by Ty Patterson
‘Ahmed is the man Clare met,’ Zeb said quietly, in the shocked silence that followed. ‘Saudi. It makes sense, now that we know what we know.’
The National Security Advisor’s face had turned grey, his skin like parchment.
‘Chinese…Saudi…Russian,’ he said when he had recovered. ‘Zeb, Clare, do you have any idea, any, why these countries have come together? Because this can’t have happened without political backing!’
‘No, sir –’ Zeb began, when the door opened and a voice boomed out.
‘Daniel! Here you are. I’ve been looking for you all over.’
That’s the -
Zeb rose and spun so fast that hot coffee spilled on his wrist but he didn’t notice it.
President Morgan filled the room, lean, craggy face, surprised look disappearing, eyes taking in all the operatives.
‘This’s your team, Clare?’ he asked. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he looked at Zeb.
‘Yes, sir. We met a couple of times.’
‘And Clare never mentioned your name,’ he flashed the grin that had won him millions of votes on the campaign trail. ‘Said it was better for me not to know. Y’all are gathered here about the killings?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You got something?’ he asked keenly, sensing the air.
‘Sir,’ Klouse began and gave him a Cliff Notes version of the findings.
The President’s jaw clenched. A vein throbbed on his neck when the NSA had finished. ‘You saw that speech the Chinese President made? That governments had to change. People had to be listened to.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Klouse replied.
‘I spoke to him, to the Russian President and to the Saudi King. All of them said we had to act to stop these killings. They agreed I should focus on this at the G20 Summit. And now,’ he let his anger show for a moment, ‘it looks like they’re behind this.’
‘There’s no proof, sir,’ Clare cautioned.
‘Which is where your agency comes into play,’ he told her grimly. ‘When there’s no evidence. Hundreds of innocents have been killed around the world,’ he said savagely, ‘stock markets are down, people’s savings, their pensions, disappeared just like that. They’re planning something big.’
He turned to Zeb, addressing all the operatives. ‘Find them. Stop them. Find out what they’re planning. And then, find a way to stop their governments, if they’re involved.’
And with that, he swept out.
Chapter Seventy-Four
‘You heard him,’ Klouse said when the door closed behind the Commander-in-Chief. ‘Anything you need, you got it.’
‘We need someone who knows Colorado well. And Nevada too,’ Meghan replied. She laid out several photographs on the NSA’s desk. ‘We think the Content and List America teams are based there. We need to hit them. Unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got. Those pictures.’
Klouse picked up his phone in response. ‘Charlie,’ he barked. ‘Get your ass to my office.’
Charlie Ripple, the President’s Chief-of-Staff, the man who had run his campaign and had gotten him elected twice, joined them minutes later.
Balding, tie askew, sleeves rolled to his elbows, he gave the impression of an absent-minded professor. Only his eyes gave away his keen intelligence and razor-sharp wit.
‘Hi Clare,’ he greeted the Agency Director. ‘Didn’t know you had company, Daniel. Who are these folks?’
‘You don’t need to know, Charlie,’ Klouse said impatiently.
‘Oh, some of those people,’ he parked his butt in a swivel-chair and checked out Zeb and his friends. He nodded to himself as if reaching a conclusion and turned to the NSA. ‘Why am I here? I’ve got a briefing with the President in five.’
‘You’re from Colorado, aren’t you?’
‘Best state there is.’
‘You explored it, you told me once.’
‘Every inch of it. Great country. Know it like the back of my hand. I told the President we should move our capital there, to Colorado. Somehow, he didn’t share my enthusiasm….’ He trailed off when he sensed the atmosphere in the room. ‘How can I help?’ he asked softly.
‘Sir,’ Meghan leaned over his shoulder and flicked through several of the images and presented him three. ‘Do you recognize this area?’
Charlie Ripple barely glanced at them. ‘That’s the Laird Ranch,’ he said. ‘I camped there when I was a kid. Visited it again when I was home, after college. It’s on the Utah border. Really remote. You got to take a chopper ride from Grand Junction Airport. Or an hour’s drive from it.’
