by Dale Brown
“I can call Washington,” he told her. “And have you ordered back home.”
“Look, there’s no need for us to spit at each other,” she told him. “Let’s work together.”
Nuri frowned.
“You can’t cut me out,” she told him. “Tell your boss I want to be involved.”
“My boss?”
“Colonel Freah.”
“Danny’s not my boss. He commands the military people.”
“And what are you?”
“I’m Agency, just like you. We work as a team.”
“Who’s in charge of the operation?”
“We both are.”
“There has to be one person in charge. One.”
“You going to tell me how to run my operation now?”
“I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m sorry.” She shifted against the wall. “Let me go into town with you.”
“So the guys in the truck can recognize you?”
“They never got close enough to see me. It was dark.”
“What part of the company do you work for?”
Melissa didn’t answer.
“How long have you been covert? Or are you a tech geek who found her way over to the action side?”
“I’m not going to play games,” Melissa said. “I work for Harker — talk to him.”
“Look, give me the money,” he told her. “I need to go in right away. You’re in no shape right now. You should have taken more morphine. At least you’d get some rest.”
“You’re a doctor now?”
“Are you?”
“I trained as a nurse.”
Nuri put up his hands. She had an answer for everything.
Finally, Melissa went over to the footlocker and opened it. She hunched over it, counting money out.
“This ought to be enough,” she told him, handing over a wad of hundred-dollar bills.
Nuri started to count it.
“There are fifty,” she told him. “Five thousand.”
“That may not do it.”
“It’ll have to.” She slammed the top down with her right hand, pulling it halfway out of the sling.
“You should get your arm fixed.”
“It’ll be fine. You go and scout. OK. But I want to go on the mission.”
“If there is a mission, that’ll be up to Danny.”
“I thought he wasn’t your boss.”
“He’s not. But he’s more objective than I am.”
* * *
Boston managed to patch up Melissa’s motorcycle well enough for Nuri to ride it across the border into Elada, a medium-sized town in Eritrea, about an hour and a half away. He bought a counterfeit Rolex, some AK-47s, an old Colt service automatic, ammo, and two pair of khaki uniforms for a hundred American dollars; he could have shaved at least another ten off the deal if he’d had exact change.
Finding a decent vehicle was a different story. Pickup trucks, even those in poor condition, were valuable and rare. Nuri wanted either two trucks, or a truck and Land Rover; he’d stick a few of the Whiplash people in the back of the pickup as bodyguards. But he couldn’t find anyone willing to sell. The best he could do was work a trade for a battered Mercedes sedan — his motorcycle, a thousand American in cash, and three stolen credit cards.
The credit cards were Agency cards, disabled by MY-PID two minutes after the transaction. It would undoubtedly be at least a full day before the buyer found out: Elada didn’t have any ATMs, nor were there any in the rest of the country.
The car ran decently, and came with three-quarters of a tank worth of diesel. Which was enough — Nuri drove it about five miles south to a field where the Osprey was waiting. Danny had decided to speed things up by flying it across to Sudan.
“I have uniforms for two bodyguards,” Nuri told Danny as the Osprey took off with the car chained beneath its belly. “How about Flash and Boston?”
“Boston can go, but Flash is going to stay with the aircraft in case we need backup,” said Danny. “I want to come.”
Boston was imposing physically, but his real asset was an angry, craggy face that would scare even a close friend into thinking he was just waiting for an excuse to kill. Flash, though white, had the lean, undernourished look of a down-on-his-luck white mercenary who very likely was nursing sociopathic tendencies.
Danny was big physically, and Nuri knew from experience that he was in excellent shape and was a great shot. But he had a quieter, almost benign face — too relaxed, too in control. The ideal bodyguard out here was just this side of criminally insane.
“You think you can do it?” Nuri asked.
“I’ve gone undercover here before.”
“This is different. You’ll have to be completely silent. If they hear your accent up here, we’re dead.”
“I’m not worried,” said Danny.
Nuri picked up one of the uniforms. “Here you go, then. I hope it fits.”
Chapter 4
Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland
Breanna spotted Jonathon Reid’s gray Taurus parked with its running lights and engine on near the edge of the tarmac as the C-20 turned off the access ramp from the runway. She unbuckled her seat belt and went to the door, waiting while the aircraft taxied over.
“Pilots say the plane should be refueled inside an hour, ma’am,” said the sergeant who was working as the crewman. “If you’d like, I can try and hunt up something to eat.”
“A bagel?” she asked. “With butter?”
“I’ll give it a shot, ma’am.”
Breanna waited impatiently for the aircraft to halt. It seemed to take forever to travel the last twenty or thirty yards. Finally it eased to a stop. The crewman dropped the fold-down stairs, and Breanna trotted down them into a light rain. She walked over to the car and got in on the passenger side.
Reid handed her a cup of coffee.
