Target Utopia

by Dale Brown

  The aircraft shook as he fired, the doors to the bays opening and then closing as he pushed down his nose. Gravity seemed to welcome him. His airspeed jumped. He saw the other two planes some 8,000 feet below him, but he was too far off to fire the Sidewinders.

  Rather than flipping over as Turk had suggested he pushed steeper into the dive, sure he would be able to close the distance before the planes reacted. But he was wrong; the UAVs seemed to disappear, and before he could react he realized they had managed to pull farther down toward the terrain, temporarily getting lost in the clutter.

  Cowboy started a turn, guessing that the UAVs would be ahead on his right. The F-35’s radar found them behind him, at very low altitude. He tried to turn toward them but they were already moving away. He started to follow but then saw one of the drones that had split off earlier angling toward him from above. It had worked to within five miles and was closing fast; had he stayed on his course it would have come down right on his tail.

  He lit flares and rolled right. Sweat poured from every pore in his body. Cowboy realized he’d made a mistake, leaving himself vulnerable. His RWR lit with a targeting radar—the drone was trying to get him.

  It was the signal he’d needed, but it came at the wrong time—now he was the vulnerable one. Cowboy jerked his stick, tightening the turn so hard that he nearly blacked out, the g forces building so quickly that even his suit couldn’t quite keep up. But the maneuver broke the UAV’s grip. He saw it pass overhead, within range of his missile for a fleeting second.

  Cowboy couldn’t react quickly enough, and the aircraft flew off. Basher Three, not close enough to take a shot, banked south to continue guarding the base.

  It was over. All six of the UAVs were gone, moving back in the direction they had come.

  The pilot let out a string of curses. His radar missiles had missed and he felt like a dope, beaten by robots.

  “You all right?” Turk asked over the radio.

  He replied with a curse.

  “It’s all right,” said Turk. “They wanted to see how you would react. They’ll use that for the next encounter.”

  “Bastards.”

  “We’re tracking them. You did good,” Turk added. “You did real good.”

  “Then why do I feel like an idiot?”

  12

  The Cube

  EVEN AS THE encounter ended, the staff of experts in the Cube were analyzing the performance of the UAVs. The evidence was now overwhelming that Rubeo was right—they were using technology developed for the Flighthawks.

  They had a traitor on their hands.

  “Theft is not the only explanation,” said Jonathon Reid, standing with Breanna and Rubeo at a console in the front of the situation room. “They may have salvaged the C3 automated pilot units from one of the Flighthawk aircraft lost in Africa last year.”

  “All of the computer units are accounted for,” said Rubeo, who had watched the raw video of the encounter with a deeply distressed face. “More to the point—the only transmissions the elint Global Hawk recorded were brief bursts between them. They’re using something similar to the system the Gen 4 Flighthawks use. We just don’t know what it is yet.”

  “But it’s a good bet it’s exactly the same,” suggested Breanna.

  Rubeo scowled. “It may be better.”

  “That’s quite an indictment of your organization,” said Jonathon.

  Rubeo looked as if he’d been shot.

  “We need to find out who these people are,” said Jonathon. “And what else they have.”

  “Why they’re doing it would be good to know as well,” said Breanna.

  “I believe I know the who, at least,” said Rubeo. “Lloyd Braxton. And it may be related to a movement he calls Kallipolis.”

  “Kalli-what?” asked Reid.

  “Kallipolis. It has to do with Plato and a movement of elites toward a perfect world beyond government.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Reid.

  “That’s Braxton,” said Breanna.

  RUBEO’S PEOPLE HAD prepared a short PowerPoint summarizing Braxton. A poor white kid from the hardscrabble area of Oakland, he’d won a scholarship to Stanford at the tender age of fifteen, graduated at eighteen, and gone across the country to MIT to work in their famous robotics lab. Two years later after winning numerous awards for work combining AI with robotics, he was recruited for a Dreamland project that adapted the physical design of the original Flighthawk to make it more suitable to combat conditions. He stayed to work on projects ranging from the unmanned bomber to nanotechnology. The ability to work across such a broad spectrum of areas was the rule rather than the exception at Dreamland, but Braxton was a standout intellect even there.

  What was unusual were his politics, or more precisely his antipolitics. They were as unconventional as his mind. And he wasn’t shy about sharing them.

  Braxton had flown in the back of several Megafortress test beds Breanna piloted, and she had interacted with him in any number of debriefings and planning sessions. They’d chatted numerous times at parties and other social occasions. He constantly intermingled thoughts about Plato and philosopher kings with g forces and artificial intelligence.

  But that wasn’t why Breanna remembered Lloyd Braxton.

  He’d had a huge crush on Jennifer Gleason, who at the time was not only the number two scientist at Dreamland, but was engaged to Breanna’s father, Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian, the commander of Dreamland.

  Crush didn’t begin to describe it. Even obsession didn’t quite capture his behavior. Braxton did everything from asking to be assigned to her projects to slyly following her around the base. Things reached a peak when Jennifer came home to her on-base apartment one night and found him inside.

