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  Realizing what he had done, Ramirez grabbed the hand mike and mashed the talk button. "Kilo Three Alpha, this is Three Bravo, over."

  From the vacant spot in the desert where he and Amer had expected to find Kilo Three, Ken Aveno was having a difficult time trying to decide whether he should be furious with Ramirez and Funk for disappearing or thankful that he had finally managed to establish contact with them. In the end he opted to maintain as calm and professional a tone as his circumstances permitted. "Three Bravo, what is your current location and status?"

  It took Ramirez but a minute to check the coordinates displayed on the GPS and look them up on a map that he'd managed to fish out of a pile of notes and papers that had been scattered about everywhere during their precipitous retreat. "This is Three Bravo. We are about three-quarters of the way to the rally point.

  We're headed back your way, over." Upon hearing this Funk started doing what Ramirez had reported they'd already done.

  By the time he heard the last part of Ramirez's message Aveno had already done some time-distance calculations and had come to a decision. "Negative, Three Bravo. We'll catch a ride with Kilo Two. Keep heading to the rally point and secure it, over."

  Within the dark confines of Kilo Three, Staff Sergeant Angel MORE THAN COURAGE

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  Ramirez's first thought was relief and joy, relief over the fact that they would not have to turn around and go back into the maelstrom they had so narrowly escaped. Only after he glanced over at Funk to see if his driver had noticed what Ramirez was feeling did that sudden and unexpected elation over being spared turn to guilt.

  Firmly gripping the humvee's steering wheel and focusing on his driving Funk kept his emotions in check, his eyes straight ahead, and his thoughts to himself as he drove Kilo Three away from where his teammates continued their struggle for survival.

  Ashamed of himself, Ramirez slowly turned away from Funk.

  From his perch atop Kilo Six O'Hara caught sight of movement some fifty meters to the right of his position. With a single easy motion he swung the heavy .50-caliber machine gun to bear.

  When he was set, he pulled his night-vision goggles down over his eyes and adjusted them so he could see properly. What he saw were Syrian soldiers deployed in skirmish line, advancing through the desert as if they were looking for something, or someone.

  "John!" he whispered while keeping his eyes on the Syrians and his hands on the smooth grips of the machine gun. "We've got company."

  John Laporta didn't need to ask O'Hara where the threat was coming from. He could tell by the direction the .50-caliber was pointed. Catching sight of the dark figures drawing nearer, Laporta carefully groped around in the dark interior until he felt the stock of his weapon and laid it in his lap. Leaning back he cocked his head, looked up into the ring mount where O'Hara stood, and whispered, "They're not acting as if they've seen us yet."

  From his vantage point O'Hara could see that the Syrian soldiers were veering away from them. Slowly scanning the horizon

  ° the left, right, and rear while keeping the machine gun aimed the Syrians, he searched for any sign of more of them. When he 68

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  was satisfied that the dozen or so enemy soldiers off to the left were the only ones in the immediate vicinity, O'Hara lowered himself into the humvee to speak to Laporta. "See if you can contact the captain." Then, recalling that there had been firing in the village and they had not heard from Burman, O'Hara added, "If you can't raise him, try the XO."

  After ordering Ramirez and Funk to keep going toward the rally point, and turning toward Kilo Two, Aveno heard Laporta's efforts to contact Burman. When Laporta's third attempt to contact Burman failed Aveno realized that something had happened to their commander. Either he was down or he was in a position that prevented him from exercising command and control either in person or via radio. Regardless of what lay behind Burman's failure to respond, it now became crystal clear to Aveno that he had no choice but to take command of the team and do everything possible to save what he could.

  At the moment the prospects of achieving this modest goal appeared to be good. Kilo Three was already out of harm's way.

  Kilo Six was threatened but had not been spotted by the Syrians.

  And Kilo Two seemed to be holding its own against an enemy force of unknown size, but one that Aveno assumed to be manageable since Kannen was still there, fighting it out rather than turning to flee. After ordering Kilo Six to stand fast for as long as he could do so in the hope that Burman and Hashmi might yet show up, Aveno turned his full attention to getting Kilo Two out of harm's way and to a spot where it could pick up Amer and him.

