Cutting Edge

the security teams aboard the enhanced 4?4s had begun fighting off his men. It was not their impressive firepower alone that opened a fissure in his confidence — as a former Cameroonian military officer, he’d learned that no amount of planning could prepare one for every aspect of an engagement, that there were always gaps in what was known about an adversary. What mystified him was that the capabilities they’d demonstrated were in such total conflict with everything he’d been told about them. To have gotten incomplete information was something he could accept. But it made no sense that sources he had always found reliable could so wholly and startlingly misinform him, not unless…

The headman’s features stiffened, his fierce brown eyes riveted on the enkindled tree where he had placed his sniper. The helicopter would soon appear over its broken, blazing remnants, and when it did, his opposition would be able to scour the ground for him and his men.

There was no time left for further supposition, not now. He would find another opportunity to throw himself open to them.

Trembling with anger, he raised his handset to his lips and called a retreat.

* * *

As the copter came flying in overhead, Nimec pressed the TRANSMIT button of his Rover’s ground-to- air.

“Pilot, this is CSO, you read me?” he said.

“Roger, sir.”

“We’ve got a mess here. Fatalities. Several wounded, three seriously. They need immediate medevac. There’s a burn vic, don’t know how long he’ll last without treatment.”

“Goddamn. The pack of wolves that did this is on the move, I see them heading toward some off-road vehicles—”

“Let ’em go.” His eyes on the dash display, Nimec was watching his microwave video feed from the chopper’s aerial surveillance pods. “We can’t chase them and get these people out at the same time.”

“Yes, sir. Hang on, we’re coming down. Over.”

Nimec cut the radio, exhausted, holding a cotton pad from a first-aid kit to his forehead. It was soaked red.

“Man,” DeMarco said beside him. “I feel like I’ve been clubbed by a giant.”

Nimec snorted. He reclined against his backrest in silence.

They sat waiting for the helicopter to land. Stretched out behind them in some cargo space cleared by their Rover’s packed-together occupants, Loren released a long, low, wavering moan.

It made the fine hairs on Nimec’s neck and arms bristle.

“A few minutes ago”—DeMarco began, then paused to marvel at those very words out of his mouth. He found it hard to believe so little time had elapsed since the windstorm of flame had come raging over the convoy from the mass of trees in front—“When you were out in the thicket, something made me remember Brazil. I couldn’t even tell you what right now, my thoughts were racing along so fast. Still are. But the raid there, those terrorists hitting us by surprise, almost wrecking the Matto Grosso compound… it feels similar to this in a way.”

Nimec looked at him. “How do you mean?”

“Damn thing is, I’m not sure.” DeMarco made a groping-at-the-air gesture with his hands. “It’s been ages since I read the Shadow Watch case files. But even before we tied it to that maniac Rollie Thibodeau calls the Wildcat, what stuck out at me about the Brazil raid was that it was done by real pros. A HAHO jump insertion, prototype FAMAS assault guns that are just being put into mass production this year… those guys were seasoned fighters, must’ve had serious underwriting.” He shrugged. “Another thing I could never get was what they were trying to accomplish. Always seemed kind of fuzzy to me, like nothing was what it seemed on its face. And the shit that came down on us now makes me wonder on the same accounts. Motive, tactics, equipment.”

Nimec added a fresh first-aid pad.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The connection’s not there for me.”

“Maybe it’s because there isn’t one,” DeMarco said. “But who were these guys? Does it seem to you we were up against two-bit bushwhackers?”

Nimec considered that.

“I wouldn’t lump together every robber gang in the neighborhood as two-bit,” he said. “Some are made up of breakaway soldiers. Men who’ve had combat training from foreign advisers. Russians, Brits, Israelis, our own Green Berets to name a few. The bunch that hit us could fit into that category.”

DeMarco shook his head.

“It still doesn’t explain their ordnance,” he said, and jerked his chin toward the windshield. Up ahead of them, SGF2 mist and dark gray smoke from the burning lead Rover and trees had commingled to blur out the sky and forest, its acrid stench seeping into their ventilation system. “Whatever they used for a showstopper was heavy duty.”

Nimec bounced DeMarco’s main points against his logic. He really didn’t know what could or couldn’t be inferred from them. It was hard for him even to think straight. A man was moaning in pain, maybe dying, less than five feet in back of him. Hard to think. At first blush, though, he didn’t see that the incidents could be compared. The strike in Brazil had been massive, well organized, perpetrated by an enemy that had carefully assessed and exploited UpLink’s vulnerabilities. But their ambushers had gone after a small supply convoy and badly underestimated its defensive strengths. Given the hotel room buggings, and the extent of the surveillance on UpLink personnel in Port-Gentil, Nimec understood there was a very credible possibility that the men who’d struck at them here had backers with a wider agenda and substantial resources — which was a handful of needles and broken glass in itself. To go beyond that at this stage, though…

Nimec wasn’t ruling anything out, not until he’d had a chance to reflect with a clear head. But he’d been with Roger Gordian’s organization long enough to realize it had many disparate enemies, and wasn’t about to make any broad jumps drawing conspiracy theories.

He expelled a breath, looked out his window. The Skyhawk was finally wheels down in the grass.

“We’ll pick up on this later,” he said over the loud whack of its blades. “The guys on that chopper are going to need an assist getting our wounded aboard.”

* * *

His arms crossed over his chest, Vince Scull sat in front of his idling laptop computer at a cramped corner table in a cyber cafe called Zebre Passage, which translated in English as Zebra Crossing, and seemed about as absurd a name to him as Scintillements. More ridiculous, actually. Maybe it was a sign he was getting old, but Scull often looked fondly back on the days when the name of a business would convey most of the information prospective customers needed to know about the services it offered, the products it sold, and whatnot. Macy’s Department Store. Woolworth’s Five and Dime. Ebinger’s Bakery. Howard Johnson Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlor. A customer walked off the street into any of those places, he not only had a very definite idea what he could expect to find, but knew the family name, and in some instances the first and middle initials, or even the full name, of its founder. Talk about a lack of consumer awareness, how were you supposed to draw people through your storefront door when the sign above it told nothing about what you were peddling?

Scull made a grumbling sound and shifted in his chair. What the name Zebra Crossing had to do with a joint that served rollups, scones, coffee, and bottled mineral water while providing Internet access to its customers, he didn’t know. He also couldn’t fathom how the twentyish men and women typing furiously at their keyboards — all of whom were white, and probably the dilettante kids of expat businessmen, and most of whom had come in wearing backpacks with padded sleeves designed for their computers — were able to concentrate on their work amid the flurry of other customers placing orders at the counter, carrying food trays past their tables, settling into chairs, or getting books, file folders, and other odds and ends out of their packs. They seemed so damned self-conscious about looking earnest and definite as they clacked away at their machines, some with headphones over their ears. What were they writing? Class papers? Travel articles? Online music reviews? Books, God forbid?

Scull didn’t understand how they could get anything accomplished. His job assignments took him everywhere on the planet and involved gathering information in every kind of physical environment, but when he actually sat down to prepare a coherent written evaluation, he needed a quiet office, or at the very least a room where he had