Act of War

by Dale Brown

  “Yeah, but what was most interesting: I don’t think Jefferson told Chamberlain anything except us having a disagreement about something other than CID.”

  “So?”

  “So it means that maybe Jefferson isn’t spying for Chamberlain after all,” Jason said. “If he was, and Jefferson then finds out we’re tapping FBI servers and satellite datalinks, he’d have us kicked off this project so fast our heads would spin. Jefferson is a fossil, but one thing’s for sure—he has a personal code of conduct, and he follows it to the letter, no matter who he’s talking with. He may be Chamberlain’s shill, but his loyalty is with the task force.”

  “He probably figures you’ll shoot yourself in the foot anyway—no need to rat you out,” Ari said.

  “You’re the one who’ll shoot herself in the foot, once you start carrying bullets in that thing.”

  “You pansy—guns are perfectly safe once you learn a few basics on gun safety and learn how it works,” Ari said, holstering the weapon. “I’ve field-stripped this gun and put it back together three times today, and the third time the gun was under a towel—I did it by feel. It’s one hundred percent safe even with a round in the chamber. Hundreds of police units and dozens of nations use this gun as their primary sidearm.”

  “To tell the truth, Sergeant Moore seemed a little like a mama’s boy the first time I met him.”

  “He got this gun from his mother, as a birthday present.”

  “Doug gave you the gun he got from his mother? Sounds like you two are engaged to be married already!”

  “Bite me, J.”

  A woman walked up to the table, notepad in hand. “Anything else I can get for you guys?” she asked.

  “Just the check, please,” Jason said, finishing off the last of his barbecue sandwich.

  “Nothing else at all? A doggie bag, a refill on your sodas—or how about a damsel in distress that was rescued by a robot knight in shining armor?”

  Jason’s eyes bugged out in surprise, and his eyes snapped up at the waitress—only to find Kristen Skyy standing there, smiling at him, pretending to be a waitress with a reporter’s steno book in her hands. She was wearing a faded leather bomber jacket, a gray scarf, faded blue jeans, snakeskin boots, and an Albuquerque Isotopes minor league baseball team cap, obviously dressed to look like one of the locals. “Hi there, Major Jason Richter, Dr. Ariadna Vega. Good to see you two again.”

  Jason got to his feet and gave Kristen a hug, and she returned it with a kiss on his cheek very close to the corner of his mouth that sent a shiver of electricity through his entire body. He led her to his side of the booth as Ari moved over to let him sit beside her. “This is quite a surprise,” Jason said after he and Kristen locked eyes for a few moments after they were all settled in—long enough that no one noticed Ariadna’s amused grin as she watched the two unabashedly gazing at one another. “What a coincidence. What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Are you kidding me, J?” Ari interjected, rolling her eyes in mock disbelief at Richter’s apparent naiveté. “This is no coincidence. She tracked us down.”

  Kristen looked into Jason’s eyes, trying to figure out if Richter was baiting her or not; she decided not to test him. “Yes, I did track you down,” she said with a smile. “Hope you don’t mind. I should have called, I guess, but when I got the information I decided to come right away.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “I have my sources,” Kristen said. “But I assure you, it wasn’t hard. My producers don’t even really have to lie—they usually mention that they work for Kristen Skyy or SATCOM One News and that’s enough. But most of the civilized world saw us together on television, and they might figure we’re already an…item?”

  “And you want to know more about CID?”

  “Of course,” Kristen said. “Your technology is simply amazing. It could revolutionize not just armed combat but policing high-crime neighborhoods, search and rescue, relief activities…”

  “Sounds like the usual spiel from our public affairs office,” Ari said suspiciously. Kristen shrugged, admitting the fact. “What’s the real reason you’re here?”

  Kristen smiled at him and nodded, apparently deciding to tell him everything—she obviously figured Ariadna would challenge her on anything she thought might be spin. “My sources say that the White House is planning on starting a secret terrorist-hunting unit, in response to the Kingman City attack,” Kristen said. “They’re preparing some sort of major antiterrorist policy statement, and they want this secret unit ready to go once the President makes the announcement.

