Wasp (Uncommon Enemies: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by Fiona Quinn

  “Sir, excuse me,” Tad interrupted. “I have that information about travel routes that you asked me for. Also, I’ve received a file on the reporter.”

  “Let’s have that,” Titus said.

  Brian moved toward the whiteboard and snapped up a marker. Zoe wondered if this information would give her a better handle on what she’d missed while she was in the sleep pod.

  Tad put up an image of the DC area with a red line. “All right. We have him starting at the address that’s listed on his driver’s license.”

  Zoe shot a questioning glance at Gage. He turned toward her and leaned in to whisper in her ear, “We’re talking about the prisoner we took from the exfil house this afternoon.”

  “He travelled to Lily’s work just as she would typically be arriving there,” Tad said.

  “We don’t have information from Lily’s GPS yet?” Titus asked.

  Prescott leaned forward. “I haven’t heard back from my office yet.”

  Lily. How did Lily figure in to the attack on the little house? Zoe wondered, feeling completely lost.

  “He’s taking his car and not following her on foot. I imagine that he had a tracker in her phone, to keep him safer from detection if he’s working as a one-man team.”

  Tad put up another picture.

  Gage tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “I’m wondering about the possibility of a tracker not only on Lily’s phone and possibly in her other effects, as well. For example, her watch. And if they are, are they similar to those found on Zoe’s phone and watch?”

  “Can you get hold of that for us?” Titus asked Prescott.

  Prescott pulled out his phone. “I’ll text my colleague to jump on it.”

  “In the next photo I put up, we can tell from this street shot,” Tad used a laser to indicate the Mercedes, “that the guy sat outside of the office park until zero nine forty hours. At that point, he went to the gardens and parked at the far north corner.”

  As Prescott slid his phone back in his pocket, he asked, “How many entrances are there to the garden?”

  “Four,” Tad replied. “Two on the east side, one on the south and the one on the north. I would guess that Lily entered the garden at the northeastern corner, because that’s where the Metro line lets out. There’s a large fountain toward the center that would be a good landmark for a meeting place of two strangers.”

  “Schultz got there at what time?” Gage asked.

  “Zero nine fifty hours. Now the audio tape between Lily and Bunsinger only lasted four and a half minutes. Schultz didn’t follow Lily as she left. He stayed in place for another half-hour. When he left, he didn’t go back to following Lily either. He went home, where he landed for ten minutes, then he went to his office, where he stayed for fifteen minutes. He left town, and we had to switch to satellite imagery, which indicated his next location was here.” The red point of his laser wand circled a barn. “That’s a farm in Maryland, and his car hasn’t left since.”

  “What do you think he was doing hanging out in the park for so long when it’s twenty degrees outside?” Prescott asked. “I’m thinking he put his sights on that envelope in the reporter’s hands. Lynx said the reporter died of a heart attack. The guy could have had the attack after Lily left, and Schultz walked right up and took the envelope.”

  “Or he could have confronted the reporter and the sheer threat might have put Bunsinger into cardiac arrest,” Tad offered. “I’m opening the file on his death now. Give me a second to scan it.”

  Prescott tossed his pen in the air and caught it. “That time frame makes me believe the PI took the envelope. What he did with it is going to be the real question.”

  “Run with that thought,” Titus said.

  “He’s not on Billings’s payroll anymore. Is he working the case for his own benefit? Is he trying to blackmail the senator? I doubt it. His unit attacked Zoe and killed Lily just hours later. One would assume that the affair would be revealed through her death. Is Schultz totally loyal to his unit? With something that big in hand, why didn’t he drive straight to his commander? Why did he make a pit stop at his apartment and his office before heading to the farm? That’s where I’m assuming they were meeting up for the later events of the night.”

  “He could have faxed them. Scanned them into a computer,” Tad offered.

  “Is that how you’d handle this kind of sensitive material? What would you do, Gage?”

  “Head straight to my commander and put the envelope in his hand. I wouldn’t have opened it or looked at it.”

  “Thorn?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Brainiack?”

  “Same.”

  “There you have it,” Prescott concluded. “My guess is this guy thought about the dollar amounts involved and started salivating. Developed an appetite for his own fat bank account. He didn’t have to know exactly what he was going to do, he only needed to be tempted to keep those documents for himself. Blackmail? Extortion? He may need time to process, form a plan. But I’d bet my badge they’re in his possession.”

  Titus held up his hand. “Agreed. We need to get our hands on that envelope.” He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Titus here, wake up, sleeping beauty. Brainiack is going to text you some information—there’s an apartment address I need you to shake, and if that’s not successful, an office.”

  “Are we going in quiet?” came a crisp, male military voice that didn’t sound to Zoe at all like someone who was just dragged from his bunk.

  “I don’t care if either space looks like it went through an earthquake when you’re done. Walls, floors, ceilings, I want it thorough. I need you and the rest of the team to put the pedal down and bring us back a large manila envelope. The contents will have to do with Montrim Industries, Israel, and the CIA. This is a time-sensitive, code orange piece of intel. We’ll send search warrants to the car fax as soon as they’re signed.”

  “Roger. We’re on it.”

