Juma's mouth fell open. "Chopra? I thought he was dead. I thought the Russians were using his name to try to contact me. Maybe that was him all along. We could never verify ..."

"She has Chopra, and she also has Hussein, son of the late sheikh and heir to Dubai."

"My cousin. We all thought he was dead. I heard rumors of his sisters being alive. Why didn't you tell me this immediately?" Juma glanced around the room, his thoughts obviously racing, his eyes widening.

Brent winced. "I didn't want to offend you or dismiss your hospitality."

Juma rose quickly to his feet. "Who is this woman you're after?"

"We can brief you, provide all the intelligence we have, but we need a commitment. We brought in a small team to fly under the radar. We need your militia."

"Of course, you have it!"

"All right, then-"

Brent didn't finish his sentence.

What felt like an earthquake rocked the entire room, dust trickling down from the ceiling, the floor feeling as though it were about to buckle. A bookcase behind Juma began shaking, the books spilling to the floor.

One of Juma's men came charging into the room. "Sir, gunships! Troops! We're under attack!"

"Get to the big guns!"

As Brent and Lakota donned their helmets and sealed their suits, Juma bounded after his men, seizing a rifle propped up near the doorway.

When they reached the bombed-out entrance, they spotted a pair of gunships arcing across the night sky.

Brent's camera zoomed in and the computer immediately identified the aircraft. Data windows opened along the margins of his display. They were looking at a pair of PAH-6 Cheetahs, the main attack helicopter of the European Federation. They were dark, sleek, futuristic-looking birds that boasted hydrogen-powered turbo shafts, shrouded tail rotors, and HOT-3 optically tracked laser-guided missiles with tandem warheads to minimize collateral damage.

A rotating three-dimensional image with engine cutaways glowed alongside the windows, but Brent didn't need the virtual picture-the real-life picture was clear enough. The gunships streaked through the night as though riding on rails, suggesting they could outmaneuver anything thrown at them. Brent had seen these choppers only a few times during joint operations with the Euros, and he'd certainly never found himself poised beneath their gunners' sights.

"What the h.e.l.l are the Euros doing here?" shouted Lakota.

"Good question!" Brent cried. "But the d.a.m.n uplink is still down. Try hailing those birds."

"On it," she replied.

"He's coming around," hollered Juma, pointing at the sky and ushering them back behind a pair of fallen columns as the recoil-less autocannons on both choppers came alive, hundreds of rounds of caseless ammunition pounding into the ground as the militiamen scrambled for cover. Juma had said he had about two hundred in Dubai at the moment, two hundred on the island, and the rest scattered across the other islands and in the mid-desert areas. It seemed the Euros were intent on exterminating this piece of Juma's network. "Come on!" the man cried.

"Sir, Voeckler says the WAN uplink's not down-it's being jammed," reported Lakota. "Can't get through. And no response from those pilots."

Brent ducked behind the rocks and called up his roster. He tapped Daugherty. Their suits used the most sophisticated encryption technology on the planet, and that paid off because the LAN still worked and Daugherty answered the call. "I'm here, Ghost Lead."

"Euros have some gunships here over the island," Brent reported.

"Just going to call you. Troop transports landing about five clicks north of the tower. They're deploying. Got a few heavy lifters dropping some armor. Not sure how many dismounts yet. Captain, what is this? The Euros got our backs now?"

"I don't know. But they're attacking the militia, which in my book makes them the enemy."

"Sir, are you ordering us to attack them?"

"Negative, but you'll return fire if fired upon."

"Roger that."

Brent grabbed Lakota by the arm. "We need to get back."

She'd been listening in and nodded.

A strange whirring and fluctuating hiss grew louder and was amplified by the suit's sensors. Brent craned his head in time to watch the entire entrance to the compound-piles of rubble, really-explode into more fountains of rock and other jagged debris as the gunship's pilot cut loose another missile, effectively sealing off the main entrance to Juma's base.