  “Now, if I was going to build a secret military antiterrorist force, I’d start with CID. You’re not at Fort Polk anymore; the Army Research Lab says you’re on temporary duty but they won’t say where, and not available for interviews. But while we’re at Fort Polk’s visitor’s center waiting to talk to someone who can tell us more about you, one of my staff members observed two civilian tractor-trailer trucks, which looked like they were loading gear up from the building where your office is. The trucks are from a moving and storage company in Shreveport, and they headed north on Interstate 49 toward Shreveport—Barksdale Air Force Base, I’m guessing.

  “I have a source who’s an Air Force reservist, flies A-10 Warthogs out of Barksdale, and he tells me that each of the trucks had two twenty-foot steel army camo cargo containers that were loaded aboard an Air Force C-130 transport. He says that Base Ops said the C-130 was heading to Cannon Air Force Base but was not accepting space-available passengers. I head out to Cannon. I can’t get onto the base and public affairs won’t talk to me, but the locals tell me about the secret test ranges west of the base, almost as secret and well guarded as Area 51 in Nevada. They also say this place is a popular hangout for Air Force types. We’ve been watching it for a couple days now. Suddenly—poof, here you are.”

  “You’d make a good intelligence officer—or spy,” Ari said. Jason looked at her but with a weird expression—not anger or exasperation, but with surprise at her comment.

  “I’m a good investigative TV journalist, which most times is the same as being a spy,” Kristen said. “Anyway, here we are. So, what can you tell me?”

  “Not anything more than what you know right now,” Ari said. “We’re here. Sorry you came all this way just to learn that.”

  “Are you involved in a secret government antiterrorist unit?”

  “If we told you, it wouldn’t be ‘secret’ anymore, would it?”

  “This conversation is strictly off the record,” Kristen said. “It’s deep background, nothing more.”

  “Does anyone ever buy that line?” Ari asked. “It doesn’t mean a thing except what you reporters want it to mean.”

  “What it means, Dr. Vega, is that I would never use anything you told me in any article, not even if I ‘quoted unnamed sources,’ ” Kristen said. “I would use your information as a stepping-off point to finding information from other sources. It lets me know if I’m getting warmer or colder, that’s all.”

  “And it’s guaranteed never to get back to the source, huh?”

  Both Jason and Ari could see Kristen Skyy finally putting up her professional’s steel-curtain defensive shield. “No, Ari, I can’t guarantee anything,” she said stonily. “But many times it protects a person who has something to say and badly wants to say it. Information is purposely leaked all the time in exactly this way. The press gets the story it wants, and the government or groups get the information they want disseminated without revealing the source—namely, themselves. Governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals take advantage of the constitutional and professional protection the press can provide. I have kings and terrorists alike agree to make deep background comments every day.”

  “So you just broadcast any information you receive from unnamed sources?”

  “Of course not,” Kristen retorted. “We realize why the information is being leaked: it’s propaganda, pure and simple. We alw
ays double-and triple-check information we receive with other sources. I’ve already received deep background information about a new government military antiterror unit being considered; you are one of the corroborating sources. I’ll need another couple sources to verify your information, and on and on it goes. But I’ll go to prison before I reveal my sources.”

  Ariadna was obviously unconvinced, and she scowled a little at Jason when he didn’t decline Kristen’s request. What’s the matter with you? Jason? she asked him silently. “We’d better go, J,” she prompted him, none too subtly.

  “Wait,” Jason said.

  Ari couldn’t believe it. “We can’t talk to her, J,” Ari said emphatically. “We’re already in hot water.”

  “Oh?” Kristen asked Jason, her eyes dancing. “Stirring up trouble, are we?”

