by Dusty Miller
Whoever was controlling the boat was far away somewhere. Either that or it was pure robot. A loon pulled up off the lake ahead of him, after a long, splashing take-off run, which was literal in every sense of the word. Their legs went full blast, providing much of the power. It crossed in front of him, two feet off the water and fifty metres out.
“Yeah, get out of here!” His words were lost in the roar of the wind and the howl of the motor. “Crazy bird.”
The thing was still back there, whining away.
Where the lake narrowed the river hooked left. There would be shoals, rocks, the tips of dead trees just breaking the surface with their gnarled and waterlogged root-balls holding bottom.
He pulled out the Beretta.
The radio control speedboat was two hundred metres back. There was no point in firing, and he looked ahead. He had to be doing twelve or fifteen knots. It was easily a good kilometre from the shallows and the hazards that went with it. If he turned, trying to kick up some waves, the thing would follow, but he would also lose speed. It was already gaining on him. He concentrated on hitting his mark, the only problem being that the background was, by its very nature, all camouflage. It was all shades of green above the rocks and the waterline. All he had to go by was a notch in the line of hills looming taller up ahead with every passing moment.
The ragged green hilltops crept higher into the sky…
He looked back. The machine was getting close to the hundred-metre mark. It had the most irritating sound. Taking quick looks forward, he took off the safety, letting go briefly of the steering to cock it. He had always liked the Beretta, mostly for esthetic reasons.
This was going to be very awkward.
The water under his keel lightened and the first of the really big underwater rocks loomed. It was all he could do to try and avoid them, one hand on the steering. There wasn’t much point in looking back. The tops of boulders broke the surface to left and right. Liam’s heart stopped on the thought that he was way off and the river was somewhere else. Flinging yourself headfirst into the boulders was no way to make a living, boy…
No. The valley opened out to his left. He recognized a slash of red and beige rock, naked and exposed, the granite ribs of the country. Everything leapt into focus. It sliced up the hillside to his right. He cranked the boat left and throttled back. She sagged down into the water again, presenting her side as a perfect sitting duck.
He found his target.
He lined up the sights and squeezed off the first shot, its impact lost in the rooster-tail of spray coming off the back end. Liam flinched in shock as the roar of a dark green helicopter smashed into his eardrums and made everything more confusing. It came in from behind, low overhead. Electric motor screaming, the radio control boat was eighty metres out and closing quickly. His aluminum hull smashed into a rock, heaving up, and over and down again, throwing off his aim. There was still a moment of time…
There was a bulge above the white hull, with a bump on top of its black mass. There was a pair of round amber reflections, showing it was equipped with high-end optics and dual lenses.
Liam Kimball had the thing dead to rights, leading down low in front of it, when he squeezed off the next shot, and then there was no longer time to aim so he just kept busting caps at it.
The helicopter was just pulling its nose up and around in an abrupt bump-turn when the infernal thing blew up in a concussive bubble that sent visible shock waves through the humid air.
The man and the boat disappeared in the greasy pall of orange and black smoke that hovered over the scene.
***
Flight Lieutenant Baxter steadied the machine, a CH-146 Griffon from 8 Wing’s 423 Squadron, Trenton. He hovered ten metres above the water. A light breeze coming from the southwest was easily compensated for, as it slowly cleared the scene below. Search and Rescue Technician Madhukar Randak was clipped on to the cable and stood in the doorway. Master Sergeant Danielle Reddy peered out and down, waiting for visibility before letting Madman go.
They had their little ritual.
“Be good or be dead.”
“Yes, ma’am. Lower away.”
She nodded and hit the switch for the motor as Mad Randy leaned out, braced and then limply let his feet fall from the sill of the door. Hand on the cable, she kept him well out from the lip, protecting his helmeted head and face from the side of the machine.
Speaking into her microphone, Danielle informed the pilot that they had a visual and were lowering. He could always tell anyways, by the slight swaying motion imparted by the weight and the line, and hence to the helicopter fuselage through its attachment on a short boom hanging over the door.
“Roger.” He was always telling them to talk it up, talk it up. “What are you seeing back there?”
There was a pause. Hitting the button, Danielle held up for a considerable wisp of smoke to pass.
It was vital to keep contact with your tech and your target while lowering.
“We have one adult male on the ground. He appears to be mobile.”
Baxter, his neck rotating left and right, eyeballing the instruments as much as he could, listened and waited.
Mobile. That’s always a good sign. Below, the water was stained a dirty brown. The concussion of a small but powerful explosive had loosened the silt. The shock wave had flung it up, out and back down again for a radius of a good fifty or a hundred metres. The iridescent colours of a small gasoline spill did nothing to detract from the overall impression. Their mystery camper was damned lucky to be alive.
Chapter Fourteen
In Hollywood films, the hero is often seen diving away, at about ten miles an hour from an explosive wave-front travelling at ten thousand feet per second. Generally speaking, the hero would be a few feet away from the explosion. This usually happened at the last nanosecond as red numerals flashed in countdown mode, triggered by a hand-built device, a little red button on a little black box with a cheap extendable antenna and one ominous red light. It was all very exciting. It was also pure nonsense.
