“Is he your likely suspect?”
“He’s the
“Good. Well, then, the next time you see him, you’re going to have to neutralize him.”
Jan Muhammad stared at the transmitter for a moment. “Maybe it would be better to let him live,” he said.
“The orders are to get rid of these saboteurs.”
“But, Sarge, the Mohajeran are behind all this. When they know their agent has done what he’s supposed to, they’re sure they’re safe. They can just sneak through the pass whenever they want. I can’t use my guns or rockets. But if I kill old Rostam, they’ll know something’s up. They’ll know we’re on to them. If I just act normally and let Rostam think he’s safe, I may be able to account for a few refugee patrols before they catch on and start their frontal attacks again. That’s if I can get my weapons systems operational again.”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll have a tech team out to you tomorrow as soon as we can.” Now it was the sergeant’s turn to fall silent for a few seconds. “You might have an idea there, sarbaaz. I’ll mention it to the lieutenant.”
“So what’s wrong with my data deck, then?”
Sergeant Abadani gave a humorless laugh. “You don’t know what a baggie is?”
“I’m a gunner, Sarge, I’m not a deck expert.”
“You’re supposed to be both. Your Persian slipped a bubble microplate into your deck, just long enough for your deck to copy it and add it to its memory. It wasn’t an assassin program, but it was a crippler. Your deck won’t respond to certain orders now, not through your cyberlink. It’ll feed you sensory input and perform harmless functions, but it won’t take any sort of offensive or defensive action. It’s like your spy tied a little invisible bag around a part of your deck’s operating system, isolating it and making it inaccessible to you. Until tomorrow, when we can slice out the baggie.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do until then? What if I’m attacked?”
“You probably won’t be. Like you said, the rebels figure you’re more useful the way you are, with your teeth pulled. They don’t want to give the show away. They’ll just parade a few more units through the pass.”
Jan Muhammad frowned. “Is there any way I can operate the weapons systems the hard way? Bypassing the cyberlink?”
“Sure,” said Sergeant Abadani, “but you said you weren’t an expert. There’s a sequence of options that will let you fire any of your guns and rockets by selecting from a series of menus. It takes a lot of time. If you’ve never worked with it, it probably won’t be any use to you.”
“But it’s better than letting those bastards get by me. I hate the idea of watching them troop past like a gang of schoolchildren on a holiday.”
“Your attitude’s all right, sarbaaz, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then the sergeant told his gunner how to request the firing control menus from the data deck.
“That won’t be bagged, too?” asked Jan Muhammad.
“It wasn’t on the other seven decks.”
“All right, Sarge.”
“Report back if you see any action. We’ll be there sometime tomorrow. Now, clear the air.”
Jan Muhammad signed off. He tapped in the commands that called up the first of the attack menus.
A second menu presented him choices of rockets and bombs. A third menu let him activate the antipersonnel and antitank mines buried on the hillside and in the defile. It took Jan Muhammad a quarter of an hour to go through the entire sequence. If he had initiated the selection process just when he’d spotted a party of Mohajeran, they would have run safely through the pass before he was finished. And he hadn’t even begun the targeting and firing procedures. The sergeant had been right; this was worse than useless.
He chipped in the command moddy and let his deck-enhanced senses make certain there were no Mohajeran nearby. He chose a flat place on the floor of the Tang-e-Kuffar that the rebels would have to cross in order to flee into the valley beyond. Caught for a moment in the open, they would have to choose between running a hopeless race through a storm of machine gun bullets or giving up and retracing the way they had come.
Through the cyberlink, Jan Muhammad knew the coordinates, in three dimensions, of every point within range of the cameras. With the link, he experienced the weapons systems as extensions of his augmented mind. He tried firing a few shots, willing the guns to open up on the target. When they remained silent, he sighed and called up the attack menu, then began running through the time-consuming manual procedures.
Jan Muhammad typed 1.
Jan Muhammad typed 0.
Jan Muhammad typed 5.
When he typed 1, each submachine gun that could bear on the target spat five rounds into the hard-packed earth. Although it was a dark, moonless night, the data deck let him see the clouds of flying rock chips and dust. He felt better knowing that he could still operate his weapons, even in this clumsy way. He relaxed for the first time since early in the day, when he’d railed to stop the Mohajeran party from making their defiant escape.
Just before dawn, after Jan Muhammad had succumbed to fatigue and was suffering through an uneasy dream of childhood and poverty, an alarm woke him. He swung groggily off his cot and leaned over the data deck, fumbling the command moddy and the military personality moddy into place. He felt a familiar elation as the confining bunker dissolved, replaced by an immediate awareness of every movement, every scent, every sound around his post.
Another small unit of Mohajeran was picking its way through the mountain pass. They were moving boldly, confidently, knowing that Jan Muhammad’s armaments were disabled. He had an unpleasant surprise waiting for
