Sunrise: Wrath & Righteousness: Episode Ten by Chris Stewart Page A

up in their lack of fear.”
    Sam shrugged again. “Yeah, OK, I’m not going to argue.”
    “All right then, just to make sure I’ve got it. We’re going up against at least three teams from the Royal Security Forces, with something like 25 to 30 men in each team. They’ve got the advantage of defensible positions and superior firepower, not to mention the fact that, when it’s all over, we don’t have any way to evacuate the area, no way of getting out of town. There are six of us.” He looked at Azadeh. “Well, six and one girl who if we were going to assault some modeling agency in Paris, I think she’d be OK. But this ain’t Paris, this is Ickystan. And I’m supposed to feel good about this gig?”
    Sam’s face remained calm, his eyes bright. He didn’t feel scared. “Yeah, Houston, you’re supposed to feel good about this thing. Come on, man! This is guts and glory, the kind of things that they write songs about.”
    “No one writes songs about things like that anymore.”
    Sam looked dejected. “Well, they used to.”
    “Not any more, captain.”
    “Still, they should.”
    Houston stared back at him, then started smiling.
    “And there’s one really important thing you didn’t mention that’s in our favor,” Bono said as he slapped Sam on the shoulder. “The quality of your leadership is unmatched anywhere in the world. If anyone can get us through this, believe me, this man will.”
    Houston nodded then glanced at his watch. Outside, the night was turning pale, the last cold glimmers of the falling moon forming shadows among the mountains.
    “LZ in two minutes,” one of the flight engineers announced over the helicopter’s intercom.
    The men stood and started unstrapping their gear from the helicopter’s metal floor. They had a very long hike ahead of them and very little time for they had to be in position before the sunlight broke over the enormous mountains peaks almost fifteen thousand feet over their heads.
    Three or four hours of running. Uphill. Among sheer cliffs. With seventy pounds of guns, ammo and equipment strapped around their chests and on their backs.
    Most men couldn’t make the hike in two days.
    They had a little more than a couple of hours.
    Sam braced himself for the physical battle that lay ahead.
    By the end of the day, all of them would be utterly exhausted, every muscle, every bone, every tendon and ounce of energy pulled, stretched, used and drained.
    By the end of the day, they’d be either dead or successful.
    He stood up and threw his pack across his shoulders when a surge of adrenaline pushed through him, sending a shiver through his veins.
    But this was more than just the adrenaline. There was something else . . . something around him. Something he didn’t recognize. A feeling, foreign and powerful, warm but unfamiliar. A premonition maybe? He swallowed and looked away, his mind tumbling, a sense of vertigo making him reach for the nearest brace.
    Turning toward Bono, he felt a sudden sense of heavy sadness sweep across him. It hit him like a black and heavy blanket, covering his entire soul.
    For no reason he could explain, he felt like weeping.
    For no reason he could explain, he felt like walking toward Bono and holding him in his arms.

NINE
Along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, eighty-five kilometers east of Kandahar, Afghanistan
     
    The village was too small to even have a name. It sat along a swiftly flowing river, dark, muddy and frothing now from the three days of severe rains. A collection of rock huts and wooden shanties had been built around a crumbling central market, the walls of which were covered arches, the blue and green paint faded now, the white script almost entirely unreadable. The entire wall was pockmarked with bullet holes, some from the brutal Russian military, some from the Taliban militia, some from U.S. soldiers, some from the local warlord’s henchmen, some from celebratory shots fired after a wedding party. Behind the