“Down!” Tracy shouted and rolled back as the 7.62 mm bullets ripped through the back of the vehicle, shattering the windows and sending glass cascading down on her.
Prone, she raised her pistol and fired four shots in the terrorists’ direction, more out of the need to mount some kind of defense than hoping to actually hit something. She heard a loud roar next to her, and figured Nate must have let loose, as well. The oddly quiet vehicle veered off to the right, back into the desert, moving out of range in seconds.
“Dammit, where’s that backup?” Nate thumbed more rounds into his smoking shotgun as he looked in all directions—whether for other Border Patrol agents or their attackers, Tracy wasn’t sure.
She strained her ears for the sound of the vehicle, but heard nothing. “We have to do something or else they’re going to chop us to pieces here,” she said.
“I’m open to suggestions at this point,” Nate said.
Tracy sniffed the air, inhaling a familiar acrid odor.
“They hit the gas tank. The next time we’d have shot, we’d blow up with it.”
Nate produced a lighter and a cheroot. “Then let’s help it along.”
Tracy glanced under the truck and saw a steady trickle of gas leaking from the tank. She dug a furrow in the dirt to make the gas flow toward them, improvising a fuse.
Crawling backward, she extended the small trench as far as she could, with Nate covering her until the quiet sound of the approaching off-roader reached her ears, followed by the unnerving noise of more bullets tearing apart the truck.
Tracy saw the other vehicle slowly approaching the truck while the gunner on top chewed it up with short bursts from his rifle. She saw the driver was wearing night-vision goggles similar to hers. “Let’s see how you like watching this. Now, Nate!”
Nate flicked his lighter and touched the flame to the trail of gas, then they both scooted away from the booby- trapped vehicle as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves. The flare of the gas showed up white-hot in her night-vision goggles, and Tracy flipped them up at the last minute and looked away, shielding her face and head with her arms.
The truck’s gas tank ignited with a dull whoomp and blew out the back of the cargo bed, flames licking all around the remains of the vehicle. Tracy felt the patter of shrapnel on her back and legs, and twisted around, making sure no burning debris had hit her.
“Come on, get up!”
She looked up to see Nate standing and ready to charge in.
“You go left, I’ll go right. Shoot as soon as you have a target!”
And with that he was gone, circling around the burning wreck. Goddamn cowboy, she thought, but got up and, holding her pistol low, trotted the other way, using the flames for cover as she tried to see around the inferno. She took another step out, and saw the hood of the four-wheel drive. One more step and she spotted the driver rubbing his eyes with one hand while trying to maneuver the stubby SUV away from the blazing vehicle. The gunner had apparently been more alert. He wasn’t wearing his night-vision goggles and spotted Tracy at the same time she saw him. With a shout, he leveled his rifle at her as she brought her pistol up, knowing that she was about to die but wanting to take this bastard out if she could—
A shotgun blast boomed, and the rifleman jerked in his harness, the rifle barrel wavering as he triggered his weapon, sending a burst of bullets into the dust about three yards from where Tracy stood. She lined up the SIG
Sauer’s sights on his upper chest, squeezed the trigger twice and was rewarded with another jerk from the gunman. Shifting her pistol down a few inches, she put three bullets into the driver’s side of the windshield, making the four-wheel-drive vehicle slowly drift away as the driver slumped over the wheel. The passenger’s door popped open, and a third man staggered out, holding a short-barreled submachine gun. Blood flowed down the side of his face, looking dark in the firelight.
“Homeland Security. Drop the weapon and raise your hands!” Tracy shouted, aiming right at him. Hearing her voice, he stepped up to the hood of his vehicle and aimed the subgun at her.
Tracy’s pistol and Nate’s shotgun roared at the same instant, and the terrorist stiffened under the impact of the bullet and buckshot, the pellets tearing at his face. He slid from sight behind the vehicle.
“Cover me!” Tracy ran to the front of the off-roader, then, keeping her pistol trained on the man, moved up and kicked the subgun out of his hands. It was unnecessary, however—he was already dead.
“Other two are gone, as well.” Nate came around the side.
“You better reload—we’re not done here by a long shot.”
He pointed back down the slope toward the road, and Tracy glanced back to see a procession of police, CBP vehicles and a SWAT team van, all with their lights off, coming toward them.
She looked back at Nate, covered in dust and sweat, and sighed. “About goddamn time.”
“I’m telling you, Kate, if these two make it out of this in one piece, I’m recruiting both of them. Improvisational skills, dead shots, able to think and react on their feet— they’re both naturals.”
Denny had logged in to assist with the coordination of what was suddenly turning into a major U.S. government field operation, and had watched in admiration as the two agents had taken out the Spaceworks security team.
The Room 59 hackers had grabbed a row of geosyn-chronous satellites that would be passing over or near the area, and set up a chain of surveillance to keep an eye on the situation.
“Shut that dangling jaw of yours and let’s keep our eyes on the prize. There’s still a loose nuke on that site, and if we’re not careful, they might just set it off to make sure they destroy something,” Kate said.
“You don’t really think he’d do it, do you?” Denny asked as he tapped keys at his office in D.C.
“No, not unless he had no other choice. While impressive, it’s still in the desert, far enough away from the city proper that there wouldn’t be that many casualties, and they could most likely evacuate the closest neighborhoods without too much difficulty. If he was crazy enough to actually come here to see that rocket off, my guess is he’s not going to immolate himself in the blast. No, he wants to set that sucker off above D.C. or New York City, or both if he can manage it.”
Denny nodded. “I agree, which means he’s probably got an escape route planned. I better put one of our boys on finding that—oops, gotta go, my federal judge is calling on line two. I’ll let you know how it goes.” He turned to another screen, but not before Kate heard him greet the man on the other end of the line, affecting a slight Texas twang as he did. “Marty, how the hell are ya? Sorry to bother you this early in the morning, but we got a bit of a situation in your neck of the woods—”
Whether it’s tax cuts to Democrats or welfare programs to Republicans, Denny can sell damn near anything to anyone. Kate smiled as she touched the screen linking her to B2S, secure in the knowledge that the federal search warrant was as good as signed.
“How’s it going?” she asked. The words transcribed into text on her screen.
“Better if my boss wasn’t breathing down my neck.”
The reply brought Kate up short—B2S usually wasn’t that curt.
“Give me a sitrep.”
“That 128-bit encryption was taking too long to hack, so I thought I’d do a back door—find out who programmed the system, and break their sysop code for instant access.”
“And?” Kate asked.
“I haven’t found anything yet. Whoever did this was good enough to find and eliminate the normal programmer back doors. Their own are very, very well hidden. I’m still working on the front door, and have been searching for the back way in—there’s gotta be one, but it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”
Kate felt the first pang of doubt spike her stomach with a needle-sharp sting. “Are you telling me you can’t break it?”
“I can, but I can’t give you a good estimate of how long it will take. Might be five minutes, might be thirty —”
“That’s about twenty-five more than we have. Keep at it, and you let me know the instant you’re in,” Kate said.
“Okay. Want the rocket dxed once I’m there?”
Even though she was concerned about the lack of progress, Kate couldn’t help smiling at B2S’s logical
