'That's the SOP, sir,' Wohl agreed. 'We all do it, or no one does it.'
Patrick hesitated. Something deep within him still maintained that this was wrong. He was trained to fight, trained to use his brains and his training and experience to fight and win battles-but this was not one of the battles he had in mind. He wasn't defending his home or his country or his family. This mission was to destroy one country's supposed threat to disrupt commerce in order to help a multinational corporation earn more money. This was a job for a private security company-or a mercenary force.
The obvious question: Was Patrick turning into a mercenary? Was he going to start fighting not for home or country or family, but for money?
Maybe he was, at least for the moment. If his own military didn't want him, maybe it was time to fight for what he felt was right-and accept a little money to do it.
'I'm in,' Patrick heard himself say. 'I'll get a NIRTSat constellation up right away, and get a few FlightHawks ready for air support.' The FlightHawks were Sky Masters's unmanned combat aircraft, capable of ground, air, or ship launch, and equipped to carry a wide variety of sensors, cameras, radio gear-or munitions. They were stealthy, accurate, and very effective.
'We're gone}' Paul McLanahan shouted excitedly, his electronically synthesized voice amplifying his happiness. 'Let's go kick some Libyan rocket-launching ass!'
'Nike, say status,' Patrick McLanahan whispered into the secure satellite link. A warning indicator on his electronic visor had just advised him that one of his men had already engaged the enemy. Just a few minutes into what was sup-
posed to be a quick, silent recon, they were made.
'Bad guy came out of nowhere, and this damned suit blasted him before I could stop it,' retired U.S. Marine Corps master sergeant Chris Wohl explained. 'I'm secure, and I'm moving in.'
'This is supposed to be a soft probe, Nike, not an assault. We can come back.'
'If they're alerted, they might move all their assets, and then we'd have to locate them all over again,' Wohl protested. 'I think only one guy saw me, and I don't think he's a sentry, so we still might have time. Besides, you made this suit, not me. If you wanted a soft probe, you should've showed me how to shut off the auto-bugzapper feature. I'm secure, and I'm moving in.'
Once a flamethrowing kick-ass Marine, always a kickass Marine, Patrick thought as he checked the God's-eye view display on his helmet-mounted electronic visor. Patrick McLanahan was kneeling in a shallow gully just a few yards inside the perimeter fence surrounding a newly discovered Libyan military base near Samah, about two hundred miles south of Benghazi. The mission was to sneak in from three different points, doing a soft probe on this remote desert base. Initial intelligence reports said Samah was a terrorist training camp, but a few unconfirmed reports received from the private intelligence sources said Samah was a rocket base set up recently to secretly attack targets in Egypt, Chad, Europe, or in the Mediterranean Sea, possibly with medium-range Russianor Chinese-made rockets with chemical or biological warheads.
The plan was for all three infiltrators to go in simultaneously, take infrared or night-vision digital images with their equipment, uplink it all to reconnaissance satellites back to their headquarters, and get out without anyone knowing they were there. If the Libyans discovered they had been infiltrated, they might pack everything up and turn the base into an unassuming training base.
But Chris Wohl was by far the most experienced and well-trained commando among them-and he ran on his own timetable, which was several steps ahead of everyone else, constantly thinking and planning and reacting, leading the way. Patrick should have known that Chris Wohl would want to make first contact.
The God's-eye overhead images that Patrick was studying were being transmitted via satellite from stealth unmanned combat aircraft called FlightHawks. Two FlightHawks had been launched from a Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 launch aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea while on a normal, routine flight from Bahrain to Madrid. The FlightHawks were autonomous UCAVs, or unmanned combat air vehicles; although a ground controller could fly them, they were designed to fly a preprogrammed flight plan and automatically react to threats or new target instructions. One FlightHawk carried a LADAR, or laser radar, that took images as crystal-clear as a high-resolution digital photograph, then beamed those images down to Wendy on the Catherine as well as the men on the ground in Libya.
