The hallway at Eglin AFB was cold. John Donovan's scar tingled slightly. That little memento never liked the cold. He didn't let that break his stride.
He opened the door, smoothly walking into the briefing room.
The briefing room was standard military issue. Grey walls, fluorescent lights, a long table with matched chairs. Maps and satellite photos were already spread across the table's surface. The people sitting around it, however, were anything but standard.
They wore plain olive drab fatigues. No patches, no name tapes, no unit insignia. Aldridge sat at the head of the table, relaxed but alert. Weathered face, close-cropped brown hair, the kind of man who looked like he'd been doing this since before it had a name. Next to him, Graves had his glasses pushed up on his forehead, studying a topographical map through a cloud of cigarette smoke, sandy hair disheveled, the cigarette seemingly welded to his fingers. Cooper sat quietly with his arms crossed, lean and dark-haired, that distant look in his grey eyes that meant he was listening to something no one else could hear. Cheung moved through equipment manifests with the focused precision of a surgeon checking instruments before an operation.
Thomson leaned against the wall near the door, sleeves rolled down, gloves on, cap pulled low.
Donovan still wasn't quite over the blue skin. She was otherwise unremarkable. Solidly built, quiet, moving in the disciplined manner of someone who was very good at killing people and breaking things, but the blue skin skewed the picture. John Donovan had seen some strange things, especially during his time as the liaison to the Canadian branch of the Weapon X program, but this one stuck with him. Rich had been cagey when he'd asked about her...skin condition. He hadn't pushed. There were things you couldn't discuss even with friends.
"Thought I'd run the final brief myself," Donovan said. "You've had the package for a week . Consider this a review. Besides." He paused slightly. "I happened to be in the neighborhood."
Aldridge nodded, leaning back in his chair. "We appreciate the personal touch, Johnny. Walk us through it."
Donovan repressed a eye roll. He placed his folder down and turned off the lights, slapping an image on the overhead projector.
"This is the fine country of San Domingo. Population three million, squeezed between Bolivia and Paraguay. Poor as dirt. Main exports are oil and agricultural products. The current government is a military junta."
He tossed a satellite photo on the overhead. "The junta's been working with AIM to procure energy weapons. Cartel connections, regional destabilization, the usual mess. Unfortunate, but several cartels work with our favourite mad scientists for hire. Not really much of note there."
Cooper leaned back slightly, arms crossed. "Methinks there's a catch."
"Correct. Several months ago, AIM presence on the ground tripled. Personnel movement suggests they're up to something slightly more involved than an arms deal this time."
Donovan switched slides, showing aerial reconnaissance of jungle terrain with a cleared compound visible. "They're very interested in these ruins. Pre-Columbian site, middle of nowhere. AIM staff have been swarming all over it ever since the surge."
"Ruins," Thomson said flatly. "Lovely. Where do we come in?"
Donovan nodded. "Your job is to grab some of these AIM characters from a convoy so we can have a discussion with them."
"MC-130 out of Hurlburt, wheels up at 2300 hours. You'll insert via HALO at 25,000 feet. Combat Talon climbs to altitude, drops you, and egresses immediately. San Domingo's air defense net is poor enough that the ECM package will cover the climb-out, but we're not leaving a valuable airframe orbiting in hostile airspace any longer than necessary."
He moved to the next slide. "Comms and overwatch are handled by an E-3 on station in international waters off the coast. It stays there, it doesn't cross the border, and it has the range and altitude to see everything worth seeing from where it's sitting. You'll have encrypted voice to the bird throughout, and the bird talks to the extraction helicopter."
He clicked to the next slide. "Convoy composition: Recon imagery from forty-eight hours ago shows two EE-9 Cascavel armored cars. Two EE-11 Urutu APCs for troop transport. Two armored trucks for the AIM personnel."
He tapped the image. "Some flavour of BTR as well, sitting in the vehicle park getting prepped with the rest. Soviet hand-me-down. Tells you something about the junta's supply situation that they're running Warsaw Pact kit alongside Brazilian iron, but it's a capable vehicle and whoever's crewing it probably knows what they're doing. Treat it accordingly."
He moved to the next slide. "One thing the imagery doesn't resolve. There's a covered structure at the staging area — large enough for a vehicle, possibly two. Could be maintenance equipment, could be nothing. We don't know what's inside and I'm not going to speculate."
