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canopies. Then in a stairstep sequence, they disappeared into the clouds.
    Redigo looked around in the fog and wondered what was wrong with this picture. He wasn’t coming down in North Korea, but he might as well have been. He was about to touch down in the Northwest Frontier Province tribal area of Pakistan—a place where Osama bin Laden felt safe until the Seal Team Six dropped in unannounced for tea.
    But the reason bin Laden had felt safe was that “Pakistan government” was a joke—which was to say, who the hell was in charge was an open question. However, one thing the various factions did agree on was that they did not allow American troops on their “sovereign” soil. So Redigo and his team weren’t really there. But having a shot at a very high value target coming down the pike made bending the rules of engagement worth it.
    A rising al-Qaeda star named Ahmed Bannihammad—a citizen of the United Arab Emirates—had clawed his way up the org chart to arguably become Osama’s crown prince in waiting. Educated in Germany on al-Qaeda’s nickel, he’d helped bin Laden navigate the Tora Bora minefield, then acted as ambassador to the Pashtun tribes and the displaced Taliban, helping orchestrate an alliance and the Taliban’s resurgence. His al-Qaeda credentials were impeccable, for his brother Fayez Bannihammad had been one of the five hijackers on United Flight 175 that had slammed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
    But with Osama out of the picture and ISIS capturing recent headlines, al-Qaeda’s stock was rather low—and tonight it was about to lose even more of its value. Through a long, frustrating, expensive, and maddening intelligence effort, Delta Force had finally gotten a diamond piece of intel. Redigo didn’t know where the intel had come from, but he guessed the Observer was somehow involved. They learned that Bannihammad was moving tonight between two Pashtun villages in a convoy of four trucks. The idea was to capture him alive if possible, but at the minimum, he was not to leave the kill zone alive. At least it would take al-Qaeda down another peg, perhaps delaying the next “Big One” on American soil.
    Much of the plan hinged on their Pashtun “allies”—a fickle term if there ever was one—securing the kill zone. He hoped the captain and his men wouldn’t have to fight their way out.
    Redigo wondered about the Observer. Somebody very high up had clearly shoved that idea of the Observer down the Old Man’s throat. Redigo had direct orders to extend her “every facility,” whatever the hell that meant. Escorting a woman into the Valley of Death was not exactly how he viewed his job description. Whoever this “Ms. Jones” was, she was a looker. Even in combat fatigues. But she had a steel wall up and wasn’t interested in chitchat. So it was on to business.
    Redigo popped out of the clouds none too soon. He only had about a thousand feet to eyeball his landing zone. His GPS readout pinged him right above where he needed to be, so he pulled on his lanyards and put himself into a wide spiral, bringing him down on the flat tableau of a mesa-like mountain. He looked to his left and saw the six chutes of the kill team disappear behind the edge—all according to plan.
    Then Redigo heard the Observer land beside him and go into a roll, but he did not offer help, knowing it would have been refused. Instead, he hit the release on his parasail harness and set to work stripping off his mask and gear. He weighed the parasail down with some rocks, then locked and loaded his M-16. He headed for the edge of the mesa to scout out the best observation post, leaving the Observer to bring the radios. Neither spoke. They had rehearsed it before.
    Redigo stood at the lip of the mesa, which rose eight hundred feet off the plain below. The opposite end of the geologic formation merged into a desolate, craggy spine of mountains in the Malakand region of the Northwest Frontier