The FlightHawk's ground monitors and controllers were Patrick's wife and electronics wizard, Wendy Tork McLanahan, as well as Patrick's longtime partner and friend, engineering expert David Luger, based aboard a converted salvage ship a hundred miles off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea. The team's infiltration and exfiltration aircraft, a CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor aircraft, could take off, land, refuel, and be serviced on the cargo ship in hiding. The ship, a Lithuanian-flagged and fully registered and functioning rescue and salvage vessel named S.S. Catherine the Great, had a contingent of fifty highly trained commandos and enough firepower on board to start a small war.
The commandos on this mission also had another hightech weapon in their arsenal: their improved 'Tin Man' electronic battle armor. Also developed by Sky Masters Inc., the armor used a special electroreactive technology that caused ordinary-looking and — feeling fabric instantly to harden to several times the strength of steel when sharply struck. The suit also contained self-contained breathing apparatus, temperature control, communications, long-range visual and aural detection and tracking sensors, mobility enhancers-compressed-air jump jets in the boots-and self-protection weapons. The self-defense weapon was an electrical discharge device that disabled the enemy with a bolt of high-voltage energy; it operated automatically, tied to the suit's sensors, and was able to fire instantly in any direction out to thirty feet from electrodes on both shoulders if an enemy was detected.
The newest feature of their battle armor: a microhydraulically controlled fibersteel exoskeleton that gave the wearer the strength and power of a multimillion-dollar robot. The exoskeleton ran along the back, shoulders, arms, legs, and neck, and amplified the wearer's muscular strength a hundred times; yet the exoskeleton and its control systems weighed only a few pounds and used very little power.
The armor could save its wearers from most small- and medium-sized infantry attacks and even some light armored attacks, but every attack drained precious power from the suit quickly, and they were several hundred miles from help. The Tin Man technology was designed to save its wearer from attack long enough to escape a defensive, patrol, or security engagement, not to press an assault against a superior fighting force. The longer Wohl stayed in the area after the alarm was sounded, the more danger he was in.
Through his electronic visor, Patrick could see that Wohl had stopped just outside an area that had previously been identified in satellite photos as a garbage dump, known by its map coordinate Bravo Two. The area was unguarded and unsecured, and military and civilian personnel passed by it constantly without being stopped or challenged by anyone-there was no reason to suspect it was anything else but a garbage dump. Patrick had dismissed it in their search. 'Nike, what are you doing at Bravo Two?'
'I want to check this place out,' Wohl replied. 'I'm secure.'
'Nike, let's stick with the recon plan, shall we?'
'I'll be back on schedule in no time.'
'Stalkers, looks like there's some activity on this side of the base-your guy might have missed a bed check or something,' ex-Air Force security officer and commando Hal Briggs reported. The commandos on this mission were spread out around the sprawling, isolated desert base in strategic support locations, and moving from one spot to another without attracting any attention took time. 'They're doing a search around the perimeter. Might as well let Nike poke around a bit more-he's safe there for now.'
'If the alarm's been sounded, we need to bug out of here,' Patrick said. 'Your best exit point now is Alpha One, Nike. Get moving.' To Briggs, he added, 'Taurus, can you cover him?'
'Dammit, Castor, we traveled too far to turn around the moment someone has a bad dream,' Wohl radioed. 'I'm secure, and I think I found something interesting, so I'm staying put for sixty lousy seconds longer. The FlightHawks will have to RTB in less than fifteen minutes anyway-they might not complete a full reconnoiter, and there won't be time to recover, refuel, and relaunch them before daybreak. I'm staying. If you don't like it, come in here and try to drag me back. Nike out.'
McLanahan cursed again-it seemed as if he was doing that a lot lately-:and wished for one of his long-range bombers loaded with smart bombs to be flying overhead right about now. Twice retired from the United States Air Force-the last time involuntarily-Patrick had been a one-star general, the deputy commander of one of the world's most secret weapons development and testing facilities, the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC),
