Shadow Watch

TWENTY-ONE

Perhaps because of the dark cloak of secrecy under which Russia’s spacecraft testing has long been conducted in southern Kazakhstan, the region has since the early 1950’s been the scene of hundreds of unexplained UFO sightings by local peasants. Sugar-beet farmers, grain growers, goatherders, cattlemen, sinewy Mongol horse traders… many have had stories of strange airborne vehicles glimpsed above the brown, moraine-covered steppes, some accounts accurate, others embellished over the course of time and countless retellings, a considerable number complete fabrications contrived to amuse friends and kinsmen and add a little brightness to the drowsy tedium of life in their remote, mountainous comer of the world.

The dark, disc-shaped object that went skimming over the promontories near the Baikonur Cosmodrome around sundown on April 26—a singularly overcast evening in what had been an even more extraordinary spell of damp, cloudy weather — would be spotted by the entire al-Bijan clan, from great-grandparents on down to its children, all sixty-seven of them gathered outside an ancestral home still occupied by family members to feast on grilled horseflesh, drink potent alcoholic beverages (at least in the case of the adults), dance to chords strummed on the three-stringed komuz, and generally celebrate the wedding of one of its daughters to the son of a well-respected and, by Kazakh standards, well-heeled livestock breeder.

In this instance, their subsequent accounts of its appearance did not require any exaggeration.

Ricci sat alone in the silence of the trailer that served as his personal quarters outside the Cosmodrome, looking over some maps of the area, liking his situation, and particularly his Russian hosts, less and less with every minute that passed. Expecting them to keep a promise of cooperation was like thinking you could hire some degenerate pedophile as a camp counselor and accept his absolute guarantee that he’d keep his hands to himself. Their original agreement to put the launch center’s security under Ricci’s full direction had, in the last twenty-four hours, been qualified and ultimately redefined so that he was now in charge only of perimeter defense, with the VKS space cops, or whatever they were called, assuming control of the facility’s interior grounds protection, even prohibiting access of Sword personnel to some of its buildings. And there already had been clashes of authority at the outer checkpoints that were supposed to be his team’s areas of patrol.

The duplicity had been pure borscht, reminding him of what had happened in Yugoslavia after the bombing war back in the ’90s, when Moscow had no sooner cut a deal with NATO not to enter Kosovo than it had ordered a military occupation force into one of Pristina’s key strategic airports. Back then, they’d had a President who’d looked and acted like a huge leech pickled in vodka to blame for the supposed confusion… but what sort of excuses were they making now?

Ricci shook his head gravely. He knew Roger Gordian had been in repeated contact with Yuri Petrov, trying to persuade him to stick to his original commitments. But Ricci’s own last conversation with Gordian had taken place twelve hours ago, at which point he’d been told to sit tight and await further news. Gordian hadn’t sounded optimistic, though, and there had been nothing from him since — a clear indication that Petrov had fallen victim to the hereditary Russian breast-beating reflex and would keep thumping away until he keeled over backward. In other words, negotiations were stalled indefinitely and Ricci’s curtailed functions would continue to be the status quo until after the ISS launch was history.

Assuming it occurred without disaster striking first.

Ricci studied his map, feeling stretched thin in every sense. His exhaustion and jet lag, the haste with which he’d needed to organize his guard force, the ongoing logistical problems of building it up to a reasonable level of adequacy, Petrov’s frequent curve balls and increasing restrictions upon his authority… the whole kit and kaboodle was grating on him. Nor had there been a bit of encouragement in anything he’d heard about the strike on the terrorist camp in the Chapadas. Whoever had been occupying that base had flown the coop aboard the Lockheed, which had itself vanished without a trace. And if they were as good and well-equipped as his information led him to believe, Ricci figured they’d have a network of safe, tucked-away airfields where they could make layover and refueling stops en route to their ultimate destination.

And where do you think that’s going to be? he thought. Come on, take a guess.

