Act of War

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dumyat, Egypt

Two nights later

It had not taken as long as he thought it might, but it was still well after 9 P.M. when Yusuf Gemici closed the last accounts receivable file on his computer and secured it with a password. He took a last sip of thick, strong Turkish coffee, popular in Egypt and around the Middle East, and was ready to start shutting the computer down when a gentleman and a lady came through the outer office door. The secretary—his slutty but very cute sister-in-law—was long gone for the day, so he rose and went out to the reception area. This was an intrusion, sure, but he wasn’t yet rich enough to turn away customers, especially those who looked well-off enough.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,” Gemici said in Egyptian Arabic. “Misae el kher.”

“Ahlan bik,” the man said in response, in stilted but passable Arabic with an American accent. “Enta bititkallim inglizi?”

“Yes, of course, I speak English,” Gemici replied. “Welcome to my place of business. How may I be of service?”

“I apologize for the late hour,” the man said. The woman, who had been unobtrusively hanging behind the man, walked off and began looking at the pictures of cargo vessels on the walls in front of the secretary’s desk.

“Not at all. Please come in and sit.” The man came into Gemici’s office; the woman stayed outside. “I am Yusuf Gemici, the owner of this business. I shall make coffee, unless you prefer water? Juice?”

“Water, min fadlak.”

“Of course. You Americans are not accustomed to ahwa turki.” He retrieved bottles of mineral water from a small refrigerator next to the secretary’s desk, along with a bowl of half-melted chips of ice and a couple small glasses. The woman stayed outside, as a woman who knew her place should always do. “I do not forget how much you Americans like your ice cubes.”

“Shukran,” the man said.

“Afwan.” Gemici kept the door to his office partially open. The woman was still looking at the pictures of various ships on the wall—she hadn’t said a thing, unusual for a Western woman. “We do not see many Americans here in our little city, except for the oil workers and tourists taking the felucca tours. Have you been on the Mouth of the Nile tour?”

“No, not yet.”

Gemici gave the man his business card after scribbling some Arabic on the back. “My brother runs the Timsaeh tour company. The best boats on the Mediterranean. Show him this card and he will get you a bottle of Omar Khayyam wine for your sunset cruise.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Pleasantries over, Gemici leaned back in his chair expansively. “How may I help you, sir?”

“My company is in the process of negotiating a sale of newly designed natural-gas metering equipment to the Egyptian General Petroleum Company,” the man said. Gemici’s eyes widened. The Egyptian General Petroleum Company was Egypt’s second-largest petroleum consortium, with an immense presence in the area because of its development of several natural-gas fields near Port Said, on the other side of the Gulf of Dumyat. “The Point Fouad project is ready to expand, and my company has a contract to provide new equipment to be shipped from Newark, New Jersey, to Dumyat.”

“Very excellent,” Gemici said. “I am glad you chose us. We have a very fine vessel to move your equipment.” He stood and went over to a large photograph of a ship on his office wall. “My pride and joy: the King Zoser, named after the man who united the two desert kingdoms into one nation which became Mi?r, or modern-day Egypt,” he said. “She is fast, reliable, efficient, fully inspected and certified by the U.S. Coast Guard, and specially designed to safely and securely handle outsized and delicate machinery such as computerized field equipment. We require very little handling equipment at the pier, so we routinely go into smaller ports which is often much more convenient for our clients. We can even offload outsized equipment directly onto offshore platforms if necessary without the use of helicopters.”

“The crew is especially important to this shipment, sir,” the man said. “To cut costs, I would like to know if the crew has any experience handling equipment such as ours. We would like to avoid sending a number of engineers on the ship if at all possible.”

“But of course!” Gemici said. “As I said, we specialize in serving the oil and gas exploration industry with safe, secure, and professional transportation support.”

“Excellent,” the man said. “In fact, I believe it was one name in particular from your company that came very highly recommended: Gennadyi Boroshev.”

Gemici kept his smile in place, but he could feel sweat start to pop out around his collar and in the soles of his feet. “I am sorry to inform you, sir, that I do not know of any such man. He does not work for my company.”

“Then maybe you can tell us where to find him, Mr. Gemici.” The woman had come into the office, followed by two younger men with obvious gun bulges under their sportcoats. He noted the shades in the windows in the outer office were all closed and the lights turned out. The woman held up a wallet and showed a gold badge. “Special Agent Kelsey DeLaine, FBI,” she said. The men with her closed the rest of the blinds in Gemici’s office and started going through his file drawers. “Gennadyi Boroshev. Where is he?”

Gemici closed his eyes as his heart sank through his chest into his bowels. Shit, he knew this was going to happen. But he still motioned to the agents rifling his file cabinets. “Do you not need a search warrant to do that, Special Agent DeLaine?”

“Do you want me to get a warrant, Yusuf?” Kelsey asked. “Would you like me to call the Mubahath el-Dawla? I’m sure they’d want to know what you’re up to.” The Mubahath el-Dawla, or State Security Investigations, was the Egyptian internal intelligence force, the secret Gestapo-like unit that provided information to the President and the Ministries of the Interior and Justice—any way they could, in whichever way the ministries wanted it, or so their reputations suggested.

Gemici’s eyes were darting around the room now in confusion, but he was still trying to bluff his way out of this, waiting to hear exactly how much information they had or if they were just on a fishing expedition. “Boroshev…Boroshev…”

“He was on board your vessel for several weeks on your last North and South American cruise,” Kelsey said. “As far as we can tell, he was on board all the way from Damascus to Richmond and all the way back to here. You don’t remember him?”

Crap, Gemici thought, they had everything…“Ah! You said Boroshev! Your accent is difficult for me,” he said, smiling and bobbing his head. “Of course I recognize him. Russian. Ugly. Sickly. A drug fiend, if I remember correctly. I do not know where he is.”

“Got the crew files, Kelsey,” one of the agents searching his file drawers said.

“Boroshev was not a crew member,” Gemici said. “He was a courier, a messenger boy. We paid very little attention to him.”

“Wall safe,” the other agent said, moving the large photograph of the King Zoser aside. He immediately started searching around the area of the picture, especially in dark, out-of-the-way places.

“That is the owner’s safe,” Gemici said.

“I thought you were the owner, Yusuf.”

“I am just a lowly ship’s captain,” he said. “I am not allowed to touch it. I do not have the…”

“Got it,” the second agent said. He copied a combination from the very edge of a piece of trim around the photograph on his notepad and then entered it into the wall safe, and the door popped open.

