Alex dove behind the ridge, sand spraying like a veil.
On the other side, the soldiers braced for a frontal assault that never came. They waited for a heartbeat.
By the time they surrounded the dune, weapons leveled at the empty depression, Alex was a ghost in their periphery.
He moved through the dead space of their formation. One soldier at the rear stumbled—a hand clamped over his mouth, a blade slipped between his vertebrae, and he was gone. No scream. Just the soft thud of a body meeting the sand.
"Fire! He's in the dunes!" the commander roared, his finger twitching on the trigger.
Lead shredded the sand where Alex had been seconds ago.
He was already ten yards behind them, moving with a predator's silence. He didn't run; he glided. Two quick steps. The Glock barked twice. Two soldiers folded—headshots. They were dead before their knees hit the earth.
"Stick together! Form a circle!"
The commander's order was a death sentence.
The metallic tink of a grenade pin hitting a rock was the only warning.
The soldiers froze. In the sudden vacuum of sound, the realization hit. They had bunched up. They were a single target.
"Scatter—!"
The blast turned the dunes into a furnace.
When the smoke cleared, only one man remained on his feet, stumbling through the red haze. He didn't make it three steps before a hand gripped his tactical vest and slammed him into the earth. The impact forced the air from his lungs in a wet wheeze.
Alex didn't go for the throat. His fist came down with the weight of an anvil.
Crack.
The soldier's jaw shifted.
"Where is he?" Alex's voice was devoid of heat. It was the sound of a man who had already decided the outcome.
The man coughed, a spray of crimson painting the sand. Alex hauled him up by the collar, bringing his face inches from his own cold, dead eyes.
"Where is my son?"
The soldier didn't look at Alex. His eyes flicked over Alex's shoulder, widening in a mix of terror and sudden, twisted relief.