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  In memory of my parents, Bob and Jerri Tata, who in 2021 reunited on their sixty-sixth wedding anniversary

  The children of those who die in war; the highest authority is specially entrusted with the duty of watching over them above all other citizens.

  —PLATO

  Empty chairs at empty tables

  Now my friends are dead and gone.

  —“EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES,” LES MISÉRABLES

  1

  IF I HAD KNOWN Dr. Zoey Morgan was going to disappear in the Sahara Desert, I would have done everything differently.

  But there was no way to know my command sergeant major’s daughter, who happened to be my goddaughter, who years ago babysat my kids, and who had been all but a daughter to Melissa and me, would act so impulsively in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

  The Sahara reinvents itself every twenty thousand years, a perpetual rotation from lush tropical jungle to barren arid desert and back. Oceans and lakes aplenty in one version; bone-dry and windswept sand dunes in another. In either format, the Sahara has hosted and consumed expeditions, tourists, traders, nomads, armies, and entire species. The Sahara today is the largest hot desert in the world, filled with pit vipers and scorpions to attack you from the baked desert floor and an unrelenting sun that suffocates you from above.

  Less than two weeks before Zoey disappeared there, her father, Command Sergeant Major Sylvester “Sly” Morgan, and I were in the Sahara at the direction of the president of the United States. We were leading a subunit of the Joint Special Operations Command called Task Force Dagger. President Kim Campbell had tasked us with rescuing a kidnapped American missionary, who also happened to be a large donor to her campaign. Sly was the ground mission commander of the operation.

  To add a layer of intrigue to our mission, we were operating near an obscure terrain feature called the Eye of Africa. It was a twenty-six-kilometer-wide series of three perfectly concentric circles that some postulated were formed by tectonic plate shifts and others claimed were the remnants of Atlantis, as described by Plato in his writings.

  Typically, I led these types of missions. This night, however, my chain of command had convinced me against my strongest inclinations to instead fly in the command-and-control aircraft, an MH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, piloted by the quite capable Lieutenant Colonel Sally McCool.

  “Jumpers away,” Master Sergeant Randy Van Dreeves said into his headset. We were seated in the cargo section of the Beast, our special operations helicopter that was outfitted with satellite communications and visual displays. We watched the jumpers glide silently through the air toward their target. The Beast’s blades chattered against the night sky. Cool air swept through the cramped cargo bay.

  Van Dreeves was a talkative California surfer with shaggy blond hair and a lean face. Next to him was Master Sergeant Joe Hobart, a quiet, reserved man with brown hair and the remnants of youth acne scarring. These two men were my most trusted operatives.

  The hostage we were rescuing, known as a “Jackpot” in military parlance, was Clark Stockton, a successful rancher in Oklahoma who had been instructing Senegalese livestock farmers when an unnamed kidnap-for-ransom group had snatched him from Senegal. Americans were high-dollar merchandise in this part of Africa, and unfortunately, Stockton had fallen prey to the grifters a few weeks ago. They had even used his Land Rover as the getaway car when theirs failed at the scene.

  The French had wisely placed GPS trackers on Stockton’s vehicle in Senegal upon his arrival and had noticed once the kidnappers went to ground that the GPS overlapped with the location of a French ex-pat mercenary turned treasure hunter named Henri Sanson. The French Special Forces conducted a raid on the outskirts of Chinguetti, Mauritania, in pursuit of Stockton and also to reach out and touch Sanson to see if there was a threat to his expedition.

  As good as the commandos were, however, they missed Stockton and Sanson, but found a farmers’ almanac that Stockton was famous in agricultural circles for maintaining, confirming to us that Stockton had been near Chinguetti. As we prepared to rescue Stockton, the French had shared the GPS information and the almanac with us. We traced the vehicle to a different location north and east of Chinguetti and Ouadane that consisted of steep ravines and sharp inclines, a rocky wasteland in the oven-baked Sahara.

  The Eye of Africa.

  As McCool banked the helicopter, I studied the ruggedized monitor and watched my team assemble in the desert after landing. They moved swiftly over the next hour on a northeast azimuth.

  “Dagger Six, Dagger Seven,” Command Sergeant Major Morgan said.

  Sly was my senior enlisted advisor and had jumped into the objective area with my team. While we had departed from Dakhla, Sly and the rest of the Dagger assault force departed from Spain to conduct a high-altitude, high-opening-jump offset from the objective area.

  “Red zone, over,” Sly said. Red zone was the code for the ground team reaching the outskirts of the target area directly prior to actions on the objective.

  “Roger, Charlie Mike,” I replied. Charlie Mike stood for “continue the mission.”

  “Wilco, out.”

  My men, represented by thermally induced human-shaped black figures on the screen, moved across the rocky wasteland toward the cave mouth near our objective. As one team positioned themselves to provide supporting fire from an outcropping, the other team continued toward the target. The helicopter vibrated as it banked, and McCool came over the intercom saying, “Apologies, sir, we’ve got a little chop up here from some wind shear.”