“You men are all alike—you can’t remember combinations so you write it on something nearby, thinking no one will ever find it,” Kelsey said. The second agent withdrew another batch of personnel files.

“I told you, Boroshev was a courier, a representative of a client,” Gemici said. The second agent flipped quickly through the personnel files, then went back to the open wall safe. “I have no records on him whatso…

“False bottom,” the agent said. He removed a piece of carpet from the floor of the safe, then a piece of metal.

“I’m afraid I must insist that I call the harbormaster and local police,” Gemici said. “This is getting quite…”

“More files,” the agent said, withdrawing another handful of folders from the bottom of the safe.

“This is outrageous!” Gemici said, his eyes bugging out in panic. “This is illegal! I shall report you to the ministry of justice in Cairo! You have no right to—”

“Got it,” the agent said, handing Kelsey a folder.

“Right on top—must be an important person, eh, Yusuf?” Kelsey said, flipping through the file. “Bottom note here says something about two million. Dollars? Egyptian pounds? Is this what Boroshev got paid to bring a nuclear weapon into the United States?”

“Nuclear weapon?” Gemici cried. “I know nothing of this! Nothing!”

“Sure you do,” Kelsey said. She continued to flip through the file, then gave up and handed it to the second agent, who began studying it himself. “You’re going to be extradited to the United States to face over two thousand counts of murder and conspiracy, Yusuf. I can pretty much guarantee you the death penalty. In fact, I don’t think we’re going to bother with going through an extradition—we’re going to hog-tie you like the murderous pig you are and just take you back with us. Your first stop will be Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Have you heard of it? Let’s go.” The second agent collected all the folders into a backpack while the first secured Gemici’s hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs.

“Wait! I will tell you all you want to know!” Gemici said. “But the real records of what Boroshev was doing are on board my ship, not here.”

“Ahmed?”

“Nothing in the files like addresses or phone numbers,” the second agent, an Arabic translator, said. “Looks like a payment sheet, maybe receipts. Hard to tell.”

“You better not be lying to me, Yusuf,” Kelsey said, “or I hope you can swim with your head bashed in.” She had the plastic handcuffs cut off. “Move out.”

They left the office and crossed over to the other side of the wharf to where the King Zoser was docked. There was one watch stander at the top of the gangway, who exchanged words with Gemici as they started up the ramp. The watch stander lit a cigarette and nodded, obviously not concerned that the captain was coming on board so late at night with four foreigners.

About halfway up the gangway, when the Arabic-speaking agent reached out to grasp the handrails with both hands as the ramp got slippery, Gemici saw his chance, slid under the handrail, and dropped about twelve meters into the harbor. “Ilha’uni!” Gemici shouted in Arabic when he surfaced. “Utlub el bolis! Ilha’uni!”

The watch stander reacted immediately, flicking his cigarette overboard, raising a small rifle, and shouting a warning to the rest of the crew. Several floodlights snapped on in the wheelhouse and somewhere on the bow. DeLaine, Ray Jefferson, and their agents were caught out in the open halfway up the gangway.

“Kelsey…?” one of the agents asked. “What do we fucking do now?”

“Let’s jump for it,” the other agent said. But at that instant the watch stander opened up with a short burst of machine gun fire and shouted something in Arabic, and the four Americans could do nothing else but raise their hands and remain still. More crewmen started rushing up on deck, converging on them, weapons at the ready…

Suddenly the searchlight up on the pilot’s arch near the wheelhouse went out in a shower of sparks, and they heard the sound of ripping metal, a scream, and then two splashes as something—or undoubtedly someone—dropped from the pilot’s arch into the harbor. As the terrified crew members ran over to the section of the rail to try to see what had gone overboard, there was another loud bang, the sound of crunching metal, and the searchlight on the bow went out.

“Move, everybody!” Jefferson said. He led the way up the gangway, drawing his sidearm.

“Wa’if! Haelan!” the watch stander shouted, then opened fire. One of the first rounds hit an agent in the leg; he screamed and dropped to the gangway. The other shots missed, but the watch stander kept on firing. Jefferson and DeLaine went back to help the injured agent to his feet, drawing their weapons and preparing to return fire. The watch stander had them all in his sights and was ready to squeeze the trigger…

…until he heard a loud thud! right beside him. He looked up and saw a massive figure standing beside him, as if he’d appeared out of thin air! The figure, a cross between a man and a machine, snatched the rifle out of his hands like a parent taking a noisy rattle away from an infant, then crumpled it up in his right hand as if it was nothing but a stick of cinnamon. Then its left hand snapped out, grasped the man by the throat, picked him up with ease, and casually dropped him over the side.

“Bolton, what are you doing up there?” Jason Richter radioed from inside CID One. He looked toward the bow and saw Carl Bolton in CID Three, the newest model, climbing down from the bow lookout. “Get down here and let’s secure this tub.”

“I can’t get the hang of this thing,” Bolton complained. He finally got the nerve to just jump the ten meters down to the deck and found the landing much softer than he expected. “I don’t know how Moore did it.” He and Jason stood guard at various places around the vessel, staying out of sight but still prepared to fight off any response from police or port security. DeLaine, Jefferson, and the two agents were belowdecks for about fifteen minutes. Soon they were back on the wharf, folding and stowing the CID units and hurrying away in a rental truck. They could see the police starting to arrive in the rearview mirrors as they sped away.

“We didn’t find anything in Gemici’s cabin, and we couldn’t find Boroshev’s cabin,” Kelsey said. “But we did find several folders of notes. Looks like we’re going sightseeing, guys.”

A Secret Location

Early the next day

“We were raided!” Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov screamed into the secure satellite phone. “You sonofabitch, we were raided!”

“Shto ty priyibalsa ka mn’e, Yegor?” the voice on the other end of the connection known as the Director asked in passable Russian. “Calm yourself.”

“They had a firefight with Gemici’s men on his ship—with two of those damned robots!” Zakharov shouted. “They’re here, right now. You knew about it, and you said nothing!”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Zakharov!” the Director retorted. “I told you to stay out of the United States. Instead you engineer another attack! Now look at what you’ve accomplished: the fucking President of the United States has gone before Congress and asked for a declaration of war on you! You brought this on yourself!”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“ ‘Do?’ I’m not going to do a fucking thing!” the man insisted. “You’ve got one more job to do out there, and then you’re out. You’ve already been paid half the cost of the last job—you’d better finish it. After you’re done, you should take your money and go back to Brazil or the Caribbean or whatever rock you intend to hide under, and disappear. Stay that way.”

