“Copy Osprey.”
She took a tube out of her pack, screwed on another piece, which she then unfolded into a rifle stock. The line thrower was a one-shot weapon; she had to do this right the first time.
Turn on the laser, find the target, exhale halfway, press the trigger button—
With a shoulder-bruising foop, the compressed air cartridge exploded and the harpoon with its trailing line covered the twenty meters in an eyeblink, burying itself just above the alarm box. She coated the metal side of the launcher with quick-acting glue and anchored it to the side of the shaft. Then she slid headfirst down the threaded nylon line, gloves
and inner-thigh padding absorbing the burn.
Patching the bypass into the alarm was hard enough under normal conditions, but she had to do it upside down while hanging from her crisscrossed knees. She’d practiced it in Baghdad with a virtual reality helmet, but that alarm had been only similar to Urdmann’s, not an exact replica.

The Lost Cult, Prologue