touched each of his men on the shoulder and pointed. The others got up, adjusted their packs, and followed him into the night, away from the recon squad they had been with. All Abru told the squad leader was that they had orders and were leaving. The reccer sergeant knew better than to ask for anything more.
The four men of Abru's team had been with him for more than a year, in training and in action. They were all considerably younger than him, all taller, all at least as heavy and fit as he was. None of them had any difficulty keeping up with the pace he set for the night march, but none would have been willing to try to set a faster pace. They worked together very well. After Porter, they had decided not to replace the one man of the team who had been killed. It would take too long to bring any replacement along to the point where he would not be a liability to the rest of them.
In an hour, the team covered just slightly less than ten kilometers. While they took a five-minute break, Abru outlined the mission, precisely, with less wasted verbiage than he had received. He spoke face-to-face, visor up, microphones switched off. Abru made a conscious point of distrusting the almost foolproof security of the radio net. He used the radio only when there was no other possible way to communicate in a timely fashion. It was a chance he simply preferred to avoid whenever possible.
After the briefing, the team reverted to silence. All of these men were comfortable with that. On Porter, they had spent ten days together, lying in wait, after jumping in a week ahead of the main invasion force. In all of those ten days, not one of them had spoken a single word.
When the team reached the narrow valley leading toward Telchuk Mountain, they climbed to the southwest slope and moved along that, hidden by evergreen trees. The wooded slope was not very dense. The trees tended to be scrawny, and few of them were more than five or six meters in height—most were barely half that. But the SI team moved easily, from tree to tree in broken formation. From habit, the men avoided showing even the simplest patterns to their movement. They moved closer together, or farther apart, climbed higher on the slope or lower, they zigged and zagged, stopped and started. Even if an enemy spyeye should happen to note the movement—a very remote possibility under any circumstances—computer analysis would not tag it as human.
When the team stopped for its second break, they had traveled twenty-three kilometers in two hours and forty minutes. Abru's power binoculars showed him where the entrance to the secret lab was concealed. He couldn't see the entrance directly, but there were vague signs of a pathway, visible even through the night-vision systems of his helmet optics.
He pointed, then lifted his helmet. The others lifted theirs as well, an automatic response.
"We'll get some rest. Two hours. Then we make contact and get those people out of there no later than sunrise." There would be no time for extended chitchat inside, certainly no time for the researchers to waste gathering things to take along. In and out, and back under cover as quickly as possible. Gene considered forgoing the rest, but decided that this might prove to be a foolish economy. It would be more difficult to get civilians out and moving in the dark, especially if they didn't have night-vision gear, and he doubted that they would.
The SI men did not post a sentry. None of these men would sleep so heavily that they wouldn't wake at the slightest untoward sound, even after a long march on little sleep. The men each found a good position, well separated from the others, and rolled himself in a thermal blanket. Two hours. That was enough of an alarm clock.
—|—
About the time that the SI team bedded down, the rest of the 13th was nearing the entrance to the valley, fifteen kilometers from the hidden laboratory. The remaining Havocs had been deployed. They would be able to provide at
The four men of Abru's team had been with him for more than a year, in training and in action. They were all considerably younger than him, all taller, all at least as heavy and fit as he was. None of them had any difficulty keeping up with the pace he set for the night march, but none would have been willing to try to set a faster pace. They worked together very well. After Porter, they had decided not to replace the one man of the team who had been killed. It would take too long to bring any replacement along to the point where he would not be a liability to the rest of them.
In an hour, the team covered just slightly less than ten kilometers. While they took a five-minute break, Abru outlined the mission, precisely, with less wasted verbiage than he had received. He spoke face-to-face, visor up, microphones switched off. Abru made a conscious point of distrusting the almost foolproof security of the radio net. He used the radio only when there was no other possible way to communicate in a timely fashion. It was a chance he simply preferred to avoid whenever possible.
After the briefing, the team reverted to silence. All of these men were comfortable with that. On Porter, they had spent ten days together, lying in wait, after jumping in a week ahead of the main invasion force. In all of those ten days, not one of them had spoken a single word.
When the team reached the narrow valley leading toward Telchuk Mountain, they climbed to the southwest slope and moved along that, hidden by evergreen trees. The wooded slope was not very dense. The trees tended to be scrawny, and few of them were more than five or six meters in height—most were barely half that. But the SI team moved easily, from tree to tree in broken formation. From habit, the men avoided showing even the simplest patterns to their movement. They moved closer together, or farther apart, climbed higher on the slope or lower, they zigged and zagged, stopped and started. Even if an enemy spyeye should happen to note the movement—a very remote possibility under any circumstances—computer analysis would not tag it as human.
When the team stopped for its second break, they had traveled twenty-three kilometers in two hours and forty minutes. Abru's power binoculars showed him where the entrance to the secret lab was concealed. He couldn't see the entrance directly, but there were vague signs of a pathway, visible even through the night-vision systems of his helmet optics.
He pointed, then lifted his helmet. The others lifted theirs as well, an automatic response.
"We'll get some rest. Two hours. Then we make contact and get those people out of there no later than sunrise." There would be no time for extended chitchat inside, certainly no time for the researchers to waste gathering things to take along. In and out, and back under cover as quickly as possible. Gene considered forgoing the rest, but decided that this might prove to be a foolish economy. It would be more difficult to get civilians out and moving in the dark, especially if they didn't have night-vision gear, and he doubted that they would.
The SI men did not post a sentry. None of these men would sleep so heavily that they wouldn't wake at the slightest untoward sound, even after a long march on little sleep. The men each found a good position, well separated from the others, and rolled himself in a thermal blanket. Two hours. That was enough of an alarm clock.
—|—
About the time that the SI team bedded down, the rest of the 13th was nearing the entrance to the valley, fifteen kilometers from the hidden laboratory. The remaining Havocs had been deployed. They would be able to provide at
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