To what else could its timing and accuracy be attributed? Burkhart thought. He saw a flicker of light from above now, pulled further back against the wall. There was a great deal of information Granger had obviously divulged. Enough to bring Nimec and his men here to Bull Pass. To the notch. But his greatest bargaining chip would have been the knowledge he possessed about the whereabouts of the UpLink field team. And if he had told Nimec about the tunnel—a fact made evident by the helicopter’s landing on the ridge-back—then he would have surely told him its descending stairs were the fastest route to the cage in which the woman scientist was being held.

This man Peter Nimec . . .

A man who led on the ground, risked his life along with those who followed him . . .

Burkhart knew he would not delegate the actual rescue to others.

It would be Nimec leading the way down the stairs, just as Burkhart himself had chosen to meet him.

Nimec suddenly halted on the stairs and raised his hand, stalling up the three men behind him. He wasn’t sure why. Or at least he couldn’t have stated why. It might have been simple caution. Or that he’d noticed a trace of movement below, heard something below, a subtle forewarning that someone might be down there—except he wasn’t even positive about that. But he told himself that they had better proceed very slowly until he knew.

“Hang back,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder at Rice. “I want to check things ou—”

The first outpouring of fire from below silenced him mid-sentence.

Nimec ducked sideways as the gunfire split the darkness, throwing himself against the stairway’s handrail, motioning for the others to do the same. He twisted his tac light to its flood setting, saw the figure of a man launch off the wall to the right of the bottom stair, and triggered a burst of return fire from his VVRS. The man slipped out of sight, into the shadows, but then Nimec saw another man swing his gun up at him. He released a tight hail of bullets, saw the man drop to the floor, or ground, or whatever the hell was waiting for him down there at the base of the stairs.

There was a second volley from the bottom, this time coming out of the darkness at his left. Rice had his gun up, his own tactical light set on “spot,” beaming a concentrated circle of brightness onto the center of the shooter’s chest.

He squeezed out a rapid burst and the man crumpled.

“Okay, move it!” Nimec shouted, bounding down the stairs, leading his men down the stairs, thinking there was no sense in them making stationary targets of themselves here on these goddamned stairs at this point.