Kuprian Grazioli growled as he trudged around the corner of the building, “you're supposed to be at least halfway awake! The next time I com you, you damned well better—!”
Grazioli's complaint chopped off as he realized why Rinaldo Mönch hadn't responded to his com request about the sound which had drawn Grazioli's attention. And he knew what that muted “Crack!” had been, as well. Lost as it had been in the sound of the wind in the trees, he'd half-thought he'd imagined it when it wasn't repeated again. Now he knew better.
He could see only the back of the chaise lounge, but that was all he needed to see. White stuffing had been blasted out of its back, just at head level for someone sitting in it. Whatever had done the blasting had obviously been traveling at a very high velocity, and the center of the tufted white flower of ruptured stuffing was a dark red, glistening rose.
He ran towards the chaise lounge and grabbed for his com again.
* * *
“Tobin!”
“What?” Tobin Manischewitz looked up from his paperwork as his name crackled from the com.
“Kuprian,” the voice identified itself. “Rinaldo's dead! Somebody put a pulser dart between his eyes!”
“What?!” Manischewitz exploded out of his chair. “You're sure?”
“Of course I'm goddamned sure!” Grazioli shot back. “I'm standing here looking at what's left of his head! And I tried Riley before I tried you—he didn't answer.”
Manischewitz' expression tightened. If Brandão hadn't answered, that meant whoever had killed Mönch was already inside the lodge. Not only that, he'd known enough to go for the security post in the kitchen first!
For just a moment, his brain refused to function. This couldn't have happened. It just wasn't possible! Even if Benton-Ramirez y Chou had gone straight to the authorities—even if he'd convinced the BSC to back an operation right here on Beowulf despite Prescott-Chartwell—he couldn't have found them yet!
Could they have somehow traced the com signal after all? But that's crazy! We put our own com satellite into orbit and bounced the first signal off of it, and that's the best software in the galaxy. We bounced it through so many nodes God couldn't've unraveled it yet. There's no way they could have back-traced it this quickly! Unless she had a tracer on her we didn't know about? But we checked. And even if she did—
He shook himself. How they'd done it mattered far less than the fact that someone had done it. But if it was the SBI or the BSC, where the hell was the rest of the attack? No SBI SWAT team would have taken out one perimeter guard and then penetrated the lodge without backup! And while the BSC was capable of finesse, it also believed in overwhelming firepower delivered in a single, finely focused strike designed to paralyze its intended victims before they could even begin to think about responding. So what kind of—?
He stabbed the all-stations button on his com.
“Com check!” he barked, and made himself stand motionless as the startled members of his team responded.
They came up four men short: Brandão, Mönch, Sugimoto . . . And Ardmore.
Shit! The damned power receptor! Manischewitz thought. Whoever this bastard is, he sucked one man out to check the receptor, took him, and made him talk. And then he walked right through our perimeter, killed Riley, and—
Then the implications of Ardmore's silence hit him squarely between the eyes. If he'd taken out Giuseppe, then that meant he had to've—
His brain was still racing after that thought, his thumb already stabbing the all-stations button again, when Kuprian Grazioli came back up on the com.
“Tobin! Somebody's coming back out the—!”
Manischewitz heard a pulser whine over the com, and then Grazioli's shout chopped off with abrupt finality.
“Somebody's gotten inside the lodge and the bastard is headed back out!” he barked into the com. “Whoever it is, he's breaking for the west! Palacios, Tangevec, Mészáros—you three hold the perimeter. He may try the ravine—if he does, kill his arse! The rest of you, head for the back veranda! We'll link up there!”
He went on talking as he jerked open a desk drawer and snatched his own pulser out of it.
“Whoever the bastard is, he's already taken out four of us—five with Grazioli—so watch your arses! I'm guessing he got through to Giuseppe before Grazioli found Mönch, so he probably has the woman with him. I want her back alive if we can get her, but the main thing is to make sure this son-of-a-bitch is