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

and turn the base into an unassuming
training base.
                 But
Chris Wohl was by far the most experienced and well-trained commando among
them—and he ran on his own timetable, which was several steps ahead of everyone
else, constantly thinking and planning and reacting, leading the way. Patrick
should have known that Chris Wohl would want to make first contact.
                 The
God’s-eye overhead images that Patrick was studying were being transmitted via
satellite from stealth unmanned combat aircraft called FlightHawks. Two FlightHawks
had been launched from a Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 launch aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea while on a normal, routine flight from Bahrain to Madrid . The FlightHawks were autonomous UCAVs, or
unmanned combat air vehicles; although a ground controller could fly them, they
were designed to fly a preprogrammed flight plan and automatically react to
threats or new target instructions. One FlightHawk carried a LADAR, or laser
radar, that took images as crystal-clear as a high-resolution digital photograph,
then beamed those images down to Wendy on the Catherine as well as the men on the ground in Libya .
                 The
FlightHawk’s ground monitors and controllers were Patrick’s wife and
electronics wizard, Wendy Tork McLanahan, as well as Patrick’s longtime partner
and friend, engineering expert David Luger, based aboard a converted salvage
ship a hundred miles off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea . The team’s infiltration and exfiltration
aircraft, a CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor aircraft, could take off, land,
refuel, and be serviced on the cargo ship in hiding. The ship, a
Lithuanian-flagged and fully registered and functioning rescue and salvage
vessel named S.S. Catherine the Great f had a contingent of fifty highly trained commandos and enough firepower on
board to start a small war.
                 The
commandos on this mission also had another high-tech weapon in their arsenal:
their improved “Tin Man” electronic battle armor. Also developed by Sky Masters
Inc., the armor used a special electroreactive technology that caused
ordinary-looking and -feeling fabric instantly to harden to several times the
strength of steel when sharply struck. The suit also contained self-contained breathing
apparatus, temperature control, communications, long-range visual and aural
detection and tracking sensors, mobility enhancers—compressed-air jump jets in
the boots—and self-protection weapons. The self-defense weapon was an
electrical discharge device that disabled the enemy with a bolt of high-voltage
energy; it operated automatically, tied to the suit’s sensors, and was able to
fire instantly in any direction out to thirty feet from electrodes on both
shoulders if an enemy was detected.
                 The
newest feature of their battle armor: a microhydraulically controlled
fibersteel exoskeleton that gave the wearer the strength and power of a
multimillion-dollar robot. The exoskeleton ran along the back, shoulders, arms,
legs, and neck, and amplified the wearer’s muscular strength a hundred times;
yet the exoskeleton and its control systems weighed only a few pounds and used
very little power.
                 The
armor could save its wearers from most small- and medium-sized infantry attacks
and even some light armored attacks, but every attack drained precious power
from the suit quickly, and they were several hundred miles from help. The Tin
Man technology was designed to save its wearer from attack long enough to
escape a defensive, patrol, or security engagement, not to press an assault
against a superior fighting force. The longer Wohl stayed in the area after the
alarm was sounded, the more danger he was in.
                 Through
his electronic visor, Patrick could see that Wohl had stopped just outside an
area that had previously been identified in satellite photos as a garbage