“Frag out!” he screamed, hoping like hell that Dykstra and Kasper could hear him through their own blast-deafened eardrums.

As soon as the grenade left his hand, its safety lever flipped open and fell away. The grenade itself soared on through a smooth arc until it thudded down high up on the dune, several yards above and beyond the little knot of prone tribesmen. Then gravity took over and it rolled downhill, right into their midst.

Flynn buried his face in the sand again.

Craaack! The grenade exploded, sending lethal, razor-edged fragments sleeting through a fifty-foot radius.

Flynn looked up. Through a small puff of dirty gray smoke drifting downwind, he saw the results. Three of the five remaining attackers were motionless—ripped into blood-soaked corpses by dozens of pieces of steel. Two staggered upright. Scarlet streaks down their faces and shredded robes showed that they hadn’t escaped the blast unscathed, but they still clutched AK-47s in their hands.

He grabbed his M4 again. “‘Iisqat al’aslihat alkhasat bik! Drop your weapons!” he shouted.

Instead, they whirled toward him, apparently still determined to carry on this fight.

“Assholes,” Flynn muttered. Gritting his teeth, he squeezed off six more rounds. Hit multiple times, the two white-robed men crumpled to the sand and lay still. They were either dead or dying, he decided. Painfully, he scrambled back to his feet.

The sound of gunfire from the other side of the C-130 seemed to be trailing away—fading from a near-continuous crackle of shots to isolated pop-pop-pops. With his carbine up and ready to fire, he moved warily off in that direction.

Greasy black smoke from the burning Mi-17 made it difficult to see much. Bodies, some in white robes, others in camouflage uniforms, were scattered in all directions. He spotted White’s gray-haired, skeletal form lying huddled near the shrapnel-torn tail section of the wrecked Super Hercules. Whether the man was dead or simply unconscious wasn’t clear, and Flynn wasn’t inclined to go check . . . not just yet.

At least one of the former Special Forces contractors was still alive, though seriously wounded and pretty clearly in shock. He was trying to apply a combat tourniquet to his own mangled right thigh . . . but his blood-soaked hands were shaking too badly.

“Hang on, trooper,” Flynn murmured, kneeling beside him. He set his M4A1 down. “I’ve got this.” Quickly, he slipped the tourniquet band through the buckle, pulled it tight, and wrapped it around the man’s leg. Then he carefully twisted the tourniquet rod, further tightening everything down until the blood pulsing out through gashed flesh slowed and then stopped.

“Thanks, man,” the wounded man said weakly. “Thought I was fucked.” But then his eyes widened as he saw something looming over Flynn’s shoulder.

Crap. He desperately grabbed for his weapon and whirled around, already knowing it was probably too late. One of the tribesmen had emerged from the thick black curtain of smoke, with a rictus grin like the Angel of Death plastered across his face, and an AKM pointed straight at Flynn’s head. The Libyan’s finger was already tightening on the trigger.