  Colonel Bastian—he hadn’t been promoted to general yet—had him escorted off the base the next day.

  But even though the incident was reported in his employee file, Braxton retained his top level security clearance. Not only that, but he was hired almost immediately by DARPA, the Defense Department’s equivalent of Dreamland, and later by the CIA. It wasn’t clear what he’d done—most of the CIA projects were so highly classified that even Reid wasn’t familiar with what lay behind the nondescript names they were given—but it was obvious that they had to do with artificial intelligence and its application.

  Since then, Braxton had left government service five years ago to start a firm in Silicon Valley. Contrary to what his background might have predicted, the company made toys—high-tech racing cars for boys that tied into games on iPads, and a miniature balloon-based UAV that kids could fly in their backyards. The toys didn’t sell particularly well—he was underfinanced, having found it impossible get backers—but the technology the toys exploited was considered so valuable that four different global companies bid to buy the entire company. Braxton cashed out with over ten billion dollars—not the biggest payout in Silicon Valley history, but up there. And it didn’t hurt that Braxton not only got all the money, as he lacked partners, but paid no taxes on the money, thanks to an extremely clever set of maneuvers that included his renouncing American citizenship and moving his company’s headquarters overseas.

  In many ways Lloyd Braxton had lived the American Dream. Starting from conditions that could be best described as horrible—his mother was a crack addict—he had become a billionaire. But along the way he’d developed a massive contempt for others who weren’t quite as smart as he was. It was an extreme arrogance not just toward other scientists, but toward the human race in general.

  After selling his company, he founded a think tank called Kallipolis, a reference to a mythical utopian island ruled by “philosopher kings” in the ancient Greek philosophy espoused by Plato. Ostensibly designed to advance Plato’s teaching that the world should be run by the best and brightest, in practice it preached Darwinist anarchy, where the “rabble” were to be left to fend for themselves while the “best” were equally free to do whatever they wanted. Seminars were hel
d on the best way to leave behind the ties of government authority, which amounted to everything from taxes and speeding laws to banking regulations designed to prevent terrorism.

  Kallipolis wasn’t simply against intrusive government, something most people could agree with. The think tank and the circle that developed around it found no legitimacy for any form of government. Governments were anachronisms left over from the days before high-speed communication, lightning-fast transportation, and high-tech computing. Borders were archaic, and meaningless to the wealthy and intelligent elite. Which of course Braxton and the people associated with Kallipolis were.

  The group claimed governments had no right to arrest anyone or defend their borders. According to Kallipolis—or at least the speakers and organizations it gave money to—the best people should divorce themselves entirely from government and the rest of the human race. Only when they did that would humankind evolve to the next level.

  What exactly this next level was remained to be seen. Braxton never said explicitly. But he had hired a ghost writer to write a science fiction novel, privately published as an enhanced e-book, that depicted a unified world ruled by a small, brilliantly intelligent elite.

  “Proles”—about ninety-nine percent of the population—lived in peaceful harmony, tending to robots and computers designed by the elite and manufactured by other robots and computers. The peaceful harmony was enhanced by ecstasylike drugs that heightened the pleasure centers of the brain.

  In the book, things went off the rails when one of the proles stopped taking his medicine. Unlike standard sci-fi fare, where the rebel prole would have been the good guy rebelling against a jackbooted society, in Braxton’s book he was the bad guy, hunted to the end and eventually killed.

  Asked by a reporter whether the book encapsulated his philosophy of life, Braxton demurred. “Fiction is fiction,” he’d said. “Things happen in fantasy that don’t in real life.”

  But his portfolio of investments—carefully researched by Rubeo when he suspected the connection—suggested otherwise. Braxton bought out a number of small high-tech companies, and was rumored to have purchased land offshore. He had also become very media-adverse; a thorough search of Web news turned up no articles on him in the past eighteen months, and no public statements by him in the past twenty-four.

  “THIS IS A new sort of threat,” said Breanna, “an extragovernmental organization stirring up trouble in a foreign country. We’ve never faced this before.”

  “There are precedents in the nineteenth century,” said Rubeo.

  “Is he capable of funding all this without backing from China or Iran?” asked Reid.

  “It would appear so.”

  “The Islam connection,” said Reid, referring to the fact that the 30 May Movement in Malaysia was Sunni Muslim. “Maybe Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf states are helping.”

  “Braxton doesn’t care for religion,” said Rubeo. “It’s the opiate of the people, to borrow the phrase from Marx. He despises religion nearly as much as governments.”

  “It’s hard to believe private people could put this together,” said Reid. “And why?”

  Rubeo gestured at his computer. “If you want to read their manifestos, be my guest. In any event, he is certainly capable intellectually of guiding the construction of this technology. He had access to the data. And he has the money to pull it all off.”

  “I think we have to lay this out for the President,” said Breanna.

  “Agreed,” said Reid.

  “YOU TWO ALWAYS present me with interesting problems,” said the President when they reached her via secure video a half hour later. She was in her private office at the White House, due to leave for Air Force One in an hour. She was heading that morning to a NASA facility in Texas to unveil the start of a manned mission to Mars.

