Kuhl turned to his driver and instructed him to give the signal to mobilize. He nodded in response, and flicked his headlights and taillights on and off once.

The driver at his rear did the same, and then the driver behind him, him, the signal rapidly making its way down the line of jeeps. the signal rapidly making its way down the line of jeeps.

Their engines coming to life, they began rolling toward the fire and thunder of the blasts, the way into the installation open before them.

His face chalk-white, Thibodeau pa.s.sed the radio headset back to Delure with an unsteady hand. Even underground, the detonations around the compound had been audible as m.u.f.fled thuds, the last and most powerful of them shaking the walls as if there had been an earthquake. But it was not until after they'd heard from the ambushed quick-response team--or what was left of it, G.o.d help those poor boys--that he he had started to tremble. Now, in the ominous silence that had followed the blasts, he realized only a supreme effort of will would make that trembling stop. had started to tremble. Now, in the ominous silence that had followed the blasts, he realized only a supreme effort of will would make that trembling stop.

Thus far they, whoever they might be, had outmaneuvered and outthought him. Been ahead of him at every stage. And that couldn't be allowed to continue.

He meshed his hands behind his back and paced the room, his teeth clenched, struggling to exert control over himself.

What was happening out there? And what was he going to do about it?

He figured the best way to start answering those questions, or trying to answer them, was by reviewing what he already knew--bad as it all was. The west gate was down, the most direct route there blocked by the fiery wreckage of his own chase vehicles. A group of heavily armed, well-trained men had penetrated the installation and were now rampant within its borders. And they had proven themselves capable of ruthless murder as well as sabotage.

He didn't yet know the size of their force. Nor could he know their ultimate goal. But it was a sure thing their plans extended beyond scattered attacks at the periphery of the compound.

No matter what they wanted, it would be in the core manufacturing and storage areas. Possibly even the living quarters--there were some very important members of the ISS scientific team on the facility. He had already ordered these areas sealed up tight, but did he have the manpower to maintain that seal against a concentrated strike?

Thibodeau stopped pacing and laid a hand on Delure's shoulder.

"How many people we got protecting the buildings?" he asked.

"Fifteen, twenty, sir."

"That'd be our full day and night details. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir. With the exception of the men in the cars and choppers. And whoever's off base."

Thibodeau nodded. A handful of Sword operatives and other staffers preferred the long daily commute from Cuiaba to the isolation of living on the compound.

He was silent a moment, his jaw tight. Ahead of me all'a way, those devils, while I been dancing like a turkey on hot coals. Ahead of me all'a way, those devils, while I been dancing like a turkey on hot coals.

He suddenly released Delure's arm, strode over to a steel supply cabinet across the room, and extracted a Zylon ballistic vest from inside it.

"You boys hold the fort down here," he said, and slipped into the vest. "I'm goin' topside."

The jeeps stopped briefly about ten meters after pa.s.sing through the gap in the fence. Little blazing islands of debris were spread over the gra.s.s around them, casting dashes of light and shadow across the faces of their occupants.

The remnants of Blue Team and Orange Team were waiting there as arranged. They scurried into the vehicles.

Manuel climbed into Kuhl's jeep without a.s.sistance, but not without difficulty. He could hear droplets of his own blood splashing the rear seat as he settled into it beside Antonio.

"You performed well," Kuhl said. He sat perfectly still in front.

Manuel leaned against the backrest, breathing hard. It felt as if a thousand white-hot needles had been jabbed into his arm. "Marco was killed. Two men from Orange Team had to be left behind."

Kuhl remained motionless.

"Losses must be expected," he said tonelessly.

Then he sliced his hand in the air and the jeep started to move again, the others following in close procession. The first thing Ed Graham thought when he spotted the jeeps from his Skyhawk chopper was that the sight reminded him of his many years as an LAPD pilot. His second thought was that the first first thought was an odd and scary comment on modem American society, given how once upon a time it would have been the Hollywood sign and Mann's Chinese Theater that were symbolic of Los Angeles, not maybe twenty men riding around in full combat gear. thought was an odd and scary comment on modem American society, given how once upon a time it would have been the Hollywood sign and Mann's Chinese Theater that were symbolic of Los Angeles, not maybe twenty men riding around in full combat gear.

