by Tom Clancy
“I like this one,” Dave Dawson said, hefting his G3 rifle. The black German-made weapon had fine balance and excellent sights. He’d been the site-security chief in Kansas, another true believer who didn’t relish the idea of flying back to America in federal custody and spending the rest of his life at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary—a part of Kansas for which he had little love. “What do we do now, Bill?”
“Okay, we split into pairs. Everybody gets one of these.” Henriksen started passing over handheld radios. “Think. Don’t shoot until we tell you to. Use your heads.”
“Okay, Bill. I’ll show these bastards what a hunter can do,” Killgore observed, liking the feel of his rifle as well and pairing off with Kirk Maclean.
“These, too.” Henriksen opened another door, revealing camouflage jackets and pants for them to wear.
“What can we do to protect ourselves, Bill?” Steve Berg asked.
“We can kill the fuckers!” Killgore replied. “They’re not cops, they’re not here to arrest us, are they, Bill?”
“Well, no, and they haven’t identified themselves, and so the law is—the law is unclear on this one, guys.”
“And we’re in a foreign country anyway. So those guys are probably breaking the fucking law to be here, and if people want to attack us with guns we can defend ourselves, right?” Ben Farmer asked.
“You know what you’re doing?” Berg asked Farmer.
“Ex-Marine, baby. Light weapons, line-grunt, yeah, I know what’s happening out there.” Farmer looked confident, and was as angry as the rest of them at the upset of their plans.
“Okay, people, I am in command, okay?” Henriksen said to them. He had thirty armed men now. That would have to be enough. “We make them come to us. If you see somebody advancing toward you with a weapon, you take the bastard out. But be patient! Let them in close. Don’t waste ammo. Let’s see if we can discourage them. They can’t stay here long without supplies, and they only have one helicopter to—”
“Look!” Maclean said. A mile and a half away, the black helo landed at the far end of the runway. Three or four people ran from it into the woods.
“Okay, be careful, people, and think before you act.”
“Let’s do it,” Killgore said aggressively, waving to Maclean to follow him out the door.
“They’re leaving the building,” Noonan said. “Looks like thirty or so.” He looked up to orient himself on the terrain. “They’re heading into the woods—figuring to ambush us, maybe?”
“We’ll see about that. Team-2, this is Command,” Clark said into his tactical radio.
“-2 Lead here, Command,” Chavez replied. “I can see people running out of the building. They appear to be armed with shoulder weapons.”
“Roger that. Okay, Ding, we will proceed as briefed.”
“Understood, Command. Let me get organized here.” Team-2 was intact, except for the absence of Julio Vega, who’d just arrived on the second helicopter delivery. Chavez got onto his radio and paired his people off with their normal partners, extending his line northward into the forest, and keeping himself at the hinge point on the southern end of the line. The Team-1 people would be the operational reserve, assigned directly to John Clark at the command post.
Noonan watched the Team-2 shooters move. Each friendly blip was identified by a letter so that he’d know them by name. “John,” he asked, “when do we go weapons-free?”
“Patience, Tim,” Six replied.
Noonan was kneeling on the damp ground, with his laptop computer sitting on a fallen tree. The battery was supposed to be good for five hours, and he had two spares in his pack.
Pierce and Loiselle took the lead, heading half a kilometer into the jungle. It wasn’t a first for either of them. Mike Pierce had worked in Peru twice, and Loiselle had been to Africa three separate times. The familiarity with the environmental conditions was not the same thing as comfort. Both worried about snakes as much as the armed people heading their way, sure that this forest was replete with them, either poisonous or willing to eat them whole. The temperature was rising, and both soldiers were sweating under their camo makeup. After ten minutes, they found a nice spot, with a standing tree and a fallen one next to it, with a decent field of fire.
“They’ve got radios,” Noonan reported. “Want me to take them away?” He had his jammer set up already.
Clark shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s listen in to them for a while.”
“Fair enough.” The FBI agent flipped the radio scanner to the speaker setting.
“This is some place,” one voice said. “Look at these trees, man.”
“Yeah, big, ain’t they?”
“What kind of trees?” a third asked.
“The kind somebody can hide behind and shoot your ass from!” a more serious voice pointed out. “Killgore and Maclean, keep moving north about half a mile, find a place, and sit still there!”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, Bill,” the third voice agreed.
“Listen up everybody,” “Bill’s” voice told them. “Don’t clutter up these radios, okay? Report in when I call you or when you see something important. Otherwise keep them clear!”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“You say so, Bill.”
“Roger.”
“I can’t see shit,” a fifth responded.
“Then find a place where you can!” another helpful voice suggested.
“They’re in pairs, moving close together, most of ’em,” Noonan said, staring down at his screen. “This pair is heading right for Mike and Louis.”
Clark looked down at the screen. “Pierce and Loiselle, this is Command. You have two targets approaching you from the south, distance about two-fifty meters.”
“Roger, Command. Pierce copies.”
