Author's Note: I forgot to thank Triptych for his help on the fine points of a Time On Target strike, so I am in this chapter. I've been reflecting on what this story means in 'Diary of a Current War Story' at fictionpress, and I've concluded this is pretty good.

"What we do in life echoes in eternity."

Maximus, from Gladiator,

"Oh, yes, and one more thing, dear Lord, about our enemies, ignore their heathen prayers and help us blow those little bastards straight to hell. Amen."

Lt. Colonel Hal Moore, We Were Soldiers

In a dried canal of Southern Iraq, Vladimir Plenkanov's small task force sucked a British task-force into a parallel ambush, in the hope of further locking Camp William Eaton in vacuo of all possible assistance from coalition allies. The hero and the Snake lay at opposing end of the road, Claymore clackers in one hand, AK rifles in the other, both prone as Zemya's name-sake.

The problem with British rapid-reaction forces in Iraq is that they refuse to move without Challenger tanks leading the way. With the United States really pressed for allies, the CentCom Chief just has to deal with this temperament, even though the tanks slow down British reactions. All this suited Mikhail just fine. He'd run track against the sluggish Brits, while the MIGs burned the Yanks.

Rifle broke up his shape perfectly, slipping the upper body of his sandy Ghillie suit neatly

into the broken crest of the canal, and letting his legs hang over the lip. He wrapped his Abakan in a desert shawl mottled with grease and dried brush. He clutched the safety in the trigger guard, set to fire, and turned the rear diopter for extreme distance shooting.

Scimitar and Gospel huddled below him, prepared to follow orders. Ruzhyo didn't feel like talking to them, which didn't surprise anyone. At the rendezvous, the smashed-up little hogan in the wilderness, he'd washed up his body and gear in an aluminum tub while Strelok entertained the men with his new favorite movie, Enemy At The Gates, on a portable DVD player, a frivolous addition to the operation budget.

Peter had enjoyed the cut scene at the docks, where Zeitsev talked to the political officer about just why his shooting was so accurate. It had been because being such poor rezidents of kolkhoz (farms) that they'd been, they'd needed the pelts of the wolves they shot intact, and one bullet through a pelt would ruin their value. That left the poor boy's grandfather only one solution; shoot the wolves through the eyes. He'd learned how, and taught his grandson.

Peter had to watch that thrice, and certain chapters in the tank factory a second time, while Grigory the Snake played the movie's one sex scene on a certain AB length a dozen times.

"Zemya, how shamelessly nekulturny an officer you've become, ogling at two English actors boffing under sheets, rather than studying Vassili and Konig practice brilliant fieldcraft. This movie, it is Tom Clancy stuff, no?"

Strelok distractedly corrected him. "No, surprisingly, others in the West are gaining an understanding of us. A Frenchman named Annaud wrote and directed the film, a reason I'm watching the French audio."

"The other reason," Ruzhyo surmised, "is that French has become your language of sniping since reading and watching Chacal (Jackal)"

"Qui, Comrade Rifle. That novel set a standard met by others, but not quite surpassed, to my mind."

Another reason, a secret reason, The Rifle knew, was that Strelock needed the fluency in French if or when these operations against American interests put him on a worldwide terrorist watch list. Since Panama, Americans seemed crazy enough to invade nations just to capture individuals that crossed them, to the point of labeling them with first names. Names like Abu, Pablo, Manuel, Saddam, Osama, and Slobadon. Of these, Abu (Nidal) died in Iraqi custody circa 2002 for reasons unknown. Perhaps the ground war had begun earlier than the public thought it did. Pablo (Escobar) was officially gunned down by Columbian police, but maybe not. Manuel (Noriega) is in Leavenworth Prison. Saddam (Hussein) is in a "secret" prison, and Slobadon (Milosivic) is in the custody of the United Nations. Only UBL has avoided death or capture, but the search is seemingly infinite, and Strelock doesn't wish to become "Peter" to American authorities. With such a track record since 1989, Mikhail wondered how any American could consider his government soft on crime. They're nuts! We should let them prowl Russia, then they'll see what "soft on crime" really means! They'd have to take Putin away... and collar those even higher!

I can understand your willingness to drop into the French Foreign Legion, friend, but not even they may be capable of protecting you.

Ruzhyo escaped from his reverie seconds before the lead tank passed the Hero and the Snake. Both remained disciplined enough to refrain from triggering too fast. Sadly, the Brits had buttoned up tightly, thieving Peter the Shooter an occasion to snipe a crew member. No matter, Ruzhyo let his AN-94 rest, opting for Tesla's HERF gun, which still had enough charge. A Challenger dragged a stiff hide, but not a hide specifically designed

to block electronic energy, and Mikhail the Rifle knew just where to shoot, through the tiny view port where the driver set.