Ricci studied the map, thinking they were out there someplace close by, knowing it with a strange and implacable certainty he could not have explained to any other human being… with the possible exception of Pete Nimec. Sometimes when he was with the BPD and had worked a criminal investigation to where a bust was imminent, he’d been able to feel the accelerating energies of the thing with his nerve endings, the way he supposed animals in a forest could sense a coming storm.

They were out there, out there someplace — but where? Even the weather was working to his disadvantage. As long as the low-pressure front remained in a holding pattern over southern Kazakhstan, the Hawkeye-II satellite would be wearing what amounted to a blindfold of clouds, severely reducing its capabilities. To offset this handicap, Gordian and Nimec had shipped Ricci another of their little toys, a SkyManta unmanned air recon vehicle that looked for all the world like a flying saucer in some 1950’s-era drive-in masterpiece. Earth versus the Aliens from Zanthor. He’d seen other drones in his military days, including the Predator, which had been in its experimental stages at the time, and was eventually given over to the exclusive use of the Air Force’s 11th Reconnaissance Squadron… the Predator, and another UAV called the Hunter, both of which had outwardly resembled conventional airplanes.

UpLink’s pilotless vehicle was in another class. While far from a scientific wizard, Ricci was a quick study, and his understanding based upon Nimec’s apprisal was that its outer shell was called a “smart skin,” a composite alloy imbedded with microelectromechanical systems — MEMS was the acronym Pete had used — which included sensors tiny enough to be carried by ants, and which gave it the ability to pick up infrared heat concentrations, plus near-real-time video, and most significantly under present meteorological conditions, synthetic aperture radar images that could penetrate the cloud cover hindering his surveillance efforts. Pitch black like a Stealth bomber, it had a circumference of thirty-five, maybe forty feet, making it difficult to eyeball from the ground at night. Also, something about its saucer shape, he wasn’t quite sure what, would allow it to slip past ground-to-air radar arrays even more easily than aircraft with Stealth design.

The technical operators that had brought the SkyManta from Kaliningrad had launched it about an hour back, and Ricci was leaving it to them to keep tabs on its transmissions. If anything of interest turned up, they’d give him a shout. But what he’d needed this evening was a few hours of solitude, a chance to simply think.

Ricci looked at the map, running his fingertip over the topographical features of the Cosmodrome’s surrounding terrain. Everywhere he looked, there were tucks and folds in the hills where an assault force with a basic knowledge of cover and concealment techniques could have been assembling for days or even weeks. And whereas they could choose the time and place to hit — and hit they would, said his own low-tech internal sensors — he was shackled by Petrov’s hairy-chested exercise in self-assertion.

Shaking his head again, leaving the map on the table as he rose to brew some coffee, Ricci wished himself the best of luck trying to stop them if that hit came soon.

Dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Voenno Kosmicheskie Sily, Kuhl rode up to the checkpoint station at the north gate of the Cosmodrome in the two-seat cabin of an MZKT-7429 military semi-trailer truck. He was on the passenger side. Oleg, a native Ukrainian with whom he had seen action in many mercenary operations, was at the wheel. In back were Antonio and four of Kuhl’s best, most dedicated men from Brazil— men who had replaced the original occupants of the truck, actual Russian Military Space Police, now dead in a ditch some miles away with bullets from Antonio’s.22-caliber pistol in their heads. With Kuhl and his men aboard the trailer was the High Power Microwave cannon — tested and proven when used against the commuter train outside Sao Paulo — and its smaller but far more potent cousin, the long-range Havoc HMP device that would be placed aboard the Russian space station module. Using ISS’s solar array as its power source, it would be both reusable and retargetable — allowing Harlan DeVane to virtually destroy the electronic infrastructure of any major city on earth at his remote command.

There were five sentries at the gate. Two wore the dark blue attire of UpLink’s security team; three had VKS uniforms like Kuhl’s — but with privates’ patches on their field jackets.

Kuhl slipped his hand off the MP5K beside his seat. The Russian presence might make using it unnecessary.

