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Show Acting Alone Page 141 convent on his back, he realized how close he'd just come to being apprehended and blowing the whole project. He felt delayed reaction fear in his legs and stomach. Not fear of nuns, but of the old man. Axelrad's mind began to hear whole fleets of Cobra 'copters just a few feet over his head, whipping up their own freak tornado, and spy satellites blipping and hovering high in outer space above the 'copters. The satellite's radio eyes were reading the brand name and neck size on his olive drab teeshirt collar, electromicron photographing the fiber particles that crawled up the nape of his neck, feeding that data into an enormous textile computer and identifying him before he could even make it to that next bank of trees. Too much thinking. He forced himself to think less. He concentrated on crossing this clearing absolutely by the book, just so. That's why they gave you all those hours of training in commando and guerilla technique: to give you something solid to fasten onto when your brain kicked into overdrive because of all the insane things you were doing. They really didn't have to re-teach anybody how to run and be sneaky. Anybody who's been a kid and played army knows how to do that, for God's sake. Axelrad entered the forest on the other side of the tornado slope and found that he and his rabbit were okay. So he stopped running. He walked the rest of the secret way to the encampment. If Axelrad had been returning from his chow run via tunnel as usual he would've simply emerged from under the big lean-to in the middle of camp |