“The mission was, Kingman dies,” Zakharov said. “He’s managed to escape every time.”

“The mission was: you do as I say, when I say it, and you get paid,” the Director snapped. “I never wanted you to strike inside the United States. If I told you once, I told you a dozen times: attack Kingman everywhere but the United States. No one is going to care if you blow up a trillion dollars’ worth of oil infrastructure in Nigeria or a power plant in Brazil, but blow up one oil head in the United States and they’d send the Marines out after you. Now you’ve got something even worse than the Marines—this lousy little task force. The attack in San Francisco was a waste of time and resources. I told you he wouldn’t be there, and blowing up that building hasn’t stopped his operation even for one day! The only thing you’ve succeeded in is enraging the Americans, turning most of the world against you, and driving Kingman even deeper belowground.”

“You’re nothing but a fucking coward!” Zakharov shouted. “I knew what you wanted: you wanted to see Kingman dead…”

“Wrong, you idiot. I want Kingman bent, broken, humiliated, bankrupt, and defeated—then dead,” the Director said. “But you’re not going to do it by blowing up his headquarters in San Francisco. You’re turning him into the aggrieved party—people are even starting to feel sorry for the conniving bastard!”

“If you’d give me all the money I need, I could have his entire worldwide operation in flames in a year!”

“You’re being paid very well,” the Director said. “These added expenses caused by your escapade in San Francisco are coming out of your pocket. Finish this one last job, then go on your way. I never want to speak to you again.”

“What about this task force?” Zakharov asked. “What about those robots? What am I supposed to do about them?”

“Sounds to me like you might need a lot more men,” the Director said. “They’re your problem. It would definitely be in your best interest to smash them, before they get any more support or funding. Use every weapon and every man you can scrape up, but take them down once and for all.”

“I need more information on them,” Zakharov said. “You can get me the data on their technology I need to destroy them.”

“I’m not your messenger boy, Zakharov…!”

“You’re involved in this as much as I am,” Zakharov said. “You can get the data. I’m busy doing your dirty work—you can sit back in your comfortable office, push a few buttons on your computer, and get what I need, and we’ll both be better off.”

There was a short pause on the line. Just as Zakharov thought he had hung up, the Director said, “Check your secure e-mail box when you can. I’ll see what I can find out. But you are the fighter. You’re being paid a lot of money to fight smart and win. Do it right this time, Zakharov. Don’t screw it up again.”

The White House, Washington, D.C.

A short time later

“She’s here, sir,” the outer office secretary said, standing in her boss’s doorway, “and I’m afraid she’s not going to leave until she gets some time with you.”

Robert Chamberlain made a show of running a hand through his ever-thinning hair and turned in his seat. From there, he could see the west entrance to the White House—and sure enough, there she was, surrounded by her ever-present camera crew and a small crowd of curious onlookers: Kristen Skyy of SATCOM One News. “She’s persistent, I’ll give her that,” he muttered.

“What do you want to do, sir?”

He shook his head with extreme, exaggerated irritation. “She wants to talk to me, not the President?”

“She said only to you.”

“What did Collins say?” All press interviews had to be approved by the President’s chief of staff first, but he knew that Collins rarely said “no” to anyone, especially to a female correspondent.

“She hasn’t spoken to the chief of staff. She showed up outside without an appointment and asked to talk to you. Do you want me to contact Miss Collins’s office?”

“No, don’t bother. I’m not going to give her a statement of any kind anyway.” The last thing he wanted now was for that busybody Collins to find out so soon that Skyy was here. Chamberlain sighed, then nodded. “All right, let’s get it over with. But the camera crew stays in the Appointments Lobby until I find out what she wants.”

Minutes later, Kristen Skyy breezed into Chamberlain’s office. A couple of days locked away in New Mexico only helped to make her look even more beautiful, he thought. Although her handshake was sincere enough and the smile looked genuine, he could definitely feel that aura of anger inside her at being cooped up at the Task Force TALON training area after returning from Brazil. “Have a seat, Miss Skyy. I have a really busy day, so I hope you don’t mind if this meeting is short.”

She didn’t sit, but marched right up to his desk before he could rise or sit elsewhere; he was forced to lean back in his chair to increase the distance between them, something he didn’t like. “I just have one question, Mr. Chamberlain: why hasn’t my request to accompany Task Force TALON overseas been approved?” Kristen asked.

“The answer should be obvious, Miss Skyy—TALON is moving fast and operational security is absolutely critical,” Chamberlain replied. “They can’t afford to watch over you while taking on Zakharov and his gang of terrorists all over the world.”

“Dammit, Mr. Chamberlain, I earned the right to go with them!” Kristen said.

“You what?” Chamberlain retorted, rising from his chair and leaning forward on his desk, going nose to nose with the gorgeous television journalist. “You did no such thing! If it was up to me you’d still be under investigation for luring Richter and Vega to Brazil…”

“I didn’t ‘lure’ anyone…”

“…and just because you managed to survive your encounters with the terrorists doesn’t mean you can tag along with TALON anytime you feel the need to grab another headline!”

Kristen looked as if she was ready to bore into Chamberlain, but instead she took a step back away from the desk and averted her eyes. Chamberlain took his seat. “Mr. Chamberlain, I’m sorry for barging into your office like this,” she said. “But I feel as if I’m intimately tied into everything that goes on with Task Force TALON now. I know…I know I was wrong to go around you to get Jason and his team to Brazil, but I felt we had to take the opportunity we had, and I made a decision. I know how it must have hurt you and affected your authority, and I apologize, deeply apologize.”

Chamberlain nodded, crossing his fingers before him. “Well, that’s a start,” he said.

“I mean it,” Kristen said. “I know I like to behave like a big shot, and I like being in control, but I now realize that my attitude and actions have an enormous effect on many around me. I don’t want to be an enemy, Mr. Chamberlain, but I know sometimes my mouth and my bad-ass attitude makes me look that way.”

If mentioning her mouth and her ass was meant as a distraction, it worked—his eyes were automatically drawn to both those luscious parts of her body before flicking back to her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice, but he was sure her remarks were deliberately intended to elicit just that very reaction. He turned in his chair to look out the window; after a moment’s thought, he nodded. “All right, Miss Skyy,” he said. “I’ll approve it.”

“Thank you so much, sir.”

“You and your network will sign all the usual waivers of responsibility and liability.”

“Of course.”

