Jed closed his eyes, trying desperately to remember how to follow a thread to another mind. He’d not done it on purpose before and only successfully with Corbin helping to guide him. He reached out—trying to feel his way into any of the minds in the hangar—but instead of finding threads, he hit a wall. No wonder the Watchers couldn’t get in. It was as if someone had set up a spiritual version of a communications jammer around the target.

“Thirty seconds,” the pilot said in his ear, snapping him out of the mind place.

Jed opened his eyes and popped into a combat crouch.

“Ten seconds, Sword,” came the pilot’s cool, low voice.

Jed locked his gaze on the door sentry, who’d turned his back to their position. He raised a closed fist, holding and readying his team tight behind him—Carl to his right, Hyeon and Nisha spread out to his left.

An instant later, the pilot called, “Sword, Vandal—go, go, go . . .”

Jed chopped a hand forward and surged out of the tree line, leaning forward into his rifle, still in a combat crouch, aware of Carl matching pace just to his left. Hyeon and Nisha would angle slightly right, clearing the near corner of the building as Jed and Carl made for the door and the single sentry. They moved swiftly, eager to cover the distance before the sentry turned and they lost the element of surprise.

Reaching the perimeter fence, Carl took a knee to cover while Jed went up and over. Fingers locked into the chain link, Jed took the eight-foot fence with only two big kicks of his legs, rolling over the top with his back protected from the barbed wire topper by his plate carrier vest. Midroll he gained control of his rifle before dropping the eight feet back to the ground and landing in a crouch. Rifle up, he placed the red dot of his holographic sight, magnified through the Vortex magnifier, onto the back of the sentry’s head while Carl cleared the fence. Hyeon and Nisha would be doing the same at an offset. At the moment, their only real threat was the sentry walking toward the far corner of the hangar. Carl tapped Jed’s shoulder and they were off, sprinting through the grass toward the hangar, angling to stay out of the tango’s peripheral vision.

As they closed range, Jed could make out the sentry’s weapon, a short, fully automatic machine pistol under his right armpit. He hoped to reach the man for a silent kill and not be forced to fire, but it felt more unlikely with every passing second. Jed hovered his red targeting dot nearly motionless on the side of the man’s head, a learned and practiced skill of keeping his torso floating above his churning legs.

The sentry abruptly froze.

Jed surged forward.

The man whirled.