Page 104 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier
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Rahul was gratified with the sound of applause from the Vendor’s clients clapping in his headset. They had been observing nearly every aspect of Rahul’s actions so far and had seen the other kills. But the death of the Turk seemed to have pleased them most.
The Indian assumed it was the level of subterfuge involved in the exercise. Plata’s incessant babbling had made it quite easy to capture his voice, and theMak?i’s onboard AI easily synthesized it, and masked it with radio interference. All Rahul had to do was talk to Kabak through theMak?i’s synthesized radio transmitter to soundlike Plata and fool the Turk into thinking he was speaking with his commander.
Rahul’s own satisfaction with killing Kabak was tactical. The seasoned Turk fighter had brilliantly avoided all optical surveillance until he reached the building where his flag was located, and even then Rahul’s surveillance drone had barely caught a glimpse of him.
Rahul assumed the Turk discovered the underground tunnels that ran from that basement to several other buildings in the city. The Turk might never again appear on his surveillance screens. Judging by his military records, Kabak was perhaps the best fighter of the bunch. Rahul had no doubt the wily Turk could ferret out the rest of the flags all by himself if given the opportunity. He had to find a way to draw Kabak out before he disappeared into the tunnels.
Spoofing Plata’s voice had proved the perfect solution.
Once out in the street, theMak?i’s semi-auto sniper rifle took over. Tracking the speeding Turk had proved effortless, as had the nearly instantaneous calculation of speed and distance the computer fed into the wirelessly controlled “guided” sniper rounds. Three shots were excessive, but Rahul couldn’t risk not killing him. The Turk had proven too difficult to find.
Now it was time to finish the others.
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Cabrillo’s bare skin numbed in the cold seawater, but his sinuses, like his eyes, burned with salt. Stripped down to his waist, his long arms churned through the high tide crashing beneath the island’s broken-down pier. The Vendor had placed a flag at the very end of it beneath a blazing blue sky—daring someone to capture it.
Juan knew that anyone foolish enough to run the length of the pier would be seen instantly and gunned down or blown up before they got a quarter way to the target. So he did the only logical thing—he dove into the water and used the pier to shield himself from overhead surveillance. The penalty for staying beneath the pier was getting slammed into the concrete pylons by the surging waves that rose and fell like a Dollywood roller coaster.
He loved swimming in open water, but with the high tide crashing into the eroding pier he suddenly understood that it was the raging sea and not just shoddy construction that had nearly wrecked the structure. Cabrillo’s long, powerful strokes clawed through the swelling waves rising eight feet and higher. Lactic acid burned though his body from his broad shoulders and down his back to his meaty thighs. In theOregon’s Olympic-sized pool he would have been making record time, but out here he had only been inching forward. After whatseemed like a month of swimming he was finally within eyesight of the rusted ladder at the end of the pier.
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High on a bluff and hidden in a patch of thick foliage, Linc was keeping overwatch for Juan through the spotting scope. He tracked the Chairman’s slow methodical progress while scanning the skies for danger.
All clear.
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Juan couldn’t afford to waste a single, exhausting stroke.
He kept his eyes shut against the burning seawater, opening them at intervals to aid in navigation. The crashing waves roaring beneath the concrete pier robbed him of the ability to hear.
Focused on the ladder and partially deaf, Cabrillo didn’t pick up on the high-speed whine of the eight-motored octocopter and its mini gun patrolling on the far side of the pier, opposite the bluff where Linc was keeping overwatch.
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The drone’s algorithm was designed to spot human movement—walking, running, and even swimming. At first, the shadowed underbelly of the pier, the surging waves, and the thick pylons obscured the octocopter’s vision sensors. But a thorough, preprogrammed scanning picked up telltale signs of rhythmic splashing and Cabrillo’s windmilling arms finally triggered an alert.
The optical targeting reticle tried to hold on to Cabrillo’s form, but was too often blocked by the pylons. Likewise, the infrared targeting system detected but couldn’t lock on to Juan’s heat signature. His body was mostly underwater and the exposed skin was nearly the same temperature as the cold sea.
The AI navigator opted to send the octocopter into the pier to get closer and acquire a target lock. Now the machine faced the same challenges as Cabrillo, except that it couldn’t swim. Using its LIDAR sensors, the machine deftly avoided both the pylons and the high-rolling waves. Each maneuver robbed it of the chance to find and lock target onto Cabrillo, but it was gaining ground rapidly.
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Linc swore he heard the sound of high-pitched motors in the distance, but the spotting scope hadn’t revealed anything. He dropped the spotting scope and settled in behind his rifle and tracked the Chairman in his crosshairs.
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Cabrillo heard a gunshot behind him. The sting of concrete chips splattering from the nearby pylons and hitting his face told him that whoever had taken the shot had missed—barely.
Almost subconsciously he calculated the geometry between the sound of the gun blast behind him and the shattering pylon, locating the origin of the shot. He quickly angled away from that line of fire toward the far side of the next pylon, hoping to block the next bullet.
Utterly exhausted from his long swim, the emergency adrenaline dump gave him an incredible boost of energy and he surged ahead.
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