"Wait," I said, before the Exodus commander signed off. "Is Lorenzo still alive?" Katsumoto relayed my question to Antoine.

"He is still alive, Mr. Valentine. He is with us. Do you wish to speak to him?"

I took the radio from Katsumoto. "Not really. Did he find his brother though?"

"I"m afraid not. He tells me that that, too was a Montalban ploy. His brother was never here. We"ve all been deceived." The radio went to static for a moment. "He also suggests that you go fornicate with yourself."

"Likewise. Valentine out."

As the last of us cleared the dam, Ling and Katsumoto consulted on a plan. We had too many wounded to all go to Antoine"s rescue. Some would not last the night if we had to fight our way to our friends. There was little choice: we"d have to split up.

Katsumoto wanted to lead the element that rescued Antoine, of course. He was the senior Exodus commander on scene now, and saving his people was his duty. His right knee had been shattered by a bullet, though. He could move under his own power only with the aid of an improvised crutch, and he"d lost a lot of blood. He looked tired and pale.

The rescue mission fell to Ling. She"d been through a lot this night, but she only had minor injuries. She accepted her task solemnly and swore to Katsumoto that she"d get Antoine out if there was any possible way. The call then went out for volunteers, those who were still able to fight and wanted to go. As near as I could tell, every single Exodus operative still walking (and some that weren"t) raised his or her hand, Skunky included.

Their loyalty to each other was impressive. They were bonded as tightly as any professional army I"d ever worked with. You couldn"t help but feel respect for their level of dedication to one another, despite coming from widely different ethnic, national, cultural, and religious backgrounds.

Not everyone could go, and there weren"t very many to choose from. Of the original fifty Exodus operatives, only thirty were still alive. Of those, only sixteen were uninjured. Of those, not all could be spared for the rescue.

In the end, six Exodus operatives were to accompany Ling, including Skunky. It was a small element to potentially have to fight across hostile territory. They would have to bring enough vehicles to carry all of Antoine"s surviving people. Many were low on ammunition and had to scrounge for what supplies they could get.

For my part, I was leaning on one of our wrecked trucks, drinking a bottle of water from a case that"d been inside. I"d sucked the hydration bladder in my backpack dry and was thirsty as h.e.l.l. I was leaning because my arms and legs were shaking. Adrenaline dump was. .h.i.tting me hard. I was exhausted. I just wanted a hot shower and a warm bed to lay in. I think Ling sensed this as she approached, because she seemed to do so cautiously. "How are you doing?"

"I"ll be okay," I said. "I just need a moment. What happens now?"

"I will lead my team to the rendezvous point to extract Lorenzo and Antoine"s element. I owe Antoine my life several times over. And Lorenzo . . . I asked Lorenzo to come here. Practically coerced him. I owe it to him to not leave him to die without trying to come to his aid. That is not the Exodus way."

"I know," I said. "I just needed a drink before we go."

"Michael, you don"t have to go," she said levelly, looking up into my eyes. "I can ask no more of you. I thought I"d brought you to your death, but by the grace of G.o.d we came through. All you need to do is go with Katsumoto. It is as close as you can get to being safe."

"And Jill would never forgive me if I just left his stupid a.s.s there. Besides, you need all the bodies you can get. So stop arguing with me, please. I"m going. I"m in this thing to the end."

Ling looked at me the way Sarah had, very briefly, before putting her mask back on. "Thank you," she managed. "But please, take your water with you. We need to get going."

d.a.m.n it, I thought. All of this and I wouldn"t even get to see the explosion.

LORENZO.

The Cliffs The last of the injured was tied to the rope and sent spiraling over the edge that I had climbed over just a few hours before. There were only three that couldn"t walk now. We had not been able to control the bleeding from a man named Solomon, and his body was behind us in the snow. I would be the last man to leave the compound, which was good, because we"d kicked the hornet"s nest.

There was a lot of movement inside the compound. I could see a lot of shadows moving in front of the fires. The gates had been flung open to let the reinforcements inside. I took one last look before going over the edge, and froze. A lone figure was standing silhouetted in front of the burning Tunguska. It was dark at the lip of the chasm. There was no way he could see me, but I felt an involuntary shiver anyway. The black sliver of a man was perfectly still and somehow I knew he was watching me with deadly, soulless eyes.

Sala Jihan had come up out of his hole.

"You win this one, you son of a b.i.t.c.h."

