A special agent with the Chicago FBI for over a decade before hooking up with Sword, he knew how to use a gun. He’d earned high qualifications for sidearm technique, better-than-average rifle certs, and a couple of commendations for situational and judgmental skills. But he was still no expert shot with a submachine gun and, for that matter, had never used deadly force on a human being or anything larger than a cockroach—shit, he even bought humane traps to catch the mice that wriggled into his basement every spring. Only twice in Chi had he been compelled to draw a weapon off the training course, both times getting a hands-in-the-air surrender. There were no dramatic takedowns or feats of marksmanship for him to tell war stories about over beers somewhere; if he was going to help the chief out of his jam, and maybe see another tomorrow himself, he would need to score his first right now.

Perspiration trickling down his face, DeMarco swept the rifle across the trees, a damn lot of them for that bastard to be hiding in, where the hell was he up there—?

He abruptly checked the weapon’s motion. Through the electronic reticle of its sight, he’d spotted the treetop shooter saddled in the crook of a foliage-swaddled limb, his IR phantom form absolutely still.

It took perhaps a millisecond to realize the sighting was mutual.

His eye to the scope, DeMarco had enough time to see the bore of the sonofabitch’s rifle swing toward him in the treetop, just enough, the sniper absolutely still and steady up in the treetop except for that one conspicuous movement.

DeMarco could hear his pulse somewhere between his ears as he squeezed back Big Daddy’s trigger and felt the recoil against his shoulder, a 20-mm smart round flying from the rifle’s titanium upper barrel, the micro-computerized sight processing range and position, automatically calculating the round’s best point of detonation for target acquisition, setting it for airburst rather than on-impact explosion. And then an earsplitting blast, the treetop igniting into an orange bouquet of flame, its trunk blowing apart, spewing everywhere, obliterated into countless fiery chunks, shaves, and splinters of wood.

DeMarco felt his heart stroking. Later he would recall his half-surprised glance down at himself as if to confirm it really was still beating inside him, that he really hadn’t gotten slugged in the chest—here, unbeknownst, was the crowd grabber of War Story Number One for the books.

He returned his eye to the rifle sight, looked through the smoke into the thicket. The gunfire around him had gotten more sporadic. He could hear the whap of copter blades closer overhead. Good signs. Very good signs.

“Chief!” Scanning the vegetation, scanning. His back pressed against the side of the Rover, his comlink channel to Nimec was open again. “Chief, come in, I’m trying to get a visual—”

“I hear you,” Nimec said. “Can’t see a damned thing, though. Smoke’s too thick. Best estimate, I’m ten yards back of the Rover, twenty yards or so deep in the brush.”