“Tell them to keep moving. They can’t get hung up here.”

“What do I say . . . what’s the phrase?”

“Well, it’s—”

Two other men came and hovered, the three talking in Hebrew. One, a sergeant, stood and waved the boys forward. With no Gadi to be his sponsor, Swagger felt himself freed from obligation, and he moved fast as any of them on the house, heard a cry, which he knew had to be “Grenade out,” went flat as three large concussions ripped up dirt and debris and filled the air with dangerous stuff, but he was up. The fire volume rose, and everywhere in the brush fast smacks of dust displayed the random pecks of bullets as the defenders fired blindly at men they couldn’t see. He made it to the door and realized—Hello! Ding-dong! Eureka!—it’s time to go hot. He slid back the Uzi bolt, felt it lock, and he shoved the handle, at that point disengaged, forward. His thumb made certain the lever was pushed to full auto, and, last of all, he yanked on the folding stock, getting it to telescope out, and though it was no ergonomic masterpiece, it gave him something to lock between arm and rib cage. That done, he did an appraisal of the house. He was alone. He reached for a grenade, realized he had no grenades. He made ready to enter under his own full-auto cover, but then, out of the night, two more commandos showed. One had a frag in hand, nodded at Swagger, who nodded in reply and pulled back. The man tossed it. In an instant, it transformed into pure energy—lots of it.

He waited a second for pieces of stuff to cease whirling about what used to be a room, was the first to enter the boiling atmosphere, and when a figure emerged from another doorway across the space, he put six Uzi nines into him fast, melting him to the ground at light’s speed, feeling the jerk of mechanism, peripheral vision noting the spew of spent cases and smear of flash at the muzzle. Behind him, he heard men climbing steps to deal with upper-floor resistance, but his job was to push through to any sort of shop.

He rushed ahead, found nobody else to shoot, came to a door, kicked it open to behold a shooter’s headquarters: targets on wall, components on shelves, heavy reloading bench, arbor press. A smashed laptop lay atop the bench, its screen a look-alike for Bonnie and Clyde’s windshield. A man crouched at the bench, struggling with a lighter while holding an opened eight-pound plastic jug whose label proclaimed Hodgdon H1000, a smokeless powder applicable to reloading cartridges. It was highly volatile.

Bob thrust the Uzi muzzle at him, finger on trigger, but did not pull down.

“No!” he screamed. “No!”

Another commando was at his shoulder, rifle zeroed, also screaming, but more helpfully in Arabic.