Captain Stan Marion of TCFD East Precinct paused for a moment as the smoke swept around him, looking carefully through the infrared imagery projected on the OLED Heads Up Display (HUD) inside his helmet screen. The heat differential of the floor and walls told him where not to step as he began to move through, and even through the thick smoke he could easily make out the forms of three people lying prone on the ground.
Marion paused for another moment, looking over his shoulder. Through the smoke he spotted the next man in the chain and waved sharply to get his attention. When the man waved back, Marion held up three fingers and pointed ahead of him. The man nodded, and Marion saw him pass the message back, albeit a little clumsily, and he moved forward to grab the first figure.
The equipment he carried and wore were a mixed bag of traditional and hi-tech, from the dull and heavy axe to the high tech, normally networked, Heads Up Display he wore on his head. Some of it was spun off of military equipment, some of it was hand tooled, but all of it was precision tailored to the job Marion and his men had to do.
He picked up the first body, heaving it up over his shoulder, and passed it back to the man behind him. In the smoke he couldn’t tell if the body was male or female, or even if it was still breathing, he could just make out the shape by the few degrees difference from the blazing environment around them. It was all his equipment could give him in the hostile environment he was dealing with, better than he’d had when he started in his chosen vocation over fifteen years earlier. It was enough, it was all he asked for in fact.
The next two bodies went back, and at least one of them was moving as he passed it off to the man behind him, so Marion had the satisfaction of knowing that at least some of the Emergency Medical Teams outside would have some work to do.
Only then did he turn his focus on the hulk that was protruding from the outside wall and ceiling, noting that in the Infrared the metal of the chopper was well above the surrounding area, temperature wise, and seemed to be heating up. He shook his head, but started forward anyway, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
He glanced back and recognized his Chief Lieutenant, Corrin Bradley, as the man shook his finger at him in chastisement. He didn’t have to hear Bradley’s voice to know that the man was lecturing him, in his mind at least. He looked back, just to make sure that there was another man behind them in the chain, then nodded to Corrin and pointed to the chopper.
Bradley nodded in return and clapped him on the shoulder as they started toward the hulk that was literally glowing an evil red color in their infrared HUDs.
“Well this is gonna be fun,” Major Malcolm uttered under his breath, his hand cradling his assault rifle.
The other members of the SAS team, Interpol Officers, and the sole Australian police Inspector looked out from the edge of the city ring across the open terrain to where the glass of the greenhouse gleamed.
The twenty-five thousand acre greenhouse occupied a huge area around the massive tower that stretched one thousand acres into the sky above them, warming the air that drive the rising thermals the tower used to generate power. Because of the need to eliminate any risk of shadows falling across the greenhouse, and thereby impairing the heat production which was the facility’s bread and butter, the city had been mandated not to be built within five hundred meters of the facility.
Since the power tower conglomeration owned the land out to that range, it was a simple ordinance to maintain.
What it did for the assault, however, did bear thinking on.
The scrub and dust that made up the Australian outback had been bulldozed and trampled and generally pounded into the ground by the construction teams, leaving nothing but a flat, featureless section of land between them and their destination.
Or, as one of the SAS men had referred to it at first sight, Sniper’s Paradise.
“Alright, we’re going to cross fast. Stay close to the monorail pillars, use them as cover,” Malcolm started, but Anselm held up his hand. “What is it, Interpol”
“A little hand, courtesy of the Americans,” Anselm replied, holding up the portable the American agent had thrown him, “They have a satellite above us with Thermal detection ability.”
Malcolm leaned over, looking at the imagery, then whistled quietly. “How close can you get”
Anselm toyed with the device, zooming him. “Close. That’s us, I believe.”
Malcolm let out a short, sharp laugh. “Americans. They always have the best toys.”
Anselm nodded, noting that he could count how many people were in their little group by their heat signatures on the portable’s screen.
“How does it handle the higher temperatures inside the greenhouse”
“Not badly,” Anselm replied, scrolling the image with a flick of his finger. “They have guards posted at the entryway for the monorail trams, but the edge of the skirt seems mostly clear.”
“They probably can’t spare the people to guard it,” Malcolm decided, thinking about it. “Alright, we’ll duck back into the buildings and circle around. We find an open space, then move in there.”
“Hang on,” Anselm said softly, “There is one blind spot. The central spire of the tower is hot enough that it’s impossible to tell if they have anyone on the tower. That’s their best vantage point.”
“Agreed. Ok, we scout that the old fashioned way,” Malcolm said, waving a hand. “Mac!”
“Sir.” Mackenzie said softly, moving up to join the powow.
“Take Givens back and find a good spot, then I want you to check that tower for Tangos.”
Mackenzie looked up, along the thousand meters of tower above them, and his face kind of pinched. “The whole tower Sir”
“Concentrate on the top,” Gwen said, speaking up, “The rest you can just quickly scan and anything that shouldn’t be there will pop out at you.”
Mac looked at Malcolm, who nodded.
“Yes Sir. How do you want to handle any we find”
“Do your thing, Mac.”
“Alright, Sir,” Mackenzie grinned.
Patrolling the top of the tower was enough to drive a man nuts, Corbin Maerin decided as he leaned over the railing again, using the powerful field imager he’d brought to observe the city below. He’d had to knock out the panes of plexiglass that normally filled in the tourists observation `bubble’, just so he could see down to the city, but without them in place the winds swept through with an irritating randomness.
Sometimes warm and sweet, blown in from the maw of the tower, and sometimes cold and biting, leaving him shivering in place as he did his best to keep watch. Around the circle of the four hundred meter walkway, there were others doing the same thing, but he still managed to feel alone when he looked down on the world below.
He had his long rifle beside him, an accurized Chinese Type 88. It was an old configuration, but well built, and totally useless from where he stood unfortunately.
Corbin knew that he was sentenced to being nothing more than a spotter, given his location. The only targets that might be open to him were a thousand meters below him, and a thousand or more meters out, within the city. If the distance weren’t bad enough, and it was pretty bad, he had to admit, the thermal variance from the glass below caused the air to shimmer and totally loused any shot a man might make.