“TALON has already deployed, and they’re incommunicado right now,” he went on. “To preserve operational security, I’m going to put you on the next scheduled military logistical flight to their general location, and I’ll arrange for Major Richter to meet you somewhere so you can join the team. The final decision whether or not to allow you to accompany the team will be his. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“How soon can you leave?”

“We’re packed and ready to go right now, sir.”

“I should have guessed,” Chamberlain said. “Report to base ops at Andrews right away; I’ll have a security pass and travel orders waiting for you at the front gate. Tell your boss that you’ll be out of touch, period—no communications with anyone from here on out until cleared by Major Richter himself. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I just hope you know what you’re doing, Kristen.” Chamberlain stood. “I’ll never understand this obsession with ‘the story,’ Miss Skyy,” he said. “The only way I can begin to understand is to equate it with my deep desire to defend my homeland. But the comparison still always comes up short.”

“I think you have it right, sir,” Kristen said, extending a hand. Chamberlain shook her hand and nodded. “Thank you again.”

“Sure. Remember, from here on out, no communications until Richter says it’s okay. Good luck to you, Miss Skyy.” He took a seat and started typing e-mail notifications to the chief of staff and orders to his secretary for the security passes and travel orders. As he typed, he could see Kristen Skyy fairly running out to the west entrance, with her crew members hustling to keep up.

Jason Richter, he thought, had no idea what was coming his way, he thought, and he wondered how he was going to be able to handle it…

She knew she said she wouldn’t tell anyone, but she had Jason’s secure short messaging service address already programmed into her phone, so she shot him a quick message: “CLEARED 2 GO BY NSA. C U SOON. LUV KRISTEN.” That couldn’t hurt anyone, she thought…right?

Near Giza, Egypt

Three nights later

The Giza necropolis is one of the starkest yet one of the most beautiful places on earth, awe-inspiring enough to give even ruthless warrior-princes like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Emperor Caligula, and Napoleon Bonaparte—men who conquered much of the then-known world—pause. The region has been the location of countless battles throughout history, and yet the pyramids, tombs, monuments, and ancient structures of the necropolis remain very much as they have been for over four thousand years. They have been invaded, desecrated, stripped of their wealth and beauty, and some have even been razed over the centuries to make way for newer ones, but there they are still, chilling and majestic.

Of course, the necropolis is no longer isolated on the limestone plateau on the edge of the Sahara Desert overlooking Giza. The city of Giza now engulfs the necropolis, so close that diners in a Pizza Hut restaurant right across the street can look out the front window and get a full awe-inspiring view of the Sphinx and the three Great Pyramids while munching on pineapple pizza. In turn, the sprawling Cairo metroplex have begun engulfing Giza as the Egyptian economy slowly improves and workers flock to the city. Thousands of visitors from all over the world still tour the pyramids and monuments every day, but it is no longer the mystical, mysterious, and magical place it once was.

Case in point: just five kilometers east of the Sphinx, near the town of Tirsa, was another sprawling complex of buildings, tunnels, and soaring structures rising out of the desert that, many thought, easily eclipsed even the majesty of the Pyramids: Kingman Tirsa, Africa’s largest petroleum refinery complex. The refinery was so close, and the complex so large, that at night the flames from the refinery’s numerous cracking towers were bright enough to fully illuminate the Great Pyramids when the floodlights were turned off.

While all of Egypt’s existing refineries and petroleum handling facilities were meant to handle product coming out of the Gulf of Suez and the Nile Delta in the Mediterranean Sea, and had already begun to see a decline in both volume and efficiency, Kingman Tirsa’s entire reason for being was to handle product coming out of Egypt’s newly explored Western Desert, five hundred kilometers to the west. The Western Desert explorations had already resulted in proven oil and natural gas reserves that exceeded all of Egypt’s previously known reserves combined.

Over four square kilometers in size, with thousands of kilometers of pipe controlled by a vast network of computers, the Kingman Tirsa refinery, twice as large as the Mostorod refinery northeast of Cairo, was designed to someday process three hundred thousand barrels of crude oil per day, over half of Egypt’s total production, and produce a diverse range of petroleum products with modern efficiency. Vast underground pipelines under construction tied Kingman Tirsa to transshipment ports in the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea, and pipeline routes were being tied in to oil fields in Sudan, Libya, and Chad.

As Egypt’s largest refinery, Kingman Tirsa was vitally important to the Egyptian government, so much so that an entire brigade of the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior’s Central Security Force, fully 20 percent of Egypt’s entire paramilitary homeland defense force, was assigned to guard the facility. The Kingman Brigade, as it was called, headquartered in Tirsa, had responsibility to patrol not only the refinery complex itself but its network of pipelines and pumping stations stretching all the way to the Western Desert and its ports along the Nile River and along the Gulf of Suez, as well as provide security for the dozens of residential subdivisions built for the refinery that housed the workers.

As with all of TransGlobal Energy’s facilities around the world, Harold Kingman employed his own handpicked administrative, security, and engineering staff within the main part of the complex, which left the rest of the security forces far outside, around the periphery. While the Kingman Brigade paramilitary forces were only just a bit above standard Central Security Force quality in training and weapons, the security forces in the main headquarters and control building had the best of everything…

…which is why Boroshev and his Egyptian counterparts decided to recruit an additional one hundred and ninety men from four companies within the Kingman Brigade to turn on their comrades, leave their barracks and desert their posts, eliminate any opposition and any officers that dared try to get in their way, and take the headquarters building. Boroshev led a platoon of snipers and commandos and eliminated the outer Central Security Force guards that chose not to surrender or join the infiltrators, then cut the communications and power lines tied into the city’s power grid. The security headquarters was quickly overwhelmed after a brief firefight with TransGlobal security forces, but the small cadre of loyal guards were no match for the sheer numbers of infiltrators, most of whom were wearing friendly forces uniforms. Within an hour, the headquarters building was safely in their hands.

Under cover of darkness, Boroshev brought several large delivery trucks filled with explosives into the Kingman Tirsa refinery complex. Squads of riggers began wiring explosives throughout the complex, starting with the entrances and roads responders might use. Most of the explosives were set right in the headquarters building itself. They didn’t even bother to unload the explosives from the trucks—they simply drove the heavily laden trucks right up to vulnerable spots in the building and set the detonators. Crates of explosives were hand-trucked into the building to be set in the complex’s massive computer facility, which controlled all of the valves, pumps, switches, and flow meters controlling 3 million liters of crude oil flowing through TransGlobal’s pipelines daily. Captured refinery workers were sent to the entrances all around the sprawling facility and made to kneel facing outward as a deterrent to any military forces that might try to storm the refinery.

