Hey what? Chance sighed. Rogers was totally overcaffeinated.

  “Okay, Dean, so with a long criminal record, he’s probably lying.”

  “This guy, Pfensky, used to work with Ildeva. Right? He says there’s a mole somewhere in SubOrbital. Says he can give us a name if we give him protection, set him up here.”

  “A name. What good is a name? Unless it’s someone important. Is it?”

  “He says no, but he’s sure it’s a guy close to power.”

  “Like—secretarial?”

  “Yeah, ex-zack-ully.”

  Chance rolled his eyes. Caffeine and—he’d heard of steroids in the fancy coffee drinks.

  “Does he know who this mole is?”

  “Nope.”

  “Area? Location?”

  “Nope, nyet, not at all.”

  “What does he want from DIA?”

  “Iron-clad protection contract.”

  “It’s a scam.”

  “Probably. Just thought you should know.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind, but… I doubt it.”

  “Me too. Meeeeeee too.”

  “Fine, man.” Chance cleared his throat. “Got to go, Dean. Stay in touch.”

  When you’ve got something real, anyway…

  SIX

  Olek stepped into the yellow lantern light. He had a submachine gun on a strap over his left shoulder, but his hands were raised. Olek was a pudgy, double-chinned guy with a tattoo on his left cheek of a cobra wearing a crown. He wore a sweat-stained paramilitary outfit, a scraggly beard, his eyes wide, sweat on his forehead.

  “Don’t shoot, I have killed these two!” Olek yelled, jerking his head at the dead men. “I need gun!”

  “The prisoners,” Burkett said. “Are they alive?” The theory was they wouldn’t be shot by their captors, despite the threats, because Moscow wanted them alive, but Burkett was always nervous about mere theory.

  Olek bobbed his head in a frantic yes. “They don’t kill those professors! Good information!”

  “Where are they?”

  “Right here, down below!” Olek pointed at the floor.

  “You stay on him, Alexi,” Burkett said. “He doesn’t need a gun, at least right now, but he can lower his hands. Sergeant Lang, check the stairs. Don’t get your head shot off.”

  “‘No blown-off head,’ roger that, sir,” Lang said. She slipped past Olek, who was talking excitedly in Bulgarian to Alexi.

  Another crack and rattle of gunfire from outside. Burkett went to the door.

  “Lem, I’m coming out!” he said. “What’s the sitrep?”

  “I’m just keeping them back, sir.” Dorman kept sighting toward the enemy as he spoke. “They’re chipping at the wall, and one of them dented my helmet with a round. No injury.”

  “What’s the range?” “About twenty-two meters. There was a guy on the wall, too, but I took him out.”

  “Wish I had that Pike launcher. Hold ’em here, pull back if you need to, watch out for grenades—I got an idea.” Hearing gunfire inside, Burkett ducked back into the building. Lang was just coming back from the stairs.

  “I can hear them talking from the basement. Random small arms fire coming up the stairwell. Didn’t come anywhere near me, but they know we’re here.”

  “How many, Olek?” Burkett asked.

  “Ildeva is down there,” Olek said, “and three more. Ildeva begin to take them out, to get them to the truck—then you come in.”

  “Okay, everyone hold right here,” Burkett said, nodding toward Lang to indicate she was in charge till he got back. “Watch the stairs but stay back from them—and stay quiet.” He slapped a fresh clip in his MK-21, switched on his helmet light, went to the dark zigzagging stone stairway, and climbed, listening for sounds from upstairs. Nothing. Just the rattle-snap of gunfire from outside.

  There was little ambient light for his night vision to harness in here and he looked closely at the stairs. He didn’t want to run into a booby trap or just a hole in the old ruin’s floor. Reaching the next floor, Burkett saw a doorway to the right. It was mostly a rubbled-up hole in the wall.

  A light flared to the left, stretching out in a seeking beam along the stone floor. Two bearded TiL appeared, the one with the flashlight wearing a white doctor’s coat and paramilitary pants. The other one, mountainously big, wore dull-green camo. Both toted Bizon-4 Russian submachine guns.

