staring down at the plate of overcooked beef and watery, reconstituted mashed potatoes on his desk with a kind of savage contempt. It was slightly past eight P.M., and a new kid on his shift by the name of McFarlane had just strolled in with the meal, holding a dish for himself as well, looking as if he could hardly wait to get back to his post and dig into it… something that had so annoyed Thibodeau, he’d been unable to even feign appreciation as he dismissed the youngster, which left him feeling still worse for having rudely punished the messenger for the message.
Well, he would just have to make it up to him later. Explain that even the most upbeat person in the world could have his disposition ruined by two years of eating lunch at eight o‘clock at night, and a repulsive approximation of dinner between midnight and three in the morning. Breakfast alone provided a modicum of satisfaction, and only because the prep cooks would arrive for work around six o’clock, giving him an opportunity to send for some fresh eggs or waffles before the end of his shift, and thus eat at least one relatively decent meal at a relatively sane hour.
“Lord, thank you for our fuckin’ daily slop,” Thibodeau muttered in his thick Cajun accent.
His features glum, he was about to reach for his knife and fork when the phone at his elbow shrilled. He glanced over at it, saw the redline light blinking, and promptly snatched up the handset.
Other than for training drills, the extension had never been used during his term at the facility.
“Yes?” he said.
The man on the line was Cody from the monitoring station.
“Sir, there’s been a penetration.”
“Where?” Thibodeau sat up straight, his culinary woes forgotten.
“The western quadrant.” Cody’s voice was edged with tension. “Wally detected several intruders. Thing I don’t understand, we aren’t seeing any damage along the fence. No sign perimeter integrity’s been violated.”
“You sic the li‘l bastard on ’em?”
“Affirmative. We actuated its VSI banks and acoustic cannon, but…” A hesitant pause. “Sir, Wally’s gone off- line. It doesn’t look good.”
Thibodeau breathed. He’d insisted a thousand times that the ’hogs couldn’t be trusted. The hell of it was, he’d never
“You hear from Henderson and Travers at the gate?”
“We’ve been trying to radio them and there’s been no response.”
“Christ,” Thibodeau said. “Send some men out right away. I also want a full detail around the plant and warehouse buildings. Seal ’em up tight, hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Thibodeau paused to collect his thoughts, gripping the receiver in his fist. He was anxious to get into the monitoring room and see what was happening for himself. But first he wanted to be sure he was covering all his bases.
“We better have us some air support ready,” he said after a moment.
“What was that, sir?”
Thibodeau rose from his seat. “Tell the chopper pilots to fasten their goddamn seat belts, out.”
Manuel crouched behind the gate, his arm throbbing, the sleeve of his jumpsuit warm and moist where he’d been injured. His rapid movement had worsened the bleeding, but the sentry robot’s destruction was certain to draw security personnel to the area, and any holdup would increase the risk of capture. He’d have to attend to the wound later.
Making an effort to ignore his pain, he took a triangular slice of C4 explosive from his gear bag, peeled off its outer foil, and molded it carefully around the bottom of the gatepost. Next he extracted a twelve-inch segment of Primadet cord, one end of which was connected to an aluminum blasting cap, the other to a battery-powered timer about the size and shape of a marker pen. He inserted the end with the blasting cap into the saddle charge and set the timer’s simple dial mechanism for a five-minute delay. When he pulled the safety pin holding it in place, the arrow on the dial would start to turn, initiating the detonation sequence — but he couldn’t do that until his teammates finished wiring together the charges they had already planted on supports along the fence. The thin orange detonating cord would set off the linked charges almost instantaneously, and he intended to be well away from the area before that happened.
He settled down to wait. Several yards to his left a light shone in the guard booth’s broken window. The single wall he could see from his position was spattered with blood. A limp, upflung arm rested against it above the spot where one of the lifeless guards had fallen.
Manuel looked away from the booth, moving his gaze out along the perimeter fence to where the others were at their tasks, dark blurs against the deeper darkness. Blowing a gap in the fence hadn’t been his own idea. The watchmen on duty would have known the gate’s electronic access codes, and he’d proposed they be captured and made to unlock it at gunpoint. But Kuhl had formulated a minute-by-minute plan and wanted them killed before the jump team’s arrival. With the robot and guards in the compound’s western sector eliminated, he had reasoned there would be a surveillance lapse until backup security units could arrive. This would give Manuel’s group an opening to set their explosives while Teams Orange and Yellow carried out their end of the plan.
Manuel hadn’t argued. It was Kuhl’s role to make the final calls, and his to carry them out.
Now Manuel saw one of the other jumpers come scurrying up toward the gate, a length of ’det cord winding out behind him. Not a moment too soon, he thought. His wound was large and ugly, the torn flesh imbedded with sharp fragments of metal. He would need to take care of it soon.
He inhaled to clear his head, then took the cord from his teammate and inserted it into the charge he’d just primed.
“Coming,” Juan said. He gestured toward Manuel’s arm. “You all right?”
Manuel looked at him.
“Yes, all right,” he said. He willed himself not to stumble as he rose to his feet. “Radio Tomas and the others. Let them know we’re through here. Then I pull the pin.”
In the center of the compound, three levels underground, Thibodeau rushed through the monitor room’s entrance to find Jezoirski, Cody, and Delure agitatedly studying their displays.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” he said, noting their flustered expressions.
Delure swiveled his chair around to look at him.
“Sir, it’s Ned… the ’hog’s detected a group of intruders in its sector. Could be the same ones we saw at the western perimeter, there’s no way to tell.”
Thibodeau eyed the screen and made a low, apprehensive sound in his throat. He cared less about whether these were the same trespassers Wally had encountered than how they had gotten into the compound without initiating any perimeter alarms, and what the purpose of their intrusion might be. A man who relied heavily on instinct, he saw a pattern and tempo to their movements that took him back to his days as a Long Range Recon Patrolman with the 101st Air Cav in Southeast Asia, awakening suspicions that were almost too crazy to share.
But he could not ignore the guideposts of his own experience, and commanding a LRRP unit out of Camp Eagle had taught him plenty. Outrageous as it seemed at first blush, what was happening had all the earmarks of an airborne insertion. That would account for the intruders’ seeming ability to materialize out of nowhere, and also explain their otherwise mystifying cat-and-mouse game with Wally. They hadn’t taken on the ’hog because they needed to, but because they’d
Thibodeau pictured the confused expressions he’d seen on the faces of the men around him when he’d come bolting into the room — expressions that must have perfectly mirrored his own. He felt sure those looks would have given tremendous pleasure to the unwanted visitors rushing around out there at the installation’s margins. Certainly he’d have enjoyed that sort of thing on his runs through the jungle between 1969 and 1970. The slicks would swing down low over the trees wherever they saw pockets of North Vietnamese and quickly insert their LRRP teams, who would plunge into the brush seeking out targets of opportunity, causing disruption and confusion for the enemy.
