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EWMAN WAS in a garage on a military base in North Carolina, up to his armpits in grease as he worked on his latest automotive restoration project, a 1955 Chevy Bel Air two-door hardtop with fender skirts. The outside skin of the old car was in decent shape, not much rust; the original baby blue and cream paint scheme was still visible, the chrome running trim undented. The interior needed major renovation, but it would just take some time and money to make it cherry again. The engine, though, a rare 350 V8, was for shit, and the deeper he dug into its guts, the shittier things got. It would cost a fortune to replace the whole thing, which was against the rules for a serious hobbyist and car trader like Newman. He had bought the car for nine thousand dollars at an Alabama estate sale and planned to restore it personally and sell it on the upside of $50K. It would take years. “Hey, Cap’n! You got a phone call over here,” shouted a motor pool Marine.
    Rick wiped the grease from his hands and picked up the receiver. “Captain Newman,” he said.
    “Hey, Rick. This is Sybelle Summers calling from Trident in Washington.” The voice was some hybrid of a normal tone, authoritative sandpaper, and a purr.
    “Hi, Sybelle. Long time,” he said, suddenly alert. “What’s up?”
    “We’ve got a job for you, my friend. Get back to your office right away and call me back on a secure line. Top Secret.”
    “On my way,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.” He hung up, closed the Chevy’s hood, and hurried away to clean up and get to his desk. The Bel Air would have to wait. Newman was part of a Marine Special Operations Company that comprised four platoons. The rotation had one platoon in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, one in training at this secret base in North Carolina, and the fourth on ready alert, sitting on a short leash, ready to go anywhere in four hours.
    When he spoke to Sybelle Summers on the secure link, her orders were quite simple and explicit. He was to choose five more designated operators for a black mission, get over to Camp Doha, in Kuwait, and link up there with Master Gunnery Sergeant O. O. Dawkins, who would give them a full briefing. Eight men would be going in, and Newman’s group would provide the guns in case something went wrong.
    She gave him only a brief overview to help pick the specialists he would take and said he could plus up with scouts, snipers, or anyone else he needed. Trident would chop them from their current assignments and arrange the temporary duty. To Newman, it sounded like he was going to need shooters to provide firepower for a special op. He had plenty of good ones from which to choose. He would rather work with people from his own team, highly disciplined and well trained, who already knew each other. His group would click together like a well-oiled military machine. Hughes, Tipp, and Rawls for certain. Two more and himself. The addition was easy. His group was six. Double-Oh made seven. Who was the eighth?
    Newman began making calls of his own.
     
    Darren Rawls faked a move to the right, pulled back, and went up and up and up. Rawls, with a thirty-one-inch vertical leap, seemed to levitate in slow motion as he flicked his wrist and delivered a jump shot from the top of the key. His sneakers hit the concrete court as the ball finished its arc to the basket with nothing but net. “Game over, Rabbit. Pay me the money,” he told Joe Tipp, a lanky white boy who was better at football than hoops. Both were sweating hard in the North Carolina sun that baked the hidden, off-limits military installation. They were the lead instructors in an escape and evasion training mission and had started the young members of the platoon through the assigned exercise at dawn. The first and fastest would be approaching the finish well after dark. At sundown, when the trainees were exhausted but feeling confident about having made the distance, Rawls and Tipp would hunt them down, one by one, and capture