by Mike Maden
“Good flight over?” Pearce asked.
“Easy as pie. You ready?”
“Let’s go. Sooner we get there, the sooner I can get back to the fish.”
“ETA to Dearborn, ten-fifteen, local,” Judy said. Their cruising speed was close to five hundred miles per hour.
Judy reached over and tapped the brightly lit glass touch screen in front of Pearce, part of the Garmin G3000 avionics package. The only thing analog about the glowing digital cockpit was the faded Polaroid taped to the instrument panel. It was ten-year-old Judy flying her father’s missionary bush plane. She claimed it was her good luck charm.
After confirming GPS coordinates, weather patterns, and nearby traffic, Judy radioed in to the tower. She was cleared to taxi back to the runway for takeoff. The flat panel in front of her displayed a 3-D graphical terrain rendering and a simulated cockpit view. Pearce Systems had purchased one of the first HondaJets to roll out of the North Carolina assembly plant earlier that year.
There was no airport traffic that morning so Judy was able to taxi quickly into position. In a few minutes, they stood poised for takeoff. Judy quickly ran her preflight checks, then pointed at the yoke in front of Pearce. “You want to give it a whirl today?” she asked.
Pearce wasn’t rated to fly the twin-engine turbofan jet, but he’d practiced on the simulator a half dozen times. He was also pretty good at flying single-engine props and had gotten better at it thanks to Judy’s patient instruction. But he didn’t have a fraction of the natural skill that Judy possessed.
Judy sensed his hesitation. “If you’re not ready, that’s okay. She’s a handful, for sure.”
“Just like every other woman in my life,” Pearce said. He knew it was foolish to not let the far superior pilot take control of the aircraft, but Pearce couldn’t resist the rush of controlling a four-thousand-feet-per-minute climb. Besides, it was his damn plane. “Let’s rock and roll.”
Judy winked. “That’s what I wanted to hear.” She called in to the tower one last time. They were cleared for takeoff. Pearce fired up the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” on the comm, then slammed the throttle home, rocketing the HondaJet down the tarmac. The plane leapt off the runway, blasting into the crisp morning sky like a mortar round, grins plastered on both of their faces.
Pearce Systems Research Facility, Dearborn, Michigan
Pearce’s main research facility was located in an abandoned Mercury auto plant just south of I-94, a stone’s throw from the General George S. Patton memorial. Pearce and his mysterious investing partner had purchased it just after the ’08 crash to house their expanding research operations, which provided a significant revenue stream for the company beyond the various civilian and security services they provided.
For most of his missions, Pearce purchased off-the-shelf operational systems from legitimate vendors, often modifying them to his own specs. If particular drone systems weren’t available for purchase, he was able to emulate their capabilities by manufacturing his own either by original design or by purchasing widely available airframe, power plant, and avionics components.
But Pearce Systems was also pioneering some of the latest drone technologies by partnering with or building upon the efforts of other bleeding-edge research organizations. Pearce and Judy had made the flight to the Dearborn lab that morning at the fevered request of Dr. Kirin Rao, the head of the research division.
“Thank you both for coming,” Rao said. “Please follow me.” With her long legs, soft curves, and cloying eyes, Dr. Rao looked more like a Bollywood movie star than a Ph.D. in robotics engineering. Pearce and Judy followed her to one of the computer labs.
“This is Jack,” Dr. Rao said. She pointed at a Rhesus monkey seated in a miniature pilot’s chair, nibbling on an apple slice. A square of hermetically sealed titanium was attached to the top of his skull—a brain-machine interface (BMI) device hardwired into his cortex. A large LCD TV was on the wall three feet directly in front of him, but no picture was present.
“Is that the wireless BMI?” Pearce asked.
Dr. Rao nodded enthusiastically. “Three months ahead of schedule.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Rao said.
The door swung open.
“Ian. Good to see you,” Pearce said. They shook hands. The wiry Scot had a kind, expressive face beneath two high arching eyebrows and a great shock of hair. Dark eyes betrayed his fierce intelligence.
