Thibodeau pictured the confused expressions he'd seen on the faces of the men around him when he'd come bolting into the room--expressions that must have perfectly mirrored his own. He felt sure those looks would have given tremendous pleasure to the unwanted visitors rushing around out there at the installation's margins. Certainly he'd have enjoyed that sort of thing on his runs through the jungle between 1969 and 1970. The slicks would swing down low over the trees wherever they saw pockets of North Vietnamese and quickly insert their LRRP teams, who would plunge into the brush seeking out targets of opportunity, causing disruption and confusion for the enemy. Faire la chasse.

"Can you give me a better fix on those bastards?" he said.

Delure fingered a button on his console to superimpose a digitized map over the radar image they'd been viewing.

"How's that?"

"Good, good, now bring it in closer."

Delure hit another button and zoomed the image. Thibodeau saw geographical features of the compound's western grounds enlarge and clarify around the blips of light, indicating the intruders' position.

"A non." He pointed at a curving blue line on-screen. "Take a look at where they are."

Delure gaped up at him. "Near the west drive. That's the quickest route from our motor vehicle pool to the perimeter."

Thibodeau nodded.

"Get the 'hog on their asses, an' this time hit 'em with something stronger than fancy lights," he said. "Our chase cars gon' be on that road any minute!"

The anti-vehicular mines they had set were simply but cleverly camouflaged, wrapped in tar paper to blend in with the pavement. By day they would have been difficult for a driver to spot. At night they would be completely invisible.

Moments after they left the access road to rejoin their teammates, Tomas and Raul heard a low whirring sound close by to the right. They were turning to investigate, their FAMAS rifles at the ready, when the security robot sped nimbly up on them, a tubular apparatus on its side swiveling in their direction, liquid issuing from its nozzle in a pressurized stream.

Neither man got to trigger his weapon before the polymer superlubricant fanned over them, drenching them at first, and then abruptly solidifying in a thin layer over their skin, combat garb, and the ground under their boots.

Raul's immediate thought was that they had been sprayed with a disabling foam, but he quickly realized this substance was something very different--more like dry ice in the way it hardened, except scarcely cooler than the air around him. Indeed, it was almost as if the fluid had altered his physical state rather than its own, as if every part of him that it touched had metamorphosed into smooth, slick glass. All at once he couldn't hold onto his rifle. The more he tried, the more slippery his grip became. His eyes widening in alarm and incomprehension, he watched the weapon leap from his hands, snapping out the cable that joined it to his helmet display like a hooked fish at the end of a line, then dangling almost ludicrously from his helmet. He snatched at it, his fingers making wild grabs at its stock and barrel, but it slid out from between them and dropped near his feet.