.N. forces, especially the American military. If he gets his message through, they'll launch that strike immediately. Your refusal to kill him will take away days and hours we might have had to prepare."

Fear raced through Goose. He'd known something was up on the border. He'd felt it in his bones.

"Three," Goose said as he threw himself in pursuit.

"I've got him," Tanaka replied.

The wind changed. The terrorist materialized out of the concealing smoke with the sat-phone clasped tightly against his head. Then he spun, his legs flaring out wildly as he fought to keep his balance. The phone against his head went to pieces. Blood showed on his hand. He turned just as the sound of Tanaka's sniper rifle slammed across the sound of the burning car.

The wind carried the twisting black smoke across Goose's vision, smudging the sight of the terrorist as he raised his pistol. The station wagon exploded, bits of it launching into the air, its body buckling into a wrenched mass of flaming metal.

Goose twisted into a profile stance, offering the smallest target possible to the terrorist. He flicked the M-4A1's fire selector over to a three-round burst. "Put the weapon down!" he ordered. "We're the United States Army! Throw down your weapon and step away! "

Instead, the terrorist screamed in rage and opened fire.

One round slapped against Goose's Kevlar-lined helmet. It hit hard enough to knock his head to one side like he'd caught a punch from a professional boxer. The bullet ricocheted from the helmet, though. Goose took a half step to the right to recover. His sights on the terrorist never wavered. He squeezed the trigger, aiming for the kill zone.

The terrorist staggered backward just as the report from Tanaka's sniper weapon echoed around Goose. It was over.

Goose assigned Williams and Clark to secure the third terrorist's body and confirm the kill, then turned back to the CIA agent.

The agent stood with difficulty, leaning heavily on Bill. Holding his assault rifle in one hand, Bill put his other arm around the man's waist to support him.

Flipping over to the secure command frequency, Goose said, "Phoenix Base, this is Phoenix Leader."

"Go, Leader. Base reads you."

"Can you confirm the story we're getting here?"

"Affirmative, Leader," Remington said in a cool voice. "My translator at this end tells me the man was telling someone that the group had been attacked by American Rangers."

"Was he alerting Syrian forces or the PKK?" Goose asked. He thought of his team. The front line was only seven klicks away, but suddenly it felt like a million miles.

"He was transmitting a warning, Leader," Remington said. "We haven't been able to confirm the destination of the signal. There wasn't time to get a lock on it."

"Did he get through?"

"We don't know."

United States of America Fort Benning, Georgia

Local Time 11:21 P.M.

Megan Gander stabbed a hand out, palmed the handset, and had the cordless phone to her ear between the first and second ring. The real trick was being awake and semicoherent by the time the chill plastic touched her ear and cheek.

Her thoughts flew immediately to Joey. She'd fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him to get home. She looked at her watch. Joey had a 9 P.m. curfew on school nights, and he knew it. It was way too late for her boy to be out. Her anger came awake with her, and she was ready to unload on her seventeen-year-old son if he was calling with any excuse as to why he hadn't been home at curfew.

If Goose were home, Joey wouldn't push his luck so hard, she thought, and at the same moment she prayed the call wasn't from the police to tell her something had happened to Joey. Or from the army, telling her something had happened to Goose.

That was her second thought as she awoke. Maybe the call was about Goose. Her husband had sounded calm and casual during their phone conversation the previous day, and she knew he wouldn't call her late at night or during her scheduled shift at the base's counseling center. Goose was just that way. No matter what time zone he was in, Goose always knew what time it was in her world and what she had going on.

Just as she thought the call might be about Goose, she dismissed the possibility. While Goose thought things might heat up along the Turkish-Syrian border, he'd assured her that nothing had happened yet. And if something had happened to Goose, there would have been a uniformed officer at her door to inform her, not some impersonal phone call.

"Megan Gander," she said, then covered the mouthpiece while she cleared the sleep from her voice.

"Megan, this is Helen Cordell."

"Yes, Helen. What can I do for you?" Helen Cordell was the current night shift supervisor at the counseling center where Megan worked. Megan sat up on the living-room couch. She wore pink sweats that were a favorite of hers from her high school days eighteen years earlier. Other than during her two pregnancies, her size had never changed. She'd been gifted with a fast metabolism and worked hard to stay in shape. She and Goose shared mutual interests in tennis and hiking, as well as other team sports supported on base, and that helped make scheduling activities easy.

"I know it's not your scheduled shift," Helen said, "but we have a situation."

"It's no problem. I was just grabbing a nap." Megan got up and moved through the small three-bedroom base house she and Goose had filled with comfortable furniture and personal items. She walked past the master bedroom and down the hall to Joey's room. "I'd have been up anyway in a few minutes."

"Is something wrong?"

"It's my son, Joey." Megan opened the door and peeked into the room. The room was a mess-the walls covered with posters of extreme sports icons in midstunt, CDs scattered everywhere, and schoolbooks gathering dust on the small rolltop desk Goose had given the boy as a birthday present a few years ago. The bed was empty. "It's past curfew and my teenager still hasn't made it home." Megan walked to the other bedroom. "He was supposed to be home by nine. If he's not home by midnight, I get to go out and look for him."

"Now I really hate having to call you," Helen said. "I know how nerve-wracking it is waiting up on a teenager. I've done that myself."

