There were no defenders between them and the building. Total and complete surprise.

Hot shit.

Between the satellite pictures of the target and the visuals Zen had fed them, the team had an incredible amount of real-time intelligence. Still, no matter how well-prepared or rehearsed, there was always a moment of hesitation and doubt, a split second when the mind had to storm through the adrenaline and gun smoke to find its balance. Danny struggled through that moment now. His lungs coughed dust and burned dirt as he spotted the small trench they’d mapped near the rear wall of the building. It was their first rendezvous point, the spot they’d launch their final assault from.

The difference between a good commander and a great one wasn’t the amount of adrenaline coursing through his veins, but the ability to control it, to use it to sharpen his judgment rather than dull it. The process was uncon-

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scious; Danny was no more aware of it than he was aware of what his little toes were doing.

“All right, we’re good. Bison, open up the wall for us,” Danny said as he ran. “Like we planned. Everyone else, remember the dance card. Liu, you’re too far left.

Go! Go!”

Bison slid in next to the back of the building while Nurse and Hernandez took the left and right flanks, respectively. Bison put two small charges of plastique explosive on the metal then furled back to the ditch.

“Down!” Danny yelled to the Marines. “Go, Bison.”

“Three, two—” Bison pushed the detonator at two; as the shock of rocks and shrapnel passed overhead, he bolted forward to leap through the eight-by-ten-foot hole his charges had made in the wall. Floyd followed; they rolled through the jagged gap, MP-5s blazing. Danny and the Marines followed a few seconds behind, Gunny and the corporal watching the flanks as Danny moved inside.

Then everything slowed down.

The building was dark and quiet. Egg and Floyd were on Danny’s right and left, respectively, crouching as they scoped out the layout. Two thick tubes covered in white and looking like large pieces of a city sewer system ran the length of the hangar on the left. Black bands extended around several sections, and in three or four places thick hoses like lines from a massive dry vac hung down to the floor, where they met metal boots. The base of the mirror system stood about twenty feet away, surrounded by metal scaffolding and bracing pieces not unlike a child’s Erector set. Beyond it stood a collection of devices stacked on metal tables; from his angle in the unilluminated shed it looked like a collection of table saws and TVs.

“People at the far end,” hissed Egg over the com link.

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“Scientists or what?” asked Danny.

“Unknown.”

Probably just technical people or they’d be shooting, Danny reasoned. “How are we outside?”

“Activity at the barracks,” said Liu. “Powder’s got them pinned down.”

“All right. Marines up. They’ll cover us.” He waved the Marines in, directing them left and right, where they would take over from his men.

“Are you ready, Captain?” said a high-pitched, tinny voice in his headset.

“Thought you’d never get here, Doc,” Danny told Ray Rubeo.

“Remember, please, that I am not where you are.”

“Hard to forget.”

“Please scan the area with the hand camera,” Rubeo told him. “The images captured from your so-called smart helmet are practically worthless.”

“Just a minute.” Danny had unhooked the small rucksack from his back and opened it on the floor. He picked up the small camera—it shot high-resolution still pictures in rapid succession, transmitting them back to Dreamland—and plugged the thick wire connector into his helmet.

Then he held up the camera as he rose tentatively. Egg and Pretty Boy meanwhile had removed their torches and were making their way with the Marines toward the Erector set.

“Humph,” growled Rubeo.

“Well?”

“Please hold.”

“Hold?”

Rubeo spoke to someone in the background, then came back on the line. “The control area. Can you get some pictures of it? And then the accelerators—the double-tube arrangement seems unique.”

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“I’m going to have to go forward,” said Danny, starting to do so.

“Don’t get shot,” said Dog.

“Agreed,” said Danny.

“There are people in there with you?” Dog asked.

“We believe there are, Colonel. But I haven’t seen them.”

“Two guys, far corner,” said Egg. “They’re squatting down like they’re hiding. Gunny’s got them covered. No weapons we can see.”

“Leave ’em for now,” said Danny. He had reached the scaffolding. He put one strap of the ruck over his shoulder and then began climbing gingerly. A pair of what looked like long, flexible drain pipes rose from a pair of cylindri-cal containers on his right. Three small control panels sat beyond them, a monitoring or control station of some sort.

“You want me to plug the sniffer into one of those pipes?” he asked Rubeo.

“Just feed us pictures for now, please,” said Rubeo.

“Pan as much of the facility as you can. We’ll tell you the next move when—Captain, please check the settings. You just changed the resolution.”

Danny reset the camera, trying not to let the scientist’s tone annoy him.

“Better?”

“Much. Your men are at the chemical bag, not the mirror. Tell them not to touch anything until we’ve finished photographing it. This isn’t a toy store.”

“No shit, Doc. You’re going to have to lighten up,” said Danny. “Bison, Pretty Boy, what’s going on?”

“Guy here,” said Bison. “Dead. Flighthawk must’ve nailed him on the way in. Two more bodies over there.”

“Come back and get ready to take out part of the mirror, okay? The ragheads aren’t going to leave us alone forever.”

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As if in answer, the ground shook with a heavy explosion.

“All right, Captain. Now, take your chemical sniffer and begin getting samples,” said Rubeo. “You’ll want to move to the tube monitoring station. The others can dis-mantle the mirror at the director assembly. We only need a cross section.”

“What’s the monitoring station?” Danny asked.

“The stations are directly ahead of you with the control panels. Slit open one of the collector tubes and run the sampler.”

“Which one?”

“Any one. This is very much a work in progress. We’ll look for the disk arrays while you’re doing that. Those will be our next target.”

The ground rumbled again. Danny had to climb up and over one of the equipment benches. As he did, Rubeo told him to stop and take more pictures. Balancing on a long steel pipe, Danny curled one arm around a flexible tube that ran to the ceiling as he panned with the camera. The tube bounced violently as a pair of fresh explosions shook the ground outside.

“Hey, listen, Doc, things are getting exciting here. You better move us along the priority list.”

Rubeo sighed. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Do we have the mirror section from the director yet?”

“This fucker is bolted in about twenty places,” said Bison. “It’s huge.”

“We need only a cross section,” replied Rubeo. “Two people should be able to carry a piece away from the building.”

“You think it’s so fucking easy, you do it,” replied Bison.

“Relax, Sergeant,” sighed the scientist. “We’re all in this together.”

“Yeah, well, some of us are more in it than others.”

“What’s going on outside, Nurse?” Danny asked Liu.

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“Two BMPs came up. Flighthawk just popped ’em.”

“I see some vehicles starting south now,” said Fernan-dez. “Uh, tank I think.”

“Captain?” said Rubeo. “Are you still with us?”

“I’m going to take my samples, then we’re blowing the whole thing up.”