“I’d like to get a closer look.”

The man turned toward her, alarm visible on his face. “Whoa now, girl. You’re not going to try to fly low, are you?”

She gave him a withering glance. “I was thinking more about landing.”

“Come on, Randi. There’s not so much as a lizard alive down there and those canyon walls are sniper heaven. Happy hour. I’m buying.”

“When did you turn into such an old lady?”

In truth, Lieutenant Deuce Brennan was one of the most talented special forces operatives the U.S. military had ever turned out. She’d been unimpressed by his Howdy Doody looks and frat-boy demeanor when he’d arrived in country, but now used every excuse in the book to make sure he was the one watching her back.

“Look, I love you, Randi. You know I do. You’ve given me a whole new respect for you useless CIA types. But I’d like to leave here with all my body parts intact one day. And the longer I know you, the less likely that seems.”

“Five minutes,” she said, slowing to a hover and easing back the power. “Then the margaritas are on me.”

It wasn’t a bad landing by her standards, though some of the credit went to the soft sand. They jumped out immediately, a bit of an odd couple with him in full combat gear and her in khaki cargo pants and a matching T-shirt.

A scarf hid the short blond hair that made her stand out so badly in this part of the world, and she reached up to make sure none was peeking out as Deuce moved north. His eyes swept smoothly across the shadows thrown by the burned-out buildings that yesterday had been a thriving village mildly sympathetic to America’s fading occupation.

Confident that she was covered, Randi started toward the body of a young woman and crouched for a moment, examining the bullet wound in her chest and the fear still frozen into her face.

The next corpse was ten meters away and was an example of what had interested her so much from the air. There was a similar bullet wound in the chest, but the body had been decapitated and in place of the head was a circle of sand stained black by blood.

She moved from body to body, finally drawing her Beretta when she found herself among the blackened buildings. Deuce was visible about a hundred meters away and gave her the thumbs-up. Obviously, he was finding the same thing she was. Death.

Randi ducked through the door of a tiny cube of a house, holding her breath against the stench of burned human flesh and finding two charred bodies in the still-glowing embers. Both had managed to keep their heads and, judging by their size, both were children.

She reemerged into the fresh air and sunlight, continuing her search but finding no break in the pattern. No weapons. Decapitated men. Intact women and children.

She’d been sent there by Fred Klein to investigate what he had characterized—with customary vagueness—as “suspicious mercenary activity.”