"This," Sonny announces, "is the junglest goddamn jungle I have ever seen."

Ray sighs and makes a half-hearted attempt to brush away the sweat bees and mosquitos congregating on his arm. He's stopped even bothering with the leeches crawling up his legs.

Sonny, who apparently hasn't, swats wildly at his ankle. "How come they even got leeches on dry land anyway? I thought those were supposed to stay in the water!"

"Around here, is there really that much difference between being on land and being in the water?" Clay asks wryly.

"That is a good point, Tinker Bell," Sonny says, then swears fluently because one of the leeches is now attached to his finger and he can't get it off.

For once, Ray can't entirely blame Sonny for all the complaining. Their current mission has taken them to the most humid place he has ever been. Every member of Bravo team is absolutely soaked in sweat that won't dry. Breathing feels like trying to inhale warm soup.

The environment is so extreme that it's made Trent paranoid. He brought double his usual supply of antibiotics, even though they're only supposed to be in the jungle for a few days.

"If you get a scrape," Trent told them before the mission, "it will get infected. If you don't get a scrape, a spontaneous infection might just pop up anyway."

Sonny accused him of making that up, so Trent googled photos of cellulitis and tropical ulcers for proof, at which point everyone scattered.

Now, on day one of what should be a three-day mission, they're hiking across unforgiving terrain toward the spot where they're supposed to eliminate an influential, evasive terrorist.

Mandy and her people have been after Bakar Abdhir for years, continually frustrated by his uncanny ability to stay off the grid. The extremist has been responsible for at least a dozen significant attacks in three different countries.

With the help of local assets, Mandy finally tracked him here, to his hiding spot in a mountainous rainforest so remote that it seems like the perfect place for nearly anyone, or anything, to disappear.

The thing about this region, though, is that it's damn near impassable. A broad, roaring whitewater river slices through the valley; from its banks, the mountains rise almost straight up. Hiking is slow and miserable, and in some places nearly impossible due to gorges, cliffs, and swift tributary streams that tumble like waterfalls down the mountainsides.

The only reliable avenue of travel is the river, and the only people who know the river well enough to navigate it and survive are local natives. They love their home. They're protective of it. They don't like sharing it with violent outsiders.

As soon as they figured out who it was they'd been hired to transport upriver, they wanted him gone. That's where Bravo Team comes in.

Mandy's local asset managed to pinpoint the date when Abdhir would be traveling downriver. Between his current location and intended destination lies a passage of whitewater so crowded with jagged rocks that not even the locals will attempt it; the only way past is to portage the outboard motor-equipped canoe. It's a slow, tedious process … and a perfect opportunity.

When Abdhir arrives, accompanied by the trusted lieutenant/bodyguard he is never without, Bravo will be waiting across the river to take them both out.

The distance between Bravo's target location and the spot where they were dropped off by boat isn't even that great, but the terrain is so unforgiving that they hike for nearly three hours before reaching their destination. Shortly after they set up camp in the jungle, a safe distance from the volatile river, darkness drops like a curtain.

Ray has been near the equator before. He always finds the complete lack of twilight disorienting at first.

The next morning, after dawn arrives just as suddenly as the darkness had the night before, Jason and Sonny take the first shift watching the river. Bravo knows the target is supposed to be moving today, but they don't know at what time.

Ray spends the morning lying in his hammock, hoping for a breeze that never comes, and miserably failing to sleep. The only bright side he can come up with is that at least the hammock is keeping him away from the leeches for the moment. Also, it hasn't rained in more than 12 hours, which feels like a small miracle.

When morning fades to afternoon and Sonny and Jason's shift gives way to Ray and Spenser's, Ray actually feels relieved. Maybe out on the rock, near the river, the air will be at least a little less stuffy. He prays for that small mercy, because praying is a reflex he still has, at least for now.

Bravo's chosen FFP is a huge slab of rock across the river from the portage route. The front half of the boulder juts out over the water; the back half sits under a tree that trails hanging vines, offering both decent concealment and a clear line of sight to the target location.

