African Ice Read Online Free PDF

advantages of having this place in Hoboken, only two blocks from the dock he used to load his gear onto oceangoing ships, far outweighed the occasional problem crossing the Hudson.
    A menswear store took the last two commercial spaces in the complex, and he entered, nodding to the desk clerk. He moved through the retail space into the storage area, around a few racks of hanging suits, to a steel door in the rear. The handle had a box attached with five buttons. He punched in the code and the door opened, exposing stairs leading to the basement. He took the stairs, ignoring the heating and cooling systems to his right, and faced the wall to the left. Just in front of him, a natural gas meter was anchored to the wall. He grasped the glass housing and twisted. Ten feet to his left, a portion of the wall opened, revealing a hidden room. He replaced the housing to its original position, and entered.
    The room was twenty by thirty feet, and well lit. Scores of boxes of differing sizes and shapes lined the walls. The markings indicated they were filled with men’s shirts, socks, underwear, and belts. None of them were. Three men sat at a table in the midst of the boxes, and McNeil greeted them as he sat down.
    â€œAlain, everything okay with our communications?” he asked the balding, late-thirties man who sat across from him.
    Alain Porter, communications expert with Team Six for his entire eight-year tenure, nodded. He was not a large man, only five-nine in height, and barely more than one seventy pounds, and the best electronics expert the SEALs had ever produced. There wasn’t a system he couldn’t hack into, jam, or recalibrate. More than once, Porter’s knowledge of electronics had saved their skins by reestablishing downed communications with their extraction team.
    â€œAll set.” He smiled, his thin lips pulling back over teeth that were one size too large for his mouth. “The GPS system is packed, ready to go. I’ve tested it extensively—no glitches. Smiths Industries makes a NAVPAC unit that has integrated GPS and inertial systems. Once we’re in the rain forest, we can pinpoint exactly where we are without a break in the canopy. We’re relying strictly on satellite information, not topography.”
    â€œSamantha Carlson wants to send a chopper up to take video footage of the canopy. Can your gear receive the aerial footage it shoots?”
    â€œAbsolutely,” Alain said. “The NAVPAC has a twelve gigabyte memory. Whoever’s in the chopper can send them to us in a compressed pulse or real-time.”
    â€œWhich is better?” Travis asked.
    â€œEither way is fine,” Alain responded. “The first few times the chopper goes out, it would be best to let it film the area, return to home base, compress the data, and send it out to us as a pulse. It’s much quicker. But once your geologist thinks we’re closing in on what she’s looking for, it would be better to download the images as they’re filmed. That way, she can direct the helicopter to do exactly what she wants.”
    Travis nodded that he understood. “Did you arrange for portable units?” he asked.
    â€œI went with Panther 5/20W manpack, and 5W minis for person to person. Damn tough to sweep the frequencies and find us. Electronically, we’ll be invisible once we’re in the bush.”
    McNeil nodded and turned to the man immediately across the table from him, Troy Ramage, weapons expert. Ramage had spent only five years with the SEALs, but his knowledge of munitions and guns was legendary. He was on call twenty-four hours a day, for any member of the SEAL team to call and ask what equipment was best suited for a specific assignment. The best-trained, most active fighting force in the U.S. military called him for advice. It looked good on his resume when he retired.
    â€œTroy?”
    The arms man stood up and walked to the far wall. His six-foot-five-inch