"Your first tour?" Heath asked, knowing the answer.

  "Straight out of Dam Neck." Dam Neck Naval Air Station near Virginia Beach.

  "What's your SEAL name?" Heath said.

  "Never got one, Chief. Just Jason."

  Bullshit, thought Heath. No newbie gets out of BUDs or SEAL training or SERE school without a new name. This kid got one he doesn't like and is looking for a new start down range. Heath earned himself the nom de guerre ‘Motown' from an unimaginative CPO who learned he was from Detroit.

  "You're with a good unit," Heath said, changing the subject.

  "Who you with, Chief?"

  "Oh, I'm just dropping in on some friends," Heath said and turned his gaze to the rising tower of dust outside the port.

  Heath's team officially had no name. In fact, it did not exist in any military records. Any of the dozen people on the planet who were allowed to read after-action reports by the team would think that the objectives detailed within were accomplished by magic or some force of nature as the identity, number and unit designation were never mentioned, even by oblique reference. What Heath and his exclusive band of brothers did in service of their country was not a matter of public record. Their part of the war was never to be entered into the history books. And they were fine with that.

  Billings, Jason E (E-7) knew enough not to ask any more questions. He also noticed that the large, muscular black man seated across from him never offered his name. Jason knew his fellow passenger was plenty salty. As a contrast to the eagle and three stars on his collar tabs, the man wore a full-on goatee and Harley Davidson headscarf that made him look so un-Navy that he had to be hardcore to get away with it.

  The inside of the Chinook darkened as it became enveloped in the dense cloud of fine, gritty dust sucked up into the air by the rotors. A fog of dust rolled in through the wide opening of the cargo hatch and crept over the mail sacks. Heath shut his eyes and held a hand over his mouth.

  The dust had a mind -- and a life -- of its own. It could make it through any gap or crack or opening no matter how small. It had a static cling to it that bound it to whatever it touched. It was an endless pain in the ass to men who relied on their equipment to save their own lives. Any weapon in use by active-duty personnel had to be cleaned and oiled daily. If not in use it had to be wrapped in plastic and sealed tight with duct tape. Even then, a film of gritty powder coated anything within the bag. Crews of Marine mechanics bussed over from Leatherneck worked night and day keeping the helos flying in the face of the constant dust incursion. Maintenance protocols that had engines being cleaned every hundred hours of flight time now had to be scheduled daily to clean the filth from bushings, fuel lines and gearboxes. No wonder this country was still in the dark ages. The 21st Century was not amenable to this tsunami of dust that was everywhere in Afghanistan.

  A bounce and a jerk and they were down. Heath stood and slapped the kid on the shoulder. The kid was squirting a stream of eye drops into his eyes and hawking up phlegm like a two-pack-a-day nicotine lifer.

  "It takes its own time settling," Heath said. "Only way out is to walk."

  They hefted their gear bags and the rifle case. Heath clamped a hand on Billings' shoulder, and guided him down the cargo ramp and out into the blast furnace heat of Helmand.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NO GOOD DEED

  "You sure you want to come back to all this?" Manny asked as he stepped from the shadows of a hangar into the dust-muted sunshine to greet Heath's arrival.

  "What'd we do wrong to get sent back here?" Heath said. He threw down his gear bag and took Manny's outstretched hand. Emmanuel Levitz (E-9) looked like a native. His dark hair fell almost to his shoulders now and his beard was filled out. His skin was tanned dark olive and, unlike most SEALs, he was free of any kind of tattooing. Only the American BDUs, the Rolex dive watch and the holstered Sig on his belt kept him from a strip search each time he stepped from the SEAL enclave.

  "Who knows, right? Pig has a theory that, after Mexico, they wanted us off the grid a while."

  "No good deed goes unfucked."

  "You want gratitude? I hear the Taliban are hiring."

  Their conversation had to wait as a big-ass cargo jet flared engines and touched down on the runway a football field away.

  "We have orders?" Heath asked. "Anything specific?"

  "The head shed's been quiet," Manny said, referring to their on-site CIA officer and OIC.

  "Who's our shot-caller out here? I know it's not Freeman. He's been called back to Langley. He's filling out a stack of paperwork a mile high to explain that shit down in Mexico."

