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So far it had been interesting, but mainly because he had spent the last several hours sifting through the communications and signals generated by both the U.S. forces and the Pan-African forces. His ears and eyes were a battery of sophisticated and tremendously expensive equipment.

A KH-12 satellite had been moved to a fixed orbit over Angola for the duration of the mission. Hawkeye and AWACS surveillance aircraft provided radar coverage of the airspace. A JSTARS plane was on call to paint a more complete picture of what was happening on the ground across the light spectrum.

Right now, the KH-12 had divulged some interesting information. Someone in the Lunda Norte province had transmitted several hours ago on a narrow band to a satellite and a reply had been sent back down just fifteen minutes ago. Waker put the tea down and leaned forward. He accessed information from the database on the satellite that had been the middleman on both transmissions and found out it was a commercial one that had hundreds of corporate clients. Because of that, the other end of the message was more difficult to trace. He was only able to tell that one end of the relay was in Lunda Norte because the U.S. military had its own satellites overhead and they had picked up the uplink coming out of Angola. If it was essential, Waker knew he could use other means to get information out of that civilian satellite, which, according to the computer, was owned by a French communications consortium.

But the only way to know if it was essential would be to know what the message was. Not being in the direct uplink of the broadcast, the KH-12 had only picked up part of the transmission. As he had expected, what the satellite had intercepted was not decipherable. The computer’s best guess was that it was encoded in a one-time pad format.

Waker summarized the information and put it in his duty log. Then he ordered the computer to alert him the next time a message was picked up. Until then, it wasn’t that important.

Airspace, Angola, 13 June

“I’ve got a faint image,” one of the radar operators in the back of the Hawkeye announced. “Helicopter. She keeps popping up and down. Staying real low.”

“Location?” the combat information officer asked.

“Departing Huambo. Heading northeast.”

The CI checked the overlay. He was supposed to have four F-18s on station, but one had mechanical problems and its partner was staying close to the carrier offshore. That meant he only had two war-planes in the sky. This was very bad timing. He had to keep the pair in close to his own position for defensive purposes on the off chance the rebel air force launched some sort of preemptive strike against either the Hawkeye or a quick cross-border attack against the PAF forces massing in Namibia.

After the downing of the MI-8 earlier today, everyone was operating on a higher level of anxiety. He could ask the op center on the Abraham Lincoln to give him two more planes, but the CI knew that the officer in charge of the planes on board the carrier had a lot on his mind right now and they were in the middle of important preparations.

“Still up?” the CI asked.

“He’s staying low, now following the main road to the east.”

That meant the chopper was on the dividing line between the U.S. and PAF forces. It could go either way before he could get planes on it.

“Let it go,” he decided. “It will probably land before I can get something in the air to take care of it. Log the sighting and transmit the information to headquarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cacolo, Angola, 14 June

“How come you military people always do things in the middle of the night?” Conner Young asked.

“Because it’s more uncomfortable,” Riley replied facetiously. “And also more difficult for reporters to see what they’re doing in the dark. Never mind that it might catch the bad guys off guard.” They were on a UH-60 Black Hawk flying east over the Serra da Chela mountain range, heading up to the high plateau that made up the western part of the country.

From the inbriefing that Riley had given her, Conner knew that Angola was split into three distinct geographical regions: a coastal lowland, an escarpment of hills and mountains of which the range beneath their aircraft was a part, and the high plateau flowing out of the escarpment to the east.

The capital city of Luanda was located in the western part of the country. Conner and company had landed there four hours ago. With quite a few aircraft flying in and out, the activity at the airfield had appeared confused to Conner, but in surprisingly short order they had been cross-loaded onto the Black Hawk. Their gear was put onto another helicopter, and they were flying east to Cacolo with ODA 314 along with a second team that was going to be working out of the AOB there.

They were leaving the western part of the country, where the majority of the population of Angola lived. Conner wondered, not for the first time, if she had taken the wrong bus and everyone else was headed for center stage and she was going far off Broadway. Luanda was where the U.S. contingent in this operation was going to be headquartered. It was where the other networks, along with a bigger SNN crew, were going to be descending like flies in the next few days to record the latest international peacekeeping effort. And Conner was half afraid she was going to be out in the boonies counting trees. Too late for that, she thought, looking out of the helicopter and mentally focusing on where they were going.

The northeast section of the country was on a high plateau. The rivers in the area drained into the Congo, north in Zaire. Signs of civilization were few and far between. The dominant industry was diamond mining, and Conner had more than a passing interest in that fact. She knew the Van Wyks cartel had a shady past and she wondered where the long hand of that organization would touch down during this operation. The major reason, though, that she was going out here was simple reverse logic. At least that was the way Riley had explained it. All the other news agencies were going to be at JTF headquarters on the west coast in Luanda. “So be where they aren’t,” had been Riley’s suggestion.

