Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Wills chuckled. "It's such a pleasure sucking up to you, sir."

Cole nodded benignly. "Carry on, Sergeant."

"Ay-ay, sir." Of course Wills had to use old-fashioned Naval language, even though nobody would laugh. It all came from letting soldiers get away with nicknames like "Jeep."

It took about two hours to get all the information together and brief the jeesh. Then they put on their Bones, got into a chopper with a nice assortment of lethal missiles attached, and headed almost due east. Just before refueling in midair outside CAR airspace, their chopper would loose four Preds to take up their coverage zones over the target.

It was less than five hundred miles to Bangui, and they spent the time talking through their assignments. It was such a luxury to work with a team like this. Every one of them was capable of leading the mission, and if something went wrong, they'd all react intelligently.

"You're all aware of the software updates?" asked Cole.

"Did they erase my cookies?" asked Drew.

"You know they didn't, or your Bones wouldn't recognize you when you put them on," said Cole.

"Then I'm fine. You know all these updates are for is to fix bugs that might get us killed, and then replace them with new code which is full of new bugs that can get us killed."

"But differently," added Mingo.

"So you didn't read the read-me file?" asked Cole.

"I never do," said Drew.

"Yes we did," said Load. "All of us, even Drew. We're not stupid, sir."

Sir, not Cole. That had been happening more and more. Not a big deal, and maybe it was just because they saw how Cole's major-general stars had everybody else groveling. But Cole thought it was because whatever these guys were into, Cole had failed their test and he was not one of them anymore. He could still trust them in combat, because they were great soldiers. But he wasn't in on their secrets anymore—if he ever had been. He was just another "sir" now.

Well, no, he was certainly more than that, after all their combat together, but still: He was outside the circle.

"Here on the map, sir," said Benny. "There really is a town named 'Bimbo'?"

"Looks like," said Cole.

"And a few miles south," said Benny, "a town named 'Yabimbo.' He put on a fake gruff voice. 'What're ya talkin' about, ya bimbo!'" Then a girly voice. "No, sir. Bimbo's about ten miles north of here."

Just precombat clowning. They all knew this was a stupid, stupid setup with almost nothing under control. But winging it was what they were good at, so of course they got the assignments where too little was known and the timetable was urgent.

They came in low up the river, but high enough they could see their landmark, the big stadium. When they were opposite the road that came straight south from that, the chopper swung in and moved up a little stream that fed into the Ubangi next to the road. It took about two seconds to realize that the "stream" wasn't exactly a babbling brook—it stank like raw sewage and lots of dead things in various stages of decay.

"At least we won't have any trouble finding this place again," said Arty.

"Yes we will," said Cat. "Because now we and everything we own smells just as bad."

They found a good spot to land the chopper, a grassy field with no buildings facing them. Not that they didn't have observers—quite a few workmen looking over fences in the middle distance. But no kids—it wasn't a residential area. And in a way, it was nice to see people who weren't hiding in terror from all human contact. Sure, there might be rebels shooting one another all over town, but out here they were beyond the range of bullets with enough force left in them to do much damage, and the nictovirus had not yet settled in to stay and kill.

So they were watching the Americans arrive and maybe some of them were thinking, Damn Yankees, and maybe some of them were thinking, Hurrah, the Yanks will save us now! Sorry, folks, Cole said silently. We're just going to pick up our package and run like hell. You'll have to live with your new government as best you can. And the sneezing death that's right behind them.

They hit the ground, offloaded a couple of generous-sized supply packs just in case—they included collapsible stretchers because you never knew what condition the embassy staffers would be in—and the moment the last pack cleared the deck, the chopper was up in the air and moving off, back down the river. When Cole called, the chopper would come back, but this time farther upstream at the rendezvous point—whether there were any barges there or not.

They were all experienced with their Bones now, and they kept good time, running parallel about fifty yards apart from one another. Leaps and bounds, that's how they traveled, but popping up and down at random intervals like the moles in a whack-a-mole game. Sometimes one guy would be going over a building, or hopping up onto it and then off the other side, if he thought the roof would hold his weight, while the rest were only having to leap fences or hop over parked cars. Then it would be another guy's turn to be most exposed to enemy observation and fire.

Over the intercom in the Noodle, Cole heard Arty say,

"Donnie Darko Street is getting closer to the river and I'm running out of room."

"It's 'Avenue David Dacko,'" Cole said, with all the patience of an older cousin. "And it's time for the backdoor team to head up the Rue de l'Industrie and cut over on Victoire. Seeya, guys."

Cole led the three who stayed with him—Cat, Babe, and Arty—along both sides of some big warehouses. Cole was on the riverside of the buildings, and sure enough, all the barges seemed to be there, just like the satellite picture. Then they got to the place where Avenue Colonel Conus came down to the river and followed it away from the river for about thirty yards before turning left to go into a weedy vacant lot that led straight toward the American embassy, which they could see towering over the street.