by Linda Nagata
The CCA was vicious, no question, but they were smart bastards. Better at electronic warfare than us and this was their home territory. We knew they had aerial assets in place. Sophisticated UAV platforms, equipped for detection, jamming, spoofing. Quality toys that were probably going to prevent Command from easily talking to us.
We could have sent in fighters to take them out, but if we did that, Saomong would know we were coming. The brain trust we were after would disappear, and we’d be escalating a hidden war into something visible—so that wasn’t going to happen.
It was up to us to infiltrate, catch their leadership in the open, and take care of things quietly. If we couldn’t get an incoming signal, that meant we wouldn’t have even a surveillance drone to watch the activity around us. I was okay with that. The mission was going to test our skills and I was looking forward to it.
A jerk in the rope just before I hit told me Diego was on his way down. The insertion site was a tiny patch of water-smoothed rock alongside a muddy, rushing stream, with the sapling forest leaning in around it. It was like landing a skydive. That fast. As soon as my boots touched ground I scrambled out of the way. Diego was right behind me. He cleared out quick, blazing a path into the trees, while I stood by to make sure everybody got down okay.
In just a few seconds, we were all on the ground. I gave the crew chief a thumbs-up and followed Mason into cover, listening to the engine noise as our ride pulled out. I couldn’t hear it for long. Not with the wind. It gushed through the trees, sounding like a river flowing overhead, with the squeaks and groans of branches grinding against each other. Every breath I took smelled of rain and sweet rot. And it was cold—a chill on the air that surprised me.
The terrain wasn’t what we’d expected either. Like I said, it was regrowth forest and it was tight. All young trees, just inches between them. We had to weave our way. Slow going. And the rain, blurring our lenses. We couldn’t see three meters.
Diego was on point, steering by GPS, but after twenty minutes he pulled up and we conferenced, our helmets close together so we could keep our voices low.
“GPS isn’t corresponding to terrain,” he said. “Saomong’s got it spoofed.” He knew the electronics better than any of us, so I wasn’t going to question him.
“You remember how to use a map?” I asked.
He cracked a smile. “That’s how I know we’re off course.”
“You’re our scout, then. Get us there.”
It wasn’t easy in the dark, in the rain, but it wasn’t the navigation that really slowed us down. It was the forest. Why the fuck did no one tell us the trees would be like that? We scraped our packs, squeezing between them. And we kept getting hung up. We’d have to drop back and find another way. I started to worry we wouldn’t make our destination in time.
Going in, we were following solid intelligence. That’s what I thought. Detailed intelligence. It was a cooperative mission, American and Chinese.
Somehow the field operatives had learned that our target would be passing a known point on a road, just after dawn. We needed to get there in time to set up an ambush. That was going to be our chance to quietly cut off Saomong’s head and we could not be late.
But nowhere in the pre-mission briefing did anyone think to mention the trees.
And we couldn’t go in by road, we couldn’t use any roads, because the roads were mined and electronically monitored. Anyone without proper credentials wasn’t going to get far. The local civilians didn’t even try anymore. If they wanted to visit between villages, they blazed paths in the forest like we were doing. Only Saomong and their collaborators used the roads.
Francis was tasked with monitoring transmissions from Command. After two hours he called another conference. “EW’s picking up. Saomong is working hard to jam across our frequencies. The software is trying to clean it up, but not much is getting through.”
“We expected communication problems,” I reminded them.
“Yeah, but what worries me,” Francis said, “is we don’t have a way to tell if it’s a cautionary action because Saomong leadership is about to move, or if they know we’re here.”
Jesse was all sunshine despite the storm. “Don’t worry. We’re good. Because if they knew we were here, they’d be after us.”
Mason, old and grim and reliable, put a stop to that happy talk. “If they’re after us, we won’t know until they start shooting.”
“Truth,” I said. “And nothing we can do about it. We focus on the job. Let’s move.”
It took us until oh-four-forty to reach the ambush site. “Two hours behind schedule,” Mason grumbled. But hell, by that point I was relieved we’d gotten there before our deadline.
The mission planners had picked a point where the road curved like a big smile along the base of a steep slope. “This would have been a good position,” Hector whispered, “if not for the damn trees.”
He was right. The trees crowded together there just like everywhere else. We could hide easily enough, but we couldn’t move quickly and we couldn’t get an unobstructed view of the road unless we were almost standing in it. This was a problem, because we were required to collect photographic evidence proving we had targeted the right people. It didn’t matter to Command if we collected that evidence before or after the ambush, but dead targets still had to be identifiable, and that’s not easy to guarantee when the woods light up.
One more minor point: we wanted to be long gone by the time the CCA’s foot soldiers came swarming out of their village barracks.
So, yeah, the trees were a problem, but not enough to stop the mission. We started setting up.
We’d brought with us a weird land-line system that let us wire up a temporary network. It used fine-gauge fiber optic lines. Clumsy. Easy to tangle, easy to break, but while we were sitting still, strung out along the road, it would let us stay in contact without using the radios. Better than nothing.
