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H arvath had to think fast. They were outgunned by more than two-to-one.

And though the house offered plenty of concealment, it didn’t provide a fortified-enough fighting position from which they could effectively repel this many shooters over a prolonged firefight.

There was only one thing he could do and he explained his plan over their encrypted radios as quickly as he could.

Clicking his phone into the hands-free mount on the front of his plate carrier, he powered up the optic on his rifle and readied to slip outside.

As he did, he remembered his wish from earlier—that he could have had enough manpower to allow him to spend the night in the woods, hunting bad guys.

Now he was going to get his chance, but at the cost of leaving Haney and McGee by themselves to protect the Ambassador.

Because of that, he decided to help them first.

There was a window for each bay in Rogers’s three-car garage. That was how Harvath was going to get out. Leaving the lights off, he flipped down his night-vision goggles and entered the garage. As soon as he had, McGee closed and locked the door behind him.

He headed for the farthest window, crossing the garage as quickly and as quietly as he could. Once he got there, he checked the feed from the Dragonflies. The two men, just outside, were already setting up their ladder.

The other team was holding in place, just behind the trees, off the southeast corner of the house.

This was where the living room windows gave onto a flagstone patio behind which was a long stretch of manicured lawn that ran down to the river.

It looked to Harvath as though they were waiting for their colleagues to get into place up on the roof so they could all enter the house simultaneously. He needed to move now.

Opening the window, he removed the screen and climbed out, closing the window behind him.

With his rifle up and at the ready, he crept to the corner of the garage. Even though the drones appeared to show that he was safe, he did a quick peek, just to make sure. Seeing that he was, he moved around the corner and headed for the edge of the structure.

Checking the feeds once more, he could see that one of the men was already at the top of the ladder, ready to step on the roof. The other man was at the base, covering his teammate. It was now or never.

Applying pressure to his trigger, Harvath leaned out from behind the garage and sighted in on the man at the top of the ladder. Looking through the optic, he immediately got bad news. The man and his colleague were both wearing helmets. Fuck .

That meant they were probably also wearing body armor, which would make his shots even more difficult, especially from this distance.

His idea had been to take the two men out quickly, without the other team of attackers knowing anything had happened. But if he failed, and one of them was able to raise the alarm, he would lose the element of surprise and Haney and McGee would instantaneously be under siege.

Fuck , he whispered again under his breath. He was going to have to get closer, which would mean crossing the gravel driveway without being seen and without being heard.

Complicating matters was the fact that the only thing smaller than the Dragonflies themselves were their batteries.

Nicholas had been crystal clear that once they were airborne, Harvath would have to act fast. And the more onboard features he utilized, such as jamming, IR, and thermal cameras, the sooner the batteries would run down.

His plan to peek out from behind the garage, pop the two guys with the ladder, and then retreat back behind the garage and head for the southeast corner of the house was off the table. He needed to get across the driveway, and to do it successfully, he needed a diversion.

Activating his radio, he gave his teammates a quick SITREP and then told McGee what he wanted him to do.

As soon as McGee had the tablet in hand and had swiped to the screen he needed, he confirmed with Harvath that he was ready to go.

The moment he did, Harvath told him to “hit it” as he sprang from behind the garage.

When the two attackers had set up the ladder to climb onto the roof, they had positioned it adjacent to the room Harvath had been given. One of the things he had noticed when he had dropped his bag and gone to take his shower was that the window shades were on a motorized track.

He assumed that like almost everything else in Rogers’s house, it was connected to the home automation system, and he’d been correct.

With just two taps, McGee had turned on the lights in the room and had started the slow roll-up of the shades.

Not knowing what the hell was going on, the man at the top of the ladder—whom Harvath could now see was also wearing a backpack—had frozen. Then, all of a sudden, he stepped down a couple of rungs and trained his rifle on the window. The other man on the ground beneath did the same thing.

With their focus on the light and activity in the window, Harvath was able to get across the driveway and take cover on the other side without being noticed.

Having lost their drone, the attackers were likely on edge.

Whether they were aware that someone inside the house was responsible for knocking it out of the sky didn’t matter.

Everything Harvath had seen told him that they were professionals.

They would not have chalked up their drone going down to an accident.

Their assumption would be that they no longer possessed the element of surprise and needed to be doubly cautious.

It would make Harvath’s job harder, but at least they wouldn’t have their own eye in the sky warning them that he was coming. Which was exactly the case with the two men who had been preparing to assault the roof.

Weaving through the trees, well aware that snapping just one twig could give him away, Harvath moved as quickly and as quietly as he could.

When he saw the man at the top of the ladder begin to climb again, he knew the clock had run out. He needed to act.

Stepping out of the tree line and back toward the driveway, he shouldered the Rattler, took aim, and fired two suppressed shots.

The rounds punched through the flesh of the man’s lower back, just beneath his vest, knocking him from the ladder.

Before he had even hit the ground, Harvath had taken aim at his partner. He pressed his trigger again and again, the muffled spits erupting from his rifle, until they had found flesh and the second man dropped to the ground.

Charging over to the men, who were dressed from head to toe in black tactical gear, Harvath placed the tip of his suppressor under each of their night-vision goggles and shot them in the forehead, just to make sure that they were dead.

“Tangos one and two down,” he radioed his teammates.

Rolling over the man who had been at the top of the ladder, Harvath opened his backpack. Inside were breaching tools, including a portable circular saw, which would have been extremely helpful in cutting through the roof above the Ambassador’s safe room.

The questions Harvath had only multiplied. But now wasn’t the time for questions.

It was time to take out the rest of the attackers.