A patrol car was spotlighting the house. They had probably been instructed to cruise by every half hour or so. Pike was calm. Neither his breathing nor his heart rate increased. The light worked over the house, probing the hedges and side gates for three or four minutes. Then the light died as abruptly as it appeared.

Pike followed his crimson light upstairs.

The house seemed even more quiet on the second floor, where a stain on the carpet marked the older son’s murder. Little Frank. Pike counted the years back to a deadly night on the far side of the world when Frank told Pike that Cindy was pregnant.

That time, they were protecting a collective of villages in Central Africa. A group called the Lord’s Resistance Army had been kidnapping teenage girls they raped and sold as slaves. Pike brought over Frank, Jon Stone, a Brit named Colin Chandler, Lonny Tang, and an ex-Special Forces soldier from Alabama named Jameson Wallace. They were tracking the LRA to recover sixteen kidnapped girls when Frank told him that his girlfriend, Cindy, was pregnant. Frank wanted to marry her, but Cindy had stunned him with an ultimatum—she wanted no part of his dangerous life or the dangerous people with whom he worked, so either Frank would leave his current life and friends behind, or Cindy would never see him again. Frank had been shattered, torn between his love for Cindy and his loyalty to his friends. He had talked to Pike almost three hours that night, then the next, and the next.

Pike closed his eyes, and felt the carpet beneath his feet, the chill air, the empty silence. He opened his eyes, and stared at the terrible stain. Even in the bad light, he could see where fibers had been clipped by the criminalists.

Those African nights led through the intervening years like a twisting tunnel through time to this spot on the floor. Pike covered the red light, turning the world black.

He went downstairs to Frank’s office.

The drapes had been left open by the SID crews, so the office was bright with outside light. Pike turned off his red flash. He sat at Frank’s desk with his back to the window. Frank the Tank’s desk. A long way from Africa.

THE NIGHT IN AFRICA when Frank decided to change his life, he had thirty-one days remaining on his contract, but was still thirteen days from earning his nickname. Two days after Africa, Joe, Frank, and Lonny Tang flew to El Salvador. Frank had not been able to reach Cindy until they landed in Central America, but that’s when he told her. She wanted him to fly home immediately, but Frank explained he had made a commitment for the duration of his contract, and would honor that commitment. Cindy didn’t like it, but agreed. Joe and his guys spent five days in El Salvador, then flew to Kuwait.