However, that would never happen if I stayed in Ohio. There weren’t too many opportunities for me growing up in Youngstown. Sure, I could’ve gone to work in the General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown like my father had, but I doubt I would’ve matched his thirty years. Boredom or the tanking economy would’ve finished me. My brother Nicolas got out himself and became an engineering professor down in Florida, while Tommy owned and operated Mitchell’s Auto Body and Repair in Youngstown. He loved cars and had inherited that passion from our father. He’d had no desire to ever leave home and had tried to persuade me to stay and run the shop with him. Because Dad was an avid woodworker, Tommy even tried to persuade me to open a custom furniture shop and work with Dad, but that didn’t sound very glamorous to an eighteen-year-old. Jennifer, the baby of our family, married a wealthy software designer, and she lived with him and their daughter in Northern California.

So I’d gone off to see the world and serve my country. Because that sounded so hokey, I told everyone I was joining the Army to pay for my college education—which Dad resented because it made us sound poor.

I can’t lie, though. During my service I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly—and it’s easy to become disenchanted. When I’d joined, I was just as naïve as the next guy, but for many years I clung to my beliefs and positive attitude, and I let my passion become infectious.

But I think after 9/11, when the GWOT (global war on terrorism) got into full swing, my veneer grew a bit worn. It didn’t happen overnight, but every mission seemed to sap me just a little more. I grew older, my body became more worn, and my spirit seemed harder to kindle.

When I raised my right hand and they swore me in, I never thought I’d have to wrap my head around no-win situations in which everyone I dealt with was a liar, in which my own institution was undermining my ability to get the job done, and in which my own friends had drawn lines in the sand based on philosophical differences.

Before my mother had died from cancer, she’d held my hand and told me to make the best of my life.

I figured she was rolling over in her grave when they started calling me a murderer . . .

Treehorn had a good ear and better eyes, and I glanced back to where he’d spotted the movement along the mountainside. My night-vision goggles revealed two Taliban fighters peering out from behind a pair of rocks, but before I could get on the radio and issue an order, Beasley appeared from behind a few rocks and slipped down toward the Taliban thugs. As they turned back, he took one out with his Nightwing black tungsten blade while Nolan, who dropped down at Beasley’s side, broke the neck of the other fighter.

Beasley called me and said, “Looks like only two up here, boss. Clear now.”

I called up Ramirez, who was packing our portable, ultrawide-band radar unit that could detect ground movement up to several hundred meters away. I’d considered leaving the device behind in case we got zapped again, but now I was glad we had it. I hadn’t expected sentries this far up into the mountains. Within a minute Ramirez would be scanning the outskirts of the town.

Off to the northeast, along a section of wall that was beginning to crumble, a pair of jingle trucks were parked abreast. The trucks were colorfully painted and adorned with pieces of rugs, festooned with chimes, and fitted with all sorts of other dangling jewels that created quite a racket as they traveled down the potholed roads between villages. These trucks had become famous and then infamous among American soldiers. They were typically used by locals to transport goods, but in more recent years they had become instruments to smuggle drugs and weapons across the borders with Iran and Pakistan. Thugs would hide weapons within stacks of firewood or piles of rugs, and young infantrymen would have to search the loads while wizened old men glared on, palms raised as they were held at gunpoint. I must’ve seen a hundred roadside incidents of search and seizure during my time in country.

That Zahed had several of these trucks in the village was unsurprising. That there was a man posted in the back of one truck and pointing his rifle up at us gave me pause.

Treehorn already had him spotted with his scope, and he’d attached the gun’s big silencer, so he could do the job in relative quiet.

I told him to wait while I scanned for more targets.

“Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez,” came the voice in my headset.

“What do you got?”

“Just the one guy in the jingle truck so far. The compound we hit looks empty. Picking up movement from all the farm animals in the pens. Nothing else, over.”

“Roger that. Hume, talk to me about the drone.”

“Nothing. Just flying around. If they’re here, they’re not taking the bait. Not yet, anyway.”

“All right, just keep flying over the town. Maybe get in close to the mosque.”

“I see it. I’ll get near the dome and towers.”

“Ghost Lead, this is Treehorn, I have my target.”

“I know you do. Hang tight for now. Still want to see if they take the bait, over.”

“Roger that. Say the word.”

I continued scanning the village, which stretched out for about a quarter kilometer, swelling to the south with dozens more brick homes that had open windows and rickety wooden ladders leading up to storage areas on the roofs. Most windows were dark, with only a faint flickering here and there from either candles or perhaps kerosene or gas lanterns. I imagined that somewhere down there, sprawled across a bed whose legs were buckling under his girth, was the fat man who wielded all the power in this region.

“Still no takers on the drone,” reported Hume.

