None of us said what all of us were thinking. Those marks might have been the result of some prolonged torture. I knew Finn pretty well, and his boys. They were rough and they were harda.s.ses, but I was sure I'd have pegged them as guys who couldn't do this.

On the other hand, I'd been wrong before.

I tapped my earbud for the command channel. "Cowboy to Bug."

It took a few seconds before I got anything but static.

Then, "Cowboy? Jeez, man, what happened?"

"What do you mean what happened? We just got ambushed by four Taliban shooters. I thought you said this valley was empty."

"I think we have a satellite malfunction. And sat phone is acting funky, too. NASA tells us it's sunspots."

"f.u.c.k NASA."

"Thermals tell me no one but Echo, then a whole bunch- thirty or forty-then no one at all. It's weird."

"Go bang the thermals with a hammer then, G.o.dd.a.m.n it.We nearly got our d.i.c.ks handed to us."

"It's in s.p.a.ce, Cowboy," he complained. "Only so much we can do. s.h.i.t, wait, the board just lit up again. Counting six-no, ten-jeez, fourteen signals coming to you from the west. Satellite's only giving us grainy c.r.a.p, but it looks like three vehicles. Jeez, Cowboy, you've got a Taliban team zeroing your twenty." He read the map coordinates. "Four klicks out and coming fast."

"Swell."

"Hey!" he yelped, but it wasn't at me. "Cowboy, be advised, RFID tracking chips for Cheech Wizard, Jazzman, and Bear have come back online. Intermittent but . . . no, the signals are strong. Four klicks to the southwest. Looks like they're on an intercept course with the Taliban, all three."

"What about Finn?"

But the line dissolved into static.

We looked at each other. Top had the coordinates up on his computer and he pointed the way. Straight down the valley we were in.There was a sluggish breeze coming from that direction, and as he listened, we thought we heard thunder.Way off in the distance.

We all knew it wasn't thunder.

"Rattlesnake," said Bunny.

And then we were running.

7.

rAttlesnAke teAm

Six days ago . . . Finn didn't remember walking away.

He didn't remember much of anything.

All he knew was that when his mind started becoming aware of things,

there were no bodies on the ground. No cave. No voices. He was miles and miles from where he'd deployed with his team.

His team.

Cheech Wizard. Bear. Jazzman.

This morning, they had been so full of life. Big, covered in the scars they'd earned fighting genuine threats to the world. Men who had saved the world. The actual world.

Now . . .

He closed his eyes-his real eyes and his inner eye-in hopes of shutting out the image of those things that had been scattered across the valley floor. Those impossible things with their impossible eyes.

Things that could not have been his men.

His friends.

They call it being "brothers in arms," but it went so much deeper than that. He and those men were brothers, more so than if they'd been born of the same mother.

Brothers.