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.
On the north side of the courtyard were three orange phosphorescent blobs, two leaning toward each other - a sudden white flare emerging between their spectral forms. Janson depowered the scope before lowering it to view the scene with his naked eyes. Even from twenty yards away, he could clearly see the flickering flame. A match had been struck - an old-fashioned fireplace match, it appeared - and two of the guards were lighting their cigarettes with it.
Amateurs, Janson thought. A guard on duty should never provide incidental illumination and should never encumber his most important weapon, his hands.
But then who were these people? There was a vast gap between the Caliph with his top strategists, trained by terror cells in the Middle East, and their followers, typically recruited from villages filled with illiterate peasants.
There would be highly trained sentinels and soldiers in place. But their attention would be directed toward the outside world. They would be at the battlements and in the watchtowers. The ones stationed along the inner courtyard would be charged with the relatively trivial chores of internal discipline, making sure that no ganja-fueled carousing disturbed the sleep of the Caliph or the members of his command.
Though they stood only a few feet away from each other, Katsaris whispered into his filament microphone, his voice amplified in Janson's ear-niece: "One sentry. Southeast corner. Seated." A beat. "Probably half asleep."
Janson replied in a subwhisper, "Three sentries. The north veranda. Very much awake."
In a hostage exfiltration, as neither had to be reminded, one went where the guards were. Unless an ambush had been laid: the visible guards in one place, the valuables in another, and a further set of guards in wait. Yet there was no room for doubt in this case. The blueprints made it clear that the dungeon was located beneath the northern face of the courtyard.
Janson moved slowly to his left, along the wall, and then beneath the overhang of the western veranda, walking half-crouched beneath the parapet. They could not be overreliant on the darkness: a rod in the human retina could be activated by a single photon. Even in the blackest night, there were shadows. Janson and Katsaris would stay in those shadows as long as possible: they would move along the sides of the courtyard, avoiding the center.
Now, for a few moments, Janson kept perfectly still, not even breathing: just listening. There was the distant, soft roar of the sea, washing at the base of the promontory. A few bird noises - a cormorant, perhaps - and, from the forests to the south, the scraping and buzzing of tropical insects. This was the aural baseline of the night, and they would do well to be aware of it. It was impossible to move with absolute silence: fabric slid against fabric, nylon fibers stretched and contracted around a person's moving limbs. Soles, even those of thick, soft rubber, registered their impact on the ground; the hard shells of a dead beetle or cicada would crunch with a footfall. The night's acoustic tapestry would conceal some noises but not others.
He listened for sounds of Katsaris's movement, straining harder than any sentry would, and