Matt thought about it. “I could probably do that.”
Ciara nodded. “Thanks. I’ll call you back later with the details. In the meantime, go get some work done.”
Ciara turned back to her companions. “Enough with trying to hit everything with a bigger hammer. We’re going to stop playing amateur hour and get professional.”
Rubinelle bristled. “Ours are the most professional troops in Africa.”
Ciara waved her hands in a calming motion. “To be sure. But frankly, all of Africa plays amateur hour when it comes to combat.” Before Rubinelle could object, Ciara continued with a quote. “General Robert Barrow, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, put it best: ‘Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.’”
She looked around the table to see if anyone got the point.
Toni laughed. “Supply lines.” She looked at Rubinelle. “Not a problem you’ve had yet.”
Ciara expanded the point. “And we’ll make damn sure she never does. We’re a long way from being able to run a supply network like the United States Army. We have to play to our strengths.”
Rubinelle still looked puzzled, but Ping was starting to get it. “Up to this point, the only people we’ve fought were people who could loot gas for their trucks and steal food for their men. But this Chinese battalion is a whole new crock of worms.”
Toni was getting excited. “Half of all American casualties in Afghanistan were inflicted on the soldiers transporting supplies. It was almost safer to be on the front line than in the supply chain.” Her eyes brightened. “And it’s really about the fuel trucks. Food, and even ammo once you step up to precision-guided munitions, are relatively small transport problems until you get into really big armies.” She pointed at the armor on the screen. “But those tanks are burning fuel at a rate incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t studied the problem.” She held out her hands as if she were flying her fighter. “We could sneak around the guided-missile batteries and hammer the fuel trucks.”
Ping nodded eagerly. “Right.”
Ciara thumped her hand on the table. “Wrong.”
Toni pointed at Ciara. “The enemy fighter squadron.”
Rubinelle went back to an earlier point that puzzled her. “How are you going to protect me from needing a supply line of my own?”
Ciara turned smug. “We’ve already begun.” She waxed philosophical, sort of. “Another American General, Dan Christman, in the early years of the century talked about ‘The Nuclear Powered Army.’ He observed that if an Army unit could take along a nuke and power all its vehicles with batteries, it would leave behind the logistical problems. They could strike deep, at length, roaming the enemy’s heartland at will, just as a carrier task force roams the seas.”
Rubinelle started to get it too. “Our new armored racecars, for example, don’t need gas, and can recharge overnight on their built-in beta batteries.”
Ping expanded the idea. “Swap out our gas-powered drones for electrical drones, and power them…from what? A big truck filled with beta batteries? Or do we have a nuke small enough to put on a truck? Would we land the drones to recharge? Or somehow use Matt’s lasers?”
Ciara smiled. “Now that we’re on the same page, we can begin a serious discussion.” She called Oziegbe and Shura and left a voicemail for Dash. “It’s time we stopped fighting like soldiers. Like I said, time to focus on our strengths. Henceforth, we shall fight as businessmen.”
12
All that Glitters
All warfare is based on deception.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Jonathan Kuffman stared at the virtual window in Lenora’s office, displaying a scene from one of the external cameras that showed the Fuxing fleet.
Almost two dozen isle ships floated there, interconnected inside the confines of the agricultural reef. If they added any more ships, they’d probably need to build a second reef and split the fleet.
Lenora came in. “Jonathan! I understand you might have good news.”
Jonathan nodded. “Hope so.”
Lenora smiled warmly. “Let’s see.”
Jonathan struggled for a moment with the controls on his tablet—he wasn’t a computer guy, although he was getting better pretty rapidly with tutelage from Chen Ying and Song and the others supporting him in his efforts. “Spent a lot of time learning to work bots on the ocean floor. Finally got to start test-drilling last week.”
Lenora nodded patiently.
Pictures of what he’d discovered appeared on the screen. “Found this.” Now that he’d conquered the display system, he abandoned it. Instead, he directed Lenora’s attention to a small transparent case he drew from his pocket.