I went over the edge quickly, a makeshift harness strung around me. My boots would impact the gla.s.slike ice, kick outward, and I would plunge another twenty feet at a time. I hit the ground too fast. The others were already prepared to move out. Exodus was silent, each of them burdened by heavy thoughts and internal pain. Shen was mashing a claymore into the snow just ahead of us. The first soldiers down that rope were going to get a surprise. Hopefully an occasional b.o.o.by-trap would keep our pursuers cautious and moving slow.

We took turns carrying the wounded, one unburdened man on point and the other at the rear. We pa.s.sed the nomads" tiny settlement and found it was abandoned. No sign of Lotus Blossom, her family, or their yaks. They apparently had the good sense to get the h.e.l.l out of the area after I had shown up earlier. Wing"s body was probably stuffed into one of the many ice creva.s.ses nearby.

We had memorized terrain maps of this area, not only because it was where my team had inserted, but also because it had been our last-ditch possibility of retreat if everything had gone horribly wrong. The canyon was far too rocky for vehicles to follow, so now we had us a foot race.

My team had been dropped off on the main road, and we had walked to the nomad village. Now that road was crawling with Jihan"s reinforcements from the mines. So our only other options were to hide or to try to walk out the other end of the canyon, which was about ten miles of brutal terrain that finally terminated on a Russian plain just off the Mongolian border. Judging by the ant"s nest we had just kicked, the smart money wasn"t on hiding.

The going was hard. The footing was treacherous and slick. Only half of the group had managed to retain their night vision, and we took turns wearing it, so that the person on point and the man bringing up the rear could always see. Luckily, the sky was still clear and the snow was so bright and reflective that none of us were totally blind.

Antoine set a brutal pace for the first thirty minutes. We needed to get as much of a lead as possible before the soldiers zeroed in on us. Finally, he called a brief halt. We needed to tend to the injured and better secure their wounds before anyone else ended up like Solomon.

Fajkus was still out. He was badly concussed, with a deep laceration on his scalp and several more cuts on his arms and torso. n.o.body knew what had happened to him after he led the counterattack against the silo, but at least we had gotten the bleeding stopped.

The next was an Exodus operative from Korea, named Kim. He had taken a round through the forearm. It had struck him in the wrist, traveled right up the bone, and exited out his elbow. The flesh was totally pulverized. Shen had tied a tourniquet just above the elbow. Kim wasn"t looking good. He could scarcely walk, and kept stumbling. He had lost a lot of blood and was barely coherent.

Svetlana was hanging in there. The Russian sniper was in terrible pain, with bones in both of her legs shattered. She had to be carried, and the burden was increased for whoever had her on their back because she refused to put down her heavy sniper rifle. None of us could really disagree with that because all of us knew what the chances of us getting away were, and none of us were the type that would give up without a fight.

Phillips was limping badly now. His ankle was terribly sprained, and the flesh sticking out the top of his boot was black, purple, and swollen to twice its normal size. He grimaced at every step, but would not quit.

There was a muted thump far behind us. Somebody had set off the claymore. Antoine signaled for us to continue. It was my turn in the middle, so I helped Kim to his feet, locked his good arm over my shoulder, and helped drag him up the mountain.

LORENZO.

The Mountain "How many are there?" I asked.

Antoine shook his head grimly and pa.s.sed me the binoculars. "Too many."

I scanned down the mountain. The gla.s.s wasn"t night vision, but I could make out the dark shapes moving on the white surface far below us. He was right. There were hundreds of them down there. It was a full-fledged hunting party. Occasionally there would be a flicker of lights as they came across some part of our trail they wanted to examine in the dark.

"They"re not having any problem tracking us," I muttered.

"Not much we could do about that, I"m afraid." Which was true, we were leaving a trail that a blind man could follow. "We must go. They"re moving much faster than we are."

"Come dawn, they"ll be able to track us even faster." I exhaled, leaving a cloud of steam that instantly crystallized in the stubble on my face. If anything, it had only gotten colder as the night had gone on. Stopping briefly to check on our pursuers drove that point home as all the sweat from our exertion froze instantly to our bodies. My hands ached with a throbbing pain that was warning me that something was seriously wrong.

"And dawn will be here soon. It is spring, you know," Antoine said.

"Antoine? Was that a joke? Exodus issued you a sense of humor?"

"Do not tell Ling. She would not approve."

