by Tom Clancy
After eliminating the guards outside the warehouse--stealing up on them had been simplicity itself--Yellow Team had entered through its loading dock, raced through several winding passageways, and finally pushed through a set of double doors that gave into the storage bay, where the team's designated leader, Heitor, planned to drop their satchel charges. Each of the two black canvas bags contained fifteen pounds of TNT, enough high explosive to bring down the steel beam supports underneath the work platforms, the space station hardware on top of them, and quite possibly the walls of the room around them.
It was much more than the saboteurs had thought they would be able to accomplish. Surely not even Kuhl had expected them to get this far into the compound, Heitor mused.
Now he hastened to one of the platforms, slipped a satchel charge off his shoulder, and placed it at the foot of a tall support post. Both timer pencils he was using had been preset to a ten-minute delay, an acceptable opening in which to get out before the blast. Silent and vigilant, their weapons held ready across their bodies, his teammates stood watch behind him in the central aisle. The vast room around them was dark except for the few widely spaced fluorescents normally left on after the close of daily operations.
Crouching at the foot of the support, Heitor removed the timer pin to initiate the detonation sequence. Then he quickly went to the next platform and dropped his other charge.
It was just as he pulled the second pin that Thibodeau stepped from an elevator onto one of the flying catwalks and, looking out over the expansive floor of the storage bay, was shocked to discover what was happening below.
"Thibodeau's backup is on the way," Delure said. "I pulled four men from the office complex, another six off other details."
"How long before they reach him?" Cody asked from his station.
"Could be as long as ten minutes for some of them."
"Not good enough," Cody said. He produced a harsh sigh and turned to Jezoirski. "What about Felix? How fast can we bring him to Thibodeau?"
"Give me a sec to call up a floor plan of the building." Jezoirski tapped his keyboard, scanned the screen in front of him. " 'Hog's in the Level 5 propulsion lab--"
"How fast?"
Jezoirski studied the schematic, then lifted his face. "There's a connecting walkway between the research and warehouse complexes. We can move him straight along this corridor right here to the elevator, then down three levels to the walkway," he said, plotting a course across the screen with his finger. "From there it might need a minute, maybe a minute and a half to reach the warehouse, another couple to get down to the payload storage bay."
"That's at least six minutes."
Jezoirski nodded. "Best we can do."
"Suppose we'll have to live with it then," Cody said. Sweat glistened in the furrow above his lip. "All right, let's hurry up and get the 'hog rolling."
The earthmovers were parked near a ditch they had scooped out of the ground, and had offered solid cover to the invaders until the helicopters marked their positions. As they came under intense fire from a chase squad now, the group of invaders scurried down into the ditch, where they pressed up against its sides and began shooting over its stony rim.
The Skyhawks stuck to them like the predatory birds that were their namesakes, one nailing the tracked vehicles with its SX-5 searchlight, the other shining its light directly into the trench.
"Nest's ready to be cleaned out," the chopper pilot above the ditch radioed the ground team.
"Roger, we're on it," its leader replied.
He turned the barrel vents of his rifle to their closed setting and ordered his squad to move.
The chopper pilot stayed on the horn to guide their advance, and continue reporting on the position of the invaders. As he hovered over the bowl-shaped ditch, the incandescent brilliance and swirling gun smoke inside it gave the eerie illusion that he was peering down into a lava pit filled with almost a dozen trapped human beings.
But the situation below was such that the distance between illusion and reality rapidly closed. The chase squad attacked in a flanking rush, looping around the dozers and front-end loaders to hose the ditch with their guns. Although return fire was heavy, they had the cold confidence of men who had stolen the offensive and gained a maneuverability their opposition had lost. Surrounded, their FAMAS weapons' targeting systems overloaded by the unsparing glare of the searchlights, the invaders had in fact run themselves into a trap.
One of them tumbled down the side of the trench, soil and pebbles spitting up around him. A second rose to trigger an explosive round, but was slammed off his feet by a blaze of fire.
A third sprang up and looked briefly as if he might attempt a suicidal charge over the rim ... but then he backed off, tossed his weapon aside, and dropped facedown onto the bottom of the ditch in surrender, his hands stretched above his head.
The chopper pilot watched another invader follow suit and disarm, then another, then the rest seemingly all at once. A moment later the chase squad's leader gave the hand signal to suspend fire, followed by a thumbs-up to the pilot.
He smiled and returned the gesture. His searchlight would make it impossible for those on the ground to see it, but what the hell.
Disengaging his auto-hover control, he skipped off to another spot where he might be needed, the other chopper close behind.
Thibodeau would never know what caught the attention of the invader standing lookout on the warehouse floor--the slight movement of his fingers when he raised the gas pressure in his rifle barrel, the click of the hand guard as it locked into its new setting, or maybe something else completely.
In the end the only thing that mattered was the invader's bullet, and the damage it did to him.
