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billowed skyward into an orange fireball unfolding from the hillside above Zabeir. Cotter kept his binoculars on the Iraqis near the C-130. All were standing in the open now, staring into the flames with gaping mouths.
    â€œKnock, knock,” Higgins said. “Avon calling.”
    Then the sound of the bomb blast thundered down from the hill, and Cotter’s hand touched Brown’s shoulder. “Do it!”
    The sniper’s rifle bucked in the SEAL’s hands, its crack swallowed by the distant waterfall roar of the explosion. On the control tower’s deck, the lone Iraqi guard pitched backward, dropped his weapon, then collapsed unmoving onto the walkway. Brown had already shifted targets, aiming toward the Hercules where the guards were pointing at the explosion and calling to one another. He fired again, and one of the Iraqis, the red triangle of the Republican Guard plainly visible on the sleeve of his fatigues, spun back into the boarding steps, arms akimbo.
    Before his comrades could react, four night-clad figures, torsos bulky with unfamiliar gear, faces painted black and heads shrouded by balaclavas and the insect-glitter of night-vision goggles, materialized out of the shadows and opened fire.
    Brown shifted targets again and, one by one, began knocking out the spotlights surrounding the plane.

3

0237 hours (Zulu +3) Shuaba Airport runway, Iraq
    Hollywood depictions to the contrary, no sound-suppressed weapon is completely silent. The MP5SD3s carried by the three SEALs in the aircraft assault element came close, though, the high-speed whirr of their bolts louder than the stuttering cough of their firing. Roselli sent two quick three-round bursts into the center of mass of one of the Iraqi soldiers at a range of fifty meters, jerking the man back and tossing him aside like a string-cut puppet. To either side, Doc Ellsworth and Mac MacKenzie loosed sharp, controlled bursts in synch with Roselli’s, taking down the last three Iraqi guards in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Boomer Garcia backed them up, ready with his M-16/M203 combo as he scanned the darkness encircling the C-130.
    Roselli raced to the parked Hercules, feeling vulnerable. The terminal building loomed beyond the aircraft, the slanted windows of the control tower dark and empty and threatening. He ducked beneath the C-130’s wing, pausing to put another three-round burst into the sprawled body of one of the Iraqi soldiers. Nearby, Doc made sure of another one.
    During the mission planning, there’d been some discussion as to whether or not they should take prisoners, especially at this stage of the operation when some hard intel about whether or not the Iraqis had already boarded the aircraft would be damned useful. The final decision had been that there would be no time to interrogate prisoners, no time to cross-check their stories for confirmation. Better to just hop-and-pop, relying on speed and surprise to overcome any bad guys waiting aboard the Herk. As for taking prisoners, well . . . shooting POWs was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention. Third Platoon’s written orders directed them to handle prisoners “according to SOP,” which everyone understood to mean that there would be none.
    â€œClear!” Ellsworth called from the other side of the aircraft.
    â€œClear!” MacKenzie called from the foot of the boarding ladder.
    One Iraqi body lay on its back, left arm thrown across its chest in an awkward position. As Roselli approached, the arm slipped down and flopped limply onto the tarmac. Instinctively, he triggered a burst into the man’s chest. “Clear!”
    â€œAlfa, Bravo,” MacKenzie said over his tactical radio. “Stage one, clear. Five tangos, five down. Going to stage two.”
    Tangos —SEAL talk for terrorists. These Iraqis weren’t terrorists, Roselli knew. They were just soldiers, doing what they’d been told to do.
    Unfortunately for them,