EndWar

Major Stephanie Halverson, USAF (“Siren”)

Captain Jake Boyd, USAF (“Ghost Hawk”)

Captain Lisa Johansson, USAF (“Sapphire”)

STRYKER BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM

Captain Chuck Welch, Company Commander

Staff Sergeant Marc Rakken (“Sparta Six”)

Sergeant Timothy Appleman, Vehicle Commander

Private First Class Penny Hassa, Vehicle Driver

USS FLORIDA SSN- 805

Commander Jonathan Andreas

“Jack” (Operations Officer)

Senior Chief Radioman Sheldon

Chief Electronic Technician Burgess

“Dan” (Communications Officer)

JSF NAVY HIGH COMMAND, HONOLULU

Admiral Donald Stanton, Commander, Pacific Fleet (COMPACFLT)

Admiral Charles Harrison, Commander, Submarines, Pacific

“Smitty” USS Florida’s Submarine Squadron Commander

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Vsevolod Vsevolodovich Kapalkin, President

General Sergei Izotov, Director of the Glavnoje

Razvedyvatel ’noje Upravlenije (GRU)

Colonel Pavel Doletskaya (GRU)

Major Alexei Noskov, Tactical Operations Officer (“Werewolf”)

Colonel Viktoria Antsyforov (GRU)

Commander Ivan Golova, commander of the Ulyanovsk

Captain Pravota, Ka-29 chopper pilot

Captain Second Rank Mikhail Anatolyevich Kolosov, commander of the Romanov

Alexi Vasiliev, aka William Bullard, Russian mole

EUROPEAN FEDERATION

President Nathalie Perreau

General Amadou Bankole, EF Enforcers Corps

Capitaine Ilaria Cimino, EFEC Executive Officer

CANADA

Robert Emerson, Prime Minister

“Khaki,” chopper pilot and ex-Canadian Special Forces

TERRORIST

Green Vox (symbolic head of the Green Brigade Transnational)

MAPS

^{Map concept by James Ide Graphic design by Carole McDaniel}

^{Map by Carole McDaniel}

^{Map by Carole McDaniel}

ONE

“He’s coming around! Everybody get—”

Team Sergeant Nathan Vatz never finished his sentence. The Russian T-100 main battle tank on the opposite end of the intersection finished it for him.

Vatz slammed onto his gut, sliding across the rain-slick pavement as the office building fifty meters ahead exploded with a thunderous boom.

Shards of concrete, glass, and mangled metal arced into the cold night and fell in a hailstorm on the blackened remains of the HMMWVs and a pair of eight-wheeled Stryker infantry combat vehicles, behind which Vatz’s special forces team had taken cover. A black rose of smoke backlit by fire bloomed across the intersection, driven by a wind thick with the stench of cordite.

With a sudden lurch, the fifty-ton tank rumbled closer, its 152mm smoothbore main gun swiveling menacingly, tracks grinding over the bodies of the rifle squad — the tank’s first victims — who’d been hit as they’d dismounted from one of the Strykers.

Vatz wiped sweat from his eyes, cleared his throat, and spoke into the tiny voice-activated boom mike at his lips: “Victor Six, this is Vortex, over?”

His voice had cracked. Calm down. They just had to get the hell out of here. That was it.

But now their exfiltration had gone to hell. No bird to swoop in, land on the rooftop helipad, and whisk them to safety. No nothing.

And that tank wasn’t operating alone. The rest of that platoon had to be nearby, with dismounted forces from the BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles parked outside the gate.

“Victor Six, this is Vortex, over?”

Where was the rest of his twelve-man team? They’d been right behind him, and the captain had been holding up in that doorway, which was now empty.

Vatz bolted to his feet, darted back behind the still-burning hulk of a Mercedes SUV, and suddenly raised his pistol, about to fire—

When he realized the men down the alley were friendlies, his team, easy to mistake because of their Russian Spetsnaz uniforms.

Weapons Sergeant Zack Murrow had already shouldered the Javelin antitank missile they had recovered from one of the dead infantrymen and was moving toward the street, about to lie prone and get a bead on that