His third thought, which followed within a heartbeat, was that he had better stop stop thinking and start acting toot-sweet, because he was right now looking down at a major s.h.i.tload of trouble. thinking and start acting toot-sweet, because he was right now looking down at a major s.h.i.tload of trouble.

"Christ, we got us a h.e.l.luva situation," said the man seated at his right, almost yelling to be heard above the loud whop of the rotors. He reached for his communications handset. "Better radio for an a.s.sist and then shine the welcome light on our guests."

Ed nodded, his hands working the sticks. Mitch Winter was the best copilot on the installation. They thought alike and got along well, which made partnering together easy.

He took the bird down lower as Mitch sent his message out to base and the rest of their fleet. A hundred feet beneath them, the jeeps had come to an abrupt halt, their drivers and pa.s.sengers craning their heads back, staring directly up at the Skyhawk.

Peering out his bubble window, Ed briefly released the cyclic and hit the chopper's Starburst SX-5 searchlight. At the same time Mitch touched a b.u.t.ton on his comm unit to shift from radio to public-address mode.

The searchlight's 15-million candlepower beam washed over the men in the convoy, its stark illumination transfixing them, turning night into brilliant noonday.

Ed glanced at Mitch. "Okay, all yours."

Mitch nodded and raised the control mike to his lips. "Stay where you are and--"

"--drop your weapons!"

Bathed in merciless light from above, Kuhl thrust his head out his open window and looked back down his row of jeeps, shielding his eyes with one hand. The command booming from the helicopter's PA had been unequivocal. His response would be equally straightforward.

"Open fire," he shouted. "Ahora!" "Ahora!"

The four members of Yellow Team had approached to within a few yards of the building, darting from one position of concealment to the next like specters in the night. Their probings had led them to conclude that their primary objective was too heavily guarded to be achieved, but they had been prepared with flexible alternatives and the one ahead of them looked much more vulnerable.

Pausing behind a maintenance shed to check their weapons, they heard the burp of automatic gunfire from off near the west gate, and then the overlying sounds of cars and helicopters converging on the area.

It might for all intents and purposes have been a prearranged cue.

Moving as one, they slipped toward their target.

Bullets rattling against his underfuselage, Graham shoved forward on the cyclic and added collective to pull pitch. The c.o.c.kpit's lightweight boron shielding had literally saved his a.s.s, but he wasn't about to press his luck by taking any more direct hits. Not without being able to return fire owing to Brazilian restrictions against Sword's fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft being fitted for attack capabilities. Muito obrigado Muito obrigado to whoever came up with that one. to whoever came up with that one.

As the Skyhawk banked into a steep climb, he glanced out his windscreen and quickly noted the firepower his attackers were bringing to bear. Neither the rifles nor the HMDs to which they were connected looked like anything he'd ever seen before.

"I'm sticking around till you get a shot of those lunatics out to the chase teams, Mitch," he shouted, nodding toward the television screen on their console. "I don't want anybody being surprised by their hardware."

Mitch returned his nod and reached for the video controls. Gripping the sticks hard, Graham figure-eighted back toward the jeeps to get his nose pod aligned for a good camera angle--and then some of the gunmen abruptly jumped from their vehicles and began darting for cover.

There was, he observed, a considerable amount available to them, mainly crawler cranes, bulldozers, excavators, wheeled compactors, and other heavy equipment that had been rolled into the area for construction of some new buildings. They were big and stationary, their sheer size making them ideal places to hide behind.

Graham continued to orbit the scene in a weaving pattern. Out beyond the bulking machinery he saw the radial web of access routes that led in toward the installation's hub, and turning his gaze northward, spotted the burning ruins of two chase cars on the main roadway from the motor pool. An emergency rescue vehicle and additional cars had pulled up nearby. A number of security men were walking up and down the road with long-handled mine sweepers, while others milled around the wreckage in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames and locate survivors.

