Twenty-Four Hours to Midnight — Dale Amidei

Today is built on the past. Eight hundred enemy face him. A thousand civilians shelter behind him. The conflict was personal then, and nothing has changed. Daniel Sean Ritter, operating in an environment where neither InterLynk nor an uncommitted United States government can help, seeks to safeguard his wife's Iraqi family during an ISIS advance. There, he learns the enemy campaign is led by One Who Got Away during his Iraq War. Haunted by memories of rare setbacks a decade ago but unwilling to again disengage from an unresolved contest, Ritter takes up arms with his stepson Gabir. With a handful of isolated local militia, a single honorable course of action remains:  to do what they can, where they are, with what they have.