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  At midnight, the metal doors of Sangar Prison, an aircraft hangar turned terrorist holding center, creaked open. It had cooled somewhat, only 79 degrees. A dry wind coughed its way past the buildings without offering any relief, and kicked up a small, protesting fog of dust and sand. Four bearded men, wearing fatigues, yanked a hooded prisoner through the doorway.

  Specialist Aaron Strickland, the guard on duty, closed the Hot Rod magazine he was reading and reclined in his swivel chair. Behind him, a large dry-erase board sat on an easel. It was covered with numbers and dates, along with the letters "ISO" and "S-DEP," meaning "Isolation" and "Sleep Deprivation." Activities for the passengers of the S.S. Sangar. A radio chattered in the background - a guard reporting his status.

  Strickland spit chewing tobacco into a Gatorade bottle and raised a hand in greeting. "Evenin', boys. What we got?"

  "New guest," one of the bearded men said as he shoved the hooded figure toward Strickland's cluttered desk. "This one's a VIP." Dried blood seeped through the burlap bag covering Hamza Nassar's head. Five-eight or so, the prisoner wore traditional Afghan clothing and was built like a linebacker.

  "What'd this raghead do?" Strickland asked, pointing. "Get caught fuckin' a goat?"

  The bearded men did not laugh. They never laughed. They hunted men for a living. Low-level guards were not part of their club. "Soldier, get off your fucking ass and call someone to get this mother-fucker out of here," the leader said. "We don't have all night."

  Strickland thumbed his radio. "Sergeant." A crackle of static. Strickland adjusted a knob on the handset. "Sergeant, we got a new detainee. Bring a welcoming party."

  "Roger that," came the reply.

  A few minutes later, five large Army soldiers entered the room. Rumor had it the Crash Team members, as they were called, had been specially trained to handle violent prisoners. In reality, they were just the biggest guys anyone could find.

  One toted an elaborate assortment of chains and belts; another carried an orange jumpsuit and a Hannibal Lecter muzzle. The shackles clanked like sinister wind chimes as the soldiers encircled the new guest. No longer needed, the men from the hunting party headed into the night, searching for more prey.

  The Crash Team members were friendlier. At least they talked. "What's up, Strick?" one of them asked, nodding at Strickland.

  "Evening, Sergeant." Strickland nodded back.

  Sergeant Rodney Cullen stepped forward. "Time for show-n-tell," he said as he snatched the sack from Nassar's head. The prisoner blinked continually, his pupils clawing for the right setting. Cullen put his face two inches from the prisoner's ear and shouted, "Welcome to Sangar Prison, bitch!" One of the Crash Team members started to translate, but Cullen held up his hand. "He gets it, Anderson. Jesus! A complete idiot knows when someone's bustin' his balls."

  The prisoner's black eyes never left Cullen's face - studying it, memorizing it, in case there was another time, another meeting, another outcome. Finally, Sergeant Cullen backed away. "Jefferson." Cullen pointed at the detainee. "Do your thing."

  Sergeant Tyler Jefferson, a refrigerator of a soldier, stepped forward and folded his arms. At 6 foot 4 inches, he towered over the prisoner. His tightly fitted camouflage uniform seemed somehow crisp and clean, even here. Suddenly, the prisoner lunged. Not far, but enough to make Jefferson flinch. The room echoed with laughter and catcalls. "Aw, Big Jeff, he made you his little bitch!"

  Jefferson regained his composure, re-approached the detainee, and dropped an orange jumpsuit at the prisoner's feet. "You are now the property of the United States. We own your ass-" The prisoner drove his knee into Jefferson's crotch, stopping him mid-sentence. Jefferson never saw it coming. He dropped to the floor and groaned.

  In a violent frenzy, the other guards slammed Nassar face-first into the concrete floor and wrenched his arms behind his back. In short order, Nassar was stripped, cavity searched, shoved into the jumpsuit, shackled, muzzled, and snatched to his feet.

  Strickland lounged in his chair, watching Jefferson rearrange his testicles, as the Crash Team dragged the detainee out of the room. When Sergeant Jefferson finally got to his feet, Strickland remained the only one close enough to hear him whisper, "I'm going to kill that fuckin' raghead."

