"You stay here and cover them-if anyone moves, shoot him. Make sure the alarms don’t come back on," Robert instructed him. He then noticed that the man seemed rather uneasy. "Hey, you ok?" he asked.

Amir shook his head. "I never really expected this when I agreed to work for the… for the U.S. I’m not James Bond; I’m just an informant," he said.

"Take it easy," Robert said calmly. He detached his computer now that it was done. "No one’s going to be shooting at you." Robert now took the electromagnetic lock from his belt and showed it to Amir. "You know what this is?"

Amir glanced at it, then put his eyes back on the captives. "It’s an electromagnet of some sort," he answered.

"That’s right, but it’s going to be so much more meaningful to you," Robert said. "You can trigger a false fire alarm from here, right?"

Amir nodded. "All right, I need you to give me one of those in exactly fifteen minutes. Trigger it for a place as far away from the launch site and this room as you can think of-just as long as it’s not the bunker next door," Robert instructed him.

Amir nodded again. Robert walked over to the door and said, "When I’m done, I’m going to swing back by and pick you up. Until then, this electromagnet will lock everyone else out. Listen for me when I come back because I’ll definitely be in a hurry."

Robert then placed his magnetic lock on the metal door. When he exited and closed the door, the lock would stick to the metal frame, preventing anyone from entering (and possibly overpowering Amir and sounding the alarm).

He started down the long hallway, taking the second branch on the right. He avoided all of the hallways that would bring him past secure areas, which would inevitably have guards posted in front of them. After two more turns, Robert was walking down a corridor when a door opened behind him. Light lined the sides of the walls next to him as he heard laughing voices emanating from the now open room. One of the voices was leaving the room. He quickly darted into a darkened room to his left. He didn’t think the man had spotted him. Just in case, he hid behind a tall stack of ammunition boxes.

Robert hushed his breathing as he heard someone enter the doorway. Apparently, the delay had been due to the guard trying to sound the alarm. Hopefully, he was going to look around before getting his friends from the other room.

The terrorist turned on the lights. Robert immediately looked to see where his shadow was being cast. Thankfully, the munitions stack was blocking the light, swallowing up his would-be shadow inside that of the boxes. Rather unfortunately though, he could tell from the number of footsteps that his pursuer was not alone. Robert steadied his gun. The barrel of a machine gun poked inside Robert’s peripheral vision. A few more moments and … pfft! A silenced bullet to the head sent the man to his grave. From the sound of it, there were still three more. One of them was telling the other two what to do. He was whispering his instructions in Siraiki-a variant of the more popular Punjabi and spoken by only about 10 percent of the Pakistani population. Robert understood both languages.

He swiftly ducked back into a corner. Seconds later another machine gun barrel poked out where he had been and peppered the area with bullets. Meanwhile, Robert could hear the other fellow coming from the other side-just as he had been told to do. Robert ambushed and shot the unfortunate man then moved swiftly to the corner nearer to the door. Reacting to the sounds of a struggle, the group leader started to charge around the corner. Robert grabbed the barrel of his gun, pointed it upward (a good idea considering the number of bullets that sprayed out of it shortly thereafter) and shot the man in the chest. The last remaining terrorist shot blindly around the side as Robert ducked for cover. Then, quickly and quietly, Robert pulled himself up to the top of the boxes and shot the man from above as he aimlessly looked around.

Robert quietly dropped down and rechecked the blueprints. At the end of the hallway he had been in, he would make a left turn. Near the end of that corridor was a relatively low security room. It probably had two men guarding the front-probably no one inside. Guarding the door to the missile bay, he could expect no less than eight men. So, he would penetrate the less secure room and enter the makeshift silo through the air ducts that connected the two rooms. That would still be difficult in and of itself because the room was sure to be swarming with terrorists. Robert thought back to the blueprints. The room the Chosen were converting to launch the missile had previously been the central power room. That information would be very useful.

Robert turned out the lights and headed down the hallway. He checked around the corner, but he couldn’t see the guards. That could be trouble since he wanted to be able to snipe down the guards before they could mow him down with machine guns. He removed the night vision goggles from his belt, placed them over his eyes and adjusted the resolution. The guards were about twenty or so feet away. Robert tried to visually verify his targets, but, without the goggles, the dim lighting and the distance made them invisible. Of course, that meant that they couldn’t see him either-a blessing. He knew he only had two bullets left in this magazine, so he was going to have to make these shots count. Robert looked through the goggles again. Two silent bullets and two heartbeats later, the guards slumped lifeless on the floor.

Robert ran down and checked the door to the room, removing his goggles as he moved. It had no locks and alarms were no longer a problem. Just in case there were terrorists inside, Robert replaced the empty magazine with his only other full one and readied himself to fire before he opened the door. The room had but one occupant-a man leaning back in a metal chair, completely surprised to see Robert. After dealing with the one inept guard, Robert brought the two other bodies inside and stashed all of them behind a large crate of empty anti-tank missile launchers. As he closed the door, he couldn’t help but think that these guys were loaded for bear. He now looked around for the grate. It was on the far wall opposite the entrance. Robert holstered his gun and removed his special grapnel from his belt. He aimed it at the ceiling and pressed the large yellow button. It shot the hook into the ceiling and attached itself. Robert tapped the green button, which began pulling him up to the roof. When he was level with the grate, he stopped the climb by touching the red button. Robert easily removed the grate with some well-placed sprays of acid. The acid ate through the galvanized steel, leaving behind a putrid smell.

Robert swung into the ventilation duct. By pressing the yellow button again, his grapnel detached itself from the ceiling. He rewound it by holding down the green button. Next to his gun, the grapnel was definitely his favorite piece of equipment.

Robert looked ahead. Thankfully, the duct wasn’t too tight of a fit. He returned the grapnel to his belt and crawled down an extremely long portion of the passage. He was thinking to himself exactly how well things were going as he mentally tracked the distance that he was crawling. Except for that one guard that spotted him in the hallway, everything was going according to plan. In fact, knowing that the missile was inside what used to be the central power core, things were even better. About that time Robert slowed his advance, sensing something was wrong. A piece of the floor was moving towards him. Hold on a moment, that wasn’t the floor. A snake was coming his way-an asp, by the looks of it. Robert’s heart nearly stopped from the fear alone, but a small dose of the asp’s poison would certainly finish the job. The venomous creature slithered closer, its forked tongue lancing the air. The serpent inched nearer as Robert’s mind raced to deal with it. The Chosen had been very clever to put an asp in the ducts. Robert carefully removed his acid spray and pointed it at the deadly, poisonous reptile. The moment the acid made contact, the asp writhed in agony as the acid wreaked havoc on its eyes and brain. Within moments, the serpent was dead; nothing was left of its central nervous system but a cloud of acrid smoke. Robert carefully crawled past the convulsing snake, endeavoring to prevent contact with the remaining acidic residue since even the little that remained could char his skin.