As Oleg slowed the truck to a halt before the gate, one of the Sword guards approached, coming around to the driver’s-side window.

“We need your identification, please,” the guard said in English. Then in choppy guidebook Russian: “Pakuhzhee-tyeh, pa-zhal-stuh rigis-tratsiuh. ”

Oleg was reaching down for his own submachine gun when Kuhl nodded slightly for him to be still, unrolled his window, and leaned his head out.

“What is this?” he said, speaking English with a fabricated Russian accent. “Do you realize I am an officer of the military police?”

The Sword guard looked calm but determined.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, sir, but my detail’s been assigned security of this entry point, and if you’d just show your papers we can let you right on through.”

Kuhl feigned affront and gestured toward the Russian watchmen.

“What is this?” he barked in Russian. “Am I to be insulted by these outlanders?”

The Sword guard might not have understood his words, but his tone made their meaning clear.

“Sir,” he said. “I assure you this is strictly a routine check—”

Suddenly one of the Russian guards stepped up past the American, slapped his hand against the truck’s rear panel, and waved it forward, signaling one of his men to open the gate.

“Nye byespakoytyes!” he told the driver in Russian. “Go on through!”

Oleg nodded and put his foot on the accelerator.

The Sword guard watched with dismay as the huge semi began rumbling past the checkpoint.

“Just a minute—”

“Nyet!” the Russian said, puffing himself out. “He is commanding officer of our military guard, not common criminal!”

The Sword guard looked at him, weighing his options. He could order his men to stand the truck down, but the damn thing was going full steam ahead, and they’d have to raise their weapons against it to do so. On the other hand, this was the third such dispute he’d had with the Russians since coming on shift tonight to suddenly find they’d crashed his party, and both times before they had bristled but ultimately yielded to his authority. Assholes that they were, he had to bear in mind they were acting on orders from higher-ranking assholes — and allowing a minor confrontation to trigger an out-and-out donny-brook would only complicate his job if something serious requiring their cooperation cropped up. Maybe it would be best to radio ahead, have the brass tussle it out, let these guys save a little face.

He turned away from the Russian and flicked on his communications headset.

Inside the truck, Kuhl had already turned on his own trunked radio and ordered his strike team to mobilize.

On receipt of Kuhl’s command, the small army he had gathered in the foothills southeast of the Cosmodrome burst into hurried activity, emerging from behind artificial boulders, foliage, stone panels, and other blinds, peeling the camouflage netting off their vehicles, moving from the pockets of concealment where they had patiently hidden while going about their preparations. Often over the past week, and again earlier that night, advance scouts handpicked by Kuhl had reported back with descriptions of the launch center’s eastern perimeter defenses, indicating they would be unable to withstand a direct, concentrated, lightning-fast strike. Resistance would become more intense once VKS and American reinforcements were called up from other areas of the center, but the attackers did not have to worry about penetrating it too deeply. Their objectives were limited: move in, put on a good show, move out.

They did not suspect that, in the interests of putting on the best, most convincing show possible, the scouts, under orders from Kuhl himself, had lied to them.

“Sir, we’ve got something from SkyManta.” The young op who had come pounding at Ricci’s trailer door was flushed and breathless. “Looks like this is it.”

Ricci stared at him from inside the entrance, coffee cup in hand.

“What’s it picked up?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty jeeps, the controllers say the IR video’s clear as day. They’re heading in convoy toward the east side of the compound.”

The launchpad area, Ricci thought. He hadn’t wished himself luck a moment too soon.

“How close are they?”

“Two, maybe three miles, sir. There’s a whole network of gullies along that way. Caves in the hills, scrub… it’s possible they could have been hiding there for a while….”

“Let’s worry about the present.” Ricci took a breath. “Those remote gun platforms that were brought in, what are they called?”

“The TRAP T-2s.”

Ricci nodded.

“They’re all in position? Exactly the way they were when we conducted firing exercises?”

