The captain of the Farragut stood on the open bridge with his number one and both glassed the submersible. They were surprised when a hatch popped open atop the stunted tower and men began to clamber out and into the water where they swam like mad away from their homemade sub.

  "What the hell are they up to?" the skipper said as he watched the men paddling frantically. An interdiction was going to turn into a rescue at sea. They were scuttling the evidence of their crime and expecting the Coast Guard to pull their asses out of the water.

  The rubber craft were halfway between the Farragut and the target craft on a path to intercept the swimmers when the submersible vanished in a flash of white light.

  The blast, with the submersible at its epicenter, created an instant crater in the sea two hundred yards across. Millions of gallons of water turned to vapor inside of a heartbeat. The concussive wave struck the Prosecutors and tore the light craft and their crews to pieces that were swept toward theFarragut. The swimmers in the water simply vanished. The sea raced back into the crater and humped up into a towering dome of water that struck a broaching blow to the Farragut that capsized the big ship. She flipped and showed her keel to the sky before righting herself in the suddenly violent sea but not before the skipper and all crew on the deck were swept overboard and away on the localized tsunami created by the explosion.

  All of this, from the blast to the righting of the Farragut, took place inside a two-second window. And then the sea was calm once again except for the splash of falling debris and the white caps created by the two Jayhawks swooping in low to search for survivors.

  The Coast Guard, whose motto is Semper Paratus, Always Ready, suffered twenty-one KIA or MIA and thirty-five injured in what would be the second deadly naval action of America's war on terror.

  CHAPTER ONE

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA HEADQUARTERS CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  "Firstly, the boat was not carrying a bomb. The boat was a bomb.

  "There's little physical evidence remaining of the suspect vessel," Dana Morton said, addressing a room filled to standing room only with analysts, agents, deputy directors and military intelligence personnel. "Our first best guess is that the vessel's hull was entirely composed of a military grade explosive contained within a thin shell of some kind. From the size estimates of the craft, and reports of the extent of the blast by the surviving Farragutcrew and the Coast Guard chopper pilots, we can surmise that between five to eight tons of Semtex or a similar agent formed the bulk of the boat's structure."

  Hands went up all over the room. Dana sighed and pretended not to see them. She stood her ground, all five feet five inches of her, and kept to her notes. She was NSA now and had been tapped by the White House to give this cross-agency presentation.

  "Forensics is still testing chemical evidence found embedded in the hull of the Farragut. They tell me they can, from the proportions they find, determine the likely composition of the explosives used. What is going to be harder is to find anything left of the vessel's engine and fuel capacity to help us calculate its range in order to shrink the search area for its likely departure point. These submersibles can travel as much as two thousand miles from their starting point. That's a lot of coastline to search and a lot of international boundaries to deal with."

  Dana looked up from the tablet monitor resting on the podium. Someone in her rapt audience had cleared his throat with a rumble. She knew before she raised her head that it would be Admiral Simon Dorrance over from Navy Special Warfare.

  "Yes, Admiral," she said.

  "All I need to know is," he began in a voice rough from decades of shouting orders over gales, gunfire and jet engine roar. "Is this the cartels or the Muslims?"

  Many around the room winced. Even in the bowels of the Agency, where political correctness succumbed to the reality of America's enemies, calling a spade a spade was discouraged. Dana was only thankful the admiral didn't opt for his usual "camel-fuckers."

  "It's too soon to jump to those kinds of conclusions, sir."

  "Belay that bullshit, Dana," the admiral stood now. "We're all grown-ups here. And I, for one, trust your best guess over a load of eggheads' informed opinions any day on the calendar."

  "Cartels don't make a lot of sense here," she said and took a breath to relax the familiar tension in her neck brought on by the pressures of her position. "There's nothing for them to gain. They are politically astute enough to know how far they can go. Antagonizing the United States just for the hell of it is not in their interests."

