Chapter 32 Dave
DAVE
The operation began at twenty-three hundred hours.
It was past curfew, so only patrols and commanders were allowed on the streets, and seeing a group of eight soldiers would have drawn immediate attention.
They were dressed in the standard Brotherhood uniforms, so as long as they didn't march as one unified group of eight, most would not recognize them as the enhanced.
Their individual features were not all that distinctive, and with over ten thousand warriors on the island, no one remembered what everyone else looked like.
Patrols were usually conducted in twos or threes, so the Eight divided themselves into pairs. Number One and Number Three approached the security command center from the north, while Number Five and Number Seven circled around from the service alley. The rest remained close but out of sight.
The hive mind worked best when they were close to each other.
The connection was maintained regardless of physical distance, but it didn't work as smoothly when they were separated, and the sensation was uncomfortable.
Each pair had to process its environment independently while maintaining coherence with the whole, and the cognitive load increased with distance.
They had trained for divided operations, so it was manageable, but they did their best to minimize the effect of separation by keeping the distance between each other short.
The security command center occupied the ground floor of a concrete building that was somewhere between Navuh's mansion and the hotel. There were other buildings in between, but not many.
It was unremarkable from the outside, which was deliberate.
Navuh had designed the island's surveillance infrastructure to be invisible to the casual observer, because the command center was right inside the resort that housed all the important guests they lured to the island with promises of sexual experiences that were hard to get anywhere else.
Those fools flocked to the island, not realizing that they were compromising themselves and that their activity would be recorded and used to extort them for the rest of their lives.
Or maybe they realized that, or at least suspected it, but believed that they were too big and important to let any scandal surface.
It was also possible that the pull of fulfilling their wildest fantasies was so strong that they threw caution to the wind.
Two guards stood at the entrance, looking bored out of their skulls at this hour. The collective read their surface thoughts easily. One was thinking about a woman in the brothel. The other was thinking about how much longer until his shift ended.
Neither of them saw Number One and Number Three approach.
The thrall was applied simultaneously, both guards receiving the same suggestion at the same instant. Turn around, look at the wall, don't move until instructed to do so, then forget the whole thing.
The guards' eyes glazed over, and they both turned around, facing the wall.
Number One opened the door.
The command center was a long room lined with monitors, each screen displaying feeds from cameras positioned across the island.
Twenty operators sat at individual stations, monitoring their assigned sectors.
A shift supervisor occupied a raised desk at the far end, his attention split between his own screens and his empty cup of coffee that he was thinking of refilling, while also grabbing something sweet to eat.
Twenty-one immortals.
The collective could thrall all of them simultaneously without breaking stride, and they did, instructing them to ignore the visitors. The rest required more finesse, and they waited until Number Five and Number Seven entered the room and stood beside them.
Number One approached the operator whose station controlled the feeds from Losham's residential sector. His sector included Losham's house, the adjacent residences of high-ranking Brotherhood personnel, and the perimeter road.
Number One stopped beside his station and leaned down. There's a maintenance cycle scheduled for Lord Losham's residential feeds tonight. The exterior cameras on his house need to be taken offline for the next four hours. You will log it as routine maintenance.
The thrall was gentle, like a hand on the shoulder guiding someone in the direction they had already taken. The order had been received this afternoon. The soldier remembered reading it. This was routine. He would log it and move on.
"Right." The operator nodded. "The maintenance cycle. I have it here somewhere." He turned to his keyboard and began typing.
On the monitors, the feeds from Losham's house flickered and went dark, including the one pointed at the exterior balcony camera and the one in the corridor camera.
The operator logged the disconnection as scheduled maintenance, noting the estimated restoration time, and returned to his other screens without a second thought.
At the far end of the room, Number Three was handling the supervisor. The thrall was similar in approach but broader in scope. The maintenance cycle was authorized and expected. If anyone asked, he was to confirm it. He would not remember anything unusual about tonight's shift.
The supervisor nodded absently, stood, and headed to the break room with his empty coffee mug.
It had taken all of four minutes to complete this part of the mission. The collective allowed itself a moment of satisfaction that was distributed across all eight bodies.
Number Five and Number Seven fell into step with Number One and Number Three as they exited the building. The entrance guards were still standing with their noses to the wall.
"We need to keep our distance from each other," Number One said to Five and Seven. "Walk ten meters behind us."
When the four of them reached the bend in the road, the collective instructed them to resume their watch, their modified memories smooth and seamless.
Phase one was complete. Phase two was Losham's house.
The walk to the residential district area took twelve minutes at a pace that was brisk but not suspicious. The Eight moved in pairs, alternating pace and distance from each other, taking different routes that converged three blocks from Losham's property.
It was a clear night. Warm and humid as usual, with a breeze carrying the salt-and-vegetation smell that the collective had known their entire lives. The moon was three-quarters full, which provided enough light for their enhanced eyes to see clearly.
At zero zero twenty, they regrouped behind a garden wall two houses down from Losham's.
