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His internal heads-up display overlaid the life-signs of his men on to his sight, sketching outlines of them amongst the bones of the trees. On a map to the top right of his visual field their locations pulsed red, but his eyes could not see them. He switched his vision from deep infrared to high ultraviolet. He pinged each location with microwaves. The others remained invisible. Wave sweeper units bent the electromagnetic spectrum around each man, cutting-edge tech, barely past prototype. If the sweepers failed, adaptive camouflage lamellae as fine as the scales on butterfly wings covered their skin and every item of kit from their weapons to their cap badges. Sound was baffled by a reactive acoustic shield each soldier carried. They would not be seen. They would not be heard. They were Ghosts.
      All top of the range. They were all top of the range. Once, Otto had been proud of that.
    I see nothing, sir, said Buchwald. The others followed suit.
    Camolam and associated stealthtech functioning correctly sir, said Muller. As communications specialist, he carried other, more specific surveillance gear both integral to his augmentations and externally. If Muller couldn't see the squad, they were as close to invisible as they could get. Wave sweepers are operating near peak efficiency, excellent conditions – no moisture.
      Kaplinski: Damn right. I need a drink .
    Shut up, Kaplinski, thought out Otto, his irritation stolen by the MT. There's water in your canteen. Drink it while we move. It's twenty klicks to the trail. We'll hold comms silence until then. That includes MT, there's intel suggests the reds are on to the carrier waves. Safeties on all weapons. No shooting without a direct order from me, understand? Do not engage the enemy until I say. That goes double for you, Kaplinksi. Keep that flame unit shouldered. There was no reply. Kaplinksi, respond .
      Again Kaplinski was slow to reply. Yes, sir, said the other. Using MT was an effort, like shouting at a deaf man in a nightclub. Otto caught Kaplinski's resentment nevertheless.
    Kaplinski's psychoconditioning is coming apart, thought Otto , he has to come off active duty now . He was careful to keep his thoughtstream off the MT – in spite of the damn thing's recalcitrance at broadcasting simple orders it was perfectly capable of picking up what he didn't want them to hear. They were all in bad shape. Otto and Buchwald had problems with their imaging systems; all of them were fatigued. They'd been fighting straight through two tours, eight months. A fight, patched up, sent back in, none of the long-term rebuild and assessment they were supposed to undergo, victims of their own success, too effective to stand down. This was their fifth engagement in a week. Machine-enhanced they might be, but they were still men, and men had limits.
      The conflict was going nowhere. The government could not bring the full force of their army to bear on the rebels, who melted in and out of the forests. Endless tit-for-tat engagements wore both sides down.
      The country was in chaos, crops were failing from Mato Grosso to the south central provinces, refugees from dead states flooded those that were dying. Maybe, the people were beginning to say, the New Bolivarians were not so bad. Maybe, they said, it is time for a change. Government was collapsing, and the rich had far too much on their hands making sure they stayed rich to fight what they saw as inevitable. That mostly involved taking their money out of the country, and that made matters worse. Brazil was giving up on itself.
      But the EU and USNA could afford no more refugees. They had not given up on Brazil, not yet. If Brazil fell, the New Bolivarian Confederacy would stretch from Patagonia to the Panamian wetline, so they waged their quiet, dirty war.
      The dead jungle blurred past, Otto and his men keeping up a steady thirty kilometres per hour. Otto enjoyed the sensation of his augmentations, the glide of