It would be the fastest way back and Smith had to admit that he’d had about enough of this exercise. The sixty-thousand-dollar seventeen-pound camera perched on his right shoulder seemed to be doing nothing but bending his collarbone. A little more tinkering might make it worth bringing out again but he was going to stick someone else with wearing it.

His man approached the corner and Smith swept left, lifting his rifle to provide cover should it become necessary. He left the satellite image up and watched the green dots that represented his people fan out behind him. Both the smoothness and resolution of the image had been significantly improved from his game of capture-the-flag three months ago. Even more important, though, his mind was growing accustomed to all the input, letting him register the flood of information without taking too much away from the reality around him.

“Rick,” he said in a voice that would be virtually inaudible to anyone around him but was easily picked up by his tooth mike. “You’re wandering a little far northeast. Tighten it up.”

Smith picked up his pace, keeping a line of sight on his point man while examining a section of ground along the edge of the road thirty-two meters away. The heat overlay that had been lurking in the background was now coloring an area about the size and shape of a manhole cover hazy orange, suggesting that the dirt had been churned up recently and was now absorbing sunlight at a slightly different rate than was the ground around it.

His man saw it too and, despite it probably being nothing more than some recently buried garbage, diverted through the increasingly dense crowd of pedestrians.

A tall man in a blue robe came out of a building just past the suspicious patch of dirt and after only a few seconds’ delay, started flashing red.

“Terry!” Smith said, raising his rifle and activating his targeting system. “Behind you!”

The soldier spun, but a fraction too late. The man the Merge had identified as a hostile knocked him to the ground before shoving his way through the people packing the street. Smith tried to follow him in his crosshairs, but the crowd started to panic and he couldn’t get a clean shot.

“We’ve got a target running south,” Smith said as the man disappeared around a corner. “Everyone behind me backtrack and try to intercept. Terry and I will flush him toward you.”

On his overhead display, he saw his people comply as he started running forward.

“You all right?” he said as he came alongside his man.

“Didn’t see him in time, sir.”

“My fault. Now let’s go get him.”

The heavy camera on his shoulder was limiting his speed to a fast jog and Terry quickly outpaced him, following the wake their target had left in the terrified throng.