  "We got a guy named Don Stroller. Likes to be called ‘Bear.' Former Army Ranger. Seems like a stand-up guy. Old-school agency man. Knows when to look the other way."

  "That's a rare quality these days," Heath muttered.

  "Fritz Spanier is the skipper," Manny added. Spanier was a Navy lieutenant commander that Heath knew by rep only. The rep was solid. A Navy lifer with almost three decades in the teams, working up ops. A heartbreaker and life-taker.

  "Shit! Look what finally showed up!"

  Angel ‘Pig' Bravos (E-8) trotted out from the dark of the hangar interior with a big grin on his face. Behind him came his Alabama-cracker buddy Chili. They were wearing only sandals and running shorts.

  Heath stuck out a hand to greet the pair but they ran past him on either side like he wasn't even there. He turned to watch them trot toward a forklift trundling down the taxiway with a pallet on its arms. It was the pallet of mailbags from the same Chinook that brought Heath. They were stacked atop three cruise boxes of personal gear Heath brought along for this deployment. The pair of SEALs trotted by the forklift speaking to the Marine in the driver's seat.

  "What the fuck?" Heath wondered. "That mail's all ours? It someone's birthday?"

  Another cargo jet touched down heavily and drowned out all conversation. Manny shrugged. Heath hefted his gear bag again and the two SEALs followed the forklift into the hangar. Pig and Chili practically skipped after it, jabbering like kids on Christmas morning.

  The team was situated inside one of the Hesco-fortified hangars, inside of which the Sea-Bees had knocked together some housing for them. They were modified pre-fab structures with the roofs left off to allow the heat to rise to the forty-foot ceiling of the hangar and, theoretically, escape through the eaves. Someone had promoted a couple of monster industrial fans and rigged them from ceiling joists where they managed to move the stifling heat around. It was still hot as hell but at least there was circulation and shade. And they could draw the insulated hangar doors closed to cut off some of the dust and most of the noise.

  They kept a couple of MRAPs and an up-armored Humvee inside where they could keep an eye on them to be sure they wouldn't get scrounged for parts. Cannibalized vehicles were everywhere in theater. Chili theorized that there wasn't one virgin ride left anywhere. Every vehicle was a Frankenstein's monster of stolen or borrowed parts. Put your vehicle in park to go take a piss and come back to find the hood up and the wheels up on blocks. It was mechanized Darwinism. The weak and the unguarded became parts for the strong and resourceful. So the SEALs watched over their trucks like they were Lamborghinis.

  The walls were lined with chickenwire cages padlocked closed. These were lockers for each of the SEALs' personal call-out gear -- the stuff they'd need to make war. All was wrapped in thick plastic or sealed in cruise boxes to keep the dust out.

  Pig and Chili dumped the mail sacks out on the concrete floor and began cutting the tape with clasp knives to open the packages. Each one was addressed to Angel Bravos, FPO Camp Bastion. Guys from the other teams who were sharing the hangar gathered around to watch and make remarks.

  "Paydays!" Chili called out as he tore a carton lid off. Inside were boxes of Payday candy bars: salt, sugar, carbs -- and no chocolate to melt in the Afghan heat. He began tossing them to the dozen or so SEALs standing around them. They snatched them mid-air and shoved them into cargo pockets in their BDUs, if they were wearing any. In the stifling heat, most of the SEALs were stripped down to shorts only.

  "Flame's been sending stuff with each delivery," Manny grinned. "You see him before you shipped out?"

  "Saw him a couple of times before I left San Diego. He's doing better. Walking on his own for the past two weeks."

  "He ever coming back to the teams?" Manny asked, expression darkening.

  "No way in hell. But they're not telling him that. He's got a long way to go and coming back to duty is the only thing keeping him going. They take that now and he'll backslide."

  "Yeah," Manny said. "I get that. A man's got to have something to live for."

  With the pallet of mail sacks empty, Heath's cruise boxes were uncovered. Manny helped him roll them to an empty call-out locker. Cruise boxes are high-impact plastic with wheels set in one side and a pull handle that extended from the other. Each one holds a shit-pile of gear and Heath had three of them loaded to capacity. It was looking to be a long deployment and Heath packed for every contingency and every op possible for the Afghan AO. Every other SEAL packed the same way: heavy. Always better to have and not need than need and not have.