Spenser looks about as frazzled as Ray feels, his fair skin dotted with swelling mosquito bites, but after they clamber up onto the rock and settle under the vines, it doesn't take him long to cheer up. Ray's small prayer is answered: there's a bit of a breeze coming off the water, cooling the air and making it easier to breathe. Which apparently makes Spenser feel talkative.

Ray half-tunes him out, thinking about prayers and the answering thereof. Thinking about how hard it's been to cling to faith lately, and how he has resolved to draw strength from his faith in the things he knows - his family, his brothers - while waiting to find his way back to God. (Or not, if that's how it turns out.)

After a while, Ray tunes back in as Spenser is saying, "You know, the drainage basin for this river isn't even that big. It's just that it rains so damn much here. Depending on precipitation, the river can rise or fall nearly 30 feet in less than 24 hours."

Ray gives him a look, eyebrows raised. Spenser just grins. "What? I read. And it's a good idea to research your terrain. You know, so you don't camp 20 feet from the river and then wake up dead."

"Fair point," Ray concedes.

For a minute, all is quiet but for birdsong, rushing water, and the incessant background hum of mosquitos orbiting their heads. Then Clay says, "Did you know that clouded leopards can have tails up to three feet long?"

Ray snorts a quiet, contained laugh. "Thank you, Animal Planet."

"Hey, it's a good idea to research-"

"Local wildlife," Ray interrupts, "so that when a leopard eats you, you'll at least know how long its tail is?"

Now Clay snickers too, covering his mouth to muffle the noise.

Sound doesn't travel far here, thanks to the river, the humidity, the impossibly dense vegetation, the narrow canyons and the relative lack of wind. In one sense, it's reassuring; as long as they keep their voices down, they're unlikely to give away their presence.

On the other hand, they're also unlikely to hear any potential trouble coming before it reaches them.

Ray glances at his watch. Spenser asks, "Boat check time?"

"Yep. Your turn."

Keeping low, Clay worms farther out onto the great slab of stone that juts out over the river. At the edge of the overhang, which is the only place that offers a clear long-range view, he flattens himself to the rock, looks upstream, downstream, then sits up, glancing back to shake his head.

"Nothing?" Ray asks.

"Nope. No sign of-"

Spenser's head snaps to the side in a cloud of red mist. His arms jerk out reflexively. He tumbles off the edge of the rock and into the river below.

Only then does Ray hear the shot.

There's a split second of airless shock that freezes him in place. Then he scuttles backward, bullets pinging off stone around him, and yells into his radio, "Contact! We're taking fire!"

The shots are coming from across the river, downward and at an angle. The tango has to be in a tree, hidden somewhere in the towering, impenetrable rainforest canopy.

Every instinct tells Ray to lunge forward, to go after his brother, but he can't help Spenser if he's dead. He retreats farther under the flimsy cover of the vines, staying as flat against the rock as he can, preparing for the drop he knows is coming.

An instant before he rolls off the back of the boulder to the sandy gravel below, heat spears through his side below the vest.

Ray loses time, comes back to find himself sprawled on his back, staring up at the narrow slits of sky visible between vines and branches. His ribs throb. His side feels wet. Jason is yelling in his ear.

Spenser is gone.

Now that Ray is out of sight, the shots have stopped, at least for the moment. It will take them time to cross the river - assuming they don't already have someone on this side, which is a dangerous assumption to make.

Jason is still talking, practically begging for a response. Ray pushes himself up on one elbow. "Yeah, boss, I'm here."

"Sitrep?"

"I'm injured but ambulatory. Six is … Six is down."

"Copy, Bravo Two. Headed to you."

"Roger that. Be advised, there's at least one sniper in the trees across the river. Maintain cover."

Ray drags himself up to his knees, pressing a hand to his side. Blood trickles between his fingers.

Naima is going to be mad at him.

