CHAPTER 24: SACRIFICE
Six Months Later
Arlington National Cemetery
11:00 AM
The headstones stretched to the horizon, row after row of perfect white markers, each one marking the place where a life had ended and a memory had begun. The grass was green, the sky blue, the air still, the silence deep. Jack stood before three of them, fresh graves with names he knew by heart. Reyes. Chen. Martinez. Killed in the Tehran raid. Dead because they had followed him into danger, because he had asked them to go where he could not go alone, because they had trusted him and he had not been able to bring them home.
He had been here before. He had stood at other graves, in other cemeteries, in other countries, had said goodbye to other men and women who had died because he had asked them to follow him