Then he saw what had sent the invaders scrambling. Their roof lights flashing, two quick-response squads were speeding toward them on secondary access roads, one on the left, the other on the right, each three-car group escorted by a Skyhawk. They would be on top of the jeep convoy within seconds.

"We sending down pictures yet?" he asked, glancing at Mitch.

Mitch nodded again and gestured at the television screen. It showed a detailed IR image of the gunmen in one of the jeeps.

"Nice shot, real nice," Graham said. "Now let's pray the guys on the ground are seeing them clear as we are."

The pictures were just fine, coming through on the monitors of the chase cars and helicopters exactly as they appeared to Graham and Winter in the air. Moreover, the information relayed by those pictures proved invaluable to the QR squads, giving them an instantaneous heads-up on the number of invaders they would be facing, the positions they held, and the type of weapons they were carrying.

The guns in particular looked formidable, but the men in the cars took some comfort from their own specially modified firearms. The Variable Velocity Rifle System, or VVRS, was an M16 chambered for 5.56mm dual-purpose sabot rounds and fitted with a vented barrel and rotating hand guard. A twist of the hand guard would widen or narrow the vents, increasing or decreasing the amount of blowback gas within the barrel, and thus the velocity at which the rounds were discharged. At a low velocity, the padded plastic sabots would remain around the bullets and cushion their deadly impact. At a high velocity, they would peel apart like shed coc.o.o.ns, and the bruiser ammunition would turn lethal.

There was little question about whether to use deadly force in the mind of QR squad leader Dan Carlysle as he came up on the convoy's left flank. The men scrambling from the jeeps had killed without hesitation. Their weapons presented an obvious mortal threat. It had to be met with a willingness to respond in kind.

Still, Carlysle wanted explicit authorization if at all possible. Some political elements in Brazil were already upset by UpLink's powerful security presence, and would be further incited by a small war occurring on their soil. While Carlysle was ready to make an on-the-spot decision, he was aware of the diplomatic mess that might follow and preferred getting a nod from his immediate higher-up.

Tearing along in the forward chase car, he reached for his dash microphone and hailed Thibodeau on the radio.

"You do what you gotta, Dan, hear me? We catch heat from the locals, soit, soit, we'll deal with that later." we'll deal with that later."

"Yes, sir. Over."

Thibodeau clipped his radio back onto his belt, lit up a cigarette, and smoked in silence. Far out at the western edge of the compound he could hear a percussive exchange of gunfire, tires screeching, and more overlapping volleys punctuated by loud explosions. Christ, the whole thing was insane. He had not in his wildest imaginings expected to find himself in an engagement of this magnitude outside of the military. Nor did he relish giving orders and instructions from a distance, sending others into action rather than partic.i.p.ating in it himself. But tonight the full responsibility of command had fallen upon his shoulders.

Still, he wished he didn't have to hear that h.e.l.lish clamor.

He dragged on his cigarette, standing outside a cl.u.s.ter of five low-rise concrete buildings that housed the installation's key personnel and their families--each four stories high with between eight and ten apartments per floor, lodging a combined total of 237 men, women, and children. Thibodeau had concentrated his manpower around them in the likelihood the invaders had kidnaping or hostage taking as their goal ... which was not to say there weren't other probabilities to consider. Theft of the multimillion-dollar ISS components on base--or their design blueprints--might be an equally powerful motive for the raid, but safeguarding human lives was his foremost concern regardless.

He stood there and thought, tobacco smoke streaming slowly out his nose. Caught shorthanded, he was trying his best to manage the situation and make optimum use of his resources. Toward these ends, all non-security personnel had been restricted to their apartments for the duration of the crisis. Over two thirds of his available operatives had a.s.sembled around the residential complex, enclosing it in a defensive ring. He could see them on patrol now, and was confident they would hang tough against any attack.

However, it worried him deeply that bolstering his strength here had required shifting people away from the industrial section of the compound. The detail charged with its protection was too small in number, too thinly dispersed around a large area--a weakness that could be easily exploited by determined raiders with surprise on their side. He continued to know almost nothing about them, but what might they they know about the layout of the installation? The strength, tactics, and priorities of his force? From the time they'd first appeared, his opposition had led the dance while he'd reeled and stumbled trying to keep up. know about the layout of the installation? The strength, tactics, and priorities of his force? From the time they'd first appeared, his opposition had led the dance while he'd reeled and stumbled trying to keep up.

