by Tom Clancy
That caused a little nervous laughter.
"We would like to avoid casualties on either side if at all possible, so we will utilize flashbangs, puke gas, and pepper fog to neutralize threats. No one is to fire unless fired upon first, and then only if the other side is using armor-piercing rounds, which is highly unlikely. Our intelligence indicates that most of the soldiers in Bissau are armed with Kalashnikovs—when they are armed at all—and issue ammo is standard Soviet Bloc surplus.
"Let me be clear on this point. We are not at war with this country, and we don't want to leave bodies piled up all over the place, understood?"
There was a mumble of acknowledgment.
"We are set to collect the package at 0130 hours. Any questions so far?"
Nobody had any.
"After Beta Team collects the package, we will rendezvous with Alpha at the assembly point, then proceed to the landing site. Whatever our status on the ground, the Hueys will lift at 0230 hours and proceed on the prearranged flight path back to Banjul. If you miss the bus, you'll have a long walk home. Any questions?"
There were no questions.
"All right then. Finish suiting up and lock and load. We leave in one hour. Dismissed."
The pilots and squads filed out into the rain, which was finally beginning to slacken. Michaels, Toni, Winthrop, and Fernandez stayed behind with the colonel.
"Got your gear?" Howard asked Michaels and Toni.
He was referring to the Kevlar helmets and hardweave armor vests he had given them. They weren't going into combat, but he'd insisted that if they were going in the copters they must wear them. And he'd also issued them each a suppressed pistol, which he also wanted to see strapped on. There was always a chance the copter could blow a gasket or take small-arms fire and be forced to land. It was better to be armed than not when moving overland in hostile territory. And with a gun that didn't make a lot of noise.
"Got them," Toni answered for herself and Michaels.
"You know you really should stay here," Howard tried again.
"You've assured us the danger is minimal," Michaels said.
"Minimal is not the same as none," Howard said.
"I appreciate your concern," Michaels said. End of discussion.
"All right. We're set then. Winthrop will be with me on Beta Team, Sergeant Fernandez leads Alpha. Our projections run between eighty-eight-percent and ninety-three-percent success, if we've plugged in all the proper variables. This ought to be a piece of cake. In and out, quick and clean. By this time tomorrow, we should be well on our way home."
Michaels nodded.
"I'll see you at the transports in fifty-five minutes."
Tuesday, January 18th, 11 p.m. Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
Platt hated this damned country. Being stuck in a mud hut that sat there and cooked in the hot sunshine all day hadn't helped his mood. Hell, even when it rained a frog-drowner like it had this afternoon, it still didn't get cool. Just muggier, so your sweat wouldn't even evaporate, it just rolled down your legs and soaked into your socks. It was like sitting in a steam bath with your clothes on.
He looked at his watch for the fiftieth time since it got dark. He was about a mile from the pink palace, the Land Rover parked inside a tin shed next to the mud house. The house's owner, a white-haired old man, was tied up and lying on the col in the corner. The old guy hadn't seemed too fretted about a man with a gun barging in. He'd damned near brained Platt with his walking stick—he was a lot faster than he looked. Another two inches and the party would have been over; as it was, the stick had left a scrape over Plait's left ear.
These jigs weren't complete pushovers like he'd figured. That bothered him. If the palace guards were up to snuff, that could be a real problem.
After he'd gotten the stick away, Platt had trussed the old man up like a hog. Near as Platt could tell, the old boy was asleep. Couldn't get away, hell, might as well take a nap. In the old man's place, Platt didn't think he'd feel so cool.
The idea of being taken out by a nigrah was… was unreal. He had to be more careful.
He'd planned to wait until around midnight before he headed for the palace, but Platt had had enough of this hanging around. He was going now. They'd roll up the sidewalks around here by eight or nine anyhow—if they'd had sidewalks.
