She put her hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him, as she strained to hear over the wind. Had she imagined the gunshots? Maybe it was a local, startled by the ferocity of the sandstorm. More likely it was one of the newer members of her team, still not used to the violence of it.
The sand whipped up from her feet, stinging every inch of exposed skin like a thousand tiny needles. Times like these, she was grateful for the uniform that stuck to her skin in the heat and the full body armor she and her team had donned. Yes, it was a training op, but they’d chosen to take the locals into a dangerous pass, practice tactical approaches. Out here, you could never discount an ambush.
Yanking her goggles down over her eyes, Jessica blinked and blinked, trying to get the grit out. No matter how much her eyes watered, the sand wouldn’t clear. Her vision was still compromised. She hunched her shoulders upward, trying to protect the exposed skin on her face, but it didn’t matter. If this kept up, it would be raw in minutes.
Time to bug out. She lifted her radio—her best bet of them hearing through the storm—to tell the team to get back to the vehicles when another shot rang out.
Instinctively she ducked low, forcing the soldier beside her down, too. Her MP4 carbine assault rifle was up without conscious thought, but she couldn’t see a thing. Was there a real threat? Or was someone panicking in the storm?
“Report!” Jessica yelled, but her voice whipped away on the wind.
Even though it would make her a target, Jessica flipped the light on her helmet, trying to illuminate the space in front of her. Her hand brushed the camera strapped to her head, reminding her she’d been taping the training session. Little good it would do them now, even if the camera wasn’t ruined.
She didn’t expect the light to make a bit of difference, but it actually helped. Or at least that’s what she thought until she realized it was just the storm dying down as fast as it had come. She had a moment’s relief until movement caught her eye. An insurgent, darting from an outcropping in the mountain above, the muzzle on his rifle flashing.
“Take cover,” Jessica screamed as she took aim.
The insurgent ducked into a mountain crevice, but as the howling wind abated, the heavy boom-boom-boom of automatic fire took its place. He wasn’t alone.
Toggling her radio, Jessica told base, “We’re taking fire. Sandstorm moving out. Insurgents...” She paused, glancing around and trying to gauge numbers. Dread sunk low in her chest, bottoming out as she saw her soldiers racing for cover. “At least twenty, maybe more. Send—”
The radio flew out of her hand before she could finish and Jessica swung her weapon up, ignoring the way her other hand burned. She didn’t dare look to see how bad it was. First she had to assess her team. At least she’d made them wear their body armor. Brand-new and the best the army had, it was lightweight but ultrastrong. It could stop a bullet from anything short of a .50 caliber. And her soldiers were wearing full-body plating today.
It wouldn’t save them from a shot to the face or a lucky hit that found its way underneath the plates, but she had faith in their training and their gear.
Then the soldier next to her—the new recruit who’d been on her team for less than a week—let out a wail that made her stomach clench. He hit the ground hard, head thrown back at an impossible angle.
Still, Jessica dropped next to him, reaching for a pulse beneath his neck guard. That’s when she saw the bullet holes. Straight through the chest, five of them in an arced line. She slammed a hand down over them, furious at him for not wearing his vest, and pain ricocheted up her arm. Not just from the bullet that had nicked the fleshy part of her thumb, but from the hard plating that should have protected him.
Her dread intensified, a new panic like she’d never felt in the almost ten years she’d dodged bullets for the army. Her head whipped up, surveying the scene. The locals, diving for cover or already down and not moving. Her soldiers, taking hits that should have knocked them down but not taken them out, crumpling under the fire of the insurgents.
Too many of them.
The panic worsened, tensing all her muscles and dimming her vision even more, a tunnel within the specks of sand. She didn’t want to die seven thousand miles from home. Didn’t want to fail her team. Didn’t want to leave behind the kids who meant everything to her. The kids she’d taken this job to support, back when her husband was still studying for his degree. The job she’d discovered she loved enough to keep even after he was gone.
But she didn’t want to die for it.
Fire seared through Jessica’s arm and the force of the bullet made her stagger backward. She’d been hit. She shifted her MP4 to the other hand, blood from her thumb smearing across the trigger guard as she returned fire. The next shot knocked her back. She slammed into the ground, gasping for breath.
Bullets hitting your body armor always did that. Ripped the air from your lungs and left a nasty bruise.
But this time the pressure wasn’t lessening. It was getting worse. Jessica gasped for air, trying to raise her MP4 as she saw another insurgent taking aim at her. She couldn’t lift it, so she went for her pistol instead, strapped to her side and much lighter than the assault rifle.
Her fingers closed around it even as her vision began to blur. Then the whole world went dark.
Chapter One
“I assume everyone’s seen the news coverage.” Jill Pembrook, director of the FBI’s Tactical Crime Division, didn’t bother to wait until her team was settled in the