I listened to the wind. Glanced around once more. Scanned. Saw the shooter still sitting there in the truck. Time to move in.

“Treehorn, clear to fire,” I said.

“Clear to fire, roger that, stand by . . .”

I held my breath, anticipated the faint click and pop, no louder than the sound of a BB gun, and watched through the binoculars as the gunman in the jingle truck slumped.

“Good hit, target down,” reported Treehorn.

“Ghost Team, this is Ghost Lead. Advance to the wall. Hume, get that drone in deeper, and feel ’em out. Two teams. Alpha right, Bravo left. Move out!”

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was an adrenaline junkie and that this part of the job quickened my pulse and was entirely addictive. You stayed up nights thinking about moments like this. And there was no better ego-stroking in the world than to play God, to decide who lives and who dies. There was nothing better than the hunting of men, Ernest Hemingway had once said, and the old man was right.

But I always stressed to my people that they had to live with their decisions, a simple fact that would become terribly ironic for me.

“Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez. Radar’s picking up something big behind us.”

“Ghost Lead, this is Brown. Paul and I are all set here, but FYI, two Blackhawks inbound, your position, over.”

Even as he finished his report, the telltale whomping began to echo off the mountains, like an arena full of people clapping off the beat, and abruptly the two helicopters appeared, both switching on searchlights that panned across the desert floor like pearlescent lasers.

“Ghost Team, take cover now!” I cried, dodging across the sand toward the jingle trucks.

Ramirez, Jenkins, and Hume rushed up behind me, while Nolan, Beasley, and Treehorn darted for a large section of fallen wall, the crumbling bricks forming a U-shaped bunker to shield them.

“Hume, bring back the drone,” I added. Then I switched channels to the command net. “Liberty Base, this is Ghost Lead, over.”

“Go ahead, Ghost Lead,” came the radio operator back at FOB Eisenhower.

“I want to talk to Liberty Six right now!” I could already see myself grabbing Harruck by the throat.

“I’m sorry, Ghost Lead, but Liberty Six is unavailable right now.”

I cursed and added, “I don’t care! Get him on the line!”

Meanwhile, Ramirez, who like all of us had received Air Force combat controller training, gave me the hand signal that he’d made contact with one of the chopper pilots, as both helicopters wheeled overhead, waking up the entire village. I listened to him speak with that guy while I waited.

“Repeat, we are the friendly team on the ground. What is your mission, over?”

I leaned in closer to hear his radio. “Ground team, we were ordered to pick you up at these coordinates, over.”

Ramirez’s eyes bulged.

“Tell him to evac immediately,” I said. “We do not need the goddamned pickup.”

Ramirez opened his mouth as a flurry of gunfire cut across the jingle truck, and even more fire was directed up at the two Blackhawks, rounds sparking off the fuselages.

With a gasp, I realized there had to be twenty, maybe thirty combatants laying down fire now.

I knew the choppers’ door gunners wouldn’t return fire. Close Air Support had become as rare as indoor plumbing in Afghanistan because of both friendly fire and civilian casualty incidents, so those pilots would just bug out. Which they did.

Leaving us to contend with the hornet’s nest they had stirred up.

“What do you think happened?” Ramirez cried over the booms and pops of AK-47s.

“Harruck figured out a way to abort our mission,” I said through my teeth. “He’ll call it a miscommunication, and he’ll remind me that I needed company support. But those birds had to come all the way from Kandahar—what a waste!”

“Well, he didn’t screw up our entire mission,” said Ramirez, then he flashed a reassuring grin. “Not yet!”

A breath-robbing whistle came from the right, and I couldn’t get the letters out of my mouth fast enough: “RPG!”

The rocket-propelled grenade lit up the night as it streaked across the wall and exploded at the foot of the concrete bricks near the rest of my team.

As the debris flew and the smoke and flames slowly dissipated, I led my group along the wall and back toward the brick pile, where we linked up with the others, who were stunned but all right. Nolan had found a hole in the wall, and we all passed through, reaching the first row of houses and rushing back toward them, where to our right the wall continued onward until it terminated in a big wooden gate. “We’ll get out that way,” I hollered, pointing.

We reached the first house, sprinted to the next, and then had to cross a much wider road, on the side of which stood a donkey cart with the donkey still attached but pulling at his straps. The moment I peered around the corner, a salvo ripped into the wall just above my head. I stole another quick glance and saw a guy ducking back inside his house, using his open window and the thick brick walls as cover. We could fire all day at those walls, but our conventional rounds wouldn’t penetrate.

Another glance showed a second gunman in the window next door. Two for one. Double your pleasure. Wonderful. We were pinned down.

I turned back to the group and gave Beasley a hand signal: We can’t get across. Got two. You’re up.

