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splattered Jason’s face. Christ, someone was taking a leak inches from his nose! Worse, the thought increased his own urge.
    There was a cry and then another from the village, a swelling of voices that blended into a single wavering ululation and handclapping that Jason guessed was a traditional tribal greeting. Above it, he heard the sound of engines.
    Footsteps crashed around him and retreated toward the sound.
    Jason counted slowly to sixty before he dared look up. Six armed men were between him and the village, running to where a cavalcade of vehicles was charging down the narrow space between huts. A World War II vintage jeep with a mounted fifty-caliber machine gun led two Mercedes limousines followed by another armed jeep. All halted in swirling dust in front of the platform.
    Forgetting his bladder’s protests, Jason trained the scope on first one and then the other Mercedes as their passengers emerged. Although he had never seen the man in person, he recognized Moustaph immediately. He wore the traditional white headdress and flowing robes of his Bedouin ancestors. Carefully placing the scope’s crosshairs between the Arab’s eyes, Jason breathed deeply and felt his finger tighten on the trigger.
    It took an act of monumental willpower to relax it.
    Instead of the dark, bearded face, Jason was seeing the tiny office, more a cubicle, really, at the Pentagon on a bright late-summer day. Captain Peters, J. had already handed in his resignation from Delta Force, the Army’s super-elite commandos. His last month would be spent shuffling paper in Washington instead of crawling through or jumping into some of the world’s least hospitable places. He was looking forward to the day he would exchange his uniform for faded jeans and paint-splattered T-shirts. His pictures were selling well and he would soon have enough for half of the down payment on that house on the beach in the British West Indies he and Laurin were going to buy. Her real-estate investments, the ones she had inherited from her mother, would easily have covered the sum, but Jason insisted he put his money into the home too.
    They had seen their last cold, drab DC winter.
    Laurin, his wife of three years and a junior partner in one of Washington’s premier law firms, had surprised him that morning by walking into the cubicle. Like most DC law firms, public relations—or more plainly, lobbying—was a major source of business.
    Lobbyists, the people we hire to protect us from the people we elect.
    One of her firm’s major clients was the United States Army, which, like any large business, had its special needs that required congressional attention (or, at times, a specific lack thereof).
    On this particular morning, she had finished her appointment early and dropped by to offer to fetch Jason a cup of coffee from the officers’ mess two floors below. His mouth sour from the brand that came out of the Mr. Coffee in his office, he had readily assented.
    In the confusion that ensued almost immediately, the one thing he remembered clearly was glancing at his desk calendar: September 11, 2001.
    They never found her amid the charred wreckage. Oddly, the one thing that survived was the simple gold wedding band, identified by the engraving inside: their initials, the date of the wedding, and per aevum —for eternity. He still wore the ring on a chain around his neck. He needed nothing to remind him of her. She was in his thoughts always, a fact Maria not only accepted, but also found endearing. But in places like this, the pressure of the ring against his chest reminded him he was not just doing a job; he was on a crusade. Money was not the point. He had more than he would ever spend, but he would never fully enjoy it until those responsible for Laurin’s death had paid in full.
    It had quickly become apparent that 9/11 was not going to be avenged anytime soon and the so-called War on Terror would be the typical political football. Instead of simply nuking