Act of War

by Dale Brown

  “If we changed our profile to include things like helicopters, ma’am, we’re losing the thing that makes us distinctive and gives us an edge—our speed and flexibility,” Jefferson said. “We’d be just another Marine or Army Ranger mixed light infantry–helicopter company.”

  “Then I suggest we practice more and get our times down, Sergeant,” Bolton said, “before the White House disbands us in favor of some grunt unit.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jefferson responded, making the “sir” sound more like “cur.” Sergeant Major Jefferson was unaccustomed to civilians telling him what to do while training his men, especially civilians that rarely, if ever, picked up a gun or rode in military vehicles.

  There was an uncomfortable pause for a few moments; then, Kelsey keyed the mike on her walkie-talkie: “Okay, Sergeant Moore, let’s give the Goose a try.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Staff Sergeant Moore, mounted inside CID Two and positioned near the helicopters’ landing zone, responded. He turned toward the oil compound and issued a command via an eye-pointing system inside his helmet. There was a loud pop! and a projectile, resembling a long bowling pin, fired from the unit’s backpack. When the projectile reached fifteen meters’ altitude, a set of long thin wings popped out of its body, a small jet engine started, and the projectile flew up and away like a tiny jet plane. A few moments later, Moore launched another. The projectile was a GUOS, or Grenade-Launched Unmanned Observation System, nicknamed “Goose,” a remotely operated drone with a tiny camera on board that sent back pictures to a ground observer team or to the CID pilot from as far as forty kilometers away and four kilometers’ altitude.

  “Two Geese away, both in the green,” Moore reported. No one responded to him. “They should be on station in five minutes.” Still no reaction. “Ma’am, I think CID could’ve reached that compound and taken out those perimeter targets faster than the buggies.”

  “After the task force gets it down in the buggies, maybe we’ll give it a try,” Kelsey said noncommittally, turning to the portable surveillance monitor set up in her Humvee.

  “Or maybe not,” Bolton said under his breath.

  “Ready to activate random gunfire, ma’am,” Jefferson said.

  “Do it,” Kelsey responded. Automated emitters inside the compound would fire laser beams outside, which would be scored as small arms fire with the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System. The emitters were just distractions, added to enhance the realism of the exercise.

  All of the officers observing the exercise were just simply amazed at the precision and accuracy of the “Rat Patrol” dune buggy gunners. They were indeed getting better by the minute: after just two complete orbits of the perimeter, Sergeant Moore reported, “Ma’am, I see smoke coming from every defensive position. They did it. Every Stinger site and machine gun nest destroyed by TALON.”

  “Those guys are incredible,” Kelsey said. “Congratulations, Sergeant Major.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jefferson responded. “But that was only phase one. These guys work best on the ground.”

  The six dune buggies surrounded the oil refinery, and twelve Task Force TALON commandos in pixilated desert camouflage fatigues, Whisper Mike communications headsets, Kevlar helmets, safety goggles, gas masks, and M-16 rifles fitted with the MILES direct fire training system modules dismounted. The six dune buggy drivers moved their vehicles away from the perimeters, then configured the pedestal-mounted weapons on their vehicles to fire remotely from the driver’s seat. The twelve commandos joined up into three groups of four and began to approach the refinery at preselected entry points. Each commando carried an M-16 rifle with a retractable stock to make it more compact, along with pouches of ammo and gas grenades; one commando in each team had an M203 grenade launcher attached under his rifle for additional firepower.

  Maxwell was the first to break radio silence: “TALON, One,” he radioed, “look sharp, I just found a booby trap. Claymore mine with a fishing-line trip wire.” Each team leader checked in, acknowledging they heard the warning. Maxwell disarmed the Claymore—a smoke grenade, not a high-explosive mine—and proceeded on. Several more traps were discovered on their way in. The more they found, the sharper their attention became. This was just a first exercise, sure, but at least Kelsey DeLaine and Ray Jefferson were making it interesting right off the bat!