Conner looked across the dimly lit cargo bay at Riley. He was still, but she could see the glint of his eyes as he looked out the open door at the moonlit terrain. He was a strange man. She knew Sammy, her sister, and he talked quite a bit. At first she had been hopeful that maybe Sammy had finally found herself a good man, but after watching and listening to them one time when they passed through St. Louis on a story, Conner had finally resigned herself to the fact that Sammy had found herself a good friend who happened to be a man.

Conner wasn’t quite sure what was going on with both of them, and she really didn’t have the time to concern herself with it. She’d been busy this past year, racing around the globe, always against a deadline, trying to keep the status she’d earned with the Eternity Base story.

Not only the location but the angle on the Angolan mission—going on the ground with a team—had been Riley’s suggestion. Conner had thought long and hard about it. There was no doubt it was a gamble, but you didn’t stay on top by taking the safe route. On the positive side, Conner knew she’d have a camera on the ground with a live satellite feed long before any of her competitors, who were going to be content to sit in the hotel in Luanda and get the daily military briefing. On the negative, she could end up with a live feed of not much.

The fallback position, a term she had picked up from Riley, was that she would most certainly have a unique perspective. One of the greatest criticisms of the media during the Gulf War had been the contentment of correspondents to sit in Riyadh and accept the military daily briefings with very little effort made to get out on the ground to see what was really happening.

However, a unique perspective wouldn’t be enough if there wasn’t a story to get a perspective on. And Conner also had to remind herself of the one news crew that had gone out on its own during Desert Storm to try and get a story and ended up getting captured by the Iraqis for their trouble. She looked at Riley’s silhouette one more time and felt that at least she held an advantage over that team with his expert presence.

Conner was distracted from her thoughts as the crew chief made some sort of gesture with his hands. Next to her, one of the Green Berets from the briefback pulled a magazine out of his vest and slammed it home into his weapon. He placed the gun between his knees, muzzle pointing down. This time, though, there were no blank adapters on the end of the weapon’s muzzle, nor a MILES harness strapped on top of their load-bearing equipment. There were live bullets being loaded.

The combination of the thud of the blades above her head, the wind, the soldiers, and the loading of weapons, and suddenly Conner felt a strange sensation in her stomach. While she was puzzling over what it was, the young soldier suddenly turned and looked at her. He smiled and leaned close. “Just a precaution, ma’am. The AOB is secure, but it never hurts to be ready.”

Conner nodded and looked out the open door. She could see a scattering of lights on the ground up ahead—Cacolo. The helicopter suddenly plunged earthward toward the landing zone, rapidly descending into and through SAM-7 range.

On the ground in Cacolo, Sergeant Ku rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He was tired and his head hurt. Damn these Americans. Why did they have to do this in the middle of the night? What was the rush? As long as Ku could remember he’d been at war. What would another night matter?

Three helicopters landed, one after another, and men and materiel poured off. The aircraft shut down their engines and silence descended on the AOB. ODA 314 and another team, ODA 315, stood there in the darkness. Major Gungue and the American major, Lindsay, walked out and greeted the team; Ku reluctandy followed as he was instructed.

Cacolo’s population could never really be tabulated because it was determined by the flow of refugees from the surrounding countryside, which depended on two factors: the way the war was going, and the way the crops were growing. Currently, the town had over thirty thousand souls crammed into it. A few relief agencies had set up camp and were supplied from the small dirt landing strip on the east side of the city.

The AOB advance had appropriated several buildings near the landing strip and turned them into an SF camp with barbed wire all around the perimeter and sandbagged gun positions guarding all avenues of approach. There was more open land to the north of the AOB for the 82d Airborne to take over when it arrived.

Lindsay greeted the two team leaders and team sergeants and linked them up with their indigenous guides. He took the entire party back, along with the pilots of the helicopters and the news team, to the AOB operations center, a former garage when there had actually been cars that ran in Cacolo. Ku reluctandy followed, wishing the headache that throbbed in his temples would go away.

Riley looked at the setup as he entered the garage with Conner and Seeger. It was typical of a Special Forces operation. Everything jury rigged, but jury rigged well. Maps lined the wall and radios were manned by men pulled from other teams to supplement the AOB.

He’d spotted a team on the roof of the garage with .50 caliber machine guns well sandbagged in at opposing corners. They were taking security seriously here, which made him feel better.

Lindsay didn’t spare any punches. “We’re putting you in before dawn.” He turned to Dorrick. “You first.” Lindsay used a pointer on the map. “ODA three one four will go in to two locations.”

Riley listened carefully, making notes as Lindsay rattled off grid coordinates, time of departure, flight paths, false insertion points— the entire operations order.

Conner tugged on his elbow. “This morning? Already?”

Riley nodded. “No wasted time.”

“Who do we go with?” she asked.

