Mono was listening and removed her goggles enough to glance at him.
“I know what a dead body is,” said Mono. “You don’t have to talk different just because I’m here.”
“Takes you down to fifty-three objects,” said Dreo. “Much less than you started with.”
“Can you put the objects in order of priority based on their distance from the ship?” asked Edimar.
“Done,” said Dreo.
Edimar adjusted her goggles and smiled at the list. This was certainly more manageable. This she could handle, even without Father’s help. She started at the top and scanned down to the bottom. The last object on the list instantly wiped the smile from her face. It was only a few thousand kilometers out and moving in their direction at incredible speed.
“What is it?” asked Rena. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the pod,” said Edimar. “It’s coming back.”
CHAPTER 12
Tech
Captain Wit O’Toole moved through the forest under the cover of night. His footfalls were soft and silent. His P87 assault rifle was at his shoulder. His body was slightly crouched, keeping a low center of gravity. His helmet had no visor or eye slits but covered his face completely with blast-resistant metal. His body armor was lightweight and camouflaged for darkness. Beside him, six MOPs in identical gear, carrying identical weapons, kept pace with him as he advanced up the slope of the Parvati Valley in northern India, weaving through the pine and fir trees as quiet as the wind.
Inside Wit’s helmet, his HUD projected a 180-degree view of the terrain in front of him, as bright as if it were day, allowing him to see every detail of the forest. The computer helped further by flagging any obstacles in his path. A root, a low branch, a patch of uneven ground.
A female computer voice said, “One hundred meters to target.”
“Full stop,” said Wit.
The six MOPs stopped their advance and moved into a tight circle, dropping to one knee with their backs to one another, rifles up, covering their position from every approach. It was a simple tactical move, but it was done swiftly and silently, without hesitation or missteps, as fluid as a practiced dance.
“We’re a hundred meters from the target,” said Wit. “Now what?”
“Threat assessment,” said Bogdanovich.
“How?” asked Wit.
“Satellite feed,” said Lobo, “I’ll patch us in.”
A window popped up on Wit’s HUD showing an overhead view of their position taken from a satellite. Wit blinked out a command, and the satellite image shifted, scrolling upward over the treetops in the direction the team was headed. The tree line ended, and a wide meadow came into view. A concrete two-story building, with an almost bunkerlike appearance, stood in the center of the meadow. The Indian military had built it here for military exercises like this one. Several armed guards patrolled the perimeter.
“What a lovely mountain resort,” said Pinetop.
“The brochure said five stars,” said Lobo.
Tonight’s mission was a rescue operation. Calinga was acting the part of a foreign diplomat being held hostage by Islamist extremists. The extremists were actually fellow MOPs and Indian PCs eager to play the bad guys for once.
It was the tenth field exercise in as many days, and Wit had no intention of letting up.
He had devised all kinds of different scenarios: rescue operations, refugee protection, urban warfare, demolition, counterinsurgency measures-each with its own different cultural consideration, terrain, and enemies. One day he’d tell them they were being dropped into a dry mountain valley in Tadzhikistan. The next day they were being dropped at a beach in New Guinea with nothing but jungle as far as the eye could see. The idea was to train for every contingency and enemy.
“I count five guards around the perimeter,” said Chi-won. “But there are probably others we can’t see with the satellite. I say we go thermal from here on in.”
He meant switching their helmet cams to detect heat signatures. “Agreed,” said Wit. “What else?”
“There are more of the enemy inside,” said Pinetop. “We need a floor plan.”
“Coming up,” said Lobo.
A three-dimensional schematic of the structure appeared on Wit’s display. “If you were holding hostages, where would you keep them?” Wit asked.
“Away from windows,” said Chi-won. “Terrorists prefer to keep hostages close, and they’re terrified of snipers. A centralized room is best, probably on the second floor since there’s no basement or attic. And the stairwell can easily be defended. If they were going to hide a hostage, I’d say they’d do it here.”
A blinking dot appeared on a room on Wit’s floor plan.
“Other ideas?” asked Wit.
The men briefly discussed other possibilities but everyone agreed that Chi-won’s assessment was probably accurate.
“Now what?” asked Wit.
“We could send in a peeker and scope out the interior,” said Pinetop.
Peekers were small, near-silent hover drones that carried a through-wall radar. Land one on a roof or a wall, and its signal processing could detect any movement on the other side.
Wit voiced no objection. Pinetop took a peeker from his backpack and flew it upward through the trees using his HUD. They all watched the vid coming from the peeker as it flew high over the meadow and settled on the building’s roof. Three minutes later, they had confirmed Chi-won’s assumption: The hostage was indeed being held on the second floor in the centrally located room.
“Pinetop, you take point,” said Wit. “From here on in, I’m a grunt. You’re in charge.”
Pinetop responded without hesitation, giving out orders to everyone. His instructions were clear, thorough, and intelligent, as if he had been planning his strategy for months.
They advanced up the slope quickly, fanning out, rifles at the ready, approaching the meadow from multiple angles. Thermal imaging revealed three enemy guards hiding in the forest, but the MOPs took these out easily. Their P87 rifles fired almost silently, and the three enemy guards dropped, their dampening suits stiff.
The MOPs crouched at the tree line in the shadows. The guards in the meadow hadn’t noticed the takedown and continued to patrol the perimeter without any sign of alarm. One of the guards walked within a few feet of their position, and Chi-won leaped out of the underbrush and hit the man with a spider pad. The man’s suit stiffened, and Chi-won dragged him back into the darkness.
Four down.
“There’s too much open ground between us and the building,” said Pinetop. “We’ll sniper the rest.”
They extended the barrels of their rifles and made adjustments to the weapons for longer-range fire. Wit put his rifle to his shoulder and blinked a command in his HUD that caused the arms, shoulders, and upper back of his body armor to stiffen. This minimized the slight movements in his hands and made his upper body as steady as a tripod, greatly enhancing the accuracy of his shots. The computer then highlighted each of the targets on Wit’s display. Seven guards total, one for each of them.
Wit watched his display as, one by one, the targets were marked with the name of the MOP who had selected it for takedown. Wit chose the last unselected target.
Pinetop gave the order. The MOPs all fired, and the seven guards went down.
After that it was a matter of following Pinetop’s instructions. They rushed forward and stormed the building. The enemy combatants were exactly where the computer told them they would be. The peeker, which was still attached to the side of the house, warned them whenever new threats charged toward them from elsewhere in the house, giving Wit and his team plenty of time to seek cover or move into a position to neutralize the enemy.
Wit made every shot count, getting up the stairs just behind the others, stepping over the enemy that had already fallen. Calinga was waiting for them in the room. The last enemy guard, who was taking his role as a
