Zen had split his lower control screen in half so he could see a sitrep feed from Dream Command showing the assault. The screen was tiny, especially in the helmet viewer, but he avoided the temptation to make it his main view — he was controlling two Flighthawks from the hold of the Megafortress, orbiting
“First wave is out of the plane,” relayed Dog, who was piloting the plane. “Looking good.”
“Yeah.”
“Merce is ready to go with the E-bomb.”
“Roger that.”
Zen checked his instruments, purposely trying to draw his attention away from the other operation. His guys were good. They could handle it.
Best thing to do was let them.
“Hawk leader, you want to take a run over the ship’s deck?” asked Dog. “Get a real close-up and see if we can spot the clone?”
Zen acknowledged, then took the helm of
The sitrep for the assault flickered.
“E-bomb went off as scheduled,” said Dog. “The power is gone in that part of the city. Everything’s on schedule.”
“Roger that,” said Zen, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.
Danny hit the roof of the building square in the middle, only a quarter meter from the point the computer had designated. With two quick snaps, he had unhooked his chute. He pressed the trigger on his taser lightly, activating its targeting mechanism. Its aimpoint appeared as a crisp red circle in his Smart Helmet visor. With the helmet’s starscope vision showing him the night, there was no need to pop on the LED wristlight that was an integral part of the fogsuit; instead, he made his way to the end of the building above the door closest to the security headquarters. He saw the door open as he reached it. Kneeling, he waited as two of the company guards emerged from the building, each carrying a handgun. As the door started to close behind the men, he fired.
A net of blue light enveloped the men. Both Taiwanese spun slightly, stunned by the shock of electricity pulverizing every muscle and nerve in their bodies. Danny climbed over the edge of the roof and swung down, landing on his feet a few feet from the men he had downed. The shock had rendered them semiconscious. He kicked the guns away, then Danny took a small plastic canister from his pocket. It looked like a grenade with an extra-long spoon handle. He pulled the handle and tossed it between the men, stepping back as netting material expanded over them. The sticky material was not escape-proof, but it would easily hold them in place until the reinforcements arrived.
Egg Reagan, meanwhile, had come around the side of the building. He slapped what looked like the head of a plunger on the door; it was actually a man-portable radar unit similar to SoldierVision to help them see inside. Using the unit rather than their own Smart Helmets would prevent anyone from homing in on the source of the radio waves and targeting them. Egg strung a wire to the unit and stepped around the corner, viewing it in his helmet visor after attaching the wire at the back.
“Clear,” said Egg.
The door was locked. Danny took out a Beretta loaded with metal slugs and fired point-blank through the mechanism.
“Still clear,” said Egg.
“In.”
The hall, dark because both the electricity and backup lighting had been knocked out by the E-bomb, made an L about twenty feet from the door. As they cleared the corner, the yellow beams of small flashlights danced at the far end.
“We’ll zap them,” said Danny. “I have the ones on the left. Wait as long as we can; get them all in view.”
He edged toward the side of the hall as the first of the Taiwanese guards came around the corner.
As soon as one of the lights played across the floor near Egg, Danny opened up, firing two bursts in rapid succession. Three guards shot back against the wall of the hallway, literally blasted off their feet. But another man had been behind them; unharmed, he began to retreat. Danny and Egg gave chase, running for all they were worth down the hall. The bulk of their suits and gear slowed them down, however; by the time they reached the corner, the hall was empty.
“Fuck,” said Egg.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Let’s see if we can find this joker.”
He tapped his Smart Helmet, activating the unit’s penetrating radar mode. The mode emitted low-power radio waves that could penetrate walls roughly out to thirty feet. Their subject was nowhere in sight.
Danny flipped back into Dreamland connect mode, taking the display off the Flighthawk. But the U/MF was too far to the west to be of any use.
“Hawks, I need some coverage down here,” he said. “On my building.”
“Copy,” said Kick, gunning the aircraft back.
Kick had just started the Flighthawk back when the Osprey veered across his path. He threw the small robot plane down hard toward the earth, realizing even as he did that he had overreacted. Cursing, but only to himself, he came back with the joystick control, trying to swoop level and get back more or less on course. The robot fluttered slightly, her airspeed plummeting.
“
“Yeah, roger that,” said Kick. “We’re working on it. A lot of things going on up here.”
Starship, whose aircraft was to the west covering the harbor approach to the complex, started to interrupt. “You want me to—”
“I’m on it,” insisted Kick, sliding his speed up. The target building was now dead-on in his screen. Kick let his speed continue to bleed off, determined to provide a detailed view to the ground team. The Osprey, meanwhile, began rotating its wings upward, driving down toward a field near the road to drop its men.
Someone shouted over the circuit — there were people on the ground, near where the Osprey was headed.
Several things happened at once — the chain gun in the Osprey’s nose rotated, Kick threw his Flighthawk down toward the spot, Danny Freah yelled a warning and told the Osprey not to fire.
Kick struggled to keep his head clear, fighting the black fuzz of confusion creeping up from behind his neck.
“The boats,” someone said, and whether it was intended for him or not, Kick started to line up the Flighthawk for a view of the harbor. But he was already crossing over the dock toward the water; he accelerated and began banking to the south to try for another run.
As soon as Danny saw the Taiwanese guards emerging from the buildings beyond the battery recycling shed in his sitrep window, he shouted at the Osprey pilots to back out. He saw the Osprey whip away just as one of the men began firing an automatic weapon. An instant later, Sergeant Geraldo Hernandez launched a stun grenade and then fired his taser, scattering the guards.
“Two of the fuckers down,” said Hernandez.
It took Hernandez another sixty seconds to work around a pile of discarded metal before he could get close
