Sokolov had spoken to them of the need to sever the loop: the loop of observing, thinking, deciding, and acting. In normal circumstances the loop was a good thing but not now; they had to act without thinking for a few moments, and only then could they observe and think and decide. Sokolov, never one to ask his men to do something he wouldn’t do himself, followed the rule pretty faithfully even though some part of his brain was already telling him that something was wrong, something didn’t make sense. The apartment was indeed a warren of smaller rooms, which was bad for them, but not unexpected, nothing they couldn’t cope with. But he wasn’t seeing computers and he wasn’t seeing young Chinese men. He was seeing sleeping bags and mattresses on the floor, rather closely spaced, with men sleeping on them. Lots of men. Some looked Chinese but some didn’t. A migrant laborer squat? They were hairy and somewhat older than he’d been expecting. Stuff was piled all over the place: burners, thermometers, pots and pans, jars of ingredients he couldn’t identify just now, big rectangular cans of the type used to hold industrial solvents. God, there were a lot of people living here! Sokolov’s squad was certainly outnumbered, perhaps by as much as two to one. Not that it mattered since the Russians were all strapped with multiple semiautomatic weapons and, in Kautsky’s case, an autoloading shotgun. Whereas China was not one of those places where ordinary people had weapons.