I tried my radio again, but still no signal from Jill. The mountains had to be between us now. Antoine and I ran after the others, following a rocky trail that had to have been created by goats or something else narrower than a person. We knew that it wouldn"t take long to catch up. Antoine was breathing hard. He and Shen had only been at this alt.i.tude for like a week, and had not had a chance to fully acclimatize before the raid. Both of them were feeling it now.

We caught up to the others a moment later. They had stopped for some reason, and were cl.u.s.tered together under a rock overhang. "What"s going on?" Antoine demanded. "We must continue."

Roland looked up at us as he rubbed his eyes. "Kim . . ."

Antoine nodded once. "Let us say a few words over him. Then b.o.o.by trap his body. Leave him on the trail." The tall African studied our surroundings for a moment. "There. If we"re lucky, it will cause a rockslide and take a few of the hounds with it."

Now there were only seven of us.

Every step was agony. My legs burned and cramped. It would have been a difficult trek even under normal circ.u.mstances, but I had Svetlana riding piggyback with her arms encircled around my neck and her legs dragging behind. She was actually taller than me.

"The map said that this canyon was sixteen kilometers long," Svetlana said, "I did not realize that meant an average of thirty up and fourteen down." Her English was good, but her accent was thick.

"It only feels that long because of the painkillers," I responded. "We"re on a beautiful mountain walk is all."

We stumbled on for a few more minutes in silence. The snow crunched under my boots. The other surviving members of Exodus were just darker shadows around us.

"So, Lorenzo . . ."

"Yeah?"

"You have a girlfriend, no?"

"Actually," I replied as I struggled over a fallen tree. "I"m in a serious relationship."

"Too bad. You have a nice b.u.t.t."

"Now I know you"re high."

The beautiful Russian laughed weakly. She was not faring well. "If you left me behind, the rest of you could make better time."

"Shut up," I grunted.

At least we were walking generally downhill now, not that that was any easier, as the ground was uneven and I kept tripping and sliding. There was probably another mile of downgrade, but then we faced a difficult uphill battle over the highest point of the pa.s.s.

"They"re gaining on us," Roland gasped as he sprinted up from behind.

"How far?" Antoine asked.

"They"ve got an advance party, maybe twenty men. They"re about eight hundred yards behind us. The main group was still around the river bend. I don"t know how far. I set our last claymore."

That was grim news. An hour ago they had been twice that distance behind us.

"Antoine. Let me slow them down," I suggested. "If we"re going to do it, we might as well do it now. We haven"t seen any of them equipped with night vision."

"You would be overwhelmed. No. We should stick together."

"You forget something. I don"t take orders from you. Sorry, Svetlana," I told her as I stopped and tried to lower her to the ground as gently as possible. She whimpered in pain as her damaged legs touched down. "Antoine, I"m going back there to kill a few of these guys. That"ll slow the others down. I"m a way better murderer than pack mule."

Antoine knew better than to try to argue with me. "Very well." Shen raised his hand. Antoine shook his head in resignation. "You too?"

Shen shrugged.

Roland and Phillips started to speak, but I cut them off. "Wrong. Somebody has to be on point, and Antoine isn"t going to carry two people by himself."

"Leave me," Svetlana said from the ground. "I"m endangering the rest of you."

"No," Shen said with grave finality. "We will hurt them, then return."

"But-" Svetlana began.

"No. I was there when your brother died on the side of a mountain, and I"ll be d.a.m.ned if the same thing happens to you. Phillips, pick her up. Good luck, my brothers. Hurry back." Antoine said as he adjusted the still unconscious form of Fajkus on his back and lumbered on.

I was unbelievably exhausted as I slid in behind the patch of rocks. Shen and I had scrambled up one of the almost-vertical rock faces, tearing our clothing and our skin on the jagged bits, to get above the approaching soldiers. Once we were at the top, I went to one side, Shen to the other. We would try to hit as many of them as possible before retreating. With any luck, the expectation of further ambushes would slow them down from here on.

There we perched, the advance party of slave soldiers now only about a hundred meters and closing. These men were moving quickly. If I had sneezed loud, they probably would have heard it. I tried to take a drink from the Camelbak I"d taken from the crashed helicopter, but the liquid had long since frozen into a block of solid ice. Add dehydration to my list of complaints.

The thief in me told me what I should have been doing. I should have told Exodus to f.u.c.k off, and I should have left them. I didn"t owe them anything. On my own, I could have already made it to the other side of the canyon or, worst case scenario, I could have hid, and then escaped during the confusion of the soldiers slaughtering the remaining survivors.

Be good, Hector. That"s all that I ask . . .

