In this case, the bridge so constructed would be roughly double the width of their Humvee, once they snapped together the axles of enough rolls of bridge netting. The bridging had taken up virtually all the cargo space in the Humvee, even though the material was as thin as cardboard and flexible enough to roll very tightly. They had had to carry so much of it because there was no way to tell how much bridging they’d need. At that, George had insisted on carrying more wedged into nooks and crannies in the plane. Cally and Granpa had surreptitiously rolled their eyes. There was paranoia, and then there was paranoia. Schmidt Two had changed since the loss of his wife and team. Among other things, for the first few years he’d been fanatically punctual. Some quirks stayed, others tapered off. Everyone knew what he was going through. Besides, assassins were always strange birds in one way or another. As long as it didn’t get in the way of the mission, they tolerated it where possible, and were glad of it when it did support the mission. George had gone from a seat of the pants improviser to an excellent go to hell guy, with an almost prescient tactical awareness.
“Your faith in my competence is touching,” the smaller man said.
The slight assassin probably weighed less than she did. He’d know how to brace himself, but no way was she going to let him see how much it freaked her out to step onto the rickety bridge. It would have been just as bad if her belayman had decent body mass. Really, it would. If she told herself that often enough, maybe she could stop the cold sweat she felt prickling on her upper lip. She tried to pretend to be someone who wasn’t afraid of heights, but slipping into character was, for this, pretty damned hard.
“No offense. Just don’t drop me.” She checked her rigging and backed out onto the dilapidated mess, watching over her shoulder and testing her footing as she went. Halfway over, when it was holding up better than expected, she sped up, dancing lightly backwards with only a few muffled curses when her foot slipped through a gap in the webbing. Damned if she was going to show how petrified she was. The adrenaline from her slip drove her heart straight up into her throat. She couldn’t help getting a glimpse of the water, so dizzyingly far down. Two missions in a row where she had to be way up in the — she really didn’t want to think about it. She yanked her foot loose and planted it on a thicker strip of webbing, her knuckles whitening on the rope in her hands.
“Hey, watch it! Where are we gonna be if you throw a shoe?” George called.
“You’re making me sound like a horse.”
“Whatever. We should have brought you an extra pair of shoes,” he said.
“Well, I’m over here now, so relax. I’m not going to drop a sneaker in the river. Even though I did wrench my ankle for real, just a bit. But hell, if I get a little swelling or something, it just adds realism.” She gave up trying to look casual and backed the rest of the way carefully, watching her footing. She had to resist collapsing on the bridge in relief when she got to solid ground again. More solid, anyway. Still far too high, but she wasn’t going to think about that.
“You got by with it. Just hook up the pulley,” he called.
Oooh, he’s pissing me off. “Fine.” She brushed the dust and dirt off part of a Postie section in the bridge, more or less in the middle, and opened the backpack. The available section of bridge looked much better for adhesive than trying to drill holes. She sprayed down the clean section of bridge and shoved the back plate of the pulley against it, counting to sixty before unclipping the lines from her waist. The pulley lines were ingenious. Strong sections of line clipped together at intervals to make the length of the loop easy to adjust, but the clips were narrow enough not to make the line jump out of the groove in the wheel. She clipped them in place and rested, elbows pressed in to her sides, tapping her fingers together nervously. Why did they have to build bridges so high? It wasn’t as if there was anything wrong with being down close to the water.
It took a few minutes for them to package up the bridging base plates for her side, and attach the package to the pulley so that it wouldn’t snag too bad on the way over, then about as much time for her to get it all loose on her side. Setting the roll of bridging to unwind smoothly around its axle as she pulled it across was even more awkward. The procedure certainly gave her bridge base plating enough time for the adhesive to set up before she had to cut the net to fit. Working backward with a boxcutter variant of a boma blade, she eased the mesh of the ultra-strong netting over the hooks on the plate and secured it. The plates themselves were now as firmly affixed to the Posleen section of bridge as if the whole assembly had been cast from Galplas.
Finished, she noticed an infinitesimal tug at her waist. Cally looked up to see that the annoying man had untied her rapelling rope from the Humvee, unrolled a substantial length, and was tying it to one of the ancient steel supports whose remnants stood, twisted and torn, on the human section of the old bridge.
He waved some coils of slack at her and called out, “Pull your end back and tie it off. If we have to dismantle the bridge in a hurry, somebody might need it. We’ve got more rope; we don’t need to take this one.”
Damn but he was lucky she wasn’t close enough to slap him. She sighed and tied the thing off, grumbling. Just like him to put her in a corner where she had to leave her lucky rope. She couldn’t say anything about it without looking stupid.
She didn’t look at him as she got into the hummer behind Granpa, who probably would get to drive for the rest of the insertion. Her right front side tingled with the urge to pop George upside the head. If he hadn’t been so good at his job, she’d really be regretting asking him now. She hadn’t been this pissed in she didn’t know how long.
The first section of bridge had moved them across to what was technically an island. The roadway forward was intact up until the small branch that separated them from the mainland. Whatever improvised bridge had spanned that gap had suffered some sort of misfortune. The Postie work was ragged at the edges and wisps of what must have once been another improvised connection hung from both ends over the gap. Naturally, Granpa’s drysuit and fins had shifted to the bottom of the pile. Normally, with her natural buoyancy, Cally would have gotten stuck with swimming the gap. She’d gotten to beg off from the task this time since it kept them from having to wait while she redid her hair. Another O’Neal was the logical choice since they swam so much at home. Granpa got the job — he wouldn’t be seen by anyone after insertion. That didn’t mean he had to like it. Even through a good suit, the water was damned cold and he let them hear about it, drawing a good-natured “quit whining” from Tommy. Still, once he made it across and up to the other side of the gap, setup was routine.
Vehicle finally across, they fired up some self-heating breakfast packs and a pot of coffee. A hot breakfast was nice for the others, but necessary for Papa O’Neal, who was still shivering after he’d gotten back into his BDUs and snivel gear. The temperature was dropping so fast Cally was feeling the chill even through her sweats. She ignored George as he tied off another rope. The problem with overcomplicating mission fail-safes was that the more you did, the more likely it was that something would go horribly wrong when you couldn’t keep track of all the balls you had in the air. It was a delicate balance. She preferred to keep things simpler and fly by the seat of her pants when she had to.