Read Online Z by Bob Mayer - Free Book Online

said.
    That wasn’t exactly what Conner had expected. “The team?”
    “That Captain Dorrick has his head so far up Colonel Burrows’s butt that he can’t see the mission ahead. I don’t know about the team sergeant. The team seemed well organized. I just didn’t like what they were saying, but I think they were censored. Maybe by Dorrick, more likely during an earlier run-through by the Group S-3.”
    “Censored?” Conner repeated. “About what?”
    “Let’s put it this way,” Riley said. “I hope they were censored.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if they weren’t, they don’t know diddly-shit about where they’re going or exactly what they’re going to be doing when they get there.”
    “Hell, Dave, we’ve been researching Angola for the past two weeks with all the resources SNN has available and we don’t know too much, either, about what’s going on in that country right now.”
    “Yeah, but no one was shooting at you.”
    “Besides the team,” Conner said, “what do you think of the mission?”
    “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when we get on the ground. I’m going to pump Comsky for more information on the flight going over. At least we’ll hit the ground running with those laser targets from the AOB as soon as we arrive.”
    Riley remembered the other parts of the censored operations plan he’d been allowed to read. Apparently the idea was to get the SF troops on the ground on day one of the air war. Take out all known targets before the rebels were ready or could hide in the countryside. After those initial targets, the teams would scour the countryside in conjunction with air surveillance, searching out new targets while the regular ground forces came in country.
    It was this sequence of events that the military wanted to keep under wraps. They hoped to eliminate most of the MPLA armor and aviation on that first day, along with all fixed bases and lines of communication. That, hopefully, would prevent major, pitched battles as the 82d hit the ground. It actually wasn’t a bad concept, in Riley’s opinion. After Haiti and Somalia, everyone who watched SNN expected the military to move slowly and with great preparation. This fast knockout punch might just do the job. Then again, Riley knew, it might not.
    Conner closed her eyes and leaned back. “Talk to Sammy lately?”
    “Yeah, last night,” Riley said.
    “How is she?”
    “The same.”
    Conner’s sister, Sammy Pintella, had been the one who had brought Riley in contact with Conner the previous year, when she’d discovered information about a secret military base in Antarctica and they’d gone south to investigate. The three of them had been the only survivors after a run-in with North Korean commandos on the ice pack.
    Conner’s stock with SNN had risen greatly, based on the story that came out of the whole episode with Eternity Base, to the point where she now was able to pick and choose her own stories and investigate them with her own team. Sammy had stayed at her job at the National Records Center in St. Louis, where she had discovered the information. Riley saw her every once in a while and talked to her on the phone when the schedule permitted.
    While Sammy was slow and steady, Conner was fast and brilliant. Technically, Riley knew he was being paid as a security consultant, but Conner had come to rely on his common sense more and more to balance out her driving instinct for the story that sometimes blinded her to other realities. This mission especially, because it was in Riley’s area of expertise, she was counting on him. He didn’t plan on letting her down.

     

Chapter 5
     
    Luia River, Angola, 12 June
     
    The patrol looked like a party of ghouls as the sun revealed details. Most of the men were splattered with dried blood, and all were covered in mud. They’d made good time in the darkness, following the riverbed away from the site of the ambush. Steam was rising off the surface of the river, mingling with