Sergeant Pierce settled into his spot, looking south, letting his eyes sweep back and forth through a ninety-degree arc. Six feet away, Loiselle did the same, starting to relax as far as the environment was concerned, and tensing with the approach of enemies.
Dr. John Killgore knew the woods and knew hunting. He moved slowly and carefully now, with every step looking down to assure quiet footing, then up and around to examine the landscape for a human shape. They’d be coming in to get us, he thought, and so he and Maclean would find good spots to shoot them from, just like hunting deer, picking a place in the shadows where you could belly up and wait for the game to come. Another couple of hundred yards, he thought, would be about right.
Three hundred meters away, Clark used the computer screen and the radios to get his people moving to good spots. This new capability was incredible. Like radar, he could spot people long before he or anyone else could see or hear them. This new electronic toy would be an astounding blessing to every soldier who ever made use of it . . .
“Here we go,” Noonan said quietly, like a commentator at a golf tournament, tapping the screen.
“Pierce and Loiselle, this is Command, you have two approaching targets just east of south, approaching at about two hundred meters.”
“Roger, Command. Can we engage?” Pierce asked. At his perch, Loiselle was looking at him instead of his direct front.
“Affirmative,” Clark replied. Then: “Rainbow, this is Six. Weapons-free. I repeat, we are weapons-free at this time.”
“Roger that, I copy weapons-free.” Pierce acknowledged.
“Let’s wait till we can get both of ’em, Louis,” Pierce whispered.
“D’accord,” Sergeant Loiselle agreed. Both men looked to their south, eyes sharp and ears listening for the first snapped twig.
This wasn’t so bad, Killgore thought. He’d hunted in worse country, far noisier country. There were no pine needles here to make that annoying swishing sound that deer could hear from half a time zone away. Plenty of shadows, little in the way of direct sunlight. Except for the bugs, he might have even been comfortable here. But the bugs were murder. The next time he came out, he’d try to spray some repel
lent, the physician thought, as he moved forward slowly. The branch of a bush was in his way. He used his left hand to move it, lest he make noise by walking through it.
There, Pierce saw. A bush branch had just moved, and there wasn’t a breath of wind down there to make that happen.
“Louis,” he whispered. When the Frenchman turned, Pierce held up one finger and pointed. Loiselle nodded and returned to looking forward.
“I have a visual target,” Pierce reported over his radio. “One target, a hundred fifty meters to my south.”
Maclean was less comfortable on his feet than he would have been on horseback. He did his best to mimic the way John Killgore was moving, however, though both keeping quiet and keeping up were proving to be incompatible. He tripped over an exposed root and fell, making noise, then swearing quietly before he stood.
“Bonjour,” Loiselle whispered to himself. It was as though the noise had switched on a light of sorts. In any case, Sergeant Loiselle now saw a man-shape moving in the shadows, about one hundred fifty meters away. “Mike?” he whispered, pointing to where his target was.
“Okay, Louis,” Pierce responded. “Let them get closer, man.”
“Yes.”
Both men shouldered their MP-10s, though the range was a little too far as yet.
If there was anything larger than an insect moving, Killgore thought, he couldn’t hear it. There were supposed to be jaguars in this jungle, leopard-size hunting cats whose pelts would make a nice throw rug, he thought, and the 7.62mm NATO round this rifle fired should be more than adequate for that purpose. Probably night hunters, though, and hard to stalk. But what about the capybaras, the largest rat in the world, supposed to be good to eat despite its biological family—they were supposed to feed during the day, weren’t they? There was so much for his eyes to see here, so much visual clutter, and his eyes weren’t used to it yet. Okay, he’d find a place to sit still, so that his eyes could learn a pattern of light and darkness and then note the change in it that denoted something that didn’t belong. There’s a good spot, he thought, a fallen tree and a standing one . . .
“Come on in, sweetheart,” Pierce whispered to himself. At one hundred yards, he thought, that would be close enough. He’d have to hold a little high, like for the target’s chin, and the natural drop of the bullet would place the rounds in the upper chest. A head shot would be nicer, but the distance was a little too far for that, and he wanted to be careful.
Killgore whistled and waved to Maclean, pointing forward. Kirk nodded agreement. His initial enthusiasm for this job was fading rapidly. The jungle wasn’t quite what he expected, and being out here with people trying to attack him didn’t make the surroundings any more attractive. He found himself, strangely, thinking of that singles bar in New York, the darkened room and loud dance music, such a strange environment . . . and the women he’d found there. It was too bad, really, what had happened to them. They were—had been—people after all. But worst of all, their deaths had not had any meaning. At least, had the Project moved forward, their sacrifice would have counted for something, but now . . . but now it was just a failure, and here he was in the fucking jungle holding a loaded rifle, looking for people who wanted to do to him what he’d done. . . .
“Louis, you got your target?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Pierce called in a raspy voice, and with that he tightened his grip on the MP-10, centered the target on the sights, and squeezed the trigger gently. The immediate result was the gentle puff-puff-puff sound of the three shots, the somewhat louder metallic sound of the cycling of the submachine gun’s action, and then the impact of all three rounds on the target. He saw the man’s mouth spring open, and then the figure fell. His ears reported similar sounds from his left. Pierce left his spot and ran forward, his weapon up, with Loiselle in close support.