  Once that was accomplished, he would then have the ability to either make a quick sweep around the village in one final effort to find Burman or break contact completely and withdraw both Kilo Two and Kilo Six to the rally point that would soon be secured by Kilo Three.

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  While O'Hara was filling Aveno in on Kilo Six's situation and the executive officer was assessing the situation and determining what to do next, Burman and Hashmi were hugging the ground and remaining absolutely still as a group of Syrian soldiers slowly made their way toward where the pair lay hidden only by the cover of darkness.

  By now the sharp pain emanating from Burman's swollen ankle straining against his tightly laced boot, had settled down to a dull throb. Still, the injury was clouding his judgment at a time when his thoughts needed to be clear and rational.

  Fighting through his pain and growing fear, Burman struggled to assess his plight. Hashmi had lost his weapon back in the village, leaving him disarmed and unable to defend himself if it came to a fight. In order to secure his own MP-5, which was lying uselessly in the small of his back, Burman would have had to push himself up off the ground, reach around, and grope about, a

  series of actions that would surely betray his position to the Syrians who were now no more than ten meters away. Only his 9mm pistol was within reach, snug and secure in a holster strapped to Burman's uninjured right leg, which was tucked beneath him. Yet even this weapon could not be accessed without him having to move his entire body. Burman feared though that any effort to roll over and retrieve it would cause too much noise. Besides, after counting his foes and doing the math, the Special Forces captain came to the unmistakable conclusion that aggressive action on his part was tantamount to suicide. Given the odds he faced, Burman concluded that his only salvation lay in trusting his luck and the darkness.

  A few feet away Hashmi felt the terror gnawing at him as he lay watching the line of Syrian soldiers draw closer. As bad as things would go for his captain if they were taken alive, the Syrian-American knew that he would become the object of a particular brand of ire from his captors that they reserved for those who betrayed their people, their homeland, and their faith. For Hashmi, the stories of cruelties and torture inflicted on those who 70

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  defied the Syrian leadership were not rumors or news stories.

  They were family legacies. Those of his uncles who had not seized the opportunity to flee Syria like his father and mother had suffered martyrdom in the most heinous manner imaginable.

  Hashmi knew that if he were captured, he'd be denounced as a traitor by a country that was not his. He'd considered that possibility when he volunteered for this assignment, and accepted it as part of his service. He knew that the rights and protections international law afforded to other members of Kilo would be denied to him. But Hashmi was an American soldier, a member of the Special Forces who understood his duties and obligations as an American. He knew that being born in a land dedicated to freedom and liberty often required great sacrifices.

  Closing his eyes, Hashmi whispered to himself the oft repeated prayer he had heard his father recite in moments of distress and despair, "Allah, my life is in your hands."

  I

  I

  Syria

  20:5
2 LOCAL (16:52 ZULU)

  Ken Aveno's initial estimate of the situation was beginning to look less and less promising as the minutes ticked away and no one assigned to Kilo Two responded to his repeated calls on the team's internal radio net. That left hitn still afoot in the middle of the desert at night with little to do but keep from getting killed by the random bursts of small-arms fire coming from the village or the 20-mm rounds that flew past Kilo Two as Kilo Two continued to engage a Syrian armored vehicle he still could not see.

  His own vehicle, Kilo Three, was miles away by now and getting farther away by the second. Kilo One had been destroyed taking an unknown number of men with it. Kilo Six was, from his perspective, out of the picture. There was nothing he could do to assist O'Hara and Laporta who were still sitting on the other side of the village. And so long as there was a chance that Burman might still show up, Kilo Six had to remain where it was.

  Seeing no good alternative, Aveno started off toward Kilo Two. Just as anxious to reach Kilo Two, Amer quickly followed, picking up his stride until he was soon pulling ahead of his lieutenant.

