in hand, ran for the control panel.

There were three technicians in the station and no passengers.
All three panicked when the psycho gas enveloped them. They ran
howling for the jungle.

Through the window of his mask, Read saw their pursuers land in
the clearing. Machine-gun bullets raked the building. They got
Umluana in the booth and hit the floor. Read took aim and opened
fire on the largest car.

"Now, I can shoot back," he said. "Now we'll see what they do."

"Are you ready, Rashid?" yelled the driver.

"Man, get us out of here!"

The booth door shut. When it opened, they were at the Game
Preserve.

The station jutted from the side of a hill. A glass-walled
waiting room surrounded the bank of transmitter booths. Read
looked out the door and saw his first battlefield.

Directly in front of him, his head shattered by a bullet, a dead
inspector lay behind an overturned couch.

Read had seen dozens of training films taken during actual
battles or after atomic attacks. He had laughed when other
recruits complained. "That's the way this world is. You people
with the weak stomachs better get used to it."

Now he slid against the rear wall of the transmitter booth.

A wounded inspector crawled across the floor to the booth. Read
couldn't see his wound, only the pain scratched on his face and
the blood he deposited on the floor.

"Did you get Umluana?" he asked Sergeant Rashid.

"He's in the booth. What's going on?" Rashid's Middle East Oxford
seemed more clipped than ever.

"They hit us with two companies of troops a few minutes ago. I
think half our men are wounded."

"Can we get out of here?"

"They machine-gunned the controls."

Rashid swore. "You heard him, Read! Get out there and help those
men."

He heard the screams of the wounded, the crack of rifles and
machine guns, all the terrifying noise of war. But since his
eighteenth year he had done everything his superiors told him to
do.

He started crawling toward an easy-chair that looked like good
cover. A bullet cracked above his head, so close he felt the
shock wave. He got up, ran panicky, crouched, and dove behind the
chair.

An inspector cracked the valve on a smoke grenade. A white fog
spread through the building. They could see anyone who tried to
rush them but the besiegers couldn't pick out targets.

Above the noise, he heard Rashid.

"I'm calling South Africa Station for a copter. It's the only way
out of here. Until it c