Carlysle had no sooner gotten into a crouch behind his door than bullets came ripping into it from several different directions at once. The man who'd been riding shotgun with him, a recent transfer from the Malaysian ground station named Ron Newell, returned fire, aiming toward the spot where he'd seen the slender outline of a rifle angling out from behind a mobile crane, and then flattening against the car just as more gunfire studded its armored surface.

Squatting beside him, Carlysle thrust the barrel of his VVRS weapon around his door and squeezed out a long volley. He couldn't help but wonder when their remote comer of Brazil had turned into Dodge City.

He looked over at Newell, saw that he hadn't been hit, and gave him a thumbs-up to indicate he was also doing okay. Then there was another burst of incoming, followed by a bright flash in the darkness, and a whistling noise that rapidly got closer and louder. An instant later some kind of explosive projectile smashed into the chase car to Carlysle's right, detonating with a bright rush of flame, crunching in the flank of the Mercedes as if it were the side of a tin box.

Carlysle stayed put, his ears ringing from the blast. The situation had to change, and change ASAP. He would not let his men remain pinned down behind their vehicles, where they were sitting ducks for whatever was being hurled at them by an enemy that could draw an accurate bead without breaking cover.

His right hand around his pistol grip, he reached into the car with his left and snatched his dashboard microphone off its hook, pressing one of the mike's control buttons as he eyed the video screen above it. The invaders' advanced night-vision equipment was formidable, but he and his men had something else going in their favor. Something that could prove even more advantageous if used to its best capacity.

They had the Skyhawks.

In the copilot's seat of his circling chopper, Winter lowered his handset and turned toward Graham. Carlysle had just broken contact after sending up his request over a ground-to-air channel.

"We need to peel the blankets back from over those fuckers' heads, give our guys downstairs a better fix on where they're shooting from," he said above the roar of the blades.

Graham gave him a look. "If we go any lower, it'll be hard to avoid the ground fire."

Winter made a face that said he knew.

Graham shrugged.

"Okay," he said. Then: "Here's how I want it done."

How Graham wanted it done was for his chopper and one of the others at the scene to pull in tight over the invaders and provide closeups of their positions, while the third aircraft continued making passes from a greater height, beaming down wide-angle images. The picture-in-picture options on the QR cars' monitors would enable all three video feeds to be seen simultaneously, giving the chase squads a composite view of the fire zone.