"The armored truck is your target. That's where the AIM people will be riding. Disable it, extract your two VIPs, and get out."
"Rules of engagement on the security forces?" Aldridge asked.
"Expendable if they get in the way. The AIM staff are your primary objective. We need at least two of them, but more are always welcome."
Cooper leaned forward slightly. "How certain are we on the personnel count?"
"Less certain than I'd like." Donovan pulled out a grease pencil and did the math on the acetate overlay. "Two Urutus, standard configuration, call it eight to ten per vehicle. The BTR holds seven in the back, maybe eight if they're friendly. That's your security element. Add vehicle crews and the AIM personnel themselves." He capped the pencil. "Local assets confirmed the convoy departure composition but couldn't get close enough for a precise count. Best estimate is thirty-five to fifty. Plan around the high end."
"What's the terrain like at the intercept point?" Cheung asked.
Donovan switched slides again, showing topographical maps. "Mountain road, switchbacks, limited visibility. Perfect for an ambush. Civilian traffic is minimal after dark."
"Exfil?" Aldridge said.
"Helicopter extraction, LZ here—" Donovan indicated a clearing on the map, "—twelve klicks from the ambush site. You've got ninety minutes from the hit to pickup. Any longer and the junta's going to have response forces in the area."
Graves muttered. "Lovely."
"The helo brings you back to Apia in Columbia. From there, you'll be on a C-141 back to the states."
Donovan paused, glancing at Aldridge. "Questions?"
The team exchanged looks. Cooper shook his head. Thomson cracked her knuckles. Graves lit another cigarette.
"We're good," Aldridge said.
Donovan nodded. "Godspeed CRECY. Wheels up in six hours."
He collected his folder, killed the projector, and headed for the door.
Richard Aldridge missed the class of air transport he was used to with STRIKE. A VTOL with supersonic dash capacity was never amiss when being inserted. The MC-130 was passable, but it didn't quite measure up. Then again, he was less spoiled then some of his team. He'd had some hairy infils and exfils during his time with the Regiment. He checked on his team, almost habitually. You checked on your lads. And lasses, he amended.
Graves, Cooper and Cheung all had their eyes closed. Graves' ever-present cigarettes were missing, and he slept the sleep of the dead. Looked like an anorak. Disheveled hair, glasses pushed up on his forehead. Appearances were deceptive. GCHQ and MI6 before S.T.R.I.K.E., could hot-wire anything with a circuit board. Cambridge educated, though he tried to hide it. Indispensable.
Cooper's sleep was less solid, his hand twitching. Psychic dreams, probably. Ex-SBS, the boat perverts. Cooper didn't make a thing of the rivalry between their former units, just did his job. Aldridge left him alone. Cooper always woke himself up. Waking a psychic deliberately, even a low-level one, was asking for trouble.
Cheung wasn't sleeping, as such. Meditating, more like. The chi business was beyond Aldridge, but he'd stopped trying to understand it. Hong Kong Police, then British Army. Solid operator. That was what mattered.
Thomson was awake. She nodded briefly at him, and he returned the nod. Ex-Army, logistics originally. Had an eye for supply chains and detail work that made her invaluable in the field. The boffins had flagged her during medical screening as she was being transferred to STRIKE Some rare genetic marker that made her compatible with the Kree hybridization process. One in a million, they'd said. Lucky her.
Altered physiology meant both of them could function on less sleep than the others. Solid perk. Aldridge's augmentation process hadn't been a bed of roses, but from the scuttlebutt, the Kree hybridization had been absolute hell..
The loadout was straightforward enough. HK33s for him and Cheung — suppressed, both of them, and modified enough over the past year that they'd stopped being standard issue anything. Aldridge's had an Aimpoint 2000, an M203 slung underneath, everything taped and worn in exactly where he wanted it. Cheung's was cleaner, more precise — different optic, every adjustment torqued to spec rather than feel. Same platform, different philosophies. It worked.
Thomson had her MP5, not counting the heavy laser she'd be carrying. Thomson was sensible about kit the same way Aldridge was sensible about kit. You used what you knew, you knew what you used, and you left the experimental enthusiasm to people who enjoyed that sort of thing.
