The pilot’s eyes were on Alex. The wound on his forehead bubbled for a second or two, and then began to knit closed like a red zipper. Jon-Pierre’s eyes rolled back, and he fell into Sam’s arms.

Alex looked at the big HAWC and shrugged. “Well, you hit him, he’s yours.”

Sam groaned and threw the pilot over his shoulder.

*

The group assembled again at midnight. They’d rested and then had a quick meal of dried beef. Jon-Pierre even looked refreshed, but his eyes were still haunted and his pallor was that of mortuary wax. From mission go-time, there would be no sleep or even rest until they made their way to a rendezvous point twenty miles out in the western desert.

They had pooled their information. Alex stared at Casey Franks, whose shawl had traces of blood all over it. He gave her a hard look, but she simply shrugged and pointed at his own thawb. Alex looked down and grunted; it was now more like a butcher’s apron. He ripped it from himself – the time for hiding was over.

They had decided on entering a building two doors down that bordered an alley. They would find an accessible door or window and break in, making their way to the roof, and then scaling across to their target building. If things went bad, there’d be no cavalry, so the backup plan was to make it to the Tigris and steal a boat. Luckily the dam was upstream, but the smaller river blockages could be worked around.

“What can I do?” Jon-Pierre asked.

“Just stay alive, sucker,” Casey said, checking her weapons. She looked up at him, her hands still running over her gun tech. “And stay out of the way. If things go well, we all go home whistling. If they don’t, you might just wish you were back lashed to that fucking post.”

“That’s not needed.” Adira glared at Casey, who scar-sneered back. Adira turned to the pilot. “You just keep up, say nothing, do nothing, other than what you’re told to do. Understand?”

Jon-Pierre nodded. Adira and her men had on night dark combat fatigues and faces streaked with blackout paint. Alex and the HAWCs were back in their adaptive camouflage suits, that were now as dark as their surroundings. Sam extended the armored hood up and over his face, and began to check and then calibrate the eye lenses’ thermal to night-vision technology.

Each person had fitted silencers to their weapons, and Alex checked his watch one last time. “Time.”

They moved out; all would use the path that Alex and Adira had taken earlier that day – it was the shortest route, and time mattered now.

At the late hour, the streets were near empty. Major roadblocks would be manned and stolen radar equipment would also be watching the skies, but down in the dirt, there was nothing except the odd lonesome dog or fleeing roach.