“Red carpet’ll be waiting.”
Boston had never worn one of the fogsuits before, and Sergeant Liu had to help him into it. Covered with a thin layer of LEDs, the suit was designed to emit light in a pattern that blended with the surroundings. In pitch black, of course, it was completely dark. But in a grayish setting it would appear gray, and on a splotchy brown background it would look splotchy brown. The technology was still being worked on at Dreamland, and the scientists predicted that within a few years, new versions would make foot soldiers practically invisible to the naked eye.
For now, they were just extremely hard to see, especially at dark.
Sergeant Liu unfurled the hood from the back of the suit, covering all but the visor area of Boston’s helmet. The six Whiplash troopers looked like aliens, ready to take over the earth.
Or at least a small part of it.
“Check your tasers,” said Liu.
Because of the political ramifications of operating without authorization in an allied country, the White House had ordered the Whiplash team to use nonlethal weapons “to the extent practical and possible” to take down the factory. Each team member carried a special Dreamland shotgun taser as his primary weapon. The gun looked like an Olin/HK CAWS RHINO (Repeating Hand-held Improved Non-rifled Ordnance) Special Forces shotgun with a large box in front of the trigger area. Traditional tasers fired two darts at a target that were connected to the weapon by a wire, allowing the shock to be administered. While potent, the need for the wire limited most tasers to relatively short range — fifteen yards was an industry standard. That was perfect for many police applications, but would put a Whiplash trooper at a severe disadvantage.
The Dreamland gun — officially known as T-3, though the troopers usually just called them tasers or sometimes phasers after the weapons used in the
While the weapon could fire its cartridges beyond a hundred yards, technical difficulties with the separation of the bullets meant the team had to decide between short or long-range cartridges, with effective ranges between five and fifty yards or forty and one hundred yards. In both cases, the bullets would not separate or set the charge properly before the minimum range, and beyond the maximum they tended to be wildly inaccurate. All team members carried clips packed with both sets of ammo, color-coded and notched so they were easily ID’d.
The team members also carried standard-issue M-4s — shortened M-16s favored by Airborne and SF troops — or MP-5s beneath their fogsuits; they were intended only as weapons of last resort.
“We’re ready, Captain,” said Liu over the shared team frequency in the Smart Helmet as the last trooper signaled he was good to go.
“Good.” Captain Freah’s rich baritone reverberated in Boston’s helmet. “Now remember, the E-bomb will go off just as we hit the ground,” he added. “It may not get everything, and they may start looking for us once their lights go out. Questions?”
Bison made a lame joke about plugging his taser into an outlet and charging the city for electricity.
“Any real questions?” asked the captain, and the silence told Boston they were ready to board the plane.
Starship took the Flighthawk from the computer as the launch sequence completed, tucking the U/MF down toward the water as Kick authorized his own launch. It was damn good to be back in action.
He wasn’t feeling any jitters, and the pressure wasn’t even up to football game levels. The fact that Kick had his hands full with his own aircraft reassured him somehow.
Bottom line, Starship knew he was twice the pilot Kick was. Having his rival next to him in the Flighthawk bay flying his own aircraft seemed easier to deal with than having him hovering over his shoulder.
It didn’t hurt either that Zen was off in the other plane.
“
“Roger that,” said Alou, his voice so calm it sounded as if he were ready for a nap. “Preparing for alpha maneuver and launch on
The big aircraft began to dip, sleighriding downhill as it fell into the launch maneuver for the other U/MF. The launch went perfectly; Starship saw his wingman pop onto the sitrep to the west, picking up speed as the computer and pilot double-checked their systems.
“As we drew it up, boys,” said Major Alou. “Starship, you have the first run over the target area. Keep your altitude up; we don’t want anyone hearing us. You ready?”
“Born ready,” said the pilot, tacking onto his course back toward land.
Danny Freah waited until he had the infrared feed from the Flighthawk before clicking the bottom of the visor to get the computer-interpreted view from the Dreamland tactical computer system. Located deep in the computer bunkers below the Megafortress hangars, the computers were sifting through the data supplied by the camera and radar in
Building Two, their primary objective, was occupied by a single guard at the shore side of the compound. Another dozen men were nearby, in a building about a hundred yards away, most of them clumped in a basement suite they had identified as the security headquarters. The suite and its sensors would be blinded by the E-bomb, which would effectively fry any unshielded electronics within a half mile of its air-burst explosion. The bomb — actually a small laser-guided missile that could be controlled by Danny once launched — sat in
“All right, listen up, you can see the schematic,” said Danny as the image of the site flashed into his team’s helmets. “As we planned it. Liu and Boston on Shed One. My team has the security headquarters building. Bison and Reagan, you have the approach. Make sure the Marines don’t kill us,” he added, knowing it would get a laugh from his men.
Six Marines, all trained in SF warfare, were jumping with the team to help take control of the perimeter. They too were armed with nonlethal weapons — Remington shotguns, equipped with crowd-control shells, along with M-4s as backups. Frankly, the hardest part of his job so far had been convincing the Marines they had to stay behind his guys once they got on the ground.
Two companies of Marines had squeezed aboard the Dreamland Osprey and would roar in once the Whiplash team was down. Four small boats sat about a mile offshore, filled with Marines, ready to race into the harbor. Danny had worked with a number of Marine units over the past few years and was confident that, despite a bit of jawing back and forth, they’d do as good a job as his troopers.
What he hadn’t worked with before in combat was the fogsuit. It was a great idea in practice, certainly, and had done well during the exercises. But jumping from a large aircraft in the middle of the night was always a risky venture. If the bulky suit felt uncomfortable to him, he was sure it would feel uncomfortable to most if not all of the others.
And being uncomfortable was never good.
But it was too late to take them off. The light flashed. The ramp at the back of the aircraft cranked open. The wind howled.
“We’re going,” he told Major Alou aboard
“Missile launch is counting down,” replied the pilot over the Dreamland circuit.
Bison, the jumpmaster, put up his fist.
“Let’s go,” Danny heard himself say.
