"Chopra? Chopra?"

He opened his eyes, saw a face half draped in darkness. The image grew more distinct ... Hussein.

"We're here now. We have to get you up," the boy said.

Where were they? He remembered being shot, the pain, the truck, something about not having much time.

And then he remembered.

He was dying.

"Chopra, they're going to move you."

His mouth tasted foul, his lips dry and cracked with something. He licked them. Salty. Blood. The shooting pain and hissing from his chest would not go away. His fingers and toes were beginning to go numb.

Loud engines whined somewhere outside the truck. Chopra leaned his head to the right and spotted something quite surreal: Three forklifts powered by natural gas drove in a line past the truck and toward a long tunnel, their tiny headlights barely pushing back the darkness.

A fourth forklift stopped behind the truck, this one driven by the Snow Maiden herself. She hopped out and climbed up into the truck. "We're going to move you into the seat next to me," she told Chopra.

Hussein came around, and together they lifted him to a standing position. The world tilted strangely on its axis, and they caught him before he fell.

Brent was climbing into an old Jeep Wrangler driven by one of Juma's men when Schoolie called him. "Brent, I'm looking at her right now. I heard them come down here. There must be a tunnel that runs from this tower to the vault. They got forklifts. She's got about a dozen guys. They look Chinese. Military. They're heading over there. Take a look."

He finished taking a seat, then focused on his HUD, where he saw the Snow Maiden and the boy helping the old man into the seat of one of the forklifts.

"Schoolie, you are way too close. Get out of there. Wait for us."

"Aren't you going to thank me? You got confirmation. The target is here. I can move on her right now."

"Negative!"

"It's just them. Her team's already gone ahead. I can take her out right now."

Brent shifted his tone. Dramatically. "Get out of there. If she spots you-"

It had been the smallest reflection, so small in fact that the average person would not have seen it, but someone like the Snow Maiden, who had trained herself over the years to be hyperaware of her surroundings, picked it up in her peripheral vision. A trio of thick water and sewer pipes as fat around as a man spanned from the concrete floor to the ceiling in one corner of the sublevel, and it was there that she saw him, crouched behind one, his elbow partially visible, along with a wedge-shaped segment of his helmet.

Who was he? She'd find out before she killed him. "Wait here," she told Hussein.

"I could run away," he said.

She looked at him. "I run fast." Then she slipped off, away from the truck, hugging the wall behind them. Chen Yi had given her a combat vest and web gear whose pockets hung heavy with grenades. She reached the corner of the garage opposite the pipes and tugged free a grenade.

"Don't move!" came a shout from behind the pipes.

An American. d.a.m.n, they'd caught up to her. It seemed Patti had done nothing to thwart their efforts.

"Who are you?" she cried in English.

"I'm the guy who's going to capture you! Stand down!"

She squinted toward the pipes as he came around with his rifle trained on her.

"Okay, okay," she said.

Then she pulled the pin on her grenade, let it fly, and threw herself forward, onto the concrete.

He fired, the rounds striking near her arm and leg as she kept rolling, knowing that his targeting computer would have to keep recalculating if she just kept moving.

She thought he'd be faster, but he wasn't. As he charged away from the pipes, trying to keep tight to the long, concrete wall, the grenade exploded in a magnesium-white flash, echoing in great thunderclaps down the tunnel and throughout the rest of the garage.

The pipes immediately ruptured, water whooshing and jetting as the soldier in the high-tech combat suit dove to the floor.

She found it odd that he wasn't wearing a helmet. Her bullet didn't care either way. It left her pistol and nicked the back of his head. A close shot but not a kill. His hand went up to the wound.

Holding her breath, she took off, but a ma.s.sive puddle now separated her and the soldier. She could barely keep her footing and wound up throwing herself down, onto her gut, and sliding across the wet concrete, firing three times at the soldier as he tried to turn and bring his rifle around.

She caught him in the arm, the abdomen, and the hand, but his armor held true.

He was a breath away from firing when she adjusted her aim and finally shot him in the head, the blood spraying across the back wall.

Gasping for breath, she rose, rushed to him, leaned down and pulled the blood-covered headset off, slipped it on, and tried to see what he saw.

"Unauthorized user," came a voice in her ear. "Shutting down ..." She ripped off the headset and threw it across the floor.

Hussein was still waiting for her. She hurried to him and was joined by a trio of Chen Yi's men, who'd no doubt heard the explosion.

They helped load Chopra into the lift. She radioed to Chen Yi and told him what had happened. They needed to move the cargo trucks to the secondary tunnel. He agreed. The Snow Maiden climbed into the driver's seat and threw the lift in gear.

Meanwhile, behind her, the three men jumped into the trucks and followed her down the tunnel.

The original plan had been to extract the gold from the main vault beneath the Almas Tower and move it underground to the Silver Tower. From there, they'd make their aboveground exit to escape. Now the Americans were aware of that. They'd have to move directly up from Almas.

She called Patti, updated her on the situation. The woman told her not to worry, that the Euros were doing, as she put it, a splendid job.

Schoolie's avatar flashed red with a warning that he had no vital signs. A secondary message indicated that his communications and command had been locked down because of unauthorized use.

