The picture resolution built rapidly as the drones closed in. Both the Carbon Goose planes were easy to distinguish, parked just above the sea, their turbines glowing like small suns. Some way back from the water, the six huts and long temporary accommodation building registered a few degrees above the ambient temperature; the lone hangar only showed up on the grainy light amplification scan. The curving generator building was an all-over ginger hue, with a shimmer of silver light oozing out through its pressure curtain. Eight large trucks were on the ground just in front of it, their combustion engines on. The drones could even pick up the carbon monoxide fumes squirting out of the exhaust pipes. Three of them had heated trailers, big oblong boxes protected by force fields.
“They haven’t gone through,” Adam said in astonishment. “What the hell are they waiting for? They’ve only got forty minutes left before the wormhole cycle ends.”
“Stig,” Bradley said. “It has to be. He’s stalled them somehow.”
The drones were close enough now to pick out individual humans on the ground. Five people in pressure suits were clustered right in front of the force field. There was a lot of encrypted signal traffic between them and the trucks.
“We’ve got a chance,” Adam said. “Wilson, circle us around. Everyone on the drop combat team, stand by.”
Wilson was sure he could hear cheering from the top deck as he altered the Carbon Goose’s flight path by a couple of degrees. He felt like joining in. Oscar was grinning sinfully beside him. Anna put her arms around his shoulders and delivered a happy kiss.
A camera in the lower cargo deck showed him ten armored figures making their way slowly back toward the rear door as it opened again. Cat’s Claws and the Paris team were all in the same kind of suit, while the four Guardians who’d joined them were in the best marque aggressor suit available on the black market.
“Rather them than me,” Oscar said. “Did you access Gore Burnelli’s little drop into Park Avenue? That assassin was in bad shape when he hit.”
“The navy suits are up to it,” Wilson said. “I remember the specs we drew up. And Adam wouldn’t let his people take part unless he was confident.”
“Here’s hoping.”
Wilson raised their altitude by another hundred fifty meters. The cliff that surrounded the vast island was over a hundred meters high in places. He’d navigated blind before—yeah right, three hundred fifty years ago—and the golden rule was always give yourself enough leeway in enemy territory. The Carbon Goose avionics had an excellent inertial navigation system, but it was hardly designed with this kind of stunt in mind.
He switched off all the internal lights, including the cockpit. “One minute till we reach the shoreline,” he told everyone.
Oscar removed the optical limiter from the windshield, and Wilson switched his retinal inserts to full light amplification. “I think I see the cliff.”
Red warning icons appeared in the plane’s navigation function section.
“It doesn’t like where we are,” Oscar growled. “That makes two of us.”
Wilson’s virtual hands moved to disengage the warnings. He’d eliminated three of them when the Carbon Goose’s radar switched on. “Shit!” Its return image swept across half of his virtual vision, splashing a green and purple portrait of the sea and the approaching cliff face. “Anna, kill the fucking radar. Shoot it if you have to.”
It took her several seconds to shut down the power, then load a series of restrictions into the ground collision safeguard programs that were monitoring the flight.
“Goddamnit,” Wilson spat as they swept in over the crumpled rock. “Adam, they know we’re here; the son of a bitch autopilot switched on the radar. I’m sorry. Do you want to abort?”
“Not an option,” Morton said. “Hold her steady, Wilson, we’re jumping.”
Wilson pressed his hands hard against the console, putting pressure on the i-spots as if that alone would keep the massive plane on course.
“They’ve gone,” Adam said. “Get us the hell out of here.”
Wilson banked the Carbon Goose sharply to starboard, curving them back around to head out to sea again. Behind them, ten armor suits plummeted through the freezing night air at terminal velocity.
***
The baby sneekbot slowly picking its way undetected along the parapet of Market Wall was designed to resemble a cockroach. It worked with five siblings who networked their respective sensor types and relayed the results back to a pack-governor disguised as a rat, which in turn transmitted the data to the operator a safe distance away. They were built by the McSobel clan, who wrapped a plyplastic body around a bioneural array supplied by the Barsoomians. Over eighty of them were scanning First Foot Fall Plaza for the Guardians, providing a reasonably comprehensive image of what the Institute was up to.
