more overt.338 Lapua Magnum, and while she preferred the latter ammo, the mission dictated more stealth and those unmarked shell casings provided by the general and friends in her home state.
She blinked hard and returned to her night-vision scope. He was still there, all right, and at any moment he would begin speaking into the microphone covering his mouth. As soon as he did, Diaz would tip off the captain that her man had just made his radio check.
Captain Gummerson asked himself for the second time,
Gummerson stood under the control room's crimson lights, ears pricked up for the next message.
Meanwhile, the OE-538 multifunction masts that were
'They move in yet?' asked the XO as he entered the control room.
Gummerson shook his head. 'No. All Mitchell's done is step up to the plate.'
The XO shrugged. 'Sometimes you wait for your pitch.'
Gummerson cocked a brow. 'And sometimes you strike out looking.'
While it might be the wee hours in China, it was twelve hours earlier at USSOCOM, and General Joshua Keating strode past banks of screens displaying network data, from satellite intel all the way down to the camera mounted on Captain Scott Mitchell's earpiece.
At the moment, Keating couldn't understand why Mitchell was taking so much damned time to analyze the pictures captured by his portable drone.
Keating was, in fact, a few seconds away from getting on the horn and blasting Mitchell for his delay.
But he liked Mitchell. Wanted to trust him. Wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Dr. Gail Gorbatova of the DIA, who was seated beside one of her intelligence analysts, rose from the desk and approached him. 'General, we are wondering—'
'About the delay,' he finished, drawing in a deep breath through his teeth.
'Our colleagues at the CIA are wondering the same thing and have no explanations from their people. And we have our mole standing by.'
'Excellent. Now we're still gathering intel, so if you would, Dr. Gorbatova, just have a seat.'
Keating returned to his computer and keyed up the intel coming in from Mitchell's Ghost Team: grainy green pictures of the castle, the helicopters, the trucks, and even Diaz's point of view as she balanced her crosshairs over one of the two Chinese snipers. Everything looked perfect.
A voice echoed through the room: 'Ghost Lead, this is Bravo Lead. Our targets will take cover from the rain any second now. Captain, we need to move now!'
'Ghost Lead, this is Diaz. Wind speed is getting worse and can really mess up my shot, sir.'
'Bravo Lead, this is Ghost Lead,' said Mitchell. 'Stand by. And Diaz, hold.'
'Captain Mitchell? This is Lieutenant Moch, Predator support, sir. We've identified a power company truck en route to your transformer station. ETA approximately ten minutes, sir.'
Keating clenched his fist and imagined himself screaming at Mitchell:
Despite his frustration, Keating knew that senses and intuition captured in real time by a commander on the ground far outweighed any digitized picture transmitted over thousands of miles.
Special Forces truth: Human beings were more important than hardware. What's more, Mitchell's own tactical assessment could be very different than what they viewed at USSOCOM. If the captain were waiting for something, then he had a damned good reason.
However — and this was a
More voices echoed in Mitchell's earpiece, and more faces appeared in his HUD, but he just lay there, mouth hung open.
At the moment the power had been cut, Mitchell had ordered Smith to launch the MAV4mp Cypher. In the minutes that had followed, Mitchell had navigated the drone high above the central building and had been able to identify the positions of every guard posted there: three at each of the silos, two at the central building with one on the roof, and the two snipers. His threat assessment, replete with flashing red diamonds, was complete and available to his people.
Mitchell steered the drone as low as he dared, and just as he had tapped the joystick, ready to fly the Cypher home, the guard on the roof turned to reveal a cane fixed to his belt.
With jittery hands Mitchell zoomed in with the drone's camera, trying to pull up a more detailed side view and muttering to himself that no, it couldn't be, that these kinds of Escrima sticks or canes or other martial arts clubs were commonplace among military men, that after ten long years, there was no way in hell that this guy, on top of this roof, in China of all places, could be Captain Fang Zhi.
But the camera's zoom worked remarkably well. And Mitchell knew that cane. That face. Those eyes.
Was it a remarkable coincidence? Fate? Was Mitchell being forced back through an open door that had never closed?
What the hell was Fang doing in China? Had he defected? Mitchell had lost track of the man — and purposely so — because he'd had to go on with life. That was the advice he'd given Rutang, and that was the advice he'd lived by.
But he'd never forgotten Fang's cowardice, or Captain Foyte impaled on those
Twelve men had entered the jungle on Basilan Island, and only three had come out, thanks, in part, to Fang Zhi.
The scar on Mitchell's chest burned anew.
And now he was back on that field, squaring off with Fang, only this time Fang had no chance to draw his sword. This time, Mitchell had a pistol jammed into Fang's forehead, and when he squeezed the trigger, all he heard was Beasley crying in his earpiece, 'Captain, we have to move—
TWENTY-SIX