The reality was somewhat different.
Liam was lucky.
Whether he’d hit the thing with a lucky shot, or whether it had hit a rock and self-destructed, or whether some remote pilot had decided this is it was an interesting question. He watched a slowly spinning rescuer grab a nearby pine bough to stabilize their descent.
The boat had hit a smooth, round rock (or the second, or the third) just under the surface, riding up on it. Liam had been in the midst of falling over backwards, when the first wave of exploding gases took the high-side gunwale and rolled the boat all the way over. The water was a relatively deep metre or so in there, and his head was above the surface, protected by thin sheets of angled aluminum from the shrapnel. That had saved him. His head had missed the rocks, and the bomb had missed the boat. That’s not to say he was unscathed…or un-scourged.
Liam stepped over and grabbed the nearest foot as it went past just above his head.
“Whoopsie daisy. There we are.”
Liam Kimball’s guts felt like a pair of enthusiastic orangutans had worked him over with cricket bats. His groin in particular must be black and blue down there. He’d be lucky not to get a blood clot, he thought in a kind of lucidity. When he got a minute, a good puke might be in order.
“Did you guys see that?”
“Ah, not me, no.” Randy did a quick assessment.
The explosion had rocked the helicopter, cruising along almost directly overhead, or they might have missed it entirely. Their presence was pure coincidence, they were just doing random passes and circuits around the area.
The gentleman was whole, entire, and all in one piece, soaking wet. Randy observed narrow trickles of blood issuing from tiny holes all over him, mostly the neck, arms, left shoulder and upper chest. It was like he’d been sandblasted. The shirt was pretty much shredded. It might have been nice once. What was left of it looked expensive. The man was lucky to have been wearing ey
e protection.
Those injuries would sting like hell, but the gentleman appeared to take no notice of it. This was shock at its most obvious.
“Sir. Can I get you to put your arms through the ring here. We’re just going to take a little helicopter ride/” There was something about the rim of white around this person’s eyes.
Randy lowered his gaze and listened intently through the helicopter’s downwash.
“Sorry. Not just yet. I need to get one or two things.” Liam slapped him on the shoulder, the rough fabric feeling warm and dry, tactile reminder of a better world.
Liam turned and carefully lowered himself down the bank and into the murk that subsisted after the explosion. It was no longer water but a mixture of mud, shredded vegetation, dead fish, the shiny shells of freshwater clams, and whatever else had been in the immediate kill zone. He oozed his way over to the overturned boat hull, only the keel, the tip of the motor and some scuffed and perforated sheet metal visible. Taking a breath, he stuck an arm down in and mucked about under the boat.
Randy rubbed whiskers and spoke to those above.
“Looks like we’re going to be a minute.”
Randy wondered who this was and what was up that was so important.
What is all this about.
He keyed the mic.
“The gentleman is pulling his personal effects out of the water.”
“Roger.”
They’d only come on the play at the last moment, the pilots at first not realizing that the white speck following the much larger boat was some kind of drone. It caught the eye, the multiple wakes and foamy rooster-tails. At first, they thought he’d hooked a big one. Baxter’s first impression was that the man in the boat was going awfully fast for such shallow water.
“Roger. Holding.” In the back of Baxter’s mind was the important question of what other sorts of unconventional weapons might be employed now that the cat was out of the bag.
They were sitting ducks like this and somebody must want their package pretty badly. When they got to base he might ask one or two questions he hadn’t thought of, first time around.
***
After the attack on Liam, there was some discussion as to what to do next. He was clearly compromised. Ottawa was all for pulling him, but London, perhaps better knowing his capabilities, pooh-poohed the notion. Instead, they were calling for greater resources. This might be counterproductive, scaring the enemy away entirely, but at least they were getting some action and in the final analysis field operatives were expendable.
No one liked it, and one rarely expressed it in those terms. Marinaro was uncomfortable with the notion that good people were sometimes sacrificed, knowingly, the decision or the possibility taken ahead of time. It was always a judgement call.
Never, ever, would they have perfect information. It was dangerous work, and you either accepted some personal responsibility for that, or you quickly got out of the trade. His people were at risk at all times.
It was a fact of life.
With all of the action going on in the locale, rumours were spreading. It was being touted as an accident of military hardware. Something fell off a helicopter and exploded when it hit the ground. There were no injuries and no damage. This was the most prevalent version, all spontaneous speculation so far. Canadian authorities were cautiously exploiting the story despite questions being asked by the opposition parties on Parliament Hill.
Authorities were investigating. That could take a very long time, as everyone knew and most accepted uncritically.
They were in teleconference.
