“Last night, there were no guards outside this facility at all,” he observed. “Now they’ve got them at the main gate, and then outside the entrances to the interior buildings. He zoomed in with the SkysEye imagery and saw men that were dressed in various styles of heavy clothing, each of them holding a rifle that was either at a loose port arms or slung over their shoulder.
“No uniforms,” Boxers said. “That’s encouraging.”
“Why?” David asked.
“Because it implies a lower level of organization and training.”
“Implies?” Yelena asked.
“Nothing’s certain in this business, ma’am,” Jonathan said.
“I saw Black Hawk Down,” Becky said. “Untrained people can do a lot of damage.”
Jonathan didn’t reply. He’d lost some friends in that battle, and didn’t want to open the door to all that.
Carl remained silent as he studied the photos, and then turned his attention to the topographical maps along with some flight charts he’d pulled out of a file cabinet next to the woodstove.
“If you’re thinking of fast-roping into there, I can’t help you,” Carl said. “We’d get shot out of the sky and I’ve got no suppressing fire.” His expression turned apologetic. “I bought a pair of seventies-era miniguns on the Internet a few weeks ago, but I won’t be able to get them in shape in time.”
“Jesus,” Boxers said.
Jonathan kept a straight face. “Just as well. I wasn’t thinking about a three-thousand-rounds-per-minute spray and slay anyway.”
“Spray and slay?” Becky said. “Really? This is funny poetry to you?”
“I didn’t know that I was trying to be funny,” Jonathan said.
Boxers added, “And it’s a damn fine tactic when a bunch of people are trying to make you dead.”
Becky opened her mouth to say something, but Jonathan silenced her with a raised hand. “Nope,” he said. “Both points have been made. The topic is closed.”
Jonathan had no compunction against using overwhelming force to send bad guys to their maker, but in this case, where every round from the minigun that did not hit its target would travel on for miles until it found a different one, the weapon posed too high a risk for the population of Ottawa.
“I was thinking we’d come in from the water,” Jonathan said. “There’s a place on the outskirts of Ottawa, a warehouse on Ridge Road, where there’s going to be a car and a boat waiting for us. It’s mostly in the middle of nowhere, a hundred twelve miles from here as the crow flies. I figure Boxers will fly us to that spot, and we’ll offload.”
“Big Guy isn’t flying anything,” Carl said. “I’m the only one who flies my birds.” The reversion back to code names was not lost on Jonathan. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but it felt significant.
“Striker, I can’t do that to you,” Jonathan said.
“I won’t let anyone else risk their lives for me,” Yelena said.
“How’d I get on the short friggin’ list of honor?” Boxers growled. To Carl, he said, “I’ll fight you for the pilot’s seat if you’d like.” That came with just enough of a smile for it not to be offensive.
“No need to fight,” Carl said. “You’ve got no bargaining power. My birds, my fuel, my rules.”
“We’ll pay you,” Jonathan said. “No one expects you to foot the bill for this.”
“You going to go to jail for me if you crash my chopper on Canadian soil?”
“You’d rather be the one to crash it?” Jonathan said.
Striker’s pallor reddened up. “I’ve never crashed anything. Even after my foot was blown off, I kept that aircraft in the air.” He pointed a finger at Boxers. “Can you say that you’ve never crashed anything?”
Big Guy recoiled from the question, then smiled. “I could say it,” he said. Boxers was as good a pilot as Jonathan had ever seen, but thanks to circumstances that were mostly beyond his control, he’d endured a few hard landings along the way.
“Um,” Jonathan said. That was it. Just “um.” He needed to word his next question carefully. “The stakes are really high here, Carl. Be honest with me. And with yourself. I can’t help but notice the cane. Are you really up for this anymore?”
Carl bristled, and then recovered, all over the course of maybe a second. He looked like he wanted to make a speech, but smiled instead. Jonathan was beginning to dislike the smile. Carl nodded once and said, “Yes.”
Jonathan recognized the challenge to mix it up more, but he let it go. He sensed that Striker somehow needed this mission. He was reckless back when he did this every day. Jonathan had no desire to die on an op because some cowboy pilot couldn’t do his job.
For right now, though, Carl had one undeniably good point: Jonathan had no leverage. He supposed he could create it if he needed it — hell, he could steal the chopper from him if it came to that — but the ripple effect of that as word spread through the Community would be devastating to Jonathan’s business. Worse, it would undo a reputation for integrity that he’d spent a lifetime building.
Rule one in Jonathan’s unofficial code: You never betray a friend.
They had time yet.
“How much equipment do you have to transport?” Striker asked. Just like that, it was back to business.
“All of us,” Jonathan said, “plus about four hundred pounds of weapons and equipment.”
“How much of that do you expect to expend?”
Jonathan shifted in his seat. It was bad form to discuss the practical details of a raid in front of people who found the phrase “spray and slay” offensive.
“Hopefully, none of it,” Jonathan said. “In a perfect world, we’ll knock on the door and they’ll hand over the PCs without argument.” He looked at Becky as he spoke, and she looked away.
“As a practical matter, probably a lot,” he said to Carl.
“Are any of your weapons traceable?” Striker’s entire demeanor had changed. The aging hippie vibe had been replaced with the soldier he used to be.
“No,” Jonathan said.
“What have you—”
“Let’s just leave it at no,” Jonathan interrupted. “Nothing’s traceable.” The reality was that Jonathan retooled the barrels and receivers of all of his weapons after they’d been used on an op, and during all that work, his bare skin never touched the weapons. It was a bit of overkill, considering that his fingerprints didn’t exist in any known file, but the little things could add up over time.
No one else in the room needed to know any of that.
Boxers said, “If you’re choosing which aircraft to use, don’t forget we’re going to be two people heavier on the way out.”
“But lighter in equipment.” As Carl leaned over the table, his hair dangled in the middle of his performance charts and he pushed it away. “Do you really need all these people?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “I need two for an exfil team. Actually, I could do with one, but since they’re not pros, nobody should work alone.”
“And the third one?” Striker asked.
“I promised them they could all come along.”
“You know we’re right here, right?” David asked.
The others ignored him. “When did an op become an amusement park ride?” Carl asked.
“Yeah, Boss, when did it become an amusement park ride?” Boxers said.
“We don’t have the benefit of a trained army,” Jonathan said. “The two of us can do a lot — we do do a lot — but sometimes, we can’t do everything. We’ve had fair success getting more out of civilians than civilians thought they had to give.”
“Yeah, okay,” Carl said. “I get that. But why more people than you need?”
“Because they’ve all got a stake in this,” Jonathan said. “If I were them, I’d want to be here, too.”
Striker turned directly to the others. “You know you can get killed, right? Worse, you know you can get shot through the spine and be a quad for the rest of your life. Or through the gut and have to eat and shit through tubes. That’s the kind of risk we’re talking about. No video games, no do-overs, just real no-shit shoot-orbe-killed firefights. Is that really what you want to get into?”