Part Eleven

"We had just come to the same conclusion," said Major Lee, once Vic and Spivak reached his office at the UN headquarters building. "Our drone team noted the activity there, and pegged it as the location for the prisoners and those holding them. Don't worry; we kept the drone very high.

"We also found people near the north shore of the island, but they only number about a dozen. Presumably, they are there to secure the exit for the mercenaries. There are small boats hidden in the underbrush nearby."

"So we need to go scout."

"Yes. Meanwhile, I'll make ready to follow-up on what you find.

* * *

Vic and Lieutenant Spivak were now riding bicycles. Vic was on her own, specially-equipped two-wheeler; the Lieutenant was on a bike from a pool maintained by the UN forces. These were both trail bikes, designed more for mobility on mixed terrain than speed or efficiency. They were also quiet. That combination of features meant the pair of searchers could approach the ridge covertly, coming in through the young woods. Walking their bikes for the last part of the trip.

"Watch for watchers," said Spivak, voice low, barely more than a whisper, as they dismounted. "If the kidnappers are in the old servants' and overseers' quarters they probably have lookout posts on all approaches. They wouldn't use electronics for keeping watch; too easy to detect."

"Yeah," said Vic, also quietly.

The pair moved into a position behind some wild-grown bushes with a good view of the ridge. There they stopped, crouched and holding still, using their hands for extra support on the steep slope, almost on all fours. Vic had hastily spay-painted her normally white armor in a two-tone camouflage pattern before this trip. Unfortunately, due to the haste with which the paint job had been done, some of the borders of the areas she had taped off - such as the visor, sensors and vents - were left with white rims. Hopefully, those wouldn't make a difference. That the still-tacky paint was holding leaves and other bits of plant growth helped with the camouflage. She looked around for a moment, working the controls of her helmet, then froze.

"I assume the UN doesn't have a reason to put sentries out here," she said, quietly.

"You're already seeing somebody up there?"

"Yeah. My helmet has passive multi-spectral scanning, including thermal IR."

Moving cautiously, Vic pointed them out. She had spotted three pairs of watchers, in concealed locations along the top of the ridge. They were close enough to each other to call for help, but far enough apart that they could cover the entire approach to the road cut through the ridge while being unlikely to all fall to the same sneak attack.

"We go around on the right," whispered Spivak, after examining the placement of the sentries through his binoculars. "Since the road is on the left."

The duo crawled slowly through the undergrowth, occasionally pausing to look and - more importantly - listen. They found no signs their progress had been noticed.

They finally reached a good viewpoint to spy on the barracks and the nearest part of the overseer's quarters. Lieutenant Spivak used his issue binoculars; Vic used her helmet.

"Lots of activity," said the Lieutenant, still quietly. "Can't really see any prisoners, but there's definitely people there who should not be."

"Let's get to Major Lee and tell him about this," said Vic.

"Slowly and cautiously. Remember, we need to be just as stealthy going out. Not only for our own sake, either."

Vic nodded. Despite her impatience and worry about Michelle, she understood that if the mercenaries knew their location had been discovered, that could be very bad for the hostages.

* * *

"We need to get a team to that location immediately!" said Lieutenant Spivak.

"You need to stay here and take charge while I lead the mission," said Lee, firmly. "You are in no shape to rescue anyone."

"I tried to tell him," said Vic, her tone almost plaintive. "He kept turning pale and having to rest on the bike ride back here."

"All right, all right," said Spivak, with a sickly grin. "As my Irish grandmother would say 'When the whole room tells you you're drunk, sit down.'"

Major Lee needed only a few minutes to finish organizing the forty troops he wanted. He had actually been working on his chosen assault team for hours. All he had to do now was send word. By messenger. Not letting the people involved know where they were going until they were underway. Ahead of time, they were only informed to load up for an assault. Vic insisted on being included.

"This won't be my first military operation," said the martial artist, when it appeared that Lee might object. "In fact, I led an action during the Shilmek War, in the battle at the Big Landing. Though that was mostly by default of being the last one standing willing to give orders."

"I remember," said Major Lee, nodding. "You led the rout."

