Jack nodded, watching the light hit the Libyan coast. They were the secret soldiers—the ones whose names wouldn't be on the morning news, but whose shadows would forever guard that patch of desert. They had survived the night, but they had left a piece of their souls in the shadows of Benghazi.
"Sun's up," Rone said, his face smeared with soot, eyes bloodshot but clear.
But the GRS team wasn't built for tired. They were built for the "thirteenth hour"—that stretch of time where the world forgets you exist, where no drones are overhead, and no quick-reaction force is screaming across the horizon to save you.
The roof erupted. Dust, concrete shards, and the blinding white flash of an explosion turned the Annex into a furnace. Jack scrambled through the grit, his lungs burning. Through the haze, he saw Rone, steady as a rock, returning fire into the dark tree line where the muzzle flashes flickered like angry fireflies.
The humid night in Benghazi didn’t smell like revolution anymore; it smelled like spent brass and diesel.