  They stopped and swore as they saw him, but by the time they were ready to shoot he’d flicked the SCAR to automatic burst and was squeezing the trigger, raking them with a full clip so that they danced clumsily with the impacts, and then slid against the walls to fall, shaking, dying, guns slipping from their hands. The fallen flashlight made a spreading pool of blood gleam.

  One of the dying men, the gangly one in the white coat, looked familiar—Burkett had seen his face in a file. Lutzoff, the interrogator.

  Very good kill, he thought.

  Burkett ejected his clip, slapped in another, his free hand already switching to double-tap. He put two rounds in each man’s head and waited a thirty-count to see if anyone else was coming.

  Not a sound. No flicker of light.

  Turning away, he went to the rubble-filled doorway and looked through. The chamber was empty of everything but shadows. The echoes of gunfire were louder here.

  Burkett stepped over fallen masonry and picked his way to the window. It was just a rectangular hole in the wall, with some ancient broken glass on the sill. He leaned out just enough to see muzzle flashes directly below—one man shooting toward Lemuel Dorman. Two others seemed to be arguing. One was pointing at the cab of the intact truck, probably arguing for escape, the other toward Private Dorman.

  Humming softly to himself—a kid’s song from a video his son liked—Burkett took two grenades from his hip pack, pulled the pins, and dropped them onto the group below. The men yelled hoarsely and tried to run—too late.

  The grenades blew, shrapnel ricocheting off the stone of the window frame and striking Burkett’s chest armor. He drew back, waited a five count, then looked out the window—could see the dark silhouettes of bodies. Ah—but one was still alive. Badly injured, trying to crawl away.

  “Good luck, pal,” he muttered, turning from the window.

  * * *

  “Lem,” Burkett said, returning to Dorman. “Three Tango down, but keep an eye on everything out here.”

  “Yes sir. Thanks for damping down the noise around here.”

  “Hey, it was bothering the neighbors.”

  Burkett returned to the anteroom. He took two grenades from his pack, one smoke and one flash-bang. The other Rangers looked at him and he gave the tactical sign for silence, then squatted on the floor near the stone stairs that led to the basement.

  Taking off his helmet, Burkett stretched out his hand, and thumped the helmet’s top on the stairway, trying to make a noise like someone going down the stairs.

  Close enough. Burkett saw a muzzle flash as a TiL soldier fired up the stairwell, the bullets cracking on stones above as he scrambled back. He activated the grenades and tossed them—flash-bang and smoke.

  Slinging his rifle over his back, he drew his M-19 smart pistol.

  “Open up on ’em!” Burkett snarled, putting on his breathing mask as the smoke flooded the stairway. “But don’t hit Ildeva or the prisoners! Precision or knives—nothing else.”

  He started down, pressed against the stairwell wall at left, hearing men below cursing, coughing with the smoke.

  Tapping his goggles to infrared, Burkett crouched by the door, swung out to see three men down the corridor, all standing, rubbing their eyes, shouting at one another in Bulgarian. There—the fourth man was Ildeva, farther down the hall, standing by a lantern and unlocking a cell door.

  Burkett picked his targets, fired, then Alexi Syrkin was suddenly beside him, firing his rifle, double-tap, with precision. Three men went down.

  Ildeva returned fire.

  Syrkin yelled incoherently and fell back. Burkett aimed his pistol very carefully, then shot Ildeva in the right shoulder. The TiL gang boss spun, dropping his weapon. Burkett turned to Syrkin, saw he was sitting on the floor, clutching a head wound.

  Alexi waved at him. “I’m okay sir, go!” Burkett nodded, then stepped over the dead men and moved to Ildeva. Lang crowded up beside him.

  “Secure Ildeva, Sergeant. Wound in upper right shoulder. After that, look to Alexi, I think he’s got a gouge on his head.”

  “Yes sir!”

  “Rodriguez, I need you with me.” The hostages had to take priority. Burkett stepped over the sprawled, groaning Ildeva and looked through the window into the cell. There were no TiL inside, but two sets of eyes looked back.

  “Corporal!” he called. In a moment the medic was pushing past him, opening the cell door.

  “Lieutenant,” Dabiri said, coming in. “I don’t want to tell you what to do, sir, but—”

  “But you thought you and your armor were supposed to take the lead. You don't have precision weapons. I wanted to make sure the prisoners got out alive.”

