Though Ricci could see the pain register in his opponent’s eyes, Kuhl gave no other sign of weakness. Before Ricci could follow up with a third blow, he slammed his truncheon lengthwise across Ricci’s side directly over his kidney, then brought it up and back for another strike, this one aimed for Ricci’s temple
Raising his arm to block the swing, Ricci forced the stick out and away from himself. But his side was on fire and he was still too stunned and breathless to move. Then, through the specks of light wheeling across his vision, he saw Kuhl’s left hand thrust downward again, his fingers groping for the backpack lying on the floor between them, then clenching around its broken strap.
He snatched it up and turned toward the corridor.
Gulping air, Ricci pushed himself off the door. Whatever was in that pack had to be important enough for the other man to have paused twice to retrieve it when he might instead have gotten a head start out of the building.
As Kuhl fled into the hall, Ricci launched into the air after him, tackling him around the middle with a force that sent both men crashing to the noor — Ricci atop Kuhl’s back, Kuhl facedown beneath him, their legs stretched out into the entryway and blocking the door from swinging shut. The truncheon skittered from Kuhl’s grasp, but his other hand remained tightly clenched around the dangling strap of the backpack. Ricci could feel his enormous power as he fought to get out from underneath, feel the muscles of his back and arms working, flexing, bulging up against his chest. The man was like a wild stallion, and Ricci knew he wouldn’t be able to keep him pinned for too long.
Pressing all his weight down on Kuhl, Ricci raised his fist over his head, then hammered it against the hand clutching the pack. Kuhl did not let go. Inhaling deeply, lifting his arm back up, Ricci struck another side-fisted punch to Kuhl’s knuckles.
This time he both heard and felt the splintering of bone. Though Kuhl again gave no outward indication of pain, his fingers splayed open around the strap. His chest flattened against Kuhl’s back, Ricci reached out, grabbed the pack off the floor of the corridor, and slung it over his shoulder through the entryway behind him, the door of which remained propped open by both men’s outstretched legs.
It was just then that a hand gripped Ricci’s ankle.
Blood trailing out behind him in a long, smeary ribbon, a feeling of looseness where he’d been shot, Antonio crawled across the floor on his belly until he was through the doorway and, mustering all the strength left in his fingers, caught hold of Ricci above his foot. It had not occurred to him that he had been intentionally sacrificed by the man he was trying to save.
“Mi mano, su vida, ” he said, repeating the phrase to himself like a mantra. “Mi mano, su vida…”
My hand, your life.
Glancing over his shoulder at the dying man, Ricci tried to shake his ankle free of him, couldn’t at first, then kicked out hard, his shoe bottom crunching into Antonio’s face.
Antonio held on to his ankle, held on through willpower alone, pulling him backward. His lips were peeled away from his gums in a kind of rictus. There was blood smeared on his teeth, lips, and chin.
“Mi mano, su vida… ”
Feeling a shift in Ricci’s balance as he struggled with Antonio, Kuhl flailed beneath him, planting both hands on the floor to gain some leverage. Like a man doing a push-up, heedless of his shattered knuckles, he straightened his arms and heaved himself off the floor. As Ricci went spilling from on top of him, Kuhl scrambled to his feet and looked hurriedly around for his pack.
Then he glimpsed it behind him. Behind Antonio. In the room containing the ISS module.
In there with the other Sword operatives.
Kuhl saw the choices before him, and again took the one that was unfortunate but unavoidable.
“Mi mano, su vida, mi mano… ”
Antonio’s voice fading until it was barely a shiver on his lips, Ricci finally kicked free of his still-clinging fingers, sprang to his feet, and looked down the corridor.
All down its length, it was empty.
He rushed straight ahead toward the loading bay, plunged from the darkness of the hall out into the lesser darkness of the night.
The man with whom he’d been struggling was nowhere to be seen.
Gone.
And though Ricci would search for him for the next hour, and immediately order a cordon placed around the space center’s grounds, Kuhl would remain gone.
He had, however, left his backpack behind.
Epilogue
A secure conference room, Uplink International corporate headquarters, San Jose, California.
“We’ve landed on our feet,” Gordian said, “but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we’re on anything close to solid ground.”
At the table with him, Megan Breen and Tom Ricci were sober.
“Our mole’s still in his burrow,” Megan said. “We know now that he was familiar with the layouts of the Brazilian compound, the Cosmodrome, and presumably the KSC’s vehicle assembly building. That he not only revealed detailed information about the design of the ISS service module, but also where to plant the HMP device so it would be hidden from sight and able to feed off the solar sails.”
“Takes real access, and a lot of technical expertise,” Ricci said. “Same for whoever did the dirty work on Orion.”
“How about the one you got the device away from?” Gordian asked. “Any leads on him?”
Ricci shook his head. In the grounds search that had followed the man’s escape from the cargo-processing facility, his teams had found two murdered VKS guards, one garroted to death, the other with a broken neck. Ricci figured their quarry had killed them both and taken off in their missing patrol vehicle.
“Rollie holds firm that he wasn’t the guiding force behind the strikes,” Megan said.
Gordian looked at her. “Reasons?”
She shrugged. “He calls it a gut feeling.”
“That it?”
She nodded.
“Sometimes,” Ricci said, “following your gut’s the best thing you can do.”
Gordian expelled a long breath.
“The longer I think about all this, the more unanswered questions arise,” he said. “A primary one being what the HMP generator’s target was going to be once it was placed in orbit.”
They all sat very still in the room’s electronic envelope of silence.
“Small steps,” Ricci said after a while, his voice so quiet it seemed he’d been talking to himself.
Then he noticed Gordian had turned to face him.
“That’s how you count your gains,” Ricci explained. “It’s what I learned in the service and had reinforced when I was working the streets as a cop, and maybe almost forgot till recently. When it seems like there are ten lousy situations you can’t do anything about, for every one where you can make a difference, it’s all about putting your right foot forward, and just taking those small steps.”
About having confidence that just being here, and alive, gives you the chance to see better times ahead, Gordian thought.
“You did a hell of a job in Kazakhstan, Tom,” he said at length. “I’m glad to have you aboard.”
Megan nodded, looked at him.
“Ditto,” she said.
Ricci met her gaze.
“You see what I mean,” he said.