“Yes, sir. Every inch of ground in that sector’s covered by overlapping fire. We have at least fifteen of them just out beyond the gate — same number at each of the other perimeters—”

“Grab a few off each line, but just a few. Three, four. Leave the rest where they are. That’d bring us to about thirty guns at the point of attack. Have the additions emplaced right away.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ricci wanted to tell the kid not to call him “sir.” He wasn’t his uncle, and Sword wasn’t the military. But his preferred form of address was something for later.

“Notify the firing and Quick Response teams, make sure they’re all in their tac vests—”

“That’s SOP, sir.”

“Make sure anyway. ”

“Yes, sir!”

Jesus, Ricci thought.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m heading out to the snoop-mobile to see the pictures for myself.”

Minutes after Kuhl had gotten past the gate sentries with what amounted to a nod and a wave, the truck stopped briefly in a quiet section of the compound, where his men had placed the dish atop its trailer’s roof and switched on the pulse generator. They had then driven on to within two hundred feet of the long cargo-processing facility in which the ISS service module was being stored prior to installation in the launch vehicle — a movement that was scheduled to occur the very next morning.

The concrete building was guarded exclusively by VKS troops, and only a sprinkling of them at that. None seemed interested when the cargo hauler pulled up at a moderate distance. It was one of their own trucks, and there were vehicles coming and going constantly in the days preceding a launch. Although Kuhl had been prepared for the eventuality of having to deal with Sword personnel, he was not surprised by their absence. One could always depend on Russian pride. That, he thought, and the impoverished economy that had ensured their facility would not be hardened against the incapacitation of their electronic alarm systems by microwave pulse, an expensive upgrade in shielding they could scarcely have afforded.

He turned to Oleg.

“Go around back,” he said. “Tell the others they are to activate the cannon when ready.”

The snoop-mobile was all boxed-in commotion. As Ricci entered, he saw men and women hunched over every one of the instrument consoles lining its sides, the radiance from the displays and lighted controls casting pale flickers of color across their faces.

He glanced up at a flat-panel monitor on the wall above one of the consoles, and instantly saw SkyManta’s aerial IR video view of the approaching jeeps.

“Those pictures,” he said, moving up beside the woman in the operator’s seat. Her name tag read Sharon Drake. “They’re called near real-time, that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sir, again.

“How near is near?”

“What you’re seeing happened less than two seconds ago.”

“Putting the attack force how close?”

Sharon hit a button to superimpose grid coordinates over the image.

“A little less than a quarter mile,” she said.

“Any movement near the other gates?”

She shook her head. “Not according to aerial IR scans, ground surveillance cameras, or reports from the guard posts.”

Ricci thought a moment. Things just weren’t making sense. Nimec’s briefing had indicated the attack on the Brazilian ISS facility was a multi-pronged and precisely coordinated affair, planned around a detailed knowledge of the compound’s layout. There had been airborne infiltration, scattered ambushes, the works. Though its objectives remained a question mark, there was no doubt that whoever had directed it was proficient in commando-style dispersal and distraction tactics. What he was seeing here, this column of jeeps coming at their guns, was a suicide run.

He expelled a breath. “The TRAP T-2s… what’s the max distance their operators can stay back from the firing line?”

Sharon leaned over toward a lean, bespectacled black man at the console to her immediate right.

“Ted, I need you to tell me—”

“Sixty meters,” he said without looking up from his screen.

Ricci did an approximate mental conversion. Two hundred feet, give or take.

“Notify the men at the perimeter that they’re to fire soon as the jeeps are in range,” he said. “I want two thirds of the weapons on lethal settings… we hit them with gas and fireworks first, give them a chance to back off. They keep coming, it’s shoot to kill. The QR teams should be ready as our second line of defense.”

Ted nodded.

“Sir,” Sharon said, looking quickly over her shoulder at Ricci. “Something’s happening here I don’t understand.”

He made a winding gesture with his hand.

“I’m getting an IR hot spot like nothing I’ve ever seen before from inside the center… at the north end.”