Cooper and Graves were those people. Both had taken DARPA energy rifles without hesitation as soon as Donovan offered them. Aldridge had let it go. The platform was modular — DARPA's one genuinely good idea about the thing — and both had configured accordingly. Cooper ran the long-barrel sniper variant. Graves had his in a DMR configuration and had then kept going, adding a sight DARPA definitely hadn't approved and doing something creative with the magnetic bottling that the project documentation almost certainly didn't cover. Aldridge had decided not to ask. Graves could fix anything with a circuit board and Cooper had that unsettling knack for coming up to speed on unfamiliar systems. If anyone could wing it on a prototype platform in a firefight, it was those two.
The plasma pistols were another matter. S.T.R.I.K.E.-issue, secured as sidearms across the whole team. Power cells barely holding charge. Graves had cannibalized their own gear and some weapons of dubious provenance just to keep them running. Aldridge hated it, but it was the compromise he'd landed on. He couldn't keep the primary energy weapons operational, couldn't standardize on DARPA kit for everyone, and he'd rather have the team on familiar ballistics with energy sidearms than the other way around. At least with a rifle you knew how it failed. Energy weapons failed in ways that occasionally surprised you.
The equipment bundle sat secured to the deck. Inside: two XM-148 shoulder-launched RPG prototypes, the heavy laser, power packs, spare ammunition. The 148s were laser-guided — meant the operator had to paint the target while the missile was in flight. The heavy laser was their ace. Thomson could carry it like it weighed nothing, and it could slag an APC in seconds.
Aldridge checked the GPS tracker on his belt. The bundle's beacon was already active, pinging steady. They'd drop it thirty seconds after Cheung, recover it on the ground, and be in position with time to spare. Standard procedure.
James Park was bored.
They'd been on the road for three hours. He wasn't driving, so he had nothing better to do than toy with the AIM APC's abundance of sensors. Yorgon Tykkio and his boys had overengineered this one. Standard AIM procedure. Build something brilliant, test it once in a parking lot, ship it to the field, move on to the next project.
Since the site of interest was in a military dictatorship that AIM had a pre-existing relationship with, Tykkio had decided the best use of one of the prototypes was as a VIP transport and marketing exercise for the local junta. Park internally cursed Tykkio's ego for getting him stuck playing babysitter to a prototype in this backwater, with a bunch of local soldiers and racist Afrikaner mercs for company.
The eggheads were alright, at least. AIM didn't select for fools. Dr. Lightman and Dr. Schreiber were both wickedly smart. Park wasn't a slouch at physics, but he'd read some of Schreiber's papers on compression dynamics and they were beyond him. Lightman's work on potential alien influences in early Egyptian civilization during Rama-Tut's time was fascinating.
Gomez was stressed out of her mind. The chemical engineer was coordinating with the locals and the mercs—rough job. Webb was mainly handling bribe distribution. Ex-British intelligence, useful skill set, kept to himself.
Park shrugged and turned his attention back to the systems. At least the vehicle itself was interesting, overengineering aside.
The QUIET LISTENER display was throwing another fit. Sixteen directional microphones in a phased array, machine learning-based threat detection, trained on thousands of hours of urban combat audio. In a city environment, it could identify gunfire, explosions, and vehicle engines at three kilometers.
In the jungle? Useless.
The ML model had never seen jungle. Training data was all from rougher neighborhoods, maybe some desert test ranges. So now it flagged arbitrary sounds as a "possible threat." Park had complained during the briefing. The project lead had shrugged. "We'll retrain it for tropical environments in the next iteration."
There wasn't going to be a next iteration, unless the junta bought. Tykkio had already moved on to designing some new prototype.
The GUARDIAN sensor fusion display showed a mess of orange and yellow contacts, all of them QUIET LISTENER false positives. Everything else was clean. Threat radar: nothing incoming. LIDAR showed terrain ahead—dense jungle, road winding through switchbacks. IR sensors picked up heat signatures from animals and ambient temperature. Cameras showed road and trees.
Everything worked fine except the acoustic system. Park had learned to ignore it.
He cycled the main display to the power readout. This was where Tykkio's overengineering really showed. Diesel-electric hybrid, battery pack adding two tons to an already overweight vehicle. Three separate power systems: main propulsion, sensors, and the dedicated capacitor bank for the plasma cannon. All drawing from the same fuel supply. The battery gave them surge capacity for the energy weapons.