Mikhail didn't see the electric energy, and the driver certainly didn't perceive until maybe when it passed through his eyes. Maybe it stimulated spontaneous responses in that electro-chemical processor the human brain, setting off wild discharges that made his hands quiver, weakening his command of the yoke that steered the vehicle. Ruzhyo looked for signs of erratic swerving, but the vehicle only slowed down. Stopped. The High-Electric-Radio-Frequency beam must have raced beyond the positronic signals between the driver's ears into the piston diesel engine, killing all electric activity. The Challenger 2 has died.

He snapped to the Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle, almost prayed the HERF's "battery" had the charge to pierce the hull, fired low by the bottom tread, a hopeful thin spot in the Armour. It stopped. Ruzhyo read the battery indicator. The gun was truly dead. Tossing it aside, he clicked his radio once, causing enough squelch to signal Zemya and Giroj that they were to hit the next car.

Three pulled on the clackers, and the Chicom Claymores pummeled forth some 5000 ball bearings at opposing ends of the roadside, angled so Snake and Hero aren't aiming at one another. They managed to catch two armoured UK Range Rovers in the crossfire, making colanders of both cars.

A Challenger immobile on one side, and two Range Rovers demolished on the other, several unarmored SUVs lay trapped in the middle. All six ambushers plinked the windows, spewing fragile shrapnel into cloth and skin, instantly causing the superficial wounds they plan to compound later. Four doors opened on each vehicle, a dismounted war-fighter behind each. Their SA-80s held over the lip of each door.

"Guys," the Chechen radioed, "grenade them." Though preplanned, someone may have forgotten. Ruzhyo almost heard the clicks of switches as every underbarrel launcher came on-line. They did as rehearsed, thudding contact-fused GP-30 bombs off thin doors, immolating the British.

"All of a sudden, the American Revolution doesn't seem such a big deal," opined the Hero.

"Cut the chatter. Dismounted infantry is coming in a skirmish line. Stay low and pin them."

The Rifle pocketed his radio, clutched his Abakan in the right hand, and slid into the canal. The soldiers were several hundred yards to the right, and he needed to move directly parallel to them. Another rescue dispatch was on the way, so he had no time to lose. He slapped Gospel and Scimitar across their shoulders.

"You," he screamed at Gospel, "down the trench! Run, count to ten, then check for Brits! Leap-frog your way there," he pointed, "where we'll flank. Move!" He sprinted fully, as they alternately followed.

In the mix, Grigory Zemya and Job Giroj alternately pumped 60-round AK clips and GP-30 rifle grenades from prone positions, briefly thankful to have the immediate advantage of defense in a small-arms exchange. Tracers shot out from their AKs with every trigger pull, lancing red frozen ropes at the British. Job quickly depleted his 60-tracer magazine, Grigory followed a beat slower, both aimed hurriedly, frightening the beBuddha out of the lunging and wilting UK advance.

They simultaneously lobbed illuminating Willy Pete "see shells" from their underbarrel mounts, blinding them well enough for Giroj to bolt in their fire-and-maneuver. The Snake fanned half his mag at full automatic, putting the Britons in a fearful crouch, then slapping to semiauto and leveling for judicious shots.

Before running dry, he heard the Hero belt an underbelly and rifle grenade at the Anglo mass, chunk a hand frag, and duck under the slow reaction of a harassed unit.

Zemya sniffed, noting the only burned propellant in his nostrils was Russian. On that chipper noted, he grinned while sticking the reserve Claymore at his fore, and triple-pulling the clacker.

Whoosh!

At sixty degrees, five-thousand steel balls arced over a wide footprint, leaving an impression filled with exposed infantry. The Russian whooped, pumping one fist as Mikhail the Rifle nose-dived into the bleeding group. Mission accomplished, the Snake oscillated his head on several axis, found Strelock crashing a barrier between the Snake and the Britons with the L21 Rarden cannon of a marooned Warrior vehicle.

As the Shooter's eyes met the Snakes, he motioned him to slither to the armor. The prostrate snake did so, allowing Peter to rake the wake of the snake as cover.

"Come on!"

He found his footing and stride, not looking back. Ricochets 'saulted off the APC, on the tread, in the sand. They aimed for the key gunner, the lone machine-gunner, as they always did.

