Janson’s hands groped over his vest and fatigues, his fingers identifying the key items of equipment. Katsaris, standing nearby, was doing the same; each visually inspected the other’s camouflage and gear, standard procedure for such operations. They had each traveled a long distance in turbulent conditions. A lot could happen in that time. Punched by the slipstream, whipped by crosswinds, a paratrooper could arrive without his full complement of equipment, however securely it had been attached to his combat vest and fatigues. Janson had learned that from his SEAL days; Katsaris had learned it from him.

Janson surveyed his partner. The whites of his eyes were the only beacons from his painted face. Then he saw a patch of pale over his right shoulder. Katsaris’s shirt had been torn during his landing roll, revealing light skin. Janson signaled him to stand still while he pulled out a few inches of black electricial tape from a spool in his fatigues. He taped the seams together, and the light patch disappeared. Tailoring in the drop zone, Janson thought to himself.

And yet such details could make all the difference. Their black garb would help them disappear into the shadows of a deeply shadowed courtyard. By the same token, even a few inches of silvery flesh could spell betrayal in the carelessly roving beam of a guard’s flashlight.

As he had emphasized on Katchall, the rebels would not have high-tech perimeter defenses, but they would have defenses of a sort that technology had not yet equaled: the five senses of vigilant human beings. An ability to detect anomalies in the visual, aural, and olfactory fields that surpassed the capabilities of any computer.

The descent had largely been through subzero winds. But on the ground, even at four o’clock in the morning, it was eighty-five degrees and humid. Janson could feel himself starting to sweat—real sweat, not condensation from the atmosphere—and he knew that in time his body’s own smell could betray him. His dermal proteins, those of a meat-eating Westerner, would be alien to the Anurans, who subsisted largely on vegetables and fish curries. He’d have to trust that the salt breezes would whisk away any olfactory signals of his presence.

Janson unhooked his night-vision glasses from his combat vest and raised them to his eyes; the large courtyard was suddenly bathed in a soft green glow. He made sure that the black rubber ocular cups were pressed firmly against his face before he dialed up the image luminosity: any light spilling from the NV scope could alert a watchful sentry. He had once seen a member of a commando team killed by a patrol who had caught the telltale glint of green and fired almost blindly. Indeed, he had once seen a man perish because of an illuminated watch dial.

Now he and Katsaris stood back-to-back, each conducting an NV sweep of the opposite quadrants.