“Come here, you,” Judy said, wrapping Ian in a bear hug. They were close friends, though Ian preferred something more.
“I see you’ve all met our wee friend Jack.”
“How are the legs these days?” Pearce asked.
Ian lifted one of his Genium bionic legs. His own legs had been amputated above the knee after he was cut down in the 2005 7/7 bombings in London. The new high-tech knee joints were controlled by a microprocessor that allowed for nearly perfect mobility. “Never better. I’ll be sword dancing before too long.”
“Shall we begin?” Dr. Rao shut the lights off. Instantly, the LCD panel lit up with a computer program.
“Looks like a flight simulator,” Judy said.
“It is,” Rao said.
“Where’s the joystick?” Judy asked.
“There isn’t one,” Ian said.
A wire-framed Predator was centered in the screen, swooping low over a vast virtual desert, following a black ribbon of asphalt highway.
“Jack’s flying it with his mind,” Pearce said to Judy. “Dr. Nicolelis did something similar to this a few years ago.” He tried to hide his irritation. He could’ve watched this demonstration from the comfort of his cabin instead of flying all the way here. In fact, he’d seen Nicolelis’s work on YouTube months ago after Rao sent him a link.
“Similar, but not exactly the same,” Rao said. “Watch.”
Moments later, an animated flatbed truck with a mounted machine gun appeared on the highway, surrounded by three other unarmed cars. The armed truck began firing at Jack’s drone. Jack swooped and swerved to avoid the antiaircraft fire.
“Dr. Nicolelis’s monkey could only track targets with his mind. Jack can avoid being a target. He can also do this.”
The truck continued firing, but the other three cars fell away. Suddenly, a missile shot out from beneath the drone’s wings. A moment later the truck disintegrated in a ball of digital fire, leaving the three other cars unscathed.
Rao beamed. “I bet my monkey can blow up his monkey.”
“And you’ll notice, little Jack isn’t just using his motor skills to track a single target. He’s making target choices,” Ian said.
“How?” Pearce asked.
“We hacked into the deeper cognitive functions of his cortex,” Rao said. She turned the lights back on, ending the game. “So what you’re seeing is not only a brain-machine connection, but also a true mind-machine interaction.”
Pearce nodded. It was impressive. One of the biggest challenges to achieving true autonomous drone capacity was artificial intelligence programming. If a computer program could ever simulate a sentient brain—and there were plenty of arguments against that eventuality—it would still be years away before that goal would be achieved. But why try to emulate a human brain with software if an actual brain could be used instead through BMI?
“Can you imagine the possibilities? Artificial limbs, exoskeletons, blindness… the medical applications are endless,” Ian said.
“So are the military ones,” Judy said. A rare scowl.
“Do you understand now why I wanted you to be here in person?” Rao asked. She had just made Pearce Systems one of the most important players in the field of neuroprosthetics.
Pearce nodded, trying to hide his excitement. “If you really want to impress me, next time have Jack fly me up here himself.”
“Then what will I do?” Judy asked.
Pearce shrugged. “Sit back and enjoy the ride, I guess.”
5
Isla Paraíso, Mexico
César Castillo’s Roman villa–styled mansion stood at the peak of the six-hundred-meter mountain in the center of his private island ten miles east of the Baja California Peninsula. Locating his palatial home on the highest point had certain strategic disadvantages, certainly, but it was his dream of witnessing the ineffable beauty of the daily rising and setting of the sun that had caused him to build it there. He had not been disappointed with his decision.
Castillo stepped out of the civilian MD 500 helicopter onto the helipad almost before the landing skids had hit the ground. He made a beeline for the house. His security chief, Ali Abdi, waited for the pilot to land before jumping out and scrambling to catch up with his boss. As usual, the Iranian wore a brimmed hat and dark sunglasses in order to keep his face hidden from the ubiquitous American electronic surveillance devices that might be circling overhead. He hadn’t survived this long without taking extreme precautions.