Two pickup trucks rolled into view with fifty-caliber machine guns mounted in their flatbeds. The men behind those fifties swung the barrels around and, howling at the gunships, directed their fire skyward as bra.s.s casings jingled and arced over the sides. Every third round was a tracer, slashing red hot against the night, and both men adjusted their fire, doing what they could to counterattack an overwhelming and technologically superior force. The engines, screams, and gunfire rose in a blaring crescendo as the gunners kept firing. Brent remembered what had happened to the two trucks in Sandhurst, and he doubted this situation would end any better.

As expected, the Cheetahs responded in kind, diving boldly and directly into the onslaught, their pilots launching missiles at each of the pickup trucks.

Brent couldn't take his eyes off the scene as the gunners tried to bail out before those missiles struck, but they were too late, both enveloped by fireb.a.l.l.s, as were the drivers.

"What are they doing?" Juma demanded. "I thought you Americans were allied with them!"

"So did I!" Brent retorted.

And as quickly as the attack began, it ended, with both birds turning tail and heading southeast toward Dubai.

"Why are they leaving?" asked Lakota.

"I don't know," muttered Brent. "Call Daugherty."

She did. Brent told Juma they needed transport back to the vault and a contingent of men to come with them.

"I'll lead them myself."

One of Juma's lieutenants came dashing up with a cell phone and thrust it into Juma's hand. The conversation went quickly, and when it was finished, Juma said, "Some of my men attacked a convoy near Al Malaiha. Three trucks are still headed south. Also, there's been another skirmish south of Dubai, along the coast. I don't know what that's about. My men did not recognize any of the forces there. Can you contact your people?"

Brent frowned. He tried to call Grey himself. Still no uplink. "We're being jammed. And until my people can stop it, I'm cut off from back home."

Juma nodded. "Very well. To the docks."

As they jogged off, Brent called back to Riggs and Schleck, who were still up on the rooftops. He warned them of the convoy.

"No worries, Boss. We're on it," said Riggs.

The Snow Maiden's group was down to three trucks, and they would have to make the gold fit or leave some bricks behind, unless Patti could somehow arrange for a replacement. She sat in the back, trying to keep the flashlight steady as the medic gave her somber looks. He'd already started an IV on Chopra, but he didn't seem very pleased with that and muttered to himself in Chinese.

Chopra's breathing had grown shallow and wheezy. Though the medic didn't say it (he probably couldn't say it in Russian), the Snow Maiden guessed that the bullet had pierced Chopra's lung and chest cavity and that he was bleeding internally.

If the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d could live long enough to get them into the vault, she'd be okay. Just keep him alive Just keep him alive, she kept screaming to herself. Part of her wanted the stubborn old b.a.s.t.a.r.d to die; yet she pitied the man because he had put such faith and belief in a punk kid who would ultimately break his heart.

She checked her watch. They were less than twenty minutes away now, and Chen Yi called her to say that he saw flashes, smoke, and fires in the distance.

She grinned. The Europeans had arrived.

Hussein sat across from them, his back pressed against the truck wall, fingers wrapped around a leather rung attached to the wall and used for strapping down cargo. "I want to tell you something," he began, raising his voice above the shimmying truck.

"What?" she said, grimacing.

"You have to keep us alive. The vault is rigged. We're both living keys. If we die while inside, the explosions will kill everyone and destroy the gold. My father was careful about these things. He explained everything to me. Showed me everything."

"Nice try, kid. We've studied the vault. We know exactly how it was constructed and what security measures are in place."

"You think you do."

She snorted. "We'll see." She glanced down at Chopra, still wheezing, and then at the medic, who was listening to Chopra's chest through a stethoscope and plugging numbers into a touchpad medical device that was providing an ultrasound-like image of Chopra's lungs.

"Bullet here," said the medic. "I find it. Not good."

"I need him alive for another half hour. Can you do that?"

