"It's to your advantage."

"Confirm if you can."

"Will do."

Mac had moved east far enough to see the lean to, if there was one. He saw nothing. Not even the GC Hannah or Chloe had seen.

That meant the meeting place for the ground troops was at least a little farther on. If Chang was right, Sebastian wouldn't be within miles of there.

Brilliant military mind, Mac. Left yourself alone in the wilderness, way outnumbered.

Mac considered his options and few advantages. He was hard to see. He knew enough not to be lured to where Sebastian was purported to be. He had the Fifty. He was a long walk or a medium jog to the car, but the car had to already be under surveillance.

It would be surrounded, so if he were stupid enough to try to get to it, he would be easily apprehended. "Lord," he said quietly, "I'm gonna thank you for keepin' me motivated to stay in shape, and I'm gonna ask you for more stamina than I've got. All I'm tryin' to do is get your man and my two partners out of here alive. Now I'm thankin' you as if you've already done it, 'cause I'm going to be busy here awhile. And if you've chosen not to, I figure you know best and I'll be seein' you real soon."

Mac made his way back toward the shack and stopped about a hundred yards above it. He removed his big, outer jacket, kept only three fifty caliber sh.e.l.ls and two clips for the Uzi, then wound the Uzi strap twice so the weapon was snug to his body.

He couldn't actually run carrying the Fifty, but he loped the best he could, staying high on the ridge and following the terrain, often as far as two hundred yards above the road. The air was cool on his arms and neck and face at first, but soon his body heat made him sweat. This, he knew, was only the beginning. Mac's muscles ached and knotted and all but cried out, but he would not stop. He didn't even slow. He just kept moving, farther and farther west, trying to gauge the distance to where he had left the car. After traversing a rugged stretch with loose rocks that nearly made him fall several times, he finally decided to look for the vehicle.

Mac stretched out on the steep slant, facing down toward the road. He set the bipod, his arms shaking from effort and fatigue, popped open the telescopic sight, loosened the connection so he could scan with it rather than trying to move the heavy gun, and searched the road.

It seemed to take forever for his eye to adjust in the darkness.

The gravel road was a ribbon of only slightly lighter gray against the blackness of the woods, but he knew what he was looking at. At the far right of his field of vision far enough that he knew he would have to move the weapon nearly a hundred feet he spotted something that picked up a hint of starlight.

Only the white car would do that.

Mac gulped another minute's worth of the cool air, then forced himself up and over to where he could line the Fifty up with the car. He was nothing if not patient. While he tightened the sight and made several seat of thepants calculations, he swore he saw movement on the north side of the road. If he was right, GC waited for him down there and almost certainly on the other side of the road too.

He remembered from experience to tear cloth from his undershirt and stuff both ear ca.n.a.ls. He set an extra round of ammunition next to the weapon, then dug him self footholds. It was a huge benefit to be pointing downhill, because the recoil could shove him up and back only so far. He had to remember to keep his knees bent.

Mac's plan was to fire two rounds into the car in as rapid a succession as possible, knowing that he would have to force himself to follow through, because no one who had shot this rascal once and that included him ever wanted to shoot it again, let alone right away.

He stretched out and settled in, leaving his finger off the trigger until he had drawn the b.u.t.t of the rifle to his shoulder.

He maneuvered it until it lay in a soft spot and not on bone, aware that the thing would still wreak havoc with his whole body.

Mac ran through the checklist. Steady. Relaxed. Pull firm to the shoulder. Trigger finger relaxed. Ears protected. Feet in holds.

Elbows slightly bent. Knees flexed and ready to give. Barely visible crosshairs dead on the roof of the car, a tick left, allowing for wind. Distance just under two hundred yards. No matter what the thing does to me, reload and fire again, not worrying about accuracy the second time.

