The door was unlocked; no need for a breacher. Carl rocked his head up and down, establishing a three-nod cadence as Jed pulled a flash-bang grenade from his kit. On three, Carl jerked the door open. Jed pulled the pin, tossed the banger inside, and Carl shut the door quickly behind his toss.

“Sword Two on the slide,” Eli announced in his ear, just as the sound of the second helicopter arriving into a hover on the ramp side of the hangar reached him.

The whump of the flash-bang rocked the corrugated metal of the hangar wall.

“Go,” Jed barked and Carl jerked the hangar door open.

Low in his crouch, Jed slipped inside and cleared left. He felt Carl enter and clear right, with Hyeon and Nisha on their heels. His corner clear, Jed vectored left, exiting the lane of potential defensive fire, which came a heartbeat later. A barrage of gunfire tore through the hangar door now ten feet behind him, tracers screaming through the smoke from the grenade like laser beams. The shots went wild, the bad guy shooters still blind from the flash-bang.

He moved left, Carl trailing with him to his right, reading the play, as Nisha and Hyeon continued to push to the center. Movement in the smoke to  center got his eye, but the pair of Shepherds unloaded a volley. Jed heard a scream and a body drop followed by a rifle clattering to the floor.

“Sword One, keep your stick clear of the center hangar door. Blowing it in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Jed squeezed his eyes shut a moment to protect his vision from the blast, but the charge was perfect, with precious little visible explosion inside the hangar. Then the door pulled open, daylight streaming in and backlighting the silhouettes of Eli and his stick spreading out as they entered and cleared corners.

A double tap echoed from the north corner, where Eli’s team had just breached.

Two tangos appeared though the hazy smoke ahead, both with rifles. Jed spun left, trusting Carl with the tango to the right. Carl fired first, two thumps of suppressed fire. Jed was about to squeeze his own trigger when the fighter in his sights dropped his weapon, threw his hands up, and dropped to his knees in surrender.

Jed circled, his red dot still floating on the man’s head. He’d never seen a Dark One surrender, and his pulse pounded in his temples, fully expecting the flash of a suicide vest detonation any moment. Dark Ones weren’t conventional jihadists, but they were fanatics with demons inside coercing their every move.

“Clear,” Eli hollered, loud enough for Jed to hear a beat before the voice reached him in his Peltors.

“Six is clear,” Grayson echoed.

“Three is clear,” Carl confirmed.

“One is clear, but I have a crow,” Jed announced, advancing slowly toward the man kneeling in front of him. “Show me inside your jacket.”