"Not sure," said the medic.

She glanced back at the kid, just as a tear slipped from one of his eyes.

"So now you're finally scared," she said.

"I'm not scared." He dragged a hand across his face. "I'm not ..."

"You should be."

"Are you really going to kill us?"

"I don't want you to die. I want you to lead your country. I told you that. But if you get in my way, then you know what'll happen. It's as simple as that."

Chopra began coughing loudly, and then he was choking, spitting up blood all over his shirt, over the medic, and the truck floor.

The Snow Maiden screamed at the medic, who rifled through his bag, produced a needle, and punched it into Chopra's ribs. He did something to the needle, and air whistled through. Chopra gasped and was beginning to calm. He caught a breath, then another.

"He bleeds bad. Not much time," said the medic.

"How long?" she demanded.

The medic shrugged.

"Don't let him die," pleaded Hussein.

Chopra reached out toward the boy, who just gaped at the b.l.o.o.d.y hand.

[image]

A flotilla of about thirty boats left Kish Island, and Juma was able to take Brent and Lakota back in a high-speed cigar boat procured from some Iranian drug dealers just after the nuclear exchange. It was, Juma had said, his personal ride.

Tensions were expectedly high, and Brent was somewhat baffled because the choppers did not return to attack; it seemed they were being lured toward Dubai.

As they neared the city-the skysc.r.a.pers like monoliths, black and dead-lightning, like flashes of combat, backlit the clouds about twenty miles north, somewhere near the airport, Brent estimated.

But up there, on the Gold and Silver Towers respectively, were Brent's eyes and ears, his own low-tech satellite feed in the form of snipers Schleck and Riggs.

"They've got about ten Badgers rolling south from the airport area, but real slow," said Schleck. "Real slow. Weird. They're taking fire from the militia, but their response so far has been limited."

The European Federation's AMZ-26 Badger was a hybrid-powered, eight-wheeled troop transport equipped with a Spanish-made thirty-millimeter dual-feed chain gun that fired seven hundred rounds per minute. Another variant came with a special multipurpose TOW missile system capable of engaging both ground and air targets.

However, the most notable and dreaded feature of the vehicle was its high-powered microwave emitter, capable of dispersing groups of infantry with a less-than-lethal dose of microwaves producing the sensation of being burned alive.

Brent had never seen the results of the lethal setting, but he'd heard about them. Horrific.

"We need to cut them off before they get near the vault. In fact, I want that place to look dead, so if our girl is with that convoy, she walks right in-then we got her."

"Roger that. No sign of the convoy yet. Wait a minute. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Take a look, Captain ..."

A camera window opened in Brent's HUD. Three trucks with lights off drove northwest up 1st Road, heading directly toward the Gold and Silver Towers.

"That's got to be her," Brent said. "Heads up, everyone, this is Ghost Lead. Three trucks inbound. Do not make contact. Just observe, roger?"

Alpha and Bravo teams checked in, and Schoolie, who was still deep in the parking garage, acknowledged that he had the trucks on Voeckler's sticky cams.

"Man," added Schoolie. "Looks like they're headed right for me. Wait a minute. They are! Coming down into this parking garage!" He cursed.

"Schoolie, hide the gear and get to cover," Brent ordered. "Do not engage. Observe only. Just like at the bar back home. Sit tight and watch."

TWENTY-TWO.

Silver Tower Business District, Dubai Chopra chased the boys down the street, lost them in a crowd at the next intersection, then launched himself into the air, soaring like a bird as metallic wings sprouted from his back. He circled the crowd, spotted the boys once again, then swooped down and ripped the first one off his bike.

The second looked up as Chopra plucked him from the bike and tossed him to the ground as the bike crashed into a pair of steel garbage cans near the edge of the alley. Chopra landed in front of the boys, who were still lying on their rumps. They backed away, stunned.

"My father gave me this bike. You shouldn't have taken it. You have no idea what it means to me."