He changed into a black T-shirt and black pants, with black tennis shoes and black socks. What skin showed was stained pretty dark, and it wouldn't show up too well at night. He tucked a little flashlight into his back pocket and strapped on the Browning 9mm, with two extra magazines in pouches on the other side of the web belt, next to the sheath knife. He had a screw-on suppressor for the pistol; he'd put that on when he got there. Coiled over his shoulder was a half-inch hemp rope with knots in it every two feel, and a steel grappling hook on one end. He thought about taking the AK, but decided against it and left it in the Rover. But he did hook the pouch with the two old German hand grenades in it onto the web belt. Things got nasty, he would go out with a bang…
As ready as he was going to get, Platt rolled his shoulders and bent his neck left and right to stretch, waved at the sleeping old man, and started out. He was gonna move careful, so it might take him a couple-three hours to get where he was going.
If Hughes had company in bed, they were going to get a surprise along about 1:30 or 2 a.m. Platt was looking forward to it.
12:40 a.m.
Howard piled into the ancient pickup truck last, and dropped the piece of canvas that covered the back opening. The pickup was an old one-ton Chevy, and the owner had built a wooden frame over the bed and stretched canvas over the frame, so the thing looked more or less like a motorized covered wagon.
"Go!" Howard commanded.
One of Beta Team drove. The driver started the motor and the truck lurched off. When he shifted into second, the driver clashed the transmission gears together, and one of the troops said, "Hey, grind me a pound too!"
Howard glanced at Lieutenant Winthrop, whose face looked awfully pale in the darkness, then looked at his watch.
Alpha Team was already on the road in a similar dilapidated vehicle.
Howard had been assured that no matter how bad they looked, the trucks were mechanically sound, and would take them to and from where they wanted to go.
He sure hoped so.
The locals would have heard the copters coming down, no way around that, but local police response time to motor noises in the night wasn't likely to be real fast—if they bothered to come out and check at all. And as soon as Beta Team was another quarter mile farther up the road, its truck would stop, whereupon two soldiers would hop out and rig flashbangs on the road's shoulders. These devices would be controlled by a pressure strip set on the only road leading from town to the helicopters. If any local cops or troops came out to check on things, they'd would get a light and noise show that would make them stop and think. So would anybody else out driving this late, but that wasn't likely to happen. This was a narrow dirt road that dead-ended at a forest, and the people who lived off this path didn't own automobiles. The pressure strip would let a bicycle or motorcycle pass over it without firing the flash-bangs.
The day's heat hadn't abated much, and Howard felt the sweat soaking his clothes. They were wearing tropical-weight assault uniforms under the SIPEsuits, but in this kind of high-temperature, high-humidity weather, any-weight clothes were too much.
"You all right, Lieutenant?"
"Sir, I'm fine," she said.
Then she said, "Actually I'm a little nervous, sir."
He smiled at her. "Only a little? I personally am scared spitless. Pucker Factor of about twelve."
That got a little smile out of her. Yeah, she was a soldier, but she wasn't a combat trooper, she'd never been on anything other than sims or training exercises. She was a computer expert, one of the best, and she didn't have to go into the field. Net Force was not like RA, where if you wanted to advance in rank, sooner or later you had to have some field experien
ce. But she'd wanted to do this, and Julio had vouched for her, so she was here.
"Really?" she said. "You?"
"If you don't feel fear, you can't be brave. Brave is when your bowels are like ice and you're terrified, but you go out and do the job anyway. I don't want troopers who are fearless. They're the first ones to get taken out when the situation goes hot. Fearless and stupid go together."
"Thank you, sir."
He smiled. "You'll do fine, Winthrop. You're wearing state-of-the-art combat armor; anything that might get thrown at you will probably bounce right off."
"That's not how Sergeant Fernandez tells it, sir."
Howard chuckled. "Well, of course, Julio is the exception that proves the rule. He's a good man, Fernandez. Best I have."
"I think quite highly of him myself," she said.
1 a.m.
Hughes got up and went to the bathroom. He shouldn't drink anything after ten at night. He knew better; he woke up every time he did having to go urinate.
