Chapter One

       Tablis, Kaziristan, baked beneath the August sunshine, and no amount of joking about it being a dry heat could make the place feel any cooler to the soldiers and diplomats assigned to protect the US Embassy against the rising unrest in the no-man’s-land beyond the city walls.

       For Nick Darcy, who’d spent most of his childhood in the cool, mild south of England, the brutal summer heat in the Central Asian republic was a shock to the system. The dress code for his job with the Diplomatic Security Service—suit, tie, holstered weapon—didn’t help.

       But the escalating tensions in the Kaziristan countryside had driven considerations such as climate and comfort from the minds of everyone tasked with the embassy’s protection.

       Something was building. Something bad. Darcy could feel it as if it were a living creature writhing beneath the dusty earth, making the very ground beneath his feet feel unsteady.

       Trouble was coming. Fast and hard.

       A harsh squawk of static from his handheld radio jangled his nerves. “BOGART on the move.”

       Darcy acknowledged the signal and watched from his post for the ambassador’s car to emerge through the slowly opening gates. The dusty black sedan moved safely through the opening and onto the four-lane boulevard in front of the embassy. The sedan made it down the road about thirty yards before all hell broke loose.

       A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the ambassador’s car and sent pieces flying through the air. One slab of metal debris slammed into the stone column next to Darcy, fragmenting the stone and sending a large chunk slamming into his forehead.