  “Hold on, Ari,” Jason said. He turned to Kristen, his expression earnest and troubled at the same time. “Here’s the deal, Kristen: we have information on a possible terror cell that might be responsible for Kingman City…”

  “Jeez, J…” Ari breathed.

  “…and we can’t verify it—the various government agencies won’t share intelligence with us,” Jason went on. “We have the technology we need to move on this group right now, but we need verification of the group’s existence, location, and strength.”

  “And you want me to get it for you?” Kristen asked. “You have any information to go on?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t do it yourself?”

  “There appear to be…political roadblocks.” He spread his hands and added, “And I obtained some of this information by surreptitious means.”

  “You scientists and your five-dollar words,” Kristen said, smiling. “You mean you stole some juicy information but you can’t verify it and you certainly can’t ask the people you stole it from to do it.” Jason smiled like the cat caught with the bird in its mouth. “Fair enough. What’s in it for me?”

  “A piece of the action,” Jason said. “Exclusive firsthand coverage of the first American high-tech joint civil-military antiterrorist assault force in action.”

  “Jason!” Ari exclaimed. “You can’t invite the media along on a secret mission—especially when it’s not authorized!”

  “It’ll be our mission,” Jason said. “CID alone.”

  “Sounds very tempting,” Kristen said.

  “I’ll bet it does!” Ari interjected. “It could also land us all in prison.”

  “Not if we get the bad guys,” Jason said. “Kristen, you have to promise me that if you can’t or don’t help us find the terrorists, then you sit on all the information you gather on us and our other units and their missions forever—no ‘deep background,’ no anything. It stays with you to the grave.”

  “Unless I get information from other sources…”

  “That’s not good enough,” Jason said. “I don’t want to blow any chances for the powers-that-be to find the terrorists and go after them their way. You either help us to close in on the terrorists, chase them out of hiding or plant them six feet under, or you forget we ever had this conversation.”

  “You sound like you don’t trust me, Major,” Kristen said playfully. “I’m hurt.”

  “That’s the way it’s going to have to be, Kristen,” Jason said seriously, but inwardly he was thinking: boy, I’ll bet that smile opens a lot of doors for her. She still appeared as if she wanted to argue. “You’ll have front-row seats to the future of war fighting, Kristen,” he added. “You saw CID in action once in Kingman City—but you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  It didn’t take any more convincing. “I’m in, Jason,” she said, extending a hand. Jason shook it. “Tell me what you got.”

  “Two words: GAMMA and Brazil.”

  Kristen looked surprised, then skeptical. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, that’s it? That’s all you have? And I was getting pretty excited there for a minute!”

  “Who is GAMMA?” asked Jason.

  “GAMMA is a radical environmental terrorist group formed in central Brazil years ago that opposes what they call oppressive multinational corporations, mostly big oil, and specifically TransGlobal Energy,” Kristen explained. “But they’re small potatoes, Jason. They’ve harassed TGE for years, mostly in South America—recently in fact. But they take great pains to avoid human casualties—I don’t believe GAMMA would ever use a nuclear weapon, even if they had access to one. And they haven’t been responsible for any activities north of the equator that I’m aware of.”

  “Our intel says otherwise.”

  “Are you sure you’re getting reliable information? You sure no one’s feeding you bogus information just to throw you off the trail of the real terrorists?”

  “Like I said, we obtained this information by ourselves, our own means—it wasn’t contained in a briefing or field report.”

  “If you think it’s so good, why don’t you stay plugged in to this source?”

  “Someone blew the whistle on us, and we had to shut down or be cut out completely.”

  “I’m surprised you weren’t busted, given the security climate around the country these days,” Kristen observed. “The feds would just as soon throw you in jail first and then investigate, just to be on the safe side.”

  “We’ve managed to keep it in-house for now, but if we kept the pipeline open and got caught again, they would definitely lock us up and throw away the keys,” Jason said. “Can you help us?”