  Chapter 3

  In the bowels of Sangar Prison were dungeon-like cells reserved for high-value prisoners in the War on Terror. Inside one of these cells, Hamza Nassar dangled from the ceiling, suspended by his shackled wrists. Only his toes touched the floor. After three hours, his arms were being pulled from their sockets. This was only the beginning. Nassar knew he would probably die in the hands of the infidels. Though not afraid, he was not eager to withstand the humiliations his brothers had endured. At least, not without a fight.

  At 0515 hours, Nassar defecated in his jumpsuit and shouted for relief. The two guards on duty, Private Jessica Hart and Specialist John Bernard, were Army Reservists, freshly deployed weekend warriors. Hart was a single mother of two and a part-time college student. Bernard, a Walmart assistant manager in civilian life, joined the Army Reserve after 9/11 out of a sense of patriotism.

  At Sangar Prison, most of the Reservists were careless, at least early in their tour. They had no experience guarding prisoners. Before mobilizing to Afghanistan, they enjoyed dull civilian lives. One weekend a month, the Reservists played soldier. They pulled gate guard duty during the day and drank cheap liquor with their buddies at night.

  Hart gagged when she entered Nassar's cell. Bernard covered his mouth and nose with his hand, but it did not help. They had dealt with dirty diapers before, but this was a full-blown intestinal assault from a 42-year-old man. Nassar wailed pitifully, ashamed to look them in the face.

  Bernard hefted the prisoner onto his shoulder while Hart unlocked the chains. The second his wrist was unshackled, Nassar whipped the four-foot chain left to right, then back. The open handcuffs swooped silently through the air, like a hawk seeking its prey. Private Hart didn't have time to scream. Jagged metal ripped through her face, splattering the wall with flesh and blood. She blacked out and fractured her skull on the concrete floor.

  Nassar looped the chain around Bernard's neck and yanked him to the floor. Broken blood vessels erupted in his eyes, and white foam oozed from his purple lips. By the time the Crash Team arrived, he was nearly brain dead.

  Sergeant Tyler Jefferson and the other Crash Team members stopped short when they saw the carnage, but only for a moment. Fanning out into a malevolent ring, they closed in on the prisoner whose right hand still clutched the bloody chain.

  Chapter 4

  The water wouldn't stop. The water choked him, gagged him, suffocated him. Hamza Nassar had spent his entire life in an area dying for water. Now, he was dying from it. The water would. Not. Stop.

  Neither would the voices. Not the same ones, not the ones belonging to the men who had initially subdued him. These voices were calmer, more frightening, more professional. These menacing voices whispered in his ear. They screamed in his face.

  "How you like that, asshole?"

  "You still think 9/11 was a good idea?"

  "Where's Bin Laden?"

  "You want this to stop? Tell us, when's the next attack?"

  He felt hot breath against his ear. He could not see well, but his blindfold had slipped enough to allow him a glimpse of one of the speakers' faces. His eyes were the color of slate. His pupils were tiny. Then, everything went black. The voice grew louder.

  "Keep going until he talks." More water.

  Twelve feet above, in an air duct, a soldier watched the waterboarding below. He was careful not to move. Those guys down there heard things. The slightest wiggle and they'd know he was there. His legs ached, and he needed to piss. Two hours was a long time to remain motionless. He had to stay quiet. If they found him, if they knew he saw them, he could disappear. The guy in the black cowboy boots was obviously in charge. The silver tips gleamed in the glare of the interrogation lights. The man on the table passed out
.

  "Give it a rest for a while," the man in the boots said.

  "I can wake him up," his partner replied.

  "Nah. He isn't going anywhere. Besides, I gotta take a wicked shit."

  "You sure?"

  "Fuck yeah? He'll feel worse in an hour."

  The men moved to the door.

  "Leave the light on," the boss said, "and crank the music."

  The other man pushed a button. Guns and Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" blared from a boombox.

  Finally, enough noise to cover his movement. The soldier moved carefully through the air duct. He curled up in a corner, stuck a needle between his toes, sighed, and wet his pants.

  That night, the soldier returned to the cool, cramped duct. Peering through a small ventilation hole, he couldn't see everybody in the room, but he could hear everything they said.

