During high school he flourished on the ever-growing Internet but lacked the social skills to have any close friends. By the time he graduated, he was part of a hacker community that, well, got him into a little trouble. Petty stuff, initially, but his 'skillz' soon implicated him in a case of identity theft that left him staring into the eyes of a North Hollywood detective, Ms. Roberta Perez, who took him under her wing, got him off of some serious charges, and suggested that he join the army before he did something even more stupid.
Perez's brother Enrique was in the army, and he sat down with Ramirez to explain that the military wasn't just for people who couldn't hack it in society like Ramirez had thought.
Ramirez wouldn't lie and say that the army didn't have its share of dummies and criminals (like most government-run organizations), and he had encountered a few of those exceptional individuals during boot camp. But his time in boot was life altering. His drill sergeant, Paul 'Papa' Montgomery, had taken a liking to him, and, after driving him to within an inch of death, Montgomery had practically ordered Ramirez to apply for Ranger School.
Long story short, he was accepted and served two tours right here along the border and had already won the Purple Heart and a Silver Star — all while working on his undergraduate degree in history.
And then some administrators at Officer Candidate School got the bright idea to offer him a desk job.
Were they kidding? They'd advertised it like a promotion, even hinted that he was getting a little old for the battlefield. He was now only thirty-one.
Ramirez had tried to be polite, saying what an honor it was to be offered a desk job after engaging in some of the most exciting, adrenaline-pumping operations known to mankind. Yes, what an honor it would be to replace ink-jet toner cartridges and squint at applications files stored via outdated software instead of thwarting the efforts of those who wanted to terrorize and control others.
All right, so maybe he wasn't exactly polite. His wiseass attitude and keen sense of humor were the products of years of living in the field and contending with the great ironies of life. The high school introvert had finally grown up.
It was Lieutenant Colonel Harold 'Buzz' Gordon himself, a member of one of the first Ghost teams and now a legend, who had rescued Ramirez from the world of simulated wood grain and stress balls. While some called Gordon 'the old man,' Ramirez was more fond of 'O-G,' not for 'Original Gangsta' but for 'Original Ghost.' Lieutenant Colonel Gordon, the O-G, was a man of impeccable taste and unparalleled foresight, in Ramirez's humble opinion.
And Ramirez felt certain that Captain Mitchell had picked him for this mission because of Gordon's recommendation and because of his Ranger experiences in the region. Ramirez was intimately familiar with the people and the terrain. While his Dari and Pushtan weren't bad — never as good as Diaz's — his Arabic was pretty impressive. He even knew a little slang that could incite some folks.
He glanced over at Marcus Brown, who, despite being a burly African-American rising some six feet four inches, appeared lean and white, his face half obscured by his breath.
Seeing how intense Brown was made Ramirez want to lower his weapon and start unzipping his fly — but he thought better of trying to get a laugh now. Sometimes he took the humor too far.
The captain stole his way toward them, then hunkered down behind Ramirez as Diaz, with her mild Texas accent, cut in over the radio, 'Ghost Lead. I'm in my secondary. Good to go. Waiting for you.'
They were seconds away from initiating the raid, and in his mind's eye, Ramirez went over the interior of the house one more time.
The structure was rectangular, single-story, just a thousand square feet if that. The door was positioned on the left side, forcing them to move deep into the house, past a partitioning wall to get to their package.
Two of the four Taliban were lying in the forward room, near the fireplace, while the other two were in back, in the colder part of the house with the hostages.
This complicated things. They couldn't ram through the door, shoot the first two guys, and hope the guys in the back wouldn't kill the friendlies.
They had to get into the house quietly, dematerializing and walking through the walls, then returning to normal inside.
Damn, it'd be nice to have that power.
Instead it was up to Ramirez to kneel down, fish out his tool pouch, and begin picking the lock.
And no, the door was not unlocked. He always checked that first.
'Ghost Lead, this is Diaz. I got one coming out of the back house. He's stopping, lighting up a cigarette.'
In five seconds that guy could round the corner and spot them. Ramirez almost had the lock.
'Diaz, can you take him out?' asked the captain.
'It's not clean. He's in a bad spot. And he seems a little weird now, might be getting ready to look for his buddy. I don't have a shot. No shot.'
'Brown, go get him,' ordered the captain.
Although Sergeant Marcus Brown was born and raised in the windy city of Chicago, he and cold weather still had a hate-hate relationship. The blood had never thickened, he liked to say. He was a rebel to the core, battling against his parents, nature, and the entire universe. He wouldn't have it any other way.
Swearing over the subzero breeze, he skulked around the back of the house, drawing his Russian-made Tula Tokarev (TT-33) with silencer.
Brown wasn't fond of the old pistol, which was once a status symbol among the Taliban in Waziristan. He preferred the more accurate, more reliable, more-of-everything Px4 Storm SD, thank you. Still, familiarizing yourself with as many weapons as possible, especially those of your enemies, was part of every Ghost's training.
Brown unsheathed his Blackhawk Masters of Defense Nightwing and took it into his left hand in a reverse grip. He wasn't expecting to use it, but you never knew. The fixed blade had a fiberglass nylon handle with wing- walk inserts, a black tungsten diamondlike carbon (DLC) finish, and a serrated spine, giving him a secondary edge for back cuts and draw cuts. The blade was 5.9 inches of pure death, and he considered it the American Express card of knives — because he never deployed without it.
Some of the Ghosts teased Brown about his affection for the knife. Everyone carried one type of folder or fixed blade for utility purposes; you wouldn't find a soldier who didn't. Odd thing was, Brown had earned his reputation not as a knife-wielding martial artist but as a gunner carrying the heavy Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) and its variants through the deserts of Africa during his early Special Forces assignments.
Prior to that he'd served with the Second Infantry Brigade in Iraq, and he rarely shared the story of that night in Fallujah, when his squad had been ambushed while on dismounted patrol — and his knife had kept him alive.
They'd been moving through an alley toward several residences where a suspected insurgent and his brother were living. They never made it. Withering gunfire came from everywhere, it seemed.
Brown pulled three wounded squad mates to safety and continued to hold off at least a half dozen insurgents for fifteen minutes until he'd run out of ammo and couldn't reach his fallen brothers' packs. Then, before his backup arrived, the bad guys moved in.
He could have panicked. He could have done something rash like trying to evacuate the others, one by one, but he knew that would only get him shot.
So he did something desperate, something he thought only worked in the movies. He'd had no choice.
Brown instructed the others to play dead, and he did likewise.
The first guy drew up on him in the dark, leaned over, and that's when Brown sat up and punched him in the heart with his Nightwing.
As the guy fell back, Brown seized the man's weapon, finished him, and reengaged the others. The ensuing firefight lasted another five minutes before his backup arrived, and Brown was twice wounded.
From that day forward, the Nightwing never left his side. Even in a world of high-tech warfare, cold, hard steel could never be replaced, and neither could a warrior's will to survive.
He always grimaced when he thought about being nominated for the Silver Star for his actions that night, not because the nomination made him feel awkward but because his parents had offered only a halfhearted acknowledgment.
Brown imagined them sitting in their million-dollar home in Lake Forest, cursing over the fact that he had thrown it all away, dropped out of the University of Illinois, abandoned his position as a defensive lineman on the
