The ground had a specific smell to it, too, a scent unlike others you’d ever crawled through, either as a child or a soldier. Many times, dirt smelled like death, or the precursor to death, hot sulfur and electrified metal. Sometimes it smelled of chemicals, and other times of rot and refuse. This dirt smelled like impervious stone, absorbing nothing, and obscuring the senses, just as the rain made it difficult for the night glasses to work properly.

“Turn twenty degrees to the right and proceed forward ten yards,” said the Voice.

Danny altered his course. Flash, Hera, and McGowan were behind in the minefield, moving forward slowly, not so much because they were afraid of the mines—though a healthy fear was always in order—but because they didn’t want to do anything to attract the attention of the guards in the post about forty yards away. The guard was sitting in the machine-gun nest under a poncho, trying to keep dry, and not paying particular attention to the minefield alongside him. Still, the four Whiplashers were in an extremely vulnerable position, surrounded by mines on both sides, with their guns tucked up over their shoulders and secured by Velcro straps against their rucksacks. If for some reason the guard decided to get up from his post and take a walk around in the rain, he might easily see them.

The mines around the Sudanese army post where Tarid and the other prisoners were kept had been laid in a complicated pattern. They’d also been placed very close together. Most soldiers would have found it impenetrable; indeed, at least two would-be saboteurs and a smuggler had been blown up in the fields over the past twelve months.

But the Whiplash team had an advantage other infiltrators did not—the Voice had mapped the mines by looking at infrared satellite images from the past few nights. The mines were all slightly warmer than the surrounding ground when the sun went down, making them easy for the computer to spot. By watching Danny and the others move through the field with the help of an Owl, it gave him precise directions, warning him when he or one of his people was getting too close to a mine.

“Turn now,” said the Voice.

Danny dug his elbow into the dirt, marking the turn so it would be easy for Flash to find. As long as they all stayed in line, they’d be fine.

“We’re in position,” said Nuri over the radio circuit.

“Roger that. We’ve still got a ways to go.”

“The guard change is in ten minutes.”

“Roger. Ten minutes. We’ll be ready.”

Danny looked up. He was a good thirty yards from the perimeter fence, and they need to be inside it when Nuri began the “attack.” He started moving faster.

The prisoners were being kept in an open pen about thirty yards from the perimeter fence. Tarid was there. So was Tilia.

She’d been shot twice in the leg, but it wasn’t until she ran out of ammunition and passed out from the blood loss that the soldiers had captured her. They threw her in the back of a captured rebel pickup and drove her to the compound, unconscious; her leg was bound but otherwise left untreated. In a way, she was lucky—if she hadn’t been recognized as one of Uncle Dpap’s lieutenants, she would have been killed on the battlefield.

After being raped. So far, she had been spared that as well.

When Danny reached the fence, he pulled himself up into a crouch and looked back. To his horror, he saw that McGowan was off course by several feet.

“McGowan, stop,” he hissed. “Stop!”

Everyone stopped, not just McGowan.

“What’s wrong?”

“You went off course. Don’t move.”

Danny pulled out the control unit for the Voice and told the computer to plot the mines near McGowan.

“You went right between two mines,” he told him after studying the image. “You’re about six inches from the next mine. And there’s one right behind you.”

“You sure?”

“No asshole, he’s just trying to scare the crap out of you,” snapped Hera.

“All right. Let’s all relax. Flash, come on forward. Follow the lines I made.”

“It’s getting hard to see with the rain,” said Flash.

“Yeah, I know. Do it, though.”

Danny waited until Flash reached the fence before signaling Hera to continue. She crawled through the dirt and mud quickly, sliding her body through the markings he had left as if she were swimming an obstacle course.

“All right. You two get working on the fence,” Danny told them. “We’ll be right with you.”

He took off his rucksack, leaving it and his rifle on the ground near the edge of the minefield. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and started back for McGowan. The rain was becoming heavier, washing away the markings he and the others had left. The water also started to soak the field, making it more slippery. Even with the Voice to guide him, he had a difficult time staying on course.

“This isn’t good, huh?” asked McGowan when he finally got close.

“There’s a mine right here,” said Danny, pointing. “And one about six inches behind your right foot.”

“Can I go right?”

“No.” Danny pulled out the MY-PID head unit and stared at the screen. “Your best bet is to move to your left slightly.”

“How slightly?”

“Hold on.”

The cloud cover was making it harder and harder for the system to see McGowan from the Owl. Danny, on the other hand, was tracked by the satellites using his biomarker. He nudged right toward McGowan.

The Voice objected that he was going off the established trail.

“Affirmative,” he told it. “Guide me toward McGowan.”

“Subject cannot be definitively located.”

“He hasn’t moved.”

“Data insufficient to confirm.”

“Warn me if I’m too close to a mine,” Danny told it. He shifted right, crawled two feet to the right, then stopped at the Voice’s direction. He had to zig to the right then back before drawing parallel to his trooper.

“Get on my back,” Danny said.

“Huh?” said McGowan.

“The computer will tell me where to go. Rather than taking a risk and following me, I’ll just carry you out. It’ll be easier.”

“Hey, Colonel, I can do this.”

“Get on my back, soldier. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

WHILE DANNY WAS GUIDING HIS MEN THROUGH THE MINEFIELD, Nuri and Boston were on the opposite side of the camp, preparing an assault. Or what would look like an assault to the men inside.

Nuri was on the north side of the road, Boston the south. They’d split the mercenaries between them. They didn’t have nearly enough men to take the camp, but they had more than enough to make it look as if they wanted to.

The rain continued to fall, blocking not only the Owl’s view, but making it hard to see with the night glasses as well. Nuri could barely tell where the machine-gun position was.

There were three minutes to go before the guards were due to change watch.

“Danny, you want us to delay the Catbirds?” Nuri asked. “You only have three minutes.”

“Stay on schedule. We want to hit while the guards are changing.”

“You sound like you’re straining.”

“I’ll explain later.”

HERA CLIPPED THROUGH THE LAST OF THE WIRE AND PUSHED it back. Then she stepped through, holding it for Flash so he could get in.

“This way,” she said, pointing toward the prisoners’ pen.

Aside from some smaller lights on the buildings, the only illumination in the complex came from a pair of floodlights mounted on a telephone pole at almost the exact center of the camp. Their light formed an arc that took in about two-thirds of the prisoners’ area. The area between the two fences where Hera and Flash were was cast in a deep shadow.

Before the rain started, two guards had been watching the prisoners, walking back and forth in the area that was lit. The heavy rain had sent them into the trucks, though Hera and Flash couldn’t see them from where they were.

“What happened to the guards?” asked Flash.