“I’ll talk to Captain Dorrick after the OPORDER is over,” Riley said.

He could tell from what Lindsay was saying that 314 had two targets to be reconned and targeted. One was the airfield on the southeast side of Saurimo, the local rebel stronghold. The other was the road leading north out of Saurimo where a bridge crossed a deep streambed. The airfield team was to help in the destruction of both the field and the planes currently stationed there. The bridge team was to laser-designate the bridge so that it could be destroyed with smart bombs. The intent was to sever Saurimo’s major ground link to the north.

Riley was impressed with the intelligence and the professionalism of Lindsay’s briefing. It more than made up for the lack in the briefback at Bragg. The AOB had certainly done its homework.

Lindsay wrapped up the order. “You load in sixty minutes. Depart at zero five twenty local time. It’s under eighty miles to the furthest insertion point. Both your teams will be on the ground before daylight. Your commo men need to link up with my AOB commo chief and get all frequencies and call signs. Questions?”

There were none, and the teams split out to prepare. Riley followed Captain Dorrick out and grabbed him. “Sir, which split team do you want us to go with?”

“I don’t want you to go with either,” Dorrick said irritably. “But if I have to, which I’ve been ordered to, then you go with the bridge team. I’m sending it in light. The airfield team has more likelihood of contact, so there won’t be room on that bird. Get with Sergeant Lome. He’s taking the bridge element.”

Namibia-Angola Border, 14 June

General Nystroom watched through a night vision telescope as the first scouts moved out, slipping across the border. They were part of two units: No. 32 Battalion, which was manned by native Angolans recruited by the South Africans during their long-running war in the area; and the Reconnaissance Commandos, the elite of the South African army. Many of the men walking out into the darkness had been here before, but fighting each other.

The scouts carried four days of food and water along with heavy loads of ammunition. Also, they carried the laser designators that they’d spent the last month training on. This was the most critical part of the entire plan, in Nystroom’s opinion. He wasn’t as confident as the American air force general who’d briefed the PAF staff three weeks ago in Silvermine. Nystroom looked back over his shoulder. An armored antitank gun was parked near his command vehicle. If the next forty-eight hours didn’t go as the American general had promised, there was going to be quite a lot of work for that gun.

Fort Bragg/Fayetteville, North Carolina, 14 June

In quarters and houses across Fort Bragg and Fayetteville phones began ringing. There was no surprise with this alert—they had all known they would be going sometime soon—and very little irritation at the timing of it. For some strange reason, practically every alert, real or practice, called by the army comes in the middle of the night and the soldiers of the 82d Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps were used to alerts. At least this one was early enough that most weren’t even in bed yet.

The major difference about this one, though, was that they all knew it was the real thing. They had been training up for Angola for two months now, ever since the president had announced support of the proposed peacekeeping mission. So this time, the good-byes were longer and harder, and spouses woke children up and put them in the car to drive onto the post and watch their other parent walk away into the darkness. And in the back of everyone’s mind was the question if everyone who left was going to come back alive.

Cacolo, Angola, 14 June

Conner ran a hand across the green markings on her face that Riley had just rubbed on using a small tube. “This isn’t going to come off easy, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Riley said, now checking the combat harness she had put on earlier. “Most soldiers use bug juice to get the camo to go on easy but that defeats the purpose, which is not, as you would think, to turn your face green. It’s to remove the shininess of your skin so you won’t be spotted as easily. Jump.”

“What?”

“Jump up and down.”

Conner followed his instructions and Riley tightened down a flap on the vest. “All right. Again.”

She jumped and this time made no noise. Riley stepped back and carefully inspected both Conner and Seeger. He glanced at Master Sergeant Lome, who’d looked as if he were being asked to jump into shark-infested waters covered in blood when Riley had informed him that they were going with him. “Okay,” the senior NCO said reluctantly. “Let’s load.”

Riley trailed as they ran out to the Black Hawk. Besides Lome, this recon element consisted of Comsky as medic, Pace on the radio, and the junior engineer, Sergeant Tiller, carrying a laser designator. Sergeant Ku was their indigenous representative and appeared quite confused.

Riley pushed in next to Conner, while Seeger began doing his job. The camera he was using was specially fitted with a night vision adapter over the normal aperture. The recording would be very similar to what everyone else on the bird was seeing as they pulled up their night vision goggles and turned them on—everything brightly lit in a green haze.

Riley leaned over and helped Conner adjust her goggles. “Can you see?” he asked, yelling to be heard over the whine of the turbine engines starting.

“Yes.” Conner’s head was turning about as she got used to the new view of the world.

“You might have problems with depth perception,” Riley advised. “Be careful when you get off the helicopter.”

The wheels of the helicopter parted company with the ground and they gained altitude quickly. The aircraft was blacked out and the pilots were wearing their own goggles and using the cutting-edge technology of the aircraft cockpit to guide them to their destination.