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out. First, they found Cal, then loaded the bodies. Finally, they helped Akil aboard; he had been wounded in the arm by a piece of shrapnel from an enemy frag grenade.
    They didn’t pause to recon the scene, ID the enemy, or count enemy dead. Instead, Crocker checked Cal’s vitals while the Israeli helicopter lifted off and a last enemy round zinged off his Kevlar helmet and crashed into the ceiling.
    “Good thing you keep your bonnet on,” commented Mancini.
    The bleeding from Cal’s wounded stomach seemed to have stopped, but his pulse was even weaker than before.
    “Tell the pilot to radio ahead and have a medical team and ambulance ready,” Crocker said.
    “Roger,” Davis responded.
    Akil, seated with his back against the fuselage, his face covered with dirt and soot, his hands caked with dried blood, muttered, “Thanks.”
    Crocker sat beside him and started to roll up his sleeve to see where he’d been nicked. “Good work,” he whispered.
    But the big SEAL’s eyes were already shut, and he started snoring.
    Crocker’s arms were weary and shaking from firing the big machine gun. He took a swig of Gatorade as the pilot announced that they had entered Israeli airspace.
    No one responded.
    To his right, Crocker saw Mancini looking down at Ritchie’s tarp-covered body on the floor. The recovered Hellfires were strapped to the floor beside him. Mancini’s lips moved as though he was saying a prayer, or a goodbye.
    Feeling tears gather in his eyes, Crocker turned to the window and stared deep into the night sky. He was looking for a place to put his grief, which clung to him like a second skin. It wasn’t ready to be shed and wouldn’t be for a long time.

Chapter Four
    Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through.
    —Joseph Conrad
    S he felt like she was moving and imagined her body spinning across a dance floor. Strong, sure hands guided her. And in her mind’s eye she saw men’s faces with dark hair slicked back and the color orange.
    Lisa realized that she was sitting. But her head kept spinning, reminding her of all the things she had to do to prepare for her husband’s forty-fifth birthday, which was only six weeks away. Besides hiring the caterer and planning the meal, she had to order flowers and put together a guest list, which was always the hardest part of organizing any political gathering. Family and friends were easy. It was determining the people Clark couldn’t afford to offend that made the guest list difficult and required study and input from Clark’s legislative and administrative assistants.
    Clark himself might spend more time considering who to invite or not to invite to his birthday party than how to vote on an upcoming military appropriation bill.
    Politics were personal. And the longer Lisa lived in Washington, the more she appreciated that. Who got along with whom, which senators played poker together, or golf, or had an interest in antique cars. She reminded herself that friendships, feuds, rivalries, slights, prejudices, and dislikes defined everything from what bills could pass through the Senate, to which individuals were likely to be appointed to fill certain seats in the president’s cabinet.
    It wasn’t ideal, or the way politics were described in textbooks. But it was the way they worked.
    Realities were realities, she said to herself. One had to make tough compromises in order to lead a successful life. In the case of planning a successful birthday party for her husband, that meant drafting a guest list and e-mailing it to Clark’s legislative assistant. But when she tried to reach for her iPhone, she couldn’t move her arms. And when she tried to look at what was binding them, she couldn’t see, even though her eyes were open.
    That was when the cold reality of her situation hit her and she remembered Sedona and the armed young men in her room. Instinctively, the muscles in her neck and her sphincter tightened, and she realized that she wasn’t