“We’re under fire,” said the Brit.

“Do you have a target?” called Grizzly.

“Negative,” said Rodent. “We’re in cover. We can’t see the gunman.”

“Rodent, is it the mosque?” Grizzly asked.

“Stand by.”

“I can take the mosque out.”

“Stand by.”

“Turk, you see the gunfire?”

“Negative.”

Turk, about a mile and a half behind Grizzly, zeroed into the area on his screen, using maximum resolution. He couldn’t see any gunfire at all. Hitting the mosque would be easy enough, but without a positive ID that it was the target he couldn’t take the shot. The helicopter, meanwhile, held short, about a mile and a half away.

“We need a target, Rodent,” said Grizzly.

The ground unit replied with a curse.

“Rodent, can you beam them with your laser designator?” asked Turk.

“Negative. We’re not sure where they are.”

“Are you under fire?”

No answer.

“Rodent?”

“We’re sorting it out, mate. We hear people moving east of us.”

“East of you?”

“And north. Both.”

“I’m going to try and get eyes on,” Turk told Grizzly. “I’ll come through, then maybe we can nail them.”

“Roger that. Good.”

“Rodent, can you try and get them to fire?” Turk told the ground unit.

“They don’t bloody well handle requests, Yank. And if they did, that wouldn’t be one I’d make.”

The haze from the earlier smoke grenades had drifted across the eastern end of town, obscuring Turk’s view as he came up from the south. As he cleared past it, he saw two quick flashes on the far right. They were coming from the roof of a building on the corner of the intersection. The location didn’t seem to have an angle on Rodent’s position, however.

“How close is that gunfire?” he asked the ground unit.

“Close enough to count.”

He told the British soldiers about the building. They agreed it was the likely source, though from where they were they could see only a small corner of the roof.

“May be why they’re missing,” said Rodent.

“You sure that mosque is clear?” Grizzly asked Turk. “It has that whole road covered.”

“I didn’t see anything there. You?”

Grizzly didn’t answer. He told the SAS troopers to keep their heads down, then dialed his Maverick into the building Turk had ID’ed as the sniper nest.

Ten seconds later the building exploded.

Rodent called in to say that they were moving. More gunfire erupted on the street, coming from behind a parked car. This time the target was obvious. The Brits took cover, and Turk put a Maverick into the vehicle, setting it on fire and killing or wounding the two gunmen behind it.

“You sure that mosque is clean?” asked Grizzly.

Stop with the mosque, thought Turk. But he answered calmly. “I don’t see anything there.”

“We’re moving,” said Rodent.

There were a few more shots, but the pair made it to the northern fork and then ran down the hill. They were clear of the village.

“Helicopter is inbound,” said the controller.

“Let’s take a pass between the landing zone and the village,” said Grizzly. “Make sure things are cool.”

Turk got behind him. Grizzly told the controller and the helicopter what they were doing.

“You sure that mosque doesn’t have anything?” asked Grizzly.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll bet that’s where they came out of. Those places are nests.”

Grizzly went across the top of the hill. Turk got his Hog a little lower. His airspeed kept declining; he was barely over a hundred knots, very close to getting a stall warning.

“Looking clear.”

A large black bug appeared on the horizon. The SAS men ran toward it. As the Blackhawk swooped in, the two A–10s flew east to west across the village, between it and the SAS troopers.

“Something on my left,” said Grizzly as he cleared west. “You see that?”

“I’ll look for it.”

“Two or three people.”

Turk saw the figures on a small path at the side of the knoll. There were four—at least two were children.

“Just kids,” he told Grizzly.

“You sure?”

Turk slid his aircraft left. He could have fired at them if he wanted.

But they were kids.

“Yeah. Just kids.”

“You see a weapon?”

“Negative.”

The helicopter touched down. Within thirty seconds it was back in the air, Brits aboard. Grizzly took another pass, running between the village and the Blackhawk. As he did, there was a puff of smoke from the hillside.

“Flares! Break right, break left!” called Turk, even before the missile launch warning began blaring. “Missile! Turn hard! Left! Flares! Flares!”

Something sparked in the sky. Turk looked to his left, where the other aircraft should be, but there was nothing there.

He jerked his head around, afraid. But Grizzly was there—he’d gone right.

Turned toward the damn missile.

There was a dot of red in the pale blue. Two dots.

Decoys, thought Turk. He’s past.

“I’m hit,” said Grizzly a moment later.

2

Southern Libya

Driving away from the radar complex, Rubeo zipped his jacket against the cold and considered something one of his professors had told him.

Only thought experiments fully succeed in science.

As a pimple-faced teenager extremely full of himself, he had considered that an exaggeration. He’d pulled off dozens of experiments that were one hundred percent successful. As time went on, however, he saw the truth in his professor’s remark. And while he had come to appreciate that the failures were almost always more interesting than the successes, at this particular moment the limits of science were a challenge.

Even though the UAV gathering the electric data had been shot down before completing its survey, the map it provided of the devices at the complex was fairly complete. The aircraft’s sensors had found the main generators and the trailers with the radar control units. The detail was good enough for an eighty-five percent certainty on the ID of the radars that detected planes and controlled the missiles.

Eighty-five percent was considered more than enough; the matching algorithms were extremely exacting. Additionally, the radars had already been identified by the receiving unit independent of the Mapper, so the match confirmed that the system was working properly.

The next stage was more difficult. The computers at Rubeo’s headquarters compared the diagrams with known circuitry maps of the “stock” radars. They found them exactly the same. Since modifications would be needed to interfere with the UAVs, Rubeo could now be certain that hadn’t happened.

Or rather, that those units hadn’t done it. Because there was still a portion of the complex that had not been mapped. The section included a small shed and a trailer. The electronic map implied some sort of activity there—there were two power lines leading in—but the rest was open for interpretation.

Or imagination. Unable to rule anything out, most people tended to think of the worst. It was an interesting human prejudice, Rubeo knew, but one even he couldn’t escape.

Would a jamming unit fit in the trailer?

Absolutely. The devices the Russians had deployed near the Georgian border to deter spying UAVs were about that size.

If they were there, wouldn’t the Libyans have used them to deter the attack?

Perhaps. But that was just it—a guess, not definitive proof.

“Guys could use some rest,” suggested Jons.

Rubeo turned to him. He’d been concentrating so fully on the problem that he forgot where he was.

“Halit up there keeps nodding off,” added Jons. “If we stop out here, away from the town, we’ll be a little more secure. Sleep until the afternoon. You wanted to see the place in the day.”