When Smith caught up with his team of misfits again, they were huddled against the broad trunk of a tree. All but Grayson were gulping wildly at the air and Smith thought Stacy might actually be in respiratory distress until she grinned and gave him the thumbs-up.
“Okay, now!” Smith said. “So what do you think? Shooting Delta guys is kind of fun, isn’t it?”
Based on their expressions, they thought it was.
“So you want to hear the score? Major, you had a kill, congratulations. Lieutenant, unfortunately, you just got a graze, so no appreciable damage.”
“Damn!” she said, the disappointment heavy in her voice.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Lieutenant. That was a low-percentage shot for anyone. And you made your point getting that close.”
“What about me, sir?” Grayson asked.
“Dead center of mass.”
He pumped a fist in the air.
“So, by my calculations, your first engagement with Delta left your team fully intact, while you scored two kills and a graze. I’d call that a pretty good start to the day.”
“So what now?” Duane said. “The rest of those guys aren’t going to make the same mistake again.”
Grayson nodded. “I think we should sweep northeast, so we can attack the mountain on the least steep side. With those kinds of losses, Delta’s going to pull back to a defensive position, and frankly they’re going to overestimate us. We can use that.”
Based on an overhead image of the battlefield that only Smith could see, Grayson was exactly right. Delta was setting up to keep an extremely professional opponent from climbing the hill, focusing on the steeper southern and western slopes. The east slope had a far less practical entry point but it was probably the only one this group would be able to get up.
The rain started to recede and Smith followed as they moved out again. They passed right by the two “dead” Delta soldiers and he would have loved to see the look on their faces, but the thermal overlay had strengthened to the point that subtlety of expression was obscured.
Grayson had put Stacy, the heavier of the two women, on point. She looked exhausted and he’d obviously decided to sacrifice her if need be. Probably not realistic in real combat but one of those easy calls to make in a training exercise.
“Wait,” Smith heard Stacy say quietly over his Merge. “Corporal. Come up here and look at this, please.”
Smith stayed where he was, bringing up a window that displayed her unit’s input. She was looking at the ground between two trees and, more specifically, a thin blue line running between them.
“Sneaky bastards,” he heard Grayson say. “Everybody step over the trip wire between the rocks. Don’t worry, you can’t miss it.”
Amazing. The tiny wire should have been virtually invisible, but instead there might as well have been a sign with an arrow and “booby trap” written in foot-high letters.
They continued on, finally stopping just before they reached a broad riverbed with only a few inches of water left. It would be just over twenty-five meters of open ground to the trees on the other side.
“Can we get around it?” Duane asked.
Grayson’s eyes went distant and flicked around as he pulled up a satellite image of the area and examined it in the air in front of him. “Nope. We have to cross it to get to the base of the hill and there isn’t anywhere that’s any narrower.”
“So what do we do?” the lawyer said.
“We run for it,” Grayson said, moving to the edge of cover and scanning the landscape for any sign of the enemy. “You first, Major. Fast as you can.”
That turned out not to be all that fast, but he gave it his all and made it to the other side safe. Grayson went with Carrie next, having her start fifty meters downstream to keep their crossing points random. She looked like she was going to make it, when a distant shot sounded.
It was a hit and Smith winced as her Merge reduced her vision and balance by seventy percent, pitching her against the rocks and sending her rolling into what was left of the river. He’d need to talk to someone about attenuating that feature when people were running or in dangerous terrain.
“Stay down!” Grayson shouted, forgetting that his voice was being projected directly into her mind. Not that it mattered. The software would reduce the volume to optimal.
Despite his warning, she panicked and tried to get up. Smith could have shut down her unit and called it a kill, but decided to instead watch her struggle to her knees and then fall over again. After one more halfhearted try, she just lay there panting.
“Sir?” Grayson said and Smith frowned, trying to decide how much he wanted to say. “Seventy percent damage. With attention, she might survive.”
“Shit,” the Ranger said under his breath. “We need to deal with this damn sniper. We’re in the low ground, though, and I can’t pick him out.” He dropped his pack. “I’m going to go up a tree.”
“Hold on,” Duane said, showing a flash of confidence for the first time that day. “I can do that. When I was a kid, we had these huge cherry trees in our yard. I used to climb them all the time.”
Grayson hesitated for a moment but then gave a short nod. “And don’t come down until you find that shooter.”
Smith was a little alarmed when the kid ran to the tallest tree near them and started into the branches. No one was supposed to get hurt and he already had a woman trapped on the riverbank who looked a little worse for the wear. What he didn’t need was this kid falling out of a tree and breaking his neck.
So he jogged over and started up through the branches in pursuit. Duane couldn’t have weighed much more than a buck forty. If the wheels fell off, Smith figured he might actually be able to catch him.
20
Craig Bailer glided along the empty rural highway, keeping the rented car’s speed steady. Inasmuch as dashboard-mounted GPS units had made maps seem obsolete, the Merge was an even more fundamental leap forward. Even with the limitations of the bare-bones apps included with the first-generation model, the act of driving felt transformed. The road ahead glowed yellow, a color he’d initially opposed because of the obvious Wizard of Oz parallel. He’d been overruled by Javier de Galdiano’s tech team, though, due to some technical minutiae about how the brain processed color. And once again, de Galdiano had been right.
More important than the interface, though, was the fact that the images transmitted to his mind were being constantly analyzed and monitored — for children and animals at the edges of the road, for unusual actions or the blind spots of surrounding drivers, as well as constant comparisons to actual and posted speeds. Finally, the sleep function, which worked both ways, subtly manipulated his brain patterns to keep him alert.
It was just a taste of what was to come, though. By next year, Mercedes and a number of other car manufacturers would include compatible cameras with various visual enhancements, as well as links to cruise control, braking, and steering during emergency situations.
That is, if Christian Dresner didn’t destroy the company first.
“Call David Tresco,” he said aloud in the empty car. Unfortunately, it was still too lengthy a command for the Merge to deal with mentally.
“Cell, home, or office?” came the response in his head.
“Cell.”
There were no visual cues at all — most apps and icons were deactivated when the user was behind the wheel — but he could hear the quiet sound of dialing followed by ringing at the other end.