“Major.” It was Wu. “Movement.”
Opal hopped halfway up the rungs in a single jump, grabbed the eyepiece of the monofilament snooper they’d fixed there, looked out into the street.
The shadows approaching from the north were bigger now, and they weren’t disappearing. They courted the edges of the smoke, indistinct but steady presences.
“What’s the wait?” asked O’Garran.
“They’re checking out the area. They seem pretty shy,” Opal mused.
“Wouldn’t you be? They’ve learned that, today, almost anything can be a trap.”
“I just want to make sure they’re not looking for us.”
“You mean, an ambush by concealed tunnel rats? I doubt it. My guess is they’re extra-cautious because they’re getting nasty surprises from the more organized resistance cells. According to the chatter on the fiber-com, all us tunnel rats and most of the infiltration teams have been able to stay under the street and under the radar, so far.”
Opal watched two Hkh’Rkh emerge from the smoke. One was limping. “We’ll be setting a new precedent, then.” These Sloths were the perfect target. Neither of the ones she saw had liquimix weapons—the Hkh’Rkh reserved those for squad support and elite troops—and were carrying light ammo loads. They were on their way to the rear, all right. As more of them emerged from the smoke, the condition of the first two proved to be universal. They were all wounded, wary, lightly loaded, scanning the buildings as they came on. They had probably learned that sporadically firing insurgents like those they knew were up ahead didn’t usually think about rear security. But they had also probably learned that they could not rely on that assumption, because there were too many humans with a little military experience sprinkled into the general population. Opal counted more than a dozen Hkh’Rkh, now within thirty meters of their subterranean hideout. She turned to O’Garran. “Activate the decoy repeater.”
The little SEAL nodded, pressed the central button on the small remote he held. “The repeater is active.”
The Hkh’Rkh’s behavior changed almost instantly. From somewhere in the rear of their well-spread column of advance, an order came up. Their point scouts held position, went low, and within thirty seconds, the unit’s commo specialist had come forward, sweeping a hand scanner back and forth, back and forth. Within ten seconds, he had found the vector of strongest transmission and pointed out the repeater.
“Mr. Wu, please tell Mr. Chou to instruct his second squad that they are to prepare to trigger their charges, and follow up by directly engaging the enemy. As per contingency B-beta.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Opal watched three of the Hkh’Rkh come forward, sweeping the muzzles of their outsized weapons across the facades of the surrounding buildings. She could also feel Little Guy squinting up at her.
“Major, if we just stick with the mines, that won’t give away our position. Hell, they can’t even be sure if they’re running into trip-wired or command-detonated charges. But if our troops join the ambush, the enemy will know we’re here, will see our positions.” O’Garran’s voice trailed off, uncomfortable with stating the obvious.
Opal paused, collecting herself, her thoughts, the right words. “Sergeant O’Garran, you are my right hand, my guardian angel, my demolitions expert—and you have more mouth on you than you should. I’ve got my reasons for starting our own little party here and now, and I will make those reasons clear to you. In my own sweet time. Understood, Sergeant?”
She didn’t look down. The one second of silence was capped by a “Yes, ma’am. Sorry if I was out of line.”
You were. But so am I, and you can smell it, can’t you? Two weeks we’ve been creeping and crawling toward Jakarta, shepherding our platoon of pint-sized soldiers through fiber-optic conduits and the occasional rare sewer, wiring up covert op teams so they’re on the fiber-com net, hitting the Hkh’Rkh when we had to, hiding most of the time to get our job done. And now—now when we should play it cool, should wait for the signal from offshore to commence the final attack on the enemy’s command and control elements—I’m taking us into an engagement that is contrary to everything we’ve been working toward. It’s contrary to our mission, to your instincts, to our present need to stay hidden. But it is essential to Caine’s survival. If the current intel is right, the Arat Kur would be keeping him in the presidential compound and we’re only three hundred meters away. But if we don’t get in the game right now, it may be too late to get to him in time.
The Hkh’Rkh had reached the repeater, were hunkering down to look for traps. But they were too late. Opal turned to Wu. “Light ’em up.”
Wu nodded at Chou. Chou turned the command switches sharply.
The convex block—a fourth-generation claymore mine—went off with a throaty roar. The three Hkh’Rkh went down, one struggling to get his claws over two geysering wounds, another limp by the time he hit the macadam.
The reaction of the other Hkh’Rkh was, as always, prudent and well-rehearsed. Their NCOs waved the rest of the troopers back into covering positions close against the walls of the buildings on either side of the street. Fifty meters south, close to the rear of the column, a small knot of the Hkh’Rkh gathered and then tucked quickly into a side-street. The command group, probably trying to assess how best to recon the point of contact, whether it had been a dumb-mine or command detonated, and whether they could afford the time or personnel to send out feelers to the flanks.
But they had less time than they knew. “Mr. Wu, tell Mr. Chou to order second squad into action, starting with the ready charges.” Opal returned her eye to the snooper scope, counted off three seconds—
The windows and doors of the buildings on the west side of the street blew out in gouts of flame, smoke, and cartwheeling debris. One or two of the Hkh’Rkh that had been sheltering against them got up, limped over to their mates on the other side of the street, some moving into the east-side buildings to find cover—
But they found an ambush instead. Having come up out of the fiber-optic conduits in the basements of two buildings on the east side of the street, Chou’s second squad, armed with South African liquimix carbines, started hitting each Hkh’Rkh with tightly grouped three- and four-round bursts. At least that’s what had been planned, and that’s what it sounded like now. The Hkh’Rkh came reeling back out of the buildings, into the middle of the street, firing as they withdrew, but uncertain where to go. After a moment, they started a fighting withdrawal back down the street, toward the last sighted location of the unit’s command group. Opal smiled. “Mr. Wu, tell Mr. Chou that third squad has the target right on top of them. Engage immediately.”
Opal almost felt sorry for the Hkh’Rkh. That side street had been the only reasonable fallback position within two hundred meters of the first ambush point. She counted off another three seconds—
An explosion quaked the walls around them slightly, shattered most of the remaining nearby windows. Smoke plumed out of the side street. Two seconds later, she could hear another but more distant stuttering torrent of South African liquimix carbines. Third squad was capitalizing upon the confusion and devastation inflicted by almost ten kilos of plastique that had been planted and upward-tamped on the thin ceiling of the sewer station in that side street. O’Garran was conferring directly with Chou in his atrocious pidgin Cantonese. “What’s he’s saying, Little Guy?” Opal asked. “How many did we get of theirs, lose of ours?”
“There’s only a handful of them left. Chou says he’s lost about half of each squad.” O’Garran had more to say, but didn’t say it; Chou’s eyes stayed on him, waiting. You may not speak English, Chou, but you know your pint-sized American pal hasn’t asked me the question you put to him. Why lose any of his men? Why stage this ambush at all? Why not wait for the “go” signal that will kick off the final attack? Opal returned her eye to the snooper scope. “Those are good results. Pass the word to all squads: fall back to yesterday’s positions.”