Chapter 2

The staging area was maps, radios, water crates, ammunition cases, and controlled chaos under a large tension canopy. The mission was a hostage extraction: one civilian contractor, David Keller, held inside a hostile compound forty-two kilometers into the desert, alive as of the last intelligence update eleven days earlier. Morrison walked the team through the route, the timing, the extraction window, the threat positions. The compound sat low in the terrain, partly built into rock. Overwatch position marked on a ridge to the east. Front approach vector, secondary entry through a northwest drainage channel.

While Morrison spoke, I stood at the far end of the table studying the topographical chart instead of the operational map.

Cole noticed. Of course he did. His whole value to himself was noticing things and making sure the room knew he'd noticed them.

"Briefing is over here," he said.

"I hear you," I said, without looking up.

"Then why are you staring at that chart?"

"Because the briefing tells me where we're going. The topo chart tells me what the air is going to do when I get there."

The table went quiet in a way I recognized. It was the specific silence of men recalibrating, not conceding, just pausing long enough to decide whether what they'd heard was arrogance or information.

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Marcus Webb, quiet and careful in the way of someone who never wasted a question, leaned slightly toward my chart. "What do you mean," he said, "what the air is going to do?"

I looked up and moved my finger to the ridge line east of the compound. The rock face heated faster than the surrounding terrain in the afternoon. The heat rising off it would meet cooler air coming down from the elevation change two contour lines to the north. The result was a crosswind reversal at nearly the exact distance I'd be working from the marked overwatch position. I had calculated it from the topo chart, seventy-two hours of regional wind data, and tomorrow afternoon's temperature forecast, cross-referenced against the angle of the approach.