There was, Kuhl thought, an exquisite symmetry to it all.
Antonio and the others close behind him, he raced forward, pushed through a door in the corridor that was supposed to be electronically locked, and glided effortlessly through another. Speed was of the essence. Though Havoc could be connected to the solar arrays in minutes, the task had to be executed, and his team’s exit from the building accomplished, before power returned to reveal the intrusion.
Kuhl moved swiftly toward one final door, gripped its handle, and pushed it open.
The ISS module was directly in front of him on a large palletized staging work stand.
Despite his need for haste, Kuhl paused in the doorway for the barest instant, feeling a surge of momentous achievement.
Then he moved forward, Antonio and the others entering at his heels, coming up to stand beside him.
“Halt right where you are, all of you,” a voice abruptly said from his right. “Another step and we’ll blow your brains out.”
Ricci held his VVRS rifle out at waist level, aiming it at the man with the backpack, eyeing him steadily through his NVGs. Beside him along the right side of the room, their own rifles angled toward the door, were half a dozen Sword ops also equipped with goggles. On the left were an equal number of men.
“Drop your weapons,” he said. “I hope you understand English, because you’ve got exactly three seconds before we open fire.”
The men in the entryway did not move.
“Two,” Ricci said.
His front teeth clicking together, Kuhl turned toward Antonio. It would be a pity to lose the men who were with him, but there was no choice.
“We fight,” he whispered. Lying to Antonio as he had lied to the perimeter assault team. “To the end. ”
With a quicksilver movement, Antonio brought his gun up and pivoted toward Ricci, but Ricci took him down with a staccato burst to his midsection before he could release a shot.
The momentary distraction was all Kuhl had desired.
As the remaining members of his team split the darkness with automatic fire, he spun on his heels, thrust his arm out at the door that would return him to the outer hall, and pushed it open.
He was halfway through the entry when Ricci lunged from behind and caught hold of his backpack.
The man beside the TRAP T-2 firing commander stared into his handheld monitor. “Jeeps are still coming on.”
The commander breathed. Didn’t those dumb bastards realize what kind of hell storm they were heading into?
“Fire at will,” he said into his headset.
The attackers riding in the jeeps had not expected to come up against the remote gun platforms. Kuhl’s scouts had told them that the east perimeter, now under American control, was guarded by an inadequate number of men possessing only nonlethal small arms intended to disrupt and incapacitate. The scouts had told them that the VKS was apparently convinced an offensive against the space center, if it came at all, would be launched against its industrial area — never expecting that Kuhl and his small group would infiltrate that sector rather than stage a mass assault there, and that the attack on this perimeter was a mere distraction that would allow Kuhl to accomplish his mission, drawing any troop concentrations away from the cargo-processing facility. Kuhl’s scouts had also told the attackers that the Sword security team did not have adequate manpower to form a strong second line of defense or mount an effective counterattack.
Although the TRAP T-2s had come as a surprise to him, the leader of the attack force had assumed they had been moved into position after the last forward reconnaissance. Having never seen anything like them, he completely underestimated their precision-firing capabilities. Furthermore, the smoke, gas, and fireworks belching from the fixed platforms seemed to confirm his intelligence — relayed by Kuhl himself — that the Americans were under stricter no-kill orders than in Brazil.
Completely misled, he stuck to his plan of attack and ordered the jeeps to roll on toward the perimeter.
The Sword gunners opened up on them with everything they had, the TRAP T-2 VVRS platforms unleashing streams of deadly ammunition, angled to cover the entire field of approach with plunging, grazing, and crossing fire.
Men leaped from their vehicles as they were sprayed with bullets, many falling dead before they could make their exits, others managing to take cover behind the jeeps and return fire with their FAMAS guns. But they knew they were stalled, unable to advance, and by the time the QR squads came speeding up on their flanks, the attackers left alive were ready to surrender.
Their assault lasted just under half an hour before the Sword guards were satisfied it had been suppressed.
Exactly as Kuhl had planned.
His rifle slung over his shoulder, the fingers of one hand clutching the strap of Kuhl’s backpack, Ricci pulled Kuhl toward him, keeping him in the doorway, hooking his free arm around Kuhl’s chest. But Kuhl continued to press forward, fighting to escape, twisting slightly to drive an elbow into the center of Ricci’s rib cage.
The wind knocked out of him, Ricci struggled to keep his arm around Kuhl, took another hard, crisp elbow jab to the diaphragm, a third.
His hold relaxed but didn’t break.
Gunfire racketing behind them, the two men grappled in the narrow space of the entryway, both their rifles clattering to the floor, their arms and shoulders banging against the partially open door, slamming it repeatedly back into the wall. Then Ricci saw Kuhl reach down with his right hand, saw the truncheon in his belt scabbard, and tried to grab his wrist to keep him from getting a grip on it. But Kuhl was too fast. He pulled it from the scabbard, brought it up, half-turned again, and thrust its blunt hardwood tip into Ricci’s solar plexus.
Ricci tightened his abdomen against the blow, but the pain was nevertheless tremendous. He grunted and crashed dazedly back against the door. His hold around Kuhl slackening, he somehow managed to cling to the strap that was his only remaining purchase, pulling it backward again even as Kuhl pulled forward.
There was a sound of fabric giving way, the strap tearing free of the stitches that held it to the pack, swinging loosely from Kuhl’s right shoulder.
Slipping down his opposite arm, the pack dangled there momentarily, and then fell toward the floor between the two men.
Kuhl spun, reached a hand down to catch it, but his brief distraction had allowed Ricci a chance to recover. He brought his knee up into Kuhl’s stomach, staggering him, then bent his legs to give himself some momentum and snapped a hard uppercut to Kuhl’s jaw.
Kuhl’s head jerked backward, but Ricci could feel him roll with the punch, and knew he’d avoided the worst of it. Ricci hit him again, aiming high, unable to maneuver in the cramped doorway and just hoping to connect with a solid hit. This time his fist smashed into the side of Kuhl’s nose, and blood came spurting from it onto Ricci’s knuckles.