Hartogg pulled him up next to Andy and Tania. He then let go, and kneeled to push up one of Matt’s eyelids and look into his eye. After a second he nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good man; you profs are tougher than I remember from when I went to school.”

“You went to school?” Andy grinned at him.

Hartogg grinned back, gave him the finger, then got back to his feet and jogged to the upturned SUV. Matt sat forward, feeling his head swim momentarily.

“What just happened?” He watched as the SEAL joined Berry and Abrams in stripping the destroyed vehicle. Smoke billowed and the scorched ground indicated there had been a fire at some time. The three men worked quickly, crawling in and over the machine like ants over roadkill, and that’s exactly what it was.

Tania groaned. “Oh God.” She rubbed her head through her hair. She looked around quickly. “Give me a shove here, Bennet.”

Andy pushed Tania forward and she got to her feet, standing with her hands on her hips but head down as she sucked in huge gulps of air. She looked across to Matt. “What happened? A fucking mine, Claymore, IED, take your pick – that happened. You okay?”

Matt nodded, and felt his neck creak.

“Good.” She smiled down at him.

“I’m okay too, thanks for asking.” Andy toasted her with his canteen.

“I could already see you were,” she said, stretching her back.

Berry trudged back to them, unloaded some gear. “Boss says five minutes and we bug out, Captain.”

“Got it.” Tania sipped again and watched as the big man returned to the truck. In a few more minutes they had everything of value that was still working, and the SEALs and Abrams joined the wounded.

The major lifted field glasses to his eyes. “We need to move. Was an IED, a good one; usually means there’ll be insurgents close by. They’ll want to see what it was that trigged their trap. We need to be a long way from here by then.”

Andy looked around. “Where to? Do we head back?”

Abrams shook his head. “Nope, we’re closer to the border than home. Might as well continue. Our sat-comms are toast so as far as HQ is concerned we’ve gone dark. We can only send a local squirt to some friendly stations and hope we can pick up support – might be useful if we run into trouble.” He continued to scan the horizon. “So, we go forward.”

Andy snorted. “Did you say run into trouble? You mean, this is not trouble?”

Abrams continued to look out at the dry landscape. “You’re alive, aren’t you?” He turned back to the group and grinned. “But that was the good news. So, now the bad news – we do not have transport, we are in extremely hostile territory and will need to move quickly, carrying as much as is humanly possible. There will be no backup, no international communications and no more supplies until we complete our mission. That is the priority, those are our orders.”