And the thing was, he had been thinking of ways to get out. Killing people for a living was all he knew how to do, but it was starting to fuck with his head. Maybe Matthias had somehow tweaked to that.

Time to the face the music, Jim thought as he stepped through the doorway.

Might as well give ’em a fight—

Just Matthias. No one else.

Jim slowly lowered his guns and scanned the cramped space again. According to his night goggles, there was only the other man. With a flick of a switch, he changed to heat-seeking mode. Nothing but Matthias. Still.

“What’s going on?” Jim demanded.

Matthias was over in the far corner, about ten feet away. When the man’s hands came up from his sides, Jim flipped his SIGs back into firing position . . . but all his boss did was shake his head and loosen his gun belt. A quick toss and it was in the sand.

And then he took a step forward, opening his mouth and saying something quietly—

Light. Sound. Blast of energy.

Then . . . nothing but the soft rain of sand and debris.

Jim came back to consciousness sometime later. The explosion had thrown him against the stone wall, knocking him cold, and going by how stiff he was, he could have been out for a while.

After a couple minutes of what-the-fuck, he sat up cautiously, wondering if anything was broken—

Across the way, there was a pile of rags where Matthias had once been.

“Jesus Christ . . .” Jim repositioned his night goggles and retrieved his weapons, then crawled through the sand to his boss.

“Matthias . . . oh, fucking A . . .”

The man’s lower leg looked like a root that had been torn up out of the ground, the limb nothing but a ragged stump that was shredded at the end. And there were patches of darkness on his fatigues that had to be blood.

Jim checked the pulse at the neck. There was one, but it was faint and uneven.

Unbuckling and shucking his belt, he cranked the leather around Matthias’s upper calf and pulled hard, torniqueting the limb. Then he quickly searched for other inj—

Shit. When Matthias had been tossed back, he’d fallen onto a wooden spike. The damn thing went right through him, the toothpick to his pig in a blanket.

Jim pretzeled up and tried to see whether it could stay in place to get Matthias out of here. . . .

It appeared to be freestanding. Good.

“. . . Dan . . . ny . . . boy . . .”

Jim frowned and looked at his boss. “What?”

Matthias’s eyes opened like his lids were steel shutters he could barely raise. “Leave . . . me.”

“You’re blown to shit—”

“Leave me—”

“Fuck that.” Jim reached for his transistor and prayed that Isaac, not that freak second in command, answered. “Come on . . . come on. . . .”

“What y’all needin’?” The soft Southern drawl coming over his earpiece was good news.