by Dan Davis
“Right, well, everyone has been here since January so you got four or five months to catch up on. Tell you the truth, I’m surprised they let you in, sir. Not sure what you’re supposed to do if you missed months of tests and everything.”
“What tests have I missed?”
Aides to the Generals Branca and Alvarez had briefed him on what to expect before they had packed him off. Onca had gotten the distinct impression that they were either hiding things from him or they were hiding how ignorant Brazil was about UNOP’s inner workings.
“I just mean the physical tests and the proficiencies tests and that kind of thing, you know.”
“I do not know, Sergeant.”
“Right. Sure. The tests are like endurance races of ultramarathon distances and they do sprints. Reaction time tests. Then there’s shooting range tests with every weapon you can think of. Hand to hand combat. Plus, tactical tests, timed runs in the Killing House. There’s written tests, too. VR stuff. They get tested in the midday sun, inside the deep freezer rooms, they do a lot of this with and without all kinds of combat gear, plus space suits. They test everything, sir. Trying to find the best of the best of the best. The best cubed, you know what I mean?”
At a right angled, blind corner, the jeep almost plowed through a group of US Army soldiers undergoing physical training in formation. The driver yanked the wheel so drastically that the jeep cornered on two wheels. Onca grabbed the roll bar handle over his head and slammed a hand on his bag to stop it falling out. Samuels span the wheel back and the jeep bounced down on all four wheels again, swerving away from a decorative stone wall around an administration building off the side of the road.
Onca glanced over at his driver. “Are you qualified to operate this vehicle, Sergeant?”
“I work for the General, sir. Sometimes my duties require me to drive. Most of the time, I work in the HQ.”
“Are we in a particular hurry?”
“Sorry, sir, I just don’t get out much. Here we are. Follow me, please, sir. Let me take your bag, sir.”
The HQ was a huge building, all concrete and industrial steel but dressed up with squared off, sparsely-planted flower beds. An ostentatious statement in the middle of a desert, for all their scrawniness.
Onca only had to wait a half hour before he was shown into the General’s office, which in senior officer terms is practically being rushed straight inside. The General sat behind her desk, an aide at her shoulder holding out a screen for her signature. Onca stood at ease in the center of the room and waited.
“Major Santos,” the General said. “I’m dreadfully glad that you are able to join us. However, you must understand that you are exceedingly late to the party.”
“Yes, General. But I am here now.”
“Your file is most impressive. And I have heard of you, of course. Most importantly for us, your preliminary test scores and your biotech enhancements would seem to qualify you for our selection program. Assuming they are accurate.”
He allowed the final insult to the integrity of the Brazilian authorities, did not rise to the bait. He had far less faith in their honesty than anyone could.
“Yes, General.”
“You have a steep mountain to climb and I’m not sure there is enough time for you to reach the summit. But I can assure you I will give you every opportunity to do so. Now, I’m sure after your travels you will wish to rest today so Captain Williams will show you to your quarters. Tomorrow you can begin the program. Welcome to Patton. And welcome to UNOP.”
She picked up her screen and the aide, Williams, stepped up. A typical rear echelon type, with obsequiousness written all over his pasty face.
“This way, Major,” Captain Williams said. “If you please.”
“Actually, General,” Onca said. She looked up, surprised. “I have been resting for so many hours that I lost count somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. I would prefer to get started right away.”
She raised an eyebrow, her mouth twitched at the corner. Then she nodded once at her aide Captain Williams and picked up her screen again.
“The teams are at the rifle range, sir,” the aide said. “Please, follow me.”
Onca fought down the urge to salute the General before he left. Either there was no saluting at the base or they just weren’t saluting him. Either way, he decided, he would not be the only chump throwing one-way salutes.
Another jeep ride. He jumped in the front passenger seat again, beside the waiting Sergeant Samuels. This appeared to irritate Captain Williams, who climbed into the rear and snapped instructions at the driver.
The rifle range was four kilometers away on the far side of the base, opposite the airfield. Even with the Sergeant’s suicidal driving technique, it took a long time to get there, weaving through the wide streets of the base, past parade grounds and barracks blocks and training grounds.
“Looks like a real base,” Onca said to the Sergeant next to him.
“It is real,” Williams shouted from the back seat. The Sergeant kept his mouth shut. “It’s home to the Eleventh Rapid Response Force, US Army.”
“But Sergeant Samuels was just telling me how this is all fake,” Onca said. “Just to distract from the UNOP activity.”
The Sergeant’s face was expressionless.
“Not at all,” Captain Williams said from the back. “It’s a working base. The conventional forces do provide physical security for the Project and also help to keep prying minds from enquiring about all the activity going on here. The media and the locals don’t have any reason to be more curious about this base than anyone would be about any other.”
“Locals?” Onca asked over his shoulder. He could not imagine anyone choosing to live in a desert.
“Well,” Captain Williams chuckled. “There’s a town about two hundred kilometers due west of here but all that’s there is a couple of bars and a whorehouse for the mining community.”
“Sounds like my kind of place.”
Williams laughed in a high-pitched snort, his nerves showing.
