The president’s tepid support of my extended mission would only last twelve hours or so; enough time to get me a decent head start. By so doing, though, I endangered my team, their careers, and their families, forcing me to confront the perpetual dilemma of “men or mission.” The mission, though, if we were right, more than qualified for the risks we were taking and the jeopardy in which I was placing my team.

  As we were landing, the sun was rising over the Sea of Dakhla and the golden sands of the Sahara six miles farther east. The sunlight lifting above the water and terrain was an illusion of sorts. It painted a beautiful morning sky with orange and golden streaks across the pristine waters separating the Dakhla Peninsula from the African continent mainland. The image was an imposter, though, a charlatan that tricked you into thinking it had your best interests in mind with its alluring pastels. The problem was God never turned down the daytime heat on the Saharan stove, and as day progressed, the sun continued to rage, baking, and suffocating everything. We would have to carefully plan our operations for nighttime execution with solid exfil plans to reset and rest during the day until we were successful.

  No matter how illusory the mainland appeared, the peninsula looked peaceful in its remoteness. I thought of Sly Morgan’s missions here in support of gathering intelligence during the meetings for the Dakhla Accords. The reports we studied on the flight and previously were voluminous and, like all intelligence, inconclusive. His imagery, like the one of Sanson, Gambeau, and the others at a castle, were snapshots in time. They did, however, piece together what was happening. Why were Secretary of State McHenry and Secretary of Defense Blankenship spending so much time here with a delegation from China and France? What was to be gained in this remote part of the world that warranted the investment of so much time from such high-level political appointees? Did Sanson’s mission in the Sahara hold the key?

  Our plane pulled into the same hangar we had used for the exfiltration of Stockton two weeks ago. As we were deplaning from the cargo ramp in the rear, one of the pilots of the C-17 came down the steps and asked to speak to me. We walked toward a corner of the hangar where pallets were stacked with our equipment set for return. McCool and her team rolled the Beast off the back ramp. Then a couple of forklifts fired up and began filling the back of the C-17. Even the air force special operations logisticians were pros.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy West was an air force special operations pilot who could fly every operational airframe in the air force inventory and several in the army’s. A modern-day Chuck Yeager, West had flown us on cargo missions and rotary insertion and extraction missions. He was a good friend and a force to be reckoned with. Tall and muscular, West was an imposing figure in his flight uniform. We huddled in the corner of the hangar as the engines whined on their spin down. He leveled his blue eyes on me and smiled.

  “General, I got a call about two-thirds of the way here that we were to turn around and come back to Bragg, or if we were committed because of fuel, to land, load, and reposition in Rota. Know anything about that?”

  “First I’m hearing,” I said.

  “Our missions, like yours, are compartmented, but I would like to know how far you want me to put my neck on the chopping block here. We left here with SOCOM and TRANSCOM approval for a simple equipment haul-back. I already told them I didn’t have the fuel to get back, which was true, and that I would reposition to Rota as soon as we got refueled and loaded, which they have now ordered me to do.”

  “I think that’s what you should do,” I said.

  “The funny thing is they asked me to, as the air mission commander, pull rank on you and not let you off the aircraft.”

  “Seems you failed at that.”

  He smiled. “And now that you’re off the aircraft, you outrank me, and I have no authority over you. So I’m respectfully requesting you to get back on the aircraft.”

  “Request denied,” I said.

  “As I figured it might be.”

  “You can report that we disobeyed you and went rogue.”

  “Well, that probably won’t be necessary, though they are going to have some questions about why I allowed you to off-load—or onload, for that matter—your Black Hawk helicopter.”

  I retrieved my officer’s Beretta pistol from my hip holster and held it low, pointed at the cement flooring, trigger finger along the rail.

  “You can now say that I drew my weapon and demanded that you allow me to off-load my helicopter.”

  He nodded and smiled again. “I only like dancing with my wife, General, but here we are.”

  I holstered my weapon. “Jeremy, how many missions have we done together?”

  “Arkansas public schools don’t teach math that high,” he said.

  “Right. Since you pulled that stunt in Afghanistan, I’m guessing you understand my mission here.”

  “I wouldn’t claim to know your mission, but if it involves recovering an American citizen related to Sly, I want in.”

  The dance had not been about covering his ass but about wanting in on the mission.

  West continued, “I can just tell them I had a loose cotter pin and had to land here and then my crew chief busted a hexagonal flange and found an inoperable jackscrew gyro, and before we knew it, the army assholes had done their thing and I couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle or use some other fancy phrase that will make them nod like they understand.”

  I replied, “I understand that hexagonal flanges are hard to get and that jackscrew gyros are mission essential, not to mention anything of the import of cotter pins. If we didn’t have those operating at peak performance, the plane could go down. The military wouldn’t worry so much about the soldiers and airmen as they would about losing a three-hundred-million-dollar airplane, all because of a ten-dollar hexagonal flange, a twenty-dollar jackscrew gyro, and a five-cent cotter pin.”