Using the boulder for support, Ray pushes to his feet and edges around the spire of rock, making sure to stay concealed, ducking beneath branches and dangling vines. Near the edge of the river, he crouches clumsily behind a slab of jagged stone, peering through a crack at the foaming rapids, at the rocks poking up like spikes between them. This close to the river, the roar is deafening.

There's no sign of Clay. He hadn't really expected there to be.

Ray looks at the water. He thinks, Dear God, and then can't come up with any prayer except just Please.

Nothing.

Blinking against the burn in his eyes, Ray retreats back around the boulder and lets himself be swallowed up by the rich green gloom of the jungle.

He doesn't make it far into the foliage before his team finds him. As soon as he sees their faces, his knees give out. Jason lunges forward to catch him. Ray lets his head fall against Jason's shoulder, listening to the rumble of his best friend's voice as he calls for Trent's help.

"Where's Spenser?" Sonny asks with a hint of panic.

Ray looks up. He says, "I'm sorry." His voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

Sonny shakes his head, puts out a hand to brace himself against a tree. "No. Goddammit, no."

"The sniper-" Ray sucks in a breath as Trent presses a bandage to his side. "The sniper got him. He fell into the river." He closes his eyes, unable to bear seeing their faces when he tells them the next part. "It was a headshot."

"Jesus," Sonny whispers.

"I looked for him," Ray tells them. It seems important that they know that. "I went down to the water, but he wasn't…"

"We know," Jason says, cupping his hands around the back of Ray's head so he can look him in the eyes. "You did everything you could." He's in leader mode, calm and collected. Ray knows it won't hit him until later.

When Trent confirms that Ray is okay to move, Jason pulls him to his feet and hauls him back toward camp so they can collect essentials and haul ass downstream before any more surprises can catch up with them.

Eric Blackburn often finds that the waiting around is the most frustrating part of missions like this one.

He, Mandy and Davis have been hovering in limbo for hours, just waiting for the report that the target's boat has finally appeared. It's a blend of boredom and tension that they're all much too familiar with.

Finally, mid-afternoon local time, Master Chief Hayes says, "Bravo One to HAVOC."

He sounds out of breath. It's the first small hint that something has gone badly wrong.

"Copy, Bravo One."

"The mission is blown. Looks like we were set up. We're moving toward exfil. Bravo Two is injured, and we've, uh, we've lost Bravo Six."

Davis sits down suddenly. Mandy exhales like she's been kicked in the lung.

Eric allows himself the luxury of closing his eyes, just for an instant, and breathing in, out. From the way Hayes sounds, Blackburn can guess roughly what went down, but he needs the team leader to be more specific. "What happened?"

"Sniper from across the river got Bravo Two and Six while they were on watch. Two was hit in the side. He's stable, but given the environment, infection could become an issue. Bravo Six, uh, he took a headshot and went into the river. We couldn't locate him."

Jesus.

What should have been a relatively straightforward mission has just turned into a clusterfuck.

Eric glances over to see Mandy with her phone jammed against her ear, demanding that someone Find out what the hell just happened, because not only did we not get Abdhir, we sent a team of Navy SEALs into a goddamn ambush!

She doesn't add And got one of them killed, but when her eyes meet Blackburn's, he can tell she's thinking it.

Eric's gut twists at the thought of the situation that Bravo Team is in. They need to get the hell out of that jungle. Doing so will mean leaving Clay behind.

Hayes must know, just as well as Eric does, what it means when a man gets shot in the head, falls into whitewater rapids, and disappears. Realistically, Clay Spenser is dead … but they can't know that, not with absolute certainty. There's no closure, and as long as there isn't, the 'maybe' will be eating at them. No matter how slim the odds.

Blackburn hates himself a little for thinking it would almost be better if they had a body.

Hayes doesn't ask to stay and search for Spenser. He confirms that he's moving his team, what's left of it, toward the spot where two canoes and a small group of local pilots sit concealed in the deep jungle, waiting to take Bravo back downriver.

There's no QRF for this mission. No medevac. Hell, it's not even possible to land a helo anywhere in that terrain. It should have been fine. Shouldn't have even been an issue.