Glittery rocks rested therein. “Auriferous quartz. Gold.”
Lenora cheered him on. “I’m delighted you’re starting to get results. It’s very exciting.” She took the case in her hand and frowned at the minerals. “Believe it or not, however, the price of gold has crashed.”
Jonathan looked puzzled and defensive. “Price is way up from what I’ve seen.”
Lenora sat back, chuckling. “Let me guess, you’re still looking at the price in terms of dollars.”
Jonathan nodded.
“Understandable, but you’ve got some adjusting to do. In terms of SmartCoin, the price of gold is falling. The big players have finally realized that SmartCoin is a better store of value than gold. It will take some time, but eventually, gold will cease to have any significant value. After all, one reason it made such a good currency in the first place was that it didn’t have any other large-scale applications.” She snorted. “SmartCoin is even less useful for anything other than currency.”
Jonathan’s shoulders sagged by just the smallest margin. “Also.” He reached into another pocket and pulled forth a transparent vial. The contents looked like tar. Even Jonathan had trouble keeping the pride of discovery out of his voice. “Crude oil.” He shrugged. “Heavy crude, but still good.” His eyes shone. “Largest find in twenty years.”
Lenora circled the desk and went to him. She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. With the economic collapse, the price of oil has also tanked. That’s pretty normal in a recession, but it is worse this time.” She took a breath. “With the production of beta batteries and graphene supercapacitors about to ramp up, it might turn out that we don’t need gasoline for cars anymore. It’s possible that the price of oil will never recover.”
Jonathan stared at the vial of unbelievable wealth in his hand, realizing in horror that it was useless.
Lenora continued to encourage him. “It’s okay, really. The important thing is your success in mapping these minerals and the opportunities. Don’t lose your data on this stuff. Who knows? Oil may recover, or SmartCoin may crash, and this stuff will all be useful again.” She shook his shoulder. “Locating gold and oil was a good start. Keep looking, eventually you’ll find something valuable.”
A BJ2022, the Chinese military version of a Jeep Cherokee, rolled up to the checkpoint on the main road into Murtala Muhammed Airport. The soldier on duty strolled up to the driver’s side and peered inside. “Papers?”
The skinny kid with thick-rimmed black glasses driving the Jeep looked barely old enough to be in the army. “Right here.” The kid handed over his ID and authorizations.
The guard was suspicious. For one thing, the paperwork was in perfect order, suggesting supernatural provenance. For another… “I haven’t seen you around here before.”
The kid nodded. “Just arrived a little while ago.” He pointed at his papers and said wryly, “As you can tell, all my papers are fresh and crisp.” The kid spoke in such a high-pitched voice he almost sounded female.
But he also spoke excellent Mandarin. The guard thought he detected a trace of a Shaanxi provincial accent, but it was hard to tell.
In any event, his suspicions mostly dissolved. “What did you go off-base for?”
The kid pointed at the stack of boxes in the
back. “Pizza for my team. We’re maintenance workers for the fuel depot.”
The guard grunted. “Important work.” He handed the papers back. “Very well, Private.”
The kid smiled. “Call me Ping. That’s what my friends call me.”
The guard nodded. “Carry on, Ping.”
Private Ping rolled into the fuel depot area. She shoved the pizzas aside and pulled out half a dozen twelve-packs of Coke. The pizzas were perfectly good, but she was glad the guard hadn’t inspected and demanded to be bribed with a soda. She’d lost track of which two sodas were really sodas. The rest, of course, were much more than that.
When Ping had collected the Coke cans from Shura’s lab, Shura had insisted the brew percolating in the aluminum cans wouldn’t hurt a person, but she also noted that you wouldn’t enjoy drinking it. “How would you expect chemoautotrophs to taste?”
Ping had licked her lips. “Sounds tasty. Uh, what is a chemoautotroph?”
