Langern volleyed continuous fire at the helicopter as it landed precariously on the windswept crest of the notch’s southern slope and men came leaping from its passenger hold beneath the still-rotating blades.

Crouched behind a large boulder, Langern had seen three of his fellows die before its skids touched down, one of them bouncing down the slope like a rag doll.

The man in the cabin door had a falcon’s eye, but now it would be his turn to be raked with death’s talons.

Langern stopped shooting long enough to push a fresh magazine stack into his weapon, sprang up on the balls of his feet, and pushed himself from behind the boulder, his finger locked over his trigger, aiming directly for the sniper as he jumped from inside the helo.

Nimec did not pause to think. Could not afford to think. He saw one of the men on the hilltop bound from the protection of a boulder and make an outright charge for Rice, his weapon spitting bullets. He saw Rice standing with his eyes momentarily turned elsewhere, hunting out another source of fire. And he reacted.

Nimec’s baby VVRS swept up from his side and rattled in his hand. The man went down onto the hard stone ridge, falling on his bullet-riddled chest, then rolling over onto his back, his lips moving faintly, his eyes staring skyward behind his snow goggles in the instant or two before life flickered out of them.

In the agitated heavens above Langern, the whorling auroral lights seemed to briefly assume the shape of a terrible multihued iris.

“Der Gott des Krieges,” he muttered, gazing upward as he hitched his final breath.

Then the cold, chaotic eye drew closer and blinked shut around him.

Still exchanging light gunfire with the men hunkered behind the rocks, Nimec’s team had gotten pitons and lines out of their rucksacks and were driving the metal anchors into the cliff head. Nimec didn’t know how many of the ridge’s defenders were left. Probably no more than two or three to judge from their fitful salvos.

Amid the clang of hammers and continued smatters of fire, he swept his eyes in a semicircle, seeking the tunnel entrance Granger had offered up information about.

Then, abruptly, he spotted it.

He called to Waylon over his headset, heard static crackle in return, didn’t pause to consider the odds of his brief message having been communicated.

Grabbing Rice’s shoulder, waving another two men over to them, he whirled toward the tunnel, turned on the high-powered tactical flashlight mounted under the barrel of his baby VVRS, and led the way inside.

Nimec’s voice cut through the white noise in Waylon’s earpiece like an isolated sun ray penetrating dense overcast.

“I’m headed into the tunnel, rappel team’s on its way down,” Nimec said. “Keep pushing forward, they’re going to need cover.”