For some reason I kept hearing the voice of Gideon Lorenzo in my head. What I was doing here was suicidal. It was asinine. If I was the man that I had been even a few years ago, I would have ditched Exodus hours ago.

But I wasn"t.

I studied the terrain. We were in a good position. We could probably get most of the advance party into the open before we opened fire. The soldiers were moving in the trees, but they had to cross a pretty good-size field of snow with very little cover to get to us. Hopefully we could catch a bunch of them in the open.

Shen signaled me and started pa.s.sing hand signals. Both of us were wearing night vision. I was wearing Fajkus" pair since he was still unconscious. Shen and I were on the same page: wait until the last possible second and then nail as many of them in the open as possible. I signaled that I would start close and work my way to the rear, he would start at the rear and work his way forward.

The soldiers moved into the kill zone. They were in pairs, and keeping a bit of distance between each pair. Doing the math, the best we could hope for would be to get ten of them in the open at once, and that was pushing it. The others would still be in a copse of trees, and they would probably take cover and start shooting back. Hopefully, without night vision, we would be able to retreat without getting hit.

I had been able to scrounge up one more 5.56 magazine from the crashed chopper, so I had one full thirty-rounder and one other that I estimated was mostly full. By my calculation, I had already fired about two hundred rounds through my ACR since the fighting had started in the compound.

The soldiers were getting closer, s.p.a.ced pretty far apart, our earlier claymores having taught them a lesson. I signaled to Shen. It"s time.

It"s difficult to be accurate at anything more than short range with a red dot sight through night vision. My ACR had an IR laser invisible to the naked eye, but through my monocular, it was a brilliant beam. I put it on the closest soldier and he was totally oblivious. I flipped the selector to semi and pulled the trigger. The round spat from the muzzle with a muted hiss, a small spark of light the only visible indication I had fired. There was a high pitched sound as the tiny projectile traveled at a rate greater than the speed of sound before the bullet struck the soldier in the top of his chest. He stopped dead in his tracks, then fell flat on his back.

Shen opened up at the furthest visible pair while I quickly shifted my gun to the second soldier and popped him once. Normally I liked to shoot everybody a bunch of times, but I didn"t really have a whole lot of ammo left at this point. Besides, if we were lucky, maybe the main body would slow down to tend to their wounded. Doubtful, but what the h.e.l.l. Worth a shot.

I moved from pair to pair as quickly as I could. I was firing on the second group before they realized what was happening. Our suppressed weapons and ability to see in the dark was a huge advantage. Shen and I met in the middle pair as both of us. .h.i.t the soldier on the right at the same time, and the soldier on the left dove into the snow. It had only taken a few seconds to work across the group.

"Go!" I hissed. We both leapt up and began to scramble back down the rocks. Muzzle flashes erupted from the tree line. Bullets violently struck all around us as the soldiers hosed our general area with automatic fire. I tripped, and tumbled down the last few feet of the slope, sprawling forward, but managing to catch myself with my already-abraded hands. Shen grabbed the back of my coat and pulled me upright. The two of us ran as fast as we could back toward Exodus.

The gunfire behind us didn"t let up for almost a minute straight.

And come dawn, they would actually be able to aim.

It was going to be a tough morning.

VALENTINE.

The Mountain Road The dam was crippled, but we weren"t out of this yet.

Dawn was fast approaching as our ersatz rescue party wound its way through barely pa.s.sable mountain roads. I drove a beat-up 4x4 with Ling next to me, and it was slow going. Some effort had been made by someone to keep the roads relatively free of snow, but we continually got bogged down in soft spots. Ling, using a map and her GPS navigated, while trying to stay in contact with Lorenzo"s group on the radio. They were constantly fading in and out, as the terrain did a marvelous job of limiting radio range.

We were in good contact with Reaper and Jill, who had taken it upon themselves to make a beeline for Lorenzo"s location on their own. Reaper was feeding us real-time information from his little drone aircraft, and it was a G.o.dsend. Otherwise we"d have had no chance of finding them in time. He said the Montalbans had been tracking his signal somehow, so he would put the plane on standby, where it would just drift in circles on autopilot, they"d move, and then he"d reconnect.

The situation was dire. The survivors of the raid on Sala Jihan"s compound were on foot, trudging through deep snow and over rugged terrain. There were only a handful of them left, and half were wounded. They were pursued by a mob of Jihan"s fanatical soldiers, numbering well over a hundred by Reaper"s best estimate.