They did not suspect that, in the interests of putting on the best, most convincing show possible, the scouts, under orders from Kuhl himself, had lied to them.
“Sir, we’ve got something from SkyManta.” The young op who had come pounding at Ricci’s trailer door was flushed and breathless. “Looks like this is it.”
Ricci stared at him from inside the entrance, coffee cup in hand.
“What’s it picked up?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty jeeps, the controllers say the IR video’s clear as day. They’re heading in convoy toward the east side of the compound.”
“How close are they?”
“Two, maybe three miles, sir. There’s a whole network of gullies along that way. Caves in the hills, scrub… it’s possible they could have been hiding there for a while….”
“Let’s worry about the present.” Ricci took a breath. “Those remote gun platforms that were brought in, what are they called?”
“The TRAP T-2s.”
Ricci nodded.
“They’re all in position? Exactly the way they were when we conducted firing exercises?”
“Yes, sir. Every inch of ground in that sector’s covered by overlapping fire. We have at least fifteen of them just out beyond the gate — same number at each of the other perimeters—”
“Grab a few off each line, but just a few. Three, four. Leave the rest where they are. That’d bring us to about thirty guns at the point of attack. Have the additions emplaced right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ricci wanted to tell the kid not to call him “sir.” He wasn’t his uncle, and Sword wasn’t the military. But his preferred form of address was something for later.
“Notify the firing and Quick Response teams, make sure they’re all in their tac vests—”
“That’s SOP, sir.”
“Make sure
“Yes, sir!”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m heading out to the snoop-mobile to see the pictures for myself.”
Minutes after Kuhl had gotten past the gate sentries with what amounted to a nod and a wave, the truck stopped briefly in a quiet section of the compound, where his men had placed the dish atop its trailer’s roof and switched on the pulse generator. They had then driven on to within two hundred feet of the long cargo-processing facility in which the ISS service module was being stored prior to installation in the launch vehicle — a movement that was scheduled to occur the very next morning.
The concrete building was guarded exclusively by VKS troops, and only a sprinkling of them at that. None seemed interested when the cargo hauler pulled up at a moderate distance. It was one of their own trucks, and there were vehicles coming and going constantly in the days preceding a launch. Although Kuhl had been prepared for the eventuality of having to deal with Sword personnel, he was not surprised by their absence. One could always depend on Russian pride. That, he thought, and the impoverished economy that had ensured their facility would not be hardened against the incapacitation of their electronic alarm systems by microwave pulse, an expensive upgrade in shielding they could scarcely have afforded.
He turned to Oleg.
“Go around back,” he said. “Tell the others they are to activate the cannon when ready.”
The snoop-mobile was all boxed-in commotion. As Ricci entered, he saw men and women hunched over every one of the instrument consoles lining its sides, the radiance from the displays and lighted controls casting pale flickers of color across their faces.
He glanced up at a flat-panel monitor on the wall above one of the consoles, and instantly saw SkyManta’s aerial IR video view of the approaching jeeps.
“Those pictures,” he said, moving up beside the woman in the operator’s seat. Her name tag read Sharon Drake. “They’re called
“Yes, sir.”
“How near is near?”
“What you’re seeing happened less than two seconds ago.”
“Putting the attack force how close?”
Sharon hit a button to superimpose grid coordinates over the image.
“A little less than a quarter mile,” she said.
“Any movement near the other gates?”
She shook her head. “Not according to aerial IR scans, ground surveillance cameras, or reports from the guard posts.”
Ricci thought a moment. Things just weren’t making sense. Nimec’s briefing had indicated the attack on the Brazilian ISS facility was a multi-pronged and precisely coordinated affair, planned around a detailed knowledge of the compound’s layout. There had been airborne infiltration, scattered ambushes, the works. Though its objectives remained a question mark, there was no doubt that whoever had directed it was proficient in commando-style dispersal and distraction tactics. What he was seeing here, this column of jeeps coming at their guns, was a suicide run.
He expelled a breath. “The TRAP T-2s… what’s the max distance their operators can stay back from the firing line?”
Sharon leaned over toward a lean, bespectacled black man at the console to her immediate right.
“Ted, I need you to tell me—”
“Sixty meters,” he said without looking up from his screen.
Ricci did an approximate mental conversion. Two hundred feet, give or take.
“Notify the men at the perimeter that they’re to fire soon as the jeeps are in range,” he said. “I want two thirds of the weapons on lethal settings… we hit them with gas and fireworks first, give them a chance to back off. They keep coming, it’s shoot to kill. The QR teams should be ready as our second line of defense.”
Ted nodded.
“Sir,” Sharon said, looking quickly over her shoulder at Ricci. “Something’s happening here I don’t understand.”
He made a winding gesture with his hand.
“I’m getting an IR hot spot like nothing I’ve ever seen before from
“We have pictures?”
“ ’Manta’s nanosensor range is far beyond its electro-optical—”
“In plain English, Sharon,
“It can detect heat and energy emissions from a distance, but video’s limited to point of sight… objects directly below it.”
Ricci ran a hand back through his hair.
“North end’s the industrial section,” he said. “Bring up a map of the area. I want to see exactly what buildings are over there.”
Computer keys clicked to his right. Ted gestured to a monitor in front of him.
“Done,” he said.
“Sir.” This from another man who had come rushing over from across the trailer a second earlier. “Don’t know if it’s relevant to what we’re seeing here, but we just got word from north sector of some friction between our people and a couple of VKS guards at their checkpoint.”
“Friction over what?”