“We have pictures?”

“ ’Manta’s nanosensor range is far beyond its electro-optical—”

“In plain English, Sharon, please.”

“It can detect heat and energy emissions from a distance, but video’s limited to point of sight… objects directly below it.”

Ricci ran a hand back through his hair.

“North end’s the industrial section,” he said. “Bring up a map of the area. I want to see exactly what buildings are over there.”

Computer keys clicked to his right. Ted gestured to a monitor in front of him.

“Done,” he said.

“Sir.” This from another man who had come rushing over from across the trailer a second earlier. “Don’t know if it’s relevant to what we’re seeing here, but we just got word from north sector of some friction between our people and a couple of VKS guards at their checkpoint.”

“Friction over what?”

“Russian with lieutenant’s boards arrives in a truck, gets into a snit about showing us his documents, the VKS guards override our security procedures and wave him through. Same kind of thing we’ve been dealing with all week. We’ve already lodged a complaint with VKS command, but I thought you should know.”

Ricci looked at him.

“When did it happen?”

“About ten minutes back.

Ricci studied the map on the screen. Yes, yes, of course. That fit the M.O. Fit it just perfectly.

“The cargo-processing facility,” he said, leaning over Ted’s shoulder. “You realize what’s kept in there?”

Ted craned his head around and stared back at him for a long time before replying, his eyes wide behind his lenses.

“The ISS module,” he finally said.

TRAP T-2 was another of those ubiquitous acronyms used by weapons and technology designers — the initials here standing for Telepresent Rapid Aiming Platform (Version) T-2.

As specifically configured for UpLink International, the sixty TRAP T-2s situated around the Cosmodrome consisted of a mix of tripod-mounted VVRS M16 assault rifles and Heckler & Koch MSG semiautomatic shotguns linked via microwave video, fiber-optic umbilical cable, and precision target-acquisition-and-firing software to man-portable control stations with handheld viewfinders and triggering units. The weapons platforms utilized two types of surveillance cameras: a wide-field camera on the tripod, and another on the receiver of the gun that provided a shooter’s-eye perspective through its 9-27X reticular scope. Their video images were transmitted both to the firer and command-and-control centers from which the engagement was being directed.

In plainest English that would almost certainly have satisfied Ricci, the TRAP T-2s allowed their users to hit their opposition with heavy, accurate fusillades of gunfire from locations that were secure and relatively out of harm’s way, making them ideal for installation defense.

Following Ricci’s orders to the letter, the Sword remote gun teams in their trailers behind the east perimeter fence waited until they could see the whites of their attackers’ eyes — figuratively speaking — on the displays of their viewfinder/joystick control units before rotating the TRAP T-2’s outside the fence into position, firing off salvos of 70mm smoke, white phosphorous, and CS rounds, while broadcasting a cease-and-desist warning alternately in Russian, English, and Kazakh. They had almost no hope the CS could be used to any effect, as the men in the jeeps were wearing gas masks, but were keeping their fingers crossed that the pyrotechnics would give the attackers pause.

The air around them bursting with lights and smoke, the line of jeeps slowed but did not stop.

Hands on their firing controls, the Sword gunners waited tensely to see what would happen next.

Ricci rang Petrov on his hotline before leaving the snoopmobile.

The space program director sounded in a near-panic. “What is happening? The shooting—”

“This facility’s under assault, and starting now I intend to conduct its defense per the terms of your original agreement with UpLink. Which means—”

“Wait a moment — assault from whom? You must tell me—”

“Which means I want the VKS to stay out of my way inside and outside the Cosmodrome, and allow Sword personnel unrestricted access to all buildings we deem under threat,” Ricci interrupted. “With all due respect, Mr. Petrov, I advise you to make that happen, or the sky just might wind up falling down around your head.”