  “Regardless of what the intentions are here,” said Reid, “the technology is impressive, and in the wrong hands will present considerable problems. Used as terror weapons, these aircraft would be difficult to stop.”

  Reid detailed more of the possible links to Dreamland, which had already been suspected and outlined. The connection to Ray Rubeo and his billion-dollar companies—even if it was indirect—would undoubtedly become a weapon for the administration’s political enemies. Rubeo and his company’s lucrative contracts had lately become a target for critics. There was absolutely nothing untoward going on, but the secrecy the firms operated in and Rubeo’s prickly and hermitlike public personality made for easy speculation.

  But that was a matter for the future.

  “The Chinese are not directly involved?” asked the President.

  “We believe not,” said Reid. “But I would have to assume they will grow more and more curious. We can’t rule out a situation where they cut some sort of deal with either Braxton or perhaps the Malaysians to capture the technology, as they did with Iran and the stealth drone.”

  “So, Breanna, Jonathon, what are we proposing?” asked the President.

  “We want to pursue them,” said Breanna. “Wherever that may take us.”

  “We’re not sure who is protecting them,” explained Reid. “And the Chinese carrier task force that was north of the area has moved south. We’ll try to avoid a confrontation with them, but we can’t make any guarantees.”

  “Avoid confronting the Chinese, if at all possible,” said the President. “I have enough problems with Congress. But get to the bottom of this. And if it’s our technology, get it back. I’ll deal with the Chinese, and Congress, if it comes to it.”

  13

  Malaysia

  DANNY HADN’T SLEPT in close to forty hours, and while that was nowhere near his record, he was so tired that his arms ached when he raised them. Rubbing his eyes, he refilled his coffee cup, then walked to a table at the far corner of the mess tent. Pulling his tablet computer from his pants pocket—the machine and its seven-inch screen fit snuggly, but it did fit—he sat down, pressed his thumb on the reader and stared at the camera just long enough for the retina scanner to ID him and show the password screen.

  It took two tries and three sips of coffee before he got the password in right; the screen popped to life and he started scanning his secure e-mail.

  The first message was from Breanna: the Tigershark and the ground team were en route, due to arrive within twenty-four hours, as was another surveillance aircraft. They would operate out of Sibu airport, about ninety miles north of the Marines in an area considered far less open to guerrilla attack.

  The next e-mail was from Breanna and Reid, a formal authorization allowing Danny to call on the Marines for help in an assault on any base believed to be harboring or controlling the UAVs. It included the name of a Pentagon official who had been tasked as a liaison. This was a bit of bureaucracy Danny didn’t particularly care for—in effect, a general several thousand miles away had been assigned as a gatekeeper and de facto impediment to the people who were actually on the scene.

  Breanna had clearly anticipated that Danny would object to this, and added two sentences to the effect that, once the overall plan was agreed to, General Grasso could be consulted if there were additional roadblocks.

  The general is a facilitator only, Breanna wrote. Danny had to smile—he could hear her saying that in his head as he read the words. But keep him in the loop.

  “Hey, Colonel.” Turk sat down across from him, a tray full of fresh bacon, scrambled eggs, and potatoes in his hands.

  “Where’d you get the chow?” Danny asked. “I thought the kitchen was closed.”

  “Cowboy’s friends with the cook. Want some?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take mine. I’ll be right back.”

  Turk was up and gone before he could object. Danny spun the tray around but waited until he saw Turk returning from the kitchen area, a big grin on his face and an even heavier tray in his hands.

  “These Marines know how to take care of their people,” said the pilot, plopping down. “Even found
me a cinnamon roll.”

  “You joining the Corps now?” joked Danny, digging into his eggs.

  “I might. If they always eat like this.”

  Danny thought of bringing up Turk’s request for a transfer but decided this wasn’t the time. He scanned the rest of his e-mails quickly; they were routine reports on training and procurement, nothing exciting, even if they were critical to the operation of the ground team. Whiplash was in the middle of an expansion program and so many details had to be taken care of that Danny needed another administrative aide. In fact, he’d already been approved for one, but had simply not been able to find the time to begin interviewing.

  “So, any word from Washington?” asked Turk after Danny shut the tablet down and put it aside.

  “Whiplash Team Two and the Tigershark will be here in twenty-four hours,” said Danny. “We have other surveillance assets en route. I want to set up an assault plan that will let us go in as soon as we know where they’re flying from.”

  “Great.”

  “Which means you should be getting some sleep,” added Danny.

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Danny smiled sardonically. He was tempted to give Turk a lecture about the need for him to be in top condition mentally and physically, but held back; he didn’t like being a hypocrite.

  “What do we do in the meantime?” asked Turk.

  “You’re going to sleep.”

  “The Malaysians have another platoon coming up this morning,” said Turk. “They have a target to hit tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “They managed to get some intel off one of the prisoners. They want to keep up their momentum. They think they have the rebels on the run.”

  “Where’s this target?”

  “They say there’s a village about twenty miles southwest of where they were that the rebels are using. It’s close to the border with Indonesia. It may even be over it.”