“So, the Eleventh RRB provide security,” Onca said. “Do you get terrorist attacks here?”
“No more than any other military base. We get the usual bomb drones flying in from time to time but the AA net picks them off far over the horizon. We’ve not seen any other forms of attack, thank goodness. But then, they must know they’d never breach our perimeter.”
“You’d be surprised what a terrorist will do even if he knows it’s a lost cause.”
“Of course, this is your area of expertise, is it not?”
You’re god damned right it is.
Onca nodded. “Spent most of my career in counter-terrorism.”
“It’s in your file.” Williams edged forward. “In the Brazilian Army and then you set up a cooperative with many former comrades. How did that happen?”
“The Army and I had a minor disagreement,” Onca said.
“Oh,” Williams sounded embarrassed. “Well, you will enjoy speaking to Hiroko Takamura, she was a counter-terrorist operative for the Japanese Defense Force. And Pia Norris ran a private military outfit, too, now I think about it.”
Onca turned slowly in his seat. “Two of your potential operatives here are women?”
William’s looked blankly back. “Er,” he sputtered. “Women, yes. Of course. In fact, there are nine women still in the running, out of thirty. Why would there not be?”
Onca sighed and turned back. If they were letting women get this far in the selection process, then Onca knew he had been lied to about the stringency of the tests. No matter how much you wanted it to be the case, the elite cubed could never include women. They were just too small, too weak and too slow. Some of them were good shots but they generally lacked the aggressiveness and decisiveness of men.
He also knew then that his chances of being the best of everyone had improved quite considerably.
But he said none of that to Captain Williams, who spluttered his outrage at the mere expre
ssion of surprise that women be involved. That was Americans for you.
The sounds of the rifles cracked in the desert air long before the jeep crested the last rise and pulled to a stop.
Around fifty people arrayed along the firing line, which was exceptionally long indeed. The targets beyond stretched far into the swirling, miraged air down range and they resounded with the impacts of the rounds fired by the soldiers nearer to him. The men and women stood or lay prone or in various stances and positions, shooting everything from pistols to machine guns. Tables groaning with the weight of weapons lay in a shaded area to one side, covered with awnings to protect the metal from getting too hot to touch with bare hands. Instructors or advisers spoke to some of the shooters while others recorded, tapping away on screens or filming and recording narration. Above, a swarm of drones buzzed. At the periphery, far from the action but poised and ready for action, were six mobile AA units, their barrels and rocket pods pointed up and out, ready to intercept missiles or bomb drones.
Captain Williams leaned in and shouted in his ear. “Come on. I will introduce you. To the Colonel.”
They crunched over to the shaded area toward a man who sat hunched in a plastic lawn chair with a big black sheet over his head fluttering like parachute fabric. On the way over, Onca took care to note which of the thirty shooters reacted to his appearance. Some of them turned and stared openly and those he marked as the ones who would come for him first. They were, generally, the biggest and strongest, physically and had the highest levels of testosterone. It would be their nature to attempt to assert their dominance over a new male entering the group.
“Colonel Boone,” Captain Williams announced. “I have Major Santos, up from Brazil, finally.”
The figure pulled his blanket, revealing that the Colonel was a hulking great muscle man. Under the blanket, he had a screen with a 3D display, which was washed out and practically invisible in the desert sun. He had the kind of dense, taught flesh that came after decades of juicing and heavy lifting. The military-style buzz cut suggested he felt ready to bang on a helmet and march off to war at a moment’s notice. His skin was deeply tanned and his face lined from all the sun and wind and life he had experienced.
“Major,” the Colonel said, his voice as tough and sand-blasted as the rest of him. “Or should that be former-Major?”
“I usually go by Onca, Colonel.”
“Alright,” the grizzled giant said, slouching back in his plastic chair. “You know, it’s a funny thing. I heard you were dead, Onca. Heard they dropped a building on your head.”
Onca shrugged. “I’ve survived worse.”
Colonel Boone grunted a couple of times, which Onca presumed was meant to be a laugh. “You’ve done some great things and no doubt you would have done some great things here. Unfortunately, you’re late. I don’t know how you will get up to speed quickly enough to avoid the cut. We have a bar here, Onca.” The Colonel held out one massive forearm, covered in a riverine landscape of bulging veins, over his lap and parallel to the ground. He slowly lifted his arm upward. “Every day, we move this bar up. This bar represents the minimum standards every individual here must meet in order to avoid being cut. It is this bar which motivates the people to achieve truly superhuman standards in shooting, stamina, strength and combat ability, measured by tactical awareness, battlescape management, CBQ and hand-to-hand combat both armed and unarmed, with a variety of weapons, tactics, and operational outcomes.”
“No problem.”
“I don’t think you understand, Onca. You won’t have time to reach the standard set by the previous weeks and months of training here. I’m afraid that this is going to be a short trip for you. I hope that you enjoyed your time in the United States.”
Back when Onca had applied for the Special Forces Brigade, during the selection process the officers in charge had attempted to demotivate the applicants, repeatedly questioning your commitment and your ability. I’m sorry, son, they would say. I’m sorry but you’re just not what we’re looking for. You don’t have what it takes. Why not quit now? You’re embarrassing yourself, you would make it easier on everyone if you bailed now.
