Prologue

The last day of his life, he remembered thinking afterward, had been hell on earth.

It wasn’t just the heat of the Baja desert. That was awesomely intense, shimmering across the dirt and scrub, and he knew some of his fellow Marines were suffering in it. But U.S. Marine Sergeant Justo Orozco had grown up in East Los Angeles, and he had no problem with heat.

It wasn’t just the job, either. The Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit prided itself on its ability to fight anywhere on the planet, and there wasn’t any particular reason why Orozco’s platoon shouldn’t be here running a drug‑interdiction exercise with their Mexican Army counterparts. Never mind that the theory underlying the exercise was bogus. Never mind that the Mexicans probably saw this as a slap at their own capabilities. The logic and politics of the situation weren’t Orozco’s concern, and he wasn’t being paid by the hour.

No, what made this particular mission hell was the way every single damn Mexican insisted on calling all the Americans “gringo.”

Including Orozco.

It irritated the hell out of him, which was probably why they kept doing it. He was an American, yes, but he was also full‑blooded Hispanic, and he was damn proud of both. Why some people seemed to think those two identities had to be mutually exclusive was something he had never understood. He’d never put up with that nonsense before, and it galled the grit out of him to have to put up with it now.

But he was under orders to be cooperative. More than that, he was a professional, and he was damned if he would let a few resentful locals get the best of him.

It was getting on toward evening, and the team was just wrapping up a search‑and‑corral exercise, when out of the corner of his eye Orozco saw the flash.

His first reflexive assumption was that the Mexicans had sneaked an aircraft into the exercise, just to shake things up a little, and that he’d caught a flicker of sunlight off one of its windows. He turned that direction, opening his mouth to warn the rest of the team.

The words died in his throat. In the hazy distance far to the north, right where he’d seen the flash, a tiny, red‑edged cloud had appeared.

And as he watched, its top boiled over into the shape of a mushroom.

He was trying to wrap his brain around the sight when there was another small flicker, slightly brighter this time. He waited, still staring at the mushroom cloud, when a second fiery pillar boiled up from the earth a little ways to the east of the first.

“My God,” someone whispered beside him. “Is that...? Oh, God!”

“It’s San Diego,” Orozco said, the sheer unnatural calmness in his voice as frightening as the mushroom clouds themselves. “San Diego.”

“Maybe Mexicali, too,” someone else muttered.

“Or Twentynine Palms,” Orozco said, marveling at the strange disconnect that had severed the link between his intellect and emotions. “Who the hell would want to take out Mexicali?”

“I just thought–”

“ Oh, Dios mio! ”

With an effort, Orozco tore his eyes away from the twin pillars of death. One of the Mexicans was staring past Orozco’s shoulder, his eyes wide and horrified, his face as pale as any of the gringos he derided. Moving like a man slogging through a nightmare, Orozco turned to look.

In the distance to the southeast, another tiny mushroom had appeared, clawing its way toward the sky.

“What the hell?” someone gasped. “That can’t be–”

“Hermosillo,” one of the other Mexicans said in a quavering voice. The man had tears shimmering in his eyes, and Orozco remembered him talking about his family in Hermosillo.

Orozco stared at the third mushroom cloud, his mind reeling with the utter insanity of it. San Diego, yes. Twentynine Palms, maybe. But Hermosillo? The place didn’t have a single shred of military or political significance that Orozco could think of. Why would anyone waste a nuke taking it out?

Unless someone had decided to take out everything.

Slowly, he turned to look at the rest of his team, their faces etched with varying degrees of terror, anger, or disbelief. They’d figured it out, too. Or they would soon enough.

Their lives were over. Everyone’s life was now over.

Orozco took a deep breath.

“I think,” he said, “we can safely say the exercise is over.”

“What do we do now?” someone asked.

Orozco took another look around the group...and this time, he saw something he hadn’t noticed before. All the Marines were looking at him. Even Lieutenant Raeder, whose face was as frozen as anyone else’s. They were all looking at Orozco.

Waiting for their sergeant to tell them what to do.

He took another deep breath. One of these deep breaths, he thought distantly, would be his last. He wondered if he would even know at the time which breath that would be.

“We’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll survive, because we’re Marines, and that’s what Marines do. We’ll start by going back to camp and figuring out what we’ve got to work with.”

For a moment no one moved. Then the lieutenant stirred.

“You heard the man,” he called. “Gather up the gear and head back to camp.”

Slowly, the clustered knots broke up as the men finally began to move. Orozco took one last look to the north, noting that the mushroom clouds, too, were starting to break up.

And as he began helping the others collect the gear, he realized he’d been wrong. This day hadn’t been hell on earth. This day had been paradise.

Hell on earth had just begun.