They're still fighting, he marveled, steering behind the hulk. He scouted for Gospel and Scimitar. They were redeploying from their tandem efficacious flank assault with Mikhail.

Job the Hero withdrew when the boys reached their leap's end to cover him. Mikhail lay cloistered, Grigory knew not exactly where.

Peter Strelock plunged from the machine gun and shouldered his Dragunov rifle, pounding the APC with his left hand.

"Fall back, the assault's over!" He repeated the call until Zemya sprinted in the canal. The remaining five of their band followed.


Author's note: watch for the footnotes!

He was a Chechen sodden of concocted blood, decked in a forged uniform, contorted in the ways of war dead, the agent trained in the ways of wet operations by the Spetznez, appeared just as all the fallen British infantry did, down to the service patches. he cradled an SA-80, forsaking his Abakan(1) to a different patch of dying Britons. He cried out in the tone of an Englishman. His pleas for a medic had him dragged to the rear, hauled to a Land Rover marked with the red cross.

The field crew wrestled him to the table inside, where they cut open his fabrication. The battle dress open, the medic began stanching the blood flow. A private slammed the rear door shut, and Ruzhyo(2) felt the vehicle move.

"Stay calm, bloke, and thank the maker those turds didn't frag your arse," soothed the field medic, as he swathed a cotton patch where Ruzhyo's Fairburn(3) knife had slit his forehead.

"That dribbles into the bloody eyes, giving chaps the fright, and it looks bad, too, from the outside. You'll be a plum shortly. There."

Vision cleared, Ruzhyo tilted his head, found the orderly, the driver, and an armed escort.

They hadn't found his piece, concealed at the small of his back. He had no wounds there, nor did he complain of any in that region, so they'd overlooked it. It cost them.

The doc leaned toward his med kit, reaching for additional bandages. The orderly rocked both his hands behind his back, and the men in the front seat gazed on at the surrounding world. They didn't notice their patient slide one hand under his back, unsafe a tiny .25 Strayer Voigt Infinity(4), he turned it under his body, and they didn't see the spot emitting from the pen light taped underneath. It crawled up the nape of the doc's neck, sighting for the shooter.

Firing from behind his back, Ruzhyo suffused a .25 duo at spine and hind brain, killing the medic. Internal pistons silenced the rounds, making no sound to jolt the orderly before the light bathed his crotch and throat. The armed escort turned, unable to retract his sub gun from the window before his temple imploded, and his eye contracted behind a bullet.

The driver's hand, conforming around a Browning pistol winced as the Chechen's boot crushed his carpel bones, and gasped when the Strayer's muzzle brushed his temple.

Headbutt.

It came too late.

Mikhail triggered on the Brit's cheekbone, dispatching him a second slower, louder, uglier. Angered, the assassin roughly manhandled him to the operating table, hearing the resonance of a biological snap as he twisted the body.

He grunted, fought for the vehicle's wheel, careful not to sharply bank it. Half seated, Ruzhyo drove his foot to the gas. Another party drove in. He swerved back to his lane, mindful his automobile was British, and not the American Ford Explorer he'd driven in Maryland, with the driver on the wrong side.

Crud, I'm shirtless. The rear-echelon convoy didn't notice, it seemed, for the Chechen didn't notice a deviation in the convoy's route.

Although he deemed alertness a pivotal asset, he mulled over the last engagement...

Tunnel vision shuts out the periphery, and a firefight sucks one's eyes into tunnel vision. Such is the tenuous hope of a Spetznez officer when infiltrating the enemy. In defense, you have to keep your eyes wide open, not easy when staring at death whiz at you in excess of 500 feet per second 800 rounds per second. Think of playground balls. The toughest kids, little leaguers, they bolt out four-seam fastballs matching the velocity of traffic in open areas. Say one aims at your head. You're ducking, flinching, or your head may become fractured.

Maybe you're more athletically gifted than that, maybe you actually comprehend what your coach is saying as he demands for your eyes to follow the ball. You can focus on the task, and three at-bats out of ten, you get a hit. You can hit a fist-sized ball traveling as fast as a car, as long as the pitcher keeps it between your knees and shoulders, and within reach of your bat. But you lose sense of most everything else, focusing on smacking an incoming projectile into a large field of grass.

Now imagine that ball is reduced to the aperture of a hole punched in paper by your little finger. That hole measures about five point five six millimetres. It isn't a nylon core wrapped in yarn and covered in stitched cowhide anymore, it has... eh... a tungsten carbide core- that's a metal with twice the density of led. The projectile is no longer powered by the contractions on a boy's muscles, but the exothermal reaction of saltpetre

sulfur, and charcoal, or a more modern mix.

