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disaster. Mack’s warriors could see the ambulances now, and the fire trucks, not to mention the pure hopelessness of trying to carry the dead away from the searing heat and melting metal.
     
    The rescue services were from the U.S. ar-Ramadi base, some fifty miles to the south. They had been on another rescue mission, a roadside bomb farther north, but had turned back immediately when news came in of the attack on the SEALs at Abu Hallah.
     
    Mack Bedford exercised a hard-earned caution about getting too close to burning vehicles when there was still a lot of gasoline in the immediate area. He signaled his convoy to halt, well short of the fires, around fifty feet beyond the bridge. He alone jumped out onto the road and walked toward the disaster area. A young SEAL lieutenant, dressed in battle cammies and carrying a rifle, walked toward him. The two knew each other well, and Lt. Barry Mason said simply, “Thanks for coming, Mack. Afraid there’s not much we can do right now, except wait. We got ’em pinned down in that building over there. But they got us pinned down right here, and I’m not anxious to break cover until we’ve cleared ’em out.
     
    “Jesus Christ. You shoulda seen the missiles they hit us with. Both of ’em went straight through the fuselage of the tanks. Holy shit. Like a goddamned hot knife through butter.”
     
    Mack Bedford could already feel the heat in more ways than one. “These fires start when the explosive reached the fuel tanks?”
     
    “Hell, no. They seemed like part of the missile. Everything ignited right away. The guys never had a chance. They were burned alive. I could see two of ’em trying to get out, but the flames were kinda blue and burned like chemicals. We couldn’t get near them. Christ, it was hot. No survivors.”
     
    “Obviously the Diamondhead,” said Mack.
     
    “No doubt,” replied Lieutenant Mason. “Couldn’t have been anything else. Fucking thing. Never seen anything more horrible than that. And this is my third time in Iraq.”
     
    Mack nodded. For the first time he could see tears streaming down the young SEAL’s face, a certain sign of the shattering cruelty he had witnessed along the south road down the Euphrates.
     
    For a few moments, neither man spoke. They just stood back and stared at the misshapen, seared, and twisted metal of the tank, each of them trying to fight away the terrible thought of their brothers who had been incinerated inside the cockpit. For Barry Mason it was all about sadness, remorse, and, inevitably, self-pity, as the brand-new memories of his lost friends stood starkly before him. For Mack, it was something altogether different. Deep in the soul of the SEAL commander there was a constantly burning flame of vengeance. Mostly, it just flickered and could be ignored. Mackenzie Bedford knew full well that all military leaders need to be free of cascading emotion, because anger and resentment are the first cousins of recklessness. But all of them carry this unseen burden, and they constantly grapple to avoid being forced into hasty decisions.
     
    Mack Bedford often found it more difficult than most to hold back the demons that urged him to lash out at his enemy with all the uncontrolled violence he could summon. He even had a name for the surge of fury that welled within him. He called it the “hours of the wolf,” a phrase he recalled from some morbid Ingmar Bergman movie. It was a phrase that perfectly described his feelings, mostly in the hours before dawn, when he could not sleep and yearned only to smash his enemy into oblivion.
     
    Right now, standing on this burning desert road, watching the molten iron tombs of his fellow SEALs and three Rangers, Mack entered the hours of the wolf. And deep inside he could sense that familiar burgeoning rage, currently aimed at everything about this godforsaken hellhole in which he must serve.
     
    He turned his head sideways to the hot wind and stared across the river, at the