Nelms pulled the sniper rifle in and up and rolled to the right and then bear crawled to the window at the far end of the room; the signature from a Barrett could sometimes be very noticeable so the experienced snipers had called for no more than two shots from a single position. Quickly he dropped the bipod of the rifle on the windowsill, targeted, and fired twice.

He held still to see what the remaining insurgents were doing. Through the BORS he could see the last two of them scanning for him and covering at the same time. They were preparing an RPG. Nelms didn’t pause this time to breathe, he just opened fire on them with the rifle, forcing them to cover. The commotion drew attention to the insurgent terrorists’ location and two bursts of SAW fire from first squad took care of them. Nelms ceased fire and continued to scan for targets.

* * *

“Top, this is Bravo Six,” Gries said, glancing at the building. He had been able to track the first sergeant’s movements pretty closely by the carnage apparent from the windows. “I’m sending a squad from second in through the bottom floor. Be advised, there’s no more fire coming from the building; the tangos have done a runner.”

* * *

“Roger,” First Sergeant Cady said over the tac-net. “We’ll just tag and bag, then.” He looked down the corridor and thought for a second. “Gregory, we’ve got this floor, Second’s got the bottom. Tag and bag!”

* * *

Shane was checking his e-mail when the Third Battalion CO, Lieutenant Colonel Mark M. Markum entered his office.

“Nice job on that ambush,” the colonel said, sitting down in a rickety Iraqi chair one of Shane’s troops had “liberated” and installed in his office. “The news media is making it look like definitive word we’re unable to ‘ensure the security of Iraq during the upcoming election’ since we couldn’t even guard these scientists. But that’s par for the course.”