Wormhole (21 page)

When he reached the comm center, he found Jack, Janet, and Heather already inside. Jennifer ran up beside him as he stepped across the threshold. Reaching the weapons locker, he grabbed his M4 assault rifle, shoulder holster with its SIG Sauer P226, and backpack filled with ammo and emergency supplies. Then he moved to his station, making room for Jennifer to arm herself.

Heather had settled in front of one of the computer consoles that glowed softly in the dark room. A quick sidelong glance verified that someone had already closed all the blinds, eliminating any chance of light leakage outside the building.

“Situation report?” Jack asked.

“We’ve got sixteen electronic signatures at two hundred forty-five degrees, distance eighteen hundred meters,” Heather responded, bringing up a map display showing the slowly moving symbols.

Mark logged into his console as Jennifer reached her own station. “Are we tied into their GPS signals yet?”

“Not yet. I’m breaking the encryption now. For the moment we’re relying on triangulation from the passive antenna array to plot their locations.”

Janet moved closer to Mark. “Jen, find out what’s providing the overhead intel. It’s going to be Global Hawk or U-2. Mark, I want to know about the combat air support.”

“On it.” Mark worked the keyboard, rapidly navigating his way through a listing of satellites capable of seeing the Frazier compound from their current orbital position. Finding what he was
looking for, he typed a coordinate into his subspace transceiver, activating the hard link that tied him into the eye in the sky.

Three thousand miles away, at the SEAL Team Ten op center just off Virginia Beach, Commander Eric Patterson cursed as one of his situational displays filled with static.

Heather’s blood pulsed through her heart, its heat spreading out through her arteries. She felt the oxygen filter through her lungs, replacing carbon dioxide with the heady mixture that made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt. She knew that with the awesome power of the United States government targeting them, she should probably feel a measure of fear. At this moment a team of the finest special operations soldiers in the world were moving in on their compound, backed by extensive air power that was capable of turning the entire Frazier hacienda into a roiling ball of flame. But all she felt was an electric thrill.

Off to her left, Mark spoke. “I’ve got a live satellite feed on monitor two. Not a very good one, though. I see three aircraft. Looks like a Global Hawk spy bird and a couple of others.”

Jack glanced at the display. “That outbound aircraft has to be the C-140 that did the HALO drop. That other one’s a B-52. Looks
like we rate a heavy hitter, just in case the SOCOM team gets in trouble.”

“Which they’re about to get into,” said Heather. “I’ve cracked the GPS encryption. Ready to disrupt their signal.”

Jack studied the map for several seconds before reaching out to point at a spot six hundred meters to the south. “Not too much. Send them just on the other side of this hill.”

Heather nodded, her fingers entering the commands that would introduce the appropriate GPS positioning error.

“I’ve got control of the Global Hawk sensors, flight controls, and telemetry. I’m monitoring the incoming commands from the Global Hawk Mission Control Element.” Jennifer joined in. “Want me to make it go dark?”

“No,” Jack said. “But I want you to replace the live feed with the last two minutes of recorded data from the sensor. Janet and I’ll get Robby, Yachay, and the alien headsets out while you three keep SOCOM confused. Give us fifteen minutes if you can, then same drill. Loop back a recorded feed, set the explosive timers, and get the hell out.”

“We’re not going to fight?”

“If that was a B-2 up there I’d consider it. Not with a B-52 in the air. It’s so old there are lots of manual ways to get things done that we can’t override with a hack. They don’t need to be accurate with that baby and we’re so remote, collateral damage won’t cross their minds. The second they think the assault team’s in trouble they’ll blow the hell out of the whole compound.”

Heather took a deep breath. She was going to miss this place, but she’d known this couldn’t last forever. Thank God the vicious old Nazi who’d built the compound was so paranoid he constructed an escape tunnel from beneath the master bedroom to a thickly wooded ravine thirteen hundred meters to the northeast.

“Ready?” Jack asked.

“Ready,” Jennifer replied.

“Start the loopback now.”

Jennifer’s long fingers whispered over the keyboard.

When Heather looked around, Jack and Janet were already gone.

Lieutenant Morrow gave the signal that brought his assault team to a stop. Although he saw and heard nothing, Master Chief Hob Lucero materialized at his elbow.

“Yeah, Chief?”

“Something’s seriously wrong here.”

