1
Russ
My phone rattles against the nightstand at 3:20 in the morning. I’d been asleep for maybe an hour.
That’s how these things always start.
Not with a warning. Not with mercy. Just a phone vibrating in the dark—and the cold, certainty that someone, somewhere, is already running out of time.
I roll out of bed before the second vibration hits, grab the phone from the nightstand, and answer on the move.
“Duncan.”
“Briefing room three. Ten minutes.”
The line goes dead.
No explanation. No good morning.
Just the kind of clipped order that tells me this one’s bad.
By the time I hit the hallway, I’m already dressed—black cargo pants, gray T-shirt, boots half-laced as I move.
The compound is quiet at this hour, but not asleep. Men like us never really sleep. We drift. We reset. We wait for the next fire.
Inside briefing room three, Miles Newton is already there, leaning back in a chair like he owns the place, coffee in one hand, expression grim enough to kill the usual smart-ass commentbefore it ever leaves his mouth. Lucas Spencer stands near the wall, arms folded, eyes on the screen. Clay Vincent is flipping a knife in one hand, catching it by the handle every time with that eerie calm of his.
I take the empty seat at the table.
“This sounds fun,” I mutter.
Miles slides a file across to me. “Depends on your definition of fun.”
I open it.
Photos.
Smoke.
Collapsed buildings.
Children covered in dust.
Medical tents shredded by shelling.
Then the satellite image comes up on the screen at the front of the room, along with a red circle over a battered section of western Iran.
Our handler steps forward. “Conflict escalation in the region has turned ugly fast. Local militia groups are using the chaos to settle scores, and the regime is cracking down hard. Foreign aid workers are being targeted. Americans especially.”
That last part lands hard.
The room goes still.
“Three American doctors are still inside a pediatric relief zone near Kermanshah,” he continues. “They stayed after the evacuation order to treat injured civilians. Intelligence suggests regime forces have begun hunting foreign nationals house to house. We believe they’ll be dead inside forty-eight hours if we don’t move.”
I look back down at the file.
Three names.