  "So, Muslims," the admiral huffed and remained standing, rocking on the balls of his feet out of a lifetime of habit from maintaining his stance on a rolling deck. This guy was a sea admiral all the way.

  "Yes, but that's not to say they didn't receive help from drug traffickers of some kind. Probably not one of the larger cartels but there's plenty of sub-groups and renegade operations throughout Central and South America. A franchise of smalltime smugglers who might make a trade of some kind with an outside terror group is likely. We need to remember that terror and criminal organizations cooperate with one another in a loose underground global network even when their goals don't necessarily align. And evidence is mounting day by day that Islamic radical groups are using the fluid nature of our southern border to bring personnel into the US."

  "Fluid, my wrinkly ass," the admiral said. "It's a damned revolving door." He huffed and took his seat. More hands came up. Dana was grateful the rest of the gathering was maintaining their classroom manners. She brusquely waved their hands down and went on.

  "Each of you needs to work within your teams and come up with pieces to this puzzle. We need the best information you can give us. Failing that we need your best guess scenarios. Where was this craft built? By who? What was its most likely target? We have to turn to the DEA and FBI and enhance our profiles of the actors in the Mexican crime syndicates including who they have on their payroll in the Mexican government, military and police. That includes the branches of the cartels operating within our borders: in our cities and in our prisons.

  "And it's top priority," she said and stepped from the podium to move closer to her audience of a hundred or more crammed in the high-security conference room meant for half that. "I mean absolute top, top priority. Don't expect to be home for the next two weeks except to kiss the kids good night and sleep a fast six hours. That's when you can get home. This is a brand new threat matrix and it's the kind we need to take seriously. It's a weapon that's cheap to build, easy to deploy, nearly impossible to interdict and, placed in the right target area, potentially devastating on a 9-11 level."

  She took a breath. No hands were raised. All eyes were on her.

  "So, call home to tell them you'll be late. Real late. And somebody put the coffee on."

  CHAPTER TWO

  HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN

  The sun was reaching noon in a crystal sky. Even at this elevation, heat could be seen rising from the rocks broiling in a land free of shadow. One rocky ridgeline after another, each topped with a razor-thin pathway less than two feet across at the most narrow point. A four thousand foot plus drop fell away either side into tree-less valleys of bleached rock and scree. Glaciers had long ago cut this land so that it looked as if it had been gouged by an enormous harrow leaving nothing but blades of broken stone between shadowed gullies.

  A convoy of men and animals climbed a steeply sloping path that led to the top of a ridge. Armed men leading donkeys loaded with bundles strapped down on wooden cargo racks. A dozen or more men and twenty donkeys struggled, one behind the other to find a way. They moved with a steady, sure-footed pace to the top of the ridge. Here they would follow the ridge for a short way to where it led to another trail that would carry them away down the other side and out of sight once more. These nearly-invisible trails were centuries, even millennia, old and followed natural clefts and declivities in the rock that were here long before the first men trod the Hindu Kush. They were natural highways over the rocky and unforgiving country and, where they did not meet to allow continuous travel, men had improved on nature with simple wooden bridges or rope lines spiked into the rock walls.

  This pathway had served the Barakzai, Noorzai, Alakozai, since the time before Alexander. It was their passage across this impassable land. It allowed warriors, traders, smugglers and bandits to move sure and unseen across a million miles of wilderness that could swallow up whole armies never to be seen again. The tribes would fall upon their unsuspecting enemies seemingly out of nowhere or, if pursued, simply vanish into the rocks.

  But that was before the invention of aircraft. Now, this trackless track's only flaw was exposed: the quarter mile of trail along the knife's blade peak of the ridgeline. Here, for the length of time it would take for men and beasts to transit, the caravan was silhouetted against the sky and visible for miles as a moving line of specks against the blue. Their best option was saving this exposed portion of their journey until the sun was at its zenith. At least, at noon, their shadows would not stretch down the rocks below them exposing them further.

