He had his aid bag in his ruck, along with extra ammo and all the usual stuff any grunt carried – tape, zip cuffs, parachute cord, protein and granola bars, water, the list went on and on. Never knew what you might need. He also had his trusty XD on the thigh rig and his XD compact was in a holster on his left inner ankle. His right calf was taken up with a wicked-sharp KA-BAR combat knife that had gone with Gramps to Iwo Jima and back.
Waiting was difficult. Most of them dozed, with the thoroughly ingrained ability of every combat trooper to sleep anywhere, any time. But even the longest wait ends.
Coming up on 0300 hours they made their last commo check with Vinny and each other on the small tactical radios buckled high on their chests. Each of them had an earpiece in his shooting ear and a slim mike extending from it, snugged on the same-side cheek. The earpieces not only connected to their tactical radios but contained high-tech noise suppression circuitry that kept them from being deafened by their own weapons. A tiny counterpart was in each man’s opposite ear, so they could hear as well or better than normal, while maintaining sonic protection from the violence they were about to cause.
They motored slowly and quietly up to Watts Island, approaching from the north, out of sight of the buildings. Daniel lowered the anchor when Skull told him to, then watched as he filled a six-man rubber boat from a compressed air tank. They loaded from the dive deck off the back. Once they were in, they paddled the short distance to the rocky shore.
They startled some sleeping seabirds on landing. Daniel saw a Great Blue heron fly off, skimming up the shoreline like a living hang-glider. Other than that, they got in nice and easy. They carried the boat into the scrubby tree line, then locked and loaded weapons.
Despite the many missions under his belt, Daniel’s heart still thudded in his chest. It had been several years since he had been on a real, deliberate combat operation, not counting the bizarre actions that started this whole thing off. He wasn’t afraid for himself, but something in him was still sick at the thought of killing.
He’d never been this way before, and he was starting to wonder about it. The XH had improved him a lot; it had stilled the serpent and healed his body, but it had also made him different in some way. He had been trying to ignore it, to wish it away, but it was really making itself felt right now. He was starting to worry he couldn’t do the job. Only his choice of ammo was letting him function right now.
Daniel tried to imagine himself treating combat trauma, visualizing the blood, the pressure bandages, the IVs, the pain and the screaming. Nothing. But visualize shooting someone, and suddenly he felt sick. It was not too bad if he thought about shooting an arm or a leg. Deliberately recalling his execution of Jenkins, a wave of nausea and regret almost overcame him. He pushed it out of his mind as they moved through the low dense woods. He couldn’t indulge in thought experiments right now, or he would screw something up.
At least he knew he could treat combat injuries.
They came to the edge of the open space right where they expected, outside the northeast corner of the small complex. They were looking at the corner where the small northern building and the big central building almost touched. This was their ORP, their objective rally point. The helipad was to their right, next to the back of the big building. They could see the white Jeep through the gap between the buildings. Their angle blocked their view of the southernmost small building.
Zeke made a hand signal and Spooky moved off to their left, vanishing into the woods. A few minutes later Daniel saw him crouching by one of the windows at the back of the small building. He had been looking but had not even seen Spooky cross the open space from the trees to the building.
“Damn, he’s good,” he breathed.
A derisive snort from Skull was the only answer.
The wind sock at the helipad swung on its short wooden pole in the three to five knot breeze. Daniel watched the black shape against the white building move along it, looking in the windows. It slid around the corner a moment later, and they waited some more. While they waited, Skull prepped a hasty sniper position there at the ORP.
They heard a faint click, then Spooky’s voice. “North small building clear. Quarters, kitchen, office, rec room. I leave east door unsecured, advise occupy. Proceeding to south small building.”
“Acknowledged.” Zeke led them fifty yards eastward, staying inside the tree line. Then they hustled across the open space, shielded from sight by the empty small building. As they crossed the space they could hear the low grumble of a generator, well muffled, and a whining hiss that was less identifiable.
They slipped around the corner of the building to enter the door Spooky had left unlocked. Inside, they found everything as he had reported – two bedrooms with two single beds each, a shared latrine and shower, a kitchen, a recreation room with a pool table, and a small windowless office with a low-end computer, a printer combo, and not much else. They did a quick search, finding nothing of significance. The fridge held enough fresh food to indicate that they brought groceries at least weekly.
Zeke unlocked the door at the other end of the building, which if opened would face a door in the north end of the large building across an angled gap. He put an eye to the crack in the blinds of the door window, watching for anything amiss.
Daniel took the other side of the door and did the same, with Larry watching their backs.
About that time they heard Spooky report, “South building all clear. Quarters and kitchen, rest of building is general storage. Rally at north door of large building ETA one minute.”
Zeke replied, “Roger, we are inside north small building at south door, standing by.”
A moment later Daniel saw Spooky slip around the big building’s nearest corner and ghost up to the door in the near end. Spooky did something at the lock and then gently turned the handle. It looked like he had got it open. He reached into a cargo pocket and took out some kind of telescoping rod, like an old-fashioned radio aerial, and extended it. It had a little box on one end with a faint yellow LED, which he ran around the edge of the whole door frame. The light stayed yellow.
Some kind of alarm detector, Daniel thought.
Spooky collapsed it back to pen-size and slid it into his pocket. Then very, very slowly he eased the door off its jamb the tiniest of bits, not even a crack. He stayed that way for a full minute before letting it go gently back. He then pushed his NVGs off his eyes up onto the top of his head, lay prone on the ground, to open the door enough to press a naked eye to the crack at the very bottom corner.
Daniel observed, fascinated. Watching a real pro at work was interesting.
“Hallway whole length of building. Low light,” Spooky reported. “Eight doors, some with windows and lights inside. No activity. Negative air pressure confirmed.” Daniel figured Spooky was able to feel the air rushing into the crack in the door, as the air system kept the pressure inside slightly lower than outside. This would ensure any stray organisms floating in the air were unlikely to make it outside, except through the filtration system. In fact, that was probably the strange hissing they had heard crossing the field. It was kind of the opposite of NBC overpressure systems, which were usually meant to keep bad things out.
Zeke responded, “All right, we go in. Larry, hold the door, me and DJ go first and start search and clear. Spooky, go around and watch the far door from the outside. Unlock it and be ready to come in. Skull, you got clear lines?”
“Ay-firmative,” Skull answered under his breath.