For Thibodeau, it all happened in what his combat buddies used to call slow time. There was the surprising realization that he'd been spotted as the invader's weapon angled up in his direction. There was a spark of alarm inside him, cold and bright, like winter sunlight glinting off ice. Then he felt his reflexes kick in, felt himself reacting, and was sure his reaction was quick enough... should have been quick enough anyway. But as he ducked down below the rail the very air seemed to gain thickness and density, to resist him. It was as if he was sinking through jelly.
And then there was a loud crack from below, and something walloped him on the right side, and he felt heat spread through his stomach and went crumpling onto the floor of the catwalk as time resumed its normal speed like a train jolting from the station.
Thibodeau tried to get up, but his body was all deadweight, somehow apart from him. He lay half on his belly, looked down at himself, and saw that his vest hadn't been penetrated, that the hit was nothing but a fluke, the trajectory of the bullet having carried it up into the space between the bottom of the vest and his stomach, some goddamned nasty bit of gris-gris. And now here he was, blood draining out of him to the floor's treaded runner, filling the spaces between the treads, flowing down along them in thin scarlet streams--when had he ever stepped on Satan's tail to earn this one?
He heard the crash of footfalls, managed to lift his cheek off the floor so he could see more than the blood and the railing in front of him.
The man who'd shot him was clambering up the metal risers to the catwalk, a second invader right behind him. The two of them coming to finish him off.
Furiously wishing to God that he knew where he'd dropped his rifle, Thibodeau turned his head downward and saw to his amazement that was it still in his right hand, his fingers clutched around the grip, its barrel jacket pressed almost vertically against his side.
He dropped his cheek to the floor again, dropped it into a pool of his own blood, no longer able to keep it up. He was funneling all his willpower into getting the hand to move. He told it to move, begged it to move, and when it failed to respond silently began cursing it, demanding that it quit giving him bullshit, insisting angrily that it could fuck with him later on, could fall right off his shoulder if that was how it had to be, bu
t that right now it was going to obey him and raise the goddamned rifle.
Thibodeau heard himself take a racking breath. He could see the invaders in their black helmets and uniforms, getting closer, pounding up the stairs.
Come on, you bastard, he thought. Come on.
And then suddenly his arm was coming up, dragging the gun with it, dragging it through his spilled blood, getting its barrel under the railing and pointed down at the stairs.
He triggered the rifle and felt it rattle against his body, spraying the stairs with rounds. The invaders almost collided with each other as they halted in their tracks and shot back with their own weapons. Bullets whizzed over Thibodeau's head, tocking like hailstones against the projecting edge of the catwalk and the wall behind him. Recovered from their surprise at being fired upon, seeing that Thibodeau was badly wounded, the two invaders were coming at him once again, crouching, their guns stuttering as they began climbing the stairs. A third man, meanwhile, had opened fire from the aisle below.
Thibodeau pumped out another burst, but knew he was weakening, knew his clip would be empty soon, knew he was nearly finished.
Laissez les bons temps rouler--wasn't that what he'd told Cody earlier? Let the good times roll, roll on to the very last, take me rolling down nice and easy, amen, God, amen, he thought half deliriously.
And fired again at the invaders with the remainder of his strength and ammunition, braced for what he was certain would be the final moments of his life.
"Thibodeau's down," Delure said. "Christ, we've got to do something."
"Give me the 'hog's position," Cody replied. He was staring at pictures being sent by ceiling-mounted surveillance cameras in the payload storage bay. Now under the remote control of the monitoring room, their feeds normally appeared on a television screen every ten minutes in a rotational sequence that included feeds from other medium- and high-security buildings, and that should have been automatically overridden in the event of a trespass, with the system tripping an alarm and locking its visuals upon the area that had been breached. But the cameras' regular transmissions had been neglected as the attack at the compound's periphery gathered momentum, and the invaders had apparently gained entry to the warehouse through authorized means, defeating the override.
It was a lapse whose consequences had become terribly clear to Cody's team in the past several minutes.
Jezoirski was looking closely at the hedgehog's video transmissions. "Felix is at the warehouse... about thirty feet down the corridor it'll bear left, take another elevator down to the storage bay...."
"You said that means, what, another minute until it's actually on that catwalk?"
Jezoirski nodded. "That's my estimate, yeah."
"Thibodeau might not last that long," Delure said. "I'm telling you, Cody, he needs our help right now."
"Our orders are to sit tight."
"But we can't just sit here and watch them kill him."
"Listen to me, goddamn it!" Cody snapped. He was sweating profusely now, the moisture dripping down over his lips. "We'd never make it to the warehouse before the 'hog and the backup team. You want to help Thibodeau, keep your eyes on those screens, and be ready to tell that robot what to do when it reaches him!"
Kuhl crouched behind his vehicle, the sounds of gunfire surrounding him, helicopters whirring overhead. His expression was rigid with thought, almost brooding, as if he were oblivious to it all.
In fact he was keenly attuned to his situation, his mind distilling and evaluating its every aspect. Up until now the mission had been a success. His men had met almost every objective set out for them, and in some cases done better than expected. But the stage at which events could be orchestrated was past, and sustaining further losses was unacceptable. It was necessary to recognize that the balance had shifted toward his opposition. If he continued, his force might be so badly weakened it would be unable to retreat. And he was not one to bait chance.