“What do I need to achieve, Colonel?” Onca asked. “In order to stay until the end of the day.”
The big man paused, his parachute-blanket half over his head. “I’m sure you’re confident of success. That’s because you don’t understand what you’re up against. These aren’t ordinary soldiers we have here.”
“I’m not ordinary either.”
“I’ve seen your file, I know what upgrades they’ve given you. I bet you feel like you could hurdle the moon but, compared to what we have here, your toughened bones and high-efficiency muscles ain’t going to mean dick.”
“I wasn’t talking about my upgrades.”
The Colonel grunted. “Everyone thinks they’re special shit. You know we had close to two hundred heroes at the start of this process and every one of them was the best in the world. Thirty left, the best of the best.”
Onca turned and surveyed the row of people firing downrange.
“Who’s the best shot?”
Colonel Boone glanced at his aides and at Captain Williams.
“Who’s bottom of the pile today?”
“Char Debusey, right now, sir,” of the aides said, reading off a screen.
“Out-shoot that woman,” Boone said, “and maybe you can stay another day.”
Before the Colonel buried his head under the blanket again, Onca was sure he saw a small grin on the man’s big, grizzled face.
When Onca strutted over to the weapons tables on the way to the shooting line, the looks from the others became increasingly overt. It was clear than many of them had augmentation biotech implanted into their flesh. Three of them wore bulky, power-assisted armor.
“Welcome to the program, sir,” the quartermaster behind the table said. He was stripped to the waist but had the bearing of a senior NCO. “Can I interest you in a weapon today?”
“What do I have to use?” Onca asked Captain Williams. “To beat this person called Char Debusey.”
Williams pursed his pink mouth and peered down the line, lowering his shades and squinting. “She’s using the M-32 battle rifle.”
“That’s this one, right?”
The quartermaster kept a perfect NCO blank expression. “No, sir. That’s the M-42. This is the 32.”
“I’m sure you don’t need to use exactly the same weapon that she is using,” Williams said. “What is your preferred loadout?”
“For a battle rifle? Most of my career I used the IMBAL AD-9. Which you won’t have. But I have trained with many weapons. I will use the M-32.”
The quartermaster grinned, presumably believing that he was seeing an arrogant man who was about to be embarrassed. But Onca knew weapons. He had trained extensively with the M-42 and used an M-32 when choosing gear for Sabre Rubro. Some soldiers become extremely attached to particular weapons and speak evangelically about this or that manufacturer or specific variant. It made a certain amount of sense. It takes time to become completely used to a weapon’s idiosyncrasies. Balance, optimum rate of fire, the location of every button and mechanism, the most comfortable stance. And although no one weapon could excel at everything, some weapons were objectively better than others. Yet, once you got to the upper echelons of small arms manufacturers, almost every product they offered was simply an accurate and reliable tool for putting high-velocity rounds into a target.
“Thirty-two rounds in the magazines?” Onca asked. “Safety here, firing mode, magazine release here? And it pushes the first round into the chamber automatically, right?”
“Right on all counts, sir.”
He took the M-32 to the firing position they directed him to and lay down to zero the telescopic sight. On the rocky desert floor, they had bolted alloy grills along the long row at the head of the firing range, elevating them a few centimeters above the hot sand blowing just underneath. Atop the grills were p
lates, two meters’ square or so, each with a huge white number. Onca lay down on the number forty-two, amazed that it was cool to the touch. He had seen plenty of non-conducting alloys before. He even owned guns made from them. But there must have been tons of the stuff at the firing range, costing who knew how many millions of dollars. In Brazil, they would have just thrown a blanket down on the ground. Typical Americans.
Around him, many of his new comrades eyed him with open curiosity. He ignored them, for now. He needed to focus completely on the task at hand and would leave the others for later. Captain Williams ducked down beside him and held out a small case with a pair of ear protectors inside. Onca nodded his thanks as he pushed them in.
The telescopic sight was medium strength with a wide-angle lens, ideal for medium range and multiple targets. He lined up on the hundred-meter target and fired. It was only a few centimeters out, high and to the left so he needed no more than five shots to be sure he had the sight zeroed for that range. He did the same at two hundred and three hundred meters until he was getting such a tight grouping that the holes in his target tore a gaping, ragged hole in the center.
“I’m ready for the test,” Onca called to Captain Williams, who was standing a few paces behind him.
Williams approached as Onca stood and reloaded. “Nice shooting. They’ve programmed a standard sequence. You’ll fire standing, in a static position. You’ll have targets pop up along this corridor from twenty meters to four hundred meters. Targets will be fully extended from point-five up to three seconds. There will be between sixty and eighty targets. One round for each is a score and the closer to the center of the target, the higher the score. Questions?”
Onca shook his head, tucked two additional magazines in his belt, planted his feet and pulled the rifle into his shoulder. If the targets would come as close as twenty meters, he would have to go in and out of the telescopic sight.
“Ready?” Williams asked.
The other shooters slowed or stopped. He felt the eyes of dozens turn toward him.
Block them out. Only you exist. Only you and your target.