1

Swann Island, South Carolina

In her dreams, Hallie Conroy was married to a hottie heart surgeon who could have graced the cover of any of the romance novels she devoured like Godiva truffles. Together they lived with a pretty four-year-old princess who looked like her, a six-year-old ball of energy whose dazzling smile—an echo of his father's—could make her forgive his youthful transgressions, and a shaggy English sheepdog named Nana straight out of Peter Pan.

Her suburban home was tastefully furnished with pieces handed down through the generations of her family. A family that, like so many others on Swann Island, traced its roots back to the American Revolution.

In her dreams, Hallie's life was blissful. Beyond perfect.

In her dreams, Hallie wasn't in a cage.

She heard the crunch of tires on gravel. The sound of a car engine cutting off. One door shut. Then a second.

Her heart sank.

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the steel bars. Although it had been a very long time since she'd believed in that hell-and-brimstone vengeful God she'd been taught to fear as a child, Hallie prayed to survive this night.

Gardez Air Base, Afghanistan
1 April

Chief Petty Officer Zachariah Tremayne had been shivering in the bite of a lingering Afghan winter for three hours. Not that Zach minded being cold. Or waiting. Being uncomfortable and forced to wait was part of a SEAL's job description. He'd known that going in, from stories his old man told about the long, wet hours hunkered down in the swampy waters of the Mekong Delta, waiting for Charlie to show up.

But in this case, for every minute that passed, the closer they were to the mission going south.

Which damn well wasn't an option.

Bad enough that the moon was riding across the sky like a gazillion-candlepower spotlight.

Worse that the sky, which had been clear as crystal only five minutes ago, had begun spitting wet snow.

Worse yet that they were only three hours and fifty-eight minutes from sunrise, and if there was one thing that would be more dangerous for his team than humping up the side of the damn Kush mountain beneath a full moon, it would be climbing it in daylight, when they'd be silhouetted against the white snow and gray sky.

It was rotten luck that the first helo had burned up an engine, requiring a replacement to be flown in from Bagram. Then they had to wait for the newly arrived bird to be refueled.

And just as they'd finally climbed aboard the Chinook, damned if the delayed timeline hadn't gone crashing into a B-52 bombing raid on nearby mountains that lit up the sky in a psychedelic pink, yellow, orange, and purple northern lights–type display.

As cool as it was to watch, the demonstration of American firepower was one more thing eating up the clock. It was vital for the planners to get their collective ass in gear.

Now.

While last week's earthquake may have shaken things up, the mountainous land in the lawless area along the Afghan/Pakistani border had already become destabilized as various factions struggled for supremacy.

Recently one al-Qaeda leader dubbed Rambo—due to his tendency of going off on his own tangents rather than sticking with any united terrorist program—had begun a move to control the entire region. Making matters worse were his taunting videos, which had put him in U.S. military crosshairs.

According to the latest intel, Rambo was holed up in one of the many subterranean tunnels. Zach's SEAL team had been tasked with finding the ratlines supplying him, locating the "bat cave," then calling in massive amounts of ordnance on it.

Having shared his take on the situation with enough brass to start their own Afghan marching band, Zach was cooling his heels with three other members of the team, breathing in the sweet airfield scent of jet fuel and oil, when Lieutenant Mike Roberts came out of the command post.

"We've got two choices," Roberts said as he spread out a map on the metal floor of the Chinook. "Since there's no way we're going to be able to reach the LZ in time to make the climb in the dark, choice number one is to abort and delay until tomorrow."

"I vote for bumping twenty-four hours."

Copyright © The Ross Family Trust, 2008.