Northern Afghanistan Winter

DARKNESS.

Wind and death.

Trace O'Halloran didn't move. Cold dug under his Kevlar vest as he watched the rugged road below him.

Something moved over the snow-dusted ground near his feet. Another rat.

Red eyes glowed in the faint green light of his nightvision goggles. Only rats could survive in this godforsaken mountain pass in winter.

It was Christmas Eve. Back in the States, families sang hymns and parents assembled dollhouses to surprise wideeyed children while snow fell in the soft hush.

But here on a rugged plateau in Afghanistan, the cold was merciless and wind cut with icy fingers. Frostbite was unavoidable if he didn't find shelter soon. But the mission came first.

Trace leveled his gaze on the road three hundred feet below his hiding spot. He didn't think about the fresh wounds across his left wrist or the blood that darkened his forearm, courtesy of a difficult high altitude, low opening—HALO—jump.

Abruptly he felt movements in the night. Leaning forward, he read a change in energy patterns. A three-truck convoy crawled through the darkness. Their Korean-made trucks were guarded by soldiers wielding Soviet RPG-7 shoulder-launched missiles.

An equal-opportunity war, he thought grimly.

And this was his target. The convoy carried covert German communication technology extorted from a weapons designer based in Singapore. Not surprisingly, the man had disappeared before he could reveal his blackmailer. In the hands of a trained technician, the new device could track a massive quantity of U.S. communications. Through the application of mathematical predictive models, government assets could be located and areas of vulnerability tapped within minutes. In enemy hands the system could inflict catastrophic damage, and Trace's job was to see that the hardware never reached its destination.

Truck lights carved the darkness. The convoy stopped with a screech of brakes. Agitated voices cut through the cold, still air.

The men in the Korean trucks were ruthless and well trained. They would shoot anything suspicious on their trek to an isolated mountain stronghold sixty miles to the north. But Trace didn't intend to be noticed until he was ready. As he glanced at his watch, his skin burned. Frostbite was setting in.

Ignoring his pain, the SEAL fingered a button on the device in his left pocket.

Something moved down on the road. The first truck pulled sideways and two soldiers jumped out. Arguing loudly, they pointed to a paper flapping in the bone-chilling wind.

Right on schedule, Trace thought. Nice to see technology working right for once. His maneuver had lured them exactly where he wanted them.

Dark fur brushed his arm. Ears raised alertly, a black Labrador retriever held his down position behind a rock, awaiting Trace's next order. The big dog had trained with Trace for months to prepare for this mission, and Trace sensed the dog's eagerness to go to work.

Not yet, Duke.

His hand settled on the dog's head. The Lab watched every movement, waiting for the next touch command.

As the wind keened over the rocky slope, Santa Fe and Christmas cheer were a universe away. Trace couldn't even remember his last Christmas at home. His last two leaves had been cut short because of security alerts. As part of a top-secret government team, code-named Foxfire, Trace trained hard and kept personal attachments next to nil. That was the price of admission for special operations work, but the conditions had never bothered Trace, not when the stakes were so high.

Other people might call him a patriot. But for Trace the job boiled down to very personal terms—protecting family, friends and a way of life from enemies without honor or scruples. If doing his job meant taking a bullet, he was more than ready to pay that price with his own blood.

A silent alarm vibrated at his wrist.

Showtime.

Silently, he pulled a small box from his Kevlar vest. The dog sniffed, then gripped the box's metal handle between his teeth. When Trace touched the Lab's collar in a prearranged command, weeks of training kicked in. Duke skirted the rocks, turned and then headed for the road below.

Be safe, Trace thought. Stay low and move fast. He didn't have to project the commands. Duke would do exactly as trained.

Trace leveled his scoped assault rifle and measured his target. A third hostile soldier jumped down, shouting at his teammates. Trace took out the nearest truck's tires and front windshield with a four-second burst.

The insurgents scattered. Gunfire hammered the air above Trace's head. His next volley drilled the middle truck's gas tank. Under the explosive flare of an orangered fireball, he jumped a boulder and dropped into a narrow wash that snaked toward the road.

Hidden by walls of sand, he followed the curve of the wash, a shadow swallowed by the greater darkness of the night. One short tap on a small transmitter alerted his backup team that the encounter had begun. Now he had only minutes to complete his objective and head for the extraction point.

He sprinted to the bottom of the wash and found the big package exactly where he'd left it a day earlier, buried beneath a foot of sand. In seconds Trace had opened the hours. He rechecked the uniform pockets, then hefted the dead weight over his shoulders.

Hidden by the mayhem of the explosion, he carried the along a second trail barely visible in the light from the burning truck.

Trace wasn't crazy about using human remains for a mission, but their local allies had provided unidentifiable bodies of insurgents killed in a violent skirmish earlier that day. Now they were dressed and outfitted as American soldiers.

Automatic weapons fire punched the air to his left, and a tracer round whined over his head. For every round he could see, Trace knew there were three others invisible in the darkness. The SEAL followed the rocky slope away from his service dog, who bounded toward a nearby covered, he turned into the open and made a clumsy run toward the highest ridge, his movements calculated to draw maximum fire.

The maneuver worked. Down the hill, dark shapes raced toward him, rifles level.

Kevlar was good, but it wouldn't stand up to repeated bursts from an AK-47. That's where the ceramic plates in his vest took over. But a glancing blow hit him with deadly force and knocked him off his feet.

Calculating the speed of his pursuers, he primed a grenade and lobbed it over his shoulder. Rocks shot up, clawing at his back and neck while gunfire burned near his face and tore through his glove. His excited pursuers clustered at the top of the slope below, shouting in delight when they saw Trace fall.

A second burst of fire drilled up his arm, but he didn't move, feigning a fatal wound.

His heart pounded.

Sweat streaked his face.

Footsteps raced behind him. He calculated strike force, distance and probable accuracy as the wind howled over the rocks, and then his fingers closed around another grenade. He yanked the pin and lobbed the deadly metal sphere hard, generating a wall of noise that masked more enemy fire.

The blast was deafening. Sand flew into his eyes and mouth. Another round tore through his right deltoid.

Trace's vision blurred. More shrapnel from enemy fire tore into his chest and neck. He stumbled and then plunged forward, the wind in his face as he hit the cold sand. A chopper crested the mountain, the whine from its engines blessedly familiar.

Another explosion ripped through the night, and the lead truck vanished in a red fireball.

The big Lab had accomplished his mission, planting his C-4 charge under the last truck while the insurgents were distracted by Trace's clumsy run.

Nice job, Duke.

Pain raked Trace's chest. He stumbled as blood gushed thickly over his Kevlar vest, every muscle stiff, every movement strained. Over his head the mountains seemed to darken, blurred between cold wind and night sky.

And then he died.