Shit.

Spenser deserved better.

Blackburn turns to Davis. "Get ISR downstream. See if you can find him."

"On it." Davis's voice is steady. It occurs to Eric, not for the first time, that she's gonna make one hell of an officer.

Luck is on their side in one sense: the last day has contained surprisingly little rainfall, leaving the river, though still formidable, a bit clearer and calmer than usual. That luck is unlikely to hold out for long. Outside of its brief six-week dry season, the area almost never goes more than 36 hours without significant precipitation.

Even with its water level unusually low, the river is still a mess of jagged rocks, powerful rapids, and underwater nooks a body could wash into and never leave. The stark, awful truth is that Spenser will most likely never be seen again.

They'll do the best they can. It probably won't be enough for anything more than an empty coffin.

Jason Hayes narrows his focus to the situation at hand, to what he can control right now.

His 2IC is hurt. Trent says the wound is a through-and-through, but Ray is in pain and has lost enough blood to weaken him. They're 90 mikes into the hike, and with Brock's help Ray is still going, stubbornly lifting his feet and putting them down, but he looks terrible.

In this godforsaken jungle, an injury like Ray's can go very bad, very fast. They need to get him downriver, out of the mountains, so that he can be evacuated to a hospital.

"Jason," Sonny says, for about the fourth time. His voice is unsteady. Jason isn't sure whether it's more that he's angry or that he's fighting tears. With Sonny, it can be hard to tell.

"Not now, Son," Jason responds, also for about the fourth time.

"Goddammit, Jace!"

Anger, then.

"We can't just leave him!"

Jason's carefully crafted laser focus breaks. He spins and grabs Sonny's arm to pull him away from the others. "What do you want to do, Sonny? You want to lose Ray too? Because if we don't get him out of here, we might."

"Trent said it's not-"

"Trent said something about infections, too. You remember that? Remember what he told us about scrapes? What do you think is gonna happen to a gunshot wound?"

Sonny shuts his mouth. His eyes glisten, and he looks away.

"Look." Jason drops his voice to a whisper. "We're gonna get Ray to exfil, okay? We're gonna make sure he gets out of here. Then maybe you and me, we'll go back to look for Clay."

"Okay," Sonny says, steadier. He nods. "Okay."

They get moving again, fast as they can given the terrain and Ray's injury. So far, there's been no sign of pursuit - not that they'd likely notice any until the tangos were right on top of them.

Jason tries to wrestle his focus back to the task at hand, but his brain has grown a thicket of conflicting thoughts. One: Sonny is right; they can't just leave their brother behind like he's nothing, like he never mattered at all. Two: Going back might get them killed, and it's probably pointless. If Sonny were thinking straight, he'd know that too.

On foot, they haven't got a hope of conducting anything more than a pointless, cursory search. Taking a boat might give them better odds, but it would also be a damn good way of making sure they get tagged from the riverbank.

Jason's skin crawls at the thought of getting back in the boats at all, risking their lives on the bet that Abdhir doesn't have anyone stationed downriver just waiting to pick them off. Their only choice is to chance it, but boating back upriver to look for Clay? That would be straight-up suicide. He can't lose anybody else today. He won't.

Even if they did take the other canoe back upstream, and even if they did survive doing so, they probably still wouldn't find anything. Rivers like this, they tend to keep what they take.

Jason's mind goes round and round in circles for the rest of the hike, and then they reach their destination and all his thoughts fade away into a blank hiss of static.

In slow motion, he reaches for his radio. "Bravo One to HAVOC," he says. "Uh, we've got a problem. Our boats are gone."

Before, somewhere upriver:

Clay Spenser crawls out of the river onto a narrow strip of silty gravel. He coughs up water. His head throbs; his vision fades in and out. He can't stop shaking. He finds his Glock strapped to his waist, but his radio is gone.

He doesn't know where he is. Only that he's alone, and it isn't safe here.

He drags himself to his feet and stumbles into the jungle.