Iglesia ………………Episode 8

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(last weeks episode)

The Center had gotten the tip about the train 16 hours ago. The techs downloaded the Sat imagery along the full length of the tracks selected the best locations for intercept, they narrowed it down to a canyon in Arizona and selected the premium approach. He and his partner had studied both the computer simulations and the polymer topographical 3D model of the site as they prepped and on the plane. They knew the territory as well as was possible without having been there. He had selected the fucking bush he would sit in from the photos while they were still three hundred miles away. They had HALO’d in 9 hours before the train was due. In case the opposition had scouts coming or were laying sensors before hand. The latest Sat imagery had shown nothing that could possibly be a sensor in place when they dropped. The Sat techs would tell them if any scouts were in the area as the intercept time approached.

After eight hours sitting in a fucking bush it felt good to break in to a jog as they headed for the canyon. In spite of the vast array of weapons, tech, food, water and miscellania that were contained in the 74 different pockets and packs of their Chameleon Camo suits, they didn’t make a sound as they ran. Their suits were tuned to keep their infrared signatures to a minimum, but the camo was good enough that they weren’t using the camera powered ‘invisibility’ features. Their feet landed in the precise posture indicated by the thorough studies that had been undertaken at The Center on foot shape and velocity and the interaction with various forms of dirt and dust….they raised no dust cloud as they ran.

As they neared the canyon he unfolded, shaped and activated what looked like a large paper airplane and launched it into the air, it was actually made of graphitish material and consisted of wings a propeller a battery and a camera. He controlled it with his tongue on the inside of his helmet and monitored its input on his heads up display, the visor of which was switched to infrared mode and also displayed the view from the camera on the back of his helmet. He kept watch while his partner drilled and snapped in a piton in an outcropping on the canyon rim and they belayed the eighty feet to the canyon floor in two hops.

It was cool and dark at the bottom of the smoothly textured, tan sandstone walls. His optics self adjusted on the canyon floor. The bottom of the canyon had plenty of cactus and scrub along the shallow curve of the track, the sandstone on the far side  consisted of huge chunks of stone forming a cliff that was pockmarked with deep cracks and caves. He turned control of the flying drone over to his partner and unloaded the stand and the laser level from his suit. Its legs were spaced perfectly for the train tracks and in just a few seconds it was up, level, and shining two little red dots onto either side of the narrowest section of canyon. As soon as the red dot appeared his partner had the drill biting into the soft rock. He took out a micro-piton as his partner finished and moved over to the other side of the canyon to drill the other hole. The piton was camouflaged and had been drilled precisely deep enough to release at a specified pressure.

The line he attached to the piton and began to stretch across the canyon was only a few molecules wide. He looked like a mime handling an invisible rope. He secured it to the second piton. When he was done, a transparent trip line was strung five feet off the ground across the canyon. He snapped another length of the same line to the piton from a spool on his harness, at precisely the same time his partner snapped his harness to the first piton. They both pulled out long cylinders from yet another pocket. The cylinders telescopically lengthened into a shaft and from the end of the shaft the tines of a rake emerged. They dragged the rakes after them as they moved down the tracks to their pre-selected places of concealment. When they reached their respective hiding places on either side of the canyon they both looked back to check their work. They saw nothing.

He bent down and put a hand on the steel track and felt a slight but steadily increasing vibration, he checked the Sat transmission and his mission clock, the train was 38 seconds behind schedule. He checked his line by feel, switched his suit to full concealment and settled back into a deep dark crack in the sandstone. It smelled like snake.

But hey, at least it wasn’t fucking bush.

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To be continued Tuesday!