were fussing over a pair of propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, each roughly five feet long, with an eight-foot wingspan.
The tall auburn-haired man who called himself Nones stood close by, watching his team complete their work. Periodic reports from the sentries posted in the woods around the clearing crackled through his radio headset. There were no signs of any unwanted observation by the local farmers.
One of the UAV technicians, a stoop-shouldered Asian man with thinning black hair, rose slowly to his feet. He turned to the third of the Hor-atii with a relieved expression on his lined and weary face. “The payloads are secure. All engine, avionics, UHF, and autonomous control systems have been tested and are online. All global positioning navigation way-points have been configured and confirmed. Both craft are ready for flight.”
“Good,” Nones replied. “Then you may prepare for launch.”
He stepped back out of the way as the technicians carefully lifted the UAVs, which weighed roughly one hundred pounds apiece, and carried them over to the twin launch rails. His bright green eyes followed them appreciatively. These two unmanned aircraft were modeled on drones used by the U.S. Army for short-range tactical reconnaissance, communications jamming, and airborne nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons detection. Now he and his men would pioneer an entirely new use for these robotic fliers.
Nones switched frequencies, contacting the newly arrived surveillance team he had stationed in Paris. “Are you receiving data from the target area, Linden?” he asked.
“We are,” the Dutchman confirmed. “All remote sensors and cameras are operational.”
“And the weather conditions?”
“Temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed arc all well within the preset mission parameters,” Linden reported. “The Center recommends that you proceed when ready.”
“Acknowledged,” Nones said quietly. He swung round to the waiting UAV technicians. “Don masks and gloves,” he ordered.
They quickly obeyed, putting on the gas masks, respirators, and thick gloves intended to give them enough time to escape the immediate area if one of their aircraft crashed on launch. The third member of the Horatii did the same, donning his own protective gear.
“Catapults pressurized and standing by,” the Asian technician told him. The technician crouched at a control console set between the two angled rails. His fingers hovered over a set of switches.
Nones smiled. “Continue.”
The technician nodded. He flicked two switches. “Engine and propeller start.”
The twin-bladed propellers on both UAVs suddenly whirled into motion, spinning with a low-pitched whir that was almost impossible to hear more than a few yards away.
“Engines at full power.”
“Launch!” the tall green-eyed man commanded.
With a soft whoosh, the first pneumatic catapult fired — hurling the UAV attached to it up the angled rail and into the air in a high, curving arc. For an instant, at the end of this arc, the unmanned aircraft seemed ready to fall back toward the ground, but then it climbed again — buoyed now by the lift provided by its own wings and propeller. Still ascending, it cleared the trees and headed west on its preprogrammed course.
Ten seconds later, the second unmanned flier followed its counterpart into the air. Both drones, now almost invisible from the ground and too small to register on most radars, climbed steadily toward their cruising altitude of three thousand feet and flew toward Paris at roughly one hundred miles per hour.
Staying low, Jon Smith followed Peter Howell west across a wide field choked with tall weeds and thickets of jagged brambles. Their surroundings glowed faintly green through their night-vision goggles. A couple of hundred yards off to their left, the paved county road cut a straight line across the darkened landscape. Ahead, the ground sloped up, rising gently above a stagnant scum-covered pond on their right. The gravel access road Kit Pierson had turned onto snaked back and forth as it climbed the low hill in front of them.
Something sharp snagged Smith's shoulder, stabbing right through the thick cloth deep enough to draw blood. He gritted his teeth and went on. Peter was doing his best to lead them through the worst of the tangled vegetation, but there were places where they just had to bull through, ignoring the thorns and briars tearing at their dark clothing and black leather gloves.
Halfway up the hill, the Englishman dropped to one knee. He scanned the terrain around them carefully and then waved Smith forward to join him. The lights were still on at the farmhouse up on the crest.
Both men were dressed and equipped for a night reconnaissance mission across rough ground. Besides their AN/PVS 7 goggles, each wore a combat vest stuffed with the surveillance gear — cameras and various types of listening devices — left waiting for them at Andrews Air Force Base. Smith had a holster for his SIG-Sauer pistol strapped to his thigh, while Peter had the same kind of rig for the Browning Hi-Power he favored. For extra firepower in a real emergency, each also carried a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun slung across his back.
Peter shook off one of his gloves and then held up a wetted finger to test the direction of the soft, cool night breeze whispering around them. He nodded, pleased by the result. “Now there's a bit of good fortune. The wind is from the west.”
Smith waited. The other man had spent decades in the field, first for the SAS and then for MI6. Peter Howell had forgotten more about moving through potentially hostile territory than Smith had ever learned.
“This wind won't carry our scent ahead of us,” Peter explained. “If there are any dogs up there, they won't smell us coming.”
Peter slid his glove back on and led the way again. Both men crouched even lower as they came out onto the top of the shallow rise. They were within yards of an old, ruined barn — a hollowed-out, roofless wreck that was more a pile of broken, rotting boards than a standing structure. Beyond that, they could make out the shapes of two parked cars, the Volkswagen Passat belonging to Kit Pierson, and another, this one an older American make. And there was enough light leaking out through the mostly closed drapes of their target, a small one-story farmhouse, to make it glow brightly in their night-vision gear.
Smith saw that whoever owned the place had gone to the trouble of whacking away the tallest weeds and brambles in a rough circle around the building. He followed Peter down onto his belly and wriggled through the low grass after him, crossing the open space as quickly as possible to gain the cover provided by the parked cars.
“Where to now?” he murmured.
Peter nodded toward a big picture window on this side of the house, not far from the front door. “Over there, I should think,” he said softly. “I thought I saw a shadow moving behind those drapes a moment ago. Worth a look anyhow.” He glanced at Smith. “Cover me, will you, Jon?”
Smith tugged his SIG-Sauer out of the holster. “Whenever you're ready.”
The other man nodded once. Then he crawled rapidly across the patch of oil-stained concrete and disappeared into a patch of tall brush
growing right up against the side of the farmhouse. Only the night-vision goggles he was wearing let Smith keep track of him. To anyone watching with unaided eyes, Peter would have seemed nothing more than a moving shadow, a shadow that simply vanished into blackness.
The Englishman raised himself up onto his knees, carefully examining the window above him. Satisfied, he dropped flat and signaled Jon to come ahead.
Smith crawled over to join him as fast as he could, feeling terribly exposed along every inch of the way. He wriggled the last few feet into the weeds and lay still, breathing heavily.
Peter leaned close to his ear and motioned to the window. “Pierson is definitely inside.”
Smith smiled tightly. “Glad to hear it. I'd sure hate to have just wrecked my knees for nothing.” He rolled onto his side and tugged a handheld laser surveillance kit out of one of the Velcro-sealed pouches on his combat vest. He slipped on the attached headset, flipped a switch to activate the low-powered IR laser, and carefully aimed the device at the window above them.
If he could hold it steady enough, the laser beam would bounce back off the glass and pick up the vibrations induced in it by anyone talking inside the room. Then, assuming everything worked right, the electronics package should be able to translate those vibrations back into understandable sounds through his headphones.
Almost to his surprise, the system worked.
“Damn it, Kit,” he heard a man's voice growl angrily. “You can't back out of this operation now. We're going