‘You’re sure, Charlie?’ Klouse leaned forward, his voice taut.
‘Yeah. I wasn’t joking. I know that country really well. That’s the Laird Ranch. No doubt about it. The Laird family owned it for generations and then, when times were tough, the last surviving member sold it to some investment company. They kept the name but turned it into a dude ranch.’
‘Look carefully, Charlie. There are no buildings in those photographs.’
‘I don’t need them,’ the Chief-of-Staff stabbed a finger on the nearest image. ‘That thicket, I slept near it. That stream over there, I bathed in it. Freshest water I’ve ever drunk. What’s this about?’
Klouse looked at Clare who nodded briefly.
‘It’s about Columbus,’ the NSA said and didn’t elaborate.
Charlie Ripple looked at him searchingly and then at Clare and her team. He picked up the photographs and looked at them closely.
‘That’s the Laird Ranch. I’ll bet my life on it,’ he said.
* * *
‘Leave these others with me,’ Klouse told Meghan when the Chief-of-Staff had left. ‘I’ll find a Nevada expert and get that location identified as well. What else do you need?’
His eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline when Zeb told him.
Chapter Seventy-Five
‘Robotic dogs?’ Bwana asked Zeb. ‘What do you need those for?’
Clare’s office. The eight of them in couches, chairs, on desks. Beth and Meghan on their screens. They had given Zeb a hard time after the White House meeting. ‘If you’d given us a heads-up, we’d have been better dressed,’ the younger twin fumed. ‘President Morgan saw me like this!’ She indicated her casual attire and dug an elbow in his ribs.
‘I didn’t know he would show up,’ he had replied.
‘But you knew we were going there.’
At which he had surrendered.
The sisters’ anger didn’t last long. It rarely did.
They had plugged in their screens as soon as they arrived at the Agency Director’s office and had waved away any offers of help. ‘It’s beyond you,’ Meghan had told Broker, without looking up.
‘I taught them,’ he had mumbled under his breath and had sidled over to Zeb who was poring over additional photographs of the ranch that Beth had printed out.
‘Dogs?’ Bwana reminded Zeb.
‘We’ll need them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we don’t have plans to that place. All we know is its location. There’s a fence,’ Zeb stabbed at one of the photographs. ‘A gate. That semi-circular building,’ another stab at another photograph. ‘More buildings behind it, and that’s all we know.’
‘They’ll be ready for us,’ Roger drawled from his couch. ‘They’ll expect us to attack. Zeb is right. We need the element of surprise. Though, it beats me what he’s got in mind with robots.’
* * *
Two hours later. Empty boxes of pizza, beer and juice bottles. The remains of their lunch.
Large photographs on a center table. That of Riyaz Khalid Ahmed and Sidor Yefremov. Meghan had found one of them on a news site, the other at a university speech. Both were old images and the sisters had run aging programs to print out likely current-day versions of how the men might look.
Brief bios on the two of them as well. Both had started their careers as aides in their respective defense ministries. Both had risen to
the ranks of junior ministers and then had disappeared. No sightings. No mentions on government communication, news reports or social media.
‘Have you heard of them?’ Clare asked Zeb.
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘You know what that means.’
She nodded gravely. ‘They went dark for a reason. They got into covert ops. No other explanation.’
‘They could be dead,’ Bear offered and held his hands up in surrender when he got scornful looks. ‘Just saying.’
‘Say less,’ Chloe hissed at him.
‘How’s that possible?’ Beth looked up from her screen. ‘We know just about everyone in the intelligence world. How could these two escape our radar?’
‘We don’t know everyone,’ Meghan corrected her. ‘There are spies we aren’t aware of. Operatives who work in the shadows. These two –’
‘They aren’t foot soldiers. To organize Hyde, pull it off, they’ve got to be high up.’
