The Secret Cardinal by Tom Grace

recruits?”
    â€œHell no. If it was good enough for you ’n me, it’s good enough for them.”
    â€œGlad to hear it. How are you coming with the team for my op?”
    â€œEvery spec warrior I polled has signed on,” Gates replied, referring to members of the elite special forces community, “so we should have a full roster by midday. Amazing how many guys will volunteer for something with so few details.”
    â€œMust be the thought of your charming company.”
    â€œOr the chance to see a crusty old SEAL strap on his fins one last time before he retires,” Gates said in a slow Oklahoma drawl. “Remember our last op?”
    â€œHaiti? Like it was yesterday. Bet Admiral Hopwood was smiling down from heaven on us after that little foray into the bush.”
    â€œAnytime you can rescue a bunch of hostages and send a steamin’ sack of shit to hell—well, my friend, that is a good day.”
    â€œThis will be a good one to hang up your fins after, Max. Any thoughts on the plan?” Kilkenny asked.
    â€œA few. About six or seven years back, you and I did a stint with the Night Stalkers. Remember those funky ultralights they were toying around with—the BATs?”
    Kilkenny clearly recalled one night flight in which the pilot from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) did all he could to get his Navy passengers to lose their dinners. Gates repaid the pilot with a little unscheduled underwater cross training.
    â€œBitchin’ Airborne Things?” Kilkenny mused, recalling the unofficial acronym. “Think we can use ‘em?”
    â€œThey’ve come a long way since the Mark One Mod Zeros we played with. Take a look at the latest iteration.”
    Gates uploaded an animation that quickly appeared in a window on Kilkenny’s screen. The new BAT sported an open, lozenge-shaped fuselage made with curved sections of piping and seated four occupants
in a two-by-two configuration. Like a helicopter, the fuselage rested on a pair of skids, but any resemblance between the two types of aircraft ended there. Tubular tendrils sprouted organically from a slender, three-foot-long turbine engine mounted atop the spine of the fuselage above the rear seats. The tendrils flowed seamlessly like arteries that could draw energy from the power plant. The most distinctive feature of the craft was its wings—a pair of fabric-clad armatures with visible ribs and scalloped along the trailing edge like its nocturnal namesake.
    â€œLooks like something Tim Burton and H. R. Giger might have dreamed up,” Kilkenny opined.
    â€œIt ain’t a fighter jet, but it sure flies like a sonofabitch. Can turn on a dime, hover, and do moves in the air that are almost unnatural. I figure with three of these, we can jump across the Mongolian border and reach the outskirts of Chifeng in just a few hours. That’ll save us a couple days of transit heading in and out—time that I’d rather use on the ground eyeballin’ that prison.”
    â€œAs I recall, BATs were just for short-range hops.”
    â€œFor the most part, they still are. This beast is totally electric now, powered by a fuel cell. Given the juice it takes to put one of ’em into the air, round-trip range is a couple hundred miles.”
    â€œWe’re going a lot farther than that.”
    â€œI know, but some of the prototypes they’re testing are for long-range insertion.”
    â€œHow long?”
    â€œDon’t know yet. On these new BATs, they replaced the fuel cell with a radioisotopic thermoelectric generator,” Gates pronounced each syllable carefully as he read the words off a specification sheet. “A RITEG for short. I understand they use ’em to power satellites.”
    â€œMax, it’s a nuke.”
    â€œNo shit. I guess that’s why they say that with a RITEG, this thing will keep going like the Energizer Bunny.