Could explain why Isaac Rothe had shown up this afternoon with Matthias’s protégé and second in command. That pair were straight-up killers, a couple of pit bulls ready to go for anyone’s throat.

Yup, this made sense and he should have figured it out sooner-although even if he had, there was no escape from a reckoning. Nobody got out of XOps alive. Not the operatives, not the fringe-playing intel guys, not the bosses, either. Die with your boots on was the way you lived-not that you knew that going in.

And the thing was, he had been thinking of ways to get out. Killing people for a living was all he knew how to do, but it was starting to fuck with his head. Maybe Matthias had somehow tweaked to that.

Time to the face the music, Jim thought as he stepped through the doorway.

Might as well give ’em a fight-

Just Matthias. No one else.

Jim slowly lowered his guns and scanned the cramped space again. According to his night goggles, there was only the other man. With a flick of a switch, he changed to heat-seeking mode. Nothing but Matthias. Still.

“What’s going on?” Jim demanded.

Matthias was over in the far corner, about ten feet away. When the man’s hands came up from his sides, Jim flipped his SIGs back into firing position… but all his boss did was shake his head and loosen his gun belt. A quick toss and it was in the sand.

And then he took a step forward, opening his mouth and saying something quietly-

Light. Sound. Blast of energy.

Then… nothing but the soft rain of sand and debris.

Jim came back to consciousness sometime later. The explosion had thrown him against the stone wall, knocking him cold, and going by how stiff he was, he could have been out for a while.

After a couple minutes of what-the-fuck, he sat up cautiously, wondering if anything was broken-

Across the way, there was a pile of rags where Matthias had once been.