You ducked and flinched at the toy thrown by a kid before. Now you're expected to confront this! And it isn't just one. Your CO thought there were a minimum of twenty people aiming these at you, and expected you- bloody grunt!- to advance against this. And you do, although henpecked by kids throwing toys at you, you brave bullets when your CO mandates that your pals are behind those shooters, distressed, praying for your rescue.

So, amazingly, you perform the stupidest feat performed by generations, you stare down death, and march toward it, you dimwitted teat-sucking git! Yeah, your eyes are open, but it's above-and-beyond to keep them wide open. Besides, you can't be the superhero in the lot, surely someone better than you, older than you, is keeping his eye on the bigger picture.

News flash, your EL-TEE, the old man, only differs from you by a few years, if at all. He wasn't in Desert Storm, and he may have never served in Kosovo. So he's barely different from you, when the cordite wafts the air. Maybe Sarge has his eyes wide, he's a lifer! Sarge is a reservist who flipped burgers for a few pounds each day at a greasy joint before rotating in a month ago. Besides, he's babysitting you, or pleading for CAS from your estranged winged brethren.

No one is watching the fringes.

Ruzhyo peddled clear of the canal, did a once-over at Gospel and Scimitar. They're a few steps behind. No one's watching, but he crouches uncomfortably, finds subtle

eccentricities in the terrain, masking behind them. You don't have a human shape, Ruzhyo; the ghillie(5) suit still flutters on your back, so only your movement truly stands out.

One hundred metres to go, you attempt sighting with the rifle. Your running has a rhythm, one you've learned to shoot from before. It's not so different from horseback archery, and at this range, you have to silence the spotters and pounce the pile, fast.

Full auto, both feet planted widely, you, a man accustomed to capping the iris in combat, have to plink six foot bodies with automatic bursts. With an avtomat(6).

You, Mikhail Ruzhyo, you fully exploit the 1800 RPM rate in short bursts. Shortly it devolves to point-and-click combat range, below 25 meters, and by reflex, you shut all their eyes, and nose-dive from view in a chicken-scratch of a foxhole, soaked garnet, scented copper. Your rifle flails on a divergent path, bayonet protruding forward, along with a grenade you loosed.

You're just another one of the wounded now, Mikhail Ruzhyo. You can dispense with the

nom de guerre(7) now. And remember to cut your forehead with that grenade pin before the medic shows. You can still fail by neglecting to polish your acting skills. People are still talking about The Phantom Menace, you know.


Footnotes!

(1) Abakan is a small Russian village where the AN-94 assault rifle won trials to replace the AK-74.

(2) His name means "rifle" in Russian. He's a character from Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik's Net force.

(3)The Fairburn Knife was invented by the co-founder of the Gates-Fairburn style of martial arts now practiced by the Shanghai police.

(4)This sort of pistol can be ordered with a custom layout. Faye Valentine carried such a gun in the Cowboy Bebop movie.

(5) A ghillie suit is basically a bunch of rags worn by snipers. The intent is to break up the shape of a human being.

(6)"Automatic" in Russian

(7) "Name of War" in French, but you probably knew that.


Caucasus Mountains

"A man makes a picture A moving picture Through the light projected He can see himself up close A man captures colour A man likes to stare He turns his money into light to look for her" U2, Lemon

He'd indulged in a luxurious Czarist-era Pullman carriage on his way to the Elbrus Mountain area, riding in seat number 26. He arrived from the depot in Mineralnie Vody, admiring not only the Russian Federation's rich farmland, but the Pullman's opulence, even down to the ceramic drink coaster manufactured in Coolridge, Tennessee. He tumbled his wine flute, felt the faceted sconces on the long stem, took in the odors of his hard pink lemonade.

Vladamir Plenkanov had grown up under a harsh Russia, where fruit scented or flavoured delectables such as this were uncommon, and not just the genuine citrus juices. Even the mendacious molecules New Jersey alchemists transmute into natural flavours were want. If the vodka came with flavouring, it was usually that of flamed pine, or some other lumber of the Siberian arbor.

