by Mike Maden
“Dios mio. Yes. If anyone can stand up to Castillo, it’s him and his gung-ho Marines.” President Barraza patted his brother on his flaccid thigh. “We’ll drag those Castillo assholes to the police station in chains if we have to. Their father, too. Excellent suggestion.” He checked his Rolex. “I’m late for an important meeting.”
Hernán kept his brother’s schedule. The important meeting was actually a round of golf with his mistress.
“Make the arrangements and coordinate with the Americans.”
“As you say, Mr. President.”
Antonio dashed out of the office.
Hernán sighed and poured himself another drink. He despaired at his brother’s lack of imagination. He thought about explaining the overall plan he had in mind, but his older sibling would just get confused. Hernán’s vision was too complicated, too violent, and too subtle for the actor to comprehend, let alone execute. It was better that Antonio remain a handsome figurehead while Hernán pulled the strings behind the scenes.
At least for now.
Hernán heard his mother’s small, pitying voice in his head again, an echo from his childhood.
You can’t fight fate, pobrecito.
“To hell with that,” Hernán said to nobody as he drained his glass.
12
Near the Snake River, Wyoming
Pearce hadn’t built his worldwide company in less than a decade by micromanaging. By temperament and training, he was an analyst, always looking for the big picture. When he decided to strike out on his own, he saw a world of opportunities thanks to advances in drone technologies. Drones themselves weren’t actually new technology. Nikola Tesla earned the world’s first patent for wireless remote-controlled vehicles in 1898 and demonstrated the remote-control wireless powerboat in Madison Square Garden that same year.
Pearce’s other gift was people. He knew how to hire the right ones to seize those new opportunities.
Drones were changing not only modern warfare but nearly every other aspect of civilian life as well. In the end, drones were just delivery systems. Energy, medicine, agriculture, and transportation were just a few of the areas being transformed by the advent of autonomous, independent, inexpensive, and reliable vehicles.
Under normal circumstances, Pearce’s unseen investing partner could’ve expected an excellent return on the cash used to launch the company. But Pearce’s civilian operations had already delivered exceptional returns and promised many, many more for years to come and he was happy to allow others to lead those divisions.
But Pearce Systems security operations were far more lucrative at the moment—and far more dangerous as well, so he took responsibility for the day-to-day operations of that division. As president of the company, it was his responsibility to ensure that both sides of his house were in order because, in fact, they supported each other, directly and indirectly. He did this by regularly contacting his division heads, just to let them know he was still engaged with them and as passionate as they were about their respective projects. It was an exciting time to be alive, for sure.
More often than not, though, Pearce felt as if he were riding on the back of a galloping two-headed tiger. There was no telling where all of this might end up—Skynet was just a writer’s nightmare, but was it really so far from the truth anymore? On the other hand, the promise of a technological nirvana seemed just as plausible. Pearce wasn’t sure which of the two mouths would eventually swallow him, but he knew exactly which orifice of the beast he’d eventually be vacating when it was all said and done.
Pearce shook his head. It was late. His mind was wandering. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and dropped into his favorite chair in the cabin and tapped on his smartphone. Time to check in.
Dungeness, Kent, United Kingdom
August Mann stood at the top of the old soaring lighthouse, more than forty meters in the air. Due west was the decommissioned Dungeness A nuclear reactor facility. Due south was the English Channel.
The view of the surrounding beaches was fantastic, but it was the stout wind frothing the Channel waters far below that had caught his attention. Perfect conditions for kite surfing. His phone rang. It was Pearce. He picked up immediately.
“Troy. Wie geht’s?”
“I’m fine, August. How are you?”
“I was just thinking about you! San Onofre,” he barked into the phone. The wind gusting through the open window whipped the German’s hair. Ironically, San Onofre also featured a nuclear reactor by the sea, but August was referring to the kite-surfing competition where they first met several years ago.
“Did you bring your board?” Pearce asked.
“Natürlich! Bring yours, we’ll have good fun.”
“Don’t tempt me. How are those beautiful daughters of yours?”
August had married three years ago. His wife bore him twin girls a week after the wedding. “Growing fast. I can’t wait to get them out on the water here. Thank you for asking.”
“So, how’s it going over there? Any problems?”
“No. Everything is on schedule. We began defueling operations three days ago. The drones have functioned perfectly, as expected,” August said.
Dungeness A was just one of ten Magnox nuclear reactors that were decommissioned in the United Kingdom and scheduled for eventual demolition. Pearce Systems had won one of the first contracts utilizing tracked drones with manipulator arms and laser cutters to reduce waste materials into smaller pieces without risking human contamination. Mann headed up the nuclear decommissioning project for Pearce Systems. He had been a combat engineer in Germany’s Bundeswehr and had helped develop his nation’s first tracked drones for mine clearing and antipersonnel work. After one tour in Kosovo and another in Iraq, he quit the army to chase the wind. Instead, he found Pearce.
“No casualties on our end?” Pearce asked.
“None, of course. But we deployed one of our rescue bots when a Swedish contractor collapsed inside of the reactor core building. We pulled him out with no problems.”
“Radiation?” Pearce asked.