  Chili and Pig made messy stacks of the goodies they unpacked. The other SEALs came forward to poke through the stuff and Chili waved them away angrily. There were DVDs (heavy on westerns and horror movies), jars of hard candy, a couple of cases of 5-Hour Energy, protein bars, shampoo, soap, gum, Maxim magazines, paperbacks and comic books. They would all be shared eventually but, for now, this was Pig and Chili's party. And they would take the best stuff for themselves.

  "Damn! These are heavy!" Pig pulled one of six identical flat boxes upright and sliced the end off. He pulled out a body armor vest of black Spectra cloth.

  "Is that Dragon Skin?" Chili asked.

  "Only the best from Flame." Pig said and pulled a second vest from the box. This was of a lighter material and Chili looked over his shoulder as he read the tag.

  "Conductive cooling vest," Chili read.

  "You wear it against your skin," this from Priest, Doug Bannion (W-2), the ‘old man' of the team at thirty-two.

  "Draws heat away from your body and slows dehydration," Priest continued. He accepted one of the vests from Chili and held it up to inspect it.

  "It's yours, Priest," Pig said. "Flame sent a set for each of us. The note says-‘Wear in good health. Keep one fresh for when I get there.'"

  There were a few seconds of silence at that. Everyone on the team knew the odds weren't with Flame ever rejoining them.

  "Who's that on the cover of that Maxim?" asked one of the other SEALs, a dude they called Speed, because he always came up dead last in runs.

  "Touch that if you want to lose that hand, hillbilly," Chili said and flashed his clasp knife with a look of mock ferocity. Speed was from Arkansas, and pure Ozark.

  "Won't do him no good with only one hand," called a ballbuster from the back of the crowd.

  "Have to learn to whack off southpaw," called another.

  "Fuck you guys," Speed said and snatched the magazine up while Chili took pretend swipes at him with the blade.

  "Killsville 5!" Pig whooped and held up a cellophane-wrapped cardboard box with cover art depicting a helmeted highway cop armed with an axe standing back-to-back with a stripper in an abbreviated nun's habit wielding a blood-caked chainsaw.

  Ooh's and ahh's from the surrounding SEALs. All but Priest, who rolled his eyes and walked away with his brand new body armor and cooling vest. Priest didn't play video games and the significance of the arrival of the newest addition to the hottest franchise in gaming was lost on him. He also didn't drink or smoke, and rumor had it he spent entire leaves in libraries -- between running marathons. This had earned the name Priest, as in ‘warrior priest.' He out-ran and out-trained any other SEAL in any other team. He read books on strategy and military history exclusively. In combat he was like a rock: hard and cold and immune to whatever shit was raining down at the moment. The only time anyone on the team saw him actually relax was when he was asleep and even then he looked like he was just gathering strength for what came next. Chili's theory was that he wasn't asleep; he was dormant like the toys in the Toy Story movies. Whenever you looked away, Priest came back to life. Pig said he was born with a gun in his hand and, with a double-tap headshot, took out the doctor that spanked him.

  Pig started laying down rules for the coming Killsville tournie. He and Chili would play the first best-of-three series on the X-box then the winner would take on the next contestant in line. The crowd was determining their ranking when Billings, Jason E (E-7) stepped in from the sun with his rifle case slung over his back and gear bag in one fist, and pulling a cruise box behind him.

  "Woody!" Speed called out.

  No SEAL name, my black ass, Heath grinned to himself.

  "Thought you'd never catch up!" Speed said and rushed up to give Woody a punch in the arm.

  "Woody?" Heath grinned, stepping up.

  Billings, Jason E's face fell. Busted.

  Speed jumped in with the 411.

  "Yeah, we call him that ‘cause back in BUDs someone crushed a whole Viagra into his coffee just before a cold water exercise. We're climbin' outta the pool with our nuts shrunk to raisins and my man Billings has this fucking anaconda in his trunks!"