He still returned to his mother drinks on occasion, but still he ordered fruity things like wine coolers when in the company of Westerners, who wouldn't find it queer. Sonja was accustomed to his peculiarities. She'd served as his aid/secretary/bodyguard since leaving the KGB Ceremonial Guards. In her forties, the crow's feet searing around her eyes granted her a severe glare when necessary. She'd known strangeness in her day, babysitting rocks stars during the opening curtain for Glostnost. She'd often been left to tend their odd shopping lists. A Mister Bon Jovi had wanted a uniform like hers, a Dave Evans had insisted she find one of the Russian electric guitars with the seventh bass string. Then there were the ones that needed prescriptions filled out...

Far off, some 150 KM south of here, The trappings of civilization are being dismantled with tools ferreted from many points of the Federation. Most are man-portable, some are only moved by vehicle, but all lesson the leverage Putin has on the region of Plenkanov's immediate interest; the Stans, as Amerikansky pundits call them.

Plenkanov allowed his mind to walk into the war room while tuning in to Handel's Water Music emanating from his iPod ear buds.

Inside his head was Father Matteo Ricci of the Jesuit order. Father Ricci, an ancestor of Thomas Ricci, had introduced the Method of Loci in China in 1853. To Plenkanov, linking the man that introduced China to the art of memory to a top lieutenant of Roger Gordian all too convenient.

The elder Ricci led him around, bonding his spacial memory to various concepts, until the loci of a battle plan came together. Ricci opened the doors of a cathedral Plenkanov remembered from when he was a kid. Each feature of the worship house linked to reams of facts the Russian had pursued rote memorization of. The physical reality wasn't enough. Ricci keyed open doors beyond the three dimensional physical reality of the cathedral, entering the virtually created wing, greatly expanding the breadth of Vladimir Plenkanov's memory palace.

Inside were strange mosaics. Ricci and Plenkanov identified them as mahjong tiles. Each image triggered memories of different texts.

Vladimir almost thanked the figment monk before leaving Winston Churchill's "empire of the mind."


Camp William Eaton

"They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards."

-Creighton Abram, during the battle of Bastogne, 1944.

He didn't super-elevate the Strela SA-7 missile, not bothering with the IFF button on the left. With one thumb, he reached behind the grip, switching a lever that granted power to the gyro, flushed coolant into the infrared seeker head, and juiced the gas cylinder. He

thumbed the shutter open, anticipated a kick from the nitrogen gas. He aimed squarely at the exhaust port nearest Camp William Eaton's power plant. The plant being a gas-cooled fission reactor of South African design, according to Geiger readouts, was an enticing source of catastrophic fallout. He triggered low. The cool propellant couldn't keep it aloft, and the missile thudded and skipped atop the sand fifty feet ahead, risking malfunction. But it homed, extending the warhead in the port before detonation, spewing aluminum shards both outward and inward. While the concrete suffered only superficial scars, the aluminum grate and tubing were clear.

Terrance Arthur Peel tapped his runner, the track-suited Nairobi sprinter with the stick grenade for a baton. His peddling motored on. Behind, a wide row of mortars showered thick plumes of chaff confetti, shrouding the Phalanx gatling cannons, while a wide line of Sagger anti-tank missiles volleyed against them. Some lines snagged in sprinkling debris, some shooters lost sight of their projectiles in the fog of tinsel, crashing them on no target, and some still flew in the path of intercepting cannon fire. But enough expired the turrets. The most lethal guns, the naval cannons capable of 2-miles ranges, deadened conclusively after the second enfilade.

The lone runner, moving in Olympian time, avoided volatile intercept long enough to lurch his grenade down the coolant throat before a base gunner palate burst a crimson trio through his chest. The redundant runner, unheeding, forced his satchel charge in before facing the same fate. The diversion gave one of TAP's 57mm recoilless riflemen enough breathing room to remove the pallet from play.

It was then that Peel was satisfied a general charge could succeed.


Inside

Headache flashed at Roger Gordian's left temple after seeing the deft exploits of the invaders. Field guns softened them up from a humongous standoff range, the enemy's barrage had been precise, they'd sneaked an infantry force through the desert, and they'd cleared all obstacles with the skill of superb sappers and basic artillery shells.

The ex-marine, Paul Evens, somehow noticed the wiry contact fuses before the skilled analysts.

"No one else remember those being used to snag barbed wire in the First World War?" He'd asked, shrugging carelessly when all stared. Evens, who'd been his own boss re-possessing items for creditors, seemed unable to read anyone's facial expression, yet had noticed wires emanating from shells pelting the perimeter. He'd found the base mole by connecting a flash on a monitor with a radio noise. This strange Semper Fi savant had thoughtfully burned a data disk of the software for the Phalanx guns, and asked Gordian for permission to load it into the C-RAM gun they had in storage.

