“Either he sits this out, or we keep him in the basement as security.”
Brent shifted through the group and faced Schoolie. “How we doing, bro?”
Schoolie shook his head and bore his teeth. “Don’t send me back. This is just my luck.”
“We can keep you with the gear. You need to stay below ground and to avoid full exposure.”
“Brent, I’ve got an idea,” said Thomas. “After I set up my sticky cams, we let Schoolie run them. That frees me up to focus on communications intel.”
“What do you think?” Brent asked Schoolie.
“Beats sitting on the bench,” said the big man.
Brent nodded to Thomas. “Let’s do it.” Then he whirled to regard the rest of the team. “Everyone else good to go?”
As they nodded, raised their thumbs, or shook their fists, a circle of avatars representing each Ghost appeared in Brent’s HUD, with his own positioned in the center. All but one of the figures showed green suits, fully online, fully functional. Schoolie’s avatar showed a flashing red line at the helmet seal, as expected. Beside each avatar floated data bars that included vital signs, weapons carried, ammo, and the combatant’s current GPS position, among other details.
With the flick of his gloved index finger, Brent minimized the report to the HUD’s margin and returned to the “home” image of scanning the battlefield for potential threats.
They broke into four teams:
Brent, Daugherty, Noboru, and Thomas were Alpha team.
Lakota, Copeland, Heston, and Park made up Bravo.
The sniper team was always known as Charlie and was staffed by Riggs and Schleck.
Delta team or the “base” team was actually a one-man show. Schoolie would still have a chance to do his part.
Brent’s team led the others up along the embankment. They wove their way between the marina buildings, wary of contacts and keeping tight to the walls.
The suit’s 360-degree sensors and three-dimensional audio queuing heightened Brent’s situational awareness, and the results of seeing what was behind him and sensing the depth of sounds around him was so effective that he couldn’t help but smile. The taxpayers had sure bought him some nice toys.
Within five minutes they reached the pedestrian footbridge spanning Sheikh Zayed Road. The concrete walls afforded some cover, so they crouched down and hustled across. Working their way on foot to the Gold and Silver Towers some 0.75 kilometers away was unavoidable, and doing so in broad daylight seemed surrealistic, but as Dennison had mentioned, the patrols had vanished like insects fleeing the light of day.
The team left the bridge and descended another concrete access way toward the Lake Terrace Tower, a forty-floor office building standing in the shadow of the much more massive Almas Tower.
“We have solar-powered surveillance cameras all over the place,” said Thomas. “Sensors picked up their motors first, but now I’ve locked on to their broadcasts.”
“Roger that, me, too,” said Lakota.
“Hold up,” Brent ordered. They strung out along a footwall beside the valet parking entrance to the Lake Terrace Tower. “Everybody sight a camera. The system will tell you if you’re doubling up. I want eleven knocked out on my mark. Stand by…”
They raised their rifles, and Brent waited until the computer confirmed that each one of his people had sighted a different surveillance camera.
“Uh, Ghost Lead, this is Remus,” called Thomas, using his call sign and reminding Brent of George, who’d gone by the other Roman twin, Romulus. “I have an idea.”
“Not right now. Stand by, everyone.”
There were four more cameras in their path toward the Gold and Silver Towers, but knocking out this many in one fell swoop would speed up the infiltration.
“Locked on,” called Lakota.
Brent took a long breath. “In three, two, one. Fire!”
Eleven suppressed rounds sliced the air, and the flashing red dots superimposed over Brent’s HUD all went gray, nearly in unison.
“Wow, that’s one for the textbooks,” cried Lakota.
Brent gasped. “You’re damned right it is.”
“Uh, Ghost Lead?” called Thomas again. “I could have jammed those video signals in about ten seconds. They’re using old-school technology, and it’s not even encrypted.”
“Don’t ruin my moment,” said Brent with a laugh. “But all right, then. Jam the rest. And keep them jammed.”
“You got it, Boss.”
Brent rose. “Let’s move out!”
As they bolted off, Brent told the computer to issue him verbal warnings regarding the proximity of enemies in the zone. The computer began to issue those reports, and as expected, two vehicles were inbound from another office building about a kilometer northeast of their position, ETA five minutes or less. Those men had probably sought shelter underground.
“Hustle up, people, they’re coming to check on their camera problem…”
“Got ’em, too,” said Lakota.
Chopra had tried to persuade the young sheikh to go along with his plan, but the boy had refused, and now it seemed inevitable that the country’s assets would be surrendered to a thug — unless Chopra was willing to sacrifice himself. It might come to that. Did he have the courage? Would that be the ultimate repayment for being rescued from the slums? But if he stood up to her, and she shot him, the boy could only get her into the computers inside the vault, not the vault itself. He’d be useless. She’d kill him.
“Listen to me,” he had whispered to Hussein while the Snow Maiden had been out of the room and they were being watched by a man posing as a hotel employee. “I’ll tell her that if your vital signs are broken while inside the vault, the entire area is rigged to detonate.”
“Is this true? Did my father tell you this?”
“No, but telling her the vault might explode could be the only way to save your life — after you give her what she wants.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to do that.”
“Now you might have to. I think if we go against her, she’ll kill us both and walk away, without getting anything. I think that’s in her nature.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s a sociopath.”
The boy snorted. “You mean a psycho?”
“I mean she no longer has a conscience. And she’s working for others, so she might not care.”
“Can I tell you something stupid?” The boy lowered his voice even more. “I feel horrible about what happened to everyone back home. But my life was so boring. And this is really exciting.”
Chopra took a deep breath. “You understand this is real.”
“Duh.”
“You’re not watching this on TV. You saw the people she killed.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then you
“I know.” He thought a moment. “So you’re right. We have to give her what she wants.”
Chopra widened his eyes. “And then what? What reason would she have to keep us alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen to me again. I’m telling her if she kills you, the vault will explode. And you’ll go along with that.”
“I don’t think she wants me to die.”
“Don’t believe anything she says.”
“If you lie, I’ll tell her,” said Hussein.
“Why have you taken her side?”