It warmed Mac as he silently counted himself down from three that he definitely saw movement through the lens. Unless someone was so spectacularly unfortunate as to step into his line of fire, no one would be hit, certainly not by the first round. By the second, even if he got it off inside a few beats, he expected the GC to be halfway back to the shack already.

When he got to one, Mac aborted. Better idea. Go for broke. Aim a little left, hope to hit the gas tank. Even if

he missed, these guys had to think they were facing a tank or at least a bazooka. But if he got lucky, they'd think they were facing eternity.

He reset, just a smidge. Checklist. Three, two, one, zero, oh, Mama!

Mac thought he had been prepared. It was as if he had nothing in his ears. The sound was so ma.s.sive it seemed to weigh on him. The woods had exploded, and yes, the erupting of that gas tank and the rebounding of that car on the gravel would have made a sound whether or not people had been there to hear it. The perverse nightmare of the sheer volume of it lay atop him longer than the

orange ball rode his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

The violence drove him back and onto his left side. As Mac struggled to gather his senses, he rolled back to his belly and slid back down into the same position. Fingers fluttering, he wrestled the extra round into the chamber, made sure the thing was generally facing away from him again, and forced himself against every instinct to pull

the trigger again.

He should have run through the checklist again. One foot had not been secure. He was neither tight nor firm. The b.u.t.t had been at least a half inch from his shoulder. The recoil sent it back seemingly at the speed of light and drove a ridge into the top of his shoulder he was sure

would be there for weeks.

The sound was lessened only by the damage the first shot had done to his eardrums. His ears buzzed and rang, and he dumbly lifted his head to see trees falling, two on this side of the road, one on the other. His aim had been ten feet to the left of the now flattened and burning car, which prettily illuminated the carnage of machine and fauna all wrought by two fairly simple pulls on a metal lever.

Mac wished only that he could have heard what had to be the frightened cries of the young Peacekeepers on the dead run. He awkwardly forced himself up on all fours like a spindly newborn colt and fought to keep from pitching down the hill.

When he was finally standing, arms outstretched for balance and to stop the woods from spinning, he waited. And waited. When his balance mechanism finally made the necessary adjustments, Mac caught his breath, shook his head, stretched each limb even the one with the violated shoulder and began to jog.

His intention was to jog what had taken him more than a half hour to drive. He would find his way back to where he and Chloe and Hannah had engaged in their sortie soiree that late afternoon that now seemed so long ago. There Mac would find the hidden Jeep, hot wire it, and set off on what he truly hoped was his last caper of the day. Surely by the time he got there, he would have heard from. Chang where he might find George Sebastian.

And after all this, may G.o.d have mercy or not on anyone who dared stand between them and freedom.

Chapter.

CHLOE DIDN'T know the specifics of the directed energy weapon lying across the backseat, but she'd heard the effect it had on a target. And she was curious. She carefully lifted it into her lap, making Hannah alternate from watching the road to watching the DEW.

"Don't point that thing at me, Chloe."

"It's not even on! "

"That's like saying a gun isn't loaded. People get killed all the time with guns they swear aren't loaded."

"Looks pretty simple. You know the deal with these, right?"

"Yes," Hannah said. "Now, Chloe, please."

"Looks like you just turn it on, let it heat up or whatever it does, and fire away. It's nonlethal."

"Yeah, I know. But degrees on soft tissue's going to make you wish you were dead." "Bet I can get those guys to quit following us."

"Don't even think about it. You miss, they start shooting, and we're not going to help anybody."

"we're not helping anybody anyway," Chloe said. "We're sitting here with Uzis, side arms, a shotgun, and a DEW, and we've left Mac up there by himself with all those GC."

"And how long are these guys going to let us lead them all over town before they realize we're playing them?"

"We've got to shake 'em before we head for the airport, Hannah.

They'll never let us in there."

"Shake them? Chloe, their ranks may be decimated, but they've got other personnel, more cars, radios. We're not going to shake them."

"I'm calling Chang."

"what for?"

"I want to know how many people know where we are."