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Whack knew he was in trouble the minute he sca
“What?” Patrick asked.
“It looks like they’re having a fiesta or something down there,” Whack said. The townspeople were actually holding a procession from town to the fishing community along the dirt road! “I just got reminded again of the commando’s ‘Six Ps’: Proper Pla
“Abort and try tomorrow night,” Patrick suggested.
He was 3.4 miles to his objective and still on time. “The procession looks like it’s just getting started,” Whack radioed. “It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you people sleep?”
“It’s a weekend-long party celebrating the begi
“Great.” He could see lights being carried by townspeople, but through his infrared sensors he could see that not everyone was carrying lights, so the procession was quite long-probably a couple hundred people in all. There was absolutely no place to hide north of the highway.
“I’m going to go for it,” Whack said. “I’ll pick a gap in the procession, jump over the dirt road, and hope to get lost in the darkness.”
“Too risky, Whack,” Patrick said. “If someone sees you, they’ll certainly alert the police, who would alert the Yemeni army border patrol, who would undoubtedly alert the Russians. Better off not pushing a bad situation. You got a couple more nights to-”
“Wait!” Whack exclaimed. At that moment the skies to his right over the ocean erupted in a shower of rockets and sparkles. “Fireworks! They’re having a friggin’ late-night fireworks show at the fishing village!” The people on the dirt road began ru
Another three-mile run, and soon he was at Socotra Airport. “I made it, boss,” he radioed. He made his way east of the airport and up a gentle rise to just outside a very large rectangular fenced compound situated on a rocky plateau overlooking the airport. During World War II, this compound had been a British prisoner-of-war camp, and then became a British military headquarters and radar site after the war until they withdrew from Yemen in the late 1960s. When the Soviet Union was invited by the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen to use port facilities in Aden in the 1970s, the Soviets took over the Socotra facility, enlarged and modernized it, and turned it into first an observation post, then a sea-and air-sca
The twelve-foot-tall perimeter fence was brightly illuminated. “Just as our intel said,” Whack radioed. “Roving patrol on the west side, guard towers at the corners. The objective is in sight.” It was right in the center of the compound, mounted near and below a large radome: a 150-foot-diameter steerable open latticework dish ante
A lot of times, the first sight of the objective made commandos anxious and excited, and it was vital to squelch that feeling and stick with the plan. The most important thing was not to alert the Russians to the point where they would shut down the transmitter or inspect the ante
He moved to his pla
“Here goes nothin’, boss,” he radioed.
“Good luck, Whack,” Patrick said.
Taking a ru
“Made it, Muck,” he radioed. “No sign of alarm.”
“Don’t get cocky, Whack,” Patrick said.
“I know, I know,” but he knew that, except for the exit jump, the hard part was over.
The inside of the compound was almost completely dark except for pole lights mounted near fire hydrants or outside entrances to some of the buildings, and it was easy enough to avoid those areas. His sensors tipped him off to any perso
Whack reached the ante
The ante
He reversed his direction, climbing back down the pedestal service ladder. He closed the gate, then pressed the hasp of the broken lock down into the lock with his microhydraulically powered fingers until the hasp jammed in place. Hopefully no one would notice the deformed lock until many days and at least one netrusion attempt from now-the first flyby of a Kingfisher weapon garage was in just eighteen hours.
Almost home free. He made his way carefully to his pla