The airport at Kubelick's Grave was barely large enough to accommodate the transport. As soon as it had settled at the end of a cracked concrete runway, the rear cargo door dropped and the armed men trooped off in military order. A handful of lightly armored vehicles waited in the coppery morning sunlight.

Brian joined Sigmund and Weil in one of those open-topped desert vehicles the locals called "roosters"

for the way they bounced over the landscape like flightless birds. Sigmund took the driver's seat and they drove off at the back of the convoy. Not a comfortable ride. The heat and sun were oppressive even at this hour. All he saw of Kubelick's Grave was a garage and gas depot where rusty automobile parts lay scattered, the drive train of an ancient truck abandoned on the gravel like the spine of some Jurassic creature. Then they were off the main road, rattling over a hardpan trail parallel to the mountains.

An hour passed, broken only by the hoarse shouting of Sigmund as he attempted to converse with someone over a field radio. The talk, what Brian could hear of it, consisted of codewords and incomprehensible commands. Then the convoy came over the peak of a small rill and the Fourth compound was suddenly dead ahead. The military vehicles put on a burst of speed, big tires kicking up geysers of dust, but Weil pulled up short and killed the engine, leaving Brian's ears ringing in the relative silence.

Sigmund began yelling again, first into his radio and then at Weil: something about "too late" and an order to "abort."

"They abandoned the compound," Weil said to Brian. "Fresh tracks. Must have been a good two dozen vehicles."

"Can't you secure the site, at least?"

"Not until we can defuse whatever ordnance they left behind. What happens in these cases, they—"

He was interrupted by a burst of distant light.

Brian looked at the Fourth compound. A moment before it had been a cluster of small buildings around a central courtyard. Now it was an expanding cloud of dust and smoke.

"Shit," Weil had time to say. The concussion reached them a fraction of a second later, a noise that seemed to swell his lungs until his chest hurt. Brian closed his eyes. A second shockwave, like the beat of a hot wing, washed over him.

The compound was gone. Brian told himself that Lise wasn't inside: no one had been inside.

"… rig it…" Weil was saying.

"What?"

"They rig it to destroy their technical gear and keep us from taking samples. We got here late." Weil's complexion had turned pale with dust kicked up by the explosion. Sigmund's assault team had turned back, hastily.

"Is Lise—?"

"We have to assume she left with the others."

"Going where?"