Thank God for Isaac. “Matthias is down. Bomb. Make sure we’re not target practice as we come into camp.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Where y’all at? I’ll get a Land Rover and pick you up.”

“We’re forty-six degrees n—”

The gun went off across the way, a bullet slicing through the air right next to Jim’s ear—to the point where he assumed he’d been hit in the head and the pain had yet to register. As he braced himself on one palm, Matthias let his SIG fall to the side . . . but what do you know, Jim did not fall over thanks to some kind of cranial wound. Warning shot, evidently.

His boss’s one working eye shone with unholy light. “Get yourself . . . out . . . alive.”

Before Jim could tell Matthias to shut the fuck up, he became aware that something was biting into the hand he’d put out. Lifting the thing up, he found . . . part of the bomb’s detonator.

Turning it over and over, at first he didn’t understand what he was looking at.

And then he knew all too well what it was.

Narrowing his eyes on Matthias, he put the fragment in his front pocket and crawled over to his boss.

“You’re not playing me like this,” Jim said grimly. “No fucking way.”

Matthias started to babble just as squawking curses came through the earpiece.

“I’m okay,” Jim said to Isaac. “Misfire. I’m starting back for camp. Make sure we’re not shot as we approach.”

The Southerner’s voice became instantly strong and steady, just like the guy’s killing hand. “Where you at. I’ll just get a—”

“No. Stay put. Find a medic on the QT and make sure they can keep their mouth shut. And we’re going to need a chopper. He’s going to have to be airlifted—discreetly. No one can know about this.”

The last thing he needed was Isaac out in the middle of the night looking for them. The guy was the only thing standing between Jim and an accusation that he’d murdered the head of the deadliest shadow organization in the U.S. government.

He’d never live that one down. Literally.

But at least the hush-hush was not going to be a news-flash. Keeping quiet about shit was the MO in XOps—no one knew exactly how many operatives there were or where they went or what they did or whether they went by their own name or an alias.

“Do you hear me, Isaac,” he demanded. “Get me what I need. Or he’s a dead man.”

“Roger that,” came the reply over the earpiece. “Over and out.”

After confiscating the gun that had been put to use, Jim picked up his boss, settled the dead, dripping weight on his shoulders, and started hoofing it.

Out of the stone shack. Out into the blustering, frigid night. Across the sand dunes.