A percussion inside the structure! Duck!

Evens kept the pleading look on his face, not deterred from the subject.

"Yes, yes! Get moving! We're under attack!"

The marine knew his way through chaos. He trained out the klaxon and lights, seeing clarity. The explosion had come from the vent by the reactor, so it didn't concern him. The pallet holding the C-RAM, short for Counter-Rocket-Artillery-Mortar-system, was on a separate path.


Outside

The dogs of Peel's force, an exiled band of Irish Republican Army terrorists, worked under him near the top (so they thought) of the mercenary totem.

Dave Hewson, gunman, an old motorcycle-borne assassin from the days before they'd killed that royal, Mountbatten, when he was a teenager. They'd killed a lot of British soldiers before that, but nobody cared about anyone but the royal, except Peel.

Hewson cradled the symbol of revolutionary movements, the AK-47M, on a leather strap, concealed his medallion under his tan forléine.

"Ullmhaigh (ready)!" He yelled, them commenced the count to three. "Aon, dó, trí!1"


1 "aon" sounds like "en"dó" sounds like "doe"
trí" sounds like "tree"


Inside

"We got our first bonzai charge," a tech dryly commented, "I had to key our inner perimeter Claymores on the easter wall."

Roger strolled over, resting one hand on the tech's chair.

"The proper move. Ignite the fire trench."

Already, he thought, we're down to a canal of burning petroleum between them and our wall being breached. Where is the good news?

The visionary entrepreneur was far removed from his typical quixotic mood when Ricci and Nimec returned from the sickbay in fresh unbloodied desert tees.

"The tank turrets, they need-" Rog preempted the conclusion.

"I know. The turrets need reinforcing, but the sentry guns are gone, artillery is ceaseless, and we're being overrun."

"Boss-"

"I won't calm down-"

"Where's Evens!"

Roger's demeanor softened. Nimec was going to lead a counterattack!

"With the fire trench burning, we can reset the roborifles," Ricci declared, nodding at Nimec.

"Right. This sudden cession puts them into transition; they're either storming us or setting a line of contravallation."

Nimec snap-turned upon hearing Paul's location, stopped, pulled by Gord's voice.

"Hold on, how's, uh, what's his name?"

"Jamal," Peter frowned, "he's going to make it," sotto voce: "if the rest of us hold on."


Various Locations, in chronological order

Ethernet 0/113 moved i/o daily under the remote command of Vladimir Plenkanov through his manipulations of the binary digit. It truly is amazing what one can do merely by reversing binary values. But what's more amazing is how much can be missed by an administrator watching the events from a higher language, like C.

Plenkanov's autonomous program eventually managed to reverse polarity of the Al Mabaheth's auditing settings, from logging failed attempts, to logging successes. In a higher language, say C, the change requires one word. Change "Failure" into "Success," but peering into assembly, you'll see the change is more elegant. One digit becomes another, and detecting this isn't easy.

As it happened, no one in Al Mabaheth security forces had their eyes on the Microsoft 2000 event viewer as these changes happened. The changes occurred during morning prayer. Vladimir covered his tracks by shrinking the maximum log size from 512kb to 64, and set old events to be overwritten by new ones.

Routine events he scheduled played out, quickly overwriting what he'd done. To a viewer, it would look like a normal user had been fooling around writing bad poetry.

What an observer wouldn't see would be motion detections from customs sensors overlooking Al Rub al Khali.


Southern Iraq, several miles west of Highway 7

Vladimir's left hook. None of the vehicles in his convoy were detected, not the Fahd 240 APCs, not the Fahd 30s, not the Jeeps, and not the hired army driving them. His old scheme of covertly funding development in the all but dead Arab Organization for Industrialization should at last return dividends.

The Fahd vehicle was one of the latest, but possibly not the last, German-Egyptian collaboration on a weapon meant for destroying the state to the east, Peter Strelock guessed. He scoped the boxy shape throw a thick sandy wake, imagined the Mercedes Benz flaunt with a Teutonic roar.

The vehicle had the heart of a Panzer, a Germanic heart crafted to slaughter the Jewish homeland. But that wasn't to be. The Egyptians sued for peace, nearly dissolving the Arab organization, the ARI. If not for funds meant to pay this very operation, the manufacturing project may have stagnated with the peace accords and the end of the Cold War.

"Those are our rides," he announced to the group, "take good care of those vehicles. The cheaper model costs around fifty K US each, with the turreted ones costing some ten times more."

