Mooch answered first. “I say we make for the airstrip and fly out in the Caravan.”
Foxy and the others were pulling strange weapons, armor, and gear out of the cases. “What about those jet-powered stealth drones? They could just shoot us down if we fly out.”
Odin shook his head. “I think they brought those out for their big show. They don’t have them in quantity yet. That’s what their appropriations bill is for.”
Ripper added, “And Odin took one out.”
Foxy pulled what looked like a Roman shield with a mirrored surface out of one of the equipment cases. It had some sort of flexible fiber-optic viewing lens on a cable attached to its inner side. “Look, let’s just dodge these sniper stations and light out into the back country on foot.”
“Overland on foot it’s two days to civilization, and the longer we stay in this area, the more shit they’ll be able to throw at us. With TRACER radar they could pick us off even in dense cover. We need to get clear out of this region as fast as possible. That means exfil by air.”
Smokey nodded. “He’s right, Foxy. With the wing tanks on the Cessna we could do fifteen hundred miles easy.”
“But to where?”
“We’ll work that out once we’re airborne. For now we just need to get out of this killbox.”
“You wanna fly below radar in these hills?”
Ripper nodded. “I’ll fly the bitch.” To McKinney the woman’s appearance seemed incongruent with her attitude-she didn’t look tough. She looked like a pleasant neighbor. Someone who baked a mean casserole. But here she was, strapping on special-purpose body armor.
Foxy eyed her. “Have you flown one, Ripper? It’s not a one-seventy- two.”
“Fuck, yeah, I’ve flown one. Remember Caqueza?”
Mooch grimaced. “We were picking branches out of the landing gear.”
“Well, is that low enough for you?”
“Then it’s agreed.” Odin pointed at Foxy. “If Ripper gets hit, you’re pilot, Foxy. Then me.”
McKinney noticed that while the conversation was going on, the team was suiting up in black body armor with odd, irregular edges and color patterns-green and brown splotches, textures. In particular they were strapping on outlandish helmets that looked almost like Pablo Picasso carnival masks-fearsome and highly asymmetrical.
Odin grabbed a thick plastic combat shotgun and jammed a plastic round drum clip into it. He chambered a shell. “They’ve got face detection running. Looks like they’re set to shoot at any human likeness, regardless of thermal intensity-so I want complete facial cover. Mooch, help the professor into Hoov’s cool suit.”
“Oh…” McKinney looked down at Hoov’s partially covered body. “I-”
“Not negotiable, Professor. Mooch!”
“On it.”
Mooch pulled a black jumpsuit out of a nearby case and tore open the Velcro fasteners before handing it to McKinney. The thing looked almost like a deep-sea diving suit, except that it had raised ribs running all along its surface. The others had already put theirs on beneath their odd armor. They resembled an oil-rig dive team gearing up for performance art.
Mooch talked while he worked. “Cool suit-it helps conceal your thermal signature. Refrigerant flows through the bladders. You’ll start getting cold if you’re not moving, so let me know if your fingers start to feel numb.” He was already strapping odd body plates onto her arms and legs.
She studied the plates. Their intent appeared to be disrupting the human outline-with special emphasis on the face. Mooch pulled a dense balaclava over her head.
“Radio earphones too. I want her jacked into team comms.” Odin turned. “Foxy, Tin Man, get up to White, Bravo, Two and draw some fire. I want a map of every sniper station between us and the airstrip.”
“What if they’re mobile? It’d be a waste of time.”
Mooch shook his head. “Look at the GBOSS images. They’re dug in like ticks out there. They’re not going anywhere.”
“Right.” Foxy pulled an uninflated pool toy from one case, and then he inserted an air canister into its base. The pool toy quickly inflated into a human bust-a Caucasian male in a suit. He affixed it to a plastic pole, then he and Tin Man ran upstairs with it.
“Watch your ears… firing!”
Odin aimed the shotgun at the skylight on the ceiling at the far side of the entry hall. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Glass rained down onto the floor planks ten feet away. The sky was now open above them. Odin leaned down to the ravens, who seemed unfazed by the gunfire. He held up an index finger. “Huginn. Recce. Recce. Muninn. Recce. Recce. Go!”
They caw ed back at him loudly, then flew up through the skylight into the blue sky.
McKinney watched them go. “They could get shot, Odin.”
He finished getting his asymmetrical armor on. “We know the OS of just about every autonomous sniper station on the market, Professor. They’re made to kill people, not birds.” He was watching his Rover tablet, an image from one of the birds’ cameras. “The twins will do a mile orbit, and we’ll see what’s between us and the airstrip.”
Several shots rang out in the distance-a crackling that echoed in the hills. It gave Odin pause. However, his video image kept running uninterrupted, and in a moment Smokey and Tin Man ran down with a deflated human decoy.
“Trigger-happy little bastards. We barely got near the wall with the decoy when they opened up on us-straight through the planks.”
Mooch nodded to a bank of monitors on a nearby table. “There’s your vector map, Odin.”
Odin stooped to examine the video monitor. It showed a series of dots and glowing lines projected on the hillside, illustrating the path of incoming bullets. “Okay, two high on the ridge, eight hundred and nine hundred meters, one closer on this rise-about seven-eighty. Foxy, what do you think-Lapua Magnums?”
“That’s what I’d use.”
“All right.” Odin clicked around the computer screen. “That gives the bullets a flight time of about a second, give or take.” He stood up. “Even if they bracket us, that’s too far for them to hit an evasive target. Foxy!”
“Yeah?”
“Take the mirror blind and mark targets with near-red. Smokey, Tin Man, assemble the M224 in defilade-behind the SUVs might be good. On Foxy’s direction drop some seven-twenties on those two sniper stations. Clear us a path to the airstrip.” He looked around. “Objections?”
Everyone nodded and murmured assent.
“All right, then. Do it.”
They immediately launched into action, grabbing yet another equipment case and dragging it toward the front door.
McKinney gave Odin a quizzical look. “Then you’ve faced these things before?”
He nodded. “Our team has unique expertise, Professor. We illuminate them with a near-red laser for targeting-heatless light. It’s based on insect bioluminescence, actually. Helps conceal our presence. These machines can see infrared light like we can see visible light, so we don’t use it.”
Foxy and the others, now in their cool suits, swiftly opened the front door, Foxy holding the mirrored, curving shield in front of him. Smokey and Tin Man followed him through the door, and although everyone tensed visibly as they ran out into the open, their cool suits and other equipment apparently made them invisible to the autosnipers in the hills.
McKinney moved over to the security monitors and watched over Mooch’s shoulder. The screen showed Foxy moving to kneel behind the mirror shield in the driveway. Behind the SUV Smokey and Tin Man quickly opened the Pelican case and set up what looked to be a light mortar. In less than a minute Tin Man radioed in.
“All right, Foxy, burn Target One.”
“Burning.”
Smokey was monitoring some sort of electronic device that he then held against a mortar round Tin Man offered to him.
“Round programmed. Firing.”
Tin Man dropped the mortar round into the tube, and they both ducked down with their mouths open.
The mortar blasted with a CHOOM sound that was audible inside the house.
Mooch tapped another monitor focused on the distant sniper station. It looked like an evergreen bush with a black pipe sticking out of it. But in a few seconds the bush exploded, revealing a shattered optical lens and a tripod mount as it tipped onto its side.