Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [118]
"Yes, sir," Private DeVonne saluted.
Squires turned to Private Honda, briefing him about the remainder of the mission. "You report to HQ as soon as the bridge is in view. Tell them what we're planning to do. If there's a message from them, you'll have to deal with it. We won't be in a position to use our radios."
"Understood," said Honda.
As the three Strikers started off through wind-gusted snows that ranged from ankle-deep to knee-deep, Squires joined Sergeant Grey and Private Newmeyer. Grey was already pressing small strips of C-4 to the trunk of a large tree near the tracks. Newmeyer was cutting the safety fuse, leaving the timer fuses they'd brought for Squires to use later. The safety fuses were marked in thirty second lengths and he had measured out a piece ten lengths long.
"Make it four minutes," Squires said, looking over his shoulder. "I'm a little antsy about the train being so close that they hear it."
Newmeyer grinned. "We all did the fourteen-mile timed run in under a hundred and ten minutes, sir."
"Not in snow with full gear you didn't--"
"We should be okay," Newmeyer said.
"We also need to leave time to throw snow on the tree, so it looks like it's been there a while," Squires said. "And me 'n' Grey have another little job to do."
The Lieutenant Colonel looked ahead. In five minutes, they could reach a concave area of granite some three hundred yards ahead, one that would protect them from the blast-- assuming the concussion didn't bring the cliff down on them. But Grey was experienced enough, and the explosives were small enough, that that wasn't likely to happen. That would still leave enough time for one of them to come back and clear away any traces of their tracks in the snow: it had to look as though the tree had cracked and come down by itself.
Grey rose when he was finished, and Squires squatted as Newmeyer lit the fuse.
"Let's go!" Squires said.
The Lieutenant Colonel helped Newmeyer up and the three men ran toward their little sanctuary, arriving with a minute to spare. They were still catching their breath when the sharp report of the low-explosive blast tore through the night, followed by the brittle cracking of the tree trunk and a dull thud as it hit the train tracks.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Tuesday, 11:08 P.M., Hokkaido
The two-crewmen "glass cockpit" was low, flat, and dark behind a narrow, curved windshield. Three of the six flat color screens in the cockpit formed a single tactical panorama, while an extra wide HUD-- heads-up display-- provided flight and target information that expanded upon the data contained on displays mounted inside the visor of the pilot's helmet. There were no dedicated gauges. The displays generated all of the information the pilot required, including input from the sophisticated sensors mounted to the exterior.
Behind the cockpit was a matte-black fuselage sixty-five feet, five inches long. There were no sharp angles on the flat-bellied craft, and the NOTAR tail system-- no tail rotor-- and advanced bearingless main rotor made the Mosquito virtually silent in flight. Ducted air forced, under pressure, through gill-like sections in the rear fuselage provided the craft with its anti-torque forces; a rotating directional control thruster on the tail boom enabled the pilot to steer. Already relatively lightweight because of the absence of driveshafts and gearboxes, the craft had been stripped of all extraneous gear, including armaments, which cut the aircraft's empty weight from nine thousand to just six thousand, five hundred pounds. With an extra tank of fuel carried outside and burned off first-- so the bladder could be jettisoned over the sea and recovered-- and coming home from a mission fifteen hundred pounds heavier than it went in, the Mosquito had a range of seven hundred miles.
It was a breed of flying machine the press and lay public called "Stealth," but which the officers of the Mosquito program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base preferred