  “Well, you sure didn’t give me much to go on,” Kristen said, “but I do have pretty good sources in the Brazilian paramilitary, the PME, which is their combined municipal police and interior military. Problem is, when they find a terrorist group, drug smugglers, poachers, insurgents, or anyone else stepping outside the law—or on their own turf—the PME tends to interrogate, torture, kill, display, and claim victory—they rarely jail anyone, and they don’t share too much information outside their provincial headquarters.”

  “You seem to know a lot about them,” Ari observed.

  “I go to Brazil a lot, and I don’t just hang out at Copacabana or Ipanema,” Kristen said. A brief image of Kristen Skyy strolling down the famous clothing-optional Brazilian beaches in nothing but a thong and suntan oil flashed in Jason’s mind, but he forced it away—unfortunately not fast enough to keep Ari from elbowing him in the ribs. “Fact is, if you have a PME officer on your side, especially a Colonel, you are completely safe from anyone and you can do pretty much whatever you like.”

  “Something tells me,” Ari said, “that you’ve charmed your way into the hearts of a lot of officers.”

  If Kristen Skyy was stung by that remark, she didn’t seem to care. “International broadcast journalism isn’t like sitting in a lab all day and having your professional life judged by lines of computer code, sister—it’s about taking chances, running hard, and not being afraid to take a few shots in the gut to get the story,” she said. “I get the big fish because I’m thorough and fair, not because I sleep around or hand out bigger bribes than the next guy.”

  “Being rich, famous, and beautiful doesn’t hurt.”

  “Dr. Vega, in places like Brazil and most of the real world, the men in charge are richer and more powerful than the presidents of most countries in the world—including the United States—and they suck rich, famous, and beautiful women dry and discard them every week. I would be just another trophy on their walls if I was just a news whore.”

  She turned to Jason and went on: “The only way we’re going to get information from the PME commandants in the provinces is to give them something they don’t already have. They’re already as wealthy as they want to be in their own regions: they are the federal, state, and local government; they can have any woman or any politician they want just for the asking. You can scare them, but they’ll turn on you faster than you can take a breath as soon as you’re out of sight. About the only thing of yours they may want is your robot.”

  “Then let’s not get infor
mation from the commandants,” Jason said. “Ari’s right, Kristen: you’re rich, famous, and beautiful. That might not impress the commandants, but speaking as a lowly field-grade officer, it impresses the hell out of me. I’ll bet there’s a lot of young bucks down there who would love to talk to Kristen Skyy of SATCOM One News and give her anything her heart desires.”

  “Maybe.” She gave Jason another mind-blowing smile and nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Once you find them, we’ll need transportation,” Jason said. “We’ll need a plane big enough to carry a Humvee.”

  “We’re a satellite news organization, Jason, not the Air Mobility Command,” Kristen said. “Why can’t the army fly us down?”

  “If your information is timely, accurate, and actionable, and if I can convince my bosses that we should act, then maybe they can,” Jason said. “But I’m assuming no one will believe us or that no one will support us even if they do believe us. SATCOM One must have jets that fly all over the world all the time that carry thousands of pounds of equipment…”

  “Sure—for the VIPs going on vacation or for coverage of the World Cup, not for me,” Kristen said. “But I do have fairly ready access to a medium jet that can make it around Central and South America with very few customs hassles—assuming the airspace in the United States isn’t shut down and I can fly it out of the country. It can carry a crew of two, six passengers—that means you two and four for me—and all the cargo and supplies we can carry. One full day of flying to get to Brazil, maybe two depending on weather. That’s the best I can do until I have something juicy to show my boss.”

  “That’ll do nicely,” Jason said. “We won’t be able to take our Humvee, but it’ll give us practice in using CID with minimum ground support on a rapid-reaction mission.”

  “And my photographers and I will have total access to all your activities, right?”

  “As soon as we load up our equipment in your plane, yes,” Jason said. “But we get a look at your information first. If it’s good, we’re on.”

  “How are you going to get your stuff off the base?”