  “Roger that,” I replied, focused on the gunfire I was now seeing on the screen. McCool was one of my most trusted friends and soldiers. She was a sharp-witted and talented pilot who had been on my team intermittently for over a decade.

  Enemy gunfire, while always possible, was not expected and could only mean a compromise at some point in the mission. The ten soldiers in the supporting position suddenly began shooting into the ridges overlooking the cave mouth as my assault team scattered under withering fire from above. Our intelligence had postulated a few sleepy guards at this time of night, and the belief was that we could get inside the cave to retrieve Stockton if he was there.

  A few men had rolled onto their backs and were shooting upward, at which point I said to my team, “Drones.”

  “Not expected,” Hobart said.

  “I’m having the satellite pan out to see if we can get a visual,” Van Dreeves said.

  “Roger,” I replied.

  “Dagger Six, this is Dagger Seven. We’re taking heavy fire from the ridgeline above the objective and two, possibly three, bogies, over.”

  “Roger. Recommendation?”

  “Charlie Mike,” Sly said.

  “Roger, Charlie Mike,” I replied. “We’ve got a B-2 bomber circling at high altitude and two A-10s in racetrack with us that can be there in two minutes. If you need supporting fires, say the word. Also have casualty evacuation on standby.”

  “Roger, out.”

  Not being on the ground as the plan began to unravel gnawed at me not because I didn’t trust Sly, which I did completely, but because I felt helpless in the helicopter. I was a passenger, not a participant. And while I understood that my years of combat experience were better applied in the relatively unfettered climate of the Beast where I had full situational awareness, than in the mêlée on the ground where my scope of understanding was largely confined to my immediate geographic area, it didn’t make me feel any better.

  The scene on the monitor showed the situation on the ground dissolving into bedlam, too, worsening the boiling in my gut.

  “Boss,” Van Dreeves said.

  I looked up at him across from me, his eyes staring at his monitor.

  “Roger?”

  “We’ve got two armed drones and one reconnaissance drone in the area. All VTOL and using pop-up technique.” VTOL stood for “vertical takeoff and landing.” These were hover drones that flew like helicopters as opposed to fixed-wing that flew like airplanes.

  This wasn’t good news. The enemy was highly sophisticated. Their communications and network discipline were matched by their tactical creativity. Small drones were nearly impossible to defeat on the battlefield, their most common method of neutralization a result of having expended all their ammunition. They gave off little to no traceable signature, negating the effectiveness of our high-tech systems.

  “Casualties!” Sly shouted, bypassing the radio procedure of using call signs. I recognized his voice, and that was all I needed to order the Osprey medical evacuation aircraft into the objective area.

  “Five minutes. Mark the landing point. Coming in with Apache escort,” I directed.

  “Ro
ger that!” Sly responded. His high-pitched, barked words came through the radio with the tap tap tap of machine-gun fire an accent to his shouts.

  Soon, two Apache gunships buzzed onto the screen, pumping 30 mm ammunition from its M230 chain gun into the ridgeline above the objective.

  “What is that?” Van Dreeves asked, pointing at the edge of the screen. Our command-and-control software suite included an air traffic control program that identified air-breathing aircraft and missiles. Hobart played with the satellite imagery picture by twisting some dials and spreading the screen with his fingers.

  “Something behind the ridge,” Hobart said. “Looks like a fixed-wing aircraft.”

  We had identified a flat road behind the objective area that we intended to use as our extraction point for the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to recover our team. The captors had given no indication of being anything other than a well-disciplined group of thugs who detained Western citizens in exchange for big ransom paydays.

  What we now realized we were facing was a high-functioning military team akin to Al Qaeda or ISIS with drones, fixed-wing airplanes, and complex tactics.

  “Get AWACS to track that plane,” I said. The aircraft touched down briefly, then took off and banked to the north, eventually leaving our field of view.

  “Roger,” Van Dreeves replied.

  On the monitor, an explosion appeared as a blossoming black mass. One of the Apache helicopters had been hit on a run-in to the target.

  “Aircraft down,” Sly said over the radio. Destroyed was probably a better term. There appeared to be little remaining from the state-of-the-art helicopter. We were at a tipping point. Our losses were rising. The enemy was better prepared than we had expected. Our advantage of stealth and surprise had evaporated. We had not accomplished the mission. We had multiple casualties, and we still had the entire force on the ground in a hornet’s nest of a firefight.

  Did we continue to fight or cut our losses and recover to our staging base?

  “Cools, break racetrack and reposition closer to the objective,” I said. My instinct made no real tactical sense other than my tactile desire to be able to influence the operation and my refusal to quit. My gut, though, was telling me that we might need extra aircraft to provide supporting fires and/or evacuate personnel.