"That was mostly Rocker. Though, yes, I was there and in the fight."

Which was Vic being modest.

* * *

"How did these people go this long without being spotted?" someone in the lead truck asked, once they were underway and Lee had explained the mission. The Major's chief aide was in the second truck, doing the same. They were all maintaining strict radio silence.

"They probably come and go at night," said Major Lee. "Which means they'll most likely wait until nightfall to try and escape. Not realizing we have a cordon of ships and aircraft with IR, night vision and radar waiting, just over the horizon in all directions."

"Which is why we have to hit them now," said Vic, riding beside him on the bench seat in the T.O.W.E.R. truck, her helmet in her lap. "Hopefully, they're on a night schedule, and a lot of them will either be asleep or feeling that they're off duty."

"That's my thinking," said Major Lee. He leaned in close to Vic and spoke quietly. "Though I have a lot more experience going against one or a few rogue supers than against troops like these mercenaries. Who have probably been in combat and may be former military."

"A word of advice, then," said Vic, just as covertly. "Send me and any personnel you have with stealth abilities - or training - in first, to scout. As just one example of why, we might be able to take out the sentries before they can raise the alarm."

That advice was partly to get Vic in the vanguard of the assault. So that she could get to Michelle sooner.

"That's the plan," said Major Lee, in a loud, firm tone.

Vic realized that he needed to be seen by the troops as not only competent, but confident. In charge of the situation. She nodded.

The two troop trucks stopped well short of the ridge, and everyone debarked. Major Lee gave them a final, brief explanation of their jobs. The main body formed into three groups and moved out, through the young woods, into their holding positions. One blind was on the left side of the cut; the other two on the right. Vic and a few others formed into three different and much smaller groups, and moved through the brush at the base of the the short rise. The teams who were charged with taking the lookout stations on the ends could approach indirectly, from along the ridge. Vic, however, was in the team assigned the more difficult middle station, which was the closest to the cut. Once all three teams were in position, this middle one had to go directly up the slope, parallel to the road, towards the concealed sentry post. Fortunately, this team also had three stealth experts. Vic followed their lead.

The operation went surprisingly smoothly. The members of Vic's group quietly and carefully moved into position. Vic was surprised at how close they were when the stealth experts silently signaled a halt. Then they waited.

At the distant toot of a truck horn, the three groups of scouts began their final advances from where each had waited in concealment near their assigned blind. The lookouts, fortunately, were complacent. They had noticed the horn, but it was far enough away that they discounted it. All three groups of attackers were able to get nearly to the blinds before being noticed. Then it was just a matter of rushing in before the alarm could be raised.

With the three lookout posts taken, the main force were given the all clear signal. The rest of the UN troops advanced on the ridge in their three groups.

"We have to move quickly, now," said Major Lee, after he and his group reached the center lookout position. "I notice they have a landline phone installed here, and presumably at both the other two blinds. No telling what their contact schedule is."

Still quietly, but now much more quickly, the three stealth teams moved down the far side of the ridge and towards the relatively flat area containing the barracks and overseer quarters. Followed at a reasonable interval by the three groups of troops.

* * *

Meanwhile, Michelle found herself one of the few healthy people tending a barracks full of sick T.O.W.E.R. and general UN personnel. She had a few people - some whom had not been sick and others who were already recovering - to help, but Michelle somehow wound up in charge. As well as doing much of the work. She was exhausted, and worried about multiple things. Michelle was not the only one so beleaguered among the hostages, either.

"This can't go on much longer," said Corporal Boleslaw Sławków, one of the UN personnel assisting Michelle. "Even though those still sick seem to be getting better. They'll soon have to either let us go, just leave us here, or use us as hostages to get off the island."

"I haven't been able to learn much about our captors," said Michelle, as the two of them worked to change the soiled sheets on a bunk. "What little I have learned is worrying. They seem to be part of or affiliated with the 'You're Arrested' people."

Michelle said this in a quiet, confidential tone. While it was unlikely that their captors had the place bugged, that was still possible. Michelle was certain that they didn't know about what she had overheard, or what she had been able to piece together from that. The only reason she mentioned this, now, was that Michelle wasn't certain she would survive what was coming, and she was certain she wanted someone else to have the information.