  They made it to the perimeter fence without tripping any of the five mines they discovered. The barrier was a simple three-strand electrified enclosure, typical of those used for farm animals. Fearing the fence might be wired to set off an alarm or an explosive if cut, the teams decided to slip under the lower wire—until they spotted the trip wires on the other side, less than a centimeter aboveground, attached to more smoke bombs. “Good setup here, Kelsey,” Maxwell said on his comlink.

  “Thank you,” Kelsey acknowledged. “Continue.”

  After a short discussion, the teams decided to jumper the electrified fence wires, then cut them. No alarms or booby traps were set off, and they were able to disarm the Claymores inside the compound. The flat desert floor made it easy to spot more trip wires and booby traps set up inside the fence. One team member was able to move up to a mechanical dog—actually a wooden box on legs with ultrasonic emitters and a speaker that would emit barking sounds if activated—and disarm it without it detecting his presence.

  “Pretty amazing,” Kelsey said off the air to Special Agent Carl Bolton seated beside her. “Thirty minutes after launch and they’ve reached the inside of a well-guarded and booby-trapped oil refinery without setting off one noisemaker. They’ll be done in five minutes.”

  “They’re the best of the best, that’s for sure,” Jefferson said. He made a few more notes, but he had precious little to debrief the team so far. “They’re acting like they’ve trained together for years.”

  “This is better than I hoped,” Kelsey said. “If we can find another twenty guys to bring out here like this, we’ll be operational in plenty of time with an entire platoon ready for action, with one in reserve.”

  “I’m just glad we’re not screwing with that CID thing,” Bolton said, completely ignoring Doug Moore standing almost right beside him in CID Two. “We’d still be sitting in a classroom learning how each and every microchip fits together. Do those eggheads really think it’s that important to learn how that stuff works? Those briefings are the most God-awful boring things I’ve ever been to.”

  “It’s impressive, but Richter and Vega are just out of their element,” Kelsey said, trying to be upbeat. “They’re not helping themselves, that’s for sure. We made the right decision by deferring their participation for now.”

  “Definitely,” Bolton said. He focused in on the refinery again. “They’ve started the search. Moore?”

  “The Gooses are on station,” Doug Moore reported. He was watching the imagery from the GUOS unmanned aerial vehicles through his helmet’s electronic visor. “Imaging infrared sensors active…I’ve got the three TALON elements in sight…Team Three, CID Two, hot contact, one o’clock, eleven meters…Team Two, no contacts…check that, Team Two, I’ve got a stray blip at your three o’clock, fifteen meters. Might be residual heat from a timer or chemical package.”

  “Checks,” the TALON team leader radioed back. “Demo charge with a mechanical timer. Deactivated.”

  “Roger that,” Moore acknowledged. “Team One, stop, stop…” But it was too late—a robot “terrorist” swung around on a mechanical pivot and fired a MILES laser beam. One commando was hit in a nonlethal spot: his backup “killed” the “terrorist” with a three-round burst. “Sorry about that, One.”

  “If you can’t help them out, Moore, then terminate and let them do their job,” Bolton complained.

  “It had an infrared shield on it,” Maxwell reported. “Very clever, hiding it from the Goose’s sensors. We would’ve completely missed it and it would’ve hosed us if the Goose hadn’t warned us. I’m starting to develop a fondness for our little Goose friends up there, Ke
lsey.” Bolton shook his head but said nothing.

  In less than ten minutes, assisted by Doug Moore and the GUOS drones, the task force had “killed” more than a dozen “terrorists” and deactivated six demolition charges and booby traps set up in various parts of the complex. “Excellent work, guys, excellent,” Kelsey said. “Mission accomplished. Let’s head back to the training area, get cleaned up, and…”

  “Something’s happening,” Doug Moore in CID Two suddenly interjected.

  “What?”

  “GUOS Two has detected a high-speed vehicle approaching,” Moore said, studying the downloaded images in his electronic visor. “It’s Major Richter, ma’am. He’s…watch out!”

