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let them tranquilize the targets. We were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
    We had flown the Australian commandos’ sleek VTOL low and slow through the mountains in the predawn darkness and landed a few miles away from the squalid collection of wooden buildings nestled in the desert. There, we had met up with Otanga’s company, who had driven to the area in their carriers. All the pieces were in place.
    The plan Phillips and Otanga had come out with was, like all good ones, simple. Otanga’s men would set up an outer cordon to prevent anyone from escaping the area. The Australian team would go in and disable the jammer. Then we could tranquilize them with the mosquitoes. It certainly beat getting into a firefight with a group that had proven to be smarter, more brutal, and more resourceful than the average scumbags who operated in the area.
    After Phillips had given a quick but through briefing, the eight troops hustled out, the active camouflage of their armor blending seamlessly with their surroundings. They disappeared into the night in seconds, nothing visible of them but a nearly imperceptible figure-shaped heat shimmer.
    Phillips and I were in the VTOL’s tiny control suite where she could coordinate the operation. Sergeant Jones was in operational command on the ground. He was a quiet-spoken man who most definitely knew what he was doing and exuded the unflappable confidence of a career military man. Interestingly, they had a fellow Brit on the team, also on an attachment, Corporal Singh. Apparently these kinds of military units did a fair number of international exchange programs to promote new skills between allied countries.
    The commandos had divided into four two-man fire teams and taken position at the cardinal compass points while Otanga’s entire company had crept in and surrounded the place a mile out.
    “All Tigers and Backstop. HQ Actual. Final ROE, ladies and gents,” Phillips said. “Nonlethal force is fully authorized. Lethal force is authorized on a self-defense basis only. Any mark that makes it past Tiger, leave to Backstop.” Otanga’s team. “We have no air support besides HQ.” I’m guessing she meant the hypersonic we were in. “However, Canberra will authorize a KIS if things go wrong.”
    The soldiers all gave terse acknowledgements as I glanced over at her. This was news to me. The Australians were serious. A KIS was a kinetic impact strike, basically dropping a rod of reinforced tungsten from orbit on these arseholes. The energy released would be equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon, only without all the dirty radiation. The camp, and anyone in it, would simply cease to be. One way or another, the bandits were coming in, dead or alive.
    “I will, however, consider it a personal failing if we have to go that far. Canberra doesn’t want to have to deal with the political fallout, and I want the marks alive so we can haul their asses before the tribunal. Do I have a solid copy?”
    Every member of the team gave a resounding affirmative even though their instincts were probably telling them to kill every last bandit in the gang. I could sympathize. These animals were the reason Dev was currently on a slab in the Keep morgue. Part of me wanted the whole area to be KISed and be done with Sahelia. But that wasn’t what we were about. It was our job to put every last one of them before a court—make them answer for their crimes. They didn’t deserve an easy way out with a tungsten KIS.
    ***
    Fighting wars is often much like policing: long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror and exhilaration, yet the Australians sounded neither terrified nor particularly exhilarated—one of the signs of seasoned veterans.
    I watched on the live tactical plot as the eight commandos crept closer and closer to the small collection of huts and vehicles in the middle of the desert settlement. The encoded transponders on their armor were the only thing giving them away. They