Chapter One

      Captain Craig Taggart was damned if his team was going to be discovered. They were the Blue Team, the good guys—the Americans—in this war game. And somewhere, hidden in among the golden brown, loaflike hills of Camp Reed, were the bad guys, the Red Team.

      Recon training was brutal, and Craig knew that these mock war games honed his men’s skills, giving them a taste of combat. Right now they lay in a rocky ravine that was peppered with cactus. Brush hid them as they waited and watched. The enemy was near; Craig could sense their presence.

      The stifling heat of the huge marine base’s desert setting rose up in waves as sweat trickled off his body. His face was darkened with smudges of brown, green and black to prevent his white skin from alerting enemy eyes. Flattened against the hard ground, Craig narrowed his eyes, his breath catching deep inside him.

      His recon team had been out for three days, successfully meeting the challenges of their assignment. They were due to be picked up in the next half hour by a marine helicopter and flown back to the area where the scores for the war game would be totaled. Craig knew he and his men were winning. All they had to do now was wait for the helo and remain undetected.

      He squinted speculatively. Several of the enemy were making their way down an old path in a ravine on the next hill, and they were headed straight toward the rocky depression where Craig and his men lay. Craig dared not move his head. But he had full confidence that the other four men wouldn’t move a muscle, either. Craig knew they would wait for him to fire the first shot. Recons weren’t in the business of ambush and attack. No, they were like silent ghosts moving in enemy territory, collecting data and information for their Intelligence unit. Because they carried little in the way of ammunition and had no way of being picked up if they were discovered, recons were the last to want to engage the enemy in a firefight.

      Well, it looked like there might be a firefight this time. Craig’s mind raced as he watched the ten members of the enemy team—all wearing fatigues similar to those of the Blue Team except the black arm bands to denote their enemy status and the M-16’s slung over their shoulders—walk toward them, still oblivious to their presence. He couldn’t be sure if the enemy squad would move on, make camp nearby—or discover his recons. His nostrils flared as the sluggish air brought the distinct smell of human sweat with it. At least the wind was in their favor. It was entirely possible that the enemy’s point man, a young marine no more than nineteen, would smell the Blue Team’s own sweaty bodies if conditions were reversed.

      What should he do? Craig glanced down at his watch, attached to his wrist with a black plastic band to avoid telltale reflection in the bright sunlight. Fifteen more minutes and the helo would arrive. His first concern—his only concern—was for his men. They were good men, and he wouldn’t let them needlessly “die” in this mock battle. Grimly, Craig pressed his lips together, filled with the desire to see his men safely out of this unexpected, last-minute situation.

      The enemy party was still picking its way along with no obvious goal. What were they looking for? A new campsite? Craig’s mind ticked off the possibilities. It was a lightly armed group—perhaps a squad sent ahead of a larger, more deadly company. They were only some three hundred yards away now, and within moments, Craig would have to make life-and-death decisions. What if they were an advance party? How far behind was the company that could easily destroy his team with their overwhelming fire superiority?

      Blinking away the sweat running into his eyes, the stinging moisture momentarily blurring his vision, Craig slowly released the breath he’d been holding. His M-16 lay ready under his hands. The enemy squad hesitated, looking upward into the taller bushes, and then pointed to the surrounding foliage. That was it! They were laying trip wires for land mines!

      Andy Hayes, Craig’s radioman, lay directly to his right, his blond hair coated with mud so as not to attract attention. His twenty-year-old face was drawn with tension; his blue eyes squinted against the sweat. Craig indicated with a hand signal for Andy to warn the helo via radio that the enemy was present. Whenever a marine helicopter came in to pick up a recon team, another helicopter came along as gunfire support, and forewarned was forearmed. Andy dipped his head once and fingered the button on the radio he held protectively against his body. The young man was going to be married in mere days, Craig remembered suddenly. Well, the honeymoon would be a well-earned rest.

      Craig quickly sized up the general area. The helicopter was supposed to hover a few feet above the crest of the hill just a hundred yards away. But the brush covering the hill—some of it twenty feet high—would require precision flying of the most dangerous kind to navigate, Craig realized. Thank God, Major Bruce Campbell, one of the best helicopter pilots at the base, had this mission; there was no one better in a tricky flying situation. The Blue Team’s escape route to the helo lay directly above them. It would be a hundred-yard sprint up and over the top of the hill to reach the extraction point.

      When the enemy squad heard the approaching aircraft, of course, they’d become alert. And once Craig gave the order to move, there was every possibility the enemy would spot them and a firefight would break out. They were outnumbered two to one, but Craig was used to even worse odds for their five-man recon team. If he could avoid a confrontation, he wanted to do it at all costs.

      Tasting the salt leaking into the corners of his mouth, Craig slowly turned his head to his left, where the remaining three team members lay spaced a good hundred feet apart. Sergeant Larry Shelton, a redheaded marine from the hills of Tennessee, was flattened against the earth, practically invisible. Craig couldn’t see Barker and Miles at all. When he gave the command, however, the other men would be contacted with a hand signal. Recons rarely spoke; everything was done with an advanced hand-signal alphabet.

      The enemy squad was completely engrossed in placing wire across an old path and planting the mine. For a moment, Craig relaxed. The second