Groups of the Colonel’s men are converging on the house, said Royce. Machine-gun fire echoed in the distance. Doing what I can to slow them down.

“Well?” Gravenholtz demanded of the dead man. “Is somebody there or not?

Rakkim retreated into the deeper darkness. He had heard Baby’s voice, surprised at how calm she sounded, but still nothing from Leo or Moseby. Gravenholtz would keep Baby alive to use as a bargaining chip, but he didn’t need them.

“Hey?” Gravenholtz jerked the man back out of the opening. “I asked…Fuck.” The man’s body hit the floor. No one fired his weapon. No one made a sound. Listening.

Their initial surprise and disorientation had passed; they were ready now. Rakkim heard fingers snap. Heard footsteps move cautiously toward where he had thrown the flashlight. The opening in the floor was dark now as the raiders gathered near the other end of the room, thinking he was using the flashlight to find his way.

As the raiders blasted the floor with gunfire, Rakkim slipped up through the hole, lost in the noise. He moved low across the floor, the air thick with gunsmoke, almost impenetrable in the faint light from their flashlights. Slumped in the middle of the room were two bodies…Leo and Moseby.

“Is he dead?” One of the raiders peered through the holes in the floor. “His light’s off…”

All units not engaged, close in on my house, said the Colonel, his voice tired. My wife is in there, so avoid hostilities. Repeat, my wife is in there.

Royce, get your ass down here for dust-off, said Gravenholtz.

One of the raiders again unloaded his weapon into the floor.

Baby put her hands over her ears.

Through the security windows, Rakkim could see the flashing red and yellow position lights as the helicopter descended.

Gravenholtz grabbed Baby’s wrist, pulled her toward the front door.

One of the raiders hoisted the canister from the underground lake onto his shoulder.

Rakkim started after Gravenholtz. He didn’t make a sound, but Baby turned…

“Rikki!”

Gravenholtz whirled in the open doorway, raised his assault rifle one-handed, sprayed the rear of the room until he emptied the clip.

The helicopter touched down in the yard, tracer rounds from somewhere dinging off the canopy as the pilot struggled against the turbulence. Maintaining low ground clearance was the hardest part of any chopper pilot’s job.

The raider carrying the canister raced past Gravenholtz and across the dirt, dove head-first into the passenger compartment of the chopper.

The chopper rose six feet off the ground, Gatlings spinning as it tore through the Colonel’s men, then settled back down. The yellow and red position lights rotated slowly on either side of it, overlapping circles of concentric color.

Gravenholtz hesitated, one arm around Baby as he glared at Rakkim. “I should have known it would be you. I’ve been wanting to-”

“Lester, let’s go!” shouted the raider from the passenger compartment.

Gravenholtz scampered toward the chopper, easily carrying Baby over his shoulder.

Cease fire! said the Colonel. That’s Baby!

Rakkim caught up with Gravenholtz halfway to the chopper, lunged at him, but the redhead used Baby as a shield and Rakkim backed off. They capered around each other, Gravenholtz’s free hand balled into a fist, while Rakkim circled, trying to find an opening.

Royce fired the machine guns in bursts, keeping the Colonel’s men back as the chopper lurched and jerked.

Rakkim slashed Gravenholtz’s shoulder, drew a cry of pain, but it was a light wound, Gravenholtz’s second skin stopping anything but a direct thrust.

Gravenholtz shifted Baby to his other arm as he retreated closer to the chopper.

Rakkim came in again, blinded for a moment by dust kicked up by the chopper’s rotors, and Gravenholtz swung at him. The blow barely grazed his jaw, but Rakkim felt his teeth rattle, his mouth filling with blood. A look of awful triumph distorted Gravenholtz’s face in the swirling red and yellow lights.

“Lester!” bellowed the raider in the passenger compartment, his sweating face caught in the auxiliary lights of an approaching jeep. Bullets slammed into the compartment, and the raider screamed. The chopper pitched.

I said, cease fire! said the Colonel, visible now at the edge of the yard, waving his arms.

Gravenholtz snarled at Rakkim, hurried the last few feet, and threw Baby into the chopper. Put his hands on the edge of the open door and lifted himself up…

Rakkim launched himself as the chopper started to rise, holding on to the metal door frame with one hand, stabbing Gravenholtz again and again. Most of his thrusts were deflected by Gravenholtz’s armored skin, but he heard the redhead groan at least twice.

“Lester, you in?” shouted the copilot.

Sprawled inside the chopper, Gravenholtz punched at Rakkim-he missed, but his fist shattered an unbreakable plastic jump seat. Rakkim again slashed at Gravenholtz, half severed his ear and the redhead screamed, rolled back inside. The chopper lurched about fifteen feet off the ground, rising slowly.

“Lester?” called the copilot. “Deeks, what’s going on back there?”

Rakkim put his knife away. Standing on the chopper’s skid, he held out a hand to Baby. “Come on.”

“Baby!” the Colonel called from below, dirt swirling around him. “Let Rikki help you!”

“Come on.” Rakkim could see Gravenholtz struggling to get upright, blood pouring down his neck from his ruined ear. He beckoned to Baby. “Give me your hand.”

The chopper kept rising.

“Trust me.” Rakkim grabbed Baby’s arm, drew her closer. He could see her pulse pounding at the base of her throat. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Baby kneed him in the face and Rakkim flew backward, landed heavily on the ground. He lay there, not moving. Above him the helicopter rose rapidly as Royce regained control. Still dazed from the fall and the shock, he saw Baby looking down at him from the passenger compartment, her long hair billowing in the breeze.

“Baby!” The Colonel stood over Rakkim, looking up, and the sadness and longing in his voice carried clear to the stars. “Baby!”

Baby waved to him.

The Colonel sobbed. His troops clustered around the house seemed to take a step back, the night’s silence broken only by the rapidly diminishing sound of the chopper heading over the treetops, and the Colonel’s soft weeping.

Rakkim rolled over, gasped. Slowly got to his knees, then his feet. It hurt to breathe. “Colonel…?”

The bandage on the Colonel’s right hand was soaked with blood. “Joke’s on you,” he said gruffly. “Looks like you paid me two hundred million dollars for nothing.”

“It was something,” said Rakkim, holding his ribs.

The Colonel jabbed a thumb at the chopper and blood flew from the bandage. “There goes your something.”

Rakkim watched the chopper disappear from view.

“Why did you do it?” The Colonel looked at him. “You brought that End-Times scum here, and then you fought beside us instead of stealing the canister. You lied to me, then you saved my life. Why? Are you stupid or just confused?”

“It’s worse than that,” said Rakkim. “I fell for my own cover story. Started seeing you as more than an honorable enemy-as an honorable man. The way you treated the Fedayeen, burying him with full honors…”

“What are you talking about?” said the Colonel.

Rakkim watched two of the Colonel’s men helping Leo and Moseby out of the cabin. “It doesn’t matter now. The weapon is on its way to the highest bidder. The Chinese probably…maybe the Brazilians. There’s going to be all kinds of trouble coming.”

“There’s always trouble coming, and always people willing to face it.” The Colonel stared at the spot over the trees where the helicopter had disappeared. “Right now, I’m trying to decide which of us is the bigger fool. You for changing your mind and standing beside me, or me for thinking that Baby loved me the way that I love her.”