Shura blew a raspberry. “In this case, I have developed a stew of bacteria, mostly genetically enhanced Cladosporium resinae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To make a long story short, they live in fuels like avgas and diesel, eat the plastic parts of the fuel system, and corrode the metal parts with their acidic byproducts.”
Ping wrinkled her nose. “Don’t they put something into the gas to stop this?”
Shura blew another raspberry. “Which is why these are genetically enhanced. My bacteria are not only more aggressive, they’re also nearly immune to the additives intended to stop them.”
Ping was still uncertain about the stuff. “If these bacteria got out in the wild, would they destroy the entirety of petroleum-based civilization?”
Shura rolled her eyes. “First of all, how would it get from your airport fuel depot back to the refineries, where it would have to go to spread wide? Secondly, are you familiar with Dr. Dash’s work on telomere chains? Well, I have taken her research in a new direction and added telomeres to the bacteria, so they can divide only a certain number of times before they stop and die. And thirdly…” Now a child’s twinkle entered her eyes, “if we accidentally destroyed all of petroleum-based civilization, why would we care? We don’t use oil on the BrainTrust for hardly anything.”
Ping thought about objecting some more but figured Ciara had already given the okay. Ping’s job was just to deliver the good news to the Chinese military.
So she clambered around the fuel tanks and poured the contents of the Coke cans into them. She half-expected someone to ask her what she was doing, but they’d picked a time of day when satellite photos suggested the place was quiet.
In the end, she threw the Coke cans into the nearest trash bin and took the Jeep back the way she’d come. She left the pizzas with a note for her coworkers telling them to enjoy.
Keenan awoke to the sound of Lily Allen singing It’s Hard Out Here for a Bitch.
His wife groaned. “I can’t believe I’m going to have to kill Lindsey too.”
Keenan swept the cell from the table and staggered into the living room. “Lindsey, do you have any idea what time it is?”
Lindsey laughed. “Get over it. It’s the same time for me, you know. I happen to be here on the BrainTrust too at the moment.”
Keenan became more alert, realizing this had to be a real emergency, not just an accident of time zones. “What’s up?” He and Lindsey had several years of history at this point; he supplied her with the scoop on the finance industry, while she supplied the scoop on just about everything else.
Lindsey got to the point. “I just got a heads-up from one of my informants. The Pres is about to arrest your boss.”
Keenan shook his head. “Larry Winters, the CEO?”
“That’s right. The FBI will probably arrive in the morning. If Larry’s still in New York, he’ll be in Guantanamo by evening.”
Keenan’s jaw dropped. “Unbelievable. Thanks. Gotta go.” The good news was, at least Keenan would be able to forward the joy of waking up at an unseemly hour to his boss.
Larry did not answer on the first call. Keenan left a message and called again. The third time he called, Larry answered. “This better be good.”
“Larry. Get dressed and get to the ferry. Take the ferry to the BrainTrust spaceport ship. Do not pass Go, and do not collect two hundred dollars.”
For a moment, Keenan thought Larry would do as he was told. It was a brief fantasy.
Larry responded with questions. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Keenan summarized the threat.
Larry didn’t believe him. “The President for the Duration would have to be insane to do that.”
Keenan did not quite scream. “Why? Don’t you get it? When he paid off California’s bonds, we made so much money, even adjusting for the inflation, that we made a fool of him. He’ll charge you with profiteering in the midst of a national emergency. And then he’ll confiscate everything we made, claiming windfall profits. Don’t doubt this, Larry. I’m the one who’s worked with him before. Call Matt Toscano, for heaven’s sake, if you don’t believe he’ll be that vicious.”
Larry paused. “Let me get a few things, and—”
“No! Just go, Larry! Just go.”
Larry had one more thing. “Make sure the money’s safe.”
Keenan growled. “Of course. Now go.”
Finally, Larry just went.
As the sun disappeared over the horizon not too far from the forests south of Lake Kainji, a scrawny young soldier snuck back into camp from a restroom break carrying a couple of twelve packs of Coke.