He turned to his driver, who was huddled beside him. "We're pulling out," he said, and motioned toward the jeep. "Radio the others to let them know."
Manuel was sitting on the ground nearby, leaning back against the door of the vehicle. His untreated wound had sapped him and he was breathing in short, labored gasps.
"We can't." He nodded toward the interior of the compound. "Yellow Team is still in there."
"They knew the risks," Kuhl said. "We've waited as long as we can."
Manuel slid himself up along the side of the door, wincing with the effort.
"They haven't had enough time," he croaked.
"I've given my order. You can stay behind, if you wish." There was anger in Kuhl's eyes. "Decide quickly."
Manuel looked at him for a long moment, bent his head to stare at the ground, then slowly looked back at him with resignation.
"I'll need some help getting into the jeep," he said at last.
Outside the warehouse complex, a group of ten Sword ops raced on foot toward the service door through which Thibodeau had pursued the invaders. The team was composed of men who had been pulled from dispositions around the compound's residential and office buildings.
They came to where the murdered guard lay on the ground, stopped, gazed down at him. The knife wound in his back was still bleeding out.
One of them mouthed an oath, his right hand making the sign of the cross on his forehead and chest.
"Bryce," he said. "Ah, shit, poor guy."
Another member of the ad hoc team grabbed his arm.
"No use standing here," he said.
The two of them looked at each other. The first man started to say something in response, but then simply cleared his throat and nodded.
Turning from the body, they ran into the open service door, the rest of the team pouring into the warehouse behind them.
Thibodeau could feel the world slipping away. He was trying to hold onto it, trying desperately, but it was loose and runny around the edges, made of soft taffy, and out beyond where it waned off into formlessness, he could sense a black mass waiting to swallow it all up. He knew what was happening to him, no brain flash needed on that score. It was blood loss, it was traumatic shock, it was how it felt to be dying from a large-caliber bullet hole in your gut. The world was slipping away, and though he would have preferred it didn't, the choice didn't seem to be within his making.
Thibodeau breathed hard through his mouth, coughed. It was a thick, liquidy sound that admittedly frightened him a little, and the air felt cold entering his lungs, but there wasn't much pain, and things seemed to get more distinct afterward. He saw the two invaders who'd been shooting at him emerge from the blurred comers of his vision, one behind the other, hurrying up the stairs to the catwalk. He had held them off as long as he could, firing his gun until its magazine was exhausted. Now he wasn't even sure whether or not the weapon was still in his hand.
The invader who had led the way up was standing over him, pointing his rifle straight down at his head.
Thibodeau took another breath, managed to lift his cheek off the catwalk's bloody runner. Its grooves had marked his cheek with smears of his own blood.
"Get it done," he said weakly.
The invader stood over him. If he had any expression beneath his face mask, Thibodeau had no way of knowing what it might be.
"Come on," Thibodeau said. "Get it done."
And still standing there looking down at him, the invader lowered the rifle's bore to his temple.
Felix rolled out onto the catwalk from the same elevator Thibodeau had taken minutes earlier.
High above the payload storage bay, the 'hog went swiftly toward him, its navigational sonar mapping its surroundings in layered echo patterns.
This was a built-in redundancy to prevent accidental collision, for Jezoirski now wielded full command of its operation from the monitoring room. Having donned virtual-reality glasses, he could see three-dimensional graphic representations of everything the 'hog "saw" with its optical array. At the same time
, the joystick controls on his console were now directing its robotic mobility systems, allowing him to guide and determine its every turn and action.
Biting his lips, Jezoirski rushed the 'hog over the catwalk. Like a sorcerer possessing an entity from afar--using technology instead of talismans, and algorithms instead of incantations--he had extended himself into the hedgehog's physical space and was, in effect, in two locations at once.
Felix glided around a curve, its wheels whispering softly, the immense room's recessed fluorescents reflecting twinkles of pale blue light off the poker-chip sensors on its turret.
Then, all at once, it came to a halt.
Was brought to a halt.
Panic sweeping through him like a whiteout blizzard, wiping all his training from his mind, Jezoirski had frozen at the remote controls. A hundred feet above him in another building, yet right in front of his eyes, Rollie Thibodeau was about to die.
And Jezoirski suddenly didn't know what to do about it.
"What's wrong?" Cody asked.
Jezoirski's heart bumped in his chest. His eyes were wide under the VR wraparounds.
He gripped Felix's controls, blinded by indecision, knowing his slightest error or miscalculation would mean Thibodeau's end.
"I asked what the hell's wrong with you!" Cody repeated beside him. His voice trembled with stress.
Jezoirski inhaled, felt his muscles unclamp. Cody's demanding, excited tone had jolted him from his momentary paralysis.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," he muttered quickly, as much to himself as his superior.
Taking another breath through gritted teeth, he resumed working the controls.