EVEN BEFORE the wounded were loaded onto medevac choppers for transport to Bagram and then Germany, the Critic-coded transmissions began.

EXPLOSION HOLUX… MULTIPLE KIA… MULTIPLE WIA… EMERGENCY TRANSPORT EN ROUTE… REPEAT EXPLOSION INSIDE WIRE HOLUX. PERIMETER SECURE NO FURTHER ATTACK. SUICIDE BOMB SUSPECTED. MARBURG ASSUMED RESPONSIBLE.

REPEAT MARBURG ASSUMED RESPONSIBLE.

In the days to come, the dimensions of the catastrophe would become evident. A less important station would have been temporarily shut. Not Kabul. Not for a month or a week or even a day. Not with the Taliban spreading and the Afghan government too corrupt to function. Not with al-Qaeda regrouping over the border in Pakistan. Even before Manny Cota was buried in Georgia, Duto and his deputies on the seventh floor at Langley were deciding who would replace him. Duto himself flew to Kabul to rally his officers.

“We’ve lost a battle,” he said. “A terrible battle. The war goes on.”

PART ONE

1

FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON, ZABUL PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN PRESENT DAY

Growing up in the scrubland of west Texas, Ricky Fowler had done some stupid things. The usual nonsense, nothing the cops cared much about. Mailbox baseball. Spraying a 1 beside the 75 on speed-limit signs. A couple times, drunk, he shot firecrackers at bulls. Roman candles and such. He wasn’t proud of that little trick, but he never hit anything. The longhorns didn’t even notice.

But these Afghans, they took the cake on stupid. Yeah, they were tough fighters, tricky little bastards who could get by forever on tea and stale bread. But tough and smart were two different things. Guys in his platoon had a name for the nonsense they saw outside the wire every day: SATs. Stupid Afghan Tricks.