Major Jack Hammerson’s face advertised all his years of active service like a billboard. Deep lines etched his forehead and cheeks and where the elements hadn’t carved his features, combat scarring had. In his fifties, he was still a man of iron who kept up the daily training that had taught him how to incapacitate a foe in less than seven seconds, a skill he had needed to call on in active service many times. A Greek military history buff, “the Hammer” had refused promotions so he could maintain an active role with his beloved special services unit and ensure his lads were the best trained and the most lethal soldiers on earth. He made sure they always came back home from battle like the Spartans—with their shields upon them.

Hammerson sat with one fist clasped in his other hand and looked at the information spread out on the desk before him. SOCOM, the Special Operations Command, had been tasked with directing a covert rescue and research mission down to the Antarctic. They’d all disappeared. Science personnel and a supporting team of Green Berets had all fallen off the grid. No radio contact, no satellite images, and nothing showing up from the VELA thermal imaging satellites—they were just gone. Hammerson reached down and picked up one of the photographs sent before the party had stepped off the earth. His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to will himself down into the ice so he could make sense of the images. He knew General Malcolm of SOCOM and the guys he sent down to be the mission shield wouldn’t have been slouches. With their hostile-environment training and thick clothing, even in a freezing environment, their bodies would have taken several hours to cool; VELA should have picked up something.

Now it was his turn. Politically, command couldn’t send a larger force, but they still wanted more military potency. There would not be a third team deployed; this was it. They needed maximum defensive and attack capabilities. Jack Hammerson dropped the photograph; he already knew who he was going to send.

Hammerson had known Alex Hunter since his first days in the squad and had initially thought of him as an enthusiastic and talented but average member of the team—if anyone could be just average in his specialised unit. However, in the eighteen months since Alex’s mission accident, he had become vastly different. Now, no one could touch him in the strategy and tactic exercises, and in hand-to-hand combat training he had lifted another man weighing over 200 pounds above his head and thrown him fifteen feet as though he was no more than a hollow, store-built mannequin. Alex’s doctors thought it was some form of beneficial side effect of the bullet lodging so close to his endocrine engine room; Hammerson saw it as a gift to be fully honed to its ultimate potential.