The terrorists didn’t have to wire the entire complex, so within another hour the headquarters building was completely mined and set to blow. Squads of demolition experts fanned out through the complex to set more mines and explosives in key refinery locations to maximize the destruction and reconstruction costs: the pipelines, valves, and manifolds from the sixteen main lines from the Western Desert oil fields were mined, as were the massive oil, refined products, and natural-gas storage containers.

Two hours from start to finish, with very little opposition inside the facility and no response from outside, and the job was finished. “All platoons reporting in, sir,” Boroshev’s second in command reported. “All demolitions set, the firing panel is in the green, full connectivity and continuity verified. Backups ready as well.”

“Looks to me like Kingman wasn’t ready to defend his largest refinery after all,” Boroshev commented. He had the fleeting thought that this job was too easy, but the fact was that it was done—all they had to do was leave. “Order all platoons to evacuate,” he ordered. “Report to briefed rally points, and make sure the head count is accurate.”

“What about the hostages, sir?”

“Last man out, turn out their lights,” Boroshev said. “We don’t want any clever engineers trying to undo all our hard work.” Boroshev took one last look around the main facility control center—this room had almost two hundred kilos of high explosives set in it alone, with another one hundred kilos down below in the computer spaces. “My young guest comes with me.” Boroshev strode quickly out of the headquarters building and headed over to his vehicle…

…when suddenly he saw a bright flash of light just ahead toward the main plant entrance, followed moments later by a loud explosion. “What the hell was that?” Boroshev shouted.

“Patrols can’t see anything yet,” his lieutenant reported. “Apparently one of the platoons heading out the front got hit.”

Boroshev nodded and unslung his Kalashnikov assault rifle. Fun and games were over, he thought. Whoever was out there—undoubtedly the American antiterrorist task force called TALON, according to the data received from the Director—their plan was simple and now obvious: wait until everyone was inside the plant and the explosives set, then trap them inside. That was probably why it was so easy to recruit the extra men from inside the plant, and why opposition was so light: they were all in on the trap.

“Contact, sir,” the lieutenant reported. “Just one small vehicle outside each entrance to the plant. Not an armored vehicle. Looks like a single dismount and single gunner on board.”

Boroshev looked perplexed for a moment, but shook it off. “Continue the evacuation,” he ordered. “Have the outer perimeter units move in and take them from the rear.”

Boroshev or his men couldn’t see them, but high overhead three small Grenade-Launched Unmanned Observation System (GUOS) aircraft orbited the Kingman Tirsa complex at one thousand meters, keeping a careful watch on everything happening below. Their imaging-infrared sensors captured the movement of any object larger than a dog and uplinked the images via satellite to controllers back in the United States and back down to users right at the scene itself.

“TALON Rats, be advised, you’ve got vehicles approaching,” Ariadna Vega reported from a control station flown into Cairo Almaza Airport about twenty-five kilometers away. “TALON Three, there’s four vehicles heading toward you, about three kilometers at your six o’clock.”

“Got ’em,” Sergeant Major Jefferson responded from the southernmost “Rat Patrol” dune buggy. He wore a monocular datalink display on his Kevlar helmet over his left eye that displayed electronic data and downlinked sensor images to him. The gunner swung his Bushmaster automatic grenade launcher south. Jefferson grabbed his M-16 rifle and got out. “Be careful what you’re shooting at, boys,” he said, and ran across the limestone plateau to the east.

“They look like Egyptian Central Security Force vehicles, but I see no transponder—definitely hostile,” Ari reported. Per Task Force TALON’s engagement agreement with the Egyptian government, any friendly vehicles brought into the area would carry a small transmitter that could be remotely activated and instructed to send a coded, invisible radio signal. If it didn’t have such a beacon, it would be considered a bad guy.

Jefferson ran about two hundred meters east, checked his position on his electronic map through his monocular display, then moved two hundred meters south. He found the deepest depression in the hard-baked earth he could, lay down, and rechecked the sensor data. Sure enough, one of the oncoming vehicles looked like it had veered east, not quite leaving the formation but definitely moving toward him. He immediately withdrew a gray-silver blanket from a hip pouch and threw it over himself.

“Ray?” Ariadna asked.

“I’m good,” Jefferson responded. That call made him feel very good—that meant that the Goose drone’s infrared sensors had lost him. The blanket he draped over himself was a cover designed to absorb and trap heat from his body so enemy soldiers with infrared scopes couldn’t detect him, and its dark color would screen him somewhat from anyone using night-vision optics as well.

“Second vehicle heading your way, Ray,” Ari warned him.

The first vehicle must’ve lost him and he called on a second to help locate him, Jefferson surmised—the first one was still the main threat. Jefferson loaded an M433 high-explosive dual-purpose grenade into his M203 grenade launcher mounted under his M-16 rifle. With his left eye displaying sensor data to the oncoming vehicle, he waited until the vehicle was about a hundred meters away, fired, and immediately rolled to his left several meters before leaping to his feet and running south. The grenade round armed after flying a few meters and landed squarely on the front armored windscreen of the armored personnel carrier. Although most of the grenade’s energy was deflected up and away, the explosion was enough to blow in the bulletproof windows and blind the crew members inside.

As soon as Jefferson rolled he lost the cover of his infrared-absorbing blanket, and the machine gunner on the second APC opened fire at the spot where he saw the grenade launcher’s muzzle flash. Still on the run, Jefferson loaded the first grenade round he could grab from his bandolier. The machine gun bursts thudded the ground with heavy raps, but they hadn’t caught up with him yet. He waited for the gunner to pause, threw himself down to the hard-baked earth, took quick aim, and fired. The grenade exploded several meters in front of the second APC—clean miss, but the distraction factor was enormous. Jefferson immediately dodged west, reloading again as he ran.

It took several seconds for the machine gunner on the APC to spot him, but once he did the carrier raced after him, less than one hundred meters behind. Jefferson realized he was running out of breath and time—one dismount had little chance against an armored personnel carrier, no matter how good a shot he was with an M203. The machine gunner opened fire, and the rounds were now whizzing all around him, close enough to feel the air pressure. Bits of limestone were kicking up in his face after hitting the ground right in front of him. No more running—this was it.

