Out front, Berry raised a hand, and then lowered it slowly, palm down. Abrams felt a tingle run through his system – the SEAL had spotted something. Those guys could pick up things regular soldiers like him could never hope to. Abrams half turned; Tania and Hartogg were already lowering themselves to the ground, but Matt and Andy were just squinting back at him.

“Get on the goddamned ground,” Tania hissed. Matt and Andy immediately dropped.

Berry scurried to a craggy outcrop, and was down on one knee. He had his rifle to his eye and was using the scope to scan the flat plains out to the northwest.

Abrams spoke softly into his field mic. “Talk to me, Berry.”

“Movement; two o’clock – staying low now, dug in tight, but they’re there.” The man was cool as ice.

“Shit,” Abrams whispered. They could win a skirmish against a few militants, but couldn’t afford to get pinned down. When reinforcements came, they wouldn’t be his own. And if there were more than a few dug in; they were in trouble right here, right now.

Abrams clicked on his mic again. “Kovitz, bring the civs in close. Hartogg, secure the rear.”

Matt, Andy, Tania belly-crawled to Abrams, and Hartogg stayed a few dozen feet back to turn and focus on the landscape behind them.

“Clear,” was all the SEAL said.

Thank God. We aren’t ringed yet, Abrams thought with relief. They had grenades; once Berry confirmed how many and where, they could turn them to dust.

“Let’s see what we’ve got. Berry, give me a count.” He tried to project cool, but was anything but. He felt as if he had a lit stick of old-style dynamite in his hand, and the wick had just disappeared into the end. Nothing had happened, yet, which meant explosion imminent or nothing at all – either eventuality was possible.

Abrams swallowed; it hurt, his mouth dust-dry. He felt the rising sun begin to sting the back of his neck. Taking too damn long, he thought.

“Incoming!” Berry roared the word, and got down low as the RPG fizzed out of the desert, directly at him, and then over him, travelling at about six hundred feet per second.

“Shit!” Abrams hugged his head. It was never like in the movies, where the rocket seemed to travel slowly – in real life once they kicked from the pipe, they were moving almost as fast as a bullet.

The rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the desert, just a hundred feet past the SEAL. They all felt the heat and percussive blast wave: the plume was close enough to punish eardrums and sear skin.

Berry was immediately up, putting rounds back at the launch position. Return fire spat from dozens of concealed positions at two o’clock, just as he had said.

Another rocket sailed out and past them. They couldn’t shoot these things for shit…And thank God for that, Abrams thought. But they obviously had more weapons than sense, and time was on their side. Eventually they’d hit the bull’s eye.