"The which?" said Sławków, also quietly, and obviously confused.

"A group which blames supers for all the world's ills, and is trying to get rid of them."

"Well, there are a few supers among the T.O.W.E.R. troops, but even they work to reign in rogue supers. Why would these people target us?"

"I didn't say they were sane," said Michelle, sourly. "I was also able to learn that they're looking for something on the island. Not sure what."

* * *

Meanwhile, the mercenaries who had taken the hostages had far more to worry about than keeping tabs on their prisoners. They had started this job short-handed, been forced to improvise, then found that the actions they had taken which were intended to reduce interference from the UN personnel on the island had been much less effective than hoped. Indeed, given the latest reports from their few remaining people on the inside, it seemed only a matter of time - and not much of it - before their position came under attack. Worse, they were also finding themselves in conflict with another - and unanticipated - group.

"Are the drug smugglers still giving us trouble?" said the leader of the mercenaries.

"Yes, sir," said one of his aides. "Even though they realize we aren't with the UN troops. We stumbled on their camp, and now they're worried we'll tell the UN. I tried to tell them that we're not supposed to be here, either, but that seemed to just make them more agitated. I think they now see us as rivals for a deal of some sort they're trying to pull off. Only the people they're supposed to meet are running late. So they're getting really agitated."

"Or maybe they're after the same thing we are," said the leader, worried. "Double the number of men we have to the north."

"Yes, sir!"

* * *

The two low-ranking T.O.W.E.R. soldiers met covertly, in a secluded spot in the heavy brush which had grown up around the overseers' quarters. They hadn't been noticed, despite the high state of alert among the mercenaries. Sneaking off to plot was something they were good at.

"I don't like this," said Piotr Wilniewczyc. "These guys are competent, but there just aren't enough of them. With the Major breathing down their necks from one direction and the smugglers from another, they should cut and run."

"That's the problem with mercs," said Orson Brown, his partner in crime. "They figure that since they're getting paid to get certain results, they better get those results."

"Now we're caught in the middle. It seemed like such a good idea, too! Selling info to multiple groups. Who knew it would backfire on us?!"

The two were part of a group which had been selling information about UN operations for months, to multiple clients. None of it was actually classified; it was just things like patrol schedules and item inventories. All innocent stuff! Most of the information had been delivered in person, sometimes on the mainland but usually in a covert, night meeting on an isolated beach of the island. Now, two of those clients had people on the island at the same time, looking for who knew what! With one of the groups insisting that the locals supplying them with information stay after meeting them and guiding them here. Promising to get them to the mainland after they were finished. Even though the informers weren't ready to leave, yet!

Worse, the drug smugglers seemed to have the idea that Wilniewczyc and Brown had betrayed them. Their small set of informers had already lost Moses Adamshock. The mercenaries had insisted that the informers negotiate with the smugglers, since they were known to them. Moses had been captured by the smugglers during an attempt to negotiate with them and had likely had already been killed. If he was lucky.

"We were counting on the mercs to get us to the mainland," said Brown, sourly, "only now it looks like they can't even get themselves off this lump of rock and dirt!"

They discussed their options. Including turning themselves in to UN brass and negotiating for a reduction in charges by revealing who else had been selling information. Planning to put as much of the blame on others as they could manage. They decided that was too risky.

"We have to find our own way off the island," said Brown, finally. "We have money and valuable items stashed on the mainland. We can use that to start new lives."

"If we can get to it," said Wilniewczyc, sourly.

The two men agreed to meet again later, then separated. Each privately planning to go their own way, even if that involved betraying the other. However, as he started towards his quarters in the overseers' huts, Brown spotted somebody who wasn't supposed to be there. That guest martial arts instructor, Vic! In that fancy armor of hers! He didn't know why she was there, alone, but suddenly felt an overwhelming anger at her. To his current state of mind, everything which had gone wrong had started with her arrival. Therefore, his problems were all her fault!

Brown moved carefully to ambush Vic.