  Suddenly there was a tremendous “Craashh!” and CID One burst through the outer perimeter fence. Several live Claymore mines exploded, but Richter kept right on coming. He ran through the avenues in the complex at a very high speed, firing smoke grenades at all of the already-attacked targets. Several MILES laser guns opened fire on him, scoring hits. The Task Force TALON commandos were stunned at how fast the CID unit was traveling and how accurate it was launching grenades.

  “Knock it off, Richter,” Kelsey radioed, waving at the smoke wafting in her direction. “The exercise is over. Stop before you run over someone.” But Richter kept right on going, running faster and faster, dodging around pipes and tanks with incredible speed while firing in all directions. Once all the targets were destroyed, Richter stood triumphantly in the center of the complex, raising his hands and jumping from foot to foot like a huge robotic Rocky Balboa on the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. “What a hot dog. Bring it in, Jason.” He turned to acknowledge an imaginary crowd, swatting at a steel pipe still left standing, then turned again, still dancing…

  “Watch out!” Moore shouted. The steel pipe had been holding up a steel tank on a short steel pedestal, and when Richter broke the pipe the tank teetered over and crashed on top of him. “Major!” Moore shouted from within CID Two, running up to Richter.

  Helped by CID Two, Richter got CID One to its feet and came trotting up to where Kelsey, Bolton, and Jefferson were standing. It unloaded its backpack and assumed the “dismount” stance, and Jason Richter climbed out a few moments later. He immediately began examining the robot’s left side. “Jason! What did you do?” Kelsey shouted as she stepped quickly over to him. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I lost everything for a moment there.”

  “You know better than to just run out onto a live fire range without getting clearance from the range supervisor!” Bolton shouted. “You did this on purpose to screw up our exercise and turn attention to your CID stuff.”

  “Hey, Bolton, you can kiss my ass,” Richter retorted angrily. “I thought you guys were done and it was my target.”

  Kelsey felt bad that the CID unit was damaged, and she was impressed that it had assaulted the complex so quickly and so effectively. Fortunately no one got hurt, and the task force had already done pretty well on their morning training. It was a good first exercise, despite the unwanted intrusion. She walked over to where Richter was examining the robot’s back. “What happened to it, Jason?” she asked.

  “Cracked an access panel,” he said worriedly. “The primary hydraulic power pack is leaking. It’s more maintenance than I can do here—I might have to take it back to Fort Polk.”

  “How long will it take to fix it?”

  “I have no idea—maybe a couple days, maybe a week.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Bolton interjected sourly. “Maybe we’ll get some work done around here for a change.”

  “Button it, Carl,” Kelsey said. “All right, Jason, you and Ariadna can head on back.”

  Jason nodded dejectedly. “Okay. There’s an Army Research Lab C-130 here from Fort Polk right now—I’ll just hitch a ride with them. I don’t want to stow the CID because of the break, so I’ll just walk it into the cargo bay.”

  Kelsey nodded. This was the first real sign of emotion she had ever seen from Jason Richter—it should’ve come as no surprise to her, she thought, that he reserved his deepest feelings for a machine. “Sorry about your robot, Jason,” she said. “Get back as soon as you can. We’ll use CID Number Two as scheduled.” Jason nodded, shot Bolton an angry glare, which did nothing but increase the size of the smirk on his face, climbed back inside the robot, started it up, picked up his grenade-launcher backpack, and trotted back toward the task force base, moving a little awkwardly.

  Bolton shook his head as he and Kelsey watched the robot run out of sight. “I thought that thing was more sophisticated than that,” he remarked.

  “I thought it did pretty well—a lot better than a Humvee, dune buggy, or helicopter could,” Kelsey said. “But I’m glad we decided not to go with it right now. That should get us off the hook with Jefferson for us not wanting to use it, too.”

  “It looks like a wounded raccoon hobbling away,” Bolton observed. “Maybe he won’t interfere with our training for a while.” He turned to speak with the commandos as they returned to the range controller’s pad. Kelsey watched the CID unit trot away for a few more moments. It did look rather pitiful. Richter’s pride and joy, brought down by a small grenade. This is not going to look good in front of the brass, she noted.

