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“Close enough for government work,” said Sam.
“What happened?”
Sam adjusted the fittings on his HAMMER Suit. “Bad things.”
They climbed back into their Hummer. No one spoke at all for nearly a mile.
Shortstop finally broke the silence. “Boss, they’ve got jammers running, right?”
“Yes. Nothing’s getting through except one channel reserved for the Guard.”
“What about us?” Shortstop tapped the small earbud he wore. “What about the team channel?”
Sam jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We have a booster in the back, tuned to provide a dedicated channel for this mission. Good news is that we’ll have a clear signal. Bad news is that the effective range is about one mile.”
“That kind of blows,” said Moonshiner.
“Yes, it does,” said Sam. “So consider it an intimate conversation between friends.”
“Makes me all tingly,” muttered Gypsy.
Then Boxer tapped the steering wheel to get their attention and pointed to something at the extreme range of the headlights. “We got movement, boss.”
Imura saw it. A pale shape, vague and indistinct more than a hundred yards away. “Get off the road.”
Boxer killed the lights and pulled off the road, climbing the verge into a field. A tractor sat cold and quiet in the rain, and beside it was a huge flatbed piled high with harvested vegetables. The humid air was thick with the smell of onions and dirt.
Gypsy leaned between the seat backs and handed a pair of night vision goggles to Imura. He put them on and adjusted the settings, then opened the top hatch of the Humvee and leaned on the big machine gun to steady his line of sight. There were no streetlights this far into farm country, and the sky was utterly black. Then, as he turned on the night vision goggles, the landscape was transformed into a thousand shades of sickly green and ghostly gray.
Because of the new position of the Humvee it took almost a full minute before the thing that Boxer saw came into sight.
“Looks like a group of people. Three of them. Just them. Don’t see anyone else.” He didn’t whisper because the sibilant “S” sounds carried, and instead he spoke quietly. “Civilians. Two men and a kid.”
“Are they infected?” asked Boxer.
Sam slid back down into his seat, pulling the hatch closed. “Can’t tell.”
Moonshiner pulled on a second pair of goggles. “Let me go take a closer look.”
“Roger that. Gypsy, go with him.”
They opened the doors and got out. The dome light of the Humvee had been disabled. Gypsy put on her night vision goggles, then drew small arms and began moving down toward the side of the road. It is impossible to move with total silence through ankle-deep mud; however, the sound of the rain masked most of the noise. Moving without haste hid the rest. Moonshiner was on point with Gypsy behind and to his right, mindful to keep him out of her line of fire.
The three figures were a hundred yards away. Both men were dressed in work clothes that were pasted to their bodies by rainwater. The child wore jeans but no shirt. No one carried an umbrella. No one seemed to give much of a damn about the cold rain.
“Uh oh,” said Gypsy very softly.
An old slatted wooden fence ran along part of the road and angled up to create a property line with the next farm. Moonshiner angled that way and he and Gypsy squatted down by the corner post. While Moonshiner kept his pistol aimed at the three figures, Gypsy tapped her earbud.
“You seeing this, Ronin?”
Ronin—Sam Imura—said, “Rain’s too heavy. What are you seeing?”
She told him. “You want us to let them pass or take them down?”
“Hold your position,” he said. “I’m coming out.”
A few seconds later the rest of the team converged on the corner post.
