Captain Scott Mitchell, Ghost Team leader, lay prone on a ridgeline approximately fifty meters south of three mud-brick houses standing in sharp relief against a frozen hilltop. Smoke wafted from stone chimneys and fluttered like pennons before dissolving into the night air.
Somewhere in the valley below, within the snow-covered alleys between dozens more homes, a dog howled and firelight flickered from more windows. Then… it grew eerily quiet.
Up ahead, Staff Sergeant Joe Ramirez and Sergeant Marcus Brown shifted furtively toward the houses, following a gully that ran up near a lone, leafless tree.
Sergeant Alicia Diaz, the team's marksman, had darted off west toward the opposite hill overlooking the houses to select her sniper's perch.
Mitchell cleared his throat and tapped a button on his earpiece with integrated camera and microphone. "Cross-Com activated."
Attached to that same earpiece was a monocle that curved forward and glowed with screens displaying his uplink and downlink channels, icons representing his support elements, and his rifle's targeting reticle, among other bits of data. While the three-dimensional images seemed to appear in his head-up display (HUD), they were actually being produced by a low-intensity laser projecting them through his pupil and onto his retina. The laser scanned vertically and horizontally at high speed using a coherent beam of light, and all data was refreshed every second to continually update him.
In order to accomplish that task, the Cross-Com system connected via satellite to the entire military's local and wide area networks (LAN/WAN) so that in effect the commander in chief could see exactly what he was doing and speak to him directly on the battlefield. That level of network-centric warfare — all part of Mitchell's Integrated Warfighter System (IWS Beta Version) — was as significant as it was unnerving. No mistake ever escaped his superior's attention.
He thumbed a button on the wireless controller in his hand and switched his HUD to a view captured by the UAV3 Cypher drone hovering two hundred feet over the houses. The ring-shaped drone with central rotor and multiple cameras and imaging systems was small, barely two meters, and newly rigged to operate much more quietly than earlier models.
With his gloved finger, Mitchell shifted the controller's joystick, steering the drone toward the target while switching between infrared and thermal modes in an attempt to identify how many occupants were in each house.
Mitchell grinned in awe.
During the past eighteen months he had fielded some mind-blowing gear while serving in the countries of Georgia and Eritrea, and he never ceased being impressed. Now, not only was he on a mission of utmost importance, but he had been chosen to field-test an early beta version of the Cross-Com system, a program whose funding was already in jeopardy. Despite that, he had made the stern argument that every operator on his team should be fitted with the devices, cost be damned. He thought it invaluable to have all Ghosts equipped with the best technology to have total situational awareness, not just the team leader. He'd won his argument.
Indeed, Susan Grey had been right about the Ghosts. They got what they wanted because they produced results.
Originally formed in 1994, the Ghosts were better funded, better trained, and better equipped than all other Special Forces companies because they had to be. They were the spearhead of all American Special Forces, a quick-response team, first in and last out. While the cliche "the best of the best" made Mitchell wince, it was undeniably true. Every operator had been handpicked, and the organization's existence was classified, compartmentalized. The army did a damned good job of keeping that secret, too, disguising them as just another unit. Mitchell had been in the service a long time, and he'd never heard of the Ghosts until Grey had crashed his party.
It had been an eventful and enlightening eighteen months to be sure, yet of all the missions he had run thus far, this one was arguably the most difficult — for multiple reasons.
Earlier in the evening, the wind speeds had been increasing, nearing the limit, and they shouldn't have jumped at all, but Mitchell wouldn't allow weather to stop them. No way.
So they had bailed out of a perfectly good C-130 and had made a hair-raising high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) insertion into the mountains just west of a town called Miranshah, where for the last three years the Taliban had established several bases of operations, including public offices — an act that had continually outraged the locals. The team had been given full drone support; otherwise, they were on their own until they rallied back on the pickup point one kilometer due east of their current position. They were dressed and armed like Taliban insurgents, save for the suppressors on their AK-47 rifles. Even Diaz was toting along a Dragunov sniper rifle instead of a silenced SR-25 or some of the other rifles she preferred.
For his part, Mitchell had offered his people the requisite sarcastic welcome to the tribal lands of Waziristan, the most hostile part of the entire country, a wild west ruled by local leaders or maliks (kings) who had either made deals allowing the Taliban to live and train within their territory or who had been coerced into making deals. Over the years, over two hundred maliks had been slaughtered trying to stand up to the Taliban.
Despite that legacy of death, Mitchell had no reservations about taking on the mission, especially when he'd learned about who was involved.
He maneuvered the drone to the farthest house, descended a few meters, centered the reticle and grid overlay, and whispered to himself, "Come on. Be there."
The drone hummed quietly. Mitchell's breath steamed. He sniffled, tensed, waited.
Abruptly, three brilliant green diamonds flashed in his HUD, along with three familiar names and their blood types. The diamonds zoomed in on the locations of each man in the house.
He'd found them! And he repressed the desire to shake a fist in the air.
Signals coming back from specially modified "Green" Force Tracker Chips under the skin of each man had allowed the computer to discern them as friendlies.
The GFTCs were part of a sophisticated and fine-tuned Identification, Friend or Foe (IFF) system that functioned much faster and more accurately than laser-based predecessors. Implanted chips were less cumbersome and more secure than external, radio-like identifiers. Additionally, the GFTCs were equipped with two security systems: (1) a DNA identifier so that the chips couldn't be used by enemies and still function, and (2) rolling encrypted signals to avoid enemy interception. Mitchell also had the command authority to update those rolling codes at his discretion.
The drone was beginning to get too close to the house, blowing snow from its roof, and Mitchell swore and guided it back to gain altitude.
The other individuals inside, four in all, were located via thermal infrared imagers and designated as "soldiers" with red numbered diamonds that also flashed and zoomed in on their positions. Mitchell could change those designations with a voice command override, should an enemy turn out to be a friendly or a civilian. "Target Three is Green," he might say.
Calming himself now, he flew the drone even higher, all of its data transmitted in real time over the entire network.
The drone picked out eight more targets, including a heavily bundled-up man posted outside each door.
They were only outnumbered three to one. Mitchell liked those odds.
"Ghost Lead, this is Brown," called the gunner. "I'm in position."
"Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez. I'm moving up. Almost there." The rifleman and communications expert aka commo guy had shivered through his words as he fought for breath.
The Cross-Com's security measures gave Mitchell and his teammates the luxury of using their own names over the radio, though he was identified as Ghost Lead in most cases. Sometimes he missed the old call signs, all starting with the same letter on an ODA team: Rockstar, Rapper, Rutang…