True keeps her head bowed, careful never to make eye contact. It’s a posture that allows her to eye the dusty screen on the taxi’s dash. Khalid has hacked the rearview camera so it’s always on. He keeps the screen’s brightness minimized, but the shadowy illumination is still enough to show a vehicle following them.
“Let’s change our route,” True says, her tension reflected in her voice. “Take a different street.”
“I think it’s no one,” Khalid responds, his voice low. “But we can turn here, then go right at the next corner. It’s almost the same.”
They turn. The car behind them—a battered old sedan—drives on.
They turn twice more, roll past yet another group of men, and then stop, still a few meters from the target house. Khalid performs the role of taxi driver, holding out a biometric tablet to Rohan to collect payment. Rohan enters a code, presses his index finger to the scanner.
“I’ll be back in six minutes,” Khalid says softly. “Good luck.”
“Watch your back,” True warns him.
Rohan adds, “And don’t be late.”
Khalid flashes a smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
The men exit the cab. Jameson turns and opens the back door. True follows Juliet out into the driving wind, hauling her pack in one hand and holding her weapon close with the other. Felice comes behind. The wind carries the smell of smoke and of roasted meats and spices, but the taste it leaves in True’s mouth is dust, and the sound of it is a white noise that muddles a background track of howling dogs and distant engines.
Then on the edge of hearing: a faint thrum of helicopter blades.
Right on time, True thinks. It’s Blackbird, ReqOps’ little 900-s stealth autonomous helicopter, newly purchased from Eden Transit in a deal that will let it be sold back if it’s returned undamaged.
Blackbird comes armed with a sniper rifle, a light machine gun, and a set of behavioral algorithms developed by Tamara. The ship is the mission’s designated sharpshooter, and once the QRF has Hussam in custody, it’s up to Blackbird to haul the prisoner away. Success depends on Blackbird.
Rohan moves swiftly, quietly into the dark mouth of an alley. True swings her pack onto one shoulder as she follows in his wake. Juliet and Felice are on her heels. No doubt they’ve incurred the attention of the loitering men. Their goal is to be over the wall before those men agree on what is happening and make up their minds on how they will react.
Gravel pops under tires as Khalid drives away. True doesn’t look back. It’s Jameson’s assignment to linger in the shadows at the alley’s mouth, discouraging anyone who might be tempted to follow them.
On the other side of the world, Lincoln stands in ReqOps’ command post. He wears an audio headset and holds a tablet in his prosthetic hand that lets him control multiple channels of communication.
Renata Ballard is with him in the command post, strapped into a padded recliner with VR goggles over her eyes and black-lace data gloves on both hands. She’s ready for a long night in the chair, dressed in informal trousers and a baggy tunic, her blonde hair loose.
Engineering director Tamara Thomas is at a desk on the opposite side of the room along with her assistants, Naomi and Michelle. Each has her own workstation. They are ready to research and reprogram at need.
At the front of the room is Hayden Rees, a sharp kid, just a year out of high school, assigned to organize the video feeds displayed on a wall-mounted monitor. He sits at a narrow desk, using a tablet to rearrange them as priorities shift. Feeds from the QRF’s visors have been pushed into a ring of small tiles around the monitor’s periphery. Three larger tiles fill the center. One displays a three-dimensional map of the house, the result of the most recent radar scan. It shows six ghostly figures downstairs in two different back rooms, and upstairs, the three prisoners in their cell and four more individuals believed to be Hussam’s soldiers.
The other two tiles display infrared feeds from the leased surveillance drone circling at high altitude. One feed shows an overview of Tadmur. The other is zoomed in on the target compound so that Lincoln’s people are visible outside the wall.
Gold Team is in the alley. Red Team is in the narrow street behind the house. Both are presently hidden from the enemy’s tethered surveillance drone, which is struggling to complete its circuit against the wind.
The wind isn’t a problem for Blackbird’s powerful engine. ReqOps’ autonomous helicopter moves in swiftly, flying against the wind to minimize its sound profile. The plan calls for Blackbird to take the first shots, clearing the field for the QRF to advance.
It’s time.
Lincoln looks down at the tablet he’s holding. On its screen is a stack of colored bars. He taps the one labeled Blackbird and speaks to the AI pilot, giving final clearance: “Blackbird, engage Phase Green Nickel One.”
A synthesized female voice responds, “Roger that.”
Lincoln watches the wall monitor, counting silently. When he reaches five, a faint flash erupts downwind of the compound. “Aerial target one down,” Hayden reports in an excited voice.
The enemy drone is gone.
The alley is so narrow and cluttered it forces Gold Team to go single file. The wind races past, whooshing and sighing against the concrete walls, sweeping cigarette butts into ugly little drifts that pile against discarded junk: TVs and automotive parts and broken plastic crates that True has to step over or make her way around.
Without slowing down, she strips off her hijab. Beneath it she wears a close-fitting skullcap that she unrolls into a camouflaged mask. The hijab she lets fall, and for a few steps it follows her, fluttering at her feet until it catches on an old car battery.
Next, she unsnaps the top of her abaya, retrieving her MARC and slipping it on. For a second she’s blind. Then the visor boots. The screen comes to life, automatically enhancing the available light so that the alley brightens and the brand names printed on the scattered junk pop into clarity. A tag confirms her TINSL is linked.
Lincoln speaks over comms: “Aerial Target One confirmed down.”
True resists the urge to look up. She didn’t hear Blackbird take the shot; she didn’t hear the impact. Both sounds were suppressed by the white noise of the wind—but Hussam’s surveillance drone is gone. She receives the news with grim satisfaction, imagining a technician inside the house frowning over a suddenly absent video feed.
Rohan holds up a hand to signal a stop. True repeats the gesture for Felice.
Time for their final mission prep.
She presses the sticky backing of her mask against her cheeks to ensure it can’t shift and obscure her vision. Dropping into a crouch, she lets her pack thump gently against the ground. Without ever losing contact with her KO, she peels off the abaya and lets the wind take it. Then she shrugs the pack on again and stands.
They are all dressed alike now in the microscopically textured fabric of their adaptive camouflage. Even seen through their light-gathering visors, they are ghosts, outlines blurred and blended into their shadowy surroundings.
The transformation has taken forty-five seconds.
In the control room, Lincoln says, “Hayden, let’s get Blackbird’s front camera on screen.”
“Yes, sir.”
The overview of Tadmur winks out, replaced by a gray-scale video showing a rapid, low-elevation approach to the town. Taking down the enemy’s surveillance drone was only the initial step of Phase Green Nickel One. Blackbird is operating on its own to optimize step two: eliminating the suspect PV boxes in the courtyard. The camera can’t see past the anti-surveillance canopy, but Blackbird doesn’t need a visual target. The beetles have precisely mapped the location of each box.