  “I can order more fictional hexagonal flanges and jackscrew gyros, General. That’s not the issue. People are the issue, as they always are. Getting serious for the moment, after the trauma I’ve seen my men and women go through the last year or two, we have to do everything we can to help our people. We broke a solemn fucking bond to our men and women in uniform. Only guys like you and me can restore that.”

  West had disobeyed orders as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan by pulling out twenty U.S. citizens and Afghan Special Forces who had been protecting them after the August 31 deadline. He had flown in from Tajikistan as the Taliban were overrunning Panjshir Valley and plucked everyone he could to safety. West was that special breed of warrior who always seemed to be on the same objective as the rest of us when the gunfire started.

  “Still keeps me up at night,” I said. “Watching our people get their throats cut.”

  He nodded.

  “Best course of action is to reposition to Rota, as I’ve been directed, order some hexagonal flanges and jackscrew gyros in the twenty-four hours of crew rest we are authorized, and you probably need to ferry that helicopter around, making sure you’ve got all of your equipment. If you’re back in twenty-four hours, call me, and I’ll reroute to get you here and take the ass chewing when I’m back,” he said, holding his cell phone. “If you’re not back in twenty-four hours, I’m going to fly this bitch back to Bragg and be on the first flight here from Raleigh. If you’re still here, good. If not, I’ll try to find you.”

  “That’s a deal on the first part. On the second part, if we’re not back, we’ll be long gone, Jeremy. You’ve got a family to take care of,” I said.

  “I love my wife of twenty-five years and my four snot-nosed kids, but this here is every bit as much family to me,” he said, waving his hand around the hangar with the team busy doing all the things he was supposed to prevent them from doing.

  “You got it. If we’re here, we’re here. If not, be safe trying to find us.”

  “That’s all I can ask for. Got some leave coming up, anyway. But if you don’t mind me saying, this is one hell of a big risk you’re taking. Only the chairman or that dipshit Luckey would call down and try to cancel this mission. So, while this part is okay, getting the gear and going back, what you’re doing is unauthorized. Not that I give a shit about authority, but you gotta know they’re going to cut your satellite feeds, comms, GPS, everything. You’ll have no intel, no support.”

  “Yes. On the upside, sort of eliminates the eight-thousand-mile screwdriver,” I said. I had thought about those concerns. They were huge issues, but not insurmountable.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, General. Never underestimate a politician’s ability to fuck you over no matter where you are in the world.”

  I nodded in general agreement.

  “And I don’t need to tell you this, but your people—Hobart, Van Dreeves, McCool—they’d follow you through the raging fires of hell.”

  His point was one I had spent the better part of the flight thinking about. Like West, they all had hopes and dreams, something to live for beyond combat or whatever trouble I was about to get them into. Van Dreeves and McCool had rekindled their relationship. Wang and Black both had significant others. Chief Warrant Officer Jorge Suarez, McCool’s new copilot who had maxed out Nightstalker selection, was married with two children. Hobart had Zoey, we hoped. And there was me, with my children, Brad and Reagan, already responsible adults. Our love was strong, for sure, but could they survive without me? Most likely. The real question was, would they prefer me as a whole person who lived my values authentically or someone who had given away a part of myself to continue to move up the ladder of “success”?

  We all knew the answer to that.

  I was reminded of that Janis Joplin refrain, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose …

  I was at that point of having nothing left to lose, but my team deserved a fair discussion about the mission, and I was going to give them one.

  “You need to reposition to Rota, correct?”

  “I could risk staying here, but it’s a risk for my crew, too, and they’re not as frisky as your team. My preference would be to push our crew rest window and reposition to Rota. You and I both know that there’s no such thing as hexagonal flanges or jackscrew gyros, but it sounds good to the brass.”

  “Give me forty-five minutes. Anyone on my team not showing up is choosing to stay. I won’t show up, so have a safe trip back, Jeremy. I hope not to see you again for a while,” I said.

  “For a while,” he said, looking away and then at me. We did the warrior hand-to-forearm clasp and bumped shoulders.

  As McCool and her crew were finishing spreading the blades on the Beast with the help of Wang and Black, I summoned Hobart and Van Dreeves.

  “Team meeting as soon as Sally is done with her checklist and has the Beast tied down.”

  They alerted the team, and fifteen minutes later, we were in the same spartan office bay where we had spoken with Stockton and recovered from the mission two weeks ago.

  Hobart, Van Dreeves, McCool, Wang, Black, and Suarez gathered in front of me, none of them choosing to sit down, most likely expecting to sprint out of the room and pursue actionable intelligence on Zoey’s location.

  I studied my team, each member with a river of experiences we collectively shared, save Suarez, who had maxed out in Nightstalker selection. They stared at me expectantly.

  “Team, we’ve had a good run-up until two weeks ago. I made some mistakes that I should have foreseen. The last couple of years have been tough. The veteran community is shattered, not to mention those of us who remain on active duty. There comes a point in time where I must ask myself if I can continue to serve a government that abandoned our people and our allies in a combat zone. For a while, I thought I could do more from within the system than from outside and had concluded until two weeks ago that staying inside was the proper course of action.

