Patrick’s head snapped up, and he glared at his longtime partner with pure seething anger. But he also knew what David had been through in his life—he definitely knew what he was talking about.

Fourteen years earlier, while flying their first secret mission in the modified B-52 Megafortress bomber nicknamed “Old Dog” out of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center in Nevada, then-Air Force first lieutenant and B-52 bomber navigator David Luger was left for dead at a Russian air base in eastern Siberia after they made an emergency landing. He survived and was systematically brainwashed and interrogated for years. The KGB eventually convinced Luger he was a Russian aerospace engineer, and he worked to advance the state of the art of Russian stealth warplane technology by several years. After he was rescued, it took three years of intense psychotherapy to return him to normal.

“She’s alive, Dave,” Patrick said earnestly.

“You don’t know that, Muck.”

“I said she’s alive!”

“Patrick, I’m not going to argue with you,” David said. “I will help you tear that country apart to find her. But I will not let you risk your life or any of the team’s lives to go in to attempt a rescue unless we get some hard intelligence information.”

“You telling me she’s not worth it, Dave?”

“Fuck you, General,” Luger snapped. “I’m thinking like a soldier—it’s about time you start doing the same. You tell me, Muck—how many lives is worth Wendy’s? Yours? Three? Five? Ten? Fifty?”

“We risked a couple dozen to get you out of Fisikous in Lithuania,” Patrick said. “I would’ve brought a thousand more with me if I could.”

“But you had hard intelligence on where I was,” Luger reminded him. “Without that information, wearing that battle armor and marching into an armed fortress like Libya would be suicide even for a hundred commandos. And you know it.” Patrick’s head slumped wearily again. Luger sighed heavily. “Muck, your son needs you,” he said. “Why don’t you go home? The CV-22 can lift you off the deck tonight, the Sky Masters jet is waiting in Tel Aviv, and you can be home by tomorrow morning. We’ll stay out here and keep searching.” He paused, then added, “And you have a brother that needs to be mourned and buried too, sir.”

“I’m not leaving without her,” Patrick said resolutely. “Dead or alive, I’m taking her home.”