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Chapters (32)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE

Espinoza moved to Juan’s side and yanked him to his feet in a savage thrust. Cabrillo swayed drunkenly and fought to keep from crying out. Espinoza kept one hand on Juan’s arm and fired two powerful punches into his gut. Juan sagged, and nearly dragged the Argentine down to the floor with him.

“Pathetic,” Espinoza said.

He reached down again for a repeat performance. Juan sat meekly until Espinoza’s head was a foot away. Then he reached out with both hands, one on the man’s chin, the other on the occipital bulge at the back of his skull. From a disadvantaged position on the ground, he still managed to generate enough torque that when he twisted Espinoza’s head, the spinal column snapped cleanly.

The corpse went rubbery as it fell, and nearly blocked him from picking up the Five-SeveN. He raised it and fired before Sergeant Lugones’s brain had processed what had just happened. The first round blew through his stomach and emerged on the other side, the second caught him in the forehead.

The horn sounded again, one long, continuous blast of sound that originated not fifty feet from where Juan sat. He managed to get to his feet, his prosthetic leg undamaged by the bullet, and he’d started for the door when a titanic crash seemed to rock the building’s foundation and the knife-edged prow of the battle cruiser Guillermo Brown exploded through the wall of the processing plant.

Six seconds later, the shock waves generated by collapsing steel and crushed concrete was enough to detonate the bomb.

The building started to go up like the Hindenburg over Lakehurst.

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-EIGHT

LINC AND EDDIE WERE IN POSITION UNDER THE PRISON when the ship’s horn began to blare. The wind made the mournful sound warble like the dying cry of a ravaged animal. They waited a beat, and, sure enough, one of the guards stuck his head out the door to see if he could find the cause of the noise. Of course, he couldn’t see more than a dozen feet, and he quickly withdrew.

Franklin used a small cordless drill to create a hole in the floor above him no more than an eighth of an inch in diameter. From their earlier reconnaissance, he’d approximated where the furniture was and had drilled under a threadbare sofa so the hole wouldn’t be seen by the guards. Into this, Eddie inserted the nozzle of a gas canister. The gas was a potent knockout agent that would render the average person unconscious in about five minutes, with the effects lasting up to an hour depending on the concentration. They’d earlier disabled the building’s ventilation system by merely unplugging the exterior unit.

Very soon, the muffled voices of the guards’ idle chatter grew quieter and quieter until there was the crash of bodies hitting the floor and then silence.