As Lakota threw the Jeep in gear, Brent called up to Schleck and Riggs. "Get to the Silver Tower, fourth level. We've lost Schoolie. She's got to be down there."

"Roger that," answered Schleck.

Poor Schoolie. How many times had he busted Brent's chops, only to beg for a place on this mission? The irony could not be more bitter.

"Look at that! They're cutting us off!" cried Lakota.

Two of the gunships had returned from the airport area to launch missiles on the bridges spanning the ca.n.a.l. There were four bridges in all, and they were targeting three, blasting away gaping sections that fell in an eerie slow motion toward the bubbling white water. Brent called up the map and nodded in understanding: They were not striking the bridge directly opposite the Almas Tower.

"Check it out," he told Lakota, sharing his HUD map with her.

"I see it."

The Euros were either creating an escape route for the Snow Maiden or attempting to funnel Juma's forces into a single approach. Perhaps both, Brent thought with a deep sigh.

He stole a quick glance at the camera images captured by Schleck and Riggs; they were still rushing down the stairs.

Then he switched to the other teams, who had moved about a kilometer up Sheikh Zayed Road and maintained their observation posts, along with several squads of Juma's men. Copeland was zooming in with his camera to reveal a dozen or so of Juma's men rushing onto the main highway to launch rocket-propelled grenades at a pair of oncoming Badgers. Just as the militiamen launched, the entire group dispersed in all directions; it was the strangest retreat Brent had ever seen-nothing orderly about it, as though each man were crawling with ants.

Then it dawned on him.

The Euros were using their microwave weapon, and Brent's stomach turned as the men fell to the ground, swelling like balloons as the water and blood in their bodies came to a boil and their skin began to separate like sausages being overcooked.

"Captain, are you seeing this?" asked Copeland.

"Yeah." Brent grunted. "I see it. Alpha? Bravo? Keep tight. Fall back on the tower. Do not engage. Do not get tagged. Go now!"

His people charged off, along with squads of militiamen in tow.

[image]

Chen Yi's team had placed wireless surveillance cameras the size of golf b.a.l.l.s throughout the tunnel area and approach to the main vault. One of his men was monitoring those cameras via a notebook computer.

They reached an intersection where four tunnels met, and in the center lay a thick, tubular shaft within which sat a broad cargo elevator with heavy steel gates. This was how they got the gold into the vault, and this, the Snow Maiden grinned, was exactly how it was coming out.

The three truck drivers parked behind her, and Chen Yi ordered them to remain there on guard.

She leaned over to Chopra. "You need to get the elevator open for us. Just do it. Or I'll shoot the kid."

Two of Chen Yi's men carried Chopra from the forklift's wide seat and toward the elevator's control panel. Chopra looked weakly at her, then back at Hussein, who cried, "Just do it, old man! We have no choice!"

Chopra placed his hand on the scanner pad. Nothing. Without power to trickle-charge the backup batteries, they'd eventually lost their charge.

"There's no way in. The emergency generator is down in the vault," he said.

The Snow Maiden tore the lower panel off the biometric scanner station, exposing the batteries.

"How much power do I need?" she demanded.

"Twenty-four volts DC," he told her.

She ordered Chen Yi's men to pull two batteries from the forklifts, wire them in series, and connect them in place of the panel's existing battery cables.

A moment after he touched it, the pad lit from beneath and light wiped across the screen. The status display showed READING ... AUTHENTICATING ... READING ... AUTHENTICATING ... And then- And then- WELCOME, MANOJ CHOPRA.

The wide doors slid open.

"You did the right thing," the Snow Maiden told him, as Chen's people carried him back to the lift. Only two forklifts at a time could fit in the elevator, so the Snow Maiden's and one other entered first.

They descended for a full thirty seconds until the elevator stopped with a series of hard clunks and thuds. The cagelike doors creaked open. They drove into another access tunnel about forty meters long, only their forklift lights illuminating the way.

Next came security checkpoint number two: another pair of wide, blastproof doors beside which sat an empty security desk whose monitors flashed a message about being in standby mode since they'd just been powered up via the other terminal.

"I'm sorry, you have to get out again," Hussein said to Chopra.

This time the medic came rushing over and shouted at Chen Yi's other men as they carried the old man toward the interface panel. The medic was not pleased with all the moving of his patient.

Now Chopra had to place both hands on a gla.s.s-top counter and stare directly into a screen that showed a digitized and lifelike image of him, basically his avatar. A female computer voice, speaking in English with a British accent, instructed him not to blink.

A light shone directly into one of his eyes, and then the computer said, "Please state your name."

Chopra took a deep breath.

"Please state your name."

The Snow Maiden raised her pistol, put it to Hussein's head, then looked at him expectantly.

"Manoj Chopra."

"Ident.i.ty recognized. Welcome, Mr. Chopra. It appears you are experiencing a medical emergency. Should I call for medical a.s.sistance?"

"No."

"Very well, then. Access is granted."

The broad metallic doors slid open, and without delay they drove the forklifts through them, down yet one more tunnel that terminated at a wall of thick t.i.tanium bars, not unlike a prison. This was a conventional barrier opened with either a set of four keys or another set of biometric measures.