course, the U.S. Army will not turn over any fingerprint records to us so we can verify this information. But a professional’s examination of the footprints on both sets of birth records conclude that they appear to be
“Now I’m not saying that Miss Vega is a dangerous spy out to destroy America. There is no question that she is a hero after her actions in hunting down and defeating the Consortium terrorist group that attacked America last year. In my opinion, she doesn’t deserve prison time. The question is, however: does she deserve to still have access to classified government programs and still be in charge of our nation’s border security? I don’t think so. And it begs the wider question: does her immigration and citizenship status have anything to do with TALON’s ineffectiveness in securing our borders?
PECOS EAST TRAINING RANGE,
CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, NEW MEXICO
THAT SAME TIME
It was called a “30-30”—dropping a lightly armed and equipped commando from thirty feet in the air into the water, from a helicopter traveling thirty nautical miles per hour. The tactic allowed the fastest possible forward flight through hostile airspace without injuring the nonparachute-equipped landing soldiers.
But this “30-30” was different. First, the commandos weren’t dropping from a helicopter, but a different type of rotorcraft: a CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, the special operations version of the world’s first active military tilt- rotor transport. Able to take off and land similar to a helicopter but then fly at fixed-wing turboprop speeds, the V- 22-series aircraft were the newest aircraft in the active U.S. military arsenal, pressed into service for utility, transport, cargo, and search and rescue as well as inserting special ops forces well behind enemy lines. All V-22 aircraft were equipped with forward-looking infrared scanners and inflight refueling probes; the special operations version was also equipped with a highly precise satellite navigation suite, terrain-avoidance radar and millimeter- wave obstacle detection radar, state-of-the-art electronic countermeasures systems, a twenty-millimeter Chain Gun in a chin turret steered by the pilot or copilot using head-mounted remote aiming displays, and long-range fuel tanks.
The second difference with this “30-30” was that it was not over water, but over the hard sun-baked high desert of east-central New Mexico. The third difference: the soldiers involved were not ordinary commandos, but Cybernetic Infantry Devices from Task Force TALON.
Using a steel handrail on the upper fuselage as a handhold, Major Jason Richter stepped aft along the CV- 22’s cargo bay toward the open cargo ramp. “CID One is in position,” he radioed.
“You sure you want to do this, Major?” FBI Deputy Director Bruno Watts, the new commander of Task Force TALON, asked. He was secured in the front of the cargo bay of the CV-22, watching the exercise. “You won’t impress me at all if you break your fool neck.”
“Thirty seconds,” the copilot radioed back, and the red “READY” light came on in the cargo bay.
“I already told you a dozen times, Watts—I’m doing it.”
“You sure you feel up to it?”
“The doc cleared me…”
“You did one blood test and a bone marrow test, then went back to the base and started putting on a CID unit. You don’t look good, and you’re not acting very right in the head.”
“Get out of my face, Watts.”
Bruno Watts grasped Jason’s CID unit by the base of the helmet. “I’m telling you, Richter, you’re not ready to go back into the field yet. I’m grounding you as of right now.”
“Who’s going to run this drop test, Bruno—
Watts scowled at the robot’s back, unaccustomed to subordinates he hardly knew calling him by his first name. But that appeared typical of Richter and others in this task force: they had been doing their own thing for so long that they had absolutely no regard for rank or common organizational structure. “The job of the commander is to command, Richter. You think you’re being a leader by skipping out of the hospital and doing this training mission, but all I see is a guy with a chip on his shoulder, out for some payback.”
“You sound like Kelsey…I mean, Director DeLaine,” Jason remarked. “Why do all of you FBI agents sound alike?”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Major?” Watts said.
“Ten seconds. Stand by.”
Jason turned around and gave a thumbs-up to the two other CID units standing behind him, piloted by Harry Dodd of the U.S. Army and Mike Tesch, formerly of the Drug Enforcement Agency. He then stepped back to the edge of the cargo ramp at the rear of the CV-22 and turned around so he was facing forward, still holding on to the overhead handrail. Tesch and Dodd waited closely in front of him. When he saw the red light in the cargo bay turn to green, he stepped back and off the ramp.
The idea was to land on his feet, absorb the shock of the drop, and simply continue running, but like most plans his didn’t survive impact. He landed squarely on his feet in a running stance, but immediately face-planted forward and ended up cartwheeling across the desert for almost a hundred feet before crashing into a cactus. Mike Tesch’s landing wasn’t much better. His plan was to land on his butt, cushioning his impact with his arms, and let his momentum carry him up to his feet. But as soon as he hit he bounced several feet in the air, and he landed headfirst on the ground.
Harry Dodd’s landing was almost perfect, but only because he didn’t try to run right out of the landing. Instead, he performed a picture-perfect parachute landing fall, hitting the ground with the balls of his feet, twisting to the right, letting his left calf, thigh, lat muscles, and shoulder take the brunt of the impact in a smooth rolling action, then letting his legs flip up and over his body until they were pointing down along the flight path. When his feet reached the ground, he simply let his momentum lift his entire body up and off the ground, and he was instantly on his feet and running. By the time the dust and sand settled, he had run back and was checking on Tesch and Richter. “You okay, sir?” he asked Richter who had just picked himself up off the ground.
“Almost had it there until that stupid cactus got in my way,” Jason complained. “Where’d you learn to do that roll? It looks like you hardly got dusty.”
“Army Airborne school, Fort Benning, Georgia, sir,” Dodd said. “Looks like I’ll be teaching TALON how to do a correct PLF.”
“Buster, this is Stronghold, looks like everyone is still in the green,” Ariadna Vega radioed from TALON headquarters after checking CID unit’s satellite datalink status readouts. She was able to see each unit’s landing via optical target scoring cameras located throughout the Pecos East range and had to force her voice back to normal after laughing so hard at Richter’s and Tesch’s attempts. “Proceed to maneuver positions.”
Following computerized navigation prompts visible on their electronic visors, the three CID units split up and proceeded to preplanned locations, about a mile from a large plywood building erected on the Pecos East range. Once they were all in position, Jason launched a GUOS, or grenade-launched unmanned observation system, drone from his backpack launcher. The bowling-pin-sized device unfolded its wings and started a small turbojet engine seconds after launch, and the little drone whizzed away with a low, rasping noise and just a hint of smoke.
“Good downlink back here,” Ariadna reported as she watched the streamed digital images being broadcast via satellite from the tiny drones. “Report in if you’re bent.” The sensor on the GUOS drone was not a visual camera, but a millimeter-wave radar designed to detect metal, even tiny bits of it buried as far as twelve inches underground. On their electronic visors, metallic objects big enough to pose a threat to the CID units appeared as blinking blue dots against the combined visual and digital imagery.
