Ed fired, the shot hitting the woman’s chest. Her arms flew upward, her gun dropping from her hand. She fell to the floor, her back coming to rest against the wall. Her mouth hung open. For a moment, she sat there, her face blank. Then her upper body slid sideways onto the floor, leaving a trail of red on the wall, like a snail leaves behind a trail of slime.

Luke stood, surveying the carnage in the tiny living room. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air. Three people dead, and it could have easily been five.

“Oh my God,” he said.

Ed looked at him. “We better go.”

Luke walked across to the shelf and grabbed the telephone. He glanced down at it. Of course it was a satellite phone. It was on. The battery power was full. The satellite connection was good.

He breathed deeply. His racing heart skipped, then slowed down the tiniest amount. “We better call the chopper to land right here,” he said. “That made a lot of noise. I doubt we could walk to the rendezvous site and make it there alive.”

“Shouldn’t we search the house?” Ed said.

Luke looked around. The rooms were spare. There wasn’t much to search. More concerning was that the house was small. A rocket attack would probably blast through and bring the whole thing down on top of them.

“I’m worried about the neighbors. In a minute, we’re going to be in a shooting war just holding onto this place.”

Ed had pressed himself against a cinderblock wall, away from the windows.

“Have you noticed?” he said. “Everybody seems to know when we’re coming.”

Luke looked out a window. There were already a dozen people gathered outside. Children were running in the alleys between houses, calling out. Luke wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have seen an AK-47 in someone’s hands, which disappeared quickly. Luke also pressed himself against a wall. It was getting ugly out there.

He got on the radio to the chopper pilots.

He had met the pilots for the first time today, but he had heard of them before. They were an odd couple, a woman and a man, Rachel and Jacob. They were US Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and they’d apparently flown together for years. Luke liked that about them. The 160th SOAR were the Delta Force of helicopter pilots.

Rachel was thick and muscular and as tough as they came. She looked like a Rosie the Riveter poster. You don’t join an elite group of Army special operations pilots as a woman. You brawl your way in. Meanwhile, Jacob was thin and reedy, but as steady as a rock. His calm under fire was legendary, almost surreal.

“Guys, we’re gonna need an extract down here,” Luke said.

Rachel’s voice: “How did the interview go?”