  They hadn't gone very far before Aveno found himself again questioning his decisions. This time it concerned his orders to Kilo Three to continue on to the rally point. With its 40mm grenade launcher, that vehicle might well be the very thing they Needed to lay down a hail of suppressive fire and permit Kilo Two to break contact. Slowing his pace he looked out over the desert Hi the direction that Ramirez, Funk, and Kilo Three had gone, Pondering if it might not be a good idea to recall them.

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  It took Amer several seconds to notice that Aveno was no longer with him. When he did he stopped and turned to see what was wrong. Upon seeing the executive officer peering off into the distance Amer wondered if he had missed something. "What is it?"

  The new commander of RT Kilo didn't respond. His mind was now on the fight that was still going on between Kilo Two and the Syrian vehicle he couldn't see, weighing the merits of recalling Kilo Three. His deliberations were interrupted by the sudden flash of a TOW missile being launched. For the briefest of moments it lit up the entire area around Kilo Two, burning an indelible image of the drama being played out there into Aveno's memory.

  He could see Sergeant Harris standing in Kilo Two's open hatch hunched over the TOW launcher, struggling to guide the just-launched missile into the distant target. The flaming wreckage that had been Kilo One continued to blaze fiercely. Between the two humvees he saw a figure moving away from Kilo One with a motionless body draped across its shoulders. Whether it was Sergeant Kannen or someone else was hard to say. He was simply too far away to be sure. Aveno understood the motivation behind this valiant effort to save a fellow soldier. It was almost a tradition in the American military to do everything one could to bring everyone back, the right thing to do in most circumstances.

  But he also appreciated that by undertaking such a noble rescue attempt the man who had sallied forth to save a member of Kilo One's crew was endangering the other three men assigned to Kilo Two by keeping his humvee in the line of fire longer than necessary.

  Of course there was nothing Aveno could do about any of that now. Besides, the would-be hero was already on his way back to Kilo Two. Just to be sure that Sergeant Kannen didn't tarry any longer than he needed to, Aveno decided to try to reach Kilo Two once more and order it to withdraw as expeditiously as pos

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  sible. "Kilo Two, this is Kilo Three Alpha. Break contact and head straight back toward the village to pick me and Three Delta up, over."

  Depending on one's proximity to enemy fire, time in combat either races by at alarming speed or crawls along at an agonizingly slow pace. Though it only took a few seconds for Mendez in Kilo Two to find the hand mike of their radio, Aveno's isolation from the scene of battle made that wait unnerving. Within the dark confines of Kilo Two, the bellowing voice of Sergeant Harris yelling to Davis to pass him up another TOW missile trumped the urgency of Aveno's call. Added to this was the distant report of the Syrian 20-mm cannon, and explosions of near misses accentuated the pungent sctent of fear, with the sharp smell left in the wake of a freshly launched missile. As Davis scrambled to secure another missile for Harris, the impression in Kilo Two was that Mendez had responded with lightning speed to Aveno's orders. "This is Two Charlie. Two Alpha is almost here with Kilo One Alpha. We are continuing to engage a BRDM."

  "Kilo Two, disengage immediately. I say again disengage and head toward the village to recover us, over."

  The last part of Aveno's message left Mendez confused. None of Kilo Two's crew knew that Kilo Three was gone, leaving the XO and Amer in the lurch. They hadn't even taken note of the spate of hostile fire that had erupted in the distant Syrian village.

  So the XO's orders to turn their back on a Syrian BRDM they were about to destroy and head back toward the village to pick him up made absolutely no sense to Mendez. In an effort to make sure he understood, he asked Aveno to repeat his message.

  Already alarmed at the situation, Aveno lost his temper. "This is Kilo Three Alpha. I say again, get the hell out of there now and head directly for the village to pick up Three Delta and me."

  Though Mendez still did not quite understand what was going on, he recognized the tenor of Aveno's bark. Without hes 74

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  itation he responded with a quick, "Wilco," before turning to relay the order on to Harris.

  In the midst of his own crisis, Sergeant Harris yelled back down through the open hatch that the XO would just have to wait until Kannen returned from Kilo One. "Doesn't that asshole realize we've got one man out there and a Syrian BRDM trying to kill us?"