"I know. Joey wouldn't pull something like this if Goose was at home." Megan eased her other son's door open.

Chris lay swaddled in blankets featuring his favorite cartoon heroes. He slept on the top bunk of the bunk bed, which he'd had to have because "sometimes me and Daddy like to have guy time to play video games and watch videos and stuff-like-that-PLEASE-Mom."

The night-light on the dresser bathed him in soft golden illumination that highlighted the wheat-colored hair he'd gotten from his father. The night-light was a scene that showed Jesus with a shepherd's crook telling stories to a group of children gathered at his feet. It had been a gift from Bill Townsend, who sometimes spent the night with them at the base when the weather turned bad or when he and Goose had to make an early morning jump. On those nights, Bill read to Chris from the big book of children's Bible stories he had bought for the boy, giving the characters unique voices that delighted Chris and left him imitating Bill for days.

It helped knowing that Bill and Goose had each other over in Turkey. But who do you have, Joey? Megan couldn't help but wonder. "Maybe this can wait," Helen suggested.

Megan sighed. She knew she wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep. Worrying about Goose and Joey was getting to be too much, and that wasn't even taking into consideration the caseload she was currently working at the counseling center.

"If you called this late," Megan said, "I know you thought it was important. Now spill."

"Gerry Fletcher is in the infirmary," Helen said.

Megan's stomach lurched. Gerry Fletcher was one of the special projects Megan had taken into her heart. Helen was well aware of that. Everyone connected to the counseling center-half the base was aware of that.

For the last fourteen months, since Private Boyd Fletcher had moved to Fort Benning with his wife and son to become a Ranger, Megan had been aware of the abuse Gerry underwent. Most of it, she'd gathered, had been psychological in nature: unkind words, sarcastic comments, anything to wreck the eleven-year-old boy's self-esteem.

But occasionally there had been bruises on Gerry's arms and legs and shoulders. None had ever shown up on the boy's face, though. Boyd Fletcher had evidently declared Gerry's face off-limits.

Megan had tried several times to get Gerry out of the home. She'd failed. No one had ever seen Boyd Fletcher punish Gerry in any way. Gerry was, according to staff at the base schools, one of the best students a teacher could hope for.

Megan had urged Gerry to come forward with what happened. No dice. He always smiled at her and tell her that he was just "accident-prone." Boyd Fletcher had refused steadfastly to talk to her, other than the one time he had been ordered to by the base commander.

Gerry had gone more than a month without a bruise after that; then he'd suffered a devastating bicycle wreck that had broken his left arm. Or so Gerry and Boyd had claimed. Somehow, though, the wreck hadn't taken any skin off the boy's knees or elbows the way such an accident normally would have. When Megan had asked for another interview with Boyd Fletcher, the base commander had denied it, telling Megan he would only enforce such a visit if she could offer proof of physical abuse.

It had gotten so hard going through channels that Megan had gone to Goose with the situation months ago. That was something she almost never did. He had listened and soothed her because he was Goose and that was what he did. However, during the past months, until Goose's unit had been pulled out to reinforce the Turkish troops, Gerry had seemed to relax and even be happy most days. Megan couldn't prove it, and she wouldn't ask, but she felt certain Goose had done something to affect the situation in the Fletcher household.

"How is he?" Megan asked.

"Bruised. Shaken up. He says he was outside on the roof with his telescope. He says he slipped and fell."

"How bad is it?"

"The doctor says he's dislocated his shoulder, but the physical pain is only part of it. That's one scared little guy, Megan," Helen said. "Gerry doesn't want his dad to know."

"Where's his father?" Megan always thought of Boyd Fletcher as Gerry's father. A dad was someone like Goose, someone who cared. "At home."

"Does he know Gerry's in the hospital?"

"No. Gerry's with Dr. Carson."

Megan relaxed a little. Thank You, God, for that. Craig Carson was a friend and one of the best pediatricians on the base.

"Dr. Carson and I are electing to have a busy night and phone trouble until you get a chance to see Gerry," Helen said. "If you want to come in to see him, that is."

"Of course I want to see him," Megan said. "I'll be right there."

Turkey 39 Klicks Southeast of Sanliurfa Local Time 0643 Hours

Belted in tight, Goose sat in the shotgun seat of the Ranger Special Operations Vehicle. The vehicle's powerful diesel engine growled as the all-terrain tires dug into the sand and propelled the team across the desert back toward the Turkish-Syrian border.

Based on the Land Rover Defender Model 110, the RSOV offered seats all the way around that faced outward rather than forward, giving passengers 360-degree visibility. The Rangers had adopted the vehicles after the Gulf War. With ten inches of clearance, heavy-duty suspension, and four-wheel drive, the RSOV was a mover and shaker on a cross-country run.

Tanaka drove while Clark handled the top gunner position where the M-249 SAW was mounted. Bill sat with the CIA agent on the rear deck, which was the most protected point on the RSOV. Williams and Cusack occupied side seats. The rest of the Ranger unit rode in a second RSOV. Both vehicles charged and leaped across the broken terrain.

Goose scanned the countryside continuously. Nothing else appeared to be moving on the desert. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the CIA agent staring apprehensively south to the border.

"Phoenix Leader," Remington said.

"Go, Base," Goose responded. "Leader reads you."

"Do you have a headset on Special Project?"

"Affirmative, Base. Special Project, do you copy?"