Then, scuttling forward, she fired the grenade. It destroyed the entire generator complex and from white, black returned, deeper than ever. Someone brushed past her. She thought it was Whit, but it was, in fact, Flix who, having disrupted all communication within the compound, leapt over the ruined gate, his AR-15 firing.

Charlie raced after him, Whit at her side. “What the hell?!” she shouted.

Rather than spraying the compound with fire, Flix was targeting enemy combatants with frightening speed and accuracy. Three were already down by the time she and Whitman began targeting their own enemies. But Flix was already ahead of them. Three more went down under his withering bursts. His advance was so on the money, he was killing them even before they had a chance to fire back. There seemed to be little for her and Whit to do but to head for the villa’s front door.

As Flix dealt with the compound guards, Charlie applied the working end of her F2000 to the door, which burst apart in flaming shards. Shouldering past her, Whit was the first to enter. The interior was completely dark; no one had had the time to light even a single candle. His goggles guided him from room to room.

“Seiran,” he whispered as he progressed. “Seiran, death has found you, my friend.”

To Charlie, now right beside him, he said, “These villas are all the same. The target’s always in the central living area, the most heavily protected place against drone attacks in the compound.”

Through the kitchen, which was a bit of a mess, through two small bedrooms, each with rumpled sheets, past two modern baths, down another corridor, then into the central room, larger than all the others put together. Charlie lunged, caught a girl, cowering in a corner, by the biceps, and pulled her to her bare feet. She was Asian and could not be more than fifteen.

“What is this, Whit, white slave trade?”

“Later,” Whitman said. “Talk to her.”

“Seiran el-Habib,” she shoveled into the shivering girl’s ear, “where is he?”

The girl opened her mouth, but a brief chattering of automatic gunfire from behind them caused her to jump, her lips clamped shut. Whit turned, weapon at the ready, but it was only Flix.

“One more down,” he said. “That’s the end of the guards, so far as I can tell.”

Even through her goggles, Charlie noticed a weird light in his eyes, as if he was not quite there, as if his body had been possessed by something else, something of which she had no knowledge. Suppressing a shiver, she turned back to the teen and repeated her question.

The girl looked at her, said, “I’m not paid enough for this shit.” She pointed to a closet on the other side of the room.

Flix went for the door, but Whitman stopped him with a hand across his chest. “You’ve got our backs, compadre.”