Title Page

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Dedication

For Bob and Pat Gussin

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My most sincere thanks to those who helped bring this story to life. To my editor, Bob Gleason, for his support and encouragement. To Kelly Quinn and the entire staff at Tor/Forge—there are none better. To those who helped me early on, Deb Stowell and Kevin Kremer, your contributions were essential. I would be hard-pressed to find a more hardworking and knowledgeable agent than Susan Gleason.

Finally, thanks to my family for their patience and support over the years.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

One could only expect so much from a stolen donkey.

Nearing the crest of an extended rise, Yaniv Stein watched the creature slowly buckle. Struggling beneath three hundred pounds of guns, ammunition, and explosives, its legs began to wobble. Then, fifty yards to go, it did what donkeys did when they reached their limit—the beast dropped to its haunches and froze, statue-like and immovable. Stein heaved on the harness, trying to coax forward momentum, but he might as well have been pulling against an oak tree. His years of training in the Israeli Special Forces had covered a great many contingencies. No one had ever thought to include this in the curriculum.

He left the donkey where it was and padded ahead, his boots scuffing over sand and loose stones. He gave a hand signal and the others appeared out of the darkness, three vibrant silhouettes clear under a half-moon that split the night sky. The obstinate donkey was only the latest in a series of misfortunes to befall the mission. To begin, their military flight from Israel to Turkmenistan had suffered a ten-hour delay, cursed by not one but two airplanes with mechanical issues. Arriving in Ashgabat behind schedule, their promised transportation to the Iranian border, a pair of jeeps obtained by an advance party, had never materialized, and they’d been forced to negotiate the purchase of a decrepit van from an Armenian used car salesman—yet another shortcoming in the training syllabus.