Mitchell took off, came around the outcropping, and swept across the hill in a full sprint, assuring himself that every step was good, that no bullet could touch him.

Blood dripped from his wounded arm, but he ignored it, swept a little wider, as the mud-covered hill boiled with even more incoming fire.

The drumming of all those rounds, the clinking of brass, and the screams in Arabic and Tagalog all funneled into a steady hum that no longer bothered him. In fact, the hum drove him harder, faster, back toward his fellow operators.

Mitchell stumbled down on his heels through a little washout, fell backward onto his rump, and began sliding along with the streaming mud, landing with a sharp thud on a bed of broken rocks. He crawled forward, looked up, and found himself a few meters from a little ditch.

He blinked, saw three silhouettes in the distance, then his vision focused. He had just found three more of his men who had taken up a position some twenty meters west from Rutang's original spot.

The senior medic, Red Cross, lay in a pool of blood surrounded by soaked bandages. Rumblefish had taken multiple rounds in the chest and was propped up on a tree, his eyes vacant. Rapper, it seemed, had been dragged to cover after being hit by that mortar, his legs chewed down to the bone. He'd bled out quickly, his face gone gray in the half-light.

Mitchell wanted to close his eyes and remember their last moments together, but without a second to spare, he fought off the urge to gag and raced through the trees toward Billy and Carlos. In his haste, he'd forgotten to warn Billy he was coming, and as he rounded the last bush, a gunshot cracked on the tree to his left.

"Billy!" he cried.

"Geez, Scott!"

He reached the man and dropped to one knee. "Sorry, my fault. Thanks for having bad aim."

"Forget me. Go check on Carlos. I've been calling, and he's not answering now. He's right behind those palms."

Carlos Alejandro, the assistant communications sergeant, was arguably the most eloquent and scholarly member of the team. He spoke expertly on world politics, religion, and philosophy and could schmooze with majors, colonels, and even generals better than most officers Mitchell knew. And because of that, he wasn't one to ever go silent.

Mitchell found the man lying supine, his head turned to the right, as though he were listening to the ground. His eyes were wide open. "Carlos?"

The sergeant turned his head, looked up, his gaze slightly unfocused. "They're moving."

"You can tell?"

"Yeah, I just heard them scream."

"And you didn't hear Billy calling?"

"I figured if I didn't answer, he'd finally shut up."

Mitchell shook his head and smirked. "Ready? I'm carrying you back."

"Not in my lifetime."