The woman was shaking, Jess realized. And that about sealed the deal. “Bullshit,” she told Afia. “This is fucked up. We’re leaving.”

It was right about then that the shooting began.

“There was nowhere to go,” Jess said as she lay in the dark, listening to the rain fall. “It was a targeted hit, and we were the targets. Panra, too, though she must have planned on getting out of there clean.”

She wondered if Burke had fallen asleep on her, but then he squeezed her hand and she knew he was there.

“They were on top of the houses,” she continued. “Maybe a dozen of them. They cut Panra down first, as she tried to run. Afia just bolted; I think she panicked. She ran to the first open door, but I think she got shot at least once. I heard her cry out.”

“What about you?” Burke asked.

“I was shooting,” Jess said. “I was trying to grab Afia, drag her back down the stairs, returning fire at the same time.” She slowed again, remembering how it happened. “I caught a round in my chest, right square in my armor, and it knocked me over the edge of those steep stairs and out of the kill zone. I guess that armor saved my life, but I’ve never felt grateful.”

Burke didn’t say anything. She was grateful for that, anyway.

“Yeah, so, my guys were already halfway up the stairs when I came tumbling down. They got past me, and I heard them open fire, but there wasn’t much they could do, not with Haji all lined up on those rooftops like that. Grieves gave the order to fall back, and the guys hustled me back downstairs, and they called in the Apaches.”

“And Afia?”

Jess swallowed. “She survived. The insurgents cleared out real quick as soon as we dropped back. We tried to chase them up the mountainside, but it wasn’t any use. They knew the terrain better, knew the shortcuts. And they took Afia with them.”

She knew she could leave it at that and Burke wouldn’t press her, knew he would get the point or as much as he needed. But she’d been over there too much in the last couple of days, and she needed Burke to know what she knew. She needed to believe he would understand.

So she told Burke how Grieves had been forced to call off the hunt, how she’d cussed him out and fought her guys all the way back to the OP. They’d left without Afia, left her to die, and though Jess could see Grieves was distraught about it, she knew he would never have abandoned any of his marines.

But Afia wasn’t a marine. She wasn’t even American. Her life simply wasn’t worth sacrificing marines for. That’s how the brass saw things, anyway.