  Back at the task force training area, Ariadna was shaking her head as she watched CID One trot up and saw Jason dismount. “I got the call from Doug,” Ariadna said. “I can’t believe you broke CID One.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “What were you doing in the middle of that training exercise?” Ari asked.

  “I wanted to see how well I could find all the targets,” Jason said. “I was watching the GUOS downlinks the whole time and found a couple mines the task force didn’t.”

  Ari shook her head, then stepped closer to Jason and asked, “Okay, J, what’s going on? Why did you go over there?”

  Jason looked at his partner for a few moments, then shook his head and replied, “Because I was pissed they didn’t invite us out there for the first field test,” he said. “I wanted to show him that we don’t need all those dune buggies to do our job—CID can do everything they can do, and better.”

  “That wasn’t a very smart move, doofus,” Ari said. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

  “We’ve shown many times how impervious CID is to grenade and heavy weapons fire,” Jason said. “The tank falling on me was a lucky shot. I wasn’t worried.”

  “You’re crazy, that’s why—you’re too stupid to be worried,” she replied, trying to keep her tone of voice lighthearted but serious at the same time. “Don’t do it again.”

  “Yes, Mom. I’ll be careful.” Ari shot him an exasperated glance and began examining the damaged compartment. Jason’s cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it while Ari hooked up a portable monitoring unit and recharger from the Humvee. Jason made sure his special encryption routine was running before checking the caller ID readout and replying: “Kristen? How are you? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  “I’m fine, Jason,” Kristen Skyy responded. He could hear a great deal of airplane noise in the background. “Listen, I have a hot lead, and we need to move as quickly as possible. I have a jet ready to take us to Brazil, but we have to leave this morning.”

  “This morning?” Jason exclaimed. “I don’t know…”

  “My source tells me he’s got a lock on one of GAMMA’s head guys,” Kristen said. “But they’ve been moving around every couple days. We need to be down there tonight. I got us a plane that can take us to Brazil in seven or eight hours. We’ll arrive at Clovis airport within the hour. My pilot says if we can leave in the next hour, we can be down at São Paulo shortly after sunset.”

  Jason threw his mind into overdrive as he tried to work out the logistics. They barely had enough time. They had to grab as much supplies and ordnance as they could and go immediately. “I’ll be there, Kristen,” Jason said. “I’
m not sure how I’ll manage it, but I’ll be there. Gotta go.” He hung up.

  “It doesn’t look too bad, J,” Ariadna said as Jason went back to her. “Failed main hydraulic power pack. The secondary power pack picked up the slack.” She showed him a slightly damaged access panel on the robot’s back approximately where the left kidney would be. “The hydraulic lines look okay thank God, but the fiber-optic connector needs replacing. I think I might have the parts I need, but I need a good two or three hours.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “I can fix a rainy day, as long as it’s in my lab, J,” she said confidently. “But in the field, reliably enough for combat? Maybe…probably…yes, I think so. I have to take apart the left data bus assembly to change the fiber-optic cable—that’s practically the whole left side’s electronics. It’s not difficult, just time-consuming work.”

  “Do we have a spare?”

  “Spare power pack—sure. Spare access door—no,” Ari replied. “Looks like the entire left edge of the panel is cracked—we won’t be able to secure it tightly. We don’t have any equipment for making repairs to composite structures here. I’ll need the material, a frame, an autoclave…”

  “Can we secure it in place temporarily?”

  “I think I might have some duct tape,” Ari quipped. “Why? You’re thinking about finishing the exercise with the rest of the task force?”

  “That call was from Kristen,” Jason said. “She has information on that terrorist group GAMMA. They located one of its leaders, in São Paulo, Brazil…”

  “Brazil?”

  “They move around a lot, and her source says our only chance to grab him will be tonight.”

  “Why don’t we get the FBI or the locals to do it?”

  “Because it’s our job, Ari,” Jason said. “If Kristen knows where this guy is, maybe the locals do too, and he’s free because he’s working with the locals. We need to get down there.”