He dropped to the earth again, lined up on the approaching APC, aimed carefully, and fired. The APC dodged left when the driver saw the muzzle flash, and the round exploded just a few meters away from the right rear tire. The APC looked like it was going to flip over, but it didn’t. It skidded to a stop, unable to move—but it wasn’t out of the fight yet. The gunner straightened himself in his cupola, reloaded, drew a bead on Ray Jefferson, and fired from about sixty meters away. At this range, it would only be a matter of seconds before…

Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion right on the machine gunner himself. When the fire and smoke cleared, Jefferson saw that the entire cupola had been blown off the APC. An armored door opened up and a couple of soldiers stumbled out of the smoking interior, dropping to the ground and crawling away from the thick oily smoke billowing from inside. A few rounds cooked off inside as the heat intensified. That APC was definitely out of business.

“You okay, Ray?” Jefferson heard Jason Richter call on his radio. He looked at his datalink display and saw a green icon moving about forty kilometers an hour from the south toward the refinery.

“Roger that, sir,” Jefferson said, getting to his feet and checking his equipment. “Thanks for the assist.”

“I’m going to cover Rat Six, Ray,” Jason said.

“I’ll catch up, sir. Don’t worry about me.” Jefferson found a cigar in a pouch on his body armor and lit up as he headed toward the refinery. He was in no hurry now—the CID units of Task Force TALON were on the job. They could fight for a while without him.

The other six “Rat Patrol” dune buggies were doing the exact same thing to every one of the approaching hijacked Central Security Force vehicles: one buggy looked like easy pickings, so the APCs were just driving right up to them ready for the ambush, while a CID unit or dismounted TALON commando sneaked up behind it and attacked. With the Goose drones overhead, it was simple for the CID units—piloted by Jason Richter, Carl Bolton, and the third by none other than Captain Frank Falcone, who volunteered to take Doug Moore’s place in a new CID unit just delivered to the task force—to sneak up on them from a blind side in the darkness and nail them.

Within minutes, the battle around the periphery of the refinery was over. Gennadyi Boroshev didn’t have to wait for the sentry reports to come in—he could hear the fear, confusion, and cries of surrender on the radio as the hijacked General Security Force vehicles were taken down one by one. He also didn’t need a report from his lieutenant that the turncoat GSF fighters still inside the refinery complex were starting to get nervous: their job was to simply desert their posts and let the terrorists inside, not get trapped inside the place after hundreds of kilos of high explosives were set right behind them. But soon he got the report anyway: “Sir, the lousy bl’ats are running!” he said.

“Let them run—those zalupas are just as likely to turn on us if we didn’t let them go,” Boroshev said. “The Egyptians will certainly be waiting to arrest them—or gun them down—as they run out. We need a distraction.” He pulled out an arming panel from a satchel on his shoulder, turned a key to power up the panel, twisted a selector knob, opened two red-covered switches, held one switch up with his left hand, then flicked the other one up with his right. Nothing happened. He twisted the knob again and activated the switches—still nothing.

“I thought you said connectivity was good!” he screamed at the lieutenant. “Did you even bother to check it?” The lieutenant’s eyes filled with fear and he remained silent. That wouldn’t be too surprising—if you weren’t trained in demolitions, it would be damned tough for anyone to turn that key knowing it was set to blow several hundred kilos of high explosives just a few steps away. But this was not the time to find out it didn’t work. “Damn you! The radio signal’s not getting out. The Americans might be jamming us.” To the lieutenant, he said, “Go to the detonators in the computer room and set them to go off in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” the lieutenant exclaimed. “That’s not enough time for me to get out!”

“It’s all the time you’ll have,” Boroshev said. “Order all the men to slip out with the hostages and CSF guards when the explosives go off. They’ll never be able to capture all of us, and while they’re trying, this place will start going up in flames. At least we’ll take out the most important location in this place. I trust you’ll run faster than you ever have before after setting those detonators. Go!” Reluctantly, the lieutenant dashed back into the headquarters building.

“More people coming out,” Ariadna reported, studying the GUOS images. “The GSF officers and Egyptian military are picking them up.”

“Good,” Kelsey DeLaine said. She was seated beside Vega in the temporary command center they had set up at Almaza airport. She pointed to one of the screens. “But this is interesting: one man running into the headquarters building, while everyone else is running out.” She hit the Transmit button on her control panel: “Carl, I need you to check something out for me.”

“Wait, Kelsey—we’ll get some TALON units to look in there,” Ari said. “The CID units aren’t really designed to operate indoors without a lot of training. He’ll feel like a bull in a china shop in there.”

“There’s not enough time, and all of the ‘Rat Patrol’ guys are on the perimeter,” Kelsey replied. “Carl is out there doing nothing right now. I’ll send him in.” Ari was worried, but she fell silent.

A few minutes later, Carl Bolton piloting the third CID unit carefully made his way down a set of stairs from the main floor at the rear of the headquarters building to the second subfloor. That short trip down those stairs was one of the most frustrating he’d ever had inside a CID unit. Being inside the Cybernetic Infantry Device didn’t feel one bit like being inside a three-meter-tall robot; the haptic interfaces kept arms, legs, fingers, and other body parts moving normally in relation to one ` But nothing prepared Bolton for taking the big robot through normal man-sized spaces. He was constantly bumping into furniture and walls, hitting his head on the ceiling when he wasn’t crouched over enough, and even tripped down the last flight of stairs on his way down. Plus, all the training he had ever done in the CID unit—one day actually piloting the device, plus lengthy and usually boring lectures—had been outdoors. The smallest building he had ever been inside while piloting the CID was an aircraft hangar.

He finally made it downstairs and went down a long hallway, breaking open locked doors and using his scanners to locate any sign of danger, until he came to the computer room. Maneuvering inside there would be even more difficult than going down the stairs—the place was chock-full of workstations, server racks, printers, monitors, and bookshelves. The suspended floor, which was ventilated underneath to provide cooling air to the servers and workstations, felt spongy and fragile. Every time he moved he knocked something over, until in complete frustration he simply pushed objects out of his way—he figured he wasn’t making any more noise than before doing it that way.

“Whoever is in this room, come out immediately,” Bolton said through his electronically synthesized voice. “Sdacha teper!” he tried in Russian, using his on-board voice translator. No movement. He turned up the gain on his audio sensors…

…and immediately turned in the direction of a very slight “Snip!” sound he heard coming from behind a rack of modems and servers. “Vy pozadi stojki!” Bolton shouted. “Vyhodivshij tam!” He heard a man’s muffled cry of panic. “Vyhodivshij tam! Come out of there!”

“Izbegite menja!” the man cried in Russian. “Stay away from me, or I’ll blow this whole place to hell!”