I reviewed the plan one more time. “We spread out. Take up separate positions. Diego takes point, I follow. We try to scope ’em, get the pictures we need. Once I clear you to shoot, we blow hell out of any vehicle on the road. Incinerate ’em. Then we retreat upslope. Rendezvous on the other side of the hill, where we made our last stream crossing. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Simple and clear.”
“Too easy.”
Idiots. They liked to play the Hollywood role, that cocky confident attitude. But they were professionals beneath it or they wouldn’t have been there with me. Diego, too. He’d been blooded in Kunar. He wasn’t a rookie anymore. The mission prep had been thorough, every piece of equipment checked and triple-checked, the geography memorized, and the faces of the targets memorized too.
“Hand me your lead,” I told Diego.
I plugged his comm line into an adjunct socket on my audio and handed my own lead to Mason. Francis, Hector, and Jesse hooked up one after the other. “Comm check,” I said. “Start with D and move down the line.”
“Delgado.”
“Walker.”
“Abanov.”
“Hue.”
“Chapin.”
“Powers.”
“Thumbs-up if you heard everyone.”
Gloved hands flashed the gesture. We were all good.
“Mason,” I said, “you stay here. Jesse and Francis, spread out down the road.”
I gestured to Diego and he set off, weaving silently between the trees in the direction we expected our quarry to come from. The fiber-optic line shimmered behind him, a spider web in night vision, linking us together. I kept close, only a few steps behind, until I’d gone sixty meters. I stopped when I found a place where the trees were a little more open so I could look down between them at the road. “This is my position,” I said, testing my angle through the scope.
Diego went on, the cable paying out behind him, laying down across fallen twigs and leaves and catching in the ferns, until he found a vantage another sixty, sixty-five meters along.
“Got a good view of the road from here,” he said, whispering over comms. “I can see eighty meters or so. Should be able to scope everybody who’s not under canvas.”
“You do that, you get us a confirmation, and we can burn ’em in a crossfire when they get this far.”
“Roger that.”
We settled in to wait in the dark and the rain. It wouldn’t be long—I hoped. But the road was half flooded, a mud trap. Saomong might cancel their expedition. They might be late. We didn’t have a way to know ahead of time. We would only know when Diego got a visual on the vehicle and passed the word that they were coming.
I wasn’t used to working like that. None of us were. We were used to Command providing oversight, watching the surrounding region with a UAV, forwarding intel. In a normal operation we’d be told when Saomong got in their vehicles, when the ignition turned over, when they got bogged down in a mudhole and spun their wheels.
None of that was getting through. We were operating off stale intelligence. It was like being hunkered down in the heart of a mystery. All we could be sure about was what we could see, and that was the green-tinted chaos of a wind-tossed forest with rain glittering like flakes in a fucking snow globe. I loved it, I did.
Twenty minutes later, things changed. The rain backed off. The wind retreated. Drops were still falling off the leaves and we could hear the wind above us, but on the forest floor no wind was blowing. A faint mist condensed right out of the night and swarms of mosquitoes started flying—but we didn’t have much flesh exposed and our faces were painted. We were okay.
Then Diego spoke in this voice that made my hair stand on end, low and hesitant, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Shaw,” he said, “take a look behind you, five o’clock, twelve meters upslope.”
I didn’t want to give my position away, so I turned slowly, silently. Studied the slope above me, but all I saw were trees. A million fucking trees, spindly trees with moss on their trunks, ferns on the ground between them, and this mist, barely visible, padding the air.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
From farther down the line, Francis said, “Fuck. I do.”
Then I did too. A thread of light. That’s all it was. Shooting between the trees. It lasted a fraction of a second. If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. In the corner of my eye I saw another thread, this one way down the line, close to Francis.
“Laser pulses,” Mason said over comms. “The NVG’s are picking it up. That’s why we’re seeing it. It’s pitch dark out there without the lenses.”
“It ain’t the goddamn trees talking to each other with laser comms,” Hector whispered. “Who we got on this hill with us?”
“Not who,” Diego said. “I’ve got one only eight meters away. Got to be a device. Some kind of security system. Motion sensor. You know how it is. Saomong’s smart. They know we’re here.”
“What the hell,” I said. “You think they got this whole road surveilled? How many point sources you count?”
“I see at least six,” Hector answered.
Way too many for it to be fixed surveillance. It was like the mosquitoes. Whatever was making those flashes, we’d brought it here. Our heat, our presence. We were the lure.
“Go check it out, Hector,” I said. “Don’t get your lines tangled.”
“Do my best.”
I couldn’t see him from where I was. The ground was soft and wet so I couldn’t hear him either. We all waited in silence.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “It’s a fucking—”
Bam!
A short, sharp concussion. Not a gun. An explosive. Not loud either. Just loud in comparison to the silence on either side of it. The flash I saw through the trees was actinic, almost fried my NVG.
Then the forest was buzzing like a nest of wasps had come awake. Far down the line, someone started shooting.
Hired Guns
True stands, arms crossed, one shoulder against the glass. It’s cool in the office but her cheeks are flushed with fear, shock. In her mind she’s in that forest, surrounded by the green-tinted dark and the endless imprisoning trunks of sapling trees.