‘Correct,’ Chloe agreed, ‘and good. Very good. And there’s a third person out there whose name we don’t even know.’
‘The Chinese man.’ Meghan answered swiftly. ‘He’s even more secretive. His voice print doesn’t exist in any of our databases or those we can access.’
‘Could he be the mastermind?’ her sister asked.
Zeb didn’t reply immediately. There was a name at the edge of his memory. Something had moved in his mind the moment the Russian and Saudi had been identified. A Chinese name. A feared spymaster that the world didn’t know of. He knew there was a face attached to that name, but try as hard as he could, his memory refused to serve him both.
He shrugged internally. It would come. ‘Who knows?’ he answered Meghan. ‘See if you can find Yefremov and Ahmed. Where they’re located. ‘You,’ he turned to the remaining operatives. ‘Can you come up with an attack plan for Nevada?’
‘I thought you were working on that,’ Bwana, rose and stretched.
‘I’ve got to make some calls.’
* * *
Riyaz Khalid Ahmed, Jack Smith, was in Riyadh. He had returned from Tokyo the previous night and had briefed his boss. He hadn’t mentioned that the Indonesian center was no more. Nor had he told him about Chernihiv. His boss didn’t need to know everything.
‘Yes sayidi, all’s going as per plan,’ he reassured the prince.
‘The Americans don’t know anything?’
‘No, sayidi,’ he said confidently. ‘Neither do the British or the French. No one.’
He returned to his office and made plans for Colorado. He would have to use another alias, another fake passport. A new disguise.
He began his preparations.
* * *
In Moscow, Sidor Yefremov, Phil Williams, had finished a similar briefing to the Russian Prime Minister. He too hadn’t mentioned the setbacks in Indonesia and Ukraine. He was committed to Hyde, but he also valued his life and had no wish to shorten it.
He looked at his calendar, at flight timings and at the upcoming protests in Washington DC. That was four days away. Enough time for him to fly to Nevada, from where he would liaise with Ahmed and Leslie.
He checked the Russian holdings in the target companies and ran through a memo from the defense minister on the proposed security force.
It will happen, he assured himself. We will have a new world order. Soon.
* * *
Back in DC, Zeb and his team were wrapping up the attack plan. Which was sketchy.
‘Because we don’t have the ranch’s layout,’ Bwana fumed when Beth needled him. ‘Why don’t we have that?’
‘Because, wealthy people have a habit of keeping things private,’ she replied archly.
‘That didn’t stop you at Chernihiv.’
‘We had help there. Andropov’s.’
‘How can we go in, blind?’
‘Which is where those dogs come in,’ Zeb answered.
‘Dogs!’ Bwana rolled his eyes. ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’
‘Let’s meet them, first.’
Chapter Seventy-Six
They flew to Denver that night and stayed in Colorado’s largest city.
The next day, they drove to an office complex on the outskirts of the city. A gated complex of several flat-roof buildings. White, CCTV cameras mounted in a perimeter, armed security guards.
Science In Motion, the company name was discreetly painted on a wall-mounted panel.
‘I haven’t heard of them,’ Broker looked questioningly at Zeb when they arrived at the gates. A security guard came out of his hut, checked their credentials against a pad, spoke into a mic and raised the barriers.
‘DoD’s got a stake in them. They are a research company. Develop AI and robotic prototypes.’
‘I don’t know how I feel about that.’
It was a debate they often had. There was no doubt that artificial intelligence and mechanization would play prime roles in covert intelligence and military warfare.
They won’t replace the human element, however. Humint and foot soldiers…to him and his team, they represented balance and values and ethics. The day humans get replaced is the day I’m out of this game.
A white-coated, bespectacled man approached them, cutting short his musings.
‘Zeb Carter? I’m Dr. Lebowski. I’ll take you to the machines.’
He led them inside a building, pointed out various developmental prototypes. A remote-controlled battle-tank. ‘Quite similar to drones,’ he said. Near-invisible battle dresses, facial recognition helmets, biometric sensing weapons.
