Under Strange Suns by Ken Lizzi Read Free Book Online

flat, despite the computer’s best efforts to provide a level of three-dimensionality. Tall grasses scraped against Aidan’s boots and slapped against his legs. He moved cautiously, alert for the ankle-breaking holes of animal dens or loose rock turning underfoot. He half expected to see the reflective, saucer-size eyes of large predators gazing hungrily at him.
    He crouched when the map indicated he was about a kilometer from the encampment. He heard the barest rustle as Summers slipped away to reconnoiter the target, the labeled dot representing him on Aidan’s visor inching away.
    Aidan sipped some water, listening to the insects and the unfamiliar noises of the African night. He stared about him, looking for anything that appeared out of place–other than himself. By the time Summers returned and conferred with Merit, half an hour had elapsed. Aidan found he’d been enjoying the nocturnal symphony.
    “Game time, ladies,” Merit said. “Here’s the layout.” A plan of the encampment appeared on Aidan’s visor. “We’re going to split the party.”
    “Fucking geeks,” Summers said.
    “Stow it, Summers. One guard here, at the south entrance. Hearse, you take him down quiet. Carson, Sinclair you enter. Carson break left, Sinclair right. Secure here and here. The rest of us will breach this structure here, Farouq should be there. Rally point right here.”
    Each man unslung the rucksack from his back and piled it on the Mule, then waited a moment for Sinclair to instruct the robot to stay. Then they moved, Hearse about a hundred meters in advance, threading the suppressor to the barrel of his .45 caliber pistol.
    “Down,” came the whisper through Aidan’s implant. He crouched. Looking ahead he saw a wavering point of light–artificially bright through his night vision–and he could just make out the figure of a man, limned with a thick outline by the computer’s biometrics programming. He heard a noise like a muted exhalation. The outlined figure collapsed, disappearing in the grass and the spot flicked off. Aidan stood and raced Sinclair to the gate, an open space in a waist high mud-brick wall.
    Aidan split left as he passed beneath the lintel of thin, twisty logs that marked the gateway. He had only the sketchiest impression of the compound or village the wall encircled. In his enhanced night vision view he saw a collection of squat, irregular, slab-sided structures, roofed with thatching or sheets of corrugated metal. He saw no watch towers or block houses. Nothing lending the place a military aspect. Farouq was blending in, then. Going to ground and relying on the human shield school of thought–using his enemy’s disinclination to kill women and children.
    He could hear the boots of the entry team behind him as he reached his assigned post, the mud-brick corner of a house where the curve of the compound wall still allowed him a view of the south gate if he turned his head. He knelt, putting his back to the corner, hefting the SAW to his shoulder. He watched the three dots form a triangle outside the outline of the largest structure shown on his map of the village. Setting up for a breach, just like training in the kill-house scenarios they’d all drilled over and over at Camp Rowe. Then he minimized the map, not wanting the imagery to distract him.
    A dog began barking somewhere deeper in the compound. A sharp report seemed to answer. Apparently Farouq’s front door was locked. Aidan heard shouting, a burst of gunfire–the ubiquitous AK-47–then silence. Momentarily.
    To his right he heard doors opening, followed immediately by yelling. He double-checked that the fire selector was switched to auto. The slap of sandaled feet announced his first visitor. His visor silhouetted the advancing figure, distinctive geometry of the Kalashnikov rifle held at port arms, bare chested, wearing only baggy trousers and cheap flip-flops, a bolo knife tucked through the cord holding up the pants. The man