The three camera images took off at a run across open terrain. Spits of dirt around their feet indicated that they’d drawn incoming fire. Sherri counted several grunts across the audio feed. Did those translate to bullet hits on their Kevlar vests, or were one or more of the guys shot now, too?

A wooden gate with huge iron hinges came into sight. All three camera feeds halted and then pointed out at the valley.

Streaks of tracer fire, muzzle blasts, and small explosions lit up the entire mountain in front of the Reapers. It had a certain macabre beauty that reminded Sherri of fields of fireflies in the summer up at the lake house when she’d been a kid. Except these fireflies were lethal, each one holding a promise of death. She shuddered in spite of herself.

The disembodied operations voice announced, “Scotty, Sulu, and Bones are in place.”

Those were the code names for the three strike teams set to enter the compound in search of Haddad. Bones was the three Reaper operators. Spock was the DEVGRU team, and Kirk was the Marine contingent.

“They can’t seriously be sending those men in anyway, knowing it’s a death trap!” Sherri exclaimed.

Griffin glanced over at her. “We’ll never get another shot like this at Haddad. We know he’s in there. Even if all we do is kill the bastard and lose our own men, it’ll be deemed a worthy trade.”

She flopped back in her chair, aghast. The military was willing to sacrifice so many highly trained Special Forces operators to kill one terrorist?

Ops was speaking again. “Go on my count. Three. Two. One. Go, go, go!”

All three cameras were moving again. Fast.

Camera one went through a recently blown hole in the wall and peeled left. Its wearer scanned the courtyard for movement and hostiles.

Camera three showed a SEAL in full night-combat gear jumping through the hole.

Griffin muttered, “That’s Jojo going in. Which means Sam was probably the one who went down before.”

The agony in Griffin’s voice was palpable. It was clearly killing him to be sitting here and not running this critical mission.

The audio feed went silent as the three Reapers moved swiftly between buildings toward their assigned targets. It was as if the support team knew to shut up and let the SEALs do their jobs now without distracting them.

Kenny paused beside the doorway into a simple two-story structure with perhaps four rooms on each floor, trying the doorknob stealthily. The knob turned a bit under his hand. Kenny waited for his buddies to get into position on the other side of the door. Then he threw the door open while Jojo lobbed in two grenades, one with each hand, then threw in two more for good measure.

A noisy explosion erupted beyond the sight line of the cameras.

“Concussion grenades followed by flash-bangs,” Griffin bit out.