Beside him sat Agent Erik Vick, code name Viking, a broad-shouldered, stocky man with a shock of chestnut brown hair and a wiry beard. He, too, could easily be mistaken for an insurgent and had spent the past three years working the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the tri-border area to the west.

And the third man, well--Mitchell could barely breathe, and a dull ache came into his eyes. It was Rutang, all right, his old friend who had gotten back on the horse, deployed to Afghanistan, and been making a new name for himself for the past couple of years as a top-notch Special Forces medic. The last time Mitchell had seen him was at his promotion party.

Rutang's face was mostly purple, his left eye swollen, and they'd obviously drugged all of the men to keep them docile. Mitchell's penlight revealed dilated pupils.

"Diaz, here, sir. Got another guy coming outside the center house. Better hurry."

"Roger that. Ramirez, keep covering the door. Brown? Get in here, now." Mitchell glanced over his shoulder as the gunner entered. "They're cuffed. I need keys."

"I'm on it."

"Tang, can you hear me?"

"Who are you?" asked Saenz.

Mitchell regarded the man with a weak grin. "We're the guys getting you out of here." He faced Rutang once more. "Come on, bro, you with me?"

"Scott, is that you?"

"Yeah." Mitchell swallowed and steeled himself as Rutang began to cry. "You're all right, Tang. Stop." They had beaten him so thoroughly that Mitchell feared picking him up.

"Keys," said Brown, after wrenching them from the nearest insurgent's pocket. He crossed around the bed and began opening Saenz's cuffs. Then he worked on Vick's.

"Captain," called Diaz. "The guy outside is moving around the back. He'll spot the bodies. I have a shot."

"Take it!"

Rutang cleared his throat. "Scott, I let everybody down again."

"No. The cache was blown. You stayed alive."

Three days ago Rutang's ODA team had been tasked with entering Waziristan based upon intel provided by Saenz and Vick. A pair of arms dealers with Chinese connections had arrived with a massive shipment of Chinese-made small arms, and the team's mission had been to kill the dealers and destroy the cache before it was delivered to the Taliban insurgents. Those small arms would undoubtedly be smuggled across the border into Afghanistan and could even reach Iran and Iraq. Those arms would no doubt be used against American and coalition forces in the region.

Part of a split team operation, Rutang and the rest of his six-man group, along with the two CIA agents, had served as the outer cordon, providing security and overwatch while the other six moved into the small village to take out the dealers and blow the cache.