Compared to a Bradly or Stryker, a bargain, really, but Plenkanov was but an arms dealer,

though a highly successful Russian oligarch.


The Elbrus Mountain Area

"A man melts the sand so he can see the world outside..." Vladimir Plenkanov idly sang along with his iPod as he checked RSS news feeds from around the world. The LA Times was still singing the script he fed them about that Paul Evens, and the Washington Post had a blurb about the helicopter sent to retrieve him... a few minutes before it took off. Good. When my guys shoot it down, the Pentagon will blame the press.Resulting in counterclaims the US government is trying to muffle free speech, and so on, until everyone's so busy looking for dirt on the domestic opposition, the actual foreign leak slips away. BCC files a report that the British are under heavy attack. No word yet on casualties. An Italian paper, Il Mundo or something, filed a bizarre opinion column about the Camp Bucca battle. Through convoluted junk science, they pin the blame behind the parking lot explosions on light reflected from the spa. And swamp gas caused the Chernobyl meltdown. Right."The capitalist decadence of the Camp Bucca spa... blah blah blah..." He promptly removed that oddball journal from his news aggregation list, and immersed his mind on heavier things.


San Jose, California

"Wave function collapsed," muttered the network security administrator, "someone's coming through." It had been a rough couple of days for the computer geeks, more than 48 deprived of the latest Dragon Ball Z episodes. Majin Buu's dog had been shot by some thugs, and the guys had been anxious to see the conclusion when Miss Breen put them all to work around the clock.

"Crud, I'm locked out." He could reach the administration panel.

"What major fragger did that?" The phone should work, surely.

"Tom, what mamma jamma locked me out of the admin root?"

Cheetos (puff), crackled on the line.

"Loser says what."

"What?"

"Gotcha!"

"Hey!"
The Cheeto-stained teeth cackled.

"I can't find any administrative functions locking you out, Boss. Are you on the right page?"

"Monster finger! You know I'm on the right page! Its the home on my browser! Uh, Tom, what have you been eating under there?"

"Under where?"

"You've been eating underwear, that's gross, Tom."

"(Sigh) You got me. I found the problem in the page source. A little JAVA script on the top. Are you receiving my PM (private message)?"

The administer read the text body:

Limit GET HEAD POST
order allow,deny
deny from 55.555.55.666
allow from all
/LIMIT

"Can you erase it, Tom?" A snack food bag rattled.

"I don't have the admin password."
Silence

"I'm walking over, Tom."

tracert IP address-d

"What just happened?"

Crunch, crunch, snap.

"Uh, he found me."

Limit GET HEAD POST
order allow,deny
deny from 55.555.55.661
allow from all
/LIMIT

The Administrator slapped Tom's keyboard.

"I'm locked out here, too! What's going on?"

"He got us. He's doing a port scan!"

The big red phone rang.

"Breen, how do we explain this?"

Wearily, he picked up.

Tom imagined a grownup's voice from the Peanuts cartoon on the other end.

"I figured you'd lost access. No, it isn't Bill Gates' fault, Linus' kernal would face the same bug. The computers are OK, we... uh, funny story, he locked us out of the router."

Tom saw the sagging grimace of his boss's continence.

"He typed some Java script in. We can clear it-" His palm wrapped over the mouth piece.

"Tom! Unplug the router!"


The Elbrus Mountain Area

The routers are mapped, the OS detected, and the firewall is scanned. Now I'll do them a favor, thought the wily Russian, I'll secure their data for them.


San Jose

"Tom, I'm locked out."

"Dude, we aren't even physically on the network anymore. Of course you are."

"No, I'm, my hard disk is locked."

"What do you mean?"

"It's asking for a password."

"Dude, don't you know the way around? Try a boot disk."

"It isn't the OS password, it's the hard disk."

"Huh. I had my mouth full. Now I see your problem. I'm also locked out. None of my admission passwords work. It looks to be 32 bits long..."

"What's wrong!"

"These hard disk passwords are of the ATA Security Feature Set! They were made for notebook PCs back when we were still on Win 3.1. They were meant to secure data if you lost your laptop at the airport. A hacker could take them home and never crack...

"Oh God, there isn't a countermeasure ever conceived for this! We never thought of it! It just sounded like a swell idea for the paranoid, so before we knew it, the industry moved beyond adding them to portable PCs, and added them to practically every desktop hard disk. The Xbox has the feature! We're screwed!"


