Haqqanis were a secretive Iranian military detachment.

Again Mary tried for Will’s face. His eyes were lost in the binoculars.

“Get the weapons,” he signaled in her palm.

She went to their rucks and pulled out the components. She handed Baz the grenades, the launcher, a semi pistol. She began to assemble the sniper rifle.

When Will took it, she shouldered her M4, set up her spot scope, and lay on the ground behind him. She watched the Haqqanis establish a perimeter. The site was larger than she’d realized; the men started marking off square segments.

They’d find the pickup. If they didn’t, they were pretenders. She timed their searches for each segment. First they went slowly. By the fifth segment, having found nothing, they speeded a fraction, and by the next, they were ten seconds faster, then twelve, then sixteen, their impatience building.

Will touched her hand. They smiled at each other; there was no question the men were hurrying. They both knew it. In her palm he told her, “Not us.”

They’d never vary segment-search time. They trusted automaton precision.

There were twenty-four men in all. Just as she considered that, Will’s fingers came back. “I take the head.” She saw the one in charge, his mouth in a radio. “Then ears.” She saw a radio operator by one of the jeeps. “Then arms.” The tall one smoking with the other tall one—neither doing the segments searches.

She began punching in the variables on the handheld.

Will’s fingers were back again. “Go ahead.”

She took her time. She got the calculations squared away, then realigned them. Okay, done. She checked Baz. He had the binocs. He lowered them and looked at her. He was afraid. She had no time to comfort him.

She code-punched the Prophet system case, and it flipped apart. Will’s eye still in his scope, her fingers flew on the flexed keyboard. She got the satellite. She started talking to it. All of the number strings poured in and out of her, the setup in progress, yes, no, not yet. Done. She retyped the passwords for this part of the sequence.

Her mind greased through the delicate intercepts. One was enough—no, two—get past the last, onto the other. Right. Right. Right. Right.

She’d finished. She dived for her scope and hoped to see it.

There, in the crepuscular deepening, it began. The commander was listening to his radio, and listening longer, and longer, and longer. She swept to the operator below. The music of his motions—how it shaded into her. He was talking on the com. Just talking and listening and talking and listening.

The commander motioned to the deputies. The deputies radioed the men. The men began returning, walking up the plateau or down it, wherever. They slung their carbines behind them; the assault rifles went casual on their backs. They gathered in a semicircle around the commander, nodding and talking.