It takes her a few seconds to register that Shaw has stopped speaking. When she does, her gaze shifts from the abstract, fixing on him. He is still in the corner where he’s taken a defensive position, but it’s as if the program he’s running on has paused. He’s motionless, mesmerized, his attention fixed on something she can’t see, something playing out on the screen of his AR visor.
“What do you have?” she asks him.
He lifts his head to look at her through the glittering lens. “You figured out who’s following you?”
“No.”
That hard half-smile. “Looks like we get a chance to find out.”
She reaches into the front pocket of her jacket, sees him tense up, and hesitates. “Easy,” she urges, and slowly pulls out her MARC. She toggles the power back on, then uses her fingernail to hold down a tiny recessed button. A purple ready light comes on. “Give me a link in.” She holds the visor out to him. “I want to see what you see.”
He scowls behind the screen of his own AR visor, then shrugs. “Stand by.” He uses his data glove to scroll through menus she can’t see. Then, taking his visor off, he holds it close to hers until both devices flash, indicating identities have been exchanged and a link established.
When she puts on the MARC, she sees a livestream. It’s an aerial view of the warehouse district taken from a low angle. Their location is noted by a tag, while a caption identifies the source of the video as a high-altitude UAV manufactured by Shin-Farrell. The surrounding streets are empty except for an SUV rounding a corner three blocks away.
Shaw is wearing his lens again, studying the display. All vehicles capable of autonomous navigation have identifying transponders. He says, “The ID links up with a local PMC. Hired guns. Gotta be.”
True is impressed. “You’ve got a link into the city’s database?”
“Support your local cops,” he says softly. “Background report says they’re a new operation. That makes them a pair of amateurs, desperate for business. They were told to follow you, but they probably don’t know who you are. For sure, they got no clue who they’re gonna find.”
The lethal certainty in that statement sends a shiver through her. She finds herself trying to talk him down. “Come on. They might not find us at all. The way they’re driving, it’s like they think they’ve got the right neighborhood, but they don’t know the exact address.”
“You’re a nice lady, True.”
The truck stops in the middle of a street. A window goes down, two devices take flight. Tags pop up on the video, labeling the objects as Sibolt surveillance drones.
Shaw snorts in contempt. “That didn’t work so well the first time, gentlemen. And around here you don’t get a second chance.”
Fear rises in True’s throat, but not fear for herself. She needs to defuse this situation before someone gets hurt. Right action demands it. “Hey, it’s just surveillance. No need to start a war.” Gentle words, feigned confidence, as she moves toward the door. “It’s not like they tried to hurt me before. I’m going to talk to them, ask who hired them. If we keep it civil, maybe we can help each other out.”
Better to take the risk herself than to let Shaw take action.
His eyebrows rise above the frame of his visor, and then his scarred mouth wrenches up on one side. “Hold on. If you want to play it that way, you’re welcome to it. But don’t go unarmed.” He palms the lock on the safe. “Take a pistol, at least. Insurance.”
Inside the safe is a small collection of firearms. He takes out a pistol, hands it to her. “Nine millimeter, homemade, unmarked.”
Printed downstairs, no doubt. It’s lightweight with a short barrel, easy to stash in a pocket. She checks the load. She would probably be safer if she went unarmed, but she slides the pistol into her jacket pocket anyway.
“Let’s do a voice li
nk,” he says. He kills her video feed, leaving her with a clear field of view. Then he puts through a new link. She accepts it. “Comm check.”
“Comm check affirmed,” she says. She grabs her pack. Shaw is resting hip-cocked on the desk, entranced by his display. “Hey,” she says.
“Yeah?” He doesn’t look up.
“Don’t disappear, okay? I need to hear the rest of that story.”
That quirk of his lips as he meets her gaze. “Ma’am, I am not the one you need to worry about. Let’s make sure you get back, okay?”
“You gonna stick with me, then?”
“Hell, yeah. You’re under my wing now, True, and I am your fucking guidance counselor.”
Just like that. Adopted.
Her eyes close in relief. She breathes out through pursed lips, bleeding off tension. “Okay, then.”
For now, at least, they are on the same side.
“When you get downstairs,” he adds, “wait by the door. I’ll let you know when you can egress without the Sibolts watching.”
~~~
It’s a brief wait but time enough for True to reflect on what she’s seen of Shaw. She realizes now she had thought to find a broken, unstable man, but what she found is more frightening. If asked to describe him, she would use words like calm, logical, rational. A man in complete control of himself. He is also the mercenary Miles encountered in the desert, who supervised the execution of innocent men—she doesn’t doubt it—because alongside Shaw Walker’s calm demeanor is a sense of lethal purpose. It’s there, evident in his nature, clear as a cobra’s hiss.
Her thoughts turn again to his setup, to Variant Forces. This warehouse is part of his operation. No doubt he has other such places. His Arkinsons are housed somewhere. He has to have staff to help administer things. He has to have soldiers under contract.
Where are they? Do they know where he is?
He doesn’t want them to know his business.
Trust no one. That, he said, was the secret to setting up a pirate PMC.
Shaw speaks through comms. “You’re clear to exit. Turn right and proceed quickly past this building and the next one.”