He rolled, firing. Dark shapes came in, falling through the hole. He saw one recoil as the armor-piercing slugs in his pistol punched into it.

Then he felt a sting in his thigh, looked down, saw a dart there.

Tranq.

He ignored it, rolled again, slammed a fresh clip home, came up shooting again, emptied his second of three clips, killing one more, taking another two pointless tranq darts in the process, then diving for cover into the next room.

He heard them figure it out. Heard them make the switch. Heard it in the sound of the Nigerian dying in the main room.

Breece jammed his last clip home.

“Come on fuckers,” he said.

He’d always known his death would be a violent one.

He was right.

The headset next to Pryce lit up. Sound came out of it.

She grabbed it, pulled it over her head.

“Pryce here!”

Stevens scowled at her. He was going to toss her out.

“Dr Pryce. Your tip was solid.”

“Did you get them?” Pryce asked, urgently.

“Dead,” the National Terror Response Center operator said. “Refused to be taken alive. Preliminary evidence onsite corroborates they were PLF.”

Pryce looked around the Situation Room. Then she looked down, looked for the button to put this on overhead speakers. She found it.

“Does any evidence link the terrorists you just took down to the Inauguration attack?” she asked.

“We’re assessing,” the NTRC operator said. “Preliminary judgment? It’s a strong possible.”

“Thank you,” Pryce said. “Keep us in the loop.” She hung up.

Then NSA spoke.

“Bandwidth incursion is gone! The electronic attack from China is over!”

Pryce found Stevens. “Mr Secretary,” her eyes searched his. “Everything says we’re not under attack by China. That something else is going on. Please do not escalate this.”

McWilliams spoke again. “I support Dr Pryce on this, Mr Secretary. If we provoke the Chinese into really launching, there’s no going back.”

Stevens blew out a breath.

“Five more minutes,” the SecDef said. He looked at McWilliams. “Call them, ship to ship. Tell their fleet to pass it on. They’ve got to close those silos!”

Rangan took a deep breath. The tunnel was crammed with people as far as he could see. And his mind was bombarded with chaos, with fear, with anxiety.

These people were tripping hard, against their will – for the first time, many of them. It was not going well. And on top of that they thought they’d been chemically attacked. They were hallucinating symptoms, making it even worse, spreading their fears from mind to mind.

“Holy shit,” Stan Kim said. Then he started walking forward, touching people he knew, talking to them. Rangan saw people flinch back, scream, felt waves of terror and pain buffet his mind again.