  Titus ended the call. “Brainiack, send Honey and Dagger the addresses and get legal moving on the warrants. You done scanning, Nutsbe?”

  “Yes, sir. Colin Bunsinger has had known heart issues for the last six years. Recently, his doctors recommended bypass surgery. He put surgery on hold because he had a cold. Bunsinger was on medical leave from his position at the Washington Post. His family had no idea why he was at that park at that time of day.”

  “I bet no one thought to be at the park in that kind of cold,” Zoe said quietly.

  “Did they give time of death?” Prescott asked.

  “A jogger running in the park over her lunch break found his body around thirteen hundred hours and called the paramedics. Bunsinger was pronounced dead on the scene. They can’t specify the time of death at this point because of the temperature.”

  “They called the M.E. in?” Gage asked.

  “The medical examiner took him back to the morgue where he was identified by family members. Since he wore a medical alert bracelet, after speaking to the family, the family doctor signed off on the death certificate as natural causes. No autopsy.”

  “Prescott, can you find out if amongst the personal effects there happened to be a manila envelope?”

  “Yep, I’ll call from the hallway. Take notes if anything interesting comes up while I’m out there. I’ll check on the GPS update too.”

  Zoe leaned over and asked Gage what this was about.

  “Lily was passing information about BIOMIST, sound technology, and wasps to a reporter on the morning of her death. Subsequent to the meeting, the reporter died. They were being followed by Senator Billings’s private investigator, though Billings wasn’t working with him at that point.”

  Zoe’s stomach dropped. “He got information about wasps and then just so happened to drop dead of a heart attack?”

  “Zoe? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  Gage’s voice came from a long way away. The whole room was swimming in front of her. Her system was simply not equipped for th
is level of intrigue. How did Gage do this day in and day out?

  “Okay, you’re looking a little better, you went gray on me all of a sudden. What gives?”

  “I’m not sure that this man’s death was natural. But there’s no way to prove otherwise. It just is what it is,” Zoe responded.

  Titus’s face loomed in front of hers. “I think we need to hear more about this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Zoe

  The fangs of the green snake and the sting of a wasp don’t really make poison

  ~ Chinese proverb

  Gage turned to Zoe and held her gaze for a long moment. He believed in her. He stood with her. And his belief in her reminded Zoe that normally, on most days, she believed in herself too.

  “Let’s start here. Zoe, why were you admitted to the hospital for exhaustion?” he asked quietly.

  “I was working long days and nights on a problem that I couldn’t solve, and I guess it snowballed. I didn’t realize how taxing this all was on my health.”

  “This was the last month or so, right?” Gage was talking to her like she was the only person in the room. She was speaking just to him. No judgement.

  “Yes. The DoD needed Sphecius to be operable in four months’ time. They had a high-priority project underway. They said it meant the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people. It’s a lot of pressure, you know?” Zoe’s eyes were glazed with tears. “I felt personally responsible for the outcome. If I could just get my WASP operable, people would live. Families would stay whole.”

  “Were you a big part of that program?” Gage asked. “Do you know what the project is all about?”

  “No, I only know that there was a push to get it done.”

  “Who was pushing you?”

  “The messages were being sent through Colonel Guthrie, he’s the director of my project and liaisons with the Pentagon.”

  “Okay, good. Let’s start with DARPA—what role do you play there?

  “DARPA is headquartered in Arlington, VA. It’s located near the Montrim industrial park. While I do my work at Montrim, I’m paid by DARPA. It’s a little complicated. DARPA pays me for the use of BIOMIST, and that covers my research expenses and affords me my living wages. I’m working on a project that DARPA is interested in using. But while I lease them the use of the end mechanism, the intellectual property remains mine—the robotics and the software.

  “DARPA was put into place so that the American government, with an eye to military applications, could address challenges spanning the scientific spectrum. Colonel Guthrie is a program director. Normally, I would have a program manager I would be accountable to. But because of Colonel Guthrie’s and my longstanding relationship and his particular interest in supporting my scientific discoveries, he was allowed to serve both as my manager and my director.”

  “And this is outside his normal purview?”

  Zoe wondered why Gage’s brows knit together when he asked that. “Right. Normally his responsibilities are developing the technical direction of study, hiring program managers, overseeing the execution of various programs, things like that. Colonel Guthrie is with the Biological Technologies Office, which is the office that started BIOMIST and with whom I later developed the applications for both the military and the FBI to field test the biomarkers.” Zoe’s gaze travelled the room where the men sat perfectly still and completely quiet.

  Gage’s steady gaze pulled her back to focus on him alone. “But that’s not the project you’re working on now. The project with the deadline.”

  “Yes and no. I’m sorry but none of this is straightforward. You’re going to have to bear with me while I go through it. DARPA asked for my biomarker field test to be extended. They’re afraid that if these machines get into the hands of law enforcement, even though that was the reason for my developing them in the first place, others would reverse engineer them and figure out what was being measured. Or if it went to court, I would be forced to reveal the biomarkers that were being measured. As my machines became public, the rest of the world would be closer to having the same technology.”

