Once they skirted those areas, the SEALS would head into the marina and follow the canals toward the city proper. Lakota kept in touch via hand signals and closely monitored the radiation levels. Brent had already picked out several underground locations, subbasements and parking garages within the nearby Gold and Silver Towers that he believed would afford them some protection between observation shifts. Even with their suits, Brent was taking no chances by keeping anyone exposed for more than eight hours. He’d studied the blueprints of both buildings and would put Schleck on the roof of one, Riggs on the roof of the other. Those snipers would be rotated out with the rest of the team.
Within thirty minutes they had slid through the central canal and reached the Nuran Dubai Marina bridge. With the delivery vehicle still submerged, the team began to ascend, breaking the surface beneath the bridge and hidden from satellite view. Local time was 0924. They transferred the waterproof load-out bags to the concrete underpass, and then, with all the gear unloaded, Brent cut loose the SEALs with a hand signal.
“Better suit up now,” said Lakota, consulting her wrist-mounted radiation detector.
Without a word, the group began the process, with Schoolie giving Thomas a hand because he’d practiced donning the Natick 9V Exoskeleton combat suit only a few times. The suits were a flexible and modular armor system, offered NBC protection (which certainly made them a necessity in Dubai), yet still allowed a remarkable range of motion. Brent had once listened to a trainer spend more than an hour discussing the suit’s capabilities — including ballistic and blast protection and integrated data gloves for hand gesture interface with the Cross-Com, which was now part of the fully sealed combat helmet (no monocle or earpiece was required). The suits also had climate systems and user-specific operation modes with voice and facial recognition so enemies couldn’t exploit them — but the bottom line, as Brent reminded his people, was that no amount of technological magic could replace the fervor of the human heart.
“Captain, there’s a problem,” said Lakota, over a private channel.
Brent winced. The volume on his communications system was much too high. He issued a verbal command to lower it, then responded, “What’s up?”
“It’s Schoolie,” she said, gesturing across the way to the back of the group. Thomas, Schleck, and Park had surrounded the man and were working on his helmet. “He can’t get a good seal.”
Brent cursed. “He really wanted to come along, too.”
“Either he sits this out, or we keep him in the basement as security.”
Brent shifted through the group and faced Schoolie. “How we doing, bro?”
Schoolie shook his head and bore his teeth. “Don’t send me back. This is just my luck.”
“We can keep you with the gear. You need to stay below ground and to avoid full exposure.”
“Brent, I’ve got an idea,” said Thomas. “After I set up my sticky cams, we let Schoolie run them. That frees me up to focus on communications intel.”
“What do you think?” Brent asked Schoolie.
“Beats sitting on the bench,” said the big man.
Brent nodded to Thomas. “Let’s do it.” Then he whirled to regard the rest of the team. “Everyone else good to go?”
As they nodded, raised their thumbs, or shook their fists, a circle of avatars representing each Ghost appeared in Brent’s HUD, with his own positioned in the center. All but one of the figures showed green suits, fully online, fully functional. Schoolie’s avatar showed a flashing red line at the helmet seal, as expected. Beside each avatar floated data bars that included vital signs, weapons carried, ammo, and the combatant’s current GPS position, among other details.
With the flick of his gloved index finger, Brent minimized the report to the HUD’s margin and returned to the “home” image of scanning the battlefield for potential threats.
They broke into four teams:
Brent, Daugherty, Noboru, and Thomas were Alpha team.
Lakota, Copeland, Heston, and Park made up Bravo.
The sniper team was always known as Charlie and was staffed by Riggs and Schleck.
Delta team or the “base” team was actually a one-man show. Schoolie would still have a chance to do his part.
Brent’s team led the others up along the embankment. They wove their way between the marina buildings, wary of contacts and keeping tight to the walls.
The suit’s 360-degree sensors and three-dimensional audio queuing heightened Brent’s situational awareness, and the results of seeing what was behind him and sensing the depth of sounds around him was so effective that he couldn’t help but smile. The taxpayers had sure bought him some nice toys.
Within five minutes they reached the pedestrian footbridge spanning Sheikh Zayed Road. The concrete walls afforded some cover, so they crouched down and hustled across. Working their way on foot to the Gold and Silver Towers some 0.75 kilometers away was unavoidable, and doing so in broad daylight seemed surrealistic, but as Dennison had mentioned, the patrols had vanished like insects fleeing the light of day.
The team left the bridge and descended another concrete access way toward the Lake Terrace Tower, a forty-floor office building standing in the shadow of the much more massive Almas Tower.
“We have solar-powered surveillance cameras all over the place,” said Thomas. “Sensors picked up their motors first, but now I’ve locked on to their broadcasts.”
“Roger that, me, too,” said Lakota.
“Hold up,” Brent ordered. They strung out along a footwall beside the valet parking entrance to the Lake Terrace Tower. “Everybody sight a camera. The system will tell you if you’re doubling up. I want eleven knocked out on my mark. Stand by…”
They raised their rifles, and Brent waited until the computer confirmed that each one of his people had sighted a different surveillance camera.
“Uh, Ghost Lead, this is Remus,” called Thomas, using his call sign and reminding Brent of George, who’d gone by the other Roman twin, Romulus. “I have an idea.”
“Not right now. Stand by, everyone.”
There were four more cameras in their path toward the Gold and Silver Towers, but knocking out this many in one fell swoop would speed up the infiltration.
“Locked on,” called Lakota.
Brent took a long breath. “In three, two, one. Fire!”
Eleven suppressed rounds sliced the air, and the flashing red dots superimposed over Brent’s HUD all went gray, nearly in unison.
“Wow, that’s one for the textbooks,” cried Lakota.
Brent gasped. “You’re damned right it is.”
“Uh, Ghost Lead?” called Thomas again. “I could have jammed those video signals in about ten seconds. They’re using old-school technology, and it’s not even encrypted.”
“Don’t ruin my moment,” said Brent with a laugh. “But all right, then. Jam the rest. And keep them jammed.”
“You got it, Boss.”
Brent rose. “Let’s move out!”
As they bolted off, Brent told the computer to issue him verbal warnings regarding the proximity of enemies in the zone. The computer began to issue those reports, and as expected, two vehicles were inbound from another office building about a kilometer northeast of their position, ETA five minutes or less. Those men had probably sought shelter underground.
“Hustle up, people, they’re coming to check on their camera problem…”
“Got ’em, too,” said Lakota.
Chopra had tried to persuade the young sheikh to go along with his plan, but the boy had refused, and now it seemed inevitable that the country’s assets would be surrendered to a thug — unless Chopra was willing to sacrifice himself. It might come to that. Did he have the courage? Would that be the ultimate repayment for being rescued from the slums? But if he stood up to her, and she shot him, the boy could only get her into the computers inside the vault, not the vault itself. He’d be useless. She’d kill him.