Chapter 18

In the dark of the night, high on the mountainside; the air had a bite that nipped at any exposed flesh. Not that any of Gunny's team had much exposed flesh. Their ghillie suits covered them in thick layers of overlapping patches to break up their outline. Underneath that they wore polyester long johns, to wick the sweat away from their bodies.

They were moving with almost reckless speed, considering that by moving through hostile territory without authorization, not only prevented them from calling for support, but also actually made them an unrecognized target for allied forces. Still, needs must when the devil drives. They had to get into position on this last exposed ridgeline before the first predawn light.

Of course, 'reckless haste' for a Force Recon Team, in enemy territory, wouldn't set any speed records. The rear man would break cover. Slowly, and nearly silently, he'd creep past the point man. Then he'd take cover. All of them would remain frozen in place for twenty seconds, while watching all points of the compass. Then, assuming they were all still alive, the operation repeated itself.

'Reckless haste', in this case, meant cutting the wait time after each move to less then half what was recommended by their training. Plus, they were walking in a crouch, rather than doing a low crawl.

The point flashed the all clear, and it was Gunny's turn to move. Even knowing where his men had dropped to cover, and with his night vision equipment, he could barely pick out his men's positions as he passed them. He tried, anyway, as it was always good practice for spotting real threats. Gunny moved past the point man, to just below the military crest of the ridgeline. He low crawled the last few feet, so he could see into the valley below.

Gunny waited the requisite twenty seconds, scanning the valley below for threats. Then, he signaled the all clear, and motioned for the next man to take a position upslope, to his right. As soon as the rest of the team was in position, Gunny pitched his voice to carry just far enough.

"All right, jarheads. Make yourselves comfy. We might be here a while. Today, we'll just see what we can see, about what our friends down there are up to."

Gunny pulled out his spotter scope. He flicked on the power for the light amplification gear and turned the powerful low light scope on the hidden base in the valley below. At first glance, there was nothing to see. The pattern of rock and tuffs of withered grass, and even a rude dirt two rutted track, all made the place seem uninhabited.

Then, Gunny started to scan wider, and up against the rock face near the edge of the valley. There he could see a discontinuity. Puzzled and unable to ascertain the cause, he panned his view further along the cliff face. Finally, his mind grasped what he was seeing. There was a fabric stretched all the way across the valley floor, with an image of the empty landscape below printed on it!

Knowing what to look for, now he could pick out the heavy cable attachments, and the anchor points in the cliff face. The discontinuity that had first drawn his attention, was that the pattern had been picked for a straight down view from a satellite in orbit, one hundred and fifty miles overhead. However, since he was viewing it from an angle, there was a break in the pattern. The tracks had a small offset, and in some cases, a rock's outline was cut in half, and moved a few inches.

Gunny grunted in grudging admiration. They must have taken a satellite image, then blown it up and printed it out on a 1:1 scale to cover the whole valley floor! That would explain why the shadows weren't the same, too. Even with the correct image of the valley floor, the covering didn't reproduce the contours. Thus, the shadows were thrown off.

Gunny searched for the edge of the camouflaged cover, to estimate its size. The valley was almost a quarter mile wide, here. When he realized that the camouflage extended for over a mile, Gunny's mouth got dry.

He swore under his breath, "Jesus Christ on a crutch! The fuckers have a quarter of a square mile concealed! They could have a whole freaking division down there, and the spooks wouldn't have a clue."

Briggs said in a low voice, "Guess I owe the butter bar an apology. I told him that the next time he got a wild hair up his ass and wanted us to go off the reservation, that he'd better have a damned good reason."

"Don't blame yah, Briggs. I've wiped the noses of plenty of butter bars. Never had much use for any of 'em, 'til they've been potty trained. But, this time he showed me what he had, and it was enough to get me to agree to run this mission. Even if it meant we both had to crash and burn. Even so, I didn't think it could be anything like this! Goddamn, they had to have gotten some serious technical assistance for this!"

"So, what's next Gunny?"

Gunny looked at the lightening of the sky over the mountains to the east, then he said, "Find yourselves a soft rock, we observe from here today. Tomorrow night, the real fun begins. We sneak down and take a peek at what they have under their skirts!"

Softly, yet emphatically, four indistinct piles of shrubbery chorused, "Recon!"

Cameras and spotlights pointed at the monorail platform inside Disney World's Contemporary Resort. A horde of paparazzi with flash cameras was held behind velvet cords hanging from bronze stanchions. Hanging over the rails of every balcony overlooking the monorail station, thousands of curious onlookers teemed. Only three entertainment reporters with their camera crews had been allowed to wait inside the velvet barriers on the red carpet.

The horde of paparazzi was already in a frenzy from the number of A-list celebrities that had previously arrived. Even the normally unflappable society and entertainment reporters were flushed with juicy sound bites, and fluff interviews with politicians, movie stars, pop singers and other 'beautiful' people.

The monorail pulled into the station quietly and came to a stop. When Jay stepped out, resplendent and dapper in his tux, with Amy in a gorgeous scarlet gown on his arm, hundreds of cameras flashed at once. A flurry of questions were flung over the velvet cords, but Jay and Amy merely stopped, posed for a few seconds, and then strode purposefully toward the first of the society camera crews.

Dave and Mary were the next to exit the monorail. Mary's tall statuesque body, flowing blonde hair and stunning smile combined with her sapphire blue designer gown, made her look right at home on the red carpet. Although, Dave looked good in his tux, his nervousness showed as he flinched from the flood of flashes. Dave held his arm up to shield his eyes from the flashbulbs until Mary unobtrusively tugged on his arm to get him moving down the red carpet.

Adam and Troy stepped out of the monorail in step and the crowd exploded into wild waving and screams, as thousands of flashes splashed over the scene. They stood just outside the doors of the monorail for over a minute waving at the tumultuous crowd. As they stepped forward to head down the red carpet, two more men, obviously personal security followed them from inside the monorail.

Troy stepped up to the first camera crew. A perfectly coiffed blonde sidled up next to him and stuck a microphone in his face.

Entertainment reporter Blaire effused, "Troy! So glad to meet you at last! So, this event is all your doing. What do you hope to accomplish here this weekend?"

Troy smiled at Blaire, and then turned to the camera to answer. "We hope to gain a huge international television audience for the Air Meet events. By combining my first private mission to the moon with the Air Meet, and a few other announcements; I hope to increase the exposure for all of them."

Blaire's furrowed her brow into the slightest of frowns. "What announcements?"

Troy pulled Adam close, threw an arm around his shoulders, and then answered. "Well, Adam here is full of wild ideas. He's the one that flew down from Daytona using his new invention, the Air Foil. Just hours ago he came up with another new idea, and we made a bet."

Blaire pulled the mike close to ask, "What new idea, and what bet?"

Then, she shoved the mike under Adam's mouth, gleefully anticipating a scoop.

Adam's eyes flickered to Troy and threw him a look of absolute disgust. He wriggled out of Troy's grasp and placed one arm around the curvaceous blonde, pulling her hip into his.

"Well after seeing the story about Jimmy getting caught in the storm, and the footage from above the clouds atop the storm, I decided I wanted to go there. I used to do HALO parachute jumps. HALO stands for High Altitude Low Open. We would jump from thirty-five thousand feet. At that altitude, the safety gear necessary would be good enough to go as high as Jimmy did, since you're already above 90% of the atmosphere. So, Troy's convinced me to bet my life on the safety equipment and give it a try."

"Wow! That sounds really scary, fun, and exciting!"

With a boyish grin, Adam said, "Oh, I'm pretty sure it will be all of that. I just hope that you don't have to add 'fatal' to the list."