The property was more heavily defended than a casual observer would have noticed, which was the point.
The two guards at the front entrance were visible, positioned on either side of the door, but the reconnaissance the previous night had revealed others.
Two more were concealed in the landscaping along the eastern wall, crouched behind the ornamental hedges with sightlines covering the garden approach.
One was positioned on the roof, prone, with a view of the rear yard.
And a sixth was tucked into the shadow of the neighbor's garden wall, watching the western flank.
The perimeter patrol added another layer.
Three warriors, walking the circuit in a loose triangle formation, each one covering a different angle.
The collective had timed their route during the previous night's reconnaissance: fifteen minutes for a full circuit, with the longest gap in coverage occurring when the patrol rounded the far corner of the property.
That gap was approximately ninety seconds.
Six hidden guards plus two at the door meant eight immortal minds that needed to be subdued, and the perimeter patrol added three more.
The original plan had been to bypass the ground floor entirely.
Enter through the bedroom balcony from the exterior, avoiding the guards and the ground-level defenses altogether.
The balcony was on the second floor, an easy climb, and the glass doors opened directly into the master bedroom.
It was clean, with minimal exposure and minimal thralling.
That plan had one complication. The alarm system was controlled by a panel inside the house near the front entrance.
They couldn't enter through the balcony without first disabling it from the inside, and they couldn't get inside without triggering it.
Which meant the front door had to come first, and if they were already inside through the front door, the balcony was pointless.
Number One would go upstairs to the bedroom alone while the others waited on the ground floor. The collective worked just as well across a single staircase as it did shoulder to shoulder.
The hidden guards needed to be dealt with before those standing at the front door, which shouldn't be a problem unless Dave encountered the occasional resistant mind.
The perimeter patrol rounded the corner and began their approach along the side wall. The collective waited, counting seconds, tracking footsteps.
The patrol passed. The gap opened.
Number One and Number Three moved first, crossing the street low and fast, angling toward the eastern wall of the property.
They reached the ornamental hedges where the two concealed guards were positioned, and the thralling was applied in one seamless pulse, their minds receiving the same suggestion simultaneously.
There is nothing unusual happening. No one has passed your position. Continue your watch. The night is quiet.
The guards' awareness rippled and smoothed. Their eyes remained open, scanning the darkness, but the two enhanced soldiers crouching three meters away had been edited out of their perception.
Number Five and Number Seven took the western approach, neutralizing the guard behind the neighbor's garden wall with the same ease.
The rooftop sentinel required slightly more focus because his mind was more resistant than the others, but they handled it with a single focused pulse.
The sentinel's gaze swept past the soldiers moving below as if they were shadows.
Twelve seconds from street to front entrance.
The two guards at the door noticed Number One's approach. One of them shifted his weight, his hand drifting toward his sidearm.
"Stand down," Number One said, and applied the thrall before the guard's fingers touched the weapon.
Both guards received the same message. We are authorized. You will allow us to enter and you will not remember our visit.
The guards relaxed. The one who had reached for his weapon moved his hand back to his side as if he'd merely been adjusting his belt.
Number One opened the front door and stepped inside.
Number Three followed, moving immediately to the alarm panel mounted on the wall beside the entryway.
The alarm wasn’t armed because Losham was still awake, but it was programmed to activate automatically at one-thirty.
He entered the master override code that they had extracted from Losham's head and changed the activation to four in the morning.
Hopefully, it was enough time for them to complete the entire sequence.
The rest of the Eight entered behind them, and the four spread out across the ground floor.
The kitchen, dining room, and living room each had French doors opening to the garden, and all three rooms had their lights turned off.
The study, facing the front of the house, was dark as well.
There was light in one of the downstairs bedrooms, but Losham’s assistant was not present.
Then Number One returned to the dining room, approached the glass doors, and stopped.
Losham was outside.
He was sitting in a deep garden chair on the stone patio, facing away from the house, a cigar in his hand. The orange glow of its tip pulsed in the darkness as he drew on it and exhaled a cloud of smoke that drifted upward and dissolved in the breeze.
His legs were crossed at the ankle, his posture indicating that he had settled in for a while, and he was not alone.
The others joined Number One, and the collective watched through the glass as Losham's assistant set a crystal tumbler on the small table beside him, along with a bottle that gleamed amber in the moonlight. Rami poured a generous measure for Losham and placed another cigar next to the glass.
Losham wasn't even done with the one he was smoking. Did he intend to light up the second? It would take him another hour to finish.
Losham accepted the drink without looking up. "Please, join me." He motioned for the other chair.
Rami sat. "Difficult call?"
"No more than usual."
Number One pulled back from the glass doors and joined the others in the dining room, where they had a partial view of the garden but were well concealed in the shadows.
"He's in the garden with Rami," Number One reported to the full collective even though the hive mind perceived it all. "Drinking, smoking, and talking about the call."
We have to wait. He needs to relax before he can fall asleep.