As he bent low and closed the twenty feet that separated him from Boxers, Jonathan keyed his mike and whispered, “Whatcha got?” He approached with his M27 up and ready to shoot. He matched Boxers’ line of fire, but he had no idea what the target was.
Boxers waited till Jonathan was squatted at his shoulder. “Sandcat,” he said, pointing with the muzzle of his rifle.
For a second or two, Jonathan didn’t see it, but then there it was, parallel parked among other vehicles on the residential street.
“I’ve come to dislike Mexican Army vehicles,” Boxers said.
It was hard not to. And seeing one this close to where they were going rang a thousand warning bells in his head. Assuming that the Mexicans treated their Sandcats the same way that Uncle Sam treated his Humvees, these were not take-home vehicles.
That meant that someone had stashed it here to keep it out of sight. Since the Sandcat was a troop transport vehicle, Jonathan had to assume that the transported troops had been deployed somewhere nearby.
And while it was entirely possible that the Mexicans were deployed on a mission that had nothing to do with him, he was going to go with the smart money and assume that he and his team were the targets.
Jonathan turned to where he’d left Tristan, and motioned for him to join them. Following the example that Jonathan had set, the kid approached bent low at the waist, and squatted in close to Jonathan and Boxers.
“What are we doing?” Tristan whispered.
“You’re staying quiet,” Boxers said.
Jonathan softened the message by holding a finger to his lips in a silent shh.
Jonathan keyed his mike. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. You there?”
“I heard Big Guy,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He told her about the vehicle. “I have to assume that we’ve got OPFOR deployed around our target building. What does SkysEye show you?” He knew that she’d recognize the shorthand for opposition force.
“We had a tasking problem,” she said. “So we’re just now getting images. Want to be patched in?”
“Negative,” Jonathan said. “Can’t afford the light wash.” While the SkysEye system and Venice’s bag of toys allowed her to download imagery to be shared in real time on Jonathan’s PDA or even a laptop, here at night in the middle of the street, the glow would be too obvious and could easily give away their position.
While they waited to hear back from Venice, Jonathan pulled a digital night vision monocular from its pouch on his ruck. While Boxers continued to hold his aim on the street, Jonathan rose above their cover and scanned the area for risks. Just beyond the wash of the streetlight that illuminated the Sandcat that Boxers had discovered, he saw another one parked along the curb.
“I’ve got another vehicle,” he whispered. “Shit, and a third.” This one was parked across the road from the second one, on their side of the street.
“See any guards?” Boxers asked. “If I were their commander, I’d have left at least one guy to keep an eye on the trucks.”
In a neighborhood like this, it made even more sense.
His earbud popped. “Scorpion, Mother Hen. I’ve got bad news.”
Of course you do, Jonathan thought.
“SkysEye’s thermal imagery shows a number of people clustered around the target property. They all seem to be huddled behind some kind of shelter. Vehicles, mostly.”
“Shit,” Boxers spat.
Tristan went on alert. “What?”
“A small setback,” Jonathan told him. Into his radio he said, “Okay, download the photo to my PDA. I’ll find a way to look at it.”
Jonathan shifted his monocular away from the Sandcats, where he was certain there were guards, even if he couldn’t see them, and surveyed the surrounding buildings. In this part of the city, so many residences had been abandoned in place that it was hard to tell the ones that were occupied from the ones that were empty.
The houses here weren’t row houses in the strict sense of the term because they didn’t physically touch, but they were so close together that the difference was academic. Most were in various stages of rot, but a few showed visible signs of prosperity in the form of flower boxes in the windows or a wreath on the door. Scanning the closest structures on his side of the street, Jonathan focused in on the third property down, where the frayed drapes on the house were open yet the lights were off. That struck him as an odd combination. If people lived in the house, and if they were home, wouldn’t they make a point of closing the drapes-especially in a neighborhood as dangerous as this one?
If only because it was convenient, Jonathan locked on to that as an undeniable truth. He tapped Boxers on the shoulder and brought his lips to within an inch of his ear. “We need to get under cover,” he whispered. “I want to target the third house down on the left. It looks empty to me.”
Boxers said, “Aim my weapon and I’m yours.”
That was Boxers’ way of saying, Let’s go.
Jonathan turned to Tristan. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay. I think.” His eyes were wide, but his focus seemed sharp.
“I can’t explain all the details,” Jonathan said, “but we need to seek some shelter for a few minutes. We’re targeting the third house up there on the left. I don’t need you to do anything but stay close. Are you cool with that?” He asked the question as if there truly was a choice.
Tristan nodded. “I’m good.”
Jonathan flashed him a smile. “You’re my shadow, remember?” He stuffed the monocular back into its pouch.
“I remember,” Tristan said. He looked at Boxers. “And my safety is on.”
Boxers smiled, too. “I figured as much.”
“Hand on my ruck,” Jonathan said to Tristan. When he felt the tug, Jonathan snapped his night vision back into place and started moving.
The first two houses were obviously occupied, one of them playing the television or radio loudly enough to be heard out here on the street. That was good news. It covered the sound of their movement.
They advanced to the base of the short stairway that led to the front door of the abandoned house. Jonathan keyed his mike. “I vote we enter from the black side,” he said.
Boxers made a sweeping motion with his arm that said, After you.
While the Big Guy took a knee at the front corner of the house, his weapon to his shoulder, Jonathan made his way down the side of the house toward the back, taking care not to brush the side of the structure next door-they really were that close. About halfway down, he encountered a window that had been broken out. The bottom sill lay at chest height, an easy climb inside.
Jonathan hated anything that was easy. He didn’t trust anything that was easy.
Even with night vision in place, it was hard to see any detail of the interior, so he raised his M27 and twisted the lens ring on his muzzle light to ignite the infrared flashlight. With night vision in place, the infrared beam operated just like a visible light beam, except it was, well, invisible. Through Jonathan’s lenses, he might as well have been peering through a green-tinted window at midday.
From this angle, furniture and fixtures blocked a thorough view of every corner, but he saw no signs of recent occupancy. In fact, there appeared to be a huge water leak in the middle of the front parlor. Given that there was a second floor above the first, Jonathan considered that kind of uncorrected damage to be a good sign of abandonment.
“Do you need a boost or can you climb?” Jonathan asked.
“I think I can climb,” Tristan said.
That was the right answer. “Okay, stay there for a second.”
Jonathan shrugged free of Tristan’s grasp, planted his gloved hands on the gritty ledge, and hefted himself up. He didn’t feel any broken glass or nails or any other nasty stuff that could hurt Tristan when it was his turn. When his waist was clear, and he pulled himself inside, he drew himself to a knee, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and waited.