  Speed doubled over laughing at his own story and Billings' flushed a deep crimson that spread up over his scalp. He was eye-stabbing Speed to stop but the Arkie went on once he'd recovered enough breath.

  "The MC gets right up in Billings' face askin' ‘are you in love with me?' and ‘does being with half-naked sailors give you a thrill?' and ‘I will not ask but you are telling me something, Billings!'"

  "That had to be Abruzzi," Heath said with a broad grin. Master Chief Duncan Abruzzi, five feet seven inches of pure abuse.

  "Oh yeah!" Speed said with renewed mirth. "He gave a once-in-a-lifetime bitching to Billings standing at attention with his main mast raised out to here! Abruzzi finally sent him back to quarters with orders to ‘reduce that appendage to regulation length' and ‘learn to curb your deviant nature!'"

  Speed was in near collapse as he got that last out and everyone except Billings joined in.

  "He was ‘Woody' from that day on!" Speed wheezed out.

  "Damn," Chili said to Billings with admiration. "That beats mine." Chili, Willard James Repp, received his SEAL name when he ruptured his stomach lining during a grueling combat training session in BUDs and spewed a blood-tinged torrent of puke on the grass. He said, "I don't remember having chili last night" before passing out.

  "Well, fuck you very much," Billings said and gave the giggling Speed enough of a push to send him to the floor. Speed lay there snorting with laughter.

  "A story that good can't keep," joked Manny. "Just the same, I think we'll have you walk point from now on, Woody."

  More laughter boomed from the ceiling of the hangar, momentarily drowning out the near-continuous traffic growling in the dusty sky overhead.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PRINCE

  Evenings and early mornings were the only times the team could get in any cardio. As night approached, the temps were still high but some of the edge was off the blast furnace effect of the sun on the rocks and sand. There was a lull in air traffic at that time, too, so dust was at a minimum. Manny, Heath, Pig and Chili ran together along the circumference of the interior fenceline that circled around the airfield section of the camp in a ragged oval. It was eight miles around the circumference. A one-third marathon. They could get in one good lap before it got too dark and they risked getting offed by a trigger-happy Brit manning a tower. "Sorry, mate. Thought you was a Taliban."

  They were trying out the conduction vests Flame sent along. They wore them against their bare skin under white tees and shorts. Each wore cross-trainers. They favored Nikes but Heath insisted on his New Balance. Chili called them ‘old man sneakers.' But it was always Chili blowing and bent over while Heath was ready for another lap.

  The team was running a loose line and heading for the first turn at the foot of the longest strip. There was an old Sky King chopper rusting in the weeds well clear of the runway. As Manny, in the lead, came around he saw a knot of figures heading around the next curve of fence a mile and a half ahead. They were limned by the dying light of the red sun sinking behind the range of hills to the west. Had to be the SEALs from Team 3.

  "Hey," Manny said and stabbed a hand toward the distant pack of runners.

  "Hell, yeah," Pig responded.

  The four SEALs picked up their pace, not going all-out but most definitely eating up the meters at a brisker clip. They pounded along, arms and legs pumping and sweat flying from the ends of their fingers in a spray and sipping air to keep the noise of their approach low. They caught up with the last Team 3 runner and flashed by him as he looked from side to side. It was Speed, of course, living up to his name.

  One by one they passed each of the Team 3 runners and each was unaware they'd been skunked until they saw Manny, then Heath, then Chili, then Pig rushing past flashing shit-eating grins. Pig gave a peace sign as he buzzed by.

  Something made Billings, now Woody, turn to glance behind him. He saw four apparitions hauling ass up on his six; coming out of the gloom, sneaker soles flashing. Woody was lead for the moment. The pride of his whole team was up to him now. The vets had the momentum and the distance. His bros would never catch up. It was all down to Woody to make sure all those old salts got to see was his ass till they rounded turn four and made it back home. He kicked it up and pumped hard, not flooring it at first, just matching their speed so they couldn't close the gap.

  It went on like that until Woody felt that cold fire in his throat and the heat coming from his knees and calves and shoulders. His mesh tee was heavy with sweat, as were his shorts. His feet went squish-squish as the sweat ran down into socks and running shoes. The burn. He reached it then ran through it. And all the while he could sense the four men behind him closing in with every pace.