Pruitt skimmed over the language of his message again. It could use some minor refinements, one more quick but careful pass before it was ready to go.

He lowered his fingers back onto his keyboard, and was about to make the first of his changes when a loud electronic warning tone grated from the console beside him, a row of color-coded chicklet lights to one side of his console blinked on in startling sequence, and the e-mail on his display screen was displaced by the base security program’s automatic pop-up window.

Pruitt’s response was practiced and immediate, his mind cleared of everything except for a task list that would need to be executed in a hurry. Bolt-erect at his station, he palmed his computer mouse, clicked to zoom, clicked again to recall and isolate an image, his eyes wide with rapidly building shock and astonishment as they confirmed what they were seeing was no bogie.

Less than fifteen seconds after the alert sounded, he flipped the redline radio switch on the panel beside him and got hold of Ron Waylon.

“It’s the desalinization plant,” Waylon told Nimec. He was breathless from his urgent hustle to the security station. “The images are from those FLIR thermacams behind the ceiling panels . . . ones we installed to replace the outside cameras when they went inoperational.”

Nimec nodded tensely. He recalled Waylon showing him their locations during their base tour just hours ago, while explaining that his people hadn’t yet gotten around to removing the weather-damaged external units. Both men were standing behind Pruitt as the thermal infrared pictures on his monitor shifted through their color palette. They could see four intruders—actually the spectral radiant heat signatures of four intruders—moving about inside the dome, heading toward the door. And Nimec knew that wasn’t the worst of it.

“Look.” He indicated three bright red streaks on the image, matching them against assigned colors on a horizontal measurement bar at the bottom of the screen. “Something’s burning in there.”

“Fires,” Waylon said. “They have to be fires. And they’re damned hot.” He breathed, pointed. “Jesus Christ, looks like one’s on an inflow pump . . . and over here, this is the seawater pipeline . . . I don’t know what the hell’s going on. . . .”

Nimec looked at him, his heart pounding.

“We’re being hit,” he said. “Pull together some men, we have to get out there now.”

A long, narrow room on the main building’s upper level, the Meat Lockers had metallic walls, bar, tables, and chairs that were washed with a reflective tungsten-blue radiance from overhead truss lighting to create a decor and ambience that wryly suited its name.