There was no sign of anyone else in the area. They'd detected no other vehicles on the flight up. Snowfall had been too low this winter for snowmobiles. The chopper was searching now in the other direction. If the pilot could turn up nothing from a visual sweep, that left only two possibilities. The hostiles had either been airlifted out, or they were still in the area.

The ASDF men were looking everywhere, clustered tightly around Fordell, their rifle barrels fanned out. "This was an ambush," the Major said with certainty. He kept his voice low. "We're looking for foxholes, burrows, trapdoors. Stay alert. Let's move." Swallowing their fear, the men spread out across the narrow valley floor. Their eyes trained on the ground, they began moving south.

Major Fordell studied not just the ground. Every now and then his eyes flicked up to the pipeline. It hung above their heads, big and menacing.

A few hundred yards from the massacre they found nothing. Some of the men were allowing the first slip of relief to hiss from between their chapped lips. Major Fordell remained tense. As he walked along the frozen ground, his eyes and ears were alert to everything around him.

There was no doubt in his mind this had been an ambush. The hole in the pipe back there was manmade, designed to lure the pipeline workers into a trap.

Could be whacked-out environmentalists trying to shut down the pipe. Hell, maybe it was agents of OPEC trying to screw with domestic oil production. No matter who it was, there was no way they were going to get past Major Race Fordell.

A flash of movement to his left drew the Major's attention. For an instant the air seemed to gel into a fuzzy solid. The instant it did, Major Fordell felt a rough tug at his hands.