by Tom Clancy
“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.
* * *
Thibodeau’s glazed eyes widened with surprise as Felix came speeding toward him from the right, its wheels swishing over the catwalk’s runner, its gripper arm extending straight out in front of it.
Startled by the sound of its advance, the invader standing over Thibodeau whirled toward the ‘hog, bringing his rifle up from Thibodeau’s head. But the ’hog’s side-mounted shotgun discharged with a belch of smoke and flame while he was still bringing the rifle around to fire at it.
The invader spun back against rail of the catwalk, his rifle flying from his hands. The advancing robot tracked his movement, angled its gun, and fired another shot at nearly point-blank range, hitting him hard enough to lift him off his feet. Shrieking and clutching at the air, the invader went sailing over the guardrail and plummeted to the floor of the storage bay, his body landing with a heavy crash.
The roar of its shotgun still echoi
ng in the air, Felix hurtled toward the second invader, who triggered his own weapon, spraying the ’hog with a short burst of automatic fire. But he’d been unable to recover from his surprise in time to position himself for his shots, and only one or two nicked Felix’s carrier, the rest going completely astray, ricocheting off the wall and catwalk.
He did not get a chance to unleash another volley. The hog’s gripper claw shot out just as he was taking aim, snatched his leg below the knee, and clamped down with several hundred pounds of force.
His trouser leg suddenly wet with blood, the invader screamed and tried to twist away, but Felix’s hold was unyielding. Screaming in pain, his rifle clattering from his hands, he bent and wrapped his fingers around the robotic arm, struggling in vain to tear it loose.
Watching blearily from inches away, Thibodeau saw him sink onto one knee, then heard the bones of his opposite leg splinter with a sickening crunch under the relentless pressure of the gripper claw. His screams growing in shrillness, the invader continued to pull at the arm as the robot resumed its advance, shoving him implacably backward, out of reach of his fallen weapon.
Sonsabitchin’ contraption’s good for somethin’ after all, Thibodeau thought, then let his head slump to the floor again, no longer able to keep it up.
His field of vision contracting to a small, fuzzy circle, he lay there motionless, the side of his face against the floor. He was vaguely aware of footsteps far below him, a lot of them. Someone shouted — first in Spanish, then English. He heard a fusillade of gunfire.
Before he even had time to wonder what any of it meant, Thibodeau’s eyes rolled back under their lids, and he ceased to be aware of anything at all.
* * *
As the Sword ops bolted into the payload storage bay, they heard two reverberating shotgun blasts over their heads, and then saw a man in a black cammo suit fall from one of the catwalks, screaming and flailing as he dropped to the floor to their left, slamming down with a hard thud, then neither screaming nor moving anymore. An instant later there was a chop of automatic fire in the air high above them. Looking up, they spotted another dark form on the catwalk, this one suddenly folding to his knees as a hedgehog launched at him across the catwalk, its gripper arm rapidly whipping out to snatch him like the foreleg of a preying mantis. Several of the ops saw a third man sprawled on the catwalk behind the ’hog, and noticing his Sword uniform, realized instantly it must be Thibodeau.
But before they could react to this sight, a third figure in black sprang from a crouch below a towering work platform up ahead, leaving an object behind on the floor near one of its supports. All of them were experienced enough to know it was a satchel charge — and they could see two more in plain view below other platforms.
“Stay right where you are!” one of the ops shouted, raising his weapon.
The man wasn’t inclined to listen to his warning, regardless of the language. He raised his gun and swung it toward the group of Sword ops.
The response from the Sword op who had called out to him was immediate and conclusive. Bullets spurted from his gun, cutting the invader down before he could fire a single round.
Lowering his barrel, the op sprinted past the invader to the platform support, knelt over the satchel charge, and rapidly assessed its threat. He was no demolitions expert, but it looked like it was on a simple timer pencil and fuze configuration… although looks could be deceptive. There could, he knew, be internal wiring that would detonate the explosives if he tried yanking out the fuze, or other types of booby traps totally unfamiliar to him. Yet the timer’s pin was nowhere in sight, and it only had a couple of minutes left on it, leaving him with no chance to move the bomb or call for help—
He hesitated briefly, feeling his body tighten. Then, gritting his teeth, he pinched the fuze between his thumb and forefinger and gave it a hard pull.
A moment later he took a deep breath, and then another, thanking God that the bomb hadn’t gone off in his hands, that he and everyone around him were still there, still there and not blown to bits.
Which did not yet mean they were in the clear, he quickly reminded himself.
“This one’s out of commission, we better get on to the others!” he shouted. “Let’s hurry!”
* * *
Back in the driver’s seat of his chase car, Carlysle looked out his windshield at the fleeing group of invaders and swore aloud. Less than a minute ago, their jeep had sped through the gap in the perimeter fence and he had followed on their tail.