He was a little peeved too. Monique hadn't shown up tonight, she wasn't answering her com, and nobody seemed to know where she had gone. Domingos said she had done that before, disappeared for a day or two. He suspected she either had a local lover or went off to do drugs. Some of the locals grew prime ganja—it wasn't hard to come by.
Ah, well. It wasn't as if Hughes needed her to be here—he'd done more screwing in the last few days than he had in months—but he didn't like surprises. That was the trouble with whores. No matter how high-priced they were, you couldn't depend on them. You needed to think of them like Kleenex. You used them, then you disposed of them, and the next time you felt a sneeze coming on, you plucked another one from the box.
He smiled at his metaphor, then waded through the thick carpet back to bed. The hum of the air conditioner would put him back to sleep soon enough.
1:15 a.m.
Getting into the compound had been harder than Platt had figured. The trees had been cut back from the walls, and there was all that broken glass on top too, but he'd managed to get over using the rope and grapple without slicing himself to ribbons.
Shit, every time he turned around, things were tougher than he'd expected. He'd been here before, on the inside, but he'd never figured he'd be going in over the wall the next time he came to visit.
He'd figured that once he was inside, all he'd have to do was keep from stepping on one of the sleeping guards, then make his way into the main building. But maybe the guards weren't going to be sleeping. He could get his ass handed to him if he wasn't careful.
He paused, then screwed the sound suppressor onto the Browning's threaded barrel and tightened it. Gun would still make a fair pop! if you shot it—the suppressor wouldn't stop the noise coming out of the slide when it went back and the spent shell ejected—but with subsonic ammo, it wouldn't be like a bomb going off or anything. You could miss the noise if you weren't too close.
Getting in would be tricky, ‘cause the guards in the house would sure as hell be awake and told to shoot first and don't ask questions. But there was a way in, something he had seen when he'd been here before. There was a trash chute coming out of the kitchen that led into a big metal trash container next to the kitchen exit. The chute was big enough to put a whole can of garbage into at once, and it was big enough for a man to get through too, if he didn't mind getting covered with old banana peels and coffee grounds and rotten fruit.
Platt headed for the garbage chute.
1:25 a.m.
Howard and Beta Team went in over the east wall. There was a grove of orange trees between the nearest building and the base of the wall where they came down, offering cover. Fortunately, according to the CIA, the President of this country did not like to hear the barking of dogs, so there weren't any roaming the grounds.
The team moved through the orange grove, got to the prearranged position, spread out, and went prone. The main building was right in front of them.
Howard looked at his watch.
He held up his hand, three fingers spread. "In three minutes, people," he said quietly.
1:30 a.m.
Julio Fernandez counted the seconds off aloud. "Five, four, three, two, one!"
Fernandez pressed the detonator stud on the IR control.
Two hundred yards away, a low-roofed warehouse stored full of cashews and palm kernels for export went up in a blinding white flash and a boom! that rocked the truck in which Fernandez and the others Alpha Teamers sat.
Flames spewed high, and bits of debris pattered back down, in a rain somewhat harder than the locals were used to.
A shower of nuts bounced off the truck's roof and hood.
"Now that's how to roast cashews," Fernandez said. "That ought to give ‘em something to worry about. AMF, we're outta here! Roll!"
The driver cranked the truck and wheeled it out onto the road. They passed a wailing fire engine a mile away, and Fernandez waved at the firemen.
"Good luck putting that one out, boys."
1:30 a.m.
The warehouse flashed brightly, followed in a couple of seconds by the sound of the explosion. Lights went on in the main building, and guards rushed out, weapons held ready, excited voices jabbering away.
"Move in!" Howard commanded.
The two point men, Hamer and Tsongas, scuttled toward the half-dozen guards who were waving their assault rifles and looking puzzled. The point men wore backpack foggers, high-pressure tanks filled with military-grade pepper spray. They were within twenty feet of the nearest guards before they were noticed, and by then it was too late. As the guards turned to bring their weapons to bear on the threat, Hamer and Tsongas cut loose.
