The Shadow of Saganami

of timid gnats who could be counted on for financial contributions, political activism, agitation and demonstrations, but not for the Movement's real work. And a second, composed of people like Divkovic, who'd known from the outset what would have to be done and demonstrated their willingness to do it. The people who had begun building the infrastructure the FAK required years before the time had come for open conflict.

Most of the first organization had either gone to ground, hiding from both sides, or, worse, turned themselves into eager informants in a desperate attempt to disassociate themselves from the FAK's armed campaign. Some had even succeeded, but none of them were any great loss. In fact, their disappearance pleased Divkovic. None of them had actually known anything useful about his side of the FAK, so the self-serving informants could do no real damage to operations. And their defection got them out of his way, reduced the threat of future security breaches... and left the direction of the Movement firmly in the hands of people like Divkovic himself. Now that there was no longer any need for Nordbrandt to jolly the weak sisters along, the Movement had rolled up its sleeves and gotten down to the serious business of kicking the accursed Manties out of Split and restructuring Kornati.

He held up his left hand, halting his strike group, and went down on one knee behind a trash barrel. He leveled his binoculars across it, gazing out over the wide boulevard at the Treasury Department compound, fifteen blocks from the Nemanja Building. This was the deepest they'd struck into Karlovac itself since the attack on the Parliament Building, and Divkovic was determined to make it a success. The darkness and misty rain were on his side, as was the lateness of the hour, but none of it helped visibility, and he spared a moment to wish his people had equipment as good as the gear Tonkovic and her flunkies were able to provide to their so-called 'Police.'

They didn't, unfortunately, although they'd at least gotten their hands on a few modern weapons. Divkovic himself carried a pulse rifle, 'liberated' from the Rendulic police arsenal in one of the Movement's early attacks. Such weapons were too expensive for most civilians-only someone with the resources of the government could afford them-which was why most of his people were still armed with chemical-powered weapons. Just like most of their equipment, they had to make do with what they could get their hands on, and despite their revolutionary ardor, that put them at a severe disadvantage. Still, his old-fashioned, pure optic binoculars were enough to bring the lighted window on the fifth floor of the main administration building into sharp focus. He couldn't see much in the way of details, but the conference room blazed with light, despite the hour.

That was the Movement's handiwork, he thought with vengeful satisfaction. The tremors their strikes were sending through Kornati's corrupt economy and political structure had panicked the pigs rooting around in the public trough. Now Treasury Secretary Grabovac had summoned her flunkies to an emergency meeting in her frantic efforts to shore up the Establishment's sagging house of cards. It was fitting that they should meet in the dark of night, like maggots crawling through the belly of a rotting carcass... and that Grabovac and her bootlicking stooges had decided to trust in the secrecy of their meeting time rather than bolstering their normal night security forces.

Thoughts of security forces brought his glasses around in another long, slow scan of the grounds. This Treasury compound was usually a secondary, or even tertiary, management node. Its three buildings and central parking garage were an isolated government enclave in one of the poorer sections of the capital that thrust in towards its center, and it was used mainly for routine record storage and clerical functions. That was one reason it had been chosen for tonight's meeting-because no one had believed the Movement would suspect that anything important would take place in such a low-security, low-level facility.

According to their intelligence, the only on-site security was internal. Little more than watchmen, although they'd been issued weapons and ammunition since the FAK began operations. Most of them were overaged, out- of-shape people who should already have been drawing pensions-the sort who'd be like sheep before the wolves of his own well-trained, motivated people. The fact that, look though he might, he couldn't see a single one of them walking the outside perimeter of the compound, rain or no rain, said volumes about their preparedness, he thought with grim amusement.

Grabovac's personal security team would be a more serious proposition. But according to their information, it consisted of only three men, and they'd be in or directly outside the conference room itself.

He returned his attention to the conference room window one last time and saw a blur, a shifting shadow against the window, as someone moved inside the room as if to demonstrate that it was occupied, just as it was supposed to be. He inhaled in satisfaction, lowered the binoculars, and cased them with deliberate movements. Then he turned to his second in command, whom he knew only as 'Tyrannicide.'

'All right,' he breathed in a throaty whisper, scarcely louder than the rainy wind. 'They're in the conference room, just like they're supposed to be. Let's go.'

Tyrannicide nodded. He rose, cradling his pulse rifle-liberated in the same raid as Divkovic's-in his arms, and beckoned to the other two men of his section. All three started directly across the avenue towards the fire escape Divkovic had selected as the secondary point of entry, floating through the night's misty ambiguity like vague spirits. Karlovac City's street lighting had never been more than barely adequate; on nights like this, it was little more than a gesture towards providing any kind of visibility.

Which was good, Divkovic thought, watching them go for a moment. Then he turned and led his own four- person section towards the parking garage. The conference room was less than ten meters down the hall from the garage's fifth-floor access door, and his smile was ugly as he visualized the expressions of the doomed administrative underlings summoned to their emergency meeting.

* * *

'Shit!'

Jezic was glad he hadn't keyed his mike as the heartfelt expletive escaped. So much for comprehensive intelligence!

He watched what was supposed to have been a single, unified FAK strike team split into two sections and thought furiously. They might not be proceeding exactly as Intelligence had predicted, but they were here. Which meant news of the Treasury Department's emergency, secret meeting had leaked to them, exactly as the KNP had feared. That was fairly ugly confirmation that their own internal security procedures had been compromised, although the fact that the attack hadn't been canceled when the meeting was moved elsewhere and the trap was set in its place probably indicated the leak was somewhere on the Treasury side. And from one of the less senior day-workers, at that. Someone who hadn't been in the loop when the last- minute cancellation had been decided upon.

But that could be left for later. His problem was that two separate forces were going to run into different parts of his own teams, and do so at different times. The three people headed for the far end of the Admin Building were almost certainly planning to use one of the exterior fire escapes to gain access to the fifth floor as one prong of a pincer attack on the conference room. That was going to take them directly into his Red Team. And given how much farther they'd have to go, they were probably going to run into Red Team at least four or five minutes before the parking garage team crossed Aranka Budak's third-floor perimeter. As soon as anyone challenged them or demanded their surrender, the alarm would be raised, at which point the other group of terrorists would turn around and try to vanish. Given the damnable efficiency with which they'd been using storm drains, sewers, service conduits, and all the other various underground connections of Karlovac to escape after launching their attacks, it was possible-although not, in his opinion, bloody likely-that they'd succeed in disappearing, too.

That would be bad enough under any circumstances, but if Nordbrandt really was present tonight herself...

'Red One, Team Leader,' he rasped over the com. 'Hold off as long as you can! I want the garage team as far into Blue One's zone as possible. Team Leader, over.'

'Team Leader, Red One copies,' Sergeant Slavko Maksimovac said. 'I'll hold as long as I can, Barto, but they're coming right down my throat. Red One, over.'

Jezic was about to reply when everything began happening at once.

* * *

Divkovic didn't know what warned him. Maybe it was simply the instincts of a predator. Or perhaps it was something else-an injudicious movement by one of Lieutenant Budak's people, or a dull gleam of reflected light off something that shouldn't have been there. It could even have been nothing at all, nothing but an overactive imagination that, just this once, was right.

Whatever it was, it brought the muzzle of his pulse rifle snapping up to the ready position, and he froze