One of them mouthed an oath, his right hand making the sign of the cross on his forehead and chest.

"Bryce," he said. "Ah, shit, poor guy."

Another member of the ad hoc team grabbed his arm.

"No use standing here," he said.

The two of them looked at each other. The first man started to say something in response, but then simply cleared his throat and nodded.

Turning from the body, they ran into the open service door, the rest of the team pouring into the warehouse behind them.

Thibodeau could feel the world slipping away. He was trying to hold onto it, trying desperately, but it was loose and runny around the edges, made of soft taffy, and out beyond where it waned off into formlessness, he could sense a black mass waiting to swallow it all up. He knew what was happening to him, no brain flash needed on that score. It was blood loss, it was traumatic shock, it was how it felt to be dying from a large-caliber bullet hole in your gut. The world was slipping away, and though he would have preferred it didn't, the choice didn't seem to be within his making.

Thibodeau breathed hard through his mouth, coughed. It was a thick, liquidy sound that admittedly frightened him a little, and the air felt cold entering his lungs, but there wasn't much pain, and things seemed to get more distinct afterward. He saw the two invaders who'd been shooting at him emerge from the blurred comers of his vision, one behind the other, hurrying up the stairs to the catwalk. He had held them off as long as he could, firing his gun until its magazine was exhausted. Now he wasn't even sure whether or not the weapon was still in his hand.

The invader who had led the way up was standing over him, pointing his rifle straight down at his head.

Thibodeau took another breath, managed to lift his cheek off the catwalk's bloody runner. Its grooves had marked his cheek with smears of his own blood.

"Get it done," he said weakly.

The invader stood over him. If he had any expression beneath his face mask, Thibodeau had no way of knowing what it might be.

"Come on," Thibodeau said. "Get it done."

And still standing there looking down at him, the invader lowered the rifle's bore to his temple.

Felix rolled out onto the catwalk from the same elevator Thibodeau had taken minutes earlier.

High above the payload storage bay, the 'hog went swiftly toward him, its navigational sonar mapping its surroundings in layered echo patterns.

This was a built-in redundancy to prevent accidental collision, for Jezoirski now wielded full command of its operation from the monitoring room. Having donned virtual-reality glasses, he could see three-dimensional graphic representations of everything the 'hog "saw" with its optical array. At the same time, the joystick controls on his console were now directing its robotic mobility systems, allowing him to guide and determine its every turn and action.