What might they know? Considering the damage they'd already inflicted, it seemed the answer was too much. Could they have used that knowledge to manipulate his decisions?

Thibodeau thought about that a moment, his heart pounding. Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, were they dancing him right into quicksand? were they dancing him right into quicksand?

His inspection of the scene suddenly concluded, he snapped his half-finished cigarette to the ground and started off toward the warehouse and factory buildings.

Taking cover behind a jeep, Antonio balanced his Barrett .50 across its hood and aimed down its reticulated scope at the lead chase car. With the car coming straight at him, he had made a split-second decision to shoot for one of its front tires, thinking it would be an easier target than the driver, whose head was ducked low behind the windshield.

He pulled the trigger. There was a crack as the gun stock recoiled against his shoulder, then a popping out-rush of air as the tire exploded in a storm of flying rubber. The car's front end bounced down, then up, then down. But although it slowed a little, it barely veered off course--to Antonio's utter surprise.

Its wheels holding to the middle of the road, the car kept moving dead-on toward the convoy of jeeps.

Carlysle was racing up on the jeep pulled crosswise ahead of him when he saw the twinkle of partially suppressed muzzle flash above its hood, heard a gunshot, and then was jolted hard in his seat as a bullet blew his right front tire to shreds.

Clenching the steering wheel, he resisted the impulse to slam on his brakes, and instead tapped the pedal lightly and repeatedly with his toe. The car bounced another couple of times and tried slewing toward the right, but he held on tightly and kept it under control. In a moment he got the feel of the runflat roller that had been emplaced within the tire and was now in contact with the road, ragged bits of rubber flapping around it, its shock-absorbent elastomer surface preventing the wheel rim from being damaged, stabilizing the car, and allowing him to keep moving almost as if the shot had never been fired and his tire was still intact.

As the invaders opened up on them, the QR squads reacted according to well-rehea.r.s.ed tactical procedures. Carlysle's trio of cars broke sharply to the left and stopped aslant the road, their wheels turned outward. The other group cut to the right shoulder of the access-way on which they were approaching and halted with their tires at a similarly extreme angle. Then the men in both squads poured out the sides of their cars, using their open doors and outturned wheels for protection.

Carlysle had no sooner gotten into a crouch behind his door than bullets came ripping into it from several different directions at once. The man who'd been riding shotgun with him, a recent transfer from the Malaysian ground station named Ron Newell, returned fire, aiming toward the spot where he'd seen the slender outline of a rifle angling out from behind a mobile crane, and then flattening against the car just as more gunfire studded its armored surface.

Squatting beside him, Carlysle thrust the barrel of his VVRS weapon around his door and squeezed out a long volley. He couldn't help but wonder when their remote comer of Brazil had turned into Dodge City.

He looked over at Newell, saw that he hadn't been hit, and gave him a thumbs-up to indicate he was also doing okay. Then there was another burst of incoming, followed by a bright flash in the darkness, and a whistling noise that rapidly got closer and louder. An instant later some kind of explosive projectile smashed into the chase car to Carlysle's right, detonating with a bright rush of flame, crunching in the flank of the Mercedes as if it were the side of a tin box.

Carlysle stayed put, his ears ringing from the blast. The situation had to change, and change ASAP. He would not let his men remain pinned down behind their vehicles, where they were sitting ducks for whatever was being hurled at them by an enemy that could draw an accurate bead without breaking cover.

His right hand around his pistol grip, he reached into the car with his left and s.n.a.t.c.hed his dashboard microphone off its hook, pressing one of the mike's control b.u.t.tons as he eyed the video screen above it. The invaders' advanced night-vision equipment was formidable, but he and his men had something else going in their favor. Something that could prove even more advantageous if used to its best capacity.

They had the Skyhawks.

In the copilot's seat of his circling chopper, Winter lowered his handset and turned toward Graham. Carlysle had just broken contact after sending up his request over a ground-to-air channel.