As had been the case with the warehouse penetration in Brazil, the invaders gained access to the cargo-processing facility through a rear loading-bay door. What was different as Kuhl and his men went in now was that every alarm, door lock, piece of audio/visual surveillance equipment, computer — everything, everything that contained wires and circuits and fed off electrical current, including the light fixtures and air conditioners — had been neutralized. And because the precise calibration of Ilkanovitch’s device had disrupted rather than destroyed the power and computer grids, most if not all of the systems would reactivate within several minutes to half an hour, leaving the intrusion undiscovered. Convinced someone was determined to halt the space station program by the Orion explosion and subsequent attack on the Brazilian ISS facility, the Russian and American defenders of the Cosmodrome would repel the decoy strike force at the east gate and congratulate themselves on having saved the launch vehicle.

Never would they guess that its successful launch always had been Harlan DeVane’s intention. That the attacks and sabotage had been both cover for his actual plan to send Havoc into orbit aboard the ISS, and a means by which Roger Gordian’s resources could be needlessly squandered, his political ties in Russia and Brazil frayed, his spreading operations in Latin America weakened and destabilized.

Their FAMAS guns shouldered, optical display helmets and visors covering their faces, Kuhl’s team made their way through the ruler-straight corridor leading to the room in which the space station module was housed, following an interior plan they had long ago committed to memory. The Havoc device and antenna in Kuhl’s backpack weighed only twenty pounds, and was the approximate size of a portable stereo. Planted discreetly aboard the boxcar-sized space-station module, it would not be detected by the engineers who transported the module to its launch vehicle, or the cosmonauts responsible for its linkup to the orbital space station. Once having accomplished the connection, the Russians were scheduled to return to Earth, and there would be several weeks before the first permanent crew was sent aboard, by which time DeVane would have accomplished his blackmail of Russia and the United States. Only the checkout engineers might have noticed it prelaunch — and their final inspection had been conducted the day before.

There was, Kuhl thought, an exquisite symmetry to it all.

Antonio and the others close behind him, he raced forward, pushed through a door in the corridor that was supposed to be electronically locked, and glided effortlessly through another. Speed was of the essence. Though Havoc could be connected to the solar arrays in minutes, the task had to be executed, and his team’s exit from the building accomplished, before power returned to reveal the intrusion.

Kuhl moved swiftly toward one final door, gripped its handle, and pushed it open.

The ISS module was directly in front of him on a large palletized staging work stand.

Despite his need for haste, Kuhl paused in the doorway for the barest instant, feeling a surge of momentous achievement.

Then he moved forward, Antonio and the others entering at his heels, coming up to stand beside him.

“Halt right where you are, all of you,” a voice abruptly said from his right. “Another step and we’ll blow your brains out.”

Ricci held his VVRS rifle out at waist level, aiming it at the man with the backpack, eyeing him steadily through his NVGs. Beside him along the right side of the room, their own rifles angled toward the door, were half a dozen Sword ops also equipped with goggles. On the left were an equal number of men.

“Drop your weapons,” he said. “I hope you understand English, because you’ve got exactly three seconds before we open fire.”

The men in the entryway did not move.

“Two,” Ricci said.

His front teeth clicking together, Kuhl turned toward Antonio. It would be a pity to lose the men who were with him, but there was no choice.

“We fight,” he whispered. Lying to Antonio as he had lied to the perimeter assault team. “To the end. ”

With a quicksilver movement, Antonio brought his gun up and pivoted toward Ricci, but Ricci took him down with a staccato burst to his midsection before he could release a shot.

The momentary distraction was all Kuhl had desired.

As the remaining members of his team split the darkness with automatic fire, he spun on his heels, thrust his arm out at the door that would return him to the outer hall, and pushed it open.

He was halfway through the entry when Ricci lunged from behind and caught hold of his backpack.

The man beside the TRAP T-2 firing commander stared into his handheld monitor. “Jeeps are still coming on.”

The commander breathed. Didn’t those dumb bastards realize what kind of hell storm they were heading into?

“Fire at will,” he said into his headset.