“No. Mild heart attack. He is recuperating in hospital. But again, no risk to personnel in the rescue.”
“Outstanding,” Pearce offered. “Keep up the good work.”
“Come out soon. The wind is fantastic here!”
Mann shut his phone and grinned. The Dungeness operation was running even more smoothly than he’d hoped. He knew his friend was pleased. August headed for the circular staircase. Time to get home to his family.
Once again, Pearce had proven prophetic, Mann thought, as his feet thudded on the steel stairs. The old nuclear reactors like Dungeness were gold mines. They took decades to fully decommission and deconstruct, and safety—for the workers and the environment—was the primary concern, not money. Over four hundred civilian reactors around the world were currently at or beyond their thirty-year design life and scheduled for decommissioning. After the tragedy at Fukushima in 2011, those schedules were being accelerated. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a Ph.D. in physics, had been affected by the Japanese catastrophe and she completely reversed her own energy policy, choosing instead to phase out all of Germany’s nuclear reactors by 2022, despite the fact they currently supplied a quarter of her nation’s electrical supply.
But Mann knew that this wasn’t just about money for Pearce, or himself for that matter. This was good environmental work that needed to be done and they were both proud to be part of it. Pearce Systems was leaving an important legacy for future generations. The fact that he and Troy would get rich doing it was just an added benefit.
August emerged from the great black lighthouse tower. He held up a hand to guard his blinking eyes against the sand stinging his face. Maybe he would bring his girls out to the beach for a picnic this weekend if the wind died down. But if it didn’t, he’d gladly bring his board instead.
Near the Snake River, Wyoming
Pearce finished his beer and picked up his phone to dial again. August was seven hours ahead of Pearce. His next call was four hours behind him on the other side of the world from the lanky German.
Port Allen, Hanapepe Bay, Kaua’i, Hawaii
Dr. Kenji Yamada was barefoot. The converted wharf workshop wasn’t technically a “clean room,” but it could’ve been. Sensitive electronic controls, motherboards, and other equipment were susceptible to damage from dust and particulate matter, but Kenji was building working vehicles and didn’t mind a little real-world challenge. He used his bare feet as contamination sensors, constantly monitoring the state of floor cleanliness, or so he told his graduate students. Truth be told, he just liked being barefoot. His feet were doing a lot of sensing today because everybody was scrambling to load up the last of the equipment on the modified 350 Outrage excursion boat bobbing in the water outside.
The fifty-three-year-old researcher wore his thick silver hair in a braid and sported a downy silver beard that contrasted nicely with his sun-drenched skin. He’d traded in his lab coat for a pair of board shorts decades earlier. His excuse was that he’d found it easier to do lab work in board shorts than it was to surf in a lab coat. His passions were whale research and surfing, in that order, with adventurous women, premium beer, and fresh sushi next on the list, also in order.
The humpback whales had arrived last December in Hawaii to calve and now the pods had just begun leaving for the three-thousand-mile return trip to the Gulf of Alaska. Thanks to Pearce Systems’ funding, Yamada had spent the last three years developing an autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to swim along with the humpbacks without disturbing them. Yamada had spent the last twenty-five years recording the migratory habits, social relationships, and communication patterns of the giant mammals, but no one had been able to travel with them for an extended period of time, owing in part to the extreme distances and water conditions. Some humpback pods were known to travel up to sixteen thousand miles in their annual migratory loops.
Yamada was on the verge of a revolution in whale research, thanks to Pearce Systems’ support. By translating his hard-won migration data into an artificial intelligence program, he hoped to be able to insert into a whale pod a torpedo-shaped UUV equipped with radar, cameras, extension arms, and other devices needed to monitor the humpbacks in the wild. In order to accomplish this feat, the UUV had to be stealthy, self-powering, able to receive and send data signals to the control base, and perform a dozen other monitoring functions, all without disturbing the whales or disrupting their migratory patterns. Yamada also didn’t want his UUV to invoke the fearsome wrath of an angry thirty-five-ton adult, which could crush the UUV and scatter its priceless components on the bottom of the ocean floor with one mighty swipe of its massive fluke.
Yamada’s UUV was still under development, but it was far enough along that he wanted to try a short run with one of the pods. The UUV was already in position, but the AI program was still buggy. The best he could hope for was a remote-control test run of a couple hundred miles by following the underwater drone in a surface vessel like the 350 Outrage.
Yamada pointed at a stack of yellow storm-proof camera cases and told one of his grad students, “Don’t forget the Pelicans, please.” He felt his smartphone vibrate in his shorts pocket. It was Pearce’s ring tone.
“Troy! Howzit, brah?” Yamada asked. Born in Japan in 1960, he had migrated like his beloved humpbacks to Hawaii with his family when he was a teenager and had gone completely native. He was fluent in three human languages—Japanese, English, and pidgin—and he was an avid collector of whale songs.
“I was going to ask you the same thing, Kenji. Ready to launch today?” Pearce was aware of the AI bugs but wasn’t concerned. He knew Yamada and his team were close to solving them.
“On our way out the door. Wish us luck.”
“One more thing. I’ve scheduled the BP demo for September. I’ll need you and your team out in Galveston by August fifteenth at the latest. Will that be a problem?”
