Shadow Command

well.

“Remember, use regular ammo only against the Security Forces guys if they open fire on you — don’t waste ammo on the CIDs or Tin Man units.” He held up a 40-millimeter grenade round. “These are our best hope of putting those things out of commission: microwave pulse generators, like a direct fucking lightning bolt hit. They tell us it should shut down all their systems instantly. Probably lethal for the guy inside, but that’s his problem if he chooses to fight. These guys are fast, so stay on your toes and concentrate fire. Questions?” There were none. “All right. We have about five minutes to go. Get ready to kick some zoomie ass.” There was a muffled round of “Hoo- ah!” in oxygen masks all around.

It seemed like just a minute later when Harden was notified by the cockpit crew that the jump zone was two minutes out. The SEALs quickly detached themselves from the aircraft oxygen system, hooked up to portable oxygen bottles, got to their feet, and held on tightly to handholds as the rear cargo ramp was lowered. No sooner had the ramp motored down than the red light turned green, and Harden led his platoon out into the frigid darkness. Less than twenty seconds after Harden jumped, all sixteen men deployed parachutes. Harden checked his chute and oxygen, made sure his infrared marker light was operating so the others could follow him in the darkness, then started following the steering indications from his wrist-mounted GPS unit.

This was a HAHO, or High Altitude — High Opening jump. From twenty-seven thousand feet, the team could sail about thirty miles from their jump point to their objective: Elliott Air Force Base, nicknamed “Dreamland.” By order of the President of the United States, the two SEAL units had been ordered to assault the base, neutralize the Cybernetic Infantry Devices and Tin Man units patrolling the base, capture all base personnel, and secure the aircraft, weapons, computer center, and laboratories.

The winds were a little squirrelly, definitely different than forecast, which probably explained the hurried jump. Harden found himself steering his canopy in some rather radical maneuvers to get on-course. Each turn soaked up some horizontal speed, so that meant a little more marching once they got on the ground. They would fly for about ten minutes.

Once finally established on-course, Harden started looking for landmarks using his binocular night-vision goggles. He quickly saw that things weren’t looking quite as planned. The first visual target was Groom Lake, the big dry lake bed south of the base that had the majority of Elliott’s twenty-thousand-foot-long runway embedded in it. It was soon obvious they were too far west — they had jumped way too early. The GPS said they were right on- course, but the landmarks didn’t lie. They had planned for this contingency, but Harden was going to give the flight crew a good chewing-out when this mission was over. He had studied the entire surrounding area in his pre-jump target study and was confident he could find a good place to land, even if it had to be on the dry lake bed itself.

He couldn’t quite reach the dry lake bed, but he was able to find a flat area about fifty yards north of a dirt road. The landing was a lot harder than he anticipated — again, the GPS was lying about the wind direction and he landed with the wind instead of into it, which increased his ground speed and the force of the landing. Fortunately they were wearing so much cold-weather gear for the long HAHO jump, and the extra impact force was mostly soaked up. He formed up the team in less than three minutes, and it took them less than five to get their parachutes, harnesses, and extra cold-weather gear off and stowed, and their weapons, comm gear, and night- vision systems checked and ready.

Harden checked his GPS and motioned their direction of movement, but the assistant officer in charge, who had the backup GPS, waved his hand and indicated a different direction. They put their GPS receivers side by side, and sure enough, their readouts were completely different…in fact, they were different by about three miles!

That explained them being off-course and landing in the wrong direction based on GPS-derived winds: their GPS receivers were being spoofed. Harden knew that GPS jammers were being developed, but a jammed GPS receiver could be disregarded and alternate navigation methods used right away before significant errors were made. On the other hand, a spoofed GPS receiver would appear to be working properly. Even the C-130’s GPS receivers had been spoofed. He had to remember that they were up against a unit that developed and tested next-generation weapons of all kinds, top secret stuff that probably wouldn’t be seen by the rest of the world for years but would revolutionize warfare when it did hit the streets.