  They moved now, as swiftly as the treacherous path before them would allow. It was early and already the rocks were dry and hot. Much better than winter when these same rocks could cover with a skin of rime ice within seconds if the wind changed, which it did with unpredictable frequency. They moved with heads up and eyes forward, trusting their feet within thin soled boots and sneakers to find solid footing. The donkeys were led on lines of braided rope and had to be urged onto the narrow trail even though they'd been led along it countless times in either direction.

  Qari Hafiz Muhammed led the caravan and kept his eyes moving left and right to scan the sky before them for the black shapes or white vapor trails of NATO aircraft. Their current elevation was too high for the American helicopter gunships. Those could not maintain lift in the thin air at this altitude. But the jet planes and drones of the enemy owned the skies above these mountains and could strike from many miles distance. The smallest mote against the clear azure firmament above could send death to them all within seconds.

  He squinted to look before and behind them. Hafiz was still a young man but his skin was deeply creased and leather thick from exposure to winter winds and scorching sun. This land made a man hard or it killed him. Any weakness, of leg, lung or heart, was quickly exposed by the harsh climate and punishing climbs. The men of the Khyber were bred for hardiness like their herds and flocks.

  Only Hafiz' faith in his lord's providence helped him maintain a cool exterior as the caravan moved along this narrow trail with death waiting on either side and watching from above. He knew in his heart that their mission was just and they were guided along this path by His will and His love and would bring the mortar and rocket rounds carried upon the backs of these animals to their ultimate destination, a cavern refuge held by the opposition to the shaky government in Kabul. The cases of rounds would be used in a major assault planned against an American forward base once the passes below were clear of winter snows.

  The American president promised that his soldiers would leave soon and that meant the opportunities to kill the infidel invaders would be running out. Older men in the tribe cautioned patience. They said that the jihad should hoard its arms and wait until the invaders left in defeat to move in and exact justice from their oldest enemies, their true enemies, their fellow Afghanis.

  Fellow Afghanis. Hafiz scoffed at the idea. There was no such thing as an Afghani. The entire idea was a fantasy created in the West to enslave them; to take away their identity. He was Barakzai and nothing else. And he would visit death and rape and thievery on rival tribes just as he had done before the Americans came and just as his father and father's father had done before the Americans or the Russians or the British or even the Persians and Mongol khans.

  Now the time was running out and the days getting longer and the chance to slit the throat or spill the guts of an American ferangi was growing more and more elusive. Yes, the annihilation of the apostates who joined the fight against the will of the faithful and betrayed the teachings of the Prophet was much to be desired. But above even that laudable goal was the most burning desire of a Barakzai for revenge. Hafiz would see this ammunition safely over the mountains to bring death; to see that as many Americans as possible would not return to the comfort of their decadent homeland in one piece or at all.

  Hafiz stood to one side, a foot placed for balance upon a protruding shelf of rock. A young boy in his unit urged the lead donkey forward with a shoulder pressed hard to its butt. The caravan picked its way over the rocks and Hafiz prayed silently for them to move swiftly but with caution. He shaded his eyes with one rough hand and scanned a parallel ridgeline a mile to the south. He thought he saw a momentary brightness there; a flash of light that came and went in an instant.

  He blinked to clear the sweat from his eyes but his eyes never re-opened.

  The young boy urging the stubborn donkey forward was aware of a sudden dampness splashing over him. He could feel the startled donkey's hide shiver under his hands. Rain? From a clear sky?

  But the liquid was hot and thick and he swept it from his eyes in time to see Qari Hafiz Muhammed tumbling, headless, from the edge of the trail.

  "Good morning, Taliban!" Chili said as he lined up the M107 rifle again from the hide occupied by himself with Heath acting as his spotter. He moved to the lead donkey now standing with legs locked atop the ridgeline nearly a mile across the ravine from their hide. A mujahideen was pushing and slapping at the animal's ass to get him moving but the burro was having none of it. The Mil dot reticle was fixed on the animal where the ammo cases were strapped to the cargo rig. Chili hitched it up a bit for the drop.

