Into his LOSIR headset, he said, “Two minutes, mark.”
“Copy,” Hill came back.
“Affirmative,” Stark added.
The fence patrol guard, a PFC who must have done something to get on somebody’s shit detail, strolled by in front of Carruth’s position, M-16 slung over his shoulder, not even bothering to look at the fence most of the time. Once he was past here, it would be thirty minutes before he came back to this spot, and if Carruth wanted to bother to try and hide them, the doofus probably wouldn’t even notice the clipped links in the wire.
Speaking of which . . . On the two-minute mark, Carruth crawled to the fence, came up to a squat, and applied the wire-cutters to the links, snipping out just enough of a gap to slide through. This position was one of many that wasn’t covered by security cams, and was far enough away from anything so nobody but the perimeter guard would likely see you come through.
Once he was inside, Carruth moved fifty steps to the SSW, then altered his direction and did thirty-six more steps directly east.
This kept him out of any security cam’s view—so the intel said.
At that point, he started walking as if he owned the place. He was dressed in the uniform of the day, Army tropical, and wearing the insignia of a master sergeant. Anybody who saw him on a cam probably wouldn’t call out the MPs—they’d figure he belonged here.
His goal—another stupid one, far as he was concerned—was the enlisted soldiers’ mess hall, at the south end of the complex, a three-minute walk from his entry point. At ten-thirty hours, the place should be relatively empty—breakfast was long over and lunch wasn’t being plated yet.
The maps he’d studied and the photographs he’d memorized were accurate—he had no trouble recognizing his route to the target.
A few enlisted soldiers passed along the way, none close, and he offered a snappy salute to the one officer who came within range, a young lieutenant, who returned the salute and did not speak.
The hall lay just ahead.
Carruth circled to the back side of the place, where the Dumpsters were lined up. He opened the lid of the largest, using a handkerchief so as not to leave prints. He caught the spoiled-milk reek of food rotting in the steel bin. Phew! What a stench!
He removed the device from his pocket, started the timer, and dropped it onto a mass of overcooked scrambled eggs, splat.
The bomb was a simple composition device—RDX/PETN blended with dense wax and a little oil, a C-4 knockoff from India stabilized for hot climates, cheap and untraceable—at least nobody could trace it to him. The electronic timer was a throwaway quartz runner’s watch he’d bought at a Kmart, no prints anywhere, and if he built another one, he’d do it differently, so as not to leave a signature the bomb guys could read.
Ten minutes from now, the Dumpster was going to pop the lid and spew a goodly portion of its stinking contents into the air—the steel walls would almost surely hold, it wasn’t that big a boomer—and the result would be a nasty mess for some poor bastard on kitchen patrol to clean up. Come all this way to blow up a garbage can? Well, it was what Lewis wanted, and probably she had some reason, though he damn sure didn’t know what it was.
He turned and started to walk away. In ten minutes, he’d be halfway back to where they’d anchored the boat. By the time the Army figured out what happened—he wouldn’t put it past ’em to blame it on methane gas—he and Hill and Stark would have sailed away.
He grinned. Stupid Army wonks . . .
“Sergeant,” came a masculine, if somewhat high-pitched, voice.
Startled, Carruth turned. It was that shavetail second lieutenant he’d passed earlier, standing three meters behind him. A big mistake on his part. He should have been paying better attention. “Sir?”
“What is your unit, soldier?”
Carruth repressed the urge to sigh. Just his luck to run into a kid officer who apparently had a eye for faces and didn’t recognize Carruth’s.
“My unit, sir? I’m on loan from the 704th Chemical, Arden Hills, sir. USASOC. I just arrived this morning to teach a class in decontamination procedure.” He took a step toward the lieutenant.
The younger man—he couldn’t be more than twenty-two or -three—frowned. “I don’t recall seeing a posting about that.”
Carruth stole another step. “I wouldn’t know about that, sir. I just go where I’m told and do what they say. I have my orders right here.” He reached toward his pocket, as if to remove them.
The lieutenant waved that off. “What are you doing messing around back here with the garbage cans?”
“I got lost, sir. Saw some trash on the ground and picked it up.” He didn’t have time for this. The clock was ticking.
He was close enough now, but maybe it wouldn’t come to that. If this idiot would just leave it, he’d be on his way.
“Show me.”
“Sir?”
“The trash you picked up. I want to see it.”
Aw, shit. He had a problem. This conversation had gone on long enough so that buzz-cut here would remember him once the can went boom! and that was bad. Plus the fact that when he opened that Dumpster lid, that ED lying on the bed of yellow egg residue would stand out like a red flag.
“Yes, sir.” And with that, Carruth clocked the lieutenant, a short hammer-fist to the temple, putting his hip into the hit.
The lieutenant fell like his legs had vanished. He was out cold.
But he was gonna wake up in a few minutes and probably his memory would work just fine. That wasn’t gonna do.
Carruth picked the unconscious officer up, shouldered him, and carried him the Dumpster. He lifted the lid and dropped the lieutenant into the bin. Wiped the lid where he had touched it, then latched the top shut.
He walked away. Too bad for the soldier, but risk went with the job. Probably the explosion would kill him; at the least, it would mess him up enough that he wouldn’t be talking anytime soon.
Better him than me . . .
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Jay Gridley sat in Thorn’s office, looking, as he often did, like a teenager late for a date.
“You got the report on the base in Hawaii?” Thorn asked.
“I haven’t read it yet,” Jay answered. “It was in the spool when you called.”
“Somebody cut through the fence and blew up a Dumpster.”
Jay laughed. “Whoa. Big-time assault.”
“The bomber apparently decked a second lieutenant and put him into the garbage bin with the bomb.”
“Jeez. Kill him?”
“No. The trash somehow partially muted the blast. Blew out his eardrums, gave him a major concussion, ruptured spleen, collapsed lung, burns, and cuts. He’s in bad shape, but he’s still alive.”
“Poor bastard.”
“I’m expecting my phone to ring any second with an irate general on the line wanting to know what we have done toward catching these people. So—what have we done?”
“I’m grinding, Boss, you know how it goes. It’s like looking for one line of bad code in a million-line program—you don’t see it until you get to it.”
“I understand, Jay, but they won’t. Give me something. Anything.”
“The computer game is intricate and well built, so we’re dealing with a serious programmer, plus one smart enough to put it out there and then trash it without leaving an easy trail. I’m working with Captain Lewis at MILDAT, running down leads.”
Thorn nodded. “Whoever is doing this is trying to make a point. I don’t know what, but blowing up a Dumpster doesn’t have a lot of strategic value, any more than the raid in Oklahoma, where they knocked down an armory door, blew some windows out, and then turned around and left empty-handed. It looks to me like they are trying to show that they can get into these bases and do whatever they want.”