  Unsure what to do Mendez glanced at the humvee to check on Kannen's progress, then back up at Harris, who was struggling to maintain his focus on the Syrian vehicle while waiting for Davis to pass a third TOW missile up to him.

  Sensing that there was little more he could do to speed Kilo Two along, Aveno turned his attention to Kilo Six and his missing commanding officer. "Kilo Six Alpha, Kilo Six Alpha, this is Kilo Three Alpha, over." After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, Aveno radioed again. "Kilo Six Charlie, what is your situation, over?"

  With the Syrian foot patrol little more than a stone's throw from their position, Specialist Four O'Hara paused before he whispered his response into the hand mike. "This is Kilo Six Charlie. Ten to twelve enemy infantry less than thirty meters at my nine o'clock. They haven't located us yet, over."

  "This is Kilo Three Alpha. Have you been able to contact or locate Six Alpha, over?"

  "Negative. We've had no contact with Six Alpha or Six Bravo since they left this location, over."

  Frustrated by his impotence, Ken Aveno decided the time had come to take decisive action and save what he could of RT Kilo's surviving members. "Kilo Six, this is Three. Break contact and move to the rally point immediately, over."

  Having paid no attention to all the details of the operation when Burman had briefed them, O'Hara didn't think this was the right time to ask Aveno where the rally point was. There would be plenty of time to do that once they were out of danger. So his reply was brief and whispered. "This is Six Charlie, roger, out."

  From the driver's seat John Laporta looked through the MORE THAN COURAGE

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  opening in the humvee's roof to where O'Hara was standing.

  "Denny, how're we going to get clear of those assholes? As soon as I start cranking the engine they'll be all over us. And what about Captain Burman and Hashmi?"

  Tightening his hands on .the machine gun's grips, O'Hara drew in a deep breath. "I don't know about the CO and Hashmi.

  For all we know they could be dead. Besides, you heard the XO.

  He's ordered us to beat feet and that's exactly what we're going to do as soon as I open fire. Now, when I cut loose, crank this sucker up and move out."

  "What direction?"

  O'Har
a snapped, "Go. Just go." Then, after a brief pause he added, "Anywhere that's far from here."

  The sudden chatter of machine-gun fire and the pained screams of wounded men was joined by the excited barking of orders issued by startled Syrians who were but a few meters away from Burman and Hashmi. At first neither party knew where the heavy machine-gun fire was being directed, causing some of the Syrians near Burman to throw themselves facedown in the sand as if they had been shot. Others dropped to one knee and watched a stream of tracers rip through the darkness like so many shooting stars.

  Captain Burman and Hashmi didn't move.

  The distinctive rattle of the M-2 left no doubt in Burman's mind that O'Hara and Kilo Six were in trouble. The need to find out what had caused him to open fire became too much. As care folly and cautiously as he could, Burman raised his head and looked out in the general direction of Kilo Six. Hashmi did not

  "love, maintaining his prone position as he listened to the hurried footsteps of the Syrian soldiers grow closer by the second.

  Just as Burman's picked his head up off the ground he heard the distinctive whoosh of an illumination round as it streaked sky Ward. Burman had only seconds to flatten out again before the Hare popped overhead and lit up the entire area. The burning illu 76

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  mination round reminded Burman of the fiery pain in his broken ankle. He knew his injury made escape all but impossible. But if he hadn't moved, both he and Hashmi would surely be dead. Perhaps, he thought, at least one of them might make it. Perhaps if he stood his ground and took the Syrians under fire, Hashmi could make a break for it.

  The brilliant light of the illumination round and the proximity of the Syrian soldiers didn't give Burman any time to think things out. Slowly, as slowly as he dared, he began to reach over his shoulder in an effort to secure his MP-5.

  Whether it was the Syrian soldiers glimpsing Burman's cautious movement or the unexpected presence of an enemy vehicle firing wildly at another patrol nearby, an excited alarm was sounded from within the ranks of the Syrians, who were but a few meters from the two Americans. When Hashmi heard the cries, he turned to Burman. "They've seen us!"