  "You still gonna do this?" Heath said. Nathan Brandeis Heath was unofficially assigned to a hunter/killer counterterrorist team known to the public as SEAL Team Six. In reality, the team had a name known to only a few inside the admiralty and the White House. He was spotting for master sniper Willard James Repp who was also a member of that nameless, highly classified unit. Just two sailors defending America's shores at the top of the world in a landlocked country a thousand miles from any open water.

  "Yep, I am," Chili said and brought more pressure onto the trigger. Through the shimmering heat haze he could see that two guys were now urging the lead animal forward; one pushing its ass and the other pulling a rope tied to its bridle.

  "That round's not authorized," Heath said.

  "You don't like it, you can hunt cover," Chili said and increased his squeeze on the trigger. "But if you're gonna stay here, try not to sound like a pussy."

  "Shit," was Heath's last word on the subject.

  The first round, the one that turned the lead mujahideen into a lifeless bag of meat hurtling off the mountain at terminal velocity, was a standard Browning .50 caliber machine gun round. Seven hundred and six grams of lead from a cartridge as long as a human hand. The next bullet fed into the chamber from the eight-round magazine was a SLAP round, Saboted Light Armor Penetrator, a bullet meant to punch through armor or block wall and explode on the other side. It was not standard issue and not recommended as it was as dangerous, or more so, to the user as it was to the intended target. SLAPs had been known to go off inside the barrel, turning the rifle into a bomb that could kill the shooter and even his spotter. Hence Heath's deep unhappiness at Chili's choice of this ordnance.

  The Barrett .50 went off sending a concussive wave of dust blossoming out from their camo-covered hide. Across the ridge the lead donkey vaporized as the explosive round struck the case of mortar ammo it was carrying on its flanks. A thick cloud of smoke and dust grew into the sky and rocks and gravel streamed down the mountainside from the trail.

  The clock was running now and there were no more time outs.

  "Rear mule backing up," Heath said and Chili heard his voice crystal clear through the wireless earpiece snuggled in his ear canal under the hearing protection mandatory when firing the monster rifle.

  The Barrett moved imperceptibly to the right and the reticle centered on a panicked donkey trying to turn around on the ridgeline despite the urgent discouragement of the men near it. Another SLAP and another plume of dust and debris rose heavenward followed by arcs of dense smoke as the rocket rounds the animal was carrying detonated and sought the sky.

  "They're bunching up," Heath said. "Center column."

  Chili shifted and trained on a tussle happening along the ridgeline center caravan. The donkeys were snout to asshole and the men waved arms and danced around and shoved and kicked. One donkey slipped off the trail and two men grabbed its lead line to keep it from plummeting from the ledge. It went anyway and carried both men with it down and off the image area in Chili's scope. He moved to a remaining animal packed tight between two others and squeezed.

  Both SEALs felt the resulting blast in their chests as the mortar rounds went up and ignited the cargos on the donkeys nearest. The whole top of the ridge seemed to rise into the air in an instant. A deep, basso rumble reached them and the far mountain side was enveloped in a thick cloud.

  Chili took his gaze from the rubber scope cowling and shut his eyes. He let his breathing go back to normal after the deep inhaling and emptying of his lungs that was part of a sniper's kata; his fighting form.

  "Take a look," Heath said after a bit. Heath lay by Chili peering into a spotters scope set on a tripod and aimed at the target area.

  The fog of dust had drifted away. A peep through the scope showed the ridgeline cleared of all life-forms and any evidence that a single living thing, man or beast, had ever stood there. In fact, the ridge itself had changed. There was a depression where the trail atop the mountain had collapsed and sent a field of loose stone down the steeply sloping side to collapse a portion of the angular trail leading to the top. The Taliban would be months making the path useable again if they ever could.