  The medical evacuation Osprey had turned around during its landing sequence as the destroyed Apache had been providing covering fire, and now the essential lifesaving support to our wounded was forced away.

  “Second Apache going bingo on gas, boss,” Hobart said.

  The problem with doing operations far from established logistics bases was the extended lines of communication ultimately resulted in less time on station to support the operation. Our rehearsals had estimated no more than five minutes on the objective. The Apaches had burned fuel on the flight in from refueling at a remote runway ninety miles west and then on the racetrack as the operation developed.

  “Launch the backup attack aircraft,” I directed.

  Hobart radioed the aviation commander at our classified forward operating base and said, “Launch. Objective hot.”

  “Roger. Blades turning. Takeoff in less than one minute,” the commander said.

  Ninety miles away at two hundred miles per hour meant the two quick reaction force Apache helicopters would be on station in twenty minutes, maybe less knowing their brethren were in a dogfight.

  The tipping point loomed large in my mind. Was I pouring more resources into a black hole, feeding my elite teams into an irreversible maw of death and destruction, or would more firepower win the day?

  “Status of the fixed-wing bogey?” I asked.

  “HQ saying no pursuit authorized,” Van Dreeves said. “They might be about to tell us to pull the plug.”

  “They can’t,” I said, but I knew they could.

  My first glimmer of hope came from Sly, who radioed, “Assault team on the objective. Have relocated with them. Enemy drones destroyed.”

  “Roger,” I replied.

  The monitor showed four of my team at the mouth of the cave with maybe ten pouring inside. Incessant gunfire popped as Sly keyed his radio mike. I assumed the soldiers at the front of the objective were Sly, his radio operator, and his two-man security detail. He would want to be outside to be able to talk to me with a direct line of communications uninterrupted by however deep the cave tunneled into the hillside.

  As time passed, concern began to grow in my gut. We trained and rehearsed these missions to the point that we knew what should be happening when. From the point of entering the cave to the team emerging from it should have been less than two minutes.

  My fears were confirmed when the satellite imagery showed a small group of insurgents counterattacking from the backside of the mountaintop. They were on top of Sly and his three men in now what looked like hand-to-hand combat before we could even alert them.

  Helpless, I watched with dread as the scene played out on the monitor. Two insurgents were up and moving, recognizable because they weren’t wearing any distinguishable equipment such as rucksacks or radios. In their wake were three motionless bodies.

  “Dagger Seven, this is Six, over.”

  No response.

  “Dagger Seven, this is Six, over.”

  Nothing.

  The two attackers were dragging a body into the cave. I continued to call. Still nothing, and I knew it was a hopeless drill. Another couple of minutes passed when the assault team came running out, dragging either one of our wounded or the hostage.

  Then, over the central command radio net, came the words, “Jackpot, over.” The sender of the message was Master Sergeant Josh Wright, the leader of the assault team and second in command on the ground.

  With the American hostage in hand, I focused on Sly and his team.

  “Roger. Status of Seven?”

  “Negative contact, over.”

  “Seven and team compromised fifty meters to your west,” I said.

  The video from the drone feed showed my men move quickly to where Sly and his team had been. They huddled around, some facing outward looking for enemy, while others looked inward, inspecting the damage.

  Awaiting their report, I said to Hobart, “Status of recovery aircraft?”

  “Just launched them at Jackpot. They’re fifty minutes out. Walk to the pickup zone is forty minutes,” he replied.

  “Not if we don’t have Sly and his team,” I said. I pressed my radio microphone’s push-to-talk button and said, “Status of objective?”

  “Enemy neutralized. Maybe a couple of squirters out the back,” Wright said. “But … three KIA,” he said. “Plus, an Apache crew down.”

  A squirter was someone who escaped from the objective area, usually by running. The airplane that had landed might have picked up whoever had fled out of the backside of the complex.

  “Roger. Status of Seven?” I asked Wright.

  “Negative contact,” he replied, which meant Sly might still be alive. Maybe a new hostage for the enemy. If so, it was a tough trade, but one I would accept right now if it would keep him alive.

  Then to Hobart, I said, “Divert the pickup to the objective area.”

  Then to McCool, I said, “Cools, take us as close as you can get to the objective.”

  Hobart and Van Dreeves snapped their heads up. We were in Mauritania on a highly sensitive and classified mission to recover a hostage. The standard protocol was to exfiltrate to an offset site because the commotion at the objective area was undoubtedly setting off radars, satellites, and other intelligence apparatus that would alert the Russians, Chinese, Moroccans, Mauritanians, and any terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Piling into the objective area significantly increased risk to the mission and personnel.

  But still, my longest and best friend, my command sergeant major, was on the ground in the cave.

  “Suit up, men,” I said. “We’re going in.”

  2

  MCCOOL LANDED THE BEAST on the flattest surface she could find. The helicopter teetered gently as all three wheels made purchase with the shale beneath us.

  “We have twenty minutes of station time, General,” she said.