Liam was covered in what looked like dozens of adhesive bandages, the result of small metal, glass and plastic splinters. Not all of it was from the device itself. A good proportion was simple paint, pebbles and bits of fishing tackle. All of the equipment in the boat was swept into fury by the force of the explosion. The actual blast was within lethal range according to their best analysis. There was no accounting for luck. This according to the analysts. In order to come up with better numbers they would have to build their own copies for testing. The boat was a complete write-off. It had been taken away before too many civilians could get a real good look. He felt sick to his stomach, the result of concussive tissue damage to the innards. The pills worked to a certain extent.
Ian and Jenkins were with Liam. Marinaro was in Ottawa and Little F was on the line from London. They were trying to figure out what came next. Priority one was to find the remaining major components of the satellite. Only when that was secure, would the opposition give up trying, for as such things went, EMERALD was small potatoes. Worth grabbing for the smaller players as it was, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis had little or no interest. They had their own comparable systems, ones that didn’t explode on launch and embarrass their builders. Those powers were also known quantities.
The other thing was the persistent attacks. That spoke of a different ethos from what they were used to seeing. Espionage, yes. Terrorism, yes. Espionage with violence, not necessarily such a rare thing, was one thing. Espionage with terrorism, sometimes for pay, yes. It happened often enough, nowhere near as glamourous as the thrillers made it seem. This reckless disregard for giving themselves away was different. This looked like terrorism aspiring to bigger and better things, going by group psychological profiling (based upon minimal inputs). They had some resources and some connections. It would be nice to nail some of those connections.
“We can be assured they will try again.”
“Have you seen this?” Jenkins spun the laptop on his knees and lifted it in Liam’s direction.
Liam nodded sagely, having studied the contraption.
As they had sort of surmised, their little bomb-boat was not a robot. It was not directed by line-of-sight radio control, which had been Liam’s initial impression. It was far more sophisticated, and yet the world being what it was, pretty much all of the components were off the shelf or reasonably available if one knew the right (or the wrong) people. The secondary setting was pure robot. The average programmer could write the software, in weeks rather than months or years.
The target would be acquired, the bomb-boat launched and then for good measure the launcher could or would self-destruct. It was all up to the remote operators. The launcher could also be maneuvered in its now-discharged condition to another location, presumably for pick-up and re-loading. The enemy had put a lot of thought into this one. It was crazy enough, that it had actually worked. The machine that had attacked Liam had acquired the target and then locked into its attack with motors and twin screws governed by accelerometers in a feedback loop to the speed control—as Liam recalled in the debriefing, the thing had throttled up and down as it followed him, especially when it hit a bump and came up out of the water.
The device had been carefully disarmed by Canadian Forces personnel, called in for the occasion. Initially puzzled by the machine, they had accepted the challenge after a quick look and some consultation among themselves.
A keen bunch.
Either that or just plain crazy.
The thing about the launcher was that it had an access hatch above the motor and control systems. Once inside, it was almost self-explanatory. The wires between the charge and its own dedicated little battery were safely unplugged, then the arming circuit came next.
The machine could be manually operated using a camera mounted on the deck. The camera could swivel left and right for about two hundred and seventy degrees, as well as tilting up and down.
The boat and camera system had a powerful transmitter considering its size. It was more than adequate to bounce a signal via satellite uplink to an operator almost anywhere in the zone of coverage. This was limited by the curvature of the earth, but signals could be easily bounced over the horizon by relay satellites.
Equipped with a few simple servo controls and a receiver, the boat had been packed with approximately one-point-one kilograms of plastic explosive.
The machine was
impressive in that it was cheap but effective. The techs said they could build one on a budget of a thousand dollars.
The boat itself was injection-molded from sturdy polystyrene, much like any toy boat. So far they had not identified the maker. A small plastics plant, one anywhere in the world and with its own tool and die-makers, could make any number of them. They could build many different designs. This included the launcher, the boat, and the camouflaged surveillance cameras as well.
What else they might have was pure speculation. The technical people had done wonders working from fragmentary evidence.
Helicopters and other military aircraft in the area were terribly vulnerable to surface-to-air attack. They agreed that simply making a terror demonstration, attacking a western military power on their own ground, was not the purpose of the opposition’s presence.
Without much hard evidence against them, (none, really) there was little point in making arrests or bringing charges against any of the individuals identified or under surveillance so far. There was little hope of a conviction with what they had now. What was important was building a case, a thorough one, taking in not just the small fry but some of the bigger players. This was only one aspect of Project EMERALD, their working code name. It was a fishing expedition of an entirely different kind, although the field operatives didn’t need to know that.
What was interesting was that the boats appeared to be part of a larger, integrated, miniature weapons system. A robot bomb, an arming circuit, and the video/fly-by-wire controls could go into miniature boats, planes, four-wheel-drive trucks. The techs had done a quick internet search and found all kinds of remote aerial, water-borne, and toy car-type videos from amateur radio-control nuts. One fellow even had an electric goose—a modified decoy, with an electric motor, a camera lens, and the whole thing was pretty convincing from a short distance away. A duck or goose decoy could carry a kilo or half-kilo of explosive, no problem.