The pepper fog boiled out in a long white cloud that enveloped the unfortunate guards. Unlike Mace or even commercial five-percent pepper spray, whose effects a man might shrug off, pepper fog was impossible to ignore. It got into your breathing passages and eyes, and you couldn't stop your body's reaction. Your eyes swelled shut and you dropped to the ground, trying to find air you could breathe. For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, you weren't going to be doing much of anything except wishing you'd never been born.
Howard had gone through the training, he'd eaten the fog, and he knew how those guards felt.
The military stuff was designed to spew hard and settle out fast, but you wanted to wait a few seconds before you ran through the area you'd just fogged, and you wanted your goggles or spookeyes down when you did it.
"Go, go!"
The point men moved in to disarm the squirming guards, while two more troopers offered cover.
Howard and Winthrop headed for the door with the other six team members. He remembered to hold his breath. Two of Beta peeled off to cover their flanks, while two more ran into the building through the open front door, Howard and Winthrop right behind them, handguns drawn.
Nobody in the hall to stop them, Howard saw. The main staircase was just ahead. "Third floor! Go, go!"
With Winthrop next to him, Howard ran for the stairs.
1:31 a.m.
Platt was in the kitchen, scraping what smelled and looked like fermented mayonnaise off his arm, when things went wonky. He saw a bright light strobe the window next to the back door, and heard an explosion in the distance that rattled the hanging pots and pans.
What the hell was that!
He didn't have time to worry about it, though. A guard ran into the kitchen, spotted Platt, and raised his assault rifle to pot him.
Platt already had the Browning nine in his hand. He indexed the guard and shot him twice—pop! pop!—right in the center of mass. Wasn't too loud—
The guard stopped, looked down at his chest as if he was annoyed, then went back to swinging his AK around at Platt.
Man! Platt put the next two into the guard's face. The guy dropped like a boneless chicken. That ended that.
Goddamn pansy nine-millimeter! You couldn't get a decent .45 or .357 in these foreign countries—they restricted you to small-caliber
if you were a civilian!
Platt scooted across the kitchen and opened the door to the electric dumbwaiter. The tiny elevator was going to be a tight fit. He hit the button for the third floor, then squeezed himself into the little box and let the door shut. The dumbwaiter groaned, not having been designed for this much weight, but it rose. He heard somebody else make it into the kitchen and start yelling in oogaboog as the dumbwaiter lifted, but by then they didn't know where he was.
1:33 a.m.
Apparently the residents knew enough to stay in their rooms. Nobody tried to stop them as the went down the hall on the third floor.
Winthrop was glad. The H&K pistol in her hand didn't offer the comfort she thought it would. It felt like an alien device, despite her training, too barrel-heavy because of the silencer, the grip sweaty. She didn't particularly want to shoot anybody, though she thought she could if she had to.
"Third door on the left," the colonel said.
The two Beta Team troopers split, one going past the door, the other stopping on the near side. They turned so they were facing away from each other, covering both ends of the hall.
Howard reached the door and tried the knob. Locked. He nodded at her, pointed at the room. "I'll get the door, you go in."
She nodded in return, said, "Okay," through dry lips.
Howard raised his foot and kicked the door open. Winthrop dived in and rolled, just as she had done in VR so many times, and came up on one knee, the pistol pointed in front of her.
Thomas Hughes, dressed in white silk pajamas, sat up in bed, where he had obviously been sleeping until that moment.
"Who the hell are you? What do you want?"
The colonel stepped in behind Winthrop. "Mr. Hughes," he said. He smiled. "Commander Alexander Michaels at Net Force would like to have a word with you."
"I don't think so," somebody said.
Winthrop snapped her gaze to the glass door leading out to the balcony. A tall, dark, and muscular man stood there, holding an odd-looking device in one hand. She swung her pistol around to cover him.