The problem was that he wasn’t at all certain he ought to be doing that.
He tried to think it through even while gunning his engine, pushing to close the distance between them.
Having sent Newell for medical treatment and dispatched their prisoners to a holding area with one of the other units, his squad had been returning to their car when they saw the invaders hasten back into their own vehicle, pull it around in a screeching circle, and whip toward the fence. As the men who by chance were closest to them, Carlysle’s team had launched off in pursuit… but the jeep had been passing through the fence before Carlysle even got behind the wheel, giving it a good head start.
What troubled him was a simple question of authority. UpLink’s host government had sanctioned the emplacement of an independent security force on the ISS compound, period. It was not prepared to have that force move about at will, engaging in what amounted to a small war. Carlysle was sensitive to that, and because he was a disciplined professional, could not close his eyes to the boundaries of his license to operate. If there had been no prisoners taken on the compound to hopefully yield information about the motives and objectives behind their raid, he might have been inclined to push those bounds and carry on the pursuit, calling in the Skyhawks for aerial support. But there were, and it was hard to justify going forward knowing the repercussions that might be expected as a consequence.
He gripped the wheel, his eyes on the taillights ahead of him. Stop or go, what was it going to be? With Thibodeau not answering his radio, the decision was his to make.
Producing another string of curses, he shifted his foot to his brake pedal and eased it down. The chase car lurched to a halt over the bumpy road.
“Never mind that bunch, we’re going back,” he said to the man beside him. “There’s a whole lot of pieces that need picking up at the facility, and nobody but us to do it.”
* * *
Its engine throbbing, Kuhl’s jeep shot through the gap in the fence at full horsepower, reversing the path it had taken into the compound.
Kuhl turned in the front passenger seat and saw the twin points of headlights in the darkness behind him. But they were a good distance away, and that distance seemed to be growing. Still, he wanted to keep his eyes on them.
The jeep plunged ahead into the jungle, bouncing over the road, vines and branches lashing its windshield, leaving behind long, drippy swipes of moisture. Soon the unbroken tunnel of vegetation around it was screening out the sky.
Kuhl watched the headlights steadily, convinced they were indeed becoming further off. Why might that be so? he asked himself. Certainly their position beside the jeep had given Kuhl and his three companions a jump on the security teams, who had dispersed from their own vehicles during the firefight. But that only accounted for his head start, not the absence of any concerted and determined pursuit. And what of the helicopters? Why hadn’t they been sent after him?
A faint smile touched his lips. Even flight had its lessons, and it struck him that he’d just gained another bit of understanding about UpLink’s vulnerabilities, limitations, and the dynamics of its relationship with the Brazilians.
It was knowledge he would have to carefully digest along with the rest of what he’d learned tonight.
Knowledge that was bound to be very useful as the next phase of the game commenced.
FIVE
VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 17, 2001
The bald eagle launched from the tall trees downhill to their righ
t, soaring above the old pilings at the marshy tidal band, its long outspread wings a serrate outline against the sky, the untinged whiteness of its head and tail feathers contrasting so strikingly with its blackish body they seemed almost like luminous, painted-on accents to guide the eye across its perfect form.
Megan watched it circle the pilings twice, rise gracefully on an updraft, and then swing out across the shiny waters of the bay. The shore below her was silent. Nothing moved amid the rushes. Nor was there any motion in the tangled scrub sloping off from the deck where she sat with Nimec and Ricci, a cup of strong black coffee on the table in front of her.
“It’ll generally stay quiet for five, ten minutes after she’s gone. Then you’ll see the gulls, terns, and ducks come back, sometimes a few at a time, sometimes hundreds of them at once, like there’s been an all-clear,” Ricci said. “The eagles prefer eating fish to anything else, but when they’re really hungry or nursing a brood, they’ll make a meal out of whatever they can sink their talons into. Smaller birds, rodents, even house cats that stray too far from their backyards.”
Megan reluctantly dropped her gaze from the eagle’s path. Its sudden appearance had given her a thrill of excitement, but Ricci had promised an explanation for the ugly scene on the road, and she was more than ready to hear it.
She shot a glance across the table at him. “How about urchins?”
Ricci smiled a little. “Them too,” he said.
She kept looking at him pointedly.
“I think Megan was offering you a neat little segue there,” Nimec said from the chair beside her. “Might not be a bad idea to take it.”
Ricci paused a moment, then nodded.
“You two want to go inside first?” He gestured toward the sliding door leading back into his house. “It’s getting pretty brisk out here.”
Nimec’s shoulders rose and fell. “I’m okay.”
“Same,” Megan said. “I can use the fresh air after all the schlepping around we’ve done. To use an Irish word.”