over the surface of the ville walls.
The people in the streets milled about uncertainly. There came the splintering of glass and a chimney toppled over, crashing onto the ground. A portion of a plastic-coated structure came down, and a vendor’s tent keeled over. Pieces of the ville walls loosened and rained down, first in flakes then in fist-size chunks. Screaming mothers began shoving their terrified children toward the gate.
A series of consecutive hammering tremors struck the ground from beneath. Rifts split the ground. Rocks and mortar, shaken loose from the walls all around, rained down. Philboyd’s legs buckled and he staggered but didn’t fall.
Waving his arms, Gedrick bellowed, “Everybody out! Everybody out of the ville! Stay away from the walls!”
Dodging the falling debris, the people stampeded toward the open gate, jostling one another. A small boy stumbled and fell, squalling. Domi scooped him up in her arms and turned toward the Cerberus personnel. “You heard the man! Let’s get the hell out of here!” she shouted.
Philboyd started to obey, then froze as the flood tide of people swirled around him. At the base of a wall a hundred yards away, a moving ripple appeared in the ground, as if a very large animal slid and burrowed just beneath the surface. Little puffs of dust burst up from the cracks in the topsoil.
The furrow inscribed a crescent and halted. Philboyd heard a steady grinding throb. The ground acquired a split and amid a geyserlike spray of dirt, a darkly gleaming metal form heaved up, surrounded by clouds of pulverized grit and sand. A wave of intense heat like that from an opened blast furnace struck his face. His skin felt as if it instantly dried up and shriveled. He recoiled, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. He glimpsed the earth heaving up like a giant wave and rolling toward him in a crushing comber of rock and soil.
A hand closed tightly around his right arm and hauled him backward.
“Move it, asshole!” Edwards snarled into his ear.
A deep fissure opened up in their path and the two men leaped over it. A span of wall toppled down, crushing vendors’ stalls. Edwards and Philboyd reeled on their feet, doing their best to maintain their balance on the convulsing earth. A shower of flying gravel pelted them.
Philboyd and Edwards dashed through the gate as the ville walls crumbled, folding inward, block after block, crash after crash. Panting, eyes stinging from dust, they ran across the bridge and joined Gedrick, Domi and Mariah on the far side of the canal. Gedrick bled from a raw gash on his left cheek. He did not seem to notice it.
The three people stared at the Administrative Monolith with wide, shocked eyes. As they watched, it swayed from side to side. Pieces of it fell away. Then the entire tower broke apart and collapsed with an earsplitting roar.
Tons of rock plunged downward, scattering in exploding fragments. A reverberating, extended thunderclap rolled as the tower cascaded down in a contained avalanche. Thick clouds of dust billowed up, roiling and rising, enveloping the interior of the ville like a gigantic ball of filthy cotton.
Then Philboyd coughed and fanned the grit-laden air. “I guess it’s time to call in the three heads of Cerberus.”
Chapter 1
Malaysia, the island of Pandakar
The sky rolled with thunderclaps and flashed with bolts of lightning.
So this is the way it’ll end, Kane thought wearily. With a bang so big you couldn’t even hear a whimper.
Lifting his head, he squinted against the glare of a lightning flash. In the white-blue electric blaze, the night shadows crawling over Pandakar’s waterfront looked like caricatures of black animals prowling for prey. Although the men creeping through the rain weren’t animals, they were most definitely on the prowl for prey. He figured at this point the odds were ten to two.
Wind-driven sheets of rain fell in a torrential downpour. Gusts of wind tore at the distant tree line. Another stroke of lightning split the indigo tapestry of the sky, turning the hulking ships docked at the piers into ghostly apparitions. Their rain-slick hulls glistened as if as they were painted with quicksilver.
Kane crouched beside the gaping rectangular hole that had been a window and a fair-size portion of stone wall before the warhead of an RPG had blown it inward in a hailstorm of rubble.
The rain suddenly increased in volume and tempo, sluicing down the sloping roof and through a hole in it. Kane wiped at the warm fluid seeping down the left side of his face and glanced ruefully at the diluted blood shining on his fingertips. He hadn’t even been aware of the superficial cut, inflicted during the brief but fierce firefight that had raged all along the docks until ten minutes ago.
He wasn’t surprised that the mission had gone sour so quickly, but he raged at the concept that his life and Grant’s might end in such a stinking place for such a foolish cause.
“Shit,” muttered Grant, who knelt on the floor across from him. He glared at the leak in the ceiling, then out through the gaping hole in the wall. “How much longer do you think this storm will last?”
Kane shook his head. “It’s monsoon season in this part of the world. It might last all night or it could stop in five minutes.”
Knee joints popping, Grant heaved himself to his feet and peered out at the rain-buffeted darkness. He could see little of the Pacific island called Pandakar beyond the immediate waterfront area.
Grant loomed six feet four inches tall in his stocking feet. He wore a Kevlar vest over a black T-shirt, tricolor camo pants and thick-soled jump boots, which added almost an inch to his impressive height. The spread of his shoulders on either side of his thickly corded neck was very broad. Because his body was all knotted sinew and muscle covered by deep brown flesh, he did not look his weight of 250 pounds.
His short-cropped hair was touched with gray at the temples, but it didn’t show in the gunfighter’s mustache that swept out fiercely around both sides of his tightlipped mouth. Behind his lantern jaw and broken nose lay a mind of keen intelligence that possessed a number of technical skills, from field-stripping and reassembling an SAR 80 blindfolded to expertly piloting every kind of flying craft, from helicopters to the Annunaki-built transatmospheric vehicles known as Mantas.
A Colt Government Model .45 pistol hung from his right hip in a paddle holster, and he held a Copperhead in his right hand. The abbreviated subgun was slightly less than two feet long, with a 700-round-per-minute rate of fire, and the extended magazines held thirty-five 4.85 mm steel-jacketed rounds. The grip and trigger units were placed in front of the breech in the bull pup design, allowing for one-handed use.
An optical image intensifier scope and a laser autotargeter were mounted atop the frames. Low recoil allowed the Copperhead to be fired in long, devastating, full-auto bursts.
“I don’t know who is who out there,” Grant murmured, “but I don’t care to be caught in a cross fire again.”
“Me either,” Kane agreed. His blue-gray eyes took in the details of the slithering shadows in the rain while his mind kept the raw worry about Brigid Baptiste from preoccupying him.
Dressed similarly to Grant in a black T-shirt, Kevlar vest and camo pants tucked into high-laced combat boots, Kane was a tall man, lean and rangy. He resembled a wolf in the way he carried most of his muscle mass in his upper body. His thick dark hair, showing just enough chestnut highlights to keep it from being
