The squad leader looked at the bodies on the corridor floor and made the only rational decision available to him.
"We're pulling out. This is above our pay grade."
No one argued. Six men in under ten minutes, and they still hadn't seen the man who'd done most of it. Just the sound of shots in the dark, the shapes of their teammates going down, and the single round that had come through the window glass from somewhere outside with the kind of precision that didn't belong to an amateur. Half the team was gone. Whoever was in that building had trained for this kind of environment and was using it against them with methodical, unhurried efficiency. Staying inside to find him wasn't courage. It was arithmetic, and the arithmetic was bad.
They moved out through the kitchen, past the two men o
