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through his implant.
    “Summers, check.”
    “Massey, check,” came the voice of Sergeant First Class Bill Massey, team medic, called Hearse by rest of the team.
    “Sinclair, check,” said Sinclair, the communications sergeant and designated Mule operator.
    “Carson, check,” Aidan said.
    “Okay, listen up,” Merit said as the shuttle began lurching and shaking. “We’ll be over the drop point in ten mikes. Nothing fancy about this one, just another jackal den to clear out, an al-Shabaab offshoot according to intel. Should be minimal collateral damage to worry about.”
    Which could mean anything , Aidan thought. Intelligence estimates were notoriously unreliable. If the brass had been one-hundred percent certain that no civilians were in the vicinity they’d have just hammered the area with cruise missiles. But the Pentagon had grown leery of massive, non-surgical retaliation ever since the firestorm in Ankara in the days immediately after DC. DC: that’s how everyone now referred to that horrible day over two years ago, the incident and the place forever conflated. The response had gradually evolved to pinpoint “retributive actions” conducted with troop strength judged just sufficient for the operation. And with operations on a global scale, that troop strength was spread thin. At least the poor bastards trying to orchestrate America’s response to the abrupt destruction of the United States’ capital had orbiting military staging posts that could drop Aidan and his heavily armed and angry friends to any point on the planet within thirty minutes.
    “Made a decision yet, Carson?” Summers asked. He’d buckled in, preparatory to re-entry.
    “Hell, Carson’s going to re-up,” Sinclair said. “What the hell else is he going to do?”
    Hearse said, “Why don’t you break out the lucky twenty-sider and roll for it, Carson?”
    Carson grinned. The die was zipped in a utility pocket on his combat harness, next to a multi-tool and a palm-sized signaling mirror.
    “No more serious decisions based on die rolls, Hearse,” Aidan said. “Not after Daytona Beach. I think that redhead gave me crabs.”
    Hearse said, “The blond was clean. Should have rolled under ten. Tell you what though, when my enlistment’s up I’m going to find a beach to sit on–not Daytona–drink beer, and watch it all collapse around me.”
    “Save me a spot,” said Summers. “I’ll bring ice.”
    “Right,” said Sinclair. “Come on, you’re a lifer and so is Carson. Ain’t you?”
    “Hate to disappoint you, Sinclair, but I haven’t quite made up my mind,” Aidan said, before the craft began shaking, putting an end to further conversation.
    The buffeting eased once the shuttle had passed through the upper atmosphere. When Captain Merit announced “one minute,” Aidan and the rest of the team stood to face the rear hatch, bunched together in a space not much larger than a freight elevator, all the more cramped with the roughly one hundred pounds of parachute and gear strapped to their bodies. The light above the hatch turned green and the door dropped open to reveal a rectangle of night sky, the howl of the wind reaching through the lowered ear pieces of Aidan’s helmet, but not loud enough to mask the “go, go, go” command received through his implant. The oxygen-rich air mixture whipped out of the bay. The transparent visor of his helmet slid down, blocking the worst of the gale battering his face, and the tiny bottle of oxygen clipped to his parachute harness began a thin feed through a flex-hose into his helmet, the soft waft past his cheek feeling almost like a caress. He shuffled after Sinclair, then hurled himself in turn into the void.
    He’d torqued the straps attaching the squad automatic rifle to his chest so tightly they were digging into him, but nonetheless the SAW threatened to rise up and clobber him in the chin as he plunged into the violent stratosphere. The thermal pumps in his battle dress