  Dumbasses have no idea I am here, the soldier thought.

  A group of men occupied the room below. Some wore Army uniforms. A man in an orange jumpsuit lay motionless on the floor. "Get 'em up," a gravelly voice said.

  Two soldiers yanked the floor dweller to a weak-kneed standing position. One of them was Sergeant Rodney Cullen.

  "Give him some pep, Doc." The same voice.

  Another soldier, Major "Doc" Needham, came into view, a syringe in hand. He approached the men propping up the prisoner. "Is this really necessary?" Needham asked.

  "Shut the fuck up and stick him, Doc," the voice said. "Just jab him with half an amp of epi. A total retard can stab someone."

  The soldier in the duct had seen a lot. He went there whenever he was off-duty. He liked to watch. He got off on two things: Afghan opium and pain. He liked to dish it out - pain. He had a hard time finding a girl who would take it, and usually had to pay some whore to let him slap her around. Sheila back home liked it, at least when he got her high. When high, Sheila would do anything.

  Doc Needham held up a cylinder. "This is an auto-injector, so I can fire it through clothing. Epinephrine hits like a mule. His heart rate will shoot up toward 200. For about 15 minutes, he's going to be wired, so hold on tight. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir," Sergeant Cullen said.

  "Now, give me something to shoot at," Needham said.

  Cullen secured the captive's limp arm, and the doctor jabbed the EpiPen. The slumping man locked his legs and gasped. The soldier in the duct heard a prolonged, sucking intake of air. Cullen and his partner hung on for dear life.

  The soldier in the duct was beginning to cramp again, but he knew he had to stay still a little longer. Once they were gone, he could do a little skin popping with some lovely Afghan smack.

  "Load him on the chopper," the voice said. The soldiers wrangled the prisoner out the door. Doc Needham picked up his bag and headed in the opposite direction. "Where the fuck are you going, Doc?" the voice again.

  Needham turned and said, "It's late. I'm going to bed."

  "Hell no. You're going with us," the voice said. "You're gonna jump-start this asshole's battery one more time when we land. He has to be semi-functional, or we don't get our guy."

  Needham's face reddened. "You're talking about 45 minutes from now?"

  "Yep. We'll stand him up, and you'll light a fire under his jihadi ass."

  "That much Epinephrine in such a short period could kill him, explode his heart."

  "Well, Doc, you better not fuck it up, 'cause if this one drops dead before the swap, I will personally see to it that you spend the rest of your professional life in Mexico doing pap smears on clap-riddled hookers." Needham shook his head as he moved toward the door and the distant, distinctive thump of helicopter rotors.

  "That's a good boy, Doc," the voice said. "Now, do your fucking job."

  The soldier in the duct waited until the men below were gone. He shimmied backward toward the spot where he could manipulate his "works." Before the heroin hit him, he had one more thought. The voice . . . that was the guy with the cowboy boots.

  Chapter 5

  Fifty miles outside of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, a trio of al Qaeda vehicles convoyed over the rocky landscape - a dusty pickup truck, a battered SUV, and an out-of-place Mercedes sedan. The pickup sported a 50-caliber machine gun in its bed. They proceeded, tentatively, as if someone could actually see them in the forbidding darkness.

  Several miles away, a chopper pilot spoke into his mic. "Be advised, Phantom 31. Standing by."

  The response came almost instantly. "Phantom 31, you are clear to your objective."

  The pilot keyed his mic as the American MH-47G Chinook helicopter smoothly vectored toward the cluster of vehicles. "Roger that. Phantom 31, pushing. ETA, three mikes."

  "Roger."

  He did the things pilots do, the stuff so seemingly effortless to the untrained eye, so precisely timed and endlessly practiced. The pilot couldn't see the crafts on his flanks, but he could sense them. He felt better knowing he was chaperoned by a pair of AH-6J Little Bird helicopters, his brothers from the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). Nicknamed "The Night Stalkers," these men were the Army's best aviators. They were known for their lethality and expertise at nighttime operations.

  The Little Birds raced over the surrounding hillsides, searching for hidden enemies using Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras. After scouring the area, they called, "All clear."