The attackers riding in the jeeps had not expected to come up against the remote gun platforms. Kuhl’s scouts had told them that the east perimeter, now under American control, was guarded by an inadequate number of men possessing only nonlethal small arms intended to disrupt and incapacitate. The scouts had told them that the VKS was apparently convinced an offensive against the space center, if it came at all, would be launched against its industrial area — never expecting that Kuhl and his small group would infiltrate that sector rather than stage a mass assault there, and that the attack on this perimeter was a mere distraction that would allow Kuhl to accomplish his mission, drawing any troop concentrations away from the cargo-processing facility. Kuhl’s scouts had also told the attackers that the Sword security team did not have adequate manpower to form a strong second line of defense or mount an effective counterattack.

Although the TRAP T-2s had come as a surprise to him, the leader of the attack force had assumed they had been moved into position after the last forward reconnaissance. Having never seen anything like them, he completely underestimated their precision-firing capabilities. Furthermore, the smoke, gas, and fireworks belching from the fixed platforms seemed to confirm his intelligence — relayed by Kuhl himself — that the Americans were under stricter no-kill orders than in Brazil.

Completely misled, he stuck to his plan of attack and ordered the jeeps to roll on toward the perimeter.

The Sword gunners opened up on them with everything they had, the TRAP T-2 VVRS platforms unleashing streams of deadly ammunition, angled to cover the entire field of approach with plunging, grazing, and crossing fire.

Men leaped from their vehicles as they were sprayed with bullets, many falling dead before they could make their exits, others managing to take cover behind the jeeps and return fire with their FAMAS guns. But they knew they were stalled, unable to advance, and by the time the QR squads came speeding up on their flanks, the attackers left alive were ready to surrender.

Their assault lasted just under half an hour before the Sword guards were satisfied it had been suppressed.

Exactly as Kuhl had planned.

His rifle slung over his shoulder, the fingers of one hand clutching the strap of Kuhl’s backpack, Ricci pulled Kuhl toward him, keeping him in the doorway, hooking his free arm around Kuhl’s chest. But Kuhl continued to press forward, fighting to escape, twisting slightly to drive an elbow into the center of Ricci’s rib cage.

The wind knocked out of him, Ricci struggled to keep his arm around Kuhl, took another hard, crisp elbow jab to the diaphragm, a third.

His hold relaxed but didn’t break.

Gunfire racketing behind them, the two men grappled in the narrow space of the entryway, both their rifles clattering to the floor, their arms and shoulders banging against the partially open door, slamming it repeatedly back into the wall. Then Ricci saw Kuhl reach down with his right hand, saw the truncheon in his belt scabbard, and tried to grab his wrist to keep him from getting a grip on it. But Kuhl was too fast. He pulled it from the scabbard, brought it up, half-turned again, and thrust its blunt hardwood tip into Ricci’s solar plexus.

Ricci tightened his abdomen against the blow, but the pain was nevertheless tremendous. He grunted and crashed dazedly back against the door. His hold around Kuhl slackening, he somehow managed to cling to the strap that was his only remaining purchase, pulling it backward again even as Kuhl pulled forward.

There was a sound of fabric giving way, the strap tearing free of the stitches that held it to the pack, swinging loosely from Kuhl’s right shoulder.

Slipping down his opposite arm, the pack dangled there momentarily, and then fell toward the floor between the two men.

Kuhl spun, reached a hand down to catch it, but his brief distraction had allowed Ricci a chance to recover. He brought his knee up into Kuhl’s stomach, staggering him, then bent his legs to give himself some momentum and snapped a hard uppercut to Kuhl’s jaw.

Kuhl’s head jerked backward, but Ricci could feel him roll with the punch, and knew he’d avoided the worst of it. Ricci hit him again, aiming high, unable to maneuver in the cramped doorway and just hoping to connect with a solid hit. This time his fist smashed into the side of Kuhl’s nose, and blood came spurting from it onto Ricci’s knuckles.