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate advances in weapons technology for two reasons: One, as a member of an elite gun club called the Ghosts, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the instruments that kept me alive, and two, like everyone else in the Army, I enjoyed things that went BOOM!

The XM-25 launcher that Beasley was about to present to the enemy made one hell of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar boom, which was the CPU or cost per unit.

“Hey, wait, before he fires, maybe we can call Harruck and ask for mortar support,” said Ramirez, making a very bad joke.

I snorted and gave Beasley the all clear.

The team sergeant lifted the launcher, which was much thicker than a conventional rifle and came equipped with a pyramid-shaped scope.

With smooth, graceful movement, Beasley laser-designated his target, used the scope to set range, and then without ceremony fired.

Each twenty-five-millimeter round packed two warheads that were more powerful than the conventional forty-millimeter grenade launchers. Next came the moment when gun freaks like me got our jollies: The round didn’t have to burrow through the wall and kill the guy on the other side, no. The round passed through the open window and detonated in midair, sending a cloud of fragmentation inside that would shred anyone, most particularly Taliban fighters attempting to play Whac-A-Mole with Ghost units.

The moment his first round detonated, Beasley turned his attention to window number two, got his laser on target, set his distance for detonation, and boom, by the time the echo struck the back wall, we were already en route toward the wooden gate, even as that donkey broke his straps and clattered past us.

“This one’s a keeper,” Beasley told me, patting the XM-25 like a puppy.

Before Ramirez could try the lock, Jenkins put his size thirteen boot to the wooden gate panel and smashed it open. We rushed through and ran to the right, working back along the wall while Treehorn lingered behind, throwing smoke grenades into the street to create a little chaos and diversion.

The choppers were still whomping somewhere over the mountains, out of range now, as we charged toward the foothills, only drawing fire once we reached the first ravine. There, we dove for cover, rolled and came back up, on our bellies, ready to return fire—

But I told everyone to hold. Wait. Keep low. And watch. Treehorn’s smoke grenades kept hissing and casting thick clouds over the village.

Many of the Taliban were running from the front gate, and two went over to the jingle trucks and fired them up.

“They’re going to chase us in those?” Ramirez asked.

“Looks like it,” I said. “Let’s fall back. Up the mountain, back to the pickup trucks.”

We broke from cover and ran, working our way along the mountainside and keeping as many of the jagged outcroppings between us and the village as possible. I wish I could say it was a highly planned and skillful withdrawal performed by some of the most elite soldiers in the world.

But all I can really say is . . . we got the hell out of there.

Up near the mountaintop road, we climbed breathlessly into the pickup trucks as down below, headlights shone across the dirt road. My binoculars showed the pair of jingle trucks and two more pickups with fifty-caliber guns mounted on their flatbeds. I breathed a curse.

Since Harruck had already sabotaged my mission, I decided not to throw any more gasoline on the fire. We wouldn’t engage those guys unless absolutely necessary.

Treehorn took us down the mountain road at a breakneck pace, and I was more frightened by his driving than by the Taliban on our tails. The pickup literally came up on two wheels as we cut around a narrow cliff side turn, and that drew swearing from everyone as the road seemed to give way in at least two spots.

“This thing’s got some power,” Treehorn said evenly.

We came down the last few slopes and turned onto the dirt road leading up to the bridge. With our headlights out, Smith and Brown were watching us with their NVGs and gave us a flash signal. We found them at the foot of the bridge, and Brown climbed in the back of our truck.

“Good to go, Captain,” he said. “Just give me the word.”

“Soon as we cross,” I told him.

“You don’t want to wait and take them out, too?” he asked, cocking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Nah, it’s okay. This’ll be enough.”

A double thud worked its way up into the seats, and we left the bridge and crossed back onto the sand.

“All right,” I cried back to Brown. “Blow that son of a bitch!”

He worked his remote, and the C-4 that he and Smith had expertly planted along the bridge’s pylons detonated in a rapid sequence of thunderclaps that shook both the ground and the pickups themselves. Magnesium-bright flashes came from beneath all that concrete, and just as the smoke clouds began to rise, the center section of the bridge simply broke off and belly flopped into the ink-black water, sending waves rushing toward both shorelines.

The drivers of the jingle trucks must have seen the explosions and bridge collapse, but the guy in the lead truck braked too hard, and the truck behind him plowed into his rear bumper, sending him over the edge where the concrete had sheared off. He did a swan dive toward the river, while the second guy attempted to turn away, but he rolled onto his side and slid off the edge. Three, two, boom, he hit the water.

Behind them, the two pickups with machine gunners came to brake-squealing halts and paused at the edge so that the drivers and gunners could stare down in awe at the sinking trucks—

As we raced off toward Senjaray in the distance.