Rayford's arms were gashed, and he felt sharp pains in both knees and one ankle. He reached
with his free hand to pull up his pant leg and wished he hadn't. Not only had something sliced the
flesh from his ankle, but something had taken part of the bone too.
Could he walk? Dare he try? He was too far from anywhere to crawl. He waited for his pulse to
abate and for his equilibrium to return. He had to be a mile from Mac and his people, and he could
not see them. There was no going back up. He rolled up onto his feet, squatting, one hand
desperately trying to keep himself from bleeding to death.
Rayford tried to stand. Only one leg worked, and it was the one with the nearly totaled ankle. He
may have broken a shinbone in the other. He tried to hop, but the incline was so great, he found
himself pitching forward again. And now he was out of control one more time, trying to hop to
keep from falling but picking up speed with every bounce. Whatever he did, he could not take his
hand from his temple, and he dared not land on one more hard thing. "Lord, now would be a most
appropriate time for You to come."
Chang sensed something was about to give. He had succeeded in intercepting signals from
geosynchronous satellites that supported communications among the millions of troops. They were
about to move, and his key people needed to know.
He called George. "Expect an advance within sixty seconds," he said.
"We've already been shelled," George yelled. "You mean more than that?"
"Yes, they will be coming."
"Rayford see you?"
"Left a little while ago. On his way to see Mac."
"Thanks. Call Mac, would you? I'll inform the others."
Chang called and told Mac the same.
"Hey," Mac said, "I can't raise Sebastian, and Ray is overdue."
"On his way," Chang said.
He called Buck. "Expect ad—"
But he was cut off. He redialed. Nothing.
"They're coming! They're coming!"
Buck heard a young rebel shrieking just as his phone chirped, and he saw an incendiary device
hurled over the Rockefeller Museum, right at his position. He saw Unity Army troop movement
from every side, and he grabbed his phone and held it up to his ear just as the bomb hit the wall
right in front of him and clattered to the ground outside.
He recognized Chang's voice just before the bomb blew a hole in the wall. Rock and shrapnel
slammed his whole right side, killed his phone, and made him drop one Uzi. He felt something give
way in his hip and his neck as his perch disintegrated.
One of the young boys near him had been blown into the air and cartwheeled to the pavement.
Buck was determined to ride the wall as it fell. He reached for his neck and felt a torrent of blood.
He was no medical student, but he could tell something had sliced his carotid artery—no small
problem.
As the wall crumbled, he danced and high-stepped to stay upright, but he had to keep a hand on
his neck. The remaining Uzi slid down into his left hand, but when he stabbed it into something to
keep his balance, it fell away. He was unarmed, falling, and mortally wounded.
And the enemy was coming.
Rayford could break his fall only with his free hand, not daring to take pressure off his temple.
His chin took as much of the brunt as the heel of his hand as he slid at what he guessed was a forty-
five-degree angle. There would be no walking. All he could do was crawl now and try to stay alive.