Whack knew he was in trouble the minute he scanned the area around the town. “I don’t friggin’ believe it,” he radioed.

“What?” Patrick asked.

“It looks like they’re having a fiesta or something down there,” Whack said. The townspeople were actually holding a procession from town to the fishing community along the dirt road! “I just got reminded again of the commando’s ‘Six Ps’: Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.”

“Abort and try tomorrow night,” Patrick suggested.

He was 3.4 miles to his objective and still on time. “The procession looks like it’s just getting started,” Whack radioed. “It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you people sleep?”

“It’s a weekend-long party celebrating the beginning of the fishing season,” Patrick said. “I just Googled it. They’ll be out there tomorrow night, too.”

“Great.” He could see lights being carried by townspeople, but through his infrared sensors he could see that not everyone was carrying lights, so the procession was quite long-probably a couple hundred people in all. There was absolutely no place to hide north of the highway.

“I’m going to go for it,” Whack said. “I’ll pick a gap in the procession, jump over the dirt road, and hope to get lost in the darkness.”

“Too risky, Whack,” Patrick said. “If someone sees you, they’ll certainly alert the police, who would alert the Yemeni army border patrol, who would undoubtedly alert the Russians. Better off not pushing a bad situation. You got a couple more nights to-”

“Wait!” Whack exclaimed. At that moment the skies to his right over the ocean erupted in a shower of rockets and sparkles. “Fireworks! They’re having a friggin’ late-night fireworks show at the fishing village!” The people on the dirt road began running toward the sea, and in minutes the road was clear. A quick scan showed the area clear for two hundred yards in all directions. “How about that, boss? Looks like it’s clear.” He didn’t even need to jump the highway-that would have highlighted him against the fireworks in the sky. He simply sprinted across the sandy marsh, across the road, and straight ahead north of the highway, halfway up a gentle sandy dune leading to the highway. There were a few homes on the crest of the dune overlooking the ocean, but if anybody was home, they’d probably-hopefully-be looking up at the fireworks, not down toward the beach.

Another three-mile run, and soon he was at Socotra Airport. “I made it, boss,” he radioed. He made his way east of the airport and up a gentle rise to just outside a very large rectangular fenced compound situated on a rocky plateau overlooking the airport. During World War II, this compound had been a British prisoner-of-war camp, and then became a British military headquarters and radar site after the war until they withdrew from Yemen in the late 1960s. When the Soviet Union was invited by the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen to use port facilities in Aden in the 1970s, the Soviets took over the Socotra facility, enlarged and modernized it, and turned it into first an observation post, then a sea-and air-scanning radar facility, and finally into a combined space tracking facility and intelligence-gathering site, listening in on transmissions from space and from ships transiting the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. It was again modernized and enlarged two years ago, when the United States started expanding its Space Defense Force satellite network.

The twelve-foot-tall perimeter fence was brightly illuminated. “Just as our intel said,” Whack radioed. “Roving patrol on the west side, guard towers at the corners. The objective is in sight.” It was right in the center of the compound, mounted near and below a large radome: a 150-foot-diameter steerable open latticework dish antenna, pointed almost straight up.

A lot of times, the first sight of the objective made commandos anxious and excited, and it was vital to squelch that feeling and stick with the plan. The most important thing was not to alert the Russians to the point where they would shut down the transmitter or inspect the antenna. They were already alerted to Whack’s presence by the inspector at the airport, and they had probably assumed this was his objective.

He moved to his planned entry point on the east side of the facility, the farthest away from the airport, then took a few moments to study the guard towers on the corners. They were the farthest apart here and, being away from the airport and the highway, the least busy. His telescopic TV sensor showed two men in one cab and one in the other, so he chose the area closer to the tower with two men-the odds were better that the one guard in the other tower wouldn’t be looking in his direction. Whack also changed batteries-the first set was down to 15 percent. He would enter the facility with fresh power in case he needed to bug out fast.

“Here goes nothin’, boss,” he radioed.

“Good luck, Whack,” Patrick said.

Taking a running start, he jumped just at the very edge of the illuminated area outside the fence, clearing it with ease. He rolled as he hit the sandy hard-packed dirt inside the compound, leaped to his feet, and dashed as fast as he could to the closest spot of darkness at the inner edge of the illumination area he could find. He stopped and listened for any sound of alarm or pursuit. His escape plan was to jump out of the compound to the north, run downhill toward a riverbed about a mile away, then hide in a small cluster of farms if necessary. But so far he didn’t need that plan.

“Made it, Muck,” he radioed. “No sign of alarm.”

“Don’t get cocky, Whack,” Patrick said.

“I know, I know,” but he knew that, except for the exit jump, the hard part was over.

The inside of the compound was almost completely dark except for pole lights mounted near fire hydrants or outside entrances to some of the buildings, and it was easy enough to avoid those areas. His sensors tipped him off to any personnel or patrols nearby in plenty of time to take cover. There were guards everywhere, but no one seemed especially vigilant. That was often the case: When the number of guards increased, everyone tended to relax a bit more, assuming that the added numbers made everyone more secure.

Whack reached the antenna within two minutes of jumping the fence and found the service ladder. He carefully and quietly popped the lock off the protective gate, opened it, extended the ladder, and started climbing. His armored feet barely fit between the rungs, so he just used his arms to crawl up the ladder, going about three times the normal climbing rate. He made the twenty-story climb in about sixty seconds. Once on the bottom of the dish, he identified the framework structure that also attached to the transmitter-receiver module in the center of the dish, climbed onto it, and was on the rim of the antenna dish in no time.

The antenna had four long arms holding the large transmitter-receiver module in the center of the dish. In the Tin Man armor, it was easy to climb across the arm to the module. Hanging by one arm, he retrieved the signal analyzer-transmitter box from his backpack and attached it to the side of the center module. It would pick up any signals broadcast by the antenna, store them in digital memory, and then burst-send them to a waiting CIA satellite for downloading and analysis.

He reversed his direction, climbing back down the pedestal service ladder. He closed the gate, then pressed the hasp of the broken lock down into the lock with his microhydraulically powered fingers until the hasp jammed in place. Hopefully no one would notice the deformed lock until many days and at least one netrusion attempt from now-the first flyby of a Kingfisher weapon garage was in just eighteen hours.

Almost home free. He made his way carefully to his planned exit point on the north side. The terrain dropped away on the other side of the fence a bit more steeply, which might make it harder for pursuers to locate him. He also knew that there were probably motion or vibration sensors on the ground outside the fence, so he had to jump as far as he could past the fence and hope he didn’t set anything off. He lined up, took one last scan around for any sign of guards, dashed for the fence…