César stormed into the courtyard with the massive pool complex. The architect had replicated the expansive marble-and-tile Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle. But César had added Greek and Roman statuary depicting various gods and heroes with tridents, swords, and spears to stand guard around the crystal-blue waters of the Olympic-size pool. The face of Zeus bore an uncanny resemblance to César’s with its fierce, cruel eyes and wicked grin.
Stretched out on chaise longues near the pool were his two strapping twin sons, Aquiles and Ulises Castillo, who were even more sculpted than the statues. Naked and tan, their muscled bodies glistened with sweat. Each was six foot three inches tall, nearly a foot taller than their father, who was a squat, barrel-chested man with enormous hands attached to abnormally long arms. César was built exactly like his father, Hércules Castillo, a Sinaloan tomato farmer long since dead. Hércules told his teenage son that God must have designed the Castillos to pick tomatoes since he gave them such long arms that they barely had to bend over to gather the fruit up. César Castillo had built the world’s most powerful drug cartel just to prove both God and his father wrong.
Without a doubt, the two young men in their early twenties had emerged from the deep end of their mother’s gene pool, an Argentine beauty of German, Italian, and Spanish descent. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, green eyes, and long, thick chestnut hair made the twins irresistible to women. Men, on the other hand, either admired or feared them. The few who had ever crossed them had long since disappeared.
“Who ordered the hit in El Paso?” César demanded as he stormed into the pool area. Ali had finally caught up. He took a position in the shade underneath the portico, a short but discreet distance away. Acoustical guitar music poured out of the hidden speakers located around the pool area.
Neither Aquiles nor Ulises stirred from beneath their Ray-Bans. They were fanatical sun worshippers.
“Welcome home, Father. How was your trip?” Aquiles asked.
César whipped around and snapped his fingers at Ali. The Iranian found the remote control and killed the music. A .40 caliber Steyr printed against Ali’s back beneath his Cuban guayabera. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, the brown-eyed Iranian was fluent in Spanish. He shaved his beard but kept his mustache and easily passed for a Hispanic anywhere he traveled in Latin America or the United States.
“Answer my question.” César stood directly over his naked son.
Ulises lifted his sunglasses. “You’re blocking the sun, Father.”
Aquiles laughed. How could such a short man block anything, let alone the sun?
“Why are you laughing?” César asked.
“No reason, Father. I’m sorry. It just struck me as a paradoxical thing for Ulises to say.”
“‘Paradoxical.’ That’s a big word. I suppose that’s why I paid all of that money to send you to university, so you can use big words with me, eh? Put some clothes on, both of you. You should be ashamed to lie around here like a couple of putos.”
Ulises’s green eyes, which had been mockingly coy until now, flashed with rage, but only for an instant. “Yes, you’re right. We should dress.” Ulises stood up from the lounger, towering over his diminutive father. He yawned and stretched his muscular arms high over his head, fully displaying his powerful physique. It was a threat display worthy of a silverback gorilla.
César grabbed his son by the testicles with his left hand and crushed them as hard as he could while clutching his son’s throat with his right hand. The pain exploded in Ulises’s scrotum, but his scream only came out as a yelp because his windpipe was blocked. César charged into his son like a bull, toppling the bigger man backward until they reached the edge of the pool, where he tossed the boy into the water with a splash.
Ali watched the battle intently. He redistributed his body weight so that he was equally balanced on both feet as he slowly, carefully, slipped his hands behind his back, clasping them together just above the pistol holstered in his lower back. He had never seen either son raise a hand to their father, but he was prepared for anything with these two wild wolves. He knew exactly how dangerous the boys were in hand-to-hand combat because he had trained them himself. It had taken Ali over eight months to work his way into his current position as Castillo’s head of security, the first step of many more to come. Ali wasn’t about to let either boy derail his plan by killing their father, even if he deserved it.
