few seconds of focus and concentration, I brought up a veil around us that should hide us from view and disperse our heat signature as well. It wouldn’t be perfect. We’d still show up on a night-vision scope, to one degree or another. I was counting on the fact that men guarding a building that isolated could not possibly deal with problems on a regular basis. They’d have a very comfortable, reliable routine, which was exactly the sort of thing to take the edge off a sentry’s wariness. That’s just human nature.
I beckoned, and the three of us began approaching the facility. There was no fluttering from shadow to shadow, or camouflage face paint. The veiling spell took care of that. We just walked over the uneven ground and focused on staying close together. That part may have been more fun if Martin weren’t there.
We got to within thirty yards of the fence, and I paused. I lifted my staff, pointed it at the first sentry camera, and whispered, “Hexus.”
I wasn’t used to holding something as demanding as a veil in one hand while performing another working with the other—even such an easy spell as a technology hex. For a second, I thought I’d lose the veil, but then it stabilized again. The lights on the camera had gone out.
We moved around the perimeter while I hexed the other two cameras into useless junk, but just as I’d taken down camera number three, Susan gripped my arm and pointed. The foot patrol was moving by on their sweep.
“The dog will get our scent,” Susan said.
Martin drew a short pistol from beneath his jacket, and screwed a silencer to its end.
“No,” I half growled. I fished in the pocket of my duster and found the second potion I’d made while preparing for the trip. It was in a delicate, round globe of glass about as thick as a piece of paper. I flipped the globe toward the path of the oncoming dog and heard it break with a little crackle.
The two patrolmen and the dog went by the area where I’d left my surprise, and the dog snuffled the new scent with thorough interest. At a jerk of the lead, the dog hurried to catch up to the guards, and all three of them went by without so much as glancing at us.
“Dog’ll have his senses of smell and hearing back in the morning,” I murmured. “These guys are just doing a job. We aren’t going to kill them for that.”
Martin looked nonplussed. He kept the pistol in his hand.
We circled around to where the fence met the canyon wall, opposite the large parking lot. Susan got out a pair of wire cutters. She opened them and prepared to cut through when Martin snatched her wrist, preventing her from touching the fence. “Electricity,” he whispered. “Dresden.”
I grunted. Now that he’d pointed it out, I thought I could feel it, too—the almost inaudible hum of current on the move, making the hairs on my arms stand up. Hexing something with a microchip in it is simple. Impeding the flow of electricity through a conductive material is considerably more difficult. I pitched my best hex at the wiring where it connected to a power line and was rewarded with the sudden scent of burned rubber. Martin reached out and touched the fence with the back of his hand. No electricity burned him.
“All right,” Susan whispered, as she began clipping us a way in, cutting a wire only when the gusting wind reached a crescendo and covered the sound of the clippers at work, then waiting for the next gust. “Where’s that distraction?”
I winked at her, lifted my blasting rod, thrust it between links of fence in front of us, and aimed carefully. Then I checked the tower guard, to be sure he was looking away, and whispered, “Fuego, fuego, fuego, fuego.”
Tiny spheres of sullen red light flickered out across the compound and into the parking lot opposite. My aim had been good. The little spheres hissed and melted their way through the rear quarter panel of several vehicles and burned on into the fuel tanks beneath.
The results were predictable. A gas tank explosion isn’t as loud as an actual bomb going off, but when you’re standing a few yards away from it, it could be hard to tell. There were several hollow booming sounds, and light blazed up from the cars that had been hit as flames roared up and consumed them.