Southern Iraq

Gigantic truck tires made up the fence of the Umm Qasr British redoubt that Mikhail the Rifle drove his ambulance into. The tires made perfect containers for one of the natural resources of Iraq; sand. Stacked one upon another, with a packaging tarp binding them together, such a wall could possibly withstand bombardment from the RGP models walking to and fro in the low tech war on terror.

Two Royal Marines, embassy types, hmm, stood on guard with the normal SA-80s, and an L-21 amid sandbags. One stayed stationed at the gun, the other signaled the Land Rover with four fingers.

Ruzhyo displayed the answering six digits. Today's answer: ten. Ruzhyo successfully solved the equation. Thank you, Vladimir, for providing the cheat sheet.

The barrier came up, and the marine waved in the Spetznez. The driveway was a cobbled circle circuit. British paras stood ramrod erect on the ambulance entry. No car bomb barricade impeded his progress. On the curb he stopped, felt the gun. He had their attention.

"Tallyho, mates, I have me a litter in the boot of my lorry!" A Spetz assassin knew how to draw 'em in.

"Me mates have had it. Now are you goin' t' help me win Mister Blair's war or aren't ya?"

As Mikhail hopped out, the shouldered their firearms, granted the Chechen two solid second advantage.

He'd driven with the Strayer Voigt Infinity in condition one on the drive. Outside, with a round chambered, the pistol was cocked and not safetied. In fact, the trigger guard was gone. He'd never polished a feed ramp more than this one. Surely .25s wouldn't jam with so much wiggle room.

Deuce to the thorax, solo to head, one brute dead. After the head, deuce some more led, correct, pierce the head. That's another kill, following the Mozambique Drill.

The song verse loosened him, allowed the smooth motions to follow through. He fingered six subsonic .25 rounds in under two seconds, all internally silenced by pistons built inside. Spaced embedded tacks steadied the frame, the OKO red dot guided his eyes, and the shoulder-strapped rifles slowed the Brits.

Mozambique the bloody creep!
For he's been breathing far too long
and you must shut him down.
There's only one way to construe
the way he points that gun at you.
The time to act is now.

Six transuranic bullets impacted the thoracic cavities and cranio ocular cavity of their heads, transferring the most hammering force possible from subsonic rounds.

Tac load, panoramic scan, and he hauled the ambulance defibrillator to the door. A water hose lay outside. He turned the knob, spraying water. It slicked the concrete. He knew it conducted electricity, so he worked it beside the door. It seeped in. Against the wall, he scanned 180 degrees. Clear. He studied his beating heart, calmed it. Knees bent, he took calming breaths. Endorphins and chill sweat seeped in, almost like super tai chi. He felt circulating blood calm from redoubling, heat prickling around sub-dermal fat, poking at one knee.

The hair on his fingered felt almost ticklish with the paddles throbbing at 400 joules. His ears focused. He'd removed the silicon ear pieces after firing. Thump. He felt the infrasonic footballs of a booted patrol. A wet thump. The paddles chortled and clacked. They hummed and sizzled while shorting.

Inside, a dozen Anglo hearts ejected. They all splashed and thrashed. He smelled roasted meat, listened to shrieks. He dropped the ambulance's jumped cables, and sat through the deathly arias.

Although he listened, he settled into his next move, used the two UK rifles. He examined both chambers, witnessed the rounds. Satisfied, he took aim. The cross hairs met at the cranium of the L-21 gunner. Ruzhyo crab-walked parallel until both were in view, CRACK! Gluck gluck! Back of the shoulder, back of the ribs, through the neck. The other fell like a colander posing as a can of red paint.

Skip the tactical reload, pan for threats, and evac with the Land Rover. But first, he unstrapped the Sterling submachine gun from behind his back, and kicked open the emergency door, and swept the floor.


Author's Notes:

I didn't make up any of the electronic security vulnerabilities. They're all real, and they haven't been rectified by those that supposedly exist to provide for our safety. The cyber attacks detailed in this chapter are extremely conservative. I placed grave limits on Vladimir, in fact. All of his attacks were only allowed a few minutes of preparation time.

The Irish words are real, and the Mozambique Drill song lyrics put to verse were written by Jim Sorrentino, presumably. All the computer code in the story is real and belongs in the public domain. The Xbox really has the storage device I described.

The British tire fort is fiction.

The Strayer Voigt Infinity exists in theory; they do come in many customizable configurations, but aren't yet publicly offered in .25 caliber. Thank you, Cheah, for some contributing research on this.

If you are curious about news aggregators, I built one on my website. Instruction exist on my Livejournal. The entry is on May 12th, 2005.

Thanks for reading.