“Ah, brah. Serious?” Yamada whined. “Texas? How about Cali?” Yamada had earned his doctorate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
“Sorry, ‘brah.’ Gotta go where the customers are. You’ll be back before December.”
Yamada cringed. “Meh. Humpbacks are my customers.”
“I’m after greenbacks. The Brits have ’em in spades. That UUV you’re building is perfectly designed to run automated repair and maintenance routes on ocean-floor pipelines all over the world. We sign this BP contract, you’ll have more money for your whales than you’ll know what to do with.”
“And the rest of our deal?” Yamada asked. The hippie scientist agreed to join Pearce Systems and allow Pearce to fund his whale research operations so long as his UUV was never deployed for military purposes. Pearce was happy to comply. Like he told Yamada when he first met him, he really liked whales, too. Especially if you cook them just right. Fortunately for Pearce, Kenji had a sense of humor—and a busted bank account.
“Still the deal. Scout’s honor.”
“K, brah. See you in Texas. We talk logistics later. Gotta run.”
“Good luck, Kenji. I’m excited for you. Keep me posted.”
13
Highway 24, Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico
The small convoy of Renault Sherpa 2s climbed the winding snake of asphalt known as Highway 24. It curved its way through the rugged, pine-covered mountains of eastern Sinaloa, not far from the bordering state of Durango. The road wasn’t heavily traveled. The only traffic was the occasional pickup or eighteen-wheeler hauling farm goods down the mountain from one of the ranchitas farther up.
Sixteen Infantería de Marina, among Mexico’s fiercest and most loyal soldiers in the drug war, were packed into the French-manufactured Humvee-style vehicles, each carrying a roof-mounted Heckler & Koch HK21 7.62mm machine gun. Oscar Obregón was in the lead command vehicle, standing inside the open-air weapon station. His helmet was equipped with a video camera providing a live “first-person shooter” broadcast. He was a freshly minted subteniente, the equivalent of a second lieutenant in American rank. Like all good young officers, he was determined to outperform on his first assignment with the unit.
A Hughes OH-6 Cayuse light observation helicopter provided overhead visual security. A video camera mounted on the helicopter provided an additional live feed of the events. It was piloted by another Marine lieutenant and the battalion commander, Colonel Israel Cruzalta, the most highly decorated man in the service. His unit had been responsible for more drug busts and weapons seizures, and had engaged in more firefights, than any other military or police unit in all of Mexico. He had inherited a deep, broad chest and a cleft chin from his German grandfather, along with his height and bald head, which, combined with his dark eyes and complexion, gave him a fearsome, commanding presence.
The convoy was racing toward one of Castillo’s hideouts, thanks to a tip received by the Mexican Federal Police. A Marina forward observation team had been put on the ground two days earlier, and they had confirmed the presence of Ulises and Aquiles Castillo as recently as thirty minutes ago. The forward observation post also kept a live camera feed on the compound. They had identified the presence of two additional adult males, each armed with AK-47 assault rifles, who were alternating duty in twelve-hour shifts. Their long-range camera had also caught sight of two attractive young women in the compound, usually in bikinis and lounging near the outdoor pool. As the observation team reported, the buxom young women were definitely unarmed, but they were packing some serious heat.
In short, security at the compound was extremely light and no match for the two squads of highly trained combat infantry racing toward them.
All three live feeds were being fed simultaneously to monitors in command centers located at both Los Pinos and
the White House.
The Situation Room, the White House
As soon as she was notified the convoy was en route, President Myers ordered her secretary to cancel all of her afternoon appointments because of “illness.” She didn’t want to set the town talking again with the news of yet another emergency meeting at the White House.
Madrigal, Early, Jeffers, and Vice President Greyhill were the only other people in the room with her watching the live feed on three separate monitors.
“They call that a resort compound? I see a shooting range, an obstacle course, and an outbuilding that looks like a barracks to me. Are they sure there’s no one else up on that hill?” Madrigal asked.
“They’d better be sure. Otherwise, they’re going to need a whole lot more firepower,” Early said.
Obregón’s helmet camera bounced and jostled as the stiff suspension of the Sherpa 2 rattled over the uneven mountain road. His head was on a swivel, and the camera swept in broad circles frequently on the lookout for trouble.
Occasionally Obregón’s camera ducked down into the personnel compartment where three young Marines—a corporal and two privates—were riding in bone-jarring silence.
“I’m getting motion sickness watching that guy’s helmet cam,” Jeffers said.
“How much longer, Mike?” Myers asked.
Early checked his watch. “Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
“Why couldn’t the Castillos have just come in?” Myers said.
No one answered. They all knew the question was rhetorical.
Cruzalta’s OH-6 Cayuse
The helicopter rotors hammered against the cloudless blue sky, spun by a Rolls-Royce turboshaft engine roaring overhead.
Los Pinos had decided to run the op during the day because of the terrain. It was closer to an arrest than an assault. If it had been an assault, the soldiers would have gone in at night. The Marines’ night-vision capabilities gave them a significant advantage over most opponents, though syndicate soldiers had been known to deploy the same technology on occasion.