  The door opened and Zoe jerked her head around to see who was coming in. Prescott moved into the room and slid into a nearby chair. He gave her a nod.

  Gage touched her knee to get Zoe’s attention. “And we would lose our ability to gather the blood census that we’re accumulating. So what is this new project about? You mentioned wasps.”

  “Okay, so in undergrad I developed the idea of blood biomarker applications. In grad school I also studied biomedical engineering. That’s when I developed the field test. Then I went on to get my PhD in microrobotics.”

  “And you developed a wasp robot?”

  “Its name is WASP, which stands for Winged Analytical Surveillance Project.”

  “That’s quite a leap from biomarkers to robotic wasps.”

  “It is and it isn’t. I was driven by the ethics of innocence. My original projects were meant to help keep people out of prison who didn’t commit a crime, so that the police were freed up to find the people who actually did break the law. A societal win-win. When I was in grad school, I saw news article after news article about how drones were being used to stalk terrorists and that whole compounds were being exploded, only to find out that the intel was old or faulty. Women, children, the elderly, and men who weren’t involved with terrorism were being killed.”

  “And you wanted to stop that from happening.”

  “Of course I did. But that’s naïve, isn’t it? I can’t stop all of it. But if I stopped just one mistake? If I saved even one life? Then I’m protecting innocents.”

  “You thought that you could do this with wasps? I’m going to need you to lead me through this. My mind isn’t coming up with any way for you to save innocent people with a robotic wasp.”

  “I took a class for fun in microrobotics before I decided to continue my studies with a PhD in the subject. I absolutely loved it. It was in that class that I developed a very crude wasp-like structure. My goal was to develop ocular enhancements, so that a tiny lens could send pictures to a computer that could identify and augment what it was seeing, thereby becoming a means of intelligence gathering. It was my goal to develop the eyes. My plan was to develop it to send visual data to someone watching a long way away. I wasn’t able to do that. But as I made progress, I was able to get this robot to send enough information to an external human, functioning as a pilot, to be able to navigate a room, and see basic human shapes.”

  “It needs an operator, like a drone does?”

  “Most of the time. I was worried about the WASP being seen and swatted. Then people would discover that these types of micro robots exist. Colonel Guthrie and DARPA taught me about paranoia and secrecy. I have an override in the computer system. If the WASP believes it is going to be captured or destroyed, it will override the pilot and fly away like an actual wasp. Once it’s safe, it hands the controls back to the pilot.”

  “That’s pretty cool. How would the robot know it was in danger?”

  “Analyzing shadows and detecting speed of movement, and since that’s harder to do at night, in a worst case scenario, if the pilot lost control, the robot’s head contains acid that will melt the WASP into what looks like black, chewed-up gum. No way to tell what it was or how its systems functioned.”

  “All right, you got to a point where your optics could detect structure and basic human form. But you were after a different result.”

  “I couldn’t get my optics to be adequate enough for identification. One day, I had one of those smack myself in the head moments. What was I doing trying to develop these ocular definitions? I was on a fool’s journey. You know, I got caught up in an idea, and it was like I couldn’t see the nose in front of my face. The reason I developed biomarkers was because of the Innocence Project. If you’ll remember, about seventy-five percent of the people that the program proved to be innocent were convicted because of faulty human memory and an inability to dis
criminate human faces. And DARPA wanted to develop BIOMIST because it was having trouble identifying terrorists because of similar cultural dress and facial hair. So why in blazes was I trying to develop a WASP that depended on visual discrimination? Stupid.”

  “But you didn’t tank the project. You came up with a better identification system.”

  “Right, I decided to put the two projects together. A WASP is piloted via ocular apparatus to the possible target. At that point in the project, the pilot could see if the person were male or female. If they were old or young. Basic, basic. Imagine rubbing a thin layer of Vaseline on the inside of your glasses, and sent into a room to find your suspect. That’s what the pilot has to contend with. The goal is to pilot the WASP to whoever they believe is the mark. The WASP lands on the suspect and by inserting a proboscis that punctures the skin, it sucks up a blood sample. At the same time, a second proboscis is inserted into the skin to plant a tiny beacon. The beacon is about half the length of a piece of rice and about that diameter. The weight of the beacon is replaced with the weight of the blood. To the person, it feels like a sting. The WASP must be able to function very quickly and maneuver away. So once the pilot finds the mark, the computer takes over.”

  “What’s the purpose of the beacon?” Prescott asked. His sudden introduction into the conversation made Zoe jump. He put up his hands up in a “sorry” gesture and leaned back.

  “Say the WASP took a blood sample. It flies back to the pilot who takes the blood and applies it to the test strip in the field analyzer. The pilot gets a plus sign. There’s a good chance that they’ve got their terrorist in house. Then they send that info to the Air Force, or whoever wants this guy, and they move in with a bomb, or boots. Preferably boots that can be more surgical about the outcome. How would I be sure that my intel is not already old? It was true in that moment, but the terrorist could leave. Then, not only would I have not helped to get the bad guy, but lots of people might be bombed on my faulty data. And we may think the guy is in there, see the rubble, declare him dead, and yet, he’s still operational. There are still lots of opportunities for bad outcomes.”