Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [99]
“It will draw suspicion if I wait here for you,” Parvik said, “so I will take to the air and circle a safe distance away. When the bomb detonates, I will immediately come back in this direction. Use your communicators to guide me to your exact position.”
“Right,” Jackson said. “And thanks for the lift.”
“Good luck,” replied the Assarn. “If you destroy that target, you will provide great assistance to our next attempt to strike Batuun.”
The three SEALS had concealed their skin under green and black camouflage paint. Stealth was at a premium—more important than firepower on this mission—but they still carried their suppressed G15s with a spare magazine of ammunition for each man. Falco, of course, had his squirrel gun strapped to his back. Wearing standard jungle camouflage fatigues, with Chief Harris carrying the Mark 92 nuclear bomb in a backpack, they spilled out of the opened ramp of the aircraft and immediately melted into the shrubbery beside the field. Parvik wasted no time firing up the downward-oriented turbines, lifting off, and quickly soaring away.
The target loomed some seven or eight klicks away, a structure similar in shape to the old vehicle assembly building on Cape Canaveral, though it was about ten times as large. Groves of fruit trees filled the ground between the SEALS and their target. The massive space cannon perched atop the structure, but at least, Jackson reminded himself, they would only have to get the bomb into the smaller building they could see next to the main structure.
The men moved carefully though the groves, keeping as much cover as possible between themselves and their target. The two point men, Sanchez and Marannis, were particularly missed right now, but as a sniper, Falco was more than competent at stealthy movement. Harris, with the bomb, followed behind him, and Jackson brought up the rear. The electrician’s mate led the group to within several hundred meters of their target. It was just past a small curve in the road that wove around several of the groves.
The SEALS took cover in a pile of brush and tree trimmings, with the road leading up to what looked like the main gate just a short distance from where they were hiding. This was the best chance to examine the compound and determine the optimum way to penetrate it.
“There’s cover to within a few dozen meters of the fence,” Chief Harris commented as he lowered his electronic binoculars from his eyes.
As the men watched the compound, a quiet noise came up from the road behind them. Without a word being spoken, they all ducked and silently watched a vehicle of some kind that was moving along the road. It was an odd-looking rectangular thing with six wheels evenly spaced along each side. The front of the vehicle was transparent, with a row of lights across the top. As they watched it pass, they could see that there was a single driver and a passenger in the front. It looked like the driver was the individual looking straight ahead on the left side of the front compartment; the person next to him was leaning back and looking out to the right side.
The vehicle passed by without noticing the SEALS or the suppressed G15 rifles that tracked the two people sitting in the front every moment they were in sight. Slipping up quickly, Lieutenant Jackson and Chief Harris watched what had to be a truck of some kind go up to the front gate and stop. The gate was a series of heavy bars that extended the width of the road and terminated in thick pillars at both ends. The whole fence was a series of horizontal bars stretched out between posts. There was maybe a ten or twelve centimeter gap between the bars, an open space that gave the SEALS a more or less clear view inside the compound.
As the truck stopped,