  “I get it, sir,” Dabiri said. He turned to the medic. “Rod—I can carry someone, this suit’s got a HULC.” The Human Universal Load Carrier.

  “Here—this man in the lower bunk,” the medic replied, gesturing. “Right leg’s swollen. Probable fractures. I’m gonna give him a shot… then pick him up carefully. I’ll bring my LTV to the western door.” He selected a syringe from his kit. Burkett went to the other men, who were flattened on the floor—trying to stay under the gunfire they’d heard from the corridor.

  “If you fellas can stand, you’re safe as we can make you. Shooting’s over… for now.”

  The hostages got to their feet. He pushed up his night-vision goggles and looked them over in the lantern light. Their suits were rumpled and grimy, they hadn’t shaved in some days, but they looked unhurt.

  “My name is Lieutenant Arthur Burkett, United States Army.”

  “Yes sir!” a tall heavy-jawed man said in a French accent. He wore transparent horn-rimmed glasses, and his blond hair spilled to his collar. Burkett recognized him from the file in his hand-screen.

  “Dr. Magonier?”

  “Yes, I am Magonier, and my comrade in calamity, he is Professor Dhariwal.”

  Dhariwal was a dark-skinned, slender man with wire-rimmed glasses, a good deal of curly black hair, and a black mustache that had joined with a new growth of beard. He flashed a smile as he took in the new situation.

  “You’ve come to rescue us?”

  “We have.”

  “God bless you!”

  “I thought you were an atheist, Lucius,” Magonier said, grinning now. Both men seemed a bit giddy at their liberation.

  “Maybe not anymore!” Dhariwal said, laughing. “Lieutenant — the injured man, the one your friend in the spacesuit took away—he is Professor Dupon.”

  Burkett nodded. “I figured he was. It’s not a spacesuit—but then again, maybe it is.” He got on his headset. “Captain? Hostages liberated.”

  “Good job, S-7. Bring them home.”

  “Roger that, sir.” Burkett turned to the scientists. “You men able to walk?”

  “Yes!” Magonier said, clapping his hands together. “They hadn’t started on us in the physical sense, as yet.”

  “Then right this way…”

  * * *

  Sgt. Linda Strickland was scanning the outer wall of the monastery, peering over the top of what was left of the granite outcropping, when Lieutenant Burkett spoke over the squad comm.

  “Coming out. Status of your position, Linda?”

  “No fire in at least fifteen minutes, Lieutenant. Des did some of his fancy marksmanship and took down three with three headshots in about a blink of an eye—and we haven’t seen a head since. Whoa—!”

  The front gate of the monastery burst open and a truck barreled through, no lights, and fishtailed to Strickland’s right, accelerating across the grass to the dirt road beside the monastery. Second Lieutenant Carney was up, firing after it—it was safe to do that now—and then the truck was gone.

  “Whoa what, Sergeant Strickland?” Burkett asked.

  “Group of Tango, dunno how many, just bugged out of here in a truck, Lieutenant. I didn’t fire, wasn’t sure if they had the prisoners.”

  Carney shouldn’t have fired, either, she thought.

  “Nope, we got the prisoners intact—more or less—and our prime captive. Alexi’s got a bad graze on the noggin but Lang thinks he’ll be all right. Coming out to you… Captain, you reading?”

  “Right here.” Mayweather’s voice came on the headset. “Meet you at Beta Team. Hold there and I’ll give you a lift. Rod’ll take the hostages along with Syrkin and Ildeva.”

  “Sounds like we’re going home,” Corporal Cha said, wiping sweat from his forehead. He squatted with his back to the rock, looking toward the craters left by two missed RPG rounds, and took off his helmet. “That got pretty hairy.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t do a sortie and come after us,” Des Andrews said, leaning to look through the open front gates into the courtyard. Strickland turned to look. The fire was still burning in there, and she saw two bodies sprawled in the flickering light.

  “I heard shooting from the west,” Cha said.

