That gave her the confidence to keep her hands free while she retraced her steps. She paused briefly to feel along the ground for small rocks, and she put several of them into her left pocket.

Somewhere off to her three o’clock position she could hear the whispered voices of Cyrus, Hecate, and Otto. Their position sounded about right for where she thought she needed to go.

Her greatest care was in placing her feet, making sure that each step was featherlight until she was sure of her footing, and then she shifted weight in a flow from one leg to the other. It was like using Tai Chi to stalk her prey in the darkness-long, slow, controlled steps.

TONTON THOUGHT HE heard something and he turned his head and sniffed at the darkness. The air was thick with the scent of fear from several of the transgenic animals that had panicked when the lights went out. It clouded his sense of smell, but he was sure that he’d just caught a fresh whiff of the woman. Humans don’t smell like animals, and though Tonton did not possess the genes necessary for processing the thousands of individual scents that jungle apes had, he had trained for many hours to hone his olfactory skills.

He was sure that it was the woman. She’d moved.

There was a sudden sound far off to his opposite side and he turned suddenly, swinging his pistol around to point at the blackness. What had made the noise? The woman? Veder? One of the animals?

There was a second sound. Sharp and fast, like a stone dislodged by a running foot.

Then a third. All off to his right side.

It had to be her. Somehow she’d tricked him and was crossing the open field under cover of darkness instead of coming back along this path.

“Got you, bitch,” he said with quiet malice as he rose from a prone position and got to his feet. He took a tentative step, then another.

And then something brushed against his leg and he spun, but as he spun he felt his thigh ignite with a white-hot burn. He smelled a confusion of scents. The woman-close!-and then the sharp, coppery tang of blood.

He swung a vicious a blow through the shadows, but all he hit was air.

There was another flash of burning pain across the back of his knee and suddenly he found himself tilting to that side, his knee buckling.

Tonton cried out as pain hit him in waves, a one-two burst of agony from thigh and knee. He scrabbled at his thigh and could feel wetness, and then he felt something hot splash against his palm. He was bleeding. Fast and hard. An artery.

The bitch had cut him!

She’d found him in the dark and cut him.

“You fucking cu-!” he started to shout, but he was struck across the face. His cheeks burned with unbearable pain, and when he touched his face he could feel something weird, something terribly wrong. His mouth seemed to stretch wide… absurdly wide. Where the corners of his mouth should be were two ragged double lines of torn flesh.

He flailed at the darkness as fear burst through him like fireworks. Then he felt fingers curl into a knot in his hair and his head was jerked violently backward. Then there was the hard edge of a blade against his throat. It pressed deep but did not cut.

Something brushed his ear and he realized it was a pair of soft lips.

“This is for those poor bastards in Deep Iron,” the woman said in a murmur that was as soft as a whisper of passion.

He didn’t understand. He hadn’t been at Deep Iron. That job had been done by two of his men. He hadn’t killed those people. He opened his mouth to tell her, to plead with her. Then there was a lava-hot line across his throat and he had no voice at all. Tonton heard a weak and distant gurgle that sounded like it came from underwater. He felt hot wetness in his mouth, and then he was falling forward into a darkness more complete and eternal than the temporary shadows of the Chamber of Myth.

The Dragon Factory

Tuesday, August 31, 2:44 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 16 minutes E.S.T.

If there were more of the scorpion-dogs down in the lower level we didn’t encounter them. We did find a half-dozen guys in greasy overalls lying dead inside a shattered office. It looked like they’d tried to make a stand against the monsters by pushing a desk against the door and arming themselves with wrenches. They’d killed one of the transgenic creatures by smashing in its skull, but from the looks of the place the other monsters had swarmed in. The workers looked to have been stung dozens of times each.

“Poor bastards,” Bunny said.

“Poor bastards who work for the bad guys,” I said. My sympathy level was bottoming out.

We ran on, chasing our flashlight beams. The EMP had wiped out our night vision, but we each had a flashlight and extra batteries wrapped in lead foil for this purpose.

“Stairs!” Bunny said, pointing, and we cut right and went through the doorway as fast as safety would allow. The stairwell was empty, so we climbed, taking turns covering each other on the corners, never stopping. If Alpha Team still held the far end of the hall, then I was hoping to catch the Russians by surprise. A few flash bangs and then some frags would make the odds more even. They would literally be in the dark, so we’d use that against them.

We got to the main floor and opened the door cautiously. No sounds of gunfire from inside the building. No way to tell if that was good news or bad. I could hear sounds of a pretty heated exchange outside, though.

This next part would be tricky because we couldn’t risk using our flashlight, but we had to get down that hallway.

I leaned close to Bunny and told him what I wanted to do.

“Roger that,” he whispered.

I slung my rifle and drew my Beretta. Moving carefully, I found the far wall with my left hand; Bunny kept one hand on my shoulder. Like a couple of blind beggars negotiating an alley we walked forward. I let my fingers glide along the wall and never moved faster than my ability to recognize the terrain. Each time I found an opening-a hallway or a doorway-I stopped, tapped Bunny’s hand twice, and then moved in a shuffle until my fingers made contact once more with the long, curving wall. Being in total darkness makes you realize how much of every action relies on sight. Sudden darkness for a sighted person opens up a feeling of great vulnerability. Movement is clumsy and slow. To overcome this you have to create a system of movement and constant analysis. Speed is an enemy to sightless orientation.

So, it took us a while to navigate that hallway, but the way we did it brought us all the way to the main doorway. The big glass doors were closed, so I followed them to the other side and found the wall again. Now I knew where we were and how far from the hatch.

We went another forty yards and then stopped. I found Bunny’s hand, tapped it three times-a cue that I was about to give instructions-and then followed his hand up his arm to his chest and then to the grenades hung on his battle rig. Then I found his big hand and drew a series of letters in his palm. He tapped my wrist every time he needed me to repeat one.

When I was done he gave my wrist two sets of two taps. Message received and understood.

We reoriented ourselves and moved farther along the hall until we could hear voices. Whispers from several men. Low, quiet, and in Russian. I could make out what they were saying, but there wasn’t time to translate for Bunny. Besides, none of it was tactically important. One man asked another when the lights were coming back on, and a gruff voice-probably a sergeant or team leader-told him to shut the hell up.

I holstered my pistol and took two grenades from my harness. A flash bang in my left and a fragmentation grenade in my right. From the faint rustle I knew Bunny was doing the same.