Promise To Defend. Don Pendleton

had become known to the Americans, forcing him to abandon the Iraqi conflict to avoid arrest. It wasn’t that he feared death. Quite the contrary; he feared being taken alive, where he could potentially be co-opted into helping the Americans and potentially destroying all he held dear. Unwilling to let that happen, he’d moved to Paris.

      During his time in Europe, he’d prayed many times a day for the chance to exact revenge on the Americans in their own land. During his time in France, he’d been approached by recruiters from the Arm of God, a group of like-minded warriors ready to exact revenge on the West for its transgressions in the Middle East. Once he’d agreed to join, things had moved quickly for him and the other recruits. There’d been more training in Somalia, not just weapons and assassination techniques, but lessons on American culture and speech training to nearly eliminate what Westerners would consider an accent.

      Since he’d joined the group, he’d found a seemingly endless stream of money and weapons. For that, he considered himself truly fortunate, a humble warrior handed a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

      He would repay God for the opportunity by killing as many Americans as possible and facing his own death with pride, courage.

      He walked the next half mile or so keenly aware of the excitement buzzing in his stomach as he anticipated the upcoming events. As he moved, he cast the flashlight’s white beam over the narrow passage. He heard the steady, plodding footsteps of his fellow warriors and the occasional frenzied scratching of a rodent scurrying away. The light hit a wall, indicating the tunnel’s end. To his left, he saw a ladder that led into a small farmhouse on the American side of the border.

      Reaching the ladder, he extinguished the light, shoved it into the back pocket of his blue jeans and grabbed for the first rung.

      At the top of the ladder was a trapdoor fitted with two locks. When the top of his head came within a few inches of the door, he reached inside the breast pocket of his shirt, felt around until he located a pair of keys. Slipping one key into the lock farthest from him, he gave it a twist, but left it in the keyhole. Following the same procedure with the second lock, he felt his breath hang in his throat as he turned the key. According to his contact in Mexico, a biker named Ed Stephens, the door was fitted with an explosive charge set to detonate if the locks weren’t opened in a certain order and the keys left in place. Grasping the handle, he gingerly pushed the door open and breathed a sigh of relief when it came free without incident.

      Within minutes he had exited the tunnel. His comrade, Jamal Hejazi, a short man with unkempt hair and narrow shoulders, stood at his side.

      “We should look around,” Salih said, “while the others unload the equipment.”

      Hejazi nodded.

      Filling his hands with a Glock 17 and his flashlight, Hejazi a few steps behind, Salih exited the room and crept down the hallway. A sharp noise from outside the house brought him to a halt. He shot a questioning glance to Hejazi, who nodded in reply. Salih extinguished the flashlight beam, slipped into a room to his left and peered through a dust-laden window. A dark, bulky vehicle stood near the front porch. He couldn’t identify the brand of vehicle, but he immediately recognized the logo on the driver’s-side door: U.S. Border Patrol.

      His grip tightening on the pistol, he whirled toward Hejazi, but found him gone. Salih swore under his breath and trailed after his friend. As he stepped into the hallway, he heard the front door come open, squeaking on rusted hinges. Flashlights immediately pierced the darkness, sweeping over the walls. He caught Hejazi’s shadow up ahead, flattened against a wall, his handgun held next to his ear, muzzle pointing skyward.

      Hejazi gave him a look and Salih shook his head, held up his hand. Edging along the wall, he tried to bridge the gap between the two men, even as a pair of shadows overtook a nearby wall.

      “U.S. Border Patrol,” a female voice said. “We saw the vehicles out front. I want you to step out here and show yourselves. Now.”

      Salih felt fear and anger roiling within. Their contact had told them that he’d leave a pair of vans at the house for transportation. The Border Patrol agents had spotted them and decided to investigate. Had they called for backup? And, if so, when would it arrive? The notion that they’d come this far only to fail was intolerable to Salih. That a woman—a woman—had interfered and was shouting orders only increased the sting. They needed to act, to go down fighting, if necessary. But go down as men.

      Apparently, Hejazi felt the same way.

      The small man rounded the corner, his weapon rising as the flashlight beams illuminated his chest and face. The officers, their voices taut with fear, shouted for him to halt his advance. But he didn’t. The pistol cracked twice and Salih saw one of the shadows fall. A microsecond later bullets hammered into Hejazi’s chest and stomach, launching him into a backward march that ended when he collided with a wall. Unable to take another step, his limbs became rubbery and he crumpled to the floor.

      Salih, Glock held high, his heartbeat thundering in his ears, approached his old friend.

      “Officer down, damn it,” he heard the Border Patrol agent saying from the other room. The agent’s shadow loomed larger as he approached Hejazi’s corpse. “Where the hell’s my backup?”

      Despite the vengeful rage boiling within, Salih forced himself to think clearly. They needed to get out of here before more agents arrived and they ended up making a last stand here in the desert.

      The officer came into view, his handgun leveled in front of him. His eyes widened as he saw Salih. The muzzle tracked toward Salih, but he already had the American in his sights. The Glock’s report echoed throughout the corridor as a pair of 9 mm slugs caught the Border Patrol agent’s head, killing him instantly.

      By the time the American folded to the ground, Salih’s fellow warriors had flocked to his side or gathered around Hejazi, checking in vain for signs of life. He didn’t wait for them to pronounce what he already knew in his heart.

      “Take his body to the van,” Salih ordered. “We have no time to waste. For today, we must go, hide. But tomorrow the Americans will pay for his death and many others a thousand times over.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      Stony Man Farm, Virginia

      With Stony Man Mountain situated to his left, Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales stood outside the farmhouse, black eyes peering over a coffee cup’s rim, drinking in the milky orange-red line of predawn light cresting the Blue Ridge Mountains’ peaks.

      Awake since 3:00 a.m., the Able Team warrior finally had surrendered to his insomnia, showering, dressing and adjourning outside to watch the sunrise, beating it by a good fifteen minutes. Sleep rarely eluded Blancanales. A trained soldier, he usually could will himself to doze, if only for a few minutes, despite time zone shifts, adrenaline rushes or anticipated danger. In the field, sleeping, like staying alert, was a survival skill one mastered as part of a larger repertoire of skills, both practical and deadly.

      But between missions, burdened with time to think and remember, Blancanales occasionally found himself in his present circumstances: wide awake, mind littered with bits of wreckage from his past. Sometimes the ghosts just wouldn’t go away.

      Scowling, he watched a smoky-gray blanket of fog rise above the acres of hardwoods and conifers that surrounded Stony Man Farm, the nation’s ultrasecret intelligence and counterterrorism operation. Pressing the coffee cup to his lips, he slurped it, trying at once to cool and consume it.

      A voice sounded from behind. “Didn’t realize you were into sunrises.”

      Blancanales turned to see Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, Able Team’s electronics genius. Schwarz, a man of medium height and build, leaned against the farmhouse, arms crossed over his chest. Blancanales flashed his most disarming grin. “If you’d gotten here a minute later, I might have started writing poetry,” he said.

      “Or yodeling.”

      “God forbid. I leave the loud, unearthly