Unnecessary complexity. These third-world dictator types weren't going to appreciate the engineering. In Park's opinion they should have pitched it to a NATO country instead.
The plasma cannon was behaving, for once. Small miracle. Park had lobbied for a simple autocannon. Tykkio had insisted on the plasma weapon. Of course.
The active protection system was the only thing Park actually liked. Laser-based threat detection and countermeasures — simple physics. Detect fast-moving object, fire laser countermeasures, destroy threats. It had nearly blinded a technician during testing, but at least it worked. Three emitters, 360-degree coverage, effective range of four hundred meters — enough to bracket four of the six other convoy vehicles, two ahead and two behind.
Tykkio had been very proud of the coverage. Park had been less proud when he'd noticed that emitter two was mounted approximately forty centimeters from the system operator's vision block. He'd filed a report, which had been quietly ignored.
QUIET LISTENER pinged again. Acoustic signature, 270 degrees, 2.3 kilometers. The display showed "Possible small arms fire."
Park watched the contact fade. Another bird. Joy.
The intercom crackled. "Park, you seeing anything?" Kowalski, the driver.
"Negative. QUIET LISTENER is still flagging wildlife. Everything else is clean."
"Roger."
Park leaned back. He glanced at his watch. Still five more hours.
Christ.
"God, what a fucking kluge that is."
Hendrik Botha, binoculars in hand, studied the AIM "vehicle." Calling it a vehicle was an insult to the noble art of armored warfare, as far as he was concerned. Antenna arrays sprouting like weeds, sensor blisters everywhere, and a turret mounting God-knew-what kind of experimental weapon. Overengineered trash.
Then again, in present company...
He glanced back at the BTR-70 he was riding in. "Needs must when the devil drives", as his mother used to say. The boys had scared up this Soviet hand-me-down for convoy duty. At least it was functional and better than the Brazilian tin cans the locals were using.
The AIM VIPs kept to themselves in their overengineered fortress. Botha had seen them briefly during the initial briefing. A pair of PhDs who barely acknowledged his existence and that Webb fellow who handled the money. They'd sent the Gomez woman to do most of the actual coordination work. Chemical engineer, supposedly. Spoke Spanish, which was why AIM was using her to wrangle the locals and handle logistics.
Botha supposed she was competent enough at her job. AIM didn't hire fools, but they had a talent for putting the wrong people in charge of the wrong things. Academics running security arrangements, scientists making logistics decisions. Still, the junta's money spent, and the junta wanted him and the boys on this convoy, so here they were.
He missed Fischerstadt. Proper city, proper infrastructure. Not this backwater where everything was held together with omkoopgeld. He'd heard through the grapevine that a European HYDRA offshoot was doing good work back home. Helping upgun the ADF, working on something classified with General Moorbeck. Proper outfit, with the right ideas about things.
The convoy ground through another switchback. Botha swept his binoculars across the ridgeline. Nothing but jungle. The vegetation hadn't been cut back from the road either. He'd raised it with Venter twice before departure. Venter had shrugged and said it was the junta's road and the junta's problem. Easy enough to say from a command post. Less easy when you were the one sitting in a vehicle hatch with fifty meters of potential cover running right up to the roadway on both sides.
The locals said the roads were safe. Botha hadn't stayed alive this long by trusting locals. That local Colonel had been pissing himself during the briefing about the Tarantula Organization. Some Argentine cartel supposedly operating in-country, hence all the security.
Two Cascavels with 90mm guns. One on point, one bringing up the rear. Two Urutu APCs with the San Domingo regulars, positions two and four. The AIM monstrosity sat third in line, right where a VIP vehicle belonged, surrounded by security. His BTR-70 rolled fifth, ahead of the equipment truck. The heavy truck with the specialists' gear rode between him and the tail Cascavel.
Seven vehicles. Forty-eight men. Air support "on standby." In his experience that meant bokkerol in shitholes like this.
All this because some hysterical local Colonel was afraid of cartel ambushes. The Tarantula Organization wasn't stupid enough to hit a military convoy. They'd stick to soft targets.
He lowered the binoculars. Five more hours of this farce, then he could grab a meal at the dig site.
Sgt. José Cruz stood in the commander's cupola of the Urutu, head and shoulders above the armored hull. Second in the convoy, right behind the lead Cascavel. Two vehicles back, Botha was doing the same thing in his BTR's hatch, scanning the ridges with binoculars.
