“You knew that was going to happen,” Boreas said calmly, still trying to figure out what the information he was looking at meant, as it wasn’t like the previous Aura transmissions they’d intercepted. “Stand by.”

In the air next to Mount of the Holy Cross, Roby was watching his radar screens, and he didn’t like what they were telling him. Four helicopters were coming in from the north. He tried contacting them on the guard frequency, but there was no reply. “This ain’t good,” he muttered.

“I’ve lost them!” Hammond said as she came running into the loading bay.

“What?” Dalton spun around, his attention diverted from the sky outside. He could hear the inbound Blackhawks but he hadn’t seen them yet.

“The team. They’re gone. Except for Kirtley. The rest of them flat-lined. All at once. No mental activity at all.”

“Damn it,” Dalton muttered.

With a blast of cold air, the first Blackhawk came to a hover, the side door opening. The crew chief shoved out the cargo netting and Jackson and Barnes began spreading it out on the grate.

He ran over to Jackson, grabbing her shoulder to get her attention. “Get this first load out, then get on board the second chopper.”

“Where are you going?”

“ Hammond ’s lost the team. Something happened to them.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Jackson said.

“Kirtley isn’t gone-he must be in a different place. I’m going to have Hammond extract him and find out what the hell is going on. The pilots know where to take you if it comes to that.”

He could see that Jackson was going to protest further, but they were both interrupted by the crew chief throwing an expended aluminum flare tube at them. It clattered on the grate and Dalton picked it up. He pulled the top off and took out the note crammed inside.

Four helicopters inbound. Not responding to hails. You have six minutes.

He shoved the note into Jackson ’s hand. “Get them loaded and get out of here.”

“What about you?”

“We’ll get out,” Dalton said. He reached over and pulled the emergency radio off her flight vest. “Come back for us.” Then he turned and ran to Hammond, leading her back into the complex.

“It came from a satellite,” McFairn’s voice echoed out of the speaker.

Boreas slapped his palm on the desktop. That fit the data but was unexpected.

“My people tracked the downlink,” McFairn continued, “but we didn’t catch the uplink.”

“Do you have a lock on the satellite?” Boreas asked.

“Space command is tracking it. I’ve got an F-15 out of Eglin Air Force Base scrambling. It’s armed with ALMV.”

“A what?”

“ALMV stands for air-launched miniature vehicle. It’s an ASAT-antisatellite-missile.”

“We need the uplink,” Boreas said.

“First things first,” McFairn said. “We take out the satellite before someone else gets killed.”

Boreas leaned back in his seat. Souris was one step ahead of them again. What the hell were she and the Ring doing? He spoke into his headset, directly to Kirtley. “Order the helicopters in.”

“Where’s the transmitter?” Kirtley demanded.

“In space. Order the helicopters in and clean up the mess at the villa.”

Farruco kicked one of the American bodies with the tip of his boot. The amount of blood surprised him. How had Cesar done this? And who were the strange beings who had just appeared on the roof, then disappeared?

He cocked his head at the sound of helicopters approaching. Barking orders, he ran upstairs. Reaching the main level, he flipped open the cell phone as the first American helicopter came racing in over the treetops.

“Can you do another burst?” Cesar asked Souris.

“I’m checking on the status of the satellite’s power right now,” she replied. Reading the screen, she nodded. “I think we can get one more.”

“Stand by,” Cesar told her. He spoke into the phone, ordering Farruco to pull his men back.

Afterburners kicked in as the F-15 roared into the sky, nose pointed almost vertical. Slung beneath the left wing was a long rocket. The F-15 passed through the sound barrier less than two minutes after wheels-up and continued to accelerate.

“Pull Kirtley back using Sybyl,” Dalton ordered Hammond.

“What about the rest of the team?”

“You’ve got no contact with them?”

“No.”

“Then there’s nothing you can do. Leave them alone. I want to know what’s going on. These inbound choppers are probably Kirtley’s people.”

The first load of commandos off-loaded on the roof, blowing holes in the ceiling, working their way down.

Farruco and his men were beating a hasty retreat across the back lawn, firing as they went. An Apache gun-ship raced by, thirty-millimeter cannon spitting bullets, killing half of Farruco’s gunslingers before they reached the relative safety of the jungle.

Two more lifts of commandos off-loaded on the roof. Thirty men were in or on the villa.

From his vantage point, Kirtley could see the action, but he made no move. The plan had been for him to redirect the commandos to capture the Aura transmitter, which Boreas had expected to be located nearby. Given that it was in space, he was at a loss what to do.

He started in surprise as he sensed a shift in his link to Sybyl. Against his will, he was being drawn back. The villa disappeared and he was in total blackness.

The first Blackhawk carefully gained altitude, lifting the cargo net full of isolation tubes off the grate. Jackson and Barnes had managed to put six in that net. The second bird dropped its net and they quickly spread it out. The unknown helicopters were three minutes out.

Valika turned on the Aura generator. Despite her warning, the men inside the helicopter bay were startled when Raisor’s image appeared, floating half in and half out of the left side door, just in front of Valika.

“We’re three minutes out,” Valika informed him.

“I know.”

The F-15 was shuddering as it passed through fifty thousand feet altitude. The pilot was linked to Space Command in Colorado Springs, which had a lock on the target satellite and was relaying the data to his targeting computer. In turn, the computer was automatically downloading updates to the ALMV every second.

The second sling load was attached to the bottom of the Blackhawk, then Roby carefully maneuvered the chopper away from the platform and down, until his cargo door was level with the metal grate. The crew chief waved for Jackson and Barnes to get on board.

“What about the sergeant major?” Roby asked as soon as Jackson put on a headset.

“He said to come back for him after we deliver this load,” Jackson said.

Roby shook his head, but he added power, moving up and away from the mountainside. He cursed as something flashed by, coming around the side of the mountain, narrowly missing. Another helicopter. The equally surprised crew of that chopper swerved away, then continued down the platform, disgorging a swarm of armed men.

“What the hell?” Roby muttered, but he didn’t have time to contemplate the scene below any longer as a second Huey came around the mountain and someone leaned out the side and fired an MP-5 on full automatic at his Blackhawk.

Roby banked hard, trying to keep from losing the slingload, and headed to the south. One of the Hueys tried to follow but it was no match for the speed of the more modern Blackhawk, even one carrying a sling load.

After five minutes of chase, the Huey gave up and turned back.

“Are you clear yet?” Cesar demanded of Farruco over the SATPhone.

“Yes. We’re in the jungle.”

Cesar turned to Souris. “Do it.”

The F-15 peaked out at seventy thousand feet, the air no longer thick enough to keep the engine firing. Just before stalling, the pilot hit the release for the ALMV. The eight-foot-long rocket separated; the first stage ignited and it roared toward the darkness of space as the F-15 rolled over and headed back toward Earth, the pilot nursing his engine to keep it from flaming out.