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 experience. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.