Killgore’s mind didn’t have time to analyze what had happened to him, just the impacts to his chest, and now he was looking straight up into the treetops, where there were small cracks of blue and white from the distant sky. He tried to say something, but he wasn’t breathing very well at the moment, and when he turned his head a few inches, there was no one there to see. Where was Kirk? he wondered, but found himself unable to move his body to—he’d been shot? The pain was real but strangely distant, and he lowered his head to see blood on his chest and—
—who was that in camouflage clothing, his face painted green and brown?
And who are you? Sergeant Pierce wondered. His three rounds had sprinkled across the chest, missing the heart but ripping into the upper lungs and major blood vessels. The eyes were still looking, focused on him.
“Wrong playground, partner,” he said softly, and then life left the eyes, and he bent down to collect the man’s rifle. It was a nice one, Pierce saw, slinging it across his back. Then he looked left to see Loiselle holding an identical rifle in one hand and waving his hand across his throat. His target was bloodily dead, too.
“Hey, you can even tell when they get killed,” Noonan said. When the hearts stopped, so did the signals the DKL gadget tracked. Cool, Timothy thought.
“Pierce and Loiselle, this is command. We copy you took down two targets.”
“That’s affirmative,” Pierce answered. “Anything else close to us?”
“Pierce,” Noonan replied, “two more about two hundred meters south of your current position. This pair is still moving eastward slowly, they’re heading toward McTyler and Patterson.”
“Pierce, this is Command. Sit tight,” Clark ordered.
“Roger, Command.” Next Pierce picked up the radio his target had been carrying, leaving it on. With nothing else to do, he fished into the man’s pants. So, he saw a minute later, he had just killed John Killgore, M.D., of Binghamton, New York. Who were you? he wanted to ask the body, but this Killgore fellow would answer no more questions, and who was to say that the answers would have made any sense?
“Okay, people, everybody check in,” the citizens band walkie-talkie said over Noonan’s scanner unit.
Henriksen was just inside the treeline, hoping that his people had the brains to sit still once they found good spots. He worried about the incoming soldiers, if that’s what they were. The Project people were a little too eager and a little too dumb. His radio crackled with voices acknowledging his order, except for two.
“Killgore and Maclean, report in.” Nothing. “John, Kirk, where the hell are you?”
“That’s the pair we took out,” Pierce called into Command. “Want me to let him know?”
“Negative, Pierce, you know better than that!” Clark replied angrily.
“No sense of humor, our chief,” Loiselle observed to his partner, with a Gallic shrug.
“Who’s closest to them?” the voice on the radio asked next.
“Me and Dawson,” another voice answered.
“Okay, Berg and Dawson, move north, take your time, and see what you can see, okay?”
“Okay, Bill,” yet another voice said.
“More business coming our way, Louis,” Pierce said.
“Oui,” Loiselle agreed. He pointed. “That tree, Mike.” It had to be three meters across at the base, Pierce saw. You could build a house from the lumber from just that one. A big house, too.
“Pierce and Loiselle, Command, two targets just started moving toward you, almost due south, they’re close together.”
Dave Dawson was a man trained in the United States Army fifteen years before, and he knew enough to be worried. He told Berg to stay close behind him, and the scientist did, as Dawson led the way.
“Command, Patterson, I have movement to my direct front, about two hundred meters out.”
“That’s about right,” Noonan said. “They’re heading straight for Mike and Louis.”
“Patterson, Command, let ’em go.”
“Roger,” Hank Patterson acknowledged.
“This isn’t very fair,” Noonan observed, looking up from his tac
tical picture.
“Timothy, ‘fair’ means I bring all my people home alive. Fuck the others,” Clark responded.
“You say so, boss,” the FBI agent agreed. Together, he and Clark watched the blips move toward the ones labeled L and P. Five minutes after that, both of the unidentified blips dropped off the screen and did not return.
“That’s two more kills for the our guys, John.”
“Jesus, this thing’s magic,” Clark said after Pierce and Loiselle called in to confirm what the instrument had already told them.
“Chavez to Command.”
“Okay, Ding, go,” Clark responded.
“Can we use that instrument to move in on them?”
“I think so. Tim, can we steer our guys in behind them, like?”
“Sure. I can see where everybody is, just a question of keeping them well clear until we bend ’em around and bring them in close.”
“Domingo, Noonan says he can do this, but it’ll take time to do it right, and you guys’ll have to use your heads.”
“I’ll do the best I can, jefe,” Chavez called back.
It was twenty minutes before Henriksen tried to raise Dawson and Berg, only to find that they were not answering. There was something bad happening out there, but he didn’t have a clue. Dawson was a former soldier, and Killgore an experienced and skilled hunter—and yet they’d fallen off the earth without a trace? What was happening here? There were soldiers out there, yes, but nobody was that good. He had little choice but to leave his people out there.
