Grant hadn’t given himself over to the Merge quite as completely. He appeared over the lip of the ditch, sighting pointlessly over his rifle to take advantage of the fact that the target was briefly fixed. A moment later a chunk of the Afghan’s left calf was torn away.

His pained cry was clearly audible as he bolted, fumbling something in his hand before leaping awkwardly over the top of a boulder. Both Deuce and Grant were firing now and Randi barely registered another spectacular shot that penetrated the back of the man’s thigh right before he disappeared. Instead, she focused on the object he’d dropped as it rolled across the ground.

“Grenade!” she shouted, but neither man heard her over the sound of their weapons.

It exploded well before it reached them, but the force of the blast sent boulders careening down the slope in a cloud of reddish dust. Grant, maybe thirty meters east of her, was in the path of the worst of it. He leapt from the shallow groove but was almost immediately engulfed by the dust.

“Shit!” Randi said in a harsh whisper, trying to will him to reappear. Luck wasn’t on their side, though, and when the air cleared she saw the dazed man struggling to reach his rifle with a leg pinned beneath a rock that probably weighed the better part of half a ton.

A shot hit the ground ten meters in front of the trapped soldier and she swore again. With too many bullets in him to go farther, the Afghan had dug in and was going to keep fighting until he bled out.

The next round was closer—four meters short and three right. It wasn’t going to take long for him to zero in.

“Deuce—are you all right?” she said, touching her throat mike.

“Fine. But Billy’s pinned and my angle on this asshole is crap.”

“I need you to keep him busy for me. On my mark. One, two, three.”

She darted from cover as Deuce let loose a series of controlled bursts upslope. It had been a hastily conceived plan and worked even worse than she expected. The Afghan either didn’t care if he took another bullet or recognized the strength of his position. He’d been ready for her to try to get to her injured comrade and a round burned through the air just in front of her face.

There was no going back, though. She let her momentum carry her, charging toward the debris left by the grenade as a round impacted the butt of the rifle on her back, spun her around, and dropped her to the ground.