“Unsling your weapons and drop them to the ground,” I told them, still speaking in Romanian. “Do it right now, or I will kill you.”

Then they laughed.

And charged at me like a pair of demented bulls. Like men who thought they were invincible, invulnerable. Insane.

I fired both guns.

And it did no damned good at all.

CHAPTER 100

THE TOC

PHOENIX HOUSE

OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

Doc Holliday clicked a new image onto the screen. It showed a man dressed in more normal body armor—helmet, chest shell, limb pads, and a stomach-groin shield. This was an actual photograph of a man—presumably a Fixer—in a field-testable prototype. He had a sidearm on one hip, a large fighting knife on the other, and carried a standard Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle.

“Well,” said Wilson weakly, “at least that’s a bit less frightening.”

“No,” said Doc cheerfully, “it’s really not.”

CHAPTER 101

DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM

The taller of the two stepped between my guns and his partner while simultaneously rushing at me. It happened in the blink of an eye.

The Sandman dart exploded uselessly on his shoulder, but the 9 mm round hit him center mass. Even with Kevlar, the brute force of the lead slug should have staggered him. All he did was grunt. It wasn’t even a cough or cry of controlled pain. A grunt. Like a bullet fired from five feet away was—at most—an irritant.

Oh … shit.

I stepped forward and raised the pistol to fire into his face. See how he’d like that, but then he swatted me aside.

That’s the best word I can think of. It wasn’t a punch. It wasn’t an attempt to deflect my aim before I could correct for a face shot. His hand moved so fast it was a blur, and his open palm hit the ballistic padding over my deltoid. I barely saw it coming, and the blow picked me up as surely as the explosion had and smashed me into the doorframe. I am over six feet and weigh north of two hundred, and that openhanded smack knocked me through the air as if I were a scarecrow stuffed with straw. I hit hard and dropped down to my knees, head ringing and the world doing some kind of drunken jig around me. My hands were empty, and I couldn’t even see where my guns went.

If I’d been alone, they’d have had me. No doubt about it.

But then a white missile blew past me and crunched into the tall man’s stomach, doubling him more from surprise than anything. The tall guy staggered and went down, and Ghost went for his throat.