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Prologue

“YOU’RE DEAD, JACK”

One

TO THE BEST OF my understandably shaky recollection, the first ti like this

Mortar rounds were thu what sounded like a shower of razor blades I was carrying Marine Corporal Danny Young over hest soldier I’d ever fought beside, funny as hell, and best of all, he was hopeful—his wife back in West Texas was pregnant with their fourth kid

Now his blood bubbled downon my boots like water from a drainpipe

I ran across rocky ground in the dark, and I choked out to Danny, “I’ve got you; I’ve got you Just stay with me, you hear me?”

I lowered hiround a few yards away from the helicopter, and suddenly there was a concussive explosion, as though the ground had blown up aroundhammer strike to my chest, and that was the end

I died I passed to the other side I don’t even kno long I was gone

Del Rio told me later that my heart had stopped

I just reht, and the pain, and the awful reek of aviation fuel

My eyes flashed open and there was Del Rio in hed when my eyes opened—and at the same time tears ran down his cheeks He said, “Jack, you son of a bitch, you’re back”

A dense curtain of oily black sht there beside les, and behind Del Rio was the helicopter, burning bright white, getting ready to blow

My buddies were still in there My friends Guys who had risked their lives for me