Pacing with suppressed excitement, Brigadier Atiba looked up as Umamgi entered his workspace. “You told him?” Atiba demanded. “What did he say? Are we attacking?”
“I fear not, Brigadier,” Umamgi replied, picking his words and emphasis with consummate care. “I outlined the opportunity to the General as I did for you. However, your leader does not think it… prudent to directly challenge the United Nations in this way at this time.”
“What?” Atiba exclaimed. “You can’t mean it? This is an opportunity that will never come again! I can’t believe Obe would throw this away for no good reason.” The Chief of Staff started to the door. “I’ll talk to him myself. I’ll change his mind.”
Umamgi caught Atiba’s arm. “Leave him in peace, my son,” the Algerian said, metering careful overtones of sympathy and pity into his voice. “The General has made his decision and there it stands. He is… tired. Things have not gone well for him of late.”
“Things are not going well for the entire Union, Ambassador! This is our opportunity to turn it all around.”
“It was our chance, my son. It was our chance. Pray to Allah that there will be others. In the meantime, we must follow your general’s decisions in these matters… must we not?”
Dear Dad:
It’s about 0700 here and I’ve just completed a pretty good patrol debriefing and a pretty bad breakfast. In a little bit, I’m going to be turning in for the day. But first, I’m going to answer your last letter as a dutiful daughter should.
We’re up and running again after our interlude with that hurricane. The British admiralty was indeed a little disgruntled at first over my innovative use of their minehunter, but they’ve agreed that under the circumstances we really didn’t have much choice. At any rate, we’ve patched up our storm damage and we’re back to conducting routine operations once more. Or at least as “routine” as it can get in a combat theater.
The campaign progresses slowly. Belewa continues to nibble at the Guinea governmental infrastructure with his guerrilla raids, and we continue to interdict his oil-smuggling line with our patrols. Chris assures me that we’re winning, but we’re doing it the slow way, one jerrican of gas at a time.
I don’t much like that, Dad. I want to get this thing finished fast. I know about “Softly softly catchee monkey” and that “A hunter is patience,” but I still don’t like giving Belewa any more time to work with than I have to. This guy is good, Dad. Good enough to scare me.
I can feel him out there, just watching and waiting for me to make that one little mistake that will give him the edge back. It’s almost as if I can feel him thinking about me at times. There have been nights here in my quarters when I’ve had the sensation of someone staring at the back of my neck. Enough so that I’ve turned to see if someone was there.
There wasn’t, of course. No doubt it’s just a minor case of the tropics.
And don’t go taking that seriously, either. I’m sleeping okay, and I’m eating as well as the galley permits. I’ve lost a couple of pounds to the heat, but I needed to reduce a little anyway. And before you can nag me about it, Admiral Daddy sir, I promise that just as soon as the rush is over, I’ll fly into Abidjan and take a couple of days’ shore leave.
In the meantime, I’m hunting for ways to possibly speed this campaign up a little. I’ll let you know what I come up with.
“I thought all this stuff was all weather- and environment-proof?”
“It’s supposed to be, ma’am. But this Gold Coast climate is something else. Nothing’ s proof against it.”
In the RPV repair bay, Christine Rendino crouched in front of a grounded Eagle Eye Recon drone, a technician kneeling at either side of her to point out the problem.
It was an easy one to spot. The heavy polymer skin had separated from the inner foam-and-aluminum core of the drone’s composite wing, peeling back from the leading edge in limp folds.
“The constant heat and humidity’s breaking down the bonding resin,” the technician continued. “This seam along the leading edge takes the full force of the propwash when the drone’s in horizontal flight mode. A corner of the skin lifts, the wind catches it, and zot!”
“Shucks and other comments,” Christine frowned. “What can we do about this?”
“Nothing, ma’am. It’s shot. We’ll have to replace the whole wing and shoulder assembly to get this thing airworthy again.”
“The whole assembly?”
“Yes, ma’am. This is a one-piece chunk of bonded composite.”
“How long is it going to take?”
“Not long at all once we get the new assembly.”
“And pray tell, when can we get one?
The two avtechs exchanged uneasy glances. “Uh, well, I understand there’s one in the pipeline, Commander,” the senior hand replied.
“Operative word—‘when’!”
“Next month.”
There was a soft smacking sound as the heel of Christine’s hand impacted on her forehead. “Not an option! We don’t have enough of these things to begin with. I can’t afford to have a hangar queen sitting around for the next two weeks.”
“I’m sorry, Commander, but there’s nothing else we can do.”
“Sure there is. Fix this one.”
“Ma’am, I’m really sorry, but we just can’t!” the young aviation hand replied earnestly. “If they had this assembly back at the factory, maybe they could apply a layer of new resin and run it through the bonding press again. We can’t come close to doing anything like that out here. The book says there’s just no way to repair this kind of composite material in the field.”
Christine stood up abruptly. Muttering under her breath, she crossed to the bay workbench. Snatching up an industrial staple gun, she returned to the parked drone. As the aviation hands watched aghast, she pulled the polymer skin section taut over the wing and ran a row of heavy-gauge staples along its edges and deep into the honeycomb core material.
“There, God says the book’s wrong. Stick some duct tape on this sucker and let’s fly it.”
An enjungled shoreline beneath a black and silent sky. A broad and smooth beach washed by the faintly luminescent foam of a low sea. A tired and crumbling macadam roadway separating beach from forest. A single, smoky orange spark guttering on the sands.
And a quarter of a mile away, a clump of undergrowth that was no longer just a clump of undergrowth. Stealthily, a pair of nonreflective night lenses peered out through a narrow slit in the vegetation.
“Sleeper…” The Bear breathed the words into the pitch darkness beneath the Ghilly camouflage net. “Hey, Sleeper!”
A few inches away, the burly SOC Marine’s lean and wiry teammate made the instant transition from deep slumber to alert wakefulness.
“What?” The ghost of a word drifted back.
“It looks like there’s two blockaders out there now. ’Nother one just came in.”
“Did you log it?”
“Yeah.” The Bear nodded, even though the gesture would be unseen.
“And the rest of the squad’s still got the OP covered?”
“Yeah.”
“And there’s no sign of enemy patrol activity?”