Cruz considered giving the mercenary a mocking wave. Decided against it. Botha was a miserable, condescending bastard, but he knew his business. No point antagonizing him now. When the mission was over and they were off the clock? Cruz wouldn't mind giving the man a good punch. See how superior the Azanian felt then.
The junta hired mercenaries because they didn't trust the regular army with specialized work. Fair enough. But Cruz took pride in his professionalism. He'd earned his stripes over twelve years, not bought them. Botha's condescending shit aside, Cruz knew his job.
He glanced back at the AIM vehicle behind him. Not only was it ugly, it limited his vision. Bristling with sensors, antenna arrays everywhere, some kind of experimental weapon in the turret. It looked like it had been built by mad scientists. Cruz supposed that came with the territory.
Whatever AIM was digging up at those ruins, it wasn't his business. Some Pre-Columbian site that had the scientists excited. They'd been out there for weeks, running tests. Cruz didn't pretend to understand it. Mad scientists doing mad scientist things.
AIM had sold energy weapons to the junta before—plasma rifles, experimental armor, things that made the regular equipment look like museum pieces. But with the site, AIM had been selling more and more gear to the junta, at bargain rates as well. Cruz suspected that, judging by the monomaniacal focus of some of the scientists, they would have sold their mothers for access to the site.
The prototype APC ahead of him was probably part of the sales pitch. Show it works in real conditions, secure a contract. The reasoning made sense.
Cruz hated being buttoned up, especially in terrain like this. Mountains, switchbacks, limited visibility. The vision blocks were useless, the periscopes worse. You needed eyes on the ground, not shadows through armored glass.
He swept his gaze across the ridgeline. Nothing. Goats, rocks and a lot of jungle.
Five more hours of this. Then the dig site, the AIM people could do whatever they were doing, and Cruz could find some shade and a cold drink. Maybe catch some sleep if the officers weren't hovering. His section had been up since 0400 prepping for this convoy. They'd earned a break.
The jaguar appeared out of nowhere. One moment nothing, the next a hundred and fifty pounds of spotted cat staring at him from ten feet away. Aldridge froze, kept his breathing steady, one hand near his sidearm.
After a long moment the jaguar huffed and bounded into the undergrowth.
"Cheeky bugger," Cooper murmured over the earpiece.
"Large wildlife in the area," Aldridge replied. "All positions, stay sharp."
He went back to watching the road through the jungle canopy. Eight hundred meters down, clear line of sight on the switchbacks. The junta had been too sloppy to cut back the vegetation from the roadway, which gave them cover to close.
"Lead, this is Four," Cheung's voice filtered over the comm. "I see a dust cloud. They're coming."
"Disposition?"
"About what we expected in the briefi—" Cheung paused. "Diu. The AIM vehicle's different."
"Different how?"
"Not the armored truck from the satellite photos. That's a proper APC. Eight wheels, turret mount, sensor arrays everywhere. They've brought something new. Third in line, right in the protected position. I'd bet that's where our VIPs are riding."
Aldridge exhaled slowly. The covered structure, resolved. His first uncharitable thought was for whoever had written "possible maintenance equipment" in the initial briefing package — then he let it go. John had flagged the gap. The analysts had worked with what they had. He'd seen worse intel failures.
"Plan stays the same," Aldridge said. "Javelins on lead and tail armored cars. Heavy laser on the AIM vehicle—disable, don't destroy. Thomson, you copy?"
"Copy. Engine block, mobility kill," Thomson's voice came back from her forward position.
"Four, you have the tail vehicle?"
"Confirmed," Cheung replied. "I've got the rear armored car."
"Good. I'll take the lead."
Quick acknowledgments clicked back over the radio.
James Park was half-asleep. Two more hours of jolting over switchbacks on the way to the dig site left him in a fugue state. Too uncomfortable to sleep, too bored to stay fully alert. The various systems had been relatively quiet for once, and it was a nice break.
He glanced through the forward vision block. The mountain jungle, despite being the most humid place he'd ever been whenever he stepped outside, was genuinely beautiful. Dense green canopy, shafts of sunlight filtering through—
Another ping from QUIET LISTENER.
The intercom crackled."Oh for the love of—" Kowalski started.
The threat radar screamed. The APS fired, and the world turned white.