  Strickland glanced down at herself to see if she was bleeding. Sometimes she got a minor hit when she was in the combat zone, and didn’t notice till it bled like hell. She didn’t see anything this time, but she felt drained, the usual post-fight let-down.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I’m guessing they sortied and Burkett caught them with their pants down.”

  “Sounds right,” Andrews said. “I was in his squad once in Venezuela. Half the time he took care of shit by himself, just to get it done. Not much of a delegator.”

  “Alpha Team had that man in the armor helping them out, too,” Carney pointed out.

  What a gift he has for annoying me, Linda thought.

  A vehicle came along between the trees and the front wall. Not much bigger than a pickup truck. It was Rodriguez, driving the ambulance LTV. He pulled up near the outcrop.

  “Who needs treatment?” he asked, sticking his head out the vehicle’s window.

  “I think Cha stubbed his toe, Rod,” Strickland said. “I recommend amputation.”

  “I’ll live,” Cha said.

  “Good to hear.” Rodriguez turned the LTV south, headed for the S-7.

  Strickland got a glimpse of Alexi Syrkin and four other men on stretchers in the back. She went wide on the headset. “Lieutenant Faraday, sir? You awake?”

  “Shaddup!” he answered. “I’ve been standing here at this stupid tripod listening to the shooting and tense as a rat with its dick in a trap.”

  “Does he know he’s talking to a lady?” Lang asked dryly.

  “Apparently not,” Strickland said. “Seen any Tango, Ike?”

  “Saw a snake once. I let it go.”

  “Rod’s coming in.”

  “Roger that. Teams okay?”

  “Alexi’s hit but not too bad. Everyone’s coming home.”

  “Here they are now,” Cha murmured, standing up, watching Burkett lead his team in a fast walk out of the woods. Megan Lang was close behind him, then Dorman walking slow to let Tafir in his suit keep up with him. Lieutenant Carney stood up and squinted at the monastery, his mouth open.

  “We’re really the last ones here?”

  “Yeah, we gotta turn out the lights,” Cha said.

  Burkett paused about twenty meters away, turned and looked into the darkness, and shouted something. A warning? Was there a stray TiL?

  Then a man came out of the woods, a short stocky man with some kind of snaky tat on his face. He was running toward them with a submachine gun in his hands. Burkett said something inaudible.

  “Oh,” Strickland said, “maybe that’s—”

  Then she was jolted by the sound of an assault weapon going off just beside her. Spinning, she saw Carney firing at the man with the tattoo. He went down.

  “I got one!” Carney crowed. “I got him! He was coming up behind Burkett and…”

  Their cold silence made him break off, and he looked at the others—who were staring at him in shock.

  “Dude,” Cha said huskily. “I think you just shot Alexi’s brother.”

  SEVEN

  There was a medical pod in the aft of the orbcraft. Burkett stood in a doorway too small for him, his head bowed under the curving metal of the little chamber, barely breathing as he watched Rodriguez trying to save Olek Syrkin. Like the other two, Olek was intubated.

  The other patients in the compartment were Dupon and Alexi Syrkin. Dupon had a cast on his right leg, from the knee down. He was strapped to a cot, half asleep, muttering. Beside him was Alexi Syrkin, his head bandaged. A bullet had dug a furrow in his skull and passed on. He had a concussion—whether there was brain damage, Rod wasn’t sure.

  Olek Syrkin had been shot three times in his midsection. One round had pierced a lung; another had torn through an intestine. The third had shattered a kidney.

  Rodriguez had opened him, was trying to stop the bleeding. He had some pretty sophisticated nanogear to apply, but a lot of damage had been done. The shock was considerable, and Olek’s lungs were filling with fluid. As Burkett watched, Rodriguez gave a small shake of the head. Art had seen that before, always when the medic was accepting the inevitable.

  “I could try putting him into a coma,” Rodriguez said. “I have the formula, but it could do as much harm as good…”

  “Lieutenant, we have Chance on the line,” Ike said over the headset. “He’s with General Carney.”

  Burkett winced at that. “Carney? Christ. Can you put them through to my headset?”

  “Yes sir.”

  As Burkett stepped away from the medi-pod there was a crackle, and then General Carney’s voice.

  “Burkett? I understand my son is A-OK?”

  “Not a scratch, sir.”