Though Ricci could see the pain register in his opponent’s eyes, Kuhl gave no other sign of weakness. Before Ricci could follow up with a third blow, he slammed his truncheon lengthwise across Ricci’s side directly over his kidney, then brought it up and back for another strike, this one aimed for Ricci’s temple

Raising his arm to block the swing, Ricci forced the stick out and away from himself. But his side was on fire and he was still too stunned and breathless to move. Then, through the specks of light wheeling across his vision, he saw Kuhl’s left hand thrust downward again, his fingers groping for the backpack lying on the floor between them, then clenching around its broken strap.

He snatched it up and turned toward the corridor.

Gulping air, Ricci pushed himself off the door. Whatever was in that pack had to be important enough for the other man to have paused twice to retrieve it when he might instead have gotten a head start out of the building.

As Kuhl fled into the hall, Ricci launched into the air after him, tackling him around the middle with a force that sent both men crashing to the noor — Ricci atop Kuhl’s back, Kuhl facedown beneath him, their legs stretched out into the entryway and blocking the door from swinging shut. The truncheon skittered from Kuhl’s grasp, but his other hand remained tightly clenched around the dangling strap of the backpack. Ricci could feel his enormous power as he fought to get out from underneath, feel the muscles of his back and arms working, flexing, bulging up against his chest. The man was like a wild stallion, and Ricci knew he wouldn’t be able to keep him pinned for too long.

Pressing all his weight down on Kuhl, Ricci raised his fist over his head, then hammered it against the hand clutching the pack. Kuhl did not let go. Inhaling deeply, lifting his arm back up, Ricci struck another side-fisted punch to Kuhl’s knuckles.

This time he both heard and felt the splintering of bone. Though Kuhl again gave no outward indication of pain, his fingers splayed open around the strap. His chest flattened against Kuhl’s back, Ricci reached out, grabbed the pack off the floor of the corridor, and slung it over his shoulder through the entryway behind him, the door of which remained propped open by both men’s outstretched legs.

It was just then that a hand gripped Ricci’s ankle.

Blood trailing out behind him in a long, smeary ribbon, a feeling of looseness where he’d been shot, Antonio crawled across the floor on his belly until he was through the doorway and, mustering all the strength left in his fingers, caught hold of Ricci above his foot. It had not occurred to him that he had been intentionally sacrificed by the man he was trying to save.

“Mi mano, su vida, ” he said, repeating the phrase to himself like a mantra. “Mi mano, su vida…”

My hand, your life.

Glancing over his shoulder at the dying man, Ricci tried to shake his ankle free of him, couldn’t at first, then kicked out hard, his shoe bottom crunching into Antonio’s face.

Antonio held on to his ankle, held on through willpower alone, pulling him backward. His lips were peeled away from his gums in a kind of rictus. There was blood smeared on his teeth, lips, and chin.

“Mi mano, su vida… ”

Feeling a shift in Ricci’s balance as he struggled with Antonio, Kuhl flailed beneath him, planting both hands on the floor to gain some leverage. Like a man doing a push-up, heedless of his shattered knuckles, he straightened his arms and heaved himself off the floor. As Ricci went spilling from on top of him, Kuhl scrambled to his feet and looked hurriedly around for his pack.

Then he glimpsed it behind him. Behind Antonio. In the room containing the ISS module.

In there with the other Sword operatives.

Kuhl saw the choices before him, and again took the one that was unfortunate but unavoidable.

“Mi mano, su vida, mi mano… ”

Antonio’s voice fading until it was barely a shiver on his lips, Ricci finally kicked free of his still-clinging fingers, sprang to his feet, and looked down the corridor.

All down its length, it was empty.

He rushed straight ahead toward the loading bay, plunged from the darkness of the hall out into the lesser darkness of the night.

The man with whom he’d been struggling was nowhere to be seen.

Gone.

And though Ricci would search for him for the next hour, and immediately order a cordon placed around the space center’s grounds, Kuhl would remain gone.

He had, however, left his backpack behind.