Bertil nodded, motioning with his head for them to follow him. They moved carefully through the forest, Bertil’s Home Guard team falling in with the Americans as they fanned out. No friction, no confusion. Two weeks of joint patrols had built trust in each other’s abilities.
When they reached thirty meters from the limestone outcropping, Staff Sergeant Anna Chen raised her hand sharply. “Hold here, sir,” she called out, her voice carrying quiet authority. “Let me scan the area before we advance. If there’s a proximity sensor, I’d rather not trigger it blind.”
“Good call, Staff Sergeant,” Bertil acknowledged with approval.
Chen gave him a brief nod, already reaching into her patrol pack for the detection wand. She extended the device’s antenna with practiced efficiency, waiting for it to initialize before turning toward where Bertil had indicated the chalk marker. The scanner hummed softly as she swept it in precise overlapping arcs, her eyes never leaving the display.
“That’s… unexpected,” Chen murmured after a moment, brow furrowing at the readout. “If they’d placed any kind of sensor — seismic, acoustic, thermal — I should be detecting electromagnetic emissions. But I’m getting nothing. No RF signature, no magnetic anomalies. The area’s reading completely clean.”
“Interesting,” Mercer said, exchanging a glance with Bertil.
The Swedish lieutenant shifted his weight, clearly troubled. “I don’t doubt your equipment, Sergeant, but my team watched them place something. We have video confirmation.”
“I believe you, Lieutenant,” Chen replied, already flipping open the scanner’s side panel. “Could be tourists, could be something else. Let me recalibrate this before we make assumptions.” Her fingers adjusted the frequency range with the confidence of someone who’d done this countless times. “Some newer devices can remain completely passive until triggered, producing no emissions until activation. They’re designed specifically to defeat standard detection protocols.”
She closed the panel and resumed scanning, this time using a different sweep pattern.
“See, Holloway?” Mercer said with mock seriousness. “This is why Battalion sent us Chen. That high-tech gear is more complicated than our simple knuckle dragger brains can grasp. It requires at least a thirty-five on the ASVAB just to operate it.”
“Ha-ha, try eighty, sir,” Chen shot back without looking up from her work.
“Ah, cut the chatter, both of you,” Sergeant First Class Holloway interjected, though his tone held amusement. “Just be grateful we’ve got Chief Long and Staff Sergeant Chen running our EW section now. Remember that disaster we used to have, Anders?”
Mercer couldn’t suppress his laugh this time. First Lieutenant Jerry Anders had been part of their unit for seven months, claiming expertise in drone warfare and electronic countermeasures. Within weeks of his arrival at the company, it became painfully clear he couldn’t tell a frequency scanner from a metal detector, let alone interpret what it was detecting. When he was replaced with a warrant officer and NCO who lived and breathed electronic warfare, it transformed their capabilities overnight. Knowledgeable soldiers paired with the proper tools were a force multiplier a commander dreamed of.
Mercer eyed Chen as she waved her wand in precise patterns he didn’t understand, much like he suspected a wizarding student from Hogwarts would in one of those Harry Potter books he’d read growing up. Glancing over to Bertil, who made his way next to him, he saw a growing look of annoyance at how long this was taking.
“Chen, you got an ETA on how much longer this is going to take before it’s safe to make a visual inspection of this thing?” asked Mercer, to the relief of his Swedish counterpart.
Chen kept a neutral face as she shrugged. “Could be minutes, could be hours. If it’s GPS-linked, might not activate until—”
“Eliasson, what are you doing?” interrupted Bertil as he called out to one of his soldiers.
Mercer and Chen turned in the direction of the mystery device. One of Bertil’s soldiers, Private Henrik Eliasson, had started moving toward it.
“I’m moving around this outcropping to see if I can get a visual on the device,” replied the young soldier, continuing to cautiously move forward. “Ah, there, I can almost see it now—”
Chen’s scanner suddenly shrieked a warning. The display lit up with flashing yellow lights.
“Oh God! It’s got a proximity activation sensor!” Chen shouted loud enough for the soldiers around her to hear. “Everyone back,
Eliasson froze as she shouted. He turned to look at them, a look of confusion etched on his face. “What do I—”
Before he could speak, the sound of a soft click echoed off the limestone outcropping when a black cylinder the size of a coffee can launched a meter into the air. For a split second, it hung there — then it detonated.
