Chapter 27: The Flying Club Raid

The small flying robot circled the Gulf Snow Birds Flying Club at an altitude of 1000 meters, virtually invisible to the naked eye. No sound reached the ground from that altitude as the robot looked through several electronic eyes. The on-board radar was able to peer through some abandoned buildings but unable to see through the roofs of others--that was a significant bit of data for an intelligence analyst, though most people wouldn't understand the importance of that information. Also vitally important were the thermal signatures. Some buildings were slightly above background temperature inside. Some were slightly below. A few buildings were invisible to thermal imagery due to exact temperature matches. The sharp eyes of the robot spotted the subtle signs of foot and vehicle traffic along the roads, along the trails and sidewalks. Techniques developed from a long-forgotten War on Terror and from two centuries of clearing away old land mines and un-exploded bombs detected irregularities consistent with deployed explosive charges. There were even signs of new battlefield obstacles and possible fortified firing bunkers at the airfield.

Kilometers away, a mobile analysis van was converting this information in to usable form for the Capitallian raiding force. A raid's primary weapon is surprise--the idea is to know all about the enemy while keeping the target ignorant that anything is happening.

"No radar from the flying club detected," Dot, one of Hank Dalton's slave intelligence system operators, told the Capitallian federal officer standing beside her. "Communications not detected. We do have some bleed-over from the Pensacola Regional Airport and from Elgin Air Base air traffic control radars, but we're out of range of their positive control space. There are stray emissions from the United States and the usual electronic spectrum trash."

"What does that mean?" the federal officer asked.

"That there's only a 5% chance that the drone has been spotted," Kandi, one of Hank Dalton's slave analysts announced. "See the distortion along that sector? That is caused by low-power LADAR scattering off a small creature--most likely a squirrel."

"We can get a pair of sid coyotes into the place to look around," Dot said. "Hank is very protective of his sid animals, but they can perform a soft penetration and pull out if they feel threatened. Hank left their animal survival instincts intact. Can't beat a hundred million years of evolution for programming situational awareness."

"We also have an eagle that can provide unobtrusive surveillance," Kandi remarked. "These spots that show nothing are indicative of camouflage. If they really were uninhabited, we'd see inside. Clumsy, obsolete USR technology! That flying club is a little bit far from town for homeless people to walk but under normal circumstances I'd expect several squatter families to camp out there. The buildings look solid enough, provided a hurricane doesn't blow through--much more sturdy and weatherproof than a bit of nylon tent cloth or taped up trash bags and plastic sheeting. The drone tells me that the vegetation has been cleared in a manner consistent with high speed avenues of approach to these positions here," Kandi used her control to highlight several places on the map, then created red fans originating at the positions, "and as you can see, the removed vegetation is consistent with cleared fields of fire. In those fire fields I'll flag the obstacles and the positions of the land mines."

"How do you know they are land mines?" the federal officer asked.

"Earlier reconnaissance elements remained outside the air field perimeter but were able to smell the same homemade C4 that was used in that Snakefly missile we recovered." Kandi replied. "And look at this. The drone sees that there was some movement to this position and back out again. The outbound is about 30 minutes old and the inbound is about 35 minutes."

"That's disciplined," Dot remarked. "Indications are the inbound are one pair of men and the outbound are another pair of men."

"Prove it!"

"The drone has been overhead only fifteen minutes, sir," Dot said, "but let me zoom in on those tracks. This equipment can detect shod footprints on asphalt surfaces for up to 90 minutes after the footprints were made, depending upon weather conditions. That track is crushed sea shells and sand. See the boot marks? I'll enhance them."

Four different size boots of the same general design appeared.

"Those are Aztlan-issue army boots," Kandi pointed out. "I can even tell you the approximate height and gross body weight of the men who wore them. That won't be their naked body weight--their footprints sink into the ground from both their bodies and the equipment they carry. That big boot print weighs a bit more than 130 kilograms and he is about two meters tall. See how far apart the bootprints are?"

"I can see why Hank Dalton gets his teams in and out of Aztlan undetected now," the federal officer said. "I will have the raid authorization in a few moments, just as soon as I compose a summary and append raw data to this. The warrant will have to come from New York and the Supreme Court because you are using techniques that are military secrets."

"I can save you time," Kandi opened a text box on the monitor. "This will do. I've had a few decades experience writing these things to get special operations clearance."

"You had to get federal permission just to look over the place with a drone," the federal officer commented, "and to use your analytical techniques."

Modern communications permit almost instant decision making. Dot and Kandi continued their surveillance for 55 minutes before a query came back.

"How long can you maintain surveillance?" the federal officer asked.

"The drone has another seven hours endurance," Dot reported.

While they watched, the wheels of Capitallian justice moved slowly. Something funny was going on at the abandoned flying club. There was no cause to call out the military because there was no proof of foreign invasion. Even though statements had been filed that homeless people had been evicted and that there were no owners of record, no Probable Cause that a crime had been committed existed. At the same time Hank Dalton had been trying to gain title to the old flying club. Due to the requirements for public notification and waiting periods on paying the back taxes, Hank couldn't even examine the property in person for weeks.

On the screen, Dot watched as two men in the distinctive camouflage of the Aztlan Internal Police marched out to the bunker carrying what appeared to be Aztlan-issue military weapons, a pair of select-fire rifles with 100 round drum magazines. Five minutes later a second pair of men dressed the same way marched back out of the bunker and disappeared into the shielding hangar building.