"You're kidding, right?" demanded Bott.

Cruz shrugged. "Check it out with your pet historians."

"Get onto Maritz," said Megane. "The hair and beards will have to be glued on."

Mac shook his head. "You guys won't pass anyway. You're all too tall. And too pale."

"Skin dye. Anything else?"

Cruz took a deep breath. "Good knives. Whetstones. Fire-making stuff. A good tent, a decent sleeping bag. Maybe some decent composite bows and the skill to use them. A sword that doesn't have a detachable handle and a shield that isn't made of aluminum. A crash course in how to speak Greek. Unless you end up like we did for a bit, in Egypt."

"Megane and Bott speak Greek. I speak Arabic," said Sternal.

Cruz shook his head. "That's not the same as ancient Egyptian, or, from what Jerry said, classical Greek."

Megane bit his lip. "Well, I guess our cover just can't be perfect then. This mission had to put together in a hurry. I gather that not all the locals are hostile."

"Nope," said Mac cheerfully. "What do you reckon, Sarge? Seventy-five percent hostile?"

"Yeah. And most of the other twenty-five will kill you for the loot you're carrying." Cruz sighed. If he and Mac ended up going, despite his best intentions, they might as well be kitted out as well as possible. "Look. If you can't look perfect, why not settle for camo? If you won't, and want to go along with all this stuff, well, we're paratroopers, not experts in covert ops. We don't know how to pass ourselves off as anything else. You guys do. Do you mind if the two of us choose our own gear? We'll pretend to be foreigners or something."

"Cruz and I could pretend to be prisoners, groaning under the weight of our stuff," put in Mac brightly. "It'd make you guys look really tough."

Cruz wished that Mac would ease off a bit. They weren't that dumb, surely.