  “But now I have a decision to make because I’m concerned our government will not authorize us to begin active search and rescue operations for Zoey and to then conduct subsequent operations. We have until this point been mostly between the guardrails. Joe and Randy have all the approvals for our flight here. We got a wink and a nod from the air force to include the Beast because there was the potential that some ammunition and gear might need to be transported from the ammunition bunkers twenty miles away. But the brass is onto us—rather, they’re onto me. They’ve requested we reposition with the C-17 to Rota, Spain. Also, you need to know that I am the subject of an active inspector general investigation into the incidents surrounding the secretary of state’s demise during the Parizad incident.”

  “Don’t say it, boss,” Hobart said. He had no idea what I was about to say, but I understood his comment. The less they knew, the better. They could go on this mission believing they were following lawful orders. Even though he was angry at me for allowing Zoey her head start, he was able to rise above his emotions and see the bigger picture.

  I nodded at Hobart and said, “Joe, I understand. What I will say is that Jeremy is standing by in the C-17 to ferry anyone who wants to leave back to Rota, where he will remain overnight before heading back to Bragg. I’m expendable. All of you have full lives to live. There is risk to this mission beyond the immediate tactical danger we will be putting ourselves in. There will be fallout. I will, as always, attempt to shield you from that, but given that I’m most likely reaching tracer burnout in my career, I don’t want any of you to step forward if you’re uncertain in any way about what the risks are. I’ve always said that personal motivations are either the least or most pure with no in-between. My motivation is to find Zoey, avenge Sly’s murder, and to see if he was right about what he believed he discovered. It may not be a national command authority priority; in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. If Sly was right, though, there could be nothing of higher import. Zoey’s already taken the risk, and I’m going to find her. And after what we’ve been through together, all of us, I would rather pursue this mission without sanction than put a fist through the wall at Fort Bragg, frustrated that I didn’t.”

  They stared at me for a full minute, speechless, their collective dumbstruck countenance watching me not in an astonished way but in a what-are-you-fucking-kidding-me way. A how-could-you-even-consider-we-wouldn’t-stick-with-you way.

  Then McCool took charge of her team. She picked up her aviator kit bag that contained her weapons, night vision goggles, and other necessary gear and stepped forward toward me and turned around.

  “I’m with the general,” she said. “Don’t even have to think about it.”

  Hobart and Van Dreeves did the same, turning around to stare at Wang, Black, and Suarez. Wang and Black didn’t hesitate, stepping forward and turning around to face Suarez, who maintained a stern, set jaw. He stared back at the entire team, most likely feeling somewhat intimidated by the situation in which I had unfairly placed him.

  He broke into a broad grin and said, “My mamacita has huge cojones … but not bigger than mine.”

  He stepped forward and turned around. Jeremy West stood in the doorway, saying, “I’m guessing I’ve got zero pax for backfill.”

  “Roger that,” McCool said.

  With that, my team had chosen an undeniable career-ending move. I had placed them in this position and would absorb as much of the blowback as possible, but whatever blame was to come was entirely mine. The question many operators had been struggling with since Afghanistan was, which is more important: My career or my commitment to my team? The nation broke faith with our citizens and our partners that had helped us for two decades, leaving those of us who had spent multiple tours in this fight to ponder the misalignment of our nation’s values from our solemn, unbreakable, leave-no-person-behind commitment. There was no reconciling that issue. Our national policy had been to abandon American citizens and our allies in Afghanistan in direct contravention of our warrior code and ethos. There was already a stark dissonance between the 3 percent of the population who served and the country’s political leadership. Now much of the veteran community was adrift, convinced their sacrifices were worthless.

  To us, finding Zoey was not some theoretical drill; it was a moral imperative. Not to mention the larger issues at stake that Sly’s research and intelligence operation had uncovered.

  In our corner of the U.S. military, we collectively saw that finding and securing Zoey would in some small way begin to tilt the balance of our ethos to never abandon a fallen comrade back toward fulfilment of that solemn pledge. Our one step would lead to other steps. We expected no praise for our effort. In fact, we expected punishment would be the likely outcome.

  West climbed back into the C-17, closed the ramp, and was pushed out by the aviation tug before spooling up his engines and screaming down the runway. Left in the echoing silence was a team that had chosen loyalty to each other over their next career move, an uncommon occurrence in today’s military, but a union borne of our shared sacrifice and the mounting conditions that indicated our country and perhaps world was in peril.

  Proud and focused, I now wonder how each of their lives might have played out differently had I not put them in such an untenable situation.

  13

  FULLY COMMITTED AND WITH pretense out of the way, we huddled in the conference room at the metal table and discussed our options.

  Our DaggerFind software ran on an internal virtual private network, VPN, that the technology geniuses in the Pentagon would take a day or two to figure out and shut down. We had outsourced the development and hosting of this satellite-based location platform to a private company with all the proper top-secret clearances. We contracted for a low-earth-orbit satellite that housed all our classified data, which so far had worked perfectly to our knowledge.