‘Larry Burt and Zack Pilgrim,’ he introduced two men in the corner of a vast hall. Both were dressed in the universal attire of jeans and tees. Sneakers on their feet, beards on their chins. They looked young, in their late twenties or early thirties.
‘These two are the operators,’ Lebowski said. ‘They’ll be with you,’ and with that he left.
‘He didn’t ask anything about us,’ Beth sidled to Zeb.
‘He was warned. The NSA gave instructions.’
That memo didn’t seem to have reached the two company men who cast appreciative glances at the twins and Chloe and decided to ask them questions.
‘You work here as a researcher?’ Meghan asked, close to her breaking point.
‘A scientist, actually,’ Burt replied and gave what he thought was a winsome grin. ‘Zack and I built those machines,’ he said proudly.
‘Well, Burt, here’s the thing. Show us the danged things, how they work and then get out of our way. Unless you and Pilgrim want to wash toilet bowls in Idaho for the rest of your lives.’
Their jaws dropped. They reddened when Bear stifled a guffaw and then they looked sheepish and proceeded to apologize.
Beth stopped them with a raised finger. ‘Just lead us to them,’ she growled.
The scientists led them down a corridor, past more prototypes and white-coated researchers and then to a large room the size of a basketball court.
In the center were a number of dogs.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
‘They look just like the animals,’ Roger’s comment, immediately slapped down, blisteringly by Meghan. ‘That’s because they are designed to look like them, Rog.’
Zeb waved them to silence as he studied the machines. The machines were matte black, had canine faces with realistic looking dark, glassy eyes that blinked every now and then. Lips parted to reveal teeth, but no tongue. About three feet tall, lean bodies, bellies flexing as they panted in the night. Walking about, sniffing, heads swiveling to observe them. Exactly as real animals would.
Can they smell?
‘Yeah,’ Burt saw what he was looking at. ‘They have advanced olfactory capabilities.’ He pointed to their skin. ‘They’re made from the same material that goes into the Stealth bombers. Zero footprint on radars.’
‘Why? Dogs don’t fly!’ Chloe asked, puzzled.
‘That was a requirement,’ Burt squirmed uncomfortably.
‘That’s ho
w the DoD spends our money,’ Bear grumbled, not very sotto-voce. ‘By making dogs fly.’
He subsided when Meghan glared at him and motioned for Burt to continue.
‘They can get from zero to sixty in three seconds.’ He pressed a remote and one of the machines blurred into speed. It sprinted across the hall; its padded feet almost silent on the concrete floor. ‘Composites in their shoes, wear resistant on any surface.’
The robot pivoted smoothly and trotted back to them, its head swinging left and right, its short tail wagging, looking at them, waiting for their approval.
‘What’s special about them?’ Roger drawled. ‘Robots are not new and there are many companies that manufacture similar ones.’
In reply, Pilgrim did something with his remote and the machines assembled in a squad and raced towards a life-size dummy that stood in the corner.
Six of them leapt at it while the others stood at bay as if guarding the attackers. In seconds, the dummy was torn to shreds, the only audible sounds were those of fabric ripping.
‘Our robots are specifically designed for military use,’ he said, clearly enjoying their expressions. ‘They have various programs…what you saw was one of many attack ones. They can sniff bombs, explosives, anything that goes boom. Even gasoline fumes. They can jam infra-red signals, have cameras, audio detectors, night-vision…Oh, yeah! They’re bullet resistant to NATO calibers, though we haven’t completed field testing on that.’
‘How high can they jump?’ Zeb asked.
Burt demonstrated, making one of the machines leap up to ten feet in the air. It landed as smoothly as a world-class gymnast, without any wobble.
‘We need thirty of them.’
‘That won’t be a problem.
‘By tonight.’
‘Sure. Dr. Lebowski has to clear that, but if he knows you, I am sure that can be arranged.’
‘We need training on their operations.’