Bolton reacted without thinking and deployed his Bushmaster grenade launcher from his backpack…before realizing that the barrel and part of the feed mechanism had to extend upward out of his backpack. Since he had to stoop to enter the room anyway, the top of the backpack was almost always scraping the ceiling. When he deployed the cannon, the barrel immediately shot through the drop-ceiling in the computer room. It immediately got tangled in electrical wires and ducting so it wouldn’t retract when ordered.

The lieutenant jumped up from behind the server rack, aiming an AK-74 assault rifle. Bolton tried to pull himself free, but the more he tried to twist free the tighter he got stuck. “Umrite vy ubljudok! Die, you bastard!” the Russian shouted, and he opened fire. The heavy-caliber bullets had no effect on the CID unit, but now Bolton was starting to panic as he was showered with sparks from the electrical wires at the same time he was being pelted with bullets. The Russian was crossing back around toward the door, firing as he moved. In a few more steps, he’d be out the door.

Enraged, Bolton thrashed around harder, kicking workstations and racks around as easily as a Lincoln Logs set in his attempts to get free and to stop that Russian from escaping. Finally, he remembered to simply detach the backpack, and the second he did so he was free. Just as the Russian made it to the door of the computer room, Bolton lunged for him. The Russian stumbled out the doors, with the CID unit right behind him, blasting through the glass doors, giving chase. Blinded with confusion and frustration, Bolton didn’t even attempt to avoid crashing into things—he crushed, scraped, smashed, or shoved anything and everything in his path.

The Russian headed straight for the stairs leading up to the main level, and Bolton knew he had to catch him before he reached those stairs because he wasn’t sure if he could go up them without tripping or otherwise looking like an ass. “Ostanovka! Halt!” Bolton shouted. With a last effort he managed to grab the guy just as he started up the stairs. The Russian battered him with the butt of his rifle until the stock shattered, then tried pounding him with his fists. “What were you doing down here?” he asked. “Shto vy delali zdes’?”

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Not until you tell me what you were doing down here!” Bolton shouted.

“CID Three, what’s your status?” Kelsey radioed.

“I captured the Russian who came down here,” Bolton replied. “Whatever he was doing, I interrupted him.”

“Bring him upstairs and clear the building.”

“I’m going to find out what he was doing first,” Bolton said. “I’ll be up in two minutes.”

“This is Richter. Bolton, get your ass up here,” Jason interjected. “Our objective is to get Zakharov and the terrorists. If he was setting explosives down there, you could be walking into a trap. We’ll let TransGlobal security and the Egyptians worry about bomb disposal.”

“Or maybe he was going to warn Zakharov,” Bolton said. “I’m going to investigate. I’ll be up in two.” Ignoring Jason’s repeated calls, Bolton headed back to the computer room. The Russian’s terrified cries and futile attempts to escape only indicated to Bolton that he was on the right track.

He had almost destroyed the computer room in his mad dash to get out and chase down the Russian—it looked like every desk and rack was on the floor and half the roof was caved in. Still carrying the Russian, Bolton walked over to the rack the Russian had been working behind, kicking desks out of his way. “Okay, Ivan,” he said, “what in hell were you doing back…?”

And then he saw it—a timer set to what appeared to be forty or fifty blocks of C-4 explosives, with wires leading to a half-dozen similar stacks on other racks and workstations. The Russian was screaming his brains out, but Bolton needed no translation now. He turned and ran, crashing through what was left of the doors and racing down the hallway toward the stairs until he—

He hardly felt the shock of the first explosion, although its force blew the Russian clean out of his arms and into a fiery oblivion. But the fury of the first explosive discharge quickly set off a chain reaction that eventually ignited over three hundred kilos of C-4 high explosives in the headquarters building. Carl Bolton was crushed between two nearly simultaneous explosions both below and above him and died almost instantly.

The feeling of dread Jason Richter felt when Carl Bolton said, “I’ll be up in two” was so strong that he didn’t jump or feel surprised in the least when the headquarters building exploded. He felt sorry for Carl. He didn’t deserve to die like this. He was here only because Kelsey DeLaine was here, not because he felt he had anything to contribute or because he cared at all for TALON.

“Jason…?” The fear and pain in Kelsey’s voice was obvious, and he felt very sorry for her. She had ordered Carl into the building, not knowing that the CID units were not meant for indoor operations.

“Kelsey, it was the headquarters building,” Jason said. “We’ll search for him, don’t worry.” But the tone in his voice made it plain: the destruction was total. What he was praying for now was that the explosions would stop and not ripple throughout the entire facility…and thankfully, they did. Men were screaming and running wildly out of the plant. “Let them go as long as they’re not armed!” he ordered. “Let the police pick them up. Keep an eye on the facility for any armed men.”

And at that exact moment, Falcone radioed, “Armored car coming out.” Jason flipped his electronic visor over to Falcone’s camera and saw what appeared to be a Humvee or similar wheeled infantry vehicle, racing away to the west. “Want me to blast it?”

“You like riding in that thing, don’t you, Falcone?” Jason asked.

“You got me hooked, boss,” Falcone said happily. Frank Falcone had always been a cheerful guy, but ever since volunteering to ride in the new CID unit, he was like a kid in a candy store. “I got legs again. Let me tag this SOB, okay?”

“Take it, Falcon—just don’t destroy it,” Jason said. “We want them alive.”

“You got it, boss. Fire in the hole.” One ride in the CID unit and a few hours of training on the C-17 Globemaster flight from New Mexico to Egypt, and Falcone was an expert. He deployed his7.62-millimeter machine gun from his backpack, turned, locked on to the front right wheels of the armored vehicle, and opened fire with a one-second burst. The rounds shredded the tire and wheel, and the vehicle collapsed and spun around. When the left front wheel exposed itself, a second one-second burst destroyed that wheel as well, completely immobilizing the vehicle.

“Two…no, three persons getting out,” Falcone reported. Jason had switched back to his own cameras so he could continue observing the main entrance to the refinery. “Two of them are armed. I’ll get ’em.”

“Rat Nine, can you assist?” Jason radioed.

“A-firm,” the driver on the westernmost dune buggy responded.

Jason switched back to the view from Falcone’s cameras. He saw the first two persons getting out…and was stunned to see a man virtually dragging another person with him with his left arm, while holding what appeared to be an AK-74 assault rifle in his right. Just as he was thinking about asking Falcone to zoom in on the two, that’s exactly what he did. “Looks like this butthead’s trying to take a hostage with him,” Falcone radioed. “Looks like a woman. That’s not nice. I’m moving in.”