As good as Morrow was, he knew his master chief was better. In SOCOM, the man was a living legend. Two Silver Stars, the Medal of Honor, and a chest full of so many ribbons he tilted to his left whenever he wore dress whites. But that barely hinted at the man’s story. Hob was a warrior from a different age: off duty a gentleman straight out of King Arthur’s court, in battle a Viking warrior his men would follow into hell itself.

“Yeah, I’ve had that feeling, but what is it?”

Hob snorted. “It’s this goddamned high-tech crap. This shit’s screwing us.”

“Care to be a bit more specific, Chief?”

The master chief pulled out a map, spread it on the ground, and flipped on a red lens flashlight. His finger circled a spot on the map. “The GPS puts us here, right?”

“Right.”

“Bullshit. I may not be one of the Pentagon’s sci-fi whiz kids, but I can read a cocksuckin’ map well enough to know the difference between a ridgeline and a valley. We’re sitting smack at the bottom of a valley, but that GPS says we’re right here on top of this ridge.”

Morrow stared at the paper map, then shifted his view to the GPS version on his digital display. He paused for several seconds, analyzing the disparity.

“NGA hasn’t spent a lot of effort producing high-quality maps of this area.”

“Fine. I’ll grant you a map error of plus or minus a hundred meters. But I swear to God, we’re half a click from where GPS says we are.”

“Which direction?”

“Due south.”

Once again Lieutenant Morrow paused. As much as he wanted to believe what the fancy SOCOM gadgetry was telling him, he trusted his master chief more.

“OK. So how do you figure it?”

“Sir, didn’t Gregory reprogram the GPS birds to deactivate the nanites?”

“He did.”

“So that tells me he knows we’re here. And he knows how addicted to technology special ops has become. He’s screwing us with our own technology.”

“Recommendation?”

“Somehow he’s tracking us through our transmitters. We need to strip off all the high-tech gadgetry, you and me. Put it in
two packs, give those packs to a couple of our guys and send our team on, just like before. Then the two of us veer off and deliver a little surprise to Jack the Ripper.”

By the time Master Chief Hob Lucero finished proposing his plan, Morrow had already begun dropping every high-tech gadget on his body in a pile on the ground in front of him.

“Almost time to go,” Mark said, the watch in his head ticking off the seconds. He pointed at the map display. “The SEAL team is too far off course now to get here before we’re long gone.”

Mark saw Heather’s eyes go white, saw her stagger under the weight of her vision and reached out a hand to support her.

As her eyes cleared, she shook her head. “Escaping through the tunnel and blowing the compound isn’t going to work. The Global Hawk’s synthetic aperture radar and infrared sensors are just too good. They’ll see us through the surrounding jungle. After that, there’ll be no escaping the B-52.”

Turning her attention back to her console, Heather redirected her subspace receiver-transmitter at the B-52.

“I’ve got control of the B-52 targeting system.” Heather’s voice sounded tight in her throat.

“I thought we couldn’t do that.”

“It’s possible for the crew to manually override my control, but only if they recognize what’s happening. That’s not going to happen until it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” asked Jennifer.

“Give me the SEAL team’s center of mass, latitude-longitude.”

The light dawned in Mark’s mind. He calculated the coordinate to tenths of a decimal second, reciting it aloud.

“Team spread?”

“One hundred seventy three meters.”

Heather punched in the targeting data.

Jennifer gasped. “We’re going to kill Americans?”

“They’re here to kill us.”

Her icy tone held an edge Mark had never heard from Heather, but it didn’t surprise him. He could feel their training kicking in, siphoning away all paralyzing emotion. They would have to deal with those emotions at some point, just not now.

“Jen,” Heather continued. “Get ready to give me the Global Hawk feed. I’m going to want live infrared video of the SEAL team.”

“I already have sensor control. Ready any time.”

“Mark, get me a satellite shot, best NIIRS resolution it can do.”

Mark focused on his own console. “Imagery coming down now. It’s a pretty large data stream. Download will take thirty-five seconds.”

The data appeared on the monitor to Heather’s left, members of the team visible, but without the detail she wanted. Heather shook her head.

“Something’s wrong. I’m only seeing fourteen people.”

“I’m still showing sixteen GPS blips within that area,” said Mark. “Maybe a couple are terrain-masked.”

Heather glanced at the map display. “Can’t be. The blips for the two I can’t see are right next to SEALs I can see.”

Suddenly Mark saw her eyes go white again. Not good.

Heather came out of her trance almost as quickly as she had entered it. “Jen, give me the Global Hawk feed now!”