Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 by Wings of Fire (v1.1) Page A

mission.”
                 “That’s
the SOP, sir,” Wohl agreed. “We all do it, or no one does it.”
                 Patrick
hesitated. Something deep within him still maintained that this was wrong. He
was trained to fight, trained to use his brains and his training and experience
to fight and win battles—but this was not one of the battles he had in mind. He
wasn’t defending his home or his country or his family. This mission was to
destroy one country’s supposed threat to disrupt commerce in order to help a
multinational corporation earn more money. This was a job for a private
security company—or a mercenary force.
                 The
obvious question: Was Patrick turning into a mercenary? Was he going to start
fighting not for home or country or family, but for money?
                 Maybe
he was, at least for the moment. If his own military didn’t want him, maybe it
was time to fight for what he felt was right—and accept a little money to do
it.
                 “I’m
in,” Patrick heard himself say. “I’ll get a NIRTSat constellation up right
away, and get a few FlightHawks ready for air support.” The FlightHawks were
Sky Masters’s unmanned combat aircraft, capable of ground, air, or ship launch,
and equipped to carry a wide variety of sensors, cameras, radio gear—or
munitions. They were stealthy, accurate, and very effective.
                 “We’re gone !” Paul McLanahan shouted
excitedly, his electronically synthesized voice amplifying his happiness.
“Let’s go kick some Libyan rocket-launching ass!”
     
    SAMAH , LIBYA   SEVERAL DAYS LATER
     
                “Nike, say status,” Patrick
McLanahan whispered into the secure satellite link. A warning indicator on his
electronic visor had just advised him that one of his men had already engaged
the enemy. Just a few minutes into what was supposed to be a quick, silent
recon, they were made.
                “Bad guy came out of nowhere, and
this damned suit blasted him before I could stop it,” retired U.S. Marine Corps
master sergeant Chris Wohl explained. “I’m secure, and I’m moving in.”
                 “This
is supposed to be a soft probe, Nike, not an assault. We can come back.”
                 “If
they’re alerted, they might move all their assets, and then we’d have to locate
them all over again,”
                Wohl protested. “I think only one
guy saw me, and I don’t think he’s a sentry, so we still might have time.
Besides, you made this suit, not me. If you wanted a soft probe, you should’ve
showed me how to shut off the auto-bugzapper feature. I’m secure, and I’m
moving in.”
                 Once
a flamethrowing kick-ass Marine, always a kick-ass Marine, Patrick thought as
he checked the God’s-eye view display on his helmet-mounted electronic visor.
Patrick McLanahan was kneeling in a shallow gully just a few yards inside the
perimeter fence surrounding a newly discovered Libyan military base near Samah,
about two hundred miles south of Benghazi. The mission was to sneak in from
three different points, doing a soft probe on this remote desert base. Initial
intelligence reports said Samah was a terrorist training camp, but a few
unconfirmed reports received from the private intelligence sources said Samah
was a rocket base set up recently to secretly attack targets in Egypt , Chad , Europe , or
in the Mediterranean
Sea , possibly with
medium-range Russian-or Chinese-made rockets with chemical or biological
warheads.
                 The
plan was for all three infiltrators to go in simultaneously, take infrared or
night-vision digital images with their equipment, uplink it all to
reconnaissance satellites back to their headquarters, and get out without
anyone knowing they were there. If the Libyans discovered they had been
infiltrated, they might pack everything up