Jason switched the images from Falcone’s camera back and forth to his own cameras so he could maintain watch on both. The woman clearly didn’t want to go with the guy, but she appeared to be stunned or woozy or something…no, he saw, she was handcuffed and manacled. “Falcon…”

“I got him, Jason,” Falcone responded. “Looks to me like she’s a hostage. Fucker. I’ll teach him to take a woman hostage.”

“Don’t forget about the third guy,” Jason reminded him. “Let’s have a look at him.”

“Rog.” Falcone zoomed his camera out and turned toward the stricken vehicle…

…just as the third terrorist fired what appeared to be a rocket-propelled grenade or TOW missile at Falcone! The missile flared; Jason saw a streak of fire, and then the camera went blank. “Falcon!” Jason cried. “Rat Nine, Rat Nine, what happened?”

“I…I’m okay, Jason,” Falcone murmured. “I’m…oh, crap, that hurt…”

“We got ’em, TALON One,” the driver of the westernmost dune buggy radioed. They had opened fire on the assailant with their Bushmaster automatic grenade launcher, peppering the terrorist with half a dozen high-explosive projectiles from short range. The terrorist was bracketed with explosions and was last seen flying through the air and landing several meters away in a blackened, smoking lump. “Splash one tango.”

“Don’t kill the other ones!” Jason shouted. “I’m after them! Check on CID Three.” Jason took off running to the west at full speed.

On the western flank of the refinery complex there was an access road, a stretch of sand and dirt used by the construction crews, a highway, and then the beginnings of temporary trailer housing for the refinery workers. By the time Jason ran over there, the two escapees had made it to the trailer area. “Ari, I need a Goose overhead my location,” Jason said. “They’re in the housing area.”

“Roger, on the way,” Ariadna responded. “It’ll be about two to three minutes.”

That was going to be way too long. Jason started running through the closely packed trailers, dodging around knots of onlookers who had come out of their homes to watch the spectacular explosion at the refinery. “Ana badawwer ‘ala muktal aqliyyan. I am looking for a terrorist and his captive,” Jason said in Arabic in a loud electronic voice. “Did anyone run through here with a captive in handcuffs?” People started either running away or pointing in all directions. Jason gave up and ran down another street, asking the next group of people he saw.

“Jason, I’m picking up a vehicle, traveling west at high speed about fifty meters west of you,” Ariadna radioed.

“It’s the only lead I’ve got. I’m on it.” Jason ran, following Ariadna’s directions. After crossing another highway, he found himself in a mostly business district, with dozens of small shops and restaurants, then another wide boulevard, and finally at the edge of the Giza necropolis itself. The floodlights were still on the Sphinx and Great Pyramids, creating an otherworldly image against the pitch-black Egyptian night sky. Hundreds of tourists and residents pointed at Jason in wonderment; a few screamed, a few started clapping, thinking he was part of some street show; others threw fruit or rocks at him. Traffic started backing up as drivers stopped to stare.

“Got him!” Ari radioed. “He’s on foot, thirty meters northwest of you!”

Jason leaped across the boulevard over the stopped cars, narrowly missing tourists on the other side where he landed, and started running across the excavation sites and monuments in the necropolis. He heard gunshots and saw the terrorist right in front of the Temple of the Great Sphinx, still dragging his hostage, and two police officers writhing in pain on the ground. Jason leaped over an excavation, took three large steps, and leaped again—right in front of the fleeing terrorist. Gennadyi Boroshev’s face was illuminated by the reflection of the spotlights shining on the face of the Sphinx.

“Ja ub’ju ee, esli Vy budete dvigati’sja!” the terrorist screamed in Russian. “I’ll kill her if you move!” He pointed the muzzle of his AK-74 at his hostage…

…who was, Jason saw with complete surprise, Kristen Skyy! “Jason!” she shouted. “Thank God you’re here!”

“I’m here, Kristen,” Jason said. “Stay calm. I’ll get you out of this.”

“I’ll kill her!” Gennadyi Boroshev shouted, his eyes wide in fear, his chest heaving from the long run. “Stay away from me or I’ll blow her brains out!”

“Jason…”

“Put away your weapon,” Boroshev ordered. “Now!”

“Don’t do it, Jason,” Kristen said. “Kill this bastard!” But Jason let his Bushmaster grenade launcher backpack detach itself and clatter to the ground.

“Vy ne mozhete ubezhat’,” Jason said in Russian. “You can’t escape.”

“Oh yes, I will,” Boroshev said. “This is the famous Kristen Skyy. The world loves her. She will die if you do not let me go, and the world will hate you. Now back away, and tell all those other police officers to back away too. I want a police car and driver to take me wherever I want to go. When I’m safe, I’ll release her.”

“He can’t release me, Jason,” Kristen said. “I know too much.”

“You! Get out of that thing!” Boroshev ordered. “Out!”

“Don’t do it, Jason,” Kristen said. “He’ll kill all of us if you do!”

“Zakrytyj!” he shouted. “Shut up! Get out now or she dies!”

“Kill him, Jason!” Kristen screamed.

The next few seconds were a blur. Several Egyptian General Security Forces and Cairo police officers shouted warnings, shining flashlights at Boroshev and Jason, covering both with pistols and automatic rifles. Boroshev shouted something in Arabic and tried to turn Kristen around so he could use her body to shield his…

…but he half-stumbled on a piece of limestone. At that moment, Kristen twisted her body to the left, pushing Boroshev in the same direction he was already stumbling…

…and at the same time the GSF and Cairo police officers opened fire. Boroshev screamed as the bullets plowed into his body…

He pulled the trigger of his AK-74 as he fell. Kristen Skyy’s hair flew as if blown by a sudden gust of wind, and the muzzle flash froze her face in a terrifying mask of surprise as if caught by a strobe light.

“Kristen!” Jason shouted. He was out of the CID unit within seconds and by her side. He pulled off his T-shirt and pressed it against the side of her head, but he knew there was nothing he could do.

Her lips were moving, and he stooped closer, putting his ear to her lips. He heard the words, heard something…and then felt her last breath on his face.

Jason held her close to him, oblivious to the growing throng of police and civilian onlookers, oblivious to the majesty of the Sphinx right over his left shoulder. He didn’t move—couldn’t move—even after several Task Force TALON dune buggies arrived to help clear the crowds away. He didn’t move until Ray Jefferson himself arrived and held Kristen so Jason could climb inside CID One. After he did, he lifted her up himself as carefully as he could and strode through the crowds, heading east again toward their rendezvous point.

Kristen’s war was over, Jason thought grimly—his was not.