Which would the invaders have taken? A little while back he’d have figured it was fifty-fifty they’d have gone either way. But the evidence was that they had not stumbled upon this place by chance, that they’d known in advance how to gain access and had a specific goal in mind. And if they were familiar with the building’s layout, it stood to reason they would head straight for the storage bay, where ISS elements were actually kept and maintained.
Okay, then, he thought. Odds were they had gone down the right-hand corridor. But did that mean he ought to do the same? He was one against several… exactly how many he didn’t know. It would be suicidal to plunge headlong into the thick of things. The principles of engagement ought to be the same here as in any battle. While they had numbers in their favor, the edge would go to whoever held the high ground.
Thibodeau stood there another second or two, feeling constricted in the narrow sterility of the corridor. Then he hefted his weapon, his mind made up.
Turning left, he rushed toward the elevator.
Carlysle had approached the mobile crane from its left side and gotten within about three yards of it, the rest of the squad close at his heels, when he thrust his hand out and signaled them to stop behind a pile of bulldozed earth and pebbles. He wanted to take one last look at the invaders before commencing his attack.
The high-intensity lights from the choppers showed a half-dozen of them spread out behind the crawler’s ringer, a sort of metal apron used to balance its weight when the boom was telescoped upward. This huge configuration was like a circular wall that gave the invaders excellent cover — but the flip side was that it also impeded their field of view and hampered their ability to follow the chase squad’s movements. Even the electronic imaging devices on their weapons were of little use unless the guns were pointed directly over or around the ringer’s edge. The instant one of them lowered his weapon he was blind, whereas the chase squads had their helicopters in continuous radio contact, reporting on the raiding party’s positions, tracking them minute by minute.
Carlysle had made the most of the opposition’s handicap, leading his team across exposed stretches of ground in short, rapid sprints. But their job was to take the invaders, and to accomplish that they would have to break from hiding and open themselves up to fire. There was no way to avoid it.
Now he waved his hand briskly in the air to get his men moving again. They raised their weapons and buttonhooked around to where the invaders were huddled behind the ringer.
By the time the invaders realized they were under attack Carlysle’s men were almost on top of them, dashing up from behind, their VVRS rifles chattering in their hands. Two of the invaders went down instantly, surprised expressions on their faces. Then the remaining four returned fire with their own guns. Carlysle saw Newell fall to his right, his leg covered in blood. Pivoting toward the shooter, he squeezed a burst from his weapon that knocked him backward off his feet. Another invader swung his rifle up at Carlysle in retaliation, but was hit by one of Carlysle’s men before he could trigger a shot. Moaning and clutching his bloody middle, he rolled onto his side and drew himself into a tight ball.
The remaining two tried making a run for it. Carlysle swung his weapon in their direction and tilted its muzzle toward the ground and fired a short burst at their heels.
“Hold it!” he shouted in Spanish. That was a tongue they were certain to understand regardless of where on the continent they were from, the
They stopped running but stayed on their feet, holding onto the rifles.
Carlysle fired into the ground behind them again, spraying up dirt.
“On your bellies, you sons of bitches!” he said. “Now!”
This time they listened and went down, hands behind their helmets. A moment later Carlysle and his men kicked their guns aside, twisted their arms behind their backs, and got them flex-cuffed.
Carlysle ran over to Newell and crouched to check out his leg wound.
“Lay still,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”
Newell looked up at him, managed a nod.
Carlysle took a breath.
It felt as if it was the first one he’d had in a while.
The payload storage bay was an enormous space enclosing three elevated work platforms of sizable dimensions, as well as an interconnected assembly of catwalks, bridge cranes, and other types of metal rigging designed to ease the movement and transfer of equipment between these platforms. Rows of large office windows looked down upon the vaulting room on two sides. A beehive of corridors, elevator shafts, tunnels, and stairwells not only linked it to the rest of the warehouse and manufacturing complex, but also to different buildings within the ISS compound.
After eliminating the guards outside the warehouse — stealing up on them had been simplicity itself — Yellow Team had entered through its loading dock, raced through several winding passageways, and finally pushed through a set of double doors that gave into the storage bay, where the team’s designated leader, Heitor, planned to drop their satchel charges. Each of the two black canvas bags contained fifteen pounds of TNT, enough high explosive to bring down the steel beam supports underneath the work platforms, the space station hardware on top of them, and quite possibly the walls of the room around them.
It was much more than the saboteurs had thought they would be able to accomplish. Surely not even Kuhl had expected them to get this far into the compound, Heitor mused.
Now he hastened to one of the platforms, slipped a satchel charge off his shoulder, and placed it at the foot of a tall support post. Both timer pencils he was using had been preset to a ten-minute delay, an acceptable opening in which to get out before the blast. Silent and vigilant, their weapons held ready across their bodies, his teammates stood watch behind him in the central aisle. The vast room around them was dark except for the few widely spaced fluorescents normally left on after the close of daily operations.
Crouching at the foot of the support, Heitor removed the timer pin to initiate the detonation sequence. Then he quickly went to the next platform and dropped his other charge.
It was just as he pulled the second pin that Thibodeau stepped from an elevator onto one of the flying catwalks and, looking out over the expansive floor of the storage bay, was shocked to discover what was happening below.
“Thibodeau’s backup is on the way,” Delure said. “I pulled four men from the office complex, another six off other details.”
“How long before they reach him?” Cody asked from his station.
“Could be as long as ten minutes for some of them.”
“Not good enough,” Cody said. He produced a harsh sigh and turned to Jezoirski. “What about Felix? How fast can we bring him to Thibodeau?”
“Give me a sec to call up a floor plan of the building.” Jezoirski tapped his keyboard, scanned the screen in front of him. “ ’Hog’s in the Level 5 propulsion lab—”
“How
Jezoirski studied the schematic, then lifted his face. “There’s a connecting walkway between the research and warehouse complexes. We can move him straight along this corridor right here to the elevator, then down three levels to the walkway,” he said, plotting a course across the screen with his finger. “From there it might need a minute, maybe a minute and a half to reach the warehouse, another couple to get down to the payload storage bay.”
“That’s at least six minutes.”
Jezoirski nodded. “Best we can do.”
“Suppose we’ll have to live with it then,” Cody said. Sweat glistened in the furrow above his lip. “All right, let’s hurry up and get the ’hog rolling.”
The earthmovers were parked near a ditch they had scooped out of the ground, and had offered solid cover to the invaders until the helicopters marked their positions. As they came under intense fire from a chase squad now, the group of invaders scurried down into the ditch, where they pressed up against its sides and began shooting over