  The Chinook's rotors twirled cyclones of dust into the air as it approached the landing zone. Small stones rifled across the ground where they came to abrupt stops after bouncing off the wheels, sides, and windows of the small, parked armada. The pilot flashed the Chinook's cabin light, twice. The headlamps of the battered Mercedes sedan returned the signal.

  The helicopter's engine idled. The pilot was not about to power down the craft. He reached up and threw a switch, and the rear door of the Chinook gaped open. The moment the tailgate hit the ground, eight heavily-armed men disembarked and formed a perimeter around a hooded prisoner. Though the soldiers were American, they wore no insignia.

  Simultaneously, the driver of the Mercedes shouted in Arabic toward the SUV. Two jihadists wearing headscarves opened the rear door, reached in, and dragged a second hooded prisoner from the SUV.

  The Americans and the terrorists approached one another with caution. When they met in the middle, the American's cut their prisoner's plastic flex-cuffs. They yanked off his hood, exposing a startled Hamza Nassar.

  In unison, several men from the convoy shouted, "Allāhu Akbar."

  In exchange, the terrorists released their captive, Chief Petty Officer David Walker, a U.S. Navy SEAL. Dazed and dehydrated, Walker stumbled forward, into the arms of his comrades. It had been five weeks since his capture. His hair and beard were unkempt, and his face was swollen from daily beatings.

  Once each side had recovered their respective prisoner, they backed away to their places of origin. The rear gate of the Chinook hummed back into place, and the rotors spun ever faster. The Little Bird gunships ascended from the ridgeline as if to say, "We are here, and we are watching. Don't fuck with us."

  The Chinook lifted into the night sky with the ungainly grace of a pelican. The men left on the ground listened as the thump of the rotors steadily diminished. They watched with careful relief as the AH-6Js dwindled in size, then disappeared into the darkness. On the ground, everyone clambered into the vehicles of the automotive flotilla.

  Carefully concealed on a distant hillside, a team of U.S. Army Rangers watched and waited. The Ranger team leader's voice broke radio silence. "Target is in the SUV. I repeat, he's in the SUV."

  "Roger that, light 'em up."

  "Roger, wilco."

  One of the Rangers painted the SUV with an infrared laser. Silently, the Little Birds popped up from behind their cover and fired. Two Hellfire missiles sprung from the helicopters and raced toward the SUV. The AGM-114KII missiles featured external blast fragmentation sleeves designed to eradicate everything in a 50-foot radius.

  At that moment, as planned,
a guy in the passenger side of the SUV heaved two canisters from his window. The white phosphorus grenades exploded 30 feet away with a brilliant white flame, then immediately produced a cloud of thick smoke. Momentarily blinded by the flash, the Ranger painting the SUV flipped up his night-vision goggles and rubbed his eyes. The Hellfire missiles veered sharply and slammed into a mountainside, missing the convoy by over 90 yards.

  One hundred and sixty-three miles into the velvet sky, a KH-11 Kennan satellite slipped through space recording images at the rate of seven per second. Commonly known as the "Keyhole" satellite, the $1.25 billion toy used electro-optical digital imaging to create real-time optical observation capabilities. Its flyover had been carefully programmed with the Strike Team's mission. No one was happy when they saw the images. "How the hell did you miss everybody?"

  Chapter 6

  One November night, three years later, Sergeant Tyler Jefferson pulled the silver Dodge minivan into the driveway of his Dallas home. Gabby, his wife, sat quietly in the adjacent seat. Aliyah and Elijah dozed in the back. It was late for a school night, but tonight was special.

  After Elijah's pee-wee football victory, the Jefferson's had met up with four other families to celebrate Aliyah's sixth birthday. And was there any better place for a party than Grimaldi's? Great friends, great cheesecake, and fabulous pizza. The neighborhood seemed ready for bed as Jefferson turned off the ignition and got out of the van.

  "Get on the ground, now!" The voice came from Jefferson's left. He pivoted as an indescribable agony shot through his body. Jefferson recognized the pulsating electric shock. He had been tasered before as part of his military police training. One of the requirements before receiving certification to discharge the weapon was to undergo what the instructors called "the experience." Once you felt the complete disruption of your own body's natural electrical system, you tended to exercise considerable restraint before using it.