Three dark birds hurtling over the dark landscape. Running hot, running low to avoid radar. The raiders were silent, knowing that when they hit the landing zone, it could turn tragic in a split second, and would definitely turn complex in two. That was the nature of the raid, and if you couldn’t handle it, you were in the wrong business. So each man smoked, prayed, dreamed of sex, wondered if the Tel Aviv Guardians would beat the Jerusalem Bobcats, then wished they’d told their dad how much they loved him or hated him, and told Sally Sue either to wait or to move on with her life. Each guy had his little thing.

Up front, wedged into the hatch next to the inert but watchful Motter, Bob was pleased to note that the Israeli pilots wore FLIR goggles, so, to their eyes, the darkness ahead was illuminated. A good way to avoid telephone poles and other nasty possibilities. Didn’t have them in ’Nam, and too many good men went down in pointless wastage. The birds vectored north by northwest on a heading the pilots knew by memory, just as they knew the landforms and city features that marked the route until they passed from Israel into southern Syria, where it all went dark. The machine vibrated familiarly—it was, after all, a Sikorsky Black Hawk, a kind of Vietnam-era Huey on protein shakes—and Swagger knew, from a thousand flights in three tours, the whup-whup-whup of the rotor, the buzz of the engines, the octane scent of the fuel. But inside—bigger than the Huey but still the cabin of a combat chopper—it was dark except for the glow of somebody oxygenating the burning stub of his butt.

Time elongated, but, at the same time, it contracted. Maybe it just couldn’t figure out what to do and decided to go away.

Red light blinked.

Motter—Gadi, by first name—spoke with the pilots into his throat mic in Hebrew, pulled his legs in, unstrapped himself. In the darkness of the craft, Bob sensed the boys doing the same: butts out, minds blank, throats cleared, goggles down, bolts checked, straps tested, tightness of Kevlar and mushroom observed, knives and grenades and flares at the ready, Glocks and aid kits prepped, relationship to God figured out. Bob duplicated their motions and found himself crouched in the doorway of an assault chopper about to land someplace interesting. He had no fear.