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Eyes fixed on each other. Hank knew what was about to happen but prayed it wouldn’t.
    The old man brought the edge of the knife to his throat and ripped it across. The arterial spray was immense, jutting six feet away from him. The man dropped to his knees, blood gushing down his robes, and collapsed next to his camel.
    Hank turned away and contemplated the rifle.
    Do it now, he thought. Kill yourself before anyone else comes by.
    But what if my body remains infected even after I’m dead? Hank shook his head. No, get somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Then do it. As long as they don’t come within thirty feet, they’ll be okay. But go, now, before anyone else shows up.
    Hank climbed back in the truck. He dropped the rifle in the blood on the seat, turned the wheel, and drove off the highway into the desert to die.

CHAPTER FOUR
    B y the time Mike found site R91, the temperature had already hit a hundred degrees. The drive from Basra was shitty thanks in large part to his Lincoln Town Car’s barely functioning air-conditioning and a stereo that picked up only local music and the call to prayer. Once the sun rose higher, it beat down on the black car like the hammer of Vulcan.
    Mike blasted the A/C but it didn’t help. Trying to tune anything in other than tribal flare and the prayer roundup landed nothing but white noise. Hot and miserable, Mike resorted to humming Rolling Stones tunes while the constant scenery of the desert sprinkled with random palm trees and marshes along the Euphrates passed by.
    Then he hit heavy traffic on the way into An Nasiriyah just north of Jalibah. Someone had raided a truck convoy on his side of the highway. The Iraqi military had the route toward An Nasiriyah completely shut down and redirected northbound traffic onto the southbound side for a few miles.
    Apparently the armed contractors had resisted. The whole scene was one big fucking mess. The trucks were wrecked to hell, and grain and blood covered most of the highway. Then Mike saw the bodies of the contractors lined up neatly in a row on the median, cleared from the highway by military personnel. It didn’t look like anyone had survived. Mike shook his head, sorry for the families who would soon find out the fate of their loved ones.
    Once clear of that, Mike made it to An Nasiriyah only to find out site R91 was another twenty miles down the road near Ur, wherever that was. Hot, sweaty, and exhausted, Mike pulled up to a makeshift Marine checkpoint just before noon.
    Four Marines stood the guard. One checked identification while the other kept an M16A4 trained on the driver. The third and fourth Marines swept the car for explosive devices. Mike had both hands up, his wallet in his left, and his window down.
    â€œGood afternoon, sir,” the Marine checking IDs said. “Can I ask your purpose in Ur?”
    Mike smiled and handed his wallet out the window slowly. “Been asked to come up here and check out the damage. The agency wants to make sure a Revolutionary Guard unit out of Iran doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
    The Marine took the wallet and then removed and examined the ID card for Jeremiah Hosselkus. “Really? The RGs operating this far in-country? I thought they were sticking to the border and Basra.”
    Mike shook his head. “They’re financing guerilla groups all over the country, hitting infrastructure projects like crazy. Mainly sabotage ops. Nothing spectacular. Pains in the ass, more than anything. We knew a big sewer line was going in up here and thought the RG would take a stab at it. Just figured they’d wait until the progress got closer to An Nasiriyah. They usually like to hit near populated areas. Easier to blend in with the locals. Hitting a target this remote is rare outside oil pipelines.”
    The Marine nodded and flipped the ID over a couple of times in his hand. “The issue is we’ve been cleared to allow only military