The platoon chief pulled out a lensatic compass, ready to take some fixes on terrain landmarks and cross- check their position on his map, but it must’ve taken a hit in the accelerated landing because the compass dial was spinning as if it were attached to an electric motor. Harden wouldn’t be surprised if the eggheads here had developed a way to jam or spoof compasses too! He decided that since they landed west of the edge of the dry lake bed they would just head east until they found the lake, then they’d move north until they found the inner perimeter fence. He again signaled their direction of movement, overriding all queries, and headed off at a trot.

They had stripped off the cold-weather gear and left their parachutes behind, greatly lightening their load, but soon Harden found himself wiping sweat from his eyes. Jeez, he thought, it had to be below freezing out here in the high desert, but he was sweating to death! But he ignored it and kept on…

“Windward,” he heard in his headset. He dropped to his belly and scanned the area. That was the code word for a team member in trouble. He crawled back along his direction of movement and found the platoon chief on his back, with the AOIC checking him over. “What in hell happened?” he whispered.

“He just collapsed,” the assistant officer in charge said. He wiped sweat from his face. “I don’t feel too good either, LT. Would they use nerve gas on us?”

“Stay down,” someone said on the secure FM tactical radio.

Harden looked down the line of SEALs spread out in the desert. “Radios tight!” he whispered. The AOIC passed the word back to the others. He had briefed to use code words only on the radios on this mission unless they were in a firefight and the whole team was compromised.

The platoon chief sat up. “You feeling okay, Chief?” Harden asked. The chief signaled he was, and they prepared to move out again. But this time it was Harden who felt woozy — the minute he stood up, he was bathed in warm, dry heat, as if he had just opened the door to a red-hot oven. The feeling subsided when he dropped to a knee. What in hell…?

And then he realized what it was. They had been briefed on the incident in Turkey, where the guys from Dreamland used nonlethal microwave weapons to knock out the base security personnel — they reported that it felt like intense heat, like their skin was on fire, and soon their brains got scrambled so bad that they passed out. “Crocodile, crocodile,” Harden spoke into his whispermike, the code word for “enemy nearby.”

“Just stay down and don’t move,” they all heard in their headsets.

Shit, the Air Force guys had found their FM frequency, decoded the encryption routine, and were talking over their whispermike channel! He turned and made a hand signal to switch to the secondary frequency, and the word was passed down to the others. In the meantime, Harden pulled out his satellite phone and punched up the other SEAL unit’s secure channel: “Silver, this is Opus, crocodile.”

“Did you know,” they heard in their headsets on the new channel, “that there are no words that rhyme with ‘silver’ and ‘opus,’ just like ‘orange’?”

Harden wiped a rivulet of sweat out of his eyes. Comm discipline completely forgotten, he angrily switched back to the whispermike: “Who the hell is this?”

“Ah ah ah, Lieutenant, beadwindow, beadwindow,” the voice said again, using the old code word warning of inappropriate radio transmissions. “Listen, guys, the exercise is over. We already took down the other unit heading to the flight line and weapon storage area — you guys did much better than they did. We have some nice comfy rooms ready for you. Stand up with your hands in the air and we’ll take a little drive back to base. We have a truck on the way to come get you.”

“Fuck you!” Harden shouted. He got into a low crouch and scanned the area, ignoring the growing pain radiating throughout his body…and then he saw it, a huge robot, less than twenty meters in front of him. He raised his rifle, flicked off the safety, and fired a grenade round. There was a tremendous flash, the smell of high-tension electricity frying the air, and a feeling of millions of ants crawling across his body…but the sensation of heat had vanished, replaced by bone-chilling cold as his sweat-soaked uniform quickly released body heat to the frigid night air.

He trotted back to his men. “Everybody okay?” he whispered. They all signaled they were fine. He checked his GPS receiver — it was completely dead, but the platoon chief’s compass was working properly again, and he quickly plotted their position on his map, got a bearing toward their destination, and headed out.