“The news is that bad?” she asked.
Reid had an extremely droll sense of humor, but he didn’t laugh now.
“I’m guessing what’s going on here,” he told her. “I’m guessing there’s an unauthorized assassination program involved. There are no official records or minutes anywhere. No NSC notes. And I did check, through the back channel.”
“OK.” Breanna had suspected as much when he said he wanted to talk about it in person.
“But it’s the weapon that worries me,” said Reid. “Raven doesn’t refer to the UAV. It was a program to develop software that could seek out and destroy whoever it was targeted against. It could control a variety of platforms. In fact, it could go, on its own, from one to the other. That was its goal.”
“Is that possible?”
“I don’t know.” Reid took a sip from his coffee. “After seeing everything Dr. Rubeo has come up with, I’d say anything is possible.”
“Hmmm.”
“This weapon would be able to take over programs of other countries,” continued Reid. “There was a white paper, very restricted access, that talks about guarding against these things.”
“You should really talk to Ray about it.”
“I’d like to. But I don’t know how much to trust him.”
“I trust Ray implicitly.”
“Would he feel obliged, morally, to discuss it with anyone else?”
“What do you mean?”
“If the Agency has created a weapon that can’t be controlled, and accidentally set it loose, who would he feel he had to tell?”
“What do you mean, it can’t be controlled?”
Reid sipped his coffee, momentarily turning his gaze to the drops of rain landing on the windshield.
“The implication of the white paper was that this software would be like a virus, released into the wild,” he said, still looking at the rain. “Once out there, it would just run relentless until its target was found.”
“You think the Agency would test that without any safety protocols?” said Breanna. “That would be insane.”
“I don
’t know what they’re doing. I would assume they would have some sort of safeguard. And I don’t know if any of this is even possible. But…”
“But?”
“But they’re definitely going after someone in the Sudan, they’re definitely using a UAV no one else has known about, and they’re definitely being extremely secretive. And the person the Whiplash team rendezvoused with in Africa joined the Agency as a software scientist before transferring about a year ago to covert ops.”
“We have to ask Edmund what’s going on,” said Breanna.
“I have. He won’t say. I have a few favors to call in,” added Reid. “And I’ll talk to Dr. Rubeo.”
“Then what?”
“I’m not sure.” Reid put his coffee cup back in the holder. “I have to ask you not to share this with the senator.”
“Zen?”
“I don’t— This could be a real political football in Congress. And…” He paused. “I’m not sure the President knows. In fact, I’d almost bet she doesn’t. Just from Edmund’s reactions.”
“You think they’d run an assassination program without telling the President?”
“Without a doubt,” said Reid.
* * *
By the time she reboarded the C-20, Breanna felt drained. Recovering the UAV — they had located it and were planning to go in as soon as it was dark — was exactly the sort of mission Whiplash had been created for. The political implications of Raven, even if it were “just” an illegal assassination mission, were something else again.
She hadn’t even been thinking of Zen until Reid mentioned that he couldn’t be told.
They both had jobs where it was necessary to keep a certain amount of separation between work and home, and therefore to keep certain state and political secrets from one another as well. But if Breanna knew that the CIA was breaking the law, and being extremely irresponsible as well — could she in good conscience not tell Zen about it? What would he say to her when he found out?
Because something like this would eventually come out. Surely.
Hopefully, Reid was overthinking the situation. Losing a top secret UAV would certainly be enough to circle the wagons.
And just because he couldn’t find any approval in the system for the assassination didn’t necessarily mean there hadn’t been one.
“Ma’am?”
Breanna looked up at the tech sergeant, standing in the aisle next to her seat.
“Got you your bagel,” he said, smiling as he handed her a tray. “I have to ask you to buckle your seat belt.”
Chapter 5
Duka, Sudan
Li Han circled the wrecked aircraft. It was worth even more than he’d thought at first glance. It was unique, far more advanced than anything he was familiar with. Granted, he wasn’t an expert in UAVs, but he knew a great deal about computers and processing technology, and what he saw here was truly impressive.
The building in Duka hadn’t changed at all since he’d been there last. Nor had Duka itself — still a sleepy backwater occupied by tribesmen barely removed from the medieval ages. The people walked around in a mixture of modern and ancient dress, and were armed with AK-47s and the like, but they still thought the way people thought in the Stone Age. If he had been a sociologist, he’d have found it fascinating.
But he was not. He was a scientist, and not even that.
His escorts were all sleeping upstairs, even the two men who had been posted by the door as guards. Just as well.
While the locals posed no threat, Li Han knew the Americans would be looking for the aircraft. Embedded in its skin were two devices sending repeater-type radio beacons, obviously intended for tracking. One of them had been damaged in the crash, but the other was still working. Carefully removing them, he’d placed them into the back of the truck, covered them with a tarp, and had the Brothers drive them to another building a kilometer away. It was an elementary ruse, but at least he’d have some warning if the Americans came.
