Hammerson put the phone down – the Iraq mission was a green light. He looked back to his screen. It was a shot of the Middle East taken from low orbit. A huge oily stain spread across the landscape, from the center of Baghdad, out for a hundred miles, almost touching the city of Fallujah to the west.

He recast the impression timeline. Once again the HRE trace had emanated from Mosul, and this time it was a 220-mile walk. Hammerson frowned, and pulled out a calculator, tapping in numbers. He wrote the result and began again. When he finished he compared the numbers and then sat back.

“You sons of bitches left at the same time, didn’t you?”

Based on his calculations, the walking bomb vectors, the Travelers, had set off from Mosul at the same time, the extra distance to the ground zero point at the Zone had delayed the second bomb detonation. Hammerson looked at the time line – the speed and pace were constant for days on end. This vector didn’t sleep, didn’t deviate, and never stopped, not even for a sip of water.

“Who or what the fuck are you guys?”

Hammerson rubbed both hands through his iron-gray crew cut before springing forward and snatching up his phone to call their electronics surveillance factory beneath the base. He sought out Gerry Harris, a friend and the man responsible for coordinating the constellation of orbiting birds that fed back a lot of the high-altitude intelligence from over the United States mainland, and also much of the globe.

He got him on first ring. “Gerry, it’s Jack, I need a favor. Can you tap into the Iraqi communications grid and find me any data from the last twenty-four hours relating to the Zone?”

“Easy. What are you looking for, Jack? Ah, wait, the nuke in Baghdad, right?” There was a furious tapping of keys. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll extract comms and bounce around the security grids for any stored CCTV.”

“Good man, Gerry, I’ll be here.”

Hammerson went back to his mission files and started to select a team. He wanted a small unit – two or three bodies, max. He had several HAWCs off-mission. He needed the best, the most formidable and experienced, and given they might need some local support, he had the perfect candidates in mind.

He selected several classified HAWC files, and then called up each individually. Firstly, there was Alex Hunter, the mission leader. His picture was at the side of screen file. Hunter was six foot two and had a brutally handsome face that could turn women’s heads or deliver a stare that’d freeze combatants to the spot. Alex Hunter was his protégé, and in some ways he was like a son. After all, Hammerson knew he was responsible for raising Alex from nothing – first to the HAWC ranks, and then later bringing him back from the brink of death.