He looked about. Another figure was forming to his right-Jackson. Then came a surprise-her featureless form began to shift. Eyes, a nose, a mouth appeared. Even hair, just like hers in real life. Dalton looked down-his avatar had changed also and was a realistic representation of his own body wearing a skintight black jumpsuit. Barnes also appeared and his avatar shifted quickly into an approximation of his normal appearance.
“Do you like the new avatars?” Hammond ’s eager voice was inside his head as she contacted him directly through Sybyl. “I’ve been working on this for a while. It doesn’t really make a difference when you’re in the virtual plane, but when you form on the real, you might be able to pass for a real person. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet.”
“Looks good,” Dalton said. “We can still shift into wings, right?”
“Oh yes,” Hammond said.
Dalton willed the change and his arms morphed into wings. He lifted off the virtual ground, keeping his orientation, Jackson and Barnes following. Technically they didn’t need the wings to move in the virtual plane, but they had discovered it made movement easier.
“First jump point, now,” Dalton said. He pictured the location in his mind-the firing range at Fort Hood where they had conducted their first live fire practice with the team.
Then he was there, two hundred feet above the ground, hidden in the virtual plane. A second later Jackson was next to him, hovering like an angel. Then Barnes.
Dalton indicated for Barnes to break off and go to Russia. Barnes’s avatar nodded, and then he was gone in a flash.
Dalton turned to Jackson. “Second jump, now.”
He came out above the first lock of the Panama Canal. Even Hammond didn’t know how they did the jumps. They probably could have jumped directly from Colorado to Colombia, but Dalton preferred taking it in steps. He also wanted a little time to get reoriented to the virtual plane.
The best explanation Hammond had been able to give them was that since the virtual plane had no substance, there also really wasn’t a concept of distance. As long as they could mentally picture where they wanted to go, they could jump there. Dalton and Jackson had discovered, though, that it wasn’t that simple. Sometimes the jumps seemed to take time. Other times they didn’t arrive exactly where they wanted and had to get oriented and rejump. There had even been occasions in Jackson ’s longer experience where jumps just didn’t happen. There were many bugs yet to be worked in the Psychic Warrior program, and they were learning by doing, which was not the safest way.
“This is our emergency rally point,” Dalton reminded Jackson.
“Roger that.”
He was surprised to see her lips move, even though the words didn’t travel in the nothingness of the virtual realm but were relayed from her mind, through Sybyl, to Dalton ’s mind.
“ Hammond did a lot of work on this,” he said.
“This next phase was being prepared when we went on the last mission. She finished it afterwards.”
“What’s the phase after this?” Dalton wondered.
“You’ll have to ask the good doctor,” Jackson said.
Dalton knew that Hammond, back in the control room at Bright Gate, could hear everything they were “saying” but there was no reply from her forthcoming.
“Last jump to objective,” Dalton said. “Now.”
He visualized the road curve in the satellite imagery Kirtley had shown them. The place where the team was to have set up the ambush. And he was there, just above the treetops, looking down.
He floated down as Jackson appeared, until his feet reached the dirt road. This gave him spatial orientation and he switched from wings to a right arm and a firing tube for the left. Using power from Sybyl, the tube could fire a pulse of energy in the real plane that was deadly. Unfortunately, it had not worked at all on Chyort, the Russian avatar, a result that Hammond had been at a loss to explain. Dalton didn’t expect any problems, since they planned on staying on the virtual plane, invisible from anybody in the area, but it never hurt to be prepared.
The first thing he noted were the blood trails on the road.
Dalton knew exactly how an ambush would be set up here. He moved to where the machine gun should have been positioned and noted the expended brass. The 7.62-millimeter NATO cartridges confirmed the location. But there weren’t many. Perhaps two bursts worth. Since there was no blood trail the firer hadn’t been killed here, which meant that either the gunner had moved or surrendered.
“They were in a firefight,” Dalton reported back to Hammond and Kirtley.
He moved back to the road and rejoined Jackson, who was looking at something in the far ditch. “Jimmy-” She pointed with a pale arm.
Dalton saw the legs, shreds of jungle fatigue pants still clinging in places, the skin gray and waxy. Looking along the ditch, he could see the trip wires for other claymore mines and knew he was looking at the far side of the kill zone.
“Where’s the rest of the body?” Jackson asked.
Dalton doubted a team on the run would haul half a dead body with them.
“They got hit from behind,” Dalton said. “At least one of them tried escaping through the kill zone. That means things were really bad.”
“And the rest?” The voice was Kirtley’s. “We need accountability. Do you have an identity on the body you have?”
“All we’ve got are a pair of legs,” Dalton said. “And we can’t exactly bring back a DNA sample through the virtual plane.”
“There were ten men on that team,” Kirtley said.
Dalton didn’t need to be reminded of information he’d received in the mission briefing. He and Jackson circled about, but found no other bodies.
“I’m open to suggestions,” he finally announced. “Wherever they are, they aren’t here. And someone recovered at least part of one body, probably wanting the head for propaganda purposes.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Jackson said. “Mr. Kirtley, do you have the identity of the cartel that was targeted here?”
“Actually, there is a consortium called the Ring led by a man named Hector Cesar. He has many holdings throughout Colombia.”
“Find the closest to this location.”
“Hold on.”
Dalton used the time to move up the road. Tire tracks and footprints in the dirt.
“Do you feel it?” he asked Jackson as she joined him.
There was an essence about the place, like smoke drifting across a battlefield, except this was on the virtual plane. There was also a sense of an intelligent presence, but there was nothing on the virtual plane that Dalton could see.
“Yes.”
“Ever felt this before?” Dalton knew Jackson had much more time operating on the v-plane, from her time at Grill Flame, the original remote-viewing unit at Fort Meade, the predecessor to Psychic Warrior.
“Yes.”
Dalton turned, facing her image. “What is it?”
He almost didn’t hear her as she replied. “The Droza.”
“What?”
“A legend. From before the Roma.”
“What are you-”
Dalton ’s question was interrupted by Kirtley. “I’ve got satellite imagery of a villa he owns nearby, about thirty kilometers away,” Kirtley said. “But I don’t know how to-”
“Give it to me,” Hammond ’s voice cut in.
Dalton and Jackson patiently waited, then the imagery appeared between them, floating like a hologram as Sybyl relayed it. A villa in the countryside. High walls. Guards all around armed with automatic weapons.
“Where is this?” Dalton asked. “Give us something so we can jump there.”
“Wait one,” Dr. Hammond said. “I’m having Sybyl spatially orient and expand to include your position.”
A new image appeared between Dalton and Jackson.
“You are located at the red arrow. The villa is the green.”