Then Reinhardt initiated the rear engine, and Mazer got that all-too-familiar sick feeling in his stomach as the HERC shot forward over the tarmac and headed north. Mazer pushed the sensation aside and focused on the intel. "Target is latitude negative thirty-seven degrees, zero minutes, twenty-one point seven seven two two seconds. Longitude one hundred seventy-five degrees, ten minutes, thirty-seven point five one six two seconds."
"Coordinates confirmed," said Patu.
"Identify target," said Fatani.
The HERC shot up another fifteen meters as they approached the tree line, heading up into the hills of the Hunua Ranges and leaving the airfield behind them. Mazer instinctively put a hand on the instrument panel to steady himself. "Target is an AT-90 Copperhead. Crew of two. Both seriously wounded."
Copperheads were squat assault tanks loaded with enough firepower to level a small city. They were also ridiculously heavy and hard to carry because of their wide, shallow design.
"Whose turn is it to play medic?" asked Fatani.
"Yours," said Patu. "And don't ask me to cover for you. I bandaged up the last two rounds of guys."
"They better not be bleeders," said Fatani. "I hate the bleeders."
For field tests and war exercises like this one, the NZSAS used rubberized dummies for their casualties. Mazer and his unit were to treat the dummies like real soldiers and administer lifesaving first aid as part of the exercise. The bleeders were the worst. Loaded with red syrupy paint, they added a good two to three hours to cleanup time and put everyone in a bad mood.
The Copperhead tank would be a dummy as well. Probably a burned-out bus or ATV pulled from the scrap heap and loaded with enough weight to resemble a Copperhead. The Colonel wouldn't use a real one and risk damaging it.
"So what's the deal, Lieutenant?" asked Reinhardt. "Is this operation a final exam or something? Why all the secrecy?"
"No idea," said Mazer. "Colonel said to be ready to fly at 0300, and we'd get our orders then."
"Seems strange to me," said Fatani. "Normally we're the ones designing the field tests. Now all of a sudden the colonel's doing it for us. No briefing. No prep. Just strap in and wait for orders."
"Combat's no different," said Patu. "Makes perfect sense to me. Brass wants to see how the HERC manages when we're not controlling all the variables. Think about it. Before we run a test, we determine everything. Where it flies, what the weather's like, where the enemy is located, what their capabilities are. But what team in real combat is going to have all that intel?"
"Pilots would at least know what the weather was like," said Reinhardt. "It's the first thing they teach you in pilot school. When the windshield wipers are on, it's raining outside."
"You're hilarious," said Patu.
"All I'm saying," said Fatani, "is that if this is some kind of exam, it would've been nice to have known that ahead of time."
"Has to be," said Patu. "That's why they didn't let us sleep. They want to know if exhausted pilots flying with limited intel can pull off a HERC mission."
"If that's the case, they're testing us as much as the HERC," said Fatani.
"It doesn't matter," said Mazer. "We do what we always do. We scoop up the target and we bring it home."
The secretive nature of the operation didn't bother Mazer. He was used to sporadic psychological tests like this; it went with the territory in special forces. Someone was always running you to the point of exhaustion and then denying you water and keeping you up for another twenty-four hours. Or they were messing with your head in some other way: isolating you, or dropping you in the middle of nowhere with a blindfold over your eyes and telling you to return to base using only your other senses. Compared to those tests, this surprise mission with the HERC was a cakewalk.
A message appeared on Mazer's HUD.
"Hostile territory in three point four kilometers," said Mazer.
A second later there was a flash and a boom to their right as a flare exploded not ten meters from the cockpit. Flares were used as surface-to-air missiles--or STAs--in war games. It was all show and no shrapnel, but it still startled everyone on board.
"Whoa!" said Reinhardt, pushing the stick forward and dipping the HERC into a stomach-churning descent.
"Hey!" said Patu, slamming back into her seat. "Easy on the dips."
Mazer grabbed the window bar to his right and tried to keep his focus on the data on his HUD.
"I'd say we got bad intel," said Reinhardt. "We're in hostile territory already." Two more explosions lit up the night sky, one on each side of the aircraft.
"Fatani!" shouted Mazer.
"I'm going, I'm going," said Fatani.