He put his knee down on the dirt floor as if genuflecting before the marvel in front of him. The airfoil was made of carbon-fiber and metallized glass, with a few titanium elements. The manufacturing process was so advanced he doubted it would be of interest to any Third World country, even the Iranians. The Russians might not even be able to duplicate it.
The Chinese, of course, would be highly interested, but they were the one country he could never deal with. Not even on this. The ministry considered him a traitor, and would pay any price for his head.
Selling the engine would be easier. It was a downsized turbine, nothing particularly fancy or difficult to copy. The Israelis were very much interested in lightweight engines for their own UAVs, and they paid extremely well. But being that this was American technology — markings indicated at least some of the parts had been manufactured by GE — it was possible, perhaps even likely, that they already had access to it. They might even have helped develop it.
As far as he could tell, the optical sensors were trashed beyond use and even recognition when the aircraft crashed. The same went for the infrared sensor, though in that case he thought some of the parts might be salvageable and potentially salable to Iran for their own research. The price wouldn’t be high; it was more likely something he could throw in to make a larger deal.
The weapons system was a straight Hellfire missile setup. He could get about three thousand dollars for the salvageable mount and related electrical parts — not even pocket change. The missile itself would have fetched much more, but part of the propulsion system had shattered on impact and appeared irreparable.
And then there was the computer and guidance system, which looked to be the equivalent of a mainframe computer stuffed into a box no bigger than a woman’s purse.
UAVs were essentially radio controlled aircraft. Their “brains” received radio signals, then translated those inputs into electrical impulses that guided the throttle and the various control surfaces. In truth, it wasn’t all that complicated — children’s toys had been doing something similar for decades. The circuitry for sending flight data and information from the other sensors was trivial.
But this UAV’s brain was far different. It had six processor arrays, all clearly custom-built. This suggested a parallel computing architecture that would be overkill for even the most complicated aircraft. Not only could you fly a Boeing Dreamliner with this much power; you could fly an entire fleet of them.
And still have plenty of processing room left for a championship game of chess.
The obvious conclusion was that the computer flew the aircraft without the help of a ground pilot. But what else did it do?
Li Han was determined to find out. His only problem was to do that without destroying the programming.
And to do it here. It seemed safer to hide out in Duka than attempt to return to the Brothers. But that meant limited power. The electricity in the house worked only a few hours a day, and he didn’t want to attract attention by getting a gas generator like some of the locals. He had battery lanterns, and his laptop was extremely powerful, but there was no mistaking the musty basement for a Shanghai computer lab. He was lucky to even be in a building with a basement, as crude as it was.
The overhead light flickered as Li Han leaned over the computer box. There were two network interface plugs, the standard 5E receptacles used by local area networks around the world. There was also a pair of much larger connectors that looked to Li Han like specialized optical cable receptors. These were irregularly sized, larger than the thumb-sized hook-ins one would find on advanced audiovisual equipment in professional studios or similar applications.
Clearly, the 5E connectors were his way in, but he didn’t have any 5E wiring.
Could he find it here?
There was a sound outside, upstairs — an engine. Li Han froze. For a moment he expected the worst: a missile crashing through the roof. But the noise was just a truck passing on the road.
He took a deep breath and began thinking a
bout where he might find a computer cable in this part of the Sudan.
Chapter 6
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
It was well after 2:00 a.m. by the time Jonathon Reid got home. The house was quiet, his wife sleeping. It was a modest house by Georgetown standards — three bedrooms, a bath and a half, no granite or marble on the property, and the only thing “faux” was the fake flower on the kitchen windowsill. Reid or his wife cut the small lawn themselves. But the house felt like an immense place tonight. He walked through the downstairs rooms quietly, absorbing the space and the quiet. Thinking.
Possibly, he was making too much of this. There was always that danger when you only saw parts, not the whole.
Reid slipped quietly into the master bedroom. He took off his clothes and reached to pull the blanket down. But as he started to slip into bed, he realized there was no way he would sleep. He looked at his wife, her face turned away from him. As good as it would feel to curl his body around hers, he didn’t want to wake her.
He left the room and walked to the far end of the hall, to the guest room. It had been his oldest daughter’s room years before. Repainted several times, it bore no visible trace of her, but to Reid it still felt as if she were there. He could remember setting up her bed the first night they moved in. He’d sat here countless times, reading her stories.
He could close his eyes and imagine himself on the floor next to her bed, telling her while she slept that he had to go away again, explaining that it was his job and that even if he didn’t come back — something he would say only when he was positive she wasn’t awake — he still loved her, and no matter what, would be her father and protector.
Reid eased himself down to that very spot on the floor next to the bed, then leaned back and stared at the ceiling. A dim brownish light filtered in from the window, casting the room in faded sepia.