A sentry spotted him and demanded he identify himself. The soldier gave his name and rank and offered a can of Coke as a bribe. The sentry accepted it gratefully. Taking a swig, he marveled that this Coke, unlike what he had become accustomed to, was made with real cane sugar, not corn syrup. He demanded to know where the private had gotten it, but this secret the youth refused to reveal. The sentry accepted a second Coke in lieu of information.
Sometime later, four of the fuel truck drivers, playing the card game Big Two, heard something that sounded suspiciously like someone slipping and falling on top of one of the tanker trucks, followed by a sharp epithet.
The drivers went to investigate. They found the skinny private sliding down the ladder so fast it looked like he was falling. All four shone flashlights into the fellow’s eyes.
He wore thick-rimmed glasses that masked much of his face. Squinting, he held up his arm to block the lights.
“What were you doing up there?” the nominal leader of the tanker drivers demanded.
“I thought I heard someone up there, so I thought I’d investigate.” The private shrugged. “It was nothing.”
One of the other men stepped forward, peering hard at the detainee. “Take off your glasses, son.”
The private stood frozen in the harsh light. “But I can’t see without them.”
The leader reiterated the demand. “Off.”
The detainee pulled off his glasses, trying to hold his hands over his face.
A third man gasped. “Is that a girl?”
The one who’d stepped up close stepped even closer, then gasped in amazement. “It’s not just a girl. It’s the Benin Empress Ping.”
Ping squinted into the glaring light and sighed. It would be easy enough to dodge out of the light and take them all down, but they’d make enough noise for others to investigate. Worse, having been caught with the tankers meant they’d probably work real hard to figure out what she had done.
This was bad.
Four whispered hisses came from the woods. Each of the men slapped his neck. The leader spoke for all of them. “What’s this?”
The one closest to Ping sagged into her, pulling out his pistol. Ping was about to strike him hard, then realized it would be better if it looked like an accident. In a most uncharacteristic move, instead of just punching through, she pulled him past her to bang his face against the bumper of the truck.
A melodious vo
ice came softly from the nearest bushes. “Could you stop dilly-dallying? We haven’t got all day.”
In a fierce whisper, Ping exclaimed, “Jam!”
Jam’s answer was all business. “Grab the needles I shot them with before you get moving. And hurry.”
The two of them dashed through multiple thickets toward the place where Ping had ditched her stealth copter, a considerable distance to the northeast, beyond the stealth-plane detection range of the radars. It had taken Ping half the night to trudge to the battalion’s camp; it would take them that long again to trudge back.
Before starting to fret about the screwup they were leaving behind, Ping had some business to attend to. “You said you’d be back in time for the invasion.”
Jam replied with serenity, “Life does not always allow for things to proceed as you had planned, or hoped, or sworn to do. I had assumed you could handle it, apparently in error.”
Realizing that was about as much apology as she’d get, Ping moved on to the current worrisome problem. “I really screwed the pooch on this one.”
“We all make mistakes,” Jam consoled her, until she didn’t. “Of course, your mistakes tend toward the spectacular.”
Ping grumbled. “Not you too.”
“Not me too, what?”
“Ciara keeps telling me I have to plan better before going off to improvise.”
While Ping crashed her way noisily through a bramble patch, Jam contemplated Ciara’s admonition as she swept silently around a bush and hopped gracefully over a dead tree trunk. Ping had to wonder, how could Jam even see the stuff she was avoiding?
Eventually Jam spoke again. “I know you hate planning, and maybe there’s another way.”
A narrow tree branch manifested itself out of the nothingness and whipped against Ping’s cheek. “Tell me.”
Jam spoke with slow consideration. “Ciara plans. Dash plans. But Colin mostly just prepares. He prepares opportunities for good things to happen, and opportunities for good people to identify additional opportunities.”
Braintrust- Requiem Page 21