Aquiles watched the lopsided battle in amused horror as he yanked on his swim trunks. He stifled the urge to laugh at his brother.
“To answer your question, Father, we put a hit on Los Tokers,” Aquiles said, tying the string on his bathing suit. “They were throwing a party on our turf. Those punks are like roaches. If you don’t squash them, they just keep spreading. Isn’t that what you taught us to do?”
“Who told you it was Los Tokers?” César asked as he stomped back over to Aquiles.
“We got a phone call. A Mara named Hater,” Aquiles said. “He’s one of our meth dealers and an enforcer.”
“And you trust this Hater guy?”
“Yes. Why?” Ulises asked.
“Because either he got it wrong or he screwed us,” César replied.
“What are you talking about?” Aquiles asked.
“Because there weren’t any Tokers at the party.”
Aquiles frowned, thoughtfully. “And why is that a problem?”
César suppressed the urge to strike his son across the face. He’d killed better men for less offense. “Tell me how it’s not a problem.”
“A hit is a hit, Father. We put the word out on the street that we thought Los Tokers were muscling in, so we smashed them. The message was sent. Mess with us and you die. And the message still makes sense even though Los Tokers weren’t there. People died just because we thought Tokers were there. Nobody’s even going to think about setting up shop on our turf again, at least not for a while,” Aquiles bragged.
César slapped his son’s grinning face. The sound echoed around the courtyard like a gunshot. Aquiles didn’t flinch, but his eyes watered. Whether from rage or pain, Ali couldn’t be certain. Probably both.
Ulises tread water in the pool, remaining a safe distance from his father’s reach. “Why are you so upset with us, Father? You told us to mind the store while you were away. We did.”
César wagged a thick finger at both of them. “You lazy bastards. You think all you have to do is pick up a phone and order people killed? You should have done the advance work yourselves. You never want to get your hands dirty yourselves, do you?”
Ulises glared at his father. He’d grown up with the endless stories of his grandfather’s backbreaking work in the tomato fields. To be accused of not wanting to get his hands dirty was the moral equivalent of accusing a soldier of cowardice in the face of battle. The verbal jab was worse than his father’s physical slap.
“But you’re wrong, Father. We did get our hands dirty.” Ulises glanced at his brother for moral support. Aquiles nodded for him to continue. “We’re the ones who pulled the trigger. We’re
the ones who sent the message.”
César fell into a lounger. He buried his head in his massive hands and moaned aloud. “What have you two idiots done?”
“We took care of business. Those punks were just collateral damage. It happens.” Aquiles had lowered his voice to a near whisper, fearing another slap by his father. He sat down on the lounger next to him.
César looked up. “Collateral damage? Are you insane? You think Ryan Martinez is just ‘collateral damage’?”
“Who’s that?” Ulises asked.
César howled with laughter. “How paradoxical! A stupid tomato picker like me knows more than a college-educated fairy. Don’t either of you listen to the news?”
“Only ESPN,” Ulises said. “And hardly that.”
“So who is Ryan Martinez?” Aquiles asked.
“Ryan Martinez was a schoolteacher at that party you shot up,” César said. He wiped his thick mustache with one of his monstrous hands.
“And…?” Ulises asked, cringing, half expecting another blow.
“Ryan Martinez was the son of the president of the United States! And now she is going to unleash holy hell on us for murdering her only child.”
The boys glanced at each other, frightened and confused. “We didn’t know,” they said to each other, as if talking to themselves in a mirror.
César leaped to his feet, reaching for the chromed .45 caliber Desert Eagle in his waistband. Screaming with maniacal rage, he opened fire at the nearest statue, a goat-legged Pan with a great golden phallus thrusting up to his midsection. Pan’s marble head exploded with the first hit. The next rounds tore away the god’s massive pectorals and mashed his silver shepherd’s flute